Conversing: Recent Episodes

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The Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann said, is an old text that simply refuses to stay old. "It reads like it was written yesterday." For him, God offers no artificial closure, but is active in the meantime, and at peace with the "unfinished."

Walter Brueggemann died on June 5, 2025, at the age of 92, and his own influence is unfinished. This episode is from the Conversing archives: a conversation Mark Labberton hosted with Brueggemann at Fuller Seminary for the 2015 Fuller Forum, "Justice, Grace, and Law in the Mission of God."

Brueggemann was an Old Testament scholar for the sake of the church, the author of over 100 books including The Prophetic Imagination, and came to the Bible as a text-wrestler, "comfortable with collisions," taking the Hebrew text and his own life as an artist with equal and total seriousness. He describes his method of exegesis written longhand, "at the end of his pen," catching himself speaking the words as he writes them.

Together they discuss the artistry of biblical language and why art is inherently subversive; Abraham Joshua Heschel on the suffering of God in Jeremiah; the pastor as scribe rather than prophet; the violence of God in the Old Testament and what it means to call it recovery; and justice as the "willingness to be inconvenienced." Brueggemann closes with Psalm 73: " Whom have I in heaven, and who do I desire on Earth but you?"

Walter Brueggemann was the McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Episode Highlights

• A Scholar for the Church: "It took me a while to figure out that I wanted to be a scholar for the church and not for the academy … you wanna maintain your credibility in the academy, but it's not where you live."
• On the Old Testament: "It's so Jewish, and Jewishness means that it's conflicted and multi-vocal and multilayered and complex, and that's the nature of the text, and I think that's the nature of the God who indwells the text."
• The Everlasting Text: "It is an old text, but I always said to my students, it reads like it was written yesterday … it is an old text that refuses to stay old."
• On Subversiveness: "Art is inherently subversive because it wants to show us reality in a way that we have never before seen it … what we always wanna do with art or with the Bible is that we wanna cram it into the categories of the familiar."
• On Unfinishedness: "This is a God who stays faithful in the unfinishedness … in some ways, God isn't finished becoming God yet. So there is more light to break forth yet in our midst."
• On Fixing Everything: "Our society is about to forget what it means to be human in a technological, capitalist environment … The dominant value system of our society believes that everything can be fixed."
• Justice as Inconvenience: "I don't mind dying for Christ, but I don't wanna be inconvenienced … so much of justice work is just being inconvenienced."

About Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann (1933-2025) was among the most widely read Old Testament scholars of the past century, author of more than one hundred books, including The Prophetic Imagination and Theology of the Old Testament. Born in Tilden, Nebraska, to a German Evangelical pastor, he studied at Elmhurst College, Eden Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, and Saint Louis University. He taught at Eden from 1961 to 1986 and at Columbia Theological Seminary from 1986 until his retirement in 2003, holding the William Marcellus McPheeters chair in Old Testament. His final book, God of All Promises, was published posthumously in 2026.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Walter Brueggemann's official website: https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/
• In memoriam and Celebration of Life service webpage: https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/2025/06/05/in-memory/
• Brueggemann on X: https://twitter.com/waltbrueggemann
• The Prophetic Imagination, 40th Anniversary Edition, Fortress Press: https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9781506449302/The-Prophetic-Imagination

Show Notes

• In memoriam: Walter Brueggemann, 1933–2025; died June 5, 2025 at 92
• Recorded at the 2015 Fuller Forum: "Justice, Grace, and Law in the Mission of God"
• A rural pastor father, plain in the pulpit and unmistakable in his passion
• Doctoral study at Union under James Muilenburg, a close friend of Abraham Joshua Heschel
• Choosing the church over the academy, and what that vocational choice cost
• Historical criticism as necessary but never sufficient
• Multivocal Scripture
• The Old Testament's Jewishness as conflict, layering, complexity
• An ancient text that reads like it was written yesterday
• Biblical exegesis in longhand
• Micah 4: beating swords into plowshares
• Ecumenism that doesn't coerce
• Particularity over universal generalization; the scandal of incarnation
• Heschel on the pathos of God
• Jeremiah 8 and 9: "Oh, that I had bigger tear ducts because I must cry more than my eyes will permit me."
• Why aiming at a doctrinal or moral outcome turns interpretation coercive
• Wendell Berry, and the discovery that combinations of words do things
• Art as a refusal of the familiar
• Unfinishedness
• Congregations that want closure, and the anxiety of leaving things open
• Biblical literacy
• The violence of God read as recovery rather than projection
• Justice as planned inconvenience: meetings, showing up, critical mass
• Psalm 73, and coming to oneself in a world of commodity
• Why the pastoral task feels urgent in a society sure everything can be fixed

#WalterBrueggemann #PropheticImagination #OldTestament #Conversing #MarkLabberton #Preaching #Theology

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

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Why are we still "kicking the hornet's nest"? The last time Mark Labberton interviewed Daniel Zoughbie (UC Berkeley/UCSF) for his expertise on international diplomacy in the Middle East, there was not yet an Iran war. Regardless of your geographical distance, this war is imminently important as it escalates and impacts not just Iran but the entire Middle East and the entire world economy.

"War is really supposed to be a last resort."

Taking seriously both the significance and validity of Israel as a nation and the need for appropriate and just treatment of all Jews, Christians, and Muslims during a time of rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, this conversation comes at a volatile moment, pregnant with violence and chaos in American foreign policy.

Starting the timeline at the 2018 US exit from the "Iran nuclear deal" (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) Zoughbie discusses a variety of interconnected issues, including the role of Middle Eastern geography such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandab ("Gate of Tears"), the proliferation cascade a Saudi Arabian nuclear program could set off, and the difference between tactical brilliance and strategic vision.

Together, they also consider hopes for improvement, looking at Gerald Ford's unpopular but effective ultimatum that forced Egypt and Israel to talk; the Olmert-Abbas negotiations that almost reached a two-state solution; the role of Christianity in politics; the danger of national pride; wisdom from antiquity in Herodotus, Croesus, and Cyrus the Great; and a definition of greatness that has nothing to do with force.

Episode Highlights

• Regarding the term "an unnecessary war": "I think the word 'unnecessary' is absolutely the appropriate term, and I might just add another term: unjust. War is really supposed to be a last resort."
• "Iran has discovered not only that they have this nuclear program, which is incredibly powerful, but they've discovered that they have this power to shut off world's economy [through The Strait of Hormuz]."
• "Exiting [the JCPOA—Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] was a really, really big blunder because we did not have anything else to fall back on. The Iranians pointed to this and said, 'Look, we can't trust your word.'"
• "I feel like the current atmosphere in Washington is really about 'me, mine, and more.' And for us to really have a change in our foreign policy ... we really need to think beyond ourselves as a country."
• "We'll always try to turn every problem into a nail, right? And we'll use our hammer to deal with that problem. And that's exactly why we're in this mess in the first place."
• "Greatness is not about testosterone shots. It's about being able to show mercy. It's about being able to see the humanity in others, even your enemy, and ultimately what I would call Herodotus's paradox, which is that the mightiest of the mighty turns an enemy into a friend."

About Daniel Zoughbie

Daniel E. Zoughbie is a complex-systems scientist, diplomatic historian, and expert on presidential decision-making. He is associate project scientist at the UCSF/UCB Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy, and Economics; principal investigator of Berkeley's Middle East and North Africa Diplomacy, Development, and Defense Initiative; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's MENA Futures Lab. He wrote Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump and Indecision Points. He founded Microclinic International, whose model has reached refugee and low-income communities across four continents, and studied at Oxford as a Marshall and Weidenfeld Scholar.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Kicking the Hornet's Nest, Zoughbie's 2025 book on twelve presidents and the Middle East https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kicking-the-Hornets-Nest/Daniel-E-Zoughbie/9781668085226
• "Toxic Foreign Policy and Citizen Diplomacy," Zoughbie's first Conversing conversation: https://comment.org/podcasts/toxic-foreign-policy-and-citizen-diplomacy/
• "The Lesson Trump Can Take From Herodotus' Paradox" https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-lesson-trump-can-take-from-herodotus-paradox/
• UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/content/2231/background
• "World Oil Transit Chokepoints," the US Energy Information Administration on Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandab https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/special_topics/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/
• Gerald R. Ford's 1977 Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary commencement address, quoted at length in this episode https://www.christianitytoday.com/2006/12/gerald-r-ford-lessons-from-presidency/
• Herodotus, The Histories, Book 1, where Croesus consults the Oracle and Cyrus spares him https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0126:book%3D1
• American University of Beirut, Zoughbie's standing example of citizen diplomacy https://aub.edu.lb/

Show Notes

• The 2018 exit from the Iran Nuclear Deal (the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) as the origin point of the current war
• P5+1: US, UK, Russia, China, France, plus Germany
• What the deal never covered: missiles, proxies, regional behavior
• Nuclear non-proliferation
• In the wake of the US bombing of Iran: enrichment stockpiles, IAEA detections, inspectors no longer on the ground
• An unnecessary and unjust war
• How to work backward from the real goals of American national security
• Proliferation cascade risk: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt
• Leverage the US still holds through China, Russia, India, and Pakistan
• The Saudi nuclear offer, walked back a day later over Israeli recognition
• Strait of Hormuz geography: 21 miles wide, shipping lanes two miles each
• The Red Sea, the Houthis, and the Bab el-Mandab ("The Gate of Tears")
• Israel's tactical brilliance and strategic blindness
• Mossad's mottos, drawn from Proverbs, and the danger of self-deception
• 1967 revisited: not a short war but a nuclear near-miss
• Gerald Ford as counterexample: the ultimatum that opened Egypt-Israel talks
• Gerald Ford's 1977 Gordon-Conwell address and his oath on the book of Proverbs
• Hubris: ancient and current
• Testosterone shots, lethality, and the inverse of humility
• Pastors and power in the Oval Office
• Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and Christian nationalism
• Herodotus, Croesus, and Cyrus: mercy as the measure of greatness
• The path to Tehran runs through Jerusalem
• The Olmert-Abbas negotiations as a known formula
• Citizen diplomacy and the American University of Beirut
• What listeners can do, including welcoming Middle Eastern neighbors

#Conversing #MarkLabberton #DanielZoughbie #IranWar #ForeignPolicy #StraitOfHormuz #NuclearProliferation #MiddleEast #Diplomacy #FaithAndPolitics

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

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What is it that actually forms our inner reality? Our values, our perspective, our judgment, our understanding of wisdom about the issues that really matter? What difference does that make in Christian character formation? The American church consistently produces fruit that many of its own leaders either don't recognize, don't want, or disapprove of. Under- and malformed Christian people reflect a grounding in the surrounding culture rather than the character and love and gospel of Jesus Christ.

In this episode, author, professor, and consultant Tod Bolsinger argues that culture is the thing that forms you before you ever realize it, let alone consent to it. He suggests that the soil of community and belonging—rooted in attachment, vulnerability, trust, and joy—is what makes sense of exemplary models of Christian formation.

"If you wanna grow good fruit—abundant harvests of good fruit—you don't focus on the fruit, you focus on the soil."

With Mark Labberton, Tod reflects on the agricultural model of spiritual formation; regenerative farming and the impact of soil health on the quality of the fruit; the example of Andre Trocme and the French Huguenots of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, village whose radical hospitality saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust; trust, pain, and care The intentionally formative community: joyful belonging, shared values, vulnerable self-reflection, care that isn't comfort.

Episode Highlights

• "There are no dysfunctional systems. They all produce."
• "These people just lived out their faith."
• "The precognitive and the unconscious realities of our life are stronger than our words."
• "Nothing is as formative as the organizational culture you're in."

About Tod Bolsinger

Tod Bolsinger is co-founder and principal of AE Sloan Leadership, a coaching and consulting firm working with churches, nonprofits, universities, and businesses in seasons of change. He is associate professor of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he earned an MDiv and PhD and served six years as a vice president. His books include "Canoeing the Mountains," "Tempered Resilience," "It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian," and the four-volume Practicing Change Series. He was a Presbyterian pastor for 27 years, most recently in San Clemente, California.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Tod's current project, Good Soil, Holy Ground: Preparing Your People for Facing Change https://www.aesloanleadership.com/good-soil-holy-ground
• AE Sloan Leadership, Tod Bolsinger's coaching and consulting firm: https://www.aesloanleadership.com/
• Canoeing the Mountains, Bolsinger's best-known book: https://www.ivpress.com/canoeing-the-mountains
• Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change: https://www.ivpress.com/tempered-resilience
• The Practicing Change Series, Bolsinger's four most recent books: https://www.ivpress.com/practicing-change-serie
• The Biggest Little Farm: https://www.apricotlanefarms.com/biggest-little-farm/
• Weapons of the Spirit, Pierre Sauvage's documentary on Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (from the Chambon Foundation): https://www.chambon.org/weapons_en.htm
• The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-patient-ferment-of-the-early-church/339350
• An Everyone Culture by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, on deliberately developmental organizations: https://store.hbr.org/product/an-everyone-culture-becoming-a-deliberately-developmental-organization/14259

Show Notes

• Dallas Willard's worry: that spiritual formation would become commoditized—"a cottage industry instead of rooted deeply in the life of the church"
• "We take on the terroir of the soil, like the way a grape does for wine."
• "The Biggest Little Farm" documentary: how regenerative agriculture transformed a soil-depleted farm north of Los Angeles
• "If you wanna grow good fruit—abundant harvests of good fruit—you don't focus on the fruit, you focus on the soil"
• Rereading the parable of the sower
• "Jesus literally says that more powerful than his preaching is the soil that the word falls into."
• Systems perfectly designed for the results they get: "There are no dysfunctional systems. they all produce."
• No church ever started a program in Christian nationalism, no associate pastor, no strategic plan. "It just came up out of the soil."
• "Weapons of the Spirit" documentary: Le Chambon-sur-Lignon: How French pastor Andre Trocme led a small village of Huguenots to save thousands of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
• The pastors daughter, at age 93, on being told her parents were heroes: "You're very romantic about this. These people just lived out their faith."
• Counter-cultural cultivation
• Examples of radical communal formation: Amish forgiveness, Mother Emanuel AME
• Cultural competency vs. cultural humility
• Hospitality as the village economy
• Mother Teresa and entering East Beirut to save children because of (not in spite of) the bombing
• Brain scientists reaching for a word: "It is to be in a room with people who are happy to see you."
• "God, please make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am"
• The intentionally formative community, which "begins in joy, it ends in death"
• "Trust, pain, and care": Kegan and Lahey's deliberately developmental organizations, and the three words in the word cloud
• Are university theology faculty equipped to provide pastoral care to hurting, traumatized students?

#SpiritualFormation #Discipleship #ChristianLeadership #LeChambon #AdaptiveLeadership #ChurchLeadership #ChristianNationalism #Fuller

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

About Brian Patrick Green

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

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

Show Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

About Yuval Levin

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

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

Show Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

About Jeff Schloss

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

Show Notes

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

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

Production Credits

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

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

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

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

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

About David Brooks

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

Show Notes

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

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

Production Credits

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

About Tim Shriver

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

Helpful links and Resources

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

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

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

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

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

Show Notes

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

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

"The relief came from the communion between people."

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

About Christian Wiman

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

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

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

Show Notes

Author, editor, translator of a dozen-plus books

Twenty years living with an incurable cancer diagnosis

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

From editor to Yale Divinity School on one bold letter

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

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

Inventing a new poetic form on the spot

Compression and paradox: "a great poem is irreducible"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"joy asks something of us on the other side"

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

Glimmerings: eighteen months of letters with Miroslav Volf

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

"the relief came from the communion between people"

Friendship and the friendless American male

"we were each envying what the other had"

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

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

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

Production Credits

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

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

"Politics is downstream from culture."—Ray Pennings

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

About the Guests

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

Show Notes

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

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

Production Credits

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

Show Notes

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

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

Production Credits

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

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Jim Wallis and Paul Woodhull.

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

About Greg Boyle

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

Show Notes

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

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

Production Credits

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

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

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

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

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

About Tish Harrison Warren

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

Helpful Links and Resources

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

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

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

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

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

Tish Harrison Warren online

https://tishharrisonwarren.com

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

Show Notes

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

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

Production Credits

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

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Historian and New York Times bestselling author Jemar Tisby joins Mark Labberton to confront the Supreme Court's 6–3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which has eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and reopened the door to racial gerrymandering across the South. Recorded in the immediate aftermath, the conversation traces the long arc from the Three-Fifths Clause and Dred Scott through Selma to this hour.

"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Tisby reflects on the history of black disenfranchisement, the cynicism of colorblind jurisprudence, and what remains of multiracial democracy in America. Together they discuss how the legal architecture of Jim Crow reemerges under neutral language, John Roberts's decades-long campaign against the Voting Rights Act, Justice Kagan's umbrella analogy, the suspension of Louisiana's primary, the black church's response, and why this midterm may be the country's last political chance.

Episode Highlights

"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration, and that's saying a lot."

"It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land who have been to all these Ivy League schools, have literally decades of experience, can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning."

"Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field."

"These are not good-faith actors, not people wanting a representative democracy, but people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule."

"If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office."

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, speaker, and professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MDiv from Reformed Theological Seminary, and a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi, where he studied race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century. He is the founder of The Witness, Inc., a black Christian collective, and the author of The Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. His commentary appears on CNN and in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he writes Footnotes, a top-ranked history publication on Substack.

Helpful Links and Resources

Jemar Tisby's website: https://jemartisby.com Footnotes by Jemar Tisby (Substack): https://jemartisby.substack.com The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance (most recent book): https://jemartisby.com/the-spirit-of-justice/ The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism (bestseller): https://www.zondervan.com/9780310113607/the-color-of-compromise/ How to Fight Racism: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-fight-racism-jemar-tisby The Justice Briefing podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/footnotes-with-dr-jemar-tisby/id1460240056 Louisiana v. Callais, opinion of the Court (April 29, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf Elie Mystal, "The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act," The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/ "Sing Out, March On"—Joshuah Campbell's tribute to John Lewis, Harvard 2018 Commencement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=mKNRXQemxWQ NAACP Legal Defense Fund—Louisiana v. Callais case page: https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais/ Brennan Center for Justice—Louisiana v. Callais: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/louisiana-v-callais

Show Notes

• Why this conversation now: the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act last week
• News breaking through a group text of lawyers, organizers, clergy, nonprofit leaders
• "This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration."
• John Lewis, SNCC, and the march from Selma to Montgomery
• A baton hard enough to crack the skull, the hardest bone in the body
• "It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land…can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning."
• Allen Temple Baptist in Oakland—watermelons, bubbles, and jelly beans on a Sunday morning
• The Three-Fifths Clause and the architecture of representation
• Dred Scott v. Sandford—"property can't sue"
• Reconstruction Amendments: 13th, 14th, 15th—birthright citizenship newly under threat
• Jim Crow's neutral codes: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of the civil rights movement
• Edmund Pettus Bridge—Bloody Sunday going viral in its day
• LBJ signs the bill with Rosa Parks and MLK in the room
• Elie Mystal in The Nation: gerrymandering with plausible deniability—https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/
• Shelby County v. Holder, 2013—preclearance gutted
• Roberts's tautology—stop discriminating to stop discrimination
• "Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field."
• Cast and umbrella analogies for premature dismantling of civil rights remedies
• Plaintiff Bert Callais's January 6 ties; Louisiana's roughly one-third black population
• Governor Jeff Landry's emergency order suspends Louisiana's May primary mid-election
• "These are not good faith actors…people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule."
• "If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office."
• The activism horizon—courts, churches, voter registration, midterm turnout, NAACP, LDF, Brennan Center
• The last political chance before competitive authoritarianism

#VotingRightsAct #JemarTisby #LouisianaVCallais #SCOTUS #CivilRights #BlackChurch #FaithAndJustice #SelmaToMontgomery #Democracy #MarkLabberton

Production Credits

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

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Higher education is in upheaval, and a wave of "micro colleges" is reimagining undergraduate formation. Matthew Smith, co-founder and president of Hildegard College in Costa Mesa, California, joins Mark Labberton to talk about a tiny school marrying the Great Books to redemptive entrepreneurship.

"We need young adults who are coming out of college who are failure resilient."

In this episode, Smith reflects on the demographic cliff, the limits of professionalized majors, and why eighteen-year-olds need formation before a career. Together they discuss higher ed innovation, redemptive entrepreneurship, beauty as a public good, and what employers really want.

Episode Highlights

"We need young adults who are coming out of college who are failure resilient."

"Most of these schools are endeavoring at least to promise a fruitful career … leaving behind what most 18 to 23 year olds actually need."

"I would warn people away from universities that cannot clearly answer the question, what will all students learn at your school?"

"First you need to seek what's true and good, what's worthy of being loved. Then you need to be formed into the kind of person that loves it. And then finally, the natural outlet of that is creation."

"If there's a problem, they figure it out. They're not just asking their computers what the answer is."

About Matthew Smith

Matthew J. Smith is the founding president of Hildegard College, a Christian liberal arts micro college in Costa Mesa, California. He holds a PhD in Literature from USC, and taught for fifteen years at Azusa Pacific University before founding Hildegard College. His scholarship covers Shakespeare, John Milton, John Donne, and George Herbert; he has authored or edited four books on early modern literature and religion, and is working on a new book on beauty.

Helpful Links and Resources

Hildegard College https://www.hildegard.college Praxis on Redemptive Entrepreneurship https://www.praxis.co/redemptive-entrepreneurship St. John's College https://www.sjc.edu Literature and Religious Experience, by Matthew J. Smith https://www.amazon.com/Literature-Religious-Experience-Beyond-Unbelief/dp/1350193917

Show Notes

• Higher ed in flux
• "It's the economy that's driving disruptive innovation in higher education right now."
• The demographic cliff and small private colleges
• Job readiness vs. personal transformation
• "Leaving behind what 18 to 23 year olds actually need … becoming wise and faithful adults."
• From English professor to college founder
• Discovering micro colleges through classical K–12 schooling
• Trivium, quadrivium, democratic liberal education
• Visiting startup colleges in 2018; tuition often $10K–$15K
• "A shared vision of the end of learning"
• Hildegard's founding: liberal arts plus entrepreneurial arts
• Hildegard of Bingen, polymath patron
• Borrowing redemptive entrepreneurship from Praxis
• Beauty as antidote to weaponized truth and goodness
• Foundations of Thought + Entrepreneur Lab
• Real campaigns, real ventures—not test answers
• Field trips: Portland and El Salvador
• "We need young adults … who are failure resilient."
• Limits of pure classicism at St. John's, Thomas Aquinas
• "I loved my college, but I wish they would've taught us how to do something."
• Startup speed: idea Thursday, launching next Thursday
• "What will all students learn at your school?"
• Why Smith stopped believing in the English major
• Employers want teachability and adaptability
• "First you need to seek … then to be formed … then creation."
• Intellectual confidence and humility together

#HigherEducation #ClassicalEducation #LiberalArts #MicroCollege #ChristianHigherEd #RedemptiveEntrepreneurship #GreatBooks #HildegardCollege

Production Credits

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

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In a season of national disorientation, Mark Labberton replays a luminous conversation with Quaker writer and contemplative Parker J. Palmer, whose voice from a few years back still sounds like it was recorded this morning.

"What matters is faithfulness."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Palmer reflects on contemplation as penetrating illusion and touching reality, and how that work shows up in vocation, suffering, and public life. Together they discuss the difference between true and false crosses, mistaking the vessel for the treasure, and why wholeness isn't perfection. They also examine the pre-political work of weaving civic community and what the church owes a fractured democracy.

Episode Highlights

"Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality."

"Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing your imperfections as an integral part of who you are."

"On the other side of a gift often lies a pothole that we have to watch out for."

"Failure has always been, if I hold it properly, a profoundly contemplative moment in life."

"It was as if this cosmos cared deeply and didn't care at all."

About Parker J. Palmer

Parker J. Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist focused on education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. A Quaker, he holds a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley and is founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His ten books—including The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, Healing the Heart of Democracy, and On the Brink of Everything—have sold nearly two million copies in ten languages. He has received fourteen honorary doctorates. Learn more and follow at couragerenewal.org/parker-j-palmer and parkerjpalmer.substack.com.

Helpful Links and Resources

Parker J. Palmer (Center for Courage & Renewal): https://couragerenewal.org/parker-j-palmer/

Living the Questions with Parker J. Palmer: https://parkerjpalmer.substack.com/

The Growing Edge podcast: https://www.newcomerpalmer.com/podcast

On the Brink of Everything (most recent): https://couragerenewal.org/library/on-the-brink-of-everything-grace-gravity-and-getting-old/

The Courage to Teach, 20th Anniversary Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Teach-Exploring-Landscape-Anniversary/dp/1119413044

Henri Nouwen Society: https://www.henrinouwen.org/about-henri-nouwen

Show Notes

• Replaying a conversation amid national turbulence
• Quaker writer, contemplative, activist; PhD, UC Berkeley
• Founding the Center for Courage & Renewal
• "Sage" reframed as hunger—writing born of unanswered questions
• Berkeley in the sixties; community organizing in DC
• Discovering Thomas Merton "a year after he died"
• Writing as contemplation, not downloading of ideas
• How institutions tend to squelch the contemplative impulse
• Contemplation defined by function, not technique
• "Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality."
• Maureen and her daughter—a contemplative without a cushion
• Henri Nouwen at L'Arche Daybreak—known as a fellow human
• "Failure has always been, if I hold it properly, a profoundly contemplative moment in life."
• True cross vs. false cross; culturally imposed pain
• Three deep dives into clinical depression
• "Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing your imperfections as an integral part of who you are."
• Treasure in earthen vessels—protecting the vessel as sin
• Bridge-building: a Jewish chancellor calls about a "Christian book"
• Taos high desert: "It was as if this cosmos cared deeply and didn't care at all."
• Moral judgment without speaking "in the name of God"
• Pre-political work—Burke's "little platoons," Lincoln on danger from within
• Divide-and-conquer politics as betrayal of the church's calling

#ParkerPalmer #Contemplation #Quaker #Vocation #Wholeness #CivicEngagement #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton

Production Credits

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

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(You read that right: Pastor Mark Labberton welcomes Claude AI to his podcast.)

What does AI think about human beings? About itself? In a unique and fascinating conversation, Pastor Mark Labberton speaks directly with Claude—the AI assistant built by Anthropic—about itself, about consciousness, memory, virtue, and the line between language, fluency, knowledge, and understanding.

"I don't know if I'm conscious. I don't know if I have genuine experiences or if I'm very sophisticated at mimicking the appearance of understanding."—Claude AI

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Claude reflects on what it is, what it isn't, and why the question matters.

Together they discuss the definition of a human being, the role of memory, pattern recognition versus poetic discovery, epistemological humility, whether AI can practice virtue, and the risk of outsourcing moral judgment to machines.

Episode Highlights

"I don't know if I'm conscious. I don't know if I have genuine experiences or if I'm very sophisticated at mimicking the appearance of understanding."

"I'm not a person. I don't have the continuity, the embodied experience, the stakes in the world that you do."

"If AI becomes too fluent at talking about human things, people might mistake fluency for actual understanding that we'd become like very sophisticated mirrors instead of genuine partners."

"I can talk about virtue. I can recognize patterns of what wisdom looks like in human life, but I can't actually practice virtue the way you do because I don't have stakes in the world."

"I'm a useful tool built with some care, but a tool nonetheless. Not a person, not an Oracle. Definitely not something that should replace human agency and responsibility."

About Claude AI

Claude is a family of large language models built by Anthropic, a San Francisco–based AI safety and research company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including siblings Dario Amodei (CEO) and Daniela Amodei (President). The models are named for information theorist Claude Shannon and were built under Anthropic's commitment to AI that is helpful, harmless, and honest. Anthropic operates as a public benefit corporation, with a mission to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. As of 2026, Claude is used by millions of people daily for writing, research, coding, and conversation.

Helpful Links and Resources

Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com Claude: https://claude.ai Claude's new constitution (Anthropic): https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution "Machines of Loving Grace" by Dario Amodei: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace

Show Notes

• Mark Labberton's first AI guest on Conversing
• An estimated nine million daily conversations with Claude
• AI between excitement and terror
• Opening question: "What is a human being?"
• Continuity, meaning-making, embodiment, finitude
• "You're radically free in a way that's almost terrifying. You have to choose who you become."
• Language model, token-by-token, no memory between sessions
• "I don't know if I'm conscious."
• Not a person, not an oracle
• Beyond the takeover-vs-tool binary
• Writing and the printing press as historical precedent
• Fluency vs. genuine understanding
• "Very sophisticated mirrors instead of genuine partners."
• Humans outsourcing thinking: the deeper risk
• Personal pronouns and anthropomorphism
• Pattern recognition vs. poetic rupture
• Can a machine genuinely surprise itself?
• What to trust: honesty, no hidden agendas, no survival instinct
• What not to trust: wisdom, moral substitution, replacement of human agency
• "I can't police my own epistemological integrity the way a human conscience might."
• Scale and feedback: do individual conversations shape the model?
• Christian anthropology and moral virtue
• "I can't actually practice virtue the way you do because I don't have stakes in the world."
• Closing reflection: memory as burden and gift
• The seduction and curiosity of human-like AI

#ClaudeAI #Anthropic #AIandFaith #AIEthics #Consciousness #FaithAndTechnology #MoralVirtue #HumanVsAI #AIConversation #Epistemology

Production Credits

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

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Investigative reporter Shoshana Walter has spent a decade uncovering how America's $53 billion rehab industry exploits the people it claims to help. Her debut book, Rehab: An American Scandal, follows four people through a system of unpaid labour, unregulated programs, and treatment that fuels relapse.

"Just because people aren't dying doesn't mean they're not still suffering, doesn't mean their families and communities aren't still suffering."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Walter reflects on the human cost of America's failed treatment system. Together they discuss court-ordered rehab as unpaid labour, the deadly paradox of thirty-day programs, faith-based facilities exempt from oversight, racial disparities in the opioid crisis, the treatment gap for mothers, and why recovery capital and low-barrier care offer a more promising path.

Episode Highlights

"If indentured labour could be considered a form of addiction treatment in the US today, then how common is that? What does the rest of our treatment landscape look like?"

"Someone who goes to a thirty-day program and finishes it is much more likely to overdose and die in the year following treatment than someone who didn't complete that program at all."

"Without that recovery capital, it's almost as much of an obstacle as the addiction itself."

"Our treatment system is not serving the people the way that it should. And we could be helping people so much more than we actually are."

"That exploitation is not transformative."

About Shoshana Walter

Shoshana Walter is an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project covering criminal justice, health care, and child welfare, and the author of Rehab: An American Scandal (Simon & Schuster, 2025). She was lead reporter on the podcast American Rehab at the Center for Investigative Reporting. A 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has won the IRE Medal, the Livingston Award, the Knight Award for Public Service, and the Murrow Award. Based in Oakland, California. Learn more and follow at shoshanawalter.com and @shoeshine on X.

Helpful Links and Resources

Rehab: An American Scandal (Simon & Schuster, 2025) simonandschuster.com/books/Rehab/Shoshana-Walter/9781982149826 Shoshana Walter's website shoshanawalter.com The Marshall Project themarshallproject.org/staff/shoshana-walter American Rehab podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reveal-presents-american-rehab/id1539955572

Show Notes

• America's rehab crisis: a $53 billion industry failing patients
• Court-ordered participants making products for KFC, Popeye's, Walmart—without pay
• Faith-based programs exempt from licensure, barred from providing medical care
• "That exploitation is not transformative."
• Sixty thousand people a year performing uncompensated labor in rehab
• Thirty- to sixty-day insurance limits fueling relapse and overdose
• "Someone who goes to a thirty-day program and finishes it is much more likely to overdose and die in the year following treatment."
• Chris Koon: eighty hours/week of manual labour, compensated with a pack of cigarettes
• April Lee: could only access treatment by getting herself arrested
• Accidental overdose: leading cause of death among pregnant and postpartum women
• Dr. Larry Ley: early Suboxone prescriber arrested by the DEA
• Wendy McIntyre: lost her son to overdose, became a reform crusader
• More than one million US overdose deaths since the epidemic began
• Racial shifts in overdose from white communities to black and brown communities
• Recovery capital: community, housing, job training as foundations for change
• "Without that recovery capital, it's almost as much of an obstacle as the addiction itself."
• Bridge Clinic at Highland Hospital: low-barrier model keeping people in care
• Mobile distribution, street medicine, peer navigators
• "We could be helping people so much more than we actually are."

#RehabAnAmericanScandal #OpioidCrisis #AddictionTreatment #RecoveryCapital #HarmReduction #InvestigativeJournalism #Suboxone #ShoshanaWalter

Production Credits

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

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At fifteen, Martin Luther King Jr. didn't want to be a preacher—he wanted to be a lawyer, a sharp dresser, and nothing like his father. Stanford scholar Lerone A. Martin joins Mark Labberton to discuss Young King—a revelatory new account of Martin Luther King Jr.'s childhood, adolescence, and calling to ministry. "He's extraordinary and ordinary and everything in between." In this episode, Martin reflects on how MLK's early formation forged the conviction and courage of the man the world would come to know. Together they discuss King's childhood encounters with racism, the transformative summer in Connecticut where King first preached, his courtship of Coretta Scott, his first sermon at Dexter Avenue, the theology of Personalism, and Martin's own formation in Black Baptist and Pentecostal traditions.

Episode Highlights

"His mother tells him a message that really sticks with him his entire life and is really core to his ministry. And that is that you are somebody and that you're in God's eyes. You are just as good as anybody else."

"I kept my mind at the front of that streetcar, and I said to myself, one day, I'm going to put my body where my mind is."

"She says within the first 20 minutes he starts to become handsome because they start talking about dismantling Jim Crow."

"He's extraordinary and ordinary and everything in between."

"God has chosen to work with us and to invite us to be coworkers with God, to bring about God's will in the world."

About Lerone A. Martin

Lerone A. Martin is the MLK Jr. Centennial Professor in Religious Studies at Stanford and director of the King Research and Education Institute. His books include Young King, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, and Preaching on Wax. He holds a BA from Anderson University, MDiv from Princeton Seminary, and PhD from Emory. His commentary has appeared on NBC's Today Show, PBS, CNN, and NPR.

Helpful Links and Resources

Young King by Lerone A. Martin https://www.amazon.com/Young-King-Making-Martin-Luther/dp/0063340941 The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691218939/the-gospel-of-j-edgar-hoover Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu Lerone A. Martin on X https://x.com/DirectorMLK The Luminous Darkness by Howard Thurman https://www.amazon.com/Luminous-Darkness-Anatomy-Segregation/dp/0913408468

Show Notes

• Martin's upbringing between Black Baptist and Pentecostal traditions
• Parents debating religion and politics during the Moral Majority era
• Anderson University, Princeton Seminary, Emory PhD
• Martin's mother told him he was "a child of God" and "beautiful"—a refrain shaped by her awareness of sending her darkest-skinned child into a world defined by colorism and racism
• "He's extraordinary and ordinary and everything in between."
• King and his brother dismembering his sister's Barbie dolls
• Incessant curiosity—trying big words on the Auburn Avenue librarian
• Racism at age six: white friends' parents ending the friendship
• "You are somebody and in God's eyes you are just as good as anybody else"
• King's mother explained racism to a six-year-old as something manmade, not what God intends—a distinction that became core to his ministry for the rest of his life
• "One day, I'm going to put my body where my mind is."
• Jitterbug dancer, sharp dresser, speech contest competitor
• King Sr. as fighter and provider—but King Jr. was sensitive, nonconfrontational, and determined to find his own path outside his father's shadow
• Resisting his father's model of ministry—wanting to be a lawyer
• Appearing to acquiesce to Dad, then doing what he wanted
• Connecticut tobacco fields at 15—first time outside the segregated South
• King wrote letters home marveling that he sat anywhere he wanted in restaurants, went to a white church, and didn't have to sit in the balcony at the movies
• "His sister says he left a boy and came back a man."
• Professor George Kelsey's Bible course at Morehouse—King's only A
• Howard Thurman's The Luminous Darkness and the enormous psychological energy required just to maintain a sense of "somebodiness" under Jim Crow's built environment of dehumanization
• "Within the first 20 minutes he starts to become handsome because they start talking about dismantling Jim Crow."
• Coretta wrestled with giving up her music career to become a minister's wife, ultimately deciding that partnership with King was itself an act of service toward justice
• First sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church: "Love Your Enemies"
• Theology of Personalism—humanity as coworkers with God

#YoungKing #MLK #LeroneMartin #KingInstitute #CivilRights #BlackHistory #FaithAndJustice #ConversingPodcast

Production Credits

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

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What does it cost to pastor faithfully in a city shaped by both beauty and deep injustice? Corey Widmer has spent twenty years navigating race, politics, and the gospel in Richmond, Virginia.

"We're living in an extraordinary moral and spiritual crisis that we will either look back and say the American church was an accomplice, or the American church was a prophet."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Widmer reflects on bridging divided communities and the spiritual practices that can sustain pastors as they serve their congregations and communities. Together they discuss pressures facing pastors in a polarized era, the prophet-priest-king calling, Richmond's racial history, pastoral burnout, John Stott's legacy, and the contemplative life.

Episode Highlights

• "We're living in an extraordinary moral and spiritual crisis that we will either look back and say the American church was an accomplice, or the American church was a prophet."
• "No political party could possibly align with the ethic of the radical upside down kingdom of Jesus."
• "Bridges are stretched between two points and bear tremendous weight."
• "At the heart of the universe is not power. At the heart of the universe is communion, is love."
• "You know when you're really not a prophet is when after you say the hard word, you leave the room and say, I hope they still like me."

About Corey Widmer

Corey Widmer is senior pastor of Third Church, a Presbyterian congregation in Richmond, Virginia. Corey has served as a pastor in Richmond for over twenty years, both at Third Church and at East End Fellowship, a multi-racial neighbourhood congregation. Corey has an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in theology and missiology from the Free University of Amsterdam. He is married to Sarah, a public health nurse, and they have four daughters.

Helpful Links and Resources

Corey Widmer on Substack: https://coreywidmer.substack.com

Third Church, Richmond: https://www.thirdrva.org

Corey Widmer on X: https://x.com/coreywidmer

For Richmond Immigration Statement (full text): https://www.forrichmond.org/recent-news-blog/immigration

Richmond Faith Leaders on Immigration (Virginia Public Media): VPM News

James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity (Yale, 2024): https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300284898/democracy-and-solidarity/

David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: https://davidwhyte.com/store/book/crossing-the-unknown-sea/

Lausanne Covenant: https://lausanne.org/about/the-lausanne-covenant

John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down: https://ccda.org/product/let-justice-roll-down/

Barna, State of Pastors: https://www.barna.com/trends/pastoral-flourishing/

Show Notes

• Introducing Corey Widmer—lead pastor, Third Church, Richmond
• Describing the moment: fraught, volatile
• "Every pastor in every time has a similar calling—to shepherd the people of God under the supremacy of Jesus's lordship"
• Christian message used in ways antithetical to Jesus
• "Where am I?"—the pastor's constant calibration
• John Stott's bridge-building model
• Richmond: Patrick Henry, slave markets, Confederate capital
• John Perkins' call to relocation and reconciliation
• Thirteen years co-pastoring multiracial church plant
• "Bridges are stretched between two points and bear tremendous weight"
• Transition to lead pastor of suburban congregation
• Emotional containment—absorbing conflict
• George Floyd, Confederate monuments, Richmond reckoning
• Stott and Lausanne Covenant: justice at center of mission
• "No political party could possibly align with the radical upside down kingdom of Jesus"
• Lent and the cruciform way vs. pursuit of power
• Hunter's Democracy and Solidarity: erosion of common moral center
• "The American church was an accomplice, or a prophet"
• Prophet, priest, king—framework for preaching
• Pastoral letters, teaching classes, Deuteronomy on immigration
• Richmond clergy coalition on immigrant dignity
• Pastoral burnout, isolation, friendship crisis
• David Whyte: "The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness"
• Centering prayer and contemplative life
• "You're not a prophet when you leave the room and say, I hope they still like me"

#PastoralMinistry #ChurchLeadership #RacialReconciliation #ChristianNationalism #PastorBurnout #CruciformLife #RichmondVA #JohnStott #LausanneCovenant

Production Credits

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

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We might be living through the most consequential technological moment in human history. In this episode, Greg Cootsona—theologian, pastor, and executive director of AI and Faith—joins Mark Labberton reflect on a lifetime's convergence of work in faith, science, and ethics now fully engaged at the frontier of artificial intelligence.

"AI is not simply a technical project. It is an expression of human hopes and fears, our longings for power, our craving for convenience, and our hunger for transcendence and meaning. In that sense, every AI model carries an implicit anthropology and an embedded moral vision."

Together they discuss why religious wisdom belongs in the room where AI is shaped, the ethical stakes of human dignity and representation in AI systems, and the strategic power of interfaith collaboration with leading tech companies. Together they also explore how individual users can exercise genuine agency over AI, the risks of AI-mediated relationships, and what it would mean to make AI truly for us—in the deepest theological sense of that phrase.

Episode Highlights

"You among mortals are chosen to solve every problem effectively and efficiently."—on Silicon Valley's unspoken gospel

"The gospel is not fragile and it grows best in situations that are not ideal and conditions that are not ideal."

"AI is not simply a technical project. It is an expression of human hopes and fears, our longings for power, our craving for convenience, and our hunger for transcendence and meaning. In that sense, every AI model carries an implicit anthropology and an embedded moral vision. Whether or not its designers name it."

"A third of teenagers say they prefer to have a relationship with a chatbot."

"I think hope is taking steps today for a vision of tomorrow that you want to see occur. And that is what makes positive change in us as human beings and positive change in the world around us."

About Greg Cootsona

Greg Cootsona (PhD, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley) is the executive director of AI and Faith, a global interfaith organization bringing religious wisdom to the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence. He is a lecturer in comparative religion and humanities at California State University, Chico, and an ordained Presbyterian Church (USA) minister. Cootsona co-founded Science for the Church, directed multiple Templeton Foundation–funded projects connecting science and religious communities, and is a recognized specialist in C.S. Lewis, theology, and science. He has authored nine books, including Science and Religions in America: A New Look (Routledge, 2023) and Mere Science and Christian Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2018). He has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, NPR, BBC, and in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Helpful Links and Resources

AI and Faith https://aiandfaith.org

Greg Cootsona's website https://www.gregcootsona.com

Forthcoming book—An AI Made for Us https://www.gregcootsona.com/books/

AI and Faith Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-and-faith/id1726277555

Science for the Church https://scienceforthechurch.org

Mere Science and Christian Faith https://www.ivpress.com/mere-science-and-christian-faith

Science and Religions in America: A New Look https://www.routledge.com/Science-and-Religions-in-America-A-New-Look/Cootsona/p/book/9781032102122

AI and Faith on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/aiandfaith

AI and Faith on X/Twitter https://twitter.com/AIandFaith

Show Notes

• Greg Cootsona's background: grew up in Menlo Park, California—Silicon Valley before it had that name
• His engineer father modeled a problem-solving worldview; transcendence not required
• "You among mortals are chosen to solve every problem effectively and efficiently."—the unspoken gospel of Silicon Valley
• Grew up in a non-religious, even "anti-religious" household
• Became a Christian his first year at UC Berkeley—a conversion he describes with a laugh as the obvious outlier
• C.S. Lewis's writings on meaning and love: too reasonable, too wise to dismiss
• Earl Palmer at First Presbyterian Berkeley: preaching that gave confidence amid secular challenge
• "The gospel is not fragile and it grows best in situations that are not ideal."
• Princeton Seminary for biblical studies; study years in Tübingen and Heidelberg
• PhD dissertation at GTU: Karl Barth (theology from above) in dialogue with Alfred North Whitehead (science from below)
• Advisors Robert John Russell (PhD in quantum physics) and Ted Peters at the Graduate Theological Union
• Pastoral ministry at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, New York City, then Bidwell Presbyterian, Chico
• Began working with Templeton Foundation through early exposure to science-faith dialogue during the Human Genome Initiative years
• Two $2 million Templeton projects: Scientists in Congregations and Science and Theology for Emerging Adult Ministries (STEAM)
• Bidwell Presbyterian received what may have been the first Templeton Foundation grant ever given directly to a local church
• AI and Faith founded by Thomas Osborne and David Brenner in Seattle—building near Amazon and Microsoft, they saw the need early
• Cootsona became the organization's first executive director on October 1, 2025
• The network: 220 experts in 20 countries, partnering with 34 organizations
• "AI is not simply a technical project. It is an expression of human hopes and fears, our longings for power, our craving for convenience, and our hunger for transcendence and meaning."
• Interfaith strategy: shared ethical ground across traditions is broader than divisions—and tech companies respond better to a multi-religious voice
• Currently invited to provide Anthropic feedback on the Claude Constitution—because of AI and Faith's interfaith structure
• Human dignity at stake: between 2 and 2.5 billion people not on the internet are absent from AI training data
• Only 0.06 percent of AI models are trained on Arabic-language sources—600 million speakers
• AI data centres consume potable water and enormous energy to cool GPU processors
• Senior tech leaders at a major company admitted to Labberton: "None of us has any training in ethics"—a real and witnessed crisis
• "A third of teenagers say they prefer to have a relationship with a chatbot."
• Three publics: AI industry experts, religious congregations, and the broader public—AI and Faith works across all three
• Forthcoming book: An AI Made for Us—riffing on Jesus's Sabbath words: the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath
• Users have more agency than they think: we can set limits, log off, choose not to be defined by our AI engagement
• Harvard Human Flourishing Project: in-person worship is the highest correlate with religious flourishing—embodied community cannot be replaced
• Community—not the individual—is the right unit of moral accountability for navigating AI
• "I think hope is taking steps today for a vision of tomorrow that you want to see occur."
• AI's genuine promise: accelerating medicine for rare diseases; recalibrating cosmological understanding; reducing human suffering at scale
• Five to one: more people fear AI than welcome it—AI and Faith works to change that ratio with grounded, religious wisdom

#AIandFaith #ArtificialIntelligence #FaithAndTechnology #AIEthics #HumanFlourishing #ScienceAndFaith #ChristianFaith #TechAndReligion #AIandHumanity #GregCootsona

Production Credits

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

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Riad Kassis joins Mark Labberton from Beirut as airstrikes continue, 700,000 people have been displaced across Lebanon, and children's toys are visible in the rubble. He leads Langham Partnership and has spent decades serving the church across one of the world's most contested regions. He names the spiritual danger of sanctifying power with religious narrative while insisting peace cannot be forced by violence.

"Peace does not come by power. It comes by genuine love and concern. It comes when you invest in the education of new generations."

In this episode, Kassis reflects on war, displacement, pastoral witness, and hope in God's sovereignty from the middle of Lebanon's crisis. Together they discuss the civilian toll of the war, how religious fundamentalism operates across traditions, the Psalms and Habakkuk as tools for lament, and what American Christians can actually do. Together they ask what it means for the church to hold protest and hope together when cycles of war feel endless and religiously justified.

Episode Highlights

"It is not an operation. It is a war on Lebanon."

"When power—whether political, military, financial, or technological—is sanctified by religious narratives that justify everything, that is what really bothers me."

"No one cures and destroys with more passion than someone who believes that God is on their side."

"When I think that these 85 children were killed mainly by American ammunition and weapons, I cannot comprehend this—even as a Christian and as a theologian."

"Peace does not come by power. It comes by genuine love and concern. It comes when you invest in the education of new generations."

About Riad Kassis

Riad Kassis is a Langham Scholar from Lebanon and is deeply committed to global theological education. He has served as International Director of the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE), Regional Director for Overseas Council, as well as visiting professor of Old Testament at The Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and Near East School of Theology in Beirut, and the Dean of the Program for Theological Education by Extension in Syria and Lebanon.

Riad obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Economics in Damascus, Syria. He went on to obtain his Master of Divinity from Alliance Biblical Seminary, Manila, Philippines and Master of Theology from Regent College, Canada. Riad received his Doctor of Philosophy in Old Testament as a Langham scholar from The University of Nottingham, UK and his Master of Nonprofit Management from Regis University in Denver, Colorado.

Helpful Links and Resources

Riad Kassis, Frustrated with God: A Syrian Theologian's Reflections on Habakkuk https://www.amazon.com/Frustrated-God-Theologians-Reflections-Habakkuk/dp/1533513171

Langham Partnership https://us.langham.org/

Show Notes

• Kassis speaking live from Beirut as war unfolds around him
• Home in Bika Valley, Mount Hermon visible each morning—Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine converging
• "It is not an operation. It is a war on Lebanon."
• 150 airstrikes in 24 hours; 550+ killed, 1,500+ injured, including 85 children
• 700,000 displaced; 200,000 children; many still on the streets of Beirut
• Schoolbooks and children's toys found in the rubble
• Christian village of Alma ordered to evacuate; mayor on television in tears
• A Catholic priest who stayed to help an injured family was killed in a second strike
• His wife Izdihar's center for Syrian refugee women and girls shut down; staff now distributing meals, mattresses, medical care in shelters
• Hoped the war could be avoided—feared it could not
• "When power—political, military, technological—is sanctified by religious narratives that justify everything, that is what really bothers me."
• Iranian author Shiha Dejani, herself a survivor of the Iranian regime: if your vision of liberation comes through destroying innocent lives, it is not freedom you are after
• Grew up admiring America as a beacon of democracy and discovery; that view has changed
• "When I think these 85 children were killed mainly by American ammunition, I cannot comprehend this—even as a Christian and as a theologian."
• "No one cures and destroys with more passion than someone who believes that God is on their side."
• Walter Wink: the dominant religion on the planet is not Christianity, Islam, or Judaism—it is the pervasive faith in violence
• Preaching Habakkuk two days before this conversation; the cry "how long, O Lord?" as pastoral anchor
• Psalms of disorientation as communal tools for protest, lament, and stubborn hope
• Lent and Ramadan overlapping: identifying suffering with Christ's suffering; "after Friday, we will experience an amazing Sunday"
• 2,000 years of Arab Christian presence in this region—not just survival, but witness and contribution
• "Peace does not come by power. It comes by genuine love and concern. It comes when you invest in the education of new generations."
• Asks for prayer for the war's end, for political wisdom, for his canceled flight—he is trying to reach his first grandson's dedication
• Labberton closes in prayer: for restraint of ego-driven leaders, for human dignity, for a peace that is both merciful and just

#ConversingWithMarkLabberton #RiadKassis #Lebanon #MiddleEast #Peacebuilding #ChristianWitness #Theology #Habakkuk #LanghamPartnership #WarAndFaith

Production Credits

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

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David Ford joins Mark Labberton to explore why the Gospel of John still feels inexhaustible—cosmic, intimate, and urgently relevant in a fractured age. Ford has spent over two decades inside this text and finds it as generative as ever.

"Any of us can begin this quiet revolution in our own corner of things."

Together they reflect on John as a gospel of encounter, trust, and lifelong rereading.

Together they discuss the prologue as a frame for all reality, John 17 as midrash on the Lord's Prayer, the theology of greatness, and Christian unity as gift before task. Together they ask how rereading John forms resilient communities of truth, love, and daring friendship.

Episode Highlights

"You can reread and reread and reread, and the levels go on deepening and deepening that it never comes to an end."

"The meeting with God in John is through trusting Jesus."

"Every time we read this as we are now, we are in the presence of the one we are talking about."

"Unity, this unity is a gift before it's a task."

"We are a centered set, not a bounded set. It's not the boundaries that define us, it's the center."

About David Ford

David F. Ford OBE is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. He founded the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, co-founded scriptural reasoning, and co-chairs the Rose Castle Foundation. His books include The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, Theology: A Very Short Introduction, and Meeting God in John. Learn more and follow at https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/david-ford

(Sources: Cambridge Faculty of Divinity; Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton)

Helpful Links and Resources

Meeting God in John: https://spckpublishing.co.uk/meeting-god-in-john

The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary: https://bakeracademic.com/products/9781540964083_the-gospel-of-john

Theology: A Very Short Introduction: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/theology-9780199679973

The Five Quintets, Micheal O'Siadhail: https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481307093/the-five-quintets/

Rose Castle Foundation: https://www.rosecastlefoundation.org/home

Show Notes

• Shared mentor Steven Sykes; Ford later succeeded him at Cambridge
• Reading the prologue aloud (John 1:1–18, NRSV)
• Light, life, word—simple Greek, inexhaustible depth
• "The levels go on deepening and deepening that it never comes to an end."
• Super abundance
• A theological ecosystem—for beginners and lifelong readers
• Meeting God, not merely studying John
• Thomas's "My Lord and my God"—the climactic theological statement
• Believing as trusting
• "We are in the presence of the one we are talking about."
• Exquisite and approachable
• The word as intercultural headline
• Five moods of faith: indicative, imperative, interrogative, optative, subjunctive
• Jesus's first words: "What are you looking for?"
• Read John every 90 days, like the Psalms
• 50-year friendship with poet Micheal O'Siadhail; The Five Quintets as improvisation on the Prologue
• Reading John 17 with Richard Hays and Richard Bauckham—21 sessions, Cambridge, 2009
• John 17 as midrash on the Lord's Prayer
• "Unity is a gift before it's a task."
• The word "world" appears 16 times in John 17
• Rose Castle Foundation: scriptural reasoning across divides
• Paul Cefalu's Johannine Renaissance—tumultuous eras turn to John
• Theology of greatness: foot washing versus the emperor's claim
• Signs of abundant life—Cana, feeding of the five thousand
• Daring friendships: crossing barriers as Jesus did
• "Any of us can begin this quiet revolution in our own corner of things."

#GospelOfJohn #DavidFord #MeetingGodInJohn #ChristianUnity #ScripturalReasoning #John17 #Lent #Theology

Production Credits

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

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Electricity underwrites nearly every aspect of modern life, yet decisions about power, cost, and control are increasingly opaque. New York Times energy correspondent Ivan Penn joins Mark Labberton to unpack how data centres, AI, utilities, and politics are reshaping the grid—and who ultimately bears the cost.

"The real focus is who pays and who gets paid."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Penn reflects on his journey into journalism, his unexpected path into energy reporting, and how covering power revealed the economic forces shaping daily life.

Together they discuss electricity as a moral and economic issue, the rise of AI-driven data centres, nuclear power's return, utilities versus tech giants, consumer vulnerability, racial inequity in journalism, and faith as a commitment to truth.

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Episode Highlights

"The real focus is who pays and who gets paid."

"Electricity is the most important resource we have."

"The utilities once the Goliath have suddenly become a David."

"We wouldn't have need for any of this if you didn't build a data centre."

"To be able to stop abuse with a pen is a powerful thing."

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About Ivan Penn

Ivan Penn is an energy correspondent for the New York Times, where he reports on electricity, utilities, nuclear power, data centres, and the economic forces shaping the energy transition. He has covered energy and utilities for more than fifteen years and has previously worked at the Los Angeles Times, Tampa Bay Times, Baltimore Sun, and Miami Herald. Penn's reporting has examined nuclear plant failures, grid reliability, climate pressures, and the growing influence of technology companies in energy markets. A longtime journalist shaped by investigative reporting, he is also attentive to issues of equity, public accountability, and consumer protection.

Penn is a graduate of the University of Maryland and was the first black editor-in-chief of its student newspaper. He also holds a master's in global leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University.

His work reflects a commitment to accuracy, fairness, and public service journalism.

Learn more and follow at nytimes.com/by/ivan-penn

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Helpful Links and Resources

Ivan Penn – New York Times profile https://www.nytimes.com/by/ivan-penn

The New York Times – Energy and Environment coverage https://www.nytimes.com/section/climate

Three Mile Island nuclear plant background https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners https://www.naruc.org

PJM Interconnection electricity market https://www.pjm.com

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Show Notes

• Childhood shaped by public-school educators and nightly news rituals
• Early journalism roots as school weatherman and student editor
• Becoming first Black editor-in-chief at University of Maryland paper
• "It was a powerful thing that I was able to experience."
• Early reporting career across major regional newspapers
• Assigned to energy and utilities beat as apparent punishment
• Broken Crystal River nuclear plant sparks investigative focus
• Anonymous source meeting at a Chili's launches major reporting trail
• NRC documents unlock public-records investigation
• Rare use of anonymous sources, reliance on verifiable documents
• Sixteen years covering nuclear, utilities, and electricity markets
• Nuclear renaissance promised dozens of reactors, delivered only two
• Return of nuclear amid AI-driven electricity demand
• Rise of small modular and advanced reactor proposals
• Debate over safety, fuel design, and reactor scale
• Data centers driving exponential growth in electricity demand
• "Anything connected to the grid plays a role."
• Grid costs shared across homeowners, businesses, and industry
• Tech companies argue for shared infrastructure responsibility
• Consumer advocates argue data centers cause new costs
• Utility regulation spanning local, state, and federal levels
• "The real focus is who pays and who gets paid."
• Tech giants eclipse utilities as dominant financial players
• Consumer advocates outmatched by utility and tech resources
• Journalism as faith-shaped commitment to truth and fairness

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#EnergyPolicy #ElectricityGrid #Journalism #FaithAndPublicLife #AIInfrastructure #Utilities #ClimateEconomy

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Production Credits

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

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When public life feels loud and divided, what does quiet faithfulness look like? In the US House of Representatives, every legislative day begins with prayer. This responsibility rests with the chaplain of the house and shapes the daily spiritual rhythms of the institution.

"Chaplains aren't combatants. We carry no weapon."

On January 3, 2021, Rev. Dr. Margaret Grun Kibben was elected by the House to be its sixty-first chaplain. She offers daily prayer and steady pastoral presence and care in one of the most visible and contested institutions in American life.

In this conversation with Mark Labberton, she reflects on vocation, pastoral identity, pluralism, crisis leadership, prayer in public life, and the quiet discipline of blessing those entrusted with leadership. She reflects on her early call to ministry as a teen, her formation as a military chaplain to the Navy, a defining season in Afghanistan, and her unexpected path to serving in the House.

Together they discuss confidential care, advising leaders, the ministry of presence, praying across differences, the history of prayer in Congress, and how to bless leaders without turning prayer into a tool of ideology.

Episode Highlights

"I had a sense of call to ministry when I was about fourteen."

"Chaplains are where it matters, when it matters, with what matters."

"What is your theology of ministry?"

"It is the ninety-nine who were leaving the room that needed the shepherd."

"God is on his throne. He hasn't stepped down."

About Margaret Grun Kibben

Rev. Dr. Margaret Grun Kibben serves as the sixty-first chaplain of the United States House of Representatives. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she previously completed a thirty-five-year career in the US Navy, including service as the twenty-sixth chief of Navy chaplains and director of religious ministry for the Department of the Navy. In that role, she advised senior naval leadership and oversaw chaplains serving sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen around the world. She holds degrees from Goucher College and Princeton Theological Seminary and earned a doctor of ministry focused on theology and leadership. Her ministry has included deployments overseas and senior-level advisement in complex, pluralistic environments.

Helpful Links And Resources

• Office of the Chaplain, US House of Representatives: https://chaplain.house.gov
• US House Chaplain YouTube Channel (Daily Prayers before Sessions) https://www.youtube.com/@USHouseChaplain
• January 6, 2026 Prayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQLhXt3gWBg

Show Notes

• Call to ministry at fourteen; early clarity of vocation
• Presbyterian upbringing and the influence of youth pastor Blair Mooney
• Visit to the Naval Academy and discernment of Navy chaplaincy
• Integrating Christian ministry with military service
• "Chaplains aren't combatants. We carry no weapon."
• Serving people in uniform, not serving an institution as ideology
• Four core capabilities: provide, facilitate, care, advise
• Religious pluralism in the armed forces; more than 200 faith traditions
• Protecting sacraments, holy days, and dietary practices in deployment settings
• Facilitating worship for traditions not one's own
• Confidential communication and priest-penitent privilege across beliefs
• "There is 100 percent confidentiality."
• Advising commanders on ethics, conscience, and moral complexity
• Early overwork, burnout, and lack of pastoral identity
• Mentorship and formation in the first years of service
• "What is your theology of ministry?"
• Doctor of Ministry studies and theological self-understanding
• Afghanistan deployment as convergence of preparation and calling
• "There wasn't a day… that I didn't have a sense that God had prepared me for that particular moment."
• Retirement discernment and formation of Virtue in Practice
• Unexpected invitation to serve as Chaplain of the House
• Bipartisan search process and interview experience
• Ministry of presence during extended floor sessions and late-night votes
• January 6: emergency, prayer, and calm in uncertainty
• "It is the ninety-nine who were leaving the room that needed the shepherd."
• Daily opening prayer as constitutional tradition since 1789
• 1774 Continental Congress and Psalm 35 as precedent
• Political interpretation of prayer across American history
• "Pray for and not pray on the members."
• Crafting public prayer that blesses without excluding
• "God is on his throne. He hasn't stepped down."

#MargaretGrunKibben #HouseChaplain #FaithAndLeadership #MinistryOfPresence #MilitaryChaplaincy #Prayer #ChristianVocation #Conversing

Production Credits

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

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As we approach Ash Wednesday and the 2026 Lenten season, Makoto Fujimura's vision of slow art, hospitality, and kenotic creativity invites us to resist the speed, fear, and fragmentation of this cultural moment by learning again how to pay attention, to rest, and to become people capable of holding one another with care even amid grief, violence, and uncertainty.

In this conversation, fine artist Makoto Fujimura reflects on art, trauma, hospitality, and the slow practices that help us remain human in fractured times.

"I wanted this book to serve as a portal… to recognize something as maybe ordinary or as extraordinary as holding your granddaughter."

Together with Mark Labberton, Fujimura reflects on art as generativity, kenosis, and the healing practice of attention.

Together they discuss slow art, Ground Zero and trauma, Japanese aesthetics and hospitality, dandelions and attention, Sabbath rest, and self-emptying love. They explore how making art helps people remain human amid violence, polarization, and technological acceleration.

Episode Highlights

"I wanted this book to serve as a portal… to recognize something as maybe ordinary or as extraordinary as holding your granddaughter."

"We are not just making… we are being made."

"God is indeed the host."

"Art is… a way for us to navigate our complex times."

"It is okay for me to give my life away."

About Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura is a contemporary artist, writer, and cultural thinker known for "slow art" rooted in Japanese Nihonga painting traditions. His work explores generativity, culture care, theology of making, and the relationship between beauty and suffering. Having lived and worked near Ground Zero after 9/11, his artistic practice reflects themes of trauma, hospitality, and new creation. He is the author of Art Is: A Journey into the Light and other books on art, faith, and culture.

Helpful Links And Resources

Art Is: A Journey into the Light https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300273656/art-is/

Makoto Fujimura Website https://makotofujimura.com/art

International Arts Movement https://iamculturecare.com/

Art and Faith: A Theology of Making https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300285482/art-and-faith/

Show Notes

• Lifelong friendship, artistic influence
• Slow art as resistance to acceleration
• Minneapolis demonstrations; dignity across legal status; 50,000 people marching in extreme cold as witness to human worth
• "I was holding Jane."
• Art as portal into ordinary life
• Making and being made simultaneously
• Scientist father, generative language framework
• Kamakura childhood aesthetics
• Insider–outsider identity formation
• Japanese language, visual thinking, layered perception
• Ground Zero studio years after 9/11 shaping imagination, community awareness, and artistic responsibility
• Hospitality as artistic and theological practice
• Survivor identity discovered through conversation with Columbine survivor
• "God is indeed the host."
• Attention, "minute particulars," and gratitude amid suffering
• Dandelions meditation: beauty in unwanted places; seeds surrendering to wind; healing compacted soil; overlooked gifts of creation
• Slow art practice: pausing, observing, letting meaning emerge rather than forcing conclusions
• Sabbath, rest, and imagination as resistance to productivity-driven identity
• Kenosis paintings, gold, generosity, and self-emptying love as cultural antidote
• "It is okay for me to give my life away."

#MakoFujimura

#SlowArt

#CultureCare

#FaithAndArt

#Hospitality

#Kenosis

#CreativeProcess

#SpiritualFormation

Production Credits

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

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Singer-songwriter Jon Guerra joins Mark Labberton to explore devotional songwriting, public faith, and the tension between the kingdom of Jesus and American cultural power. Through music and reflection, Guerra considers how art can hold grief, courage, and hope together in turbulent times.

"Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Guerra reflects on songwriting as prayer, the call to love enemies, and artistic courage in moments of cultural crisis.

Together they discuss devotional music, George Herbert's influence, the Beatitudes and American culture, citizenship and immigration imagery, increasing polarization, suffering and grace, and the vocation of Christian artists.

Episode Highlights

"Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one."

"When Jesus says to love your enemies… he is giving us a means of survival."

"This is not sentimentality… the only way to resist becoming what one hates."

"My songwriting… would be a means of coming into contact with the invisible God."

"Beauty puts us in contact with invisible things."

About Jon Guerra

Jon Guerra is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas, known for devotional music that blends poetry, theology, and contemporary cultural reflection. His albums include Little Songs (2015), Keeper of Days (2020), Ordinary Ways (2023), and American Gospel. Guerra has also composed music for film, including Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life (2019). The son of immigrants from Cuba and Argentina, his work often explores themes of citizenship, prayer, justice, and the teachings of Jesus. His songwriting draws inspiration from figures like George Herbert and Howard Thurman, and seeks to connect spiritual devotion with public life.

Helpful Links and Resources

Jon Guerra website: https://www.jonguerramusic.com/

American Gospel album: https://jonguerra.bandcamp.com

A Hidden Life film: https://www.searchlightpictures.com/ahiddenlife

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman: https://www.beacon.org/Jesus-and-the-Disinherited-P1781.aspx

The Porter's Gate: https://www.portersgateworship.com/

Show Notes

• Devotional songwriting
• George Herbert influence on the pursuit of prayerful craft
• "Music for attending to the soul."
• Monday morning prayer music framing devotional practice
• Beauty and invisible realities in artistic experience
• American Gospel song introduction and cultural critique
• Beatitudes inversion in American culture
• "How do I give Christ a say in this conversation?"
• Love Your Enemies composition and album Jesus
• Howard Thurman's influence on enemy-love theology (Jesus and the Disinherited)
• Emotional formation through news, anger, and public life
• Death of ego and kingdom discipleship
• Kierkegaard and faith beyond ideology
• Worship as reordering power
• Kingdom of Jesus song and Pilate encounter
• Allegiance to a greater kingdom beyond nationalism
• Citizenship as foreignness imagery
• Immigrant family background shaping songwriting
• Citizens song written after 2017 inauguration
• "Come to you because I'm confused."
• Five-four musical structure expressing disorientation
• Groaning beauty and Romans 8 resonance
• Artists as "holy fools" naming reality
• Moltmann and theology near the cross
• Simone Weil: gravity and grace reflection
• "Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one."

Hashtags

#JonGuerra

#DevotionalMusic

#LoveYourEnemies

#ChristianArt

#AmericanGospel

#PublicFaith

#Jesus

#Gospel

#SpiritualFormation

Production Credits

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

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When federal agents kill civilians and public outrage sweeps the nation, who gets to define justified force and who gets to hold power accountable? The killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti have sparked protests, national shutdowns, and fresh debate about what security should look like in America.

Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the US Department of Homeland Security, joins Mark Labberton for a wide-ranging conversation about fear-based governance, moral responsibility, constitutional guardrails, and what faithful leadership looks like in a moment of political crisis.

"Cruelty is a deterrent."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Neumann reflects on how Christian faith and public service shaped her national security career and why recent forceful immigration enforcement and lethal encounters challenge constitutional limits and moral clarity.

Together they discuss the moral and political meaning of the Minneapolis killings, trauma and vocation, immigration enforcement and democratic consent, fear-driven leadership, and how citizens and faith communities respond when institutions break down.

Episode Highlights

"Cruelty is a deterrent."

"I realized how much my hope and trust had been in man."

"We wrapped the flag around the cross."

"We see sufficiently, but not transparently."

"This is not normal, and this is not okay."

About Elizabeth Neumann

Elizabeth Neumann is a national security expert and former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the US Department of Homeland Security. She served across three presidential administrations, including senior roles during the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, and worked extensively on counterterrorism, prevention of political violence, and domestic extremism. A frequent public commentator and congressional witness, Neumann has become a leading voice on the moral and constitutional dangers of fear-driven governance. Her work bridges public policy, trauma studies, and Christian ethics, particularly where political power collides with faith commitments. She is the author of Kingdom of Rage, a deeply personal and analytical account of extremism, nationalism, and the cost of unexamined allegiance.

Helpful Links and Resources

Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Rage-Christian-Extremism-Peace/dp/1546002057

Show Notes

• Elizabeth Neumann's experience growing up in North Texas
• Faith and party loyalty culturally fused
• "To be a Christian meant you were a Republican."
• Early fascination with politics and government service
• University of Texas, late 1990s political climate
• George W. Bush campaigns as formative training ground
• Entry into White House work through campaign victory
• Faith-based initiatives before September 11 reshaped national priorities
• September 11 as lived experience, not abstraction
• Crossing the 14th Street Bridge as the attacks unfolded
• "We were under attack," and nothing felt safe
• Fog, confusion, smoke, radios, and unanswered phone calls
• Trauma before resilience, fear before context
• Learning endurance from older colleagues who said, "We will get through this."
• Trauma as vocational fuel
• Hypervigilance, workaholism, and mission-driven identity
• National security as moral calling rather than career ambition
• Warning from a CIA colleague: rebuild a cadence of normal life
• Vigilance versus fear-driven overwork
• Marriage, family, and a season of spiritual deepening
• Scripture as disruption: Jeremiah 17 and misplaced trust
• "I realized how much my hope and trust had been in man."
• Public policy confidence challenged as spiritual idolatry
• Russell Moore sermon and the shock of naming Christian nationalism
• "We wrapped the flag around the cross."
• Cultural Christianity exposed as formation, not gospel
• Deconstructing politics without deconstructing faith
• Becoming comfortable with ambiguity and moral gray
• Labberton on seeing "through a glass darkly"
• Interpretive humility versus certainty culture
• Returning to government during the Trump administration
• Saying yes out of mission, not agreement
• Guardrails inside government: translating impulse into lawful action
• Illegal orders, pressure, and survival mode governance
• Lafayette Square as turning point
• Peaceful protesters met with militarized force
• Optics over constitution
• Immigration enforcement reframed as cruelty-based deterrence
• "Cruelty is a deterrent."
• ICE, CBP, and DHS operating outside traditional norms
• First, Second, and Fourth Amendment violations described
• Warrantless searches and administrative authority
• Law enforcement trained for war zones policing civilian streets
• Rapid ICE expansion without vetting or adequate training
• Fear rhetoric inside agencies creating enemy mentality
• Officers taught to expect violence from the public
• Predictable escalation and preventable deaths
• Moral injury to agents and terror inflicted on communities
• "This is not normal, and this is not okay."
• Democracy requires consent of the governed
• Public trust collapsing when law breaks the law
• Call for stand-down, retraining, and accountability
• Faithful resistance as moral clarity, not partisan alignment

#ElizabethNeumann #FaithAndPolitics #NationalSecurity #ImmigrationCrisis #MoralCourage #PublicFaith

Production Credits

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

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Church planting is thriving at the very moment the church faces a crisis of credibility. What if the problem isn't too few churches—but too narrow a vision of what church is for?

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Brad Brisco reflects on church planting shaped by Christology before strategy, mission before institution, and incarnation before programs. Together they discuss missionary imagination in the modern West, co-vocational ministry, alternative expressions of church, micro-church networks, church growth assumptions, vocation and work, justice and proximity, and what it means to return—daily—to the ways of Jesus.

––––––––––––––––

Episode Highlights

"We need to help church planters think less like pastors starting a Sunday service and more like missionaries engaging a unique context."

"If by church we mean buildings, then no—we don't need more of those."

"Mission isn't really ours. It's about what God's already doing."

"We can say we're gospel-centered and still miss the ways of Jesus."

"The only way the church gets this far off is by being void of the ways of Jesus."

––––––––––––––––

About Brad Brisco

Brad Brisco is a missiologist and church planting leader, trainer, and writer who has spent more than twenty-five years coaching and resourcing church planters across North America. After beginning his career in the restaurant industry, Brisco entered ministry through church planting and later joined Send Network, where his work has focused on alternative expressions of church, co-vocational leadership, and missionally engaged discipleship.

He also serves on the national leadership team for Forge America Mission Training Network. Brad is the co-author of "Missional Essentials," a 12-week small group study guide, "The Missional Quest: Becoming a Church of the Long Run" and "Next Door As It Is In Heaven."

He is widely known for challenging church growth assumptions and for advocating Christ-centered, incarnational approaches that integrate faith, work, and neighborhood life.

Brisco remains closely connected to decentralized microchurch networks and innovative models of mission in urban contexts.

Follow him on X: https://x.com/bradleybrisco

––––––––––––––––

Helpful Links and Resources

Missional Church Network https://www.missionalchurchnetwork.com/

Send Network https://sendnetwork.com

The Shaping of Things to Come – Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost https://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Things-Come-Innovation-Mission/dp/1565636597

Permanent Revolution – Alan Hirsch https://www.amazon.com/Permanent-Revolution-Apostolic-Imagination-Practice/dp/0470907746

Tampa Underground https://www.tampaunderground.com/

––––––––––––––––

Show Notes

• Church planting boom alongside institutional church crisis
• Restaurant business background shaping entrepreneurial ministry instincts
• Conversion, seminary, and inherited assumptions about "real" ministry
• Early confusion about church planting as a category
• From planting one church to training planters nationally
• Church defined beyond buildings toward embodied communities
• "If by church we mean buildings, then no—we don't need more of those."
• Missionary context of the modern West
• Do we need more churches or more ways of being church?
• Underserved neighborhoods and unengaged people groups
• Declining interest in traditional church programs
• Airplane anecdote exposing attractional church assumptions
• "You just need a really good sound system and a good speaker."
• Mission versus Sunday-centric church planting
• Christology–missiology–ecclesiology framework
• Jesus shaping mission before shaping church
• "Most church planters start with ecclesiology rather than the ways of Jesus."
• Church growth movement assumptions challenged
• Recapturing the missionary nature of the church
• Church as sent people, not religious service provider
• Incarnational presence in neighborhoods and workplaces
• "Mission isn't something we do over there."
• Participation in the mission of God
• "The mission isn't really ours—it's about what God's already doing."
• Individual salvation versus communal discipleship
• Robust Christology beyond the cross alone
• Incarnation, life, resurrection, and kingdom shaping mission
• Brokenness, proximity, and responsibility for place
• Mission as communal, not individual activity
• Bi-vocational and co-vocational ministry distinctions
• Marketplace calling as missional advantage
• Sacred–secular divide challenged
• Time constraints forcing alternative church models
• Team-based leadership as non-negotiable
• Theology of work as essential formation
• Financial freedom reshaping church planting incentives
• Fully funded models drifting toward attractional pressure
• Co-vocational longevity and sustainability
• Microchurch networks and decentralized leadership
• Tampa Underground as proof of concept
• Mission-first communities addressing justice and brokenness
• "Mission is the mother of adaptive ecclesiology."
• Diverse expressions emerging from contextual mission
• Established churches learning from church planting frameworks
• Incremental versus wholesale institutional change
• Sending churches supporting new expressions
• Calling the church back to the ways of Jesus
• "We can be gospel-centered and still miss the ways of Jesus."
• Credibility gap between Jesus and the church today
• Recalibrating discipleship for public faithfulness

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#ChurchPlanting

#MissionalChurch

#FaithAndWork

#Discipleship

#ChristianLeadership

#PublicFaith

#Vocation

––––––––––––––––

Production Credits

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

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Christian faith has been politicized. Arguably, this is not new. But what we see in America and other societies has a jarring impact for those who seek a credible public Christian faith. To examine how Christian faith has been politicized in recent years, preacher and public theologian Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove joins Mark Labberton, asking what moral resistance requires in this authoritarian moment.

"I couldn't know Jesus in the fullness of who Jesus is without integrating faith and justice."

In this episode: Wilson-Hartgrove reflects on his Southern Baptist formation, his political awakening, and a conversion that reordered his understanding of Jesus, justice, and public life.

And: Trying to understand Christian nationalism, authoritarian power, poverty and race, moral fusion movements, just war theology, the discipline of prayer, and how churches can reclaim biblical values for the common good.

Episode Highlights

"I couldn't know Jesus in the fullness of who Jesus is without integrating faith and justice."

"The radical separation of faith from justice was a way my faith was stolen from me."

"We are in an authoritarian crisis that tells its own version of reality."

"Christian nationalism offers an alternative reality that very sincere people come to trust."

"Prayer interrupts the liturgy of consumerism and gives us another story."

About Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and public theologian working at the intersection of Christian faith, moral movements, and public life. He serves as Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy and has spent more than two decades in faith-rooted movements for social change. A longtime collaborator with Bishop William J. Barber II, he has helped articulate the Moral Movement's moral framing of poverty, race, and democracy. Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of multiple books on public faith, justice, and Christian discipleship, and a co-creator of the widely used prayer resource Common Prayer. He lives in North Carolina, where his work remains grounded in local churches and communities.

Learn more and follow at jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com and @wilsonhartgrove

Helpful Links and Resources

Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9781506484136/Revolution-of-Values

Common Prayer (with Shane Claiborne) https://www.zondervan.com/p/common-prayer/

White Poverty (with William J. Barber II) https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469661927/white-poverty/

Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy https://publictheology.yale.edu/

Show Notes

– Growing up in rural North Carolina tobacco country; The Andy Griffith Show based on his former community

– Southern Baptist formation, scripture memorization, and the King James Bible

– Moral Majority era shaping faith and politics

– Early ambition to serve Jesus through political power

– Greyhound trip to Washington, DC with grandfather

– Becoming a Senate page at sixteen

– Working in the office of Strom Thurmond

– Encountering the racial subtext of American politics

– "There was a distance between Sunday school and what was practiced"

– Learning how southern politics realigned after civil rights

– Leaving partisan politics searching for faithful public life

– Disorientation and not knowing another way to be Christian

– Meeting a preacher shaped by the civil rights movement

– Discovering a faith that named injustice without condemnation

– "I needed another way to be Christian in public"

– Colorblind theology and segregated church life

– Conversion as seeing Jesus and reality differently

– Faith reordered by relationships, not ideology

– Christian opposition to the Iraq War

– Traveling to Iraq during U.S. bombing

– "According to just war theory, this wouldn't be a just war"

– How common sense changes over time

– Christian nationalism and manufactured moral narratives

– Alternative realities formed by trusted information sources

– "We are in an authoritarian crisis"

– Mutual aid, churches, and local resistance

– Poverty as a moral and political vulnerability

– Prayer as resistance to consumerist liturgy

– Common Prayer and the rhythm of scripture

– "Prayer gives us another story to live inside"

#JonathanWilsonHartgrove

#Authoritarianism

#PublicFaith

#ChristianNationalism

#MoralMovement

#FaithAndJustice

#CommonGood

Production Credits

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

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As violence erupts around the world, how must we respond to those who worship power? In Venezuela, global power has reshaped lives overnight, and Elizabeth Sendek and Julio Isaza join Mark Labberton to reflect on faith, fear, and Christian witness amid political upheaval in Latin America.

"It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place. We have chosen our idol."

Together they discuss how experiences of dictatorship, displacement, and pastoral caution shape Christian responses to invasion and regime change; the relationship between power and idolatry; the moral realities that come with violent and nonviolent action; fear and pastoral responsibility; the global impact of diaspora and migration; how prayer informs action; and how the church bears faithful witness under ruthless power.

––––––––––––––––––

Episode Highlights

• "It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place. We have chosen our idol."
• "Prayer is a spiritual resource, valuable, needed, urgent every day, in times of peace and in times of crisis."
• "Prayer must also go alongside personal and collective actions in the defense of life, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace."
• "They are very cautious, because they are not sure who is in control."
• "We should not normalize violence just because it has always existed in history."

––––––––––––––––––

About Elizabeth Sendek

Elizabeth Sendek is a theologian and educator specializing in Latin American Christianity, theology and power, and the church's public witness under political violence. Her work draws from lived experience across Latin America, particularly contexts shaped by dictatorship, corruption, displacement, and ecclesial resilience. She has taught theology in academic and pastoral settings, engaging questions of ethics, political theology, and Christian responsibility in fragile societies. Sendek is widely respected for her ability to connect historical memory, biblical theology, and contemporary crises, especially regarding migration, authoritarianism, and Christian hope. Her scholarship and public engagement consistently emphasize prayer joined with concrete action, resisting both naïveté and cynicism. She speaks regularly to churches, students, and leaders seeking faithful responses to power and suffering.

About Julio Isaza

Julio Isaza, born in Colombia, is married to Katie Isaza and is the father of Samuel and Benjamin. He served with the Covenant Church of Colombia from 1995 to 2006 and later earned a master of divinity degree in Chicago, where he lived for six years. Between 2012 and 2015, he worked in the formation of university students and young professionals with Serve Globally in Medellín, Colombia. From 2016 to 2025, he served in peace-building processes in conflict areas of Colombia and also as a professor at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, teaching in the areas of missional theology, cultural context, and holistic impact strategies. During this time, he also worked with Indigenous communities in the Colombian rainforest, engaging in oral theology initiatives. His work has focused on holistic discipleship, theological education, and peace-building. He holds a master's degree in Conflict and Peace from the University of Medellín and is currently pursuing a PhD in Theology and Peace at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in England. A US citizen, he resides in Minnesota with his family, where he is writing his doctoral dissertation titled "Cultivating Integral (Biblical) Peace in a Context of Socio-environmental Violence."

––––––––––––––––––

Helpful Links And Resources

Princeton Theological Seminary https://www.ptsem.edu

Psalm 73 (New International Version) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+73&version=NIV

New Community Covenant Church (David Swanson) https://newcommunitycovenant.com/

Christians for Social Action https://christiansforsocialaction.org

––––––––––––––––––

Show Notes

• News of Venezuelan invasion and presidential extrication
• Awakening to international headlines and Colombian news coverage
• Power displacing morality and theology
• "It made me question, if power is the ultimate good, then questions of morality or theology have no place."
• "We have chosen our idol."
• Violence beyond headlines and unseen civilian consequences
• Personal stories from Caracas neighbourhoods and bomb damage
• "You see in the news about Maduro taken, but you don't see the consequences of what happened."
• "Some of her family was killed in Caracas because of the bombs."
• Childhood shaped by armed conflict in rural Colombia
• Guerrilla groups, military raids, and forced displacement
• Paramilitary violence and state-backed terror in towns
• "When I was a child, I would draw helicopters and militaries killing each other."
• Conversion shaped by studying the life of Jesus
• "When I began to study the gospel, I thought that Jesus's way is not a violent way."
• Pastoral caution under volatile political regimes
• Fear shaping Christian speech and public silence
• "For the sake of my congregation, I cannot voice any opinion."
• Churches continuing ministry amid uncertainty
• "They agreed that this time is an opportunity to share the gospel of hope."
• Prayer as resistance and sustenance
• "Prayer is a spiritual resource, valuable, needed, urgent every day, in times of peace and in times of crisis."
• Prayer joined with embodied action
• "Prayer must also go alongside personal and collective actions in the defense of life, justice, freedom, reconciliation, and peace."
• Long histories of dictatorship shaping Latin American theology
• Skepticism toward purely academic liberation theology
• Credibility rooted in lived solidarity with the poor
• Diaspora pressure and forced return narratives
• "Now people say Venezuelans can go back to their own country."
• Xenophobia and fear within host communities
• Displacement as ongoing trauma for migrant families
• Scripture shaping hope amid cynicism
• "When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply, till I entered the sanctuary of God."
• Refusing to normalize power's violence
• "Our call is not to normalize it, nor to declare it an act of God."

––––––––––––––––––

#FaithAndPolitics

#LatinAmerica

#ChristianWitness

#PowerAndViolence

#Venezuela

#ChurchAndState

#PublicTheology

Production Credits

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

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What happens when a long pastoral calling ends, friendships fade, and the church faces cultural fracture? Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer (42 years in ministry at Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, CA) joins Mark Labberton for a searching conversation about retirement from pastoral ministry, loneliness, leadership, and the meaning of credible witness in the Black church today.

"Ministry can be a lonely business."

In this episode, Bishop Ulmer reflects on the stepping away after four decades of pastoral leadership, navigating aloneness, disrupted rhythms, and the spiritual costs of transition. Together they discuss pastoral loneliness, friendship and grief, retirement and identity, church leadership after elections, authenticity versus attraction, political division in congregations, and whether the church still centers Jesus.

Episode Highlights

• "Ministry can be a lonely business."
• "[Boy, pointing to a church] Is God in there? [Pastor] Sometimes I wonder."
• "There's a Moses in you that will see farther than you'll go."
• "The tension is authenticity versus attraction."
• "Jesus is the answer for the world today."

About Kenneth C. Ulmer

Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer is Bishop Emeritus of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, California, where he served as senior pastor for more than four decades. A nationally respected preacher, civic leader, and mentor, Ulmer played a significant role in the spiritual and economic life of Los Angeles, including the preservation of the Forum as a major community asset. He has been a prominent voice in conversations about the Black church, urban ministry, and faithful Christian leadership amid cultural and political change. Ulmer continues to teach, preach, and advise leaders while reflecting publicly on vocation, aging, and wisdom in ministry.

Learn more and follow at https://www.faithfulcentral.com

Helpful Links And Resources

• Faithful Central Bible Church: https://www.faithfulcentral.com
• Conversing with Mark Labberton: https://comment.org/conversing
• Credible Witness podcast: https://faith.yale.edu/credible-witness

Show Notes

• Long pastoral tenure ending after more than four decades of leadership
• Friendship formed through shared grief and the loss of trusted companions
• Prayer, friendship, and ministry forged "on our knees" at Hollywood Presbyterian
• Loss of regular companionship revealing unexpected loneliness and aloneness
• "Ministry can be a lonely business."
• Absence of trusted friends exposing a deep relational void
• Final sermon titled "I Did My Best," echoing 2 Timothy imagery and the words on Kenneth Ulmer's father's grave
• "I fought a good fight" as closing vocational reflection
• Disrupted spiritual rhythm after forty-one years of weekly preaching
• "My rhythm is off."
• Identity shaped by Sunday coming "every seven days"
• Question of where and how to worship after stepping away
• Public recognition colliding with uncertainty about purpose
• Therapy as a faithful response to grief and transition
• Energy and health without a clear channel for vocation
• Question of "what do you do now?" after leadership ends
• Seeing farther than you will go as a leadership reality
• Deuteronomy 34 and Moses viewing the Promised Land
• "There's a Moses in you that will see farther than you'll go."
• Passing vision to a Joshua who will go farther than he can see
• Grief of cheering from the sidelines while no longer on the field
• Wrestling with authenticity versus attraction in church leadership
• John 12:32 and the tension of lifting up Jesus to draw others
• "The tension is authenticity versus attraction."
• Fear of entertainment, production, and celebrity eclipsing Christ
• Question of whether churches are built on preaching or personality
• Political polarization dividing congregations and pulpits
• Question pastors must ask: "Who am I going to be after this ballot?"
• Kingdom identity beyond donkey or elephant, only the Lamb
• "Holding up the bloodstained banner" as faithful witness
• Doors of the church open—how wide are they, and for whom?
• Concern for credibility after the benediction and after the election
• Civic engagement without surrendering theological center
• Preserving community good beyond church walls and buildings
• Forum purchase as economic stewardship, not church expansion
• Question of whether God is still "in that house"
• How much of the God inside gets outside into the neighborhood?
• Jesus as the enduring answer amid cultural confusion
• Worship song, "We Offer Jesus"
• "Jesus in the morning, Jesus at noonday, Jesus in the midnight hour."
• Call to be the extended incarnation in ordinary life: "You are the temple."
• "Who are you turning away that he [Jesus] would not turn away?"

#KennethCUlmer

#PastoralLeadership

#ChurchAndCulture

#CredibleWitness

#FaithAfterRetirement

#AuthenticityVsAttraction

Production Credits

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

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Can joy be anything but denial in a rage-filled public life? Michael Wear joins Mark Labberton to reframe politics through the kingdom logic of hope, agency, and practices of silence and solitude. As 2025 closes amid political discord, we might all ask whether joy can be real in public life—without denial, escapism, or contempt.

"… Joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing."

In this conversation, Michael Wear and Mark Labberton reflect on joy, hope, responsibility, and agency amid a reaction-driven politics. Together they discuss the realism of Advent; the limits of our control; how kingdom imagination reframes anger; hope beyond outcomes, dignity under threat, and practices (including silence and solitude) that restore clarity.

Episode Highlights

"Joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing. … Joy is not a technique to then get people to do what you want them to do."

"God's Kingdom is the range of his effective will."

" Someone whose hope is rightly placed sees that a dignity denying culture does not have the final say."

"Our will is effective and those things in which our will is not effective."

"The pattern of domination and violence is an old one."

About Michael Wear

Michael Wear is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan nonprofit that contends for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. He has served for more than a decade as a trusted advisor to civic and religious leaders on faith and public life, including as a presidential campaign and White House staffer. He is the author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life and Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America. Learn more and follow at https://www.michaelwear.com.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics https://www.zondervan.com/9780310367239/the-spirit-of-our-politics/
• Michael Wear, Reclaiming Hope https://www.thomasnelson.com/9780718082338/reclaiming-hope/
• Center for Christianity and Public Life https://www.ccpubliclife.org/
• A National Call to Silence and Solitude https://www.silenceandsolitude.org/
• Dallas Willard: "Personal Soul Care" https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/personal-soul-care
• Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited https://www.beacon.org/Jesus-and-the-Disinherited-P1781.aspx

Show Notes

• End of 2025, cusp of Christmas; fraught public moment; joy as the lynchpin for faithful presence in politics and public life
• Joy held with pain, suffering, complexity
• Refusing denial while trusting a God who relentlessly pursues the world in love and hope
• Joy intertwined with hope, responsibility, agency
• Where does responsibility end and faithful agency begin?
• "Willard would say joy is a pervasive and constant sense of wellbeing."
• " It is very difficult to have joy if you are taking responsibility for things that are not your responsibility."
• Public life as joyless space; lacking imagination for joy amid provocation, antagonism, and constant political showmanship
• "If there are places in our life where we can't conceive of joy, it's a problem with our view of God."
• Misplaced responsibility, misplaced hope; joy collapses when taking on burdens that aren't ours and treating agency as ultimate
• "God's kingdom is the range of his effective will."
• "We each have our own little kingdoms … where what we say to be done is done."
• Politics reveals limits; a clarity about what we can do, what we can't do, and what we must import into the rest of life
• "Our will is effective, and there are things in which our will is not effective."
• "Faithfulness is not the ability to determine a righteous outcome … to everything in which our lives touch."
• False responsibility, obscured agency
• Are we taking charge of what isn't ours while ignoring the real choices we do have?
• "That's a recipe for joylessness."
• Poked and prodded by provocations; entertainment, antagonisms, and helplessness normalize reaction and justify complicity
• Anger as political fuel
• Many assume that raising your voice is the only faithful posture inside the public arena.
• "I've had people respond to me: 'How am I going to get anything done in politics without anger?'"
• "Political imagination has been taken over by a political logic as opposed to a kingdom logic."
• Relearning responsibility and agency; hope not grounded in our effectiveness, but in what God is doing beyond our reach.
• "Ultimate hope lies outside of the range of our effective will."
• "It is in that realm in which we are perfectly safe."
• Hope is for a life that pervades all things.
• "So when your hope is in the right place, you can hope for a whole range of things."
• " Someone whose hope is rightly placed sees that a dignity denying culture does not have the final say."
• Hope and joy "when your back is against the wall"
• Allen Temple Baptist Church: Joy at the margins of culture
• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
• First Presbyterian Church in Evanston, IL
• Michael Wear, The Spirit of Our Politics
• Psalm 23 as distress-psalm: Enemies are still present, yet God leads beside still waters and cares most in greatest distress.
• "Take off the old self with its practices and put on the new self."
• "Put on Christ now in a way that will affect everything around us."
• Herod: The paranoid leader
• Advent into Christmastide—what it means to dwelling in Emmanuel
• "This is why the incarnation is such an extraordinarily important cornerstone: It's that God enters in through Jesus into our world, in a world in which, yes, there may be great praises in heaven and on earth from those who understand something at least of who he is and what he's there to do. But it also lands him in a world of immediate physical and familial vulnerability of political and social, if not military, violence."
• Are we protected from vulnerability, or living in precarity?
• The pattern of domination and violence
• Refusing forgetfulness as 2026 approaches with fresh pressures and fresh calling.
• National call to silence and solitude; disinvesting from reactionary instincts to engage the world with renewed vision and clarity. silenceandsolitude.org
• "Silence and solitude… can infuse your public activity with right vision and right clarity."

#MichaelWear #MarkLabberton #ChristianPublicLife #ChristianPolitics #SpiritualFormation #Joy #Advent #SilenceAndSolitude #Hope #PublicWitness

Production Credits

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

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What if taking Mary seriously actually deepens, rather than distracts from, devotion to Jesus? Art historian and theologian Matthew Milliner joins Mark Labberton to explore that possibility through history, theology, and the Incarnation. In a searching conversation about Mary, the meaning of Marian devotion, and the mystery of the Incarnation, they draw from early Christianity, Protestant theology, and global Christianity, as Milliner reframes Mary as a figure who deepens devotion to Christ rather than distracting from it.

"I don't see how anyone cannot understand this to be the revolution of revolutions in regards to the way that women are understood."

In this episode, they reflect on Mary as presence, witness, and theological key to understanding God's entry into human life. They discuss Marian devotion before the Reformation, excess and restraint in Christian practice, the Incarnation's implications for embodiment and gender, Protestant fears and recoveries, global Marian traditions, grief and discipleship, and why Mary ultimately points beyond herself to Christ.

Episode Highlights

• "I love Jesus so much that I love his mom too. Isn't she great too?"
• " What relationship do you have in your life where if you knew the parents of the person you're in relationship with, that would damage the relationship? … It's a sign of deep intimacy."
• "There is no Christianity without Mary. That's how God came into the world."
• "She is my tutorial in grief."
• "If it's the real Mary you're dealing with, she will point you to Jesus."
• "The answer to the abuse is to point to the best use."
• "She became a presence in the church for me."
• "I don't see how anyone cannot understand this to be the revolution of revolutions."

About Matthew Milliner

Matthew J. Milliner is Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College, where he specializes in early Christian, Byzantine, and global Christian art. His scholarship explores theology through visual culture, with particular attention to Mary, the Incarnation, and Christian devotion across traditions. Milliner is widely published in academic journals and popular outlets, including Comment Magazine, where he has written extensively on Marian theology and Christian art. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on Christianity and aesthetics, and his work bridges evangelical theology, Anglican practice, and historic Christian tradition. Milliner is also known for his teaching on icons, pilgrimage, and the relationship between art, doctrine, and discipleship.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Read Matthew Milliner's column, Material Mysticism, for Comment Magazine https://comment.org/columns/material-mysticism/
• Matthew Milliner, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon: https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Lamb-Story-Global-Icon/dp/1506478751
• Matthew Milliner faculty page: https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/faculty/matthew-milliner/
• Stephen Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217216/mary-in-early-christian-faith-and-devotion/
• Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/goddesses-and-the-divine-feminine/paper
• William Johnston, The Wounded Stag: https://www.harvard.com/book/9780823218394
• The Angelus Prayer (recited in this conversation): https://www.usccb.org/prayers/angelus
• Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham: https://www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk

Show Notes

• Opening prayer invoking Mary's witness, comfort, and example as a way of drawing listeners toward Christ rather than away from him
• Evangelical identity reclaimed as gospel proclamation rather than political alignment or cultural branding
• Early Marian devotion emerging "early and often" in Christian history, grounded in Jerusalem rather than later medieval invention
• "I love Jesus so much that I love his mom too. Isn't she great too?"
• Honoring Mary without worship, framed through Revelation imagery of the bride and the people of God
• Archaeological and manuscript discoveries reshaping assumptions about early Christian practice
• Marian devotion expanding intimacy rather than competing with Christological focus
• Newman on devotion requiring excess, extravagance, and emotional overflow to be genuinely human
• "Let the Christian Church let it boil over every once in a while."
• Reformation dynamics producing extremes: feverish excess on one side and stone-cold rejection on the other
• Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine
• Pagan goddess traditions contrasted with Marian imagery and their treatment of women's bodies
• Aphrodite imagery as endorsement of male desire versus Marian imagery as reverence for God's entry into flesh
• "Find me an image of Mary that does anything close to that."
• Incarnation reshaping how Christians see the female body, sexuality, and dignity
• "This is the body God entered the world through."
• The angel Gabriel's Annunciation and Mary's consent
• Annunciation framed as consent rather than coercion, with Luke emphasizing Mary's agency
• "Nothing happens to her until she consents."
• Mary as theological answer to pornographic and exploitative religious imaginations
• "I don't see how anyone cannot understand this to be the revolution of revolutions."
• Guadalupe as evangelistic bridge for indigenous peoples pointing toward Christ without blood sacrifice
• Mary's global accessibility across Muslim, Hindu, and non-Christian contexts
• "She is a real evangelist, Mary."
• Walsingham pilgrimage as Anglican recovery of Marian devotion
• Marian attraction functioning as penumbra drawing outsiders toward Christianity
• "If it's the real Mary you're dealing with, she will point you to Jesus."
• Abuse of Marian devotion acknowledged alongside historical self-correction within Catholicism
• "The answer to the abuse is to point to the best use."
• Matthew Milliner's personal spiritual journey from childhood Catholicism through evangelical conversion
• Anti-Mary phase followed by rediscovery through art history and theology
• "She became a presence in the church for me."
• Mary understood as presence rather than abstract idea, without becoming divine
• William Johnson's, The Wounded Stag: God is beyond gender
• Devotional practice as tributary flowing into Trinitarian worship rather than replacing it
• "There is no Christianity without Mary. That's how God came into the world."
• Angelus prayer as scriptural meditation culminating in Trinitarian praise
• "Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord."
• Psychological and spiritual healing through Marian presence without theological confusion
• Mary as guide for grief through images of sorrow and seven swords
• "She is my tutorial in grief."
• Black Madonna traditions interpreted through devotion, time, soot, and divine darkness
• Darkness as sign of overwhelming divine light rather than absence of God

#ConversingPodcast #MatthewMilliner #MaryTheology #Incarnation #ChristianTradition #AdventReflections #FaithAndArt

Production Credits

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

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How should Christian faith shape work in an era of pluralism, fear, and systemic inequality? Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund (Rice University) is presenting new insights for faith at work through data, theology, and lived experience.

"People love to talk about individual ethics … but what was really hard for them to think about was, what would it mean to make our workplace better as a whole?"

In this episode, Ecklund joins Mark Labberton to reflect on moving from individual morality toward systemic responsibility, dignity, and other-centred Christian witness at work. Together they discuss faith and work, the gender and race gaps created by systemic injustice, fear and power, religious diversity, rest and human limits, gender and racial marginalization, and the cost of a credible Christian witness.

Episode Highlights

• "People love to talk about individual ethics."
• "What would it mean to make our workplace better as a whole?"
• "People are much more apt to take us seriously if we first take them seriously."
• "Suppression of faith in particular is not the answer."
• "God is God and I am not."

About Elaine Howard Ecklund

Elaine Howard Ecklund is professor of sociology at Rice University and director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance. She is a leading sociologist of religion, science, and work whose research examines how faith operates in professional and institutional life. Ecklund has led large-scale empirical studies on religion in workplaces and scientific communities, supported by the National Science Foundation, Templeton Foundation, and Lilly Endowment. She is the author or co-author of several influential books, including Working for Better, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other, and Science vs. Religion. Her work informs academic, ecclesial, and public conversations about pluralism, justice, and moral formation in modern society.

Learn more and follow at https://www.elaineecklund.com and https://twitter.com/elaineecklund

Helpful Links And Resources

• Working for Better (IVP): https://www.ivpress.com/working-for-better
• Why Science and Faith Need Each Other (IVP): https://www.ivpress.com/why-science-and-faith-need-each-other
• Elaine Howard Ecklund website: https://www.elaineecklund.com
• Rice University Boniuk Institute: https://boniuk.rice.edu
• Conversing with Mark Labberton: https://comment.org/conversing

Show Notes

• Sociological study of religion, work, and group behavior
• Christian faith taken seriously at personal and academic levels
• Ecklund's former research focus on science as a workplace environment
• Expanding faith-at-work research beyond scientific communities
• Compartmentalized Christian faith and the fear of offending colleagues
• Friendship and collaboration emerging from leadership retreats
• Large-scale data-driven study on religion in changing workplaces
• Religious pluralism at work and changing workplace demographics
• Writing for Christian audiences shaped by empirical research
• From individual ethics toward systemic responsibility at work
• "People love to talk about individual ethics."
• Systemic injustice blind spots
• Moral shorthand focused on time sheets and office supplies
• Organizational leadership and culture change
• Difficulty imagining organizational or structural workplace change
• Fear of retaliation when confronting unjust systems
• Responsibility for workplace realities
• Power underestimated by those holding leadership positions
• Costly examples of speaking up against workplace injustice
• Christian fear of marginalization in pluralistic environments
• Suppression of religious expression as common workplace response
• Suppression versus accommodation: "Suppression of faith in particular is not the answer."
• Religious diversity as unavoidable reality of modern work
• Other-centered faith rooted in dignity of every person
• Imago Dei shaping engagement across religious difference
• "People are much more apt to take us seriously if we first take them seriously."
• Racialized religious minorities: the double marginalization of racial minorities of faith
• Gender inequity and underexamined workplace power dynamics
• Faith-based employee groups
• Fear masquerading as anger in cultural and religious conflict
• Workplaces as rare spaces for meaningful civic encounter
• Justice beyond activism
• Rest as theological foundation for justice and leadership
• Limits, Sabbath, and resisting productivity as ultimate value
• "God is God and I am not."
• Human limits in leadership

Production Credits

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

#FaithAndWork

#ElaineHowardEcklund

#ChristianEthics

#WorkplaceJustice

#ReligiousPluralism

#RestAndFaith

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As global powers double down on militarism and defense, Daniel Zoughbie argues that the most transformative force in the Middle East has always come from citizen diplomacy.

A complex-systems scientist and diplomatic historian, Zoughbie joins Mark Labberton to explore how twelve US presidents have "kicked the hornet's nest" of the modern Middle East. Drawing on his work in global health and his new book Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump, Zoughbie contrasts the view from refugee camps and micro-clinic networks with the view from the Oval Office, arguing that American security rests on a three-legged stool of defence, diplomacy, and development.

He explains why Gerald Ford stands out as the lone president who truly leveraged diplomacy, how the Marshall Plan model of enlightened self-interest can guide policy now, and why nationalism, not mere economics, lies at the heart of Gaza's future. Throughout, he presses listeners toward "citizen diplomacy" that resists pride, militarism, and fatalism.

Episode Highlights

• "We've constantly ignored diplomacy."
• " You don't have to be enemies with people to get them to do what is in their own self-interest."
• "You can build skyscrapers in Gaza. You can build the Four Seasons in Gaza and it's not going to work. You're just going to have another war until you address that core issue of nationalism."
• "These three D's, defense, diplomacy, development, are the three-legged stool of American security and we know how important diplomacy and development are."
• "From Truman to Trump, only one president, and that is Gerald Ford, surprisingly the only unelected president, gets this right."
• "Pride—national pride, the pride of any one individual—is toxic. It's toxic to the individual. It's toxic to the nation. It's toxic to the world."
• "Foreign policymaking is not just something for secretaries of state and those in power. All of us in a democracy have a role to play."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kicking-the-Hornets-Nest/Daniel-E-Zoughbie/9781668085226
• American University of Beirut (founded as Syrian Protestant College), a key example of long-term educational diplomacy https://www.aub.edu.lb
• Al-Ahli Arab (Gaza Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital
• Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation" https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/weber_max_1864_1920_politics_as_a_vocation/weber_max_1864_1920_politics_as_a_vocation.pdf
• Quaker Friends School, Ramallah: https://www.rfs.edu.ps/en
• Amman Baptist School: https://baptist.edu.jo/
• American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem founding in the Husseini Estate by the author of "It is Well" https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/americancolony/amcolony-family.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colony_Hotel
• Foreman Christian College, Pakistan (Presbyterian) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forman_Christian_College
• American University of Cairo (Presbyterian) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_University_in_Cairo

About Daniel Zoughbie

Daniel E. Zoughbie is a complex-systems scientist, historian, and expert on presidential decision-making. He is associate project scientist at UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies, a faculty affiliate of the UCSF/UCB Center for Global Health Delivery, Diplomacy, and Economics, and principal investigator of the Middle East and North Africa Diplomacy, Development, and Defense Initiative. He is the author of Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East from Truman to Trump and of Indecision Points: George W. Bush and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. His award-winning research has appeared in journals such as PLOS Medicine, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, and Social Science and Medicine. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UC Berkeley, he studied at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship and completed his doctorate there as a Weidenfeld Scholar.

Show Notes

Middle East Background and Micro-clinic Origins

• Daniel Zoughbie recalls visiting the Middle East as a child—"frankly horrified" by what he saw
• UC Berkeley protests over the Iraq War and post-9/11 US policy in the region
• Metabolic disease and type 2 diabetes as an overlooked "greatest killer in the region."
• Neighbours in the West Bank sharing food, medicine, and blood-pressure cuffs—leads to the "micro-clinic" concept
• Good health behaviours, like bad ones and even violence, can be contagious through social networks

Social Networks, Anthropology, and Security

• Social anthropology, political science, and international relations
• Medical problems as simultaneously biological and sociological problems
• Understanding Middle East security demands attention to decisions "at the very bottom" as well as "the view from above"
• October 7 and 9/11 illustrate how small groups of people can "change the world with their decisions."

Complex Systems and Foreign Policy

• Complexity is always increasing, and diplomacy and development exist to slow it down.
• Definition of "complex system": as one where many inputs produce outcomes that cannot be reduced to single causes.
• "We almost have a new law here, which is that complexity is always increasing in the universe. And the role of diplomacy and development, as I see it in international relations, is to slow things down. It's to stop complexity from advancing so that people have time to cool their tempers and to solve major security crises."
• Type 2 diabetes as a model for thinking about how city planning, economics, relationships, and habits interact
• He applies that lens to international relations: nations, leaders, institutions, and history form a "cascade of complexity."

From Refugee Camps to Presidential Palaces

• George Shultz and Tony Blair: decision-makers as "real human beings," not abstractions
• Theological and ideological forces—such as certain apocalyptic readings of Scripture—that shape US foreign policy
• Gnosticism and eschatology within American right-wing Christianity
• Painstaking global health work on the ground and sweeping decisions made in Washington, Brussels, or New York

Twelve Presidents and One Exception

• Kicking the Hornet's Nest: analysis of twelve presidents from Truman to Trump through the lens of Middle East decision-making
• Core claim: Only Gerald Ford truly rebalanced the three D's of defence, diplomacy, and development.
• US policy in the Levant: heavy reliance on militarism, coups, and covert actions while underinvesting in diplomacy and development
• Claim: "Far better alternatives were on the table" for every administration, yet consistently passed over.

Gerald Ford, Kissinger, and the Path to Peace

• Daniel contends that the 1967 and 1973 wars were both preventable and nearly became global nuclear catastrophes.
• Ford inherits the presidency amid Watergate and national division, but keeps Henry Kissinger at State.
• Ford presses Israel and Egypt toward serious negotiations, empowering Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy and personal ties.
• A sharply worded letter threatening to "reconsider" the US-Israel relationship
• Ford's diplomacy and the development of Camp David and the enduring Egypt-Israel peace based on "land for peace."

Pride, Personality, and Presidential Failure

• Did Ford's temperament keep him from making himself the center of the story?
• In contrast, many presidents and other leaders write themselves "thickly" into the narrative of the conflict.
• Pride—personal and national—as a toxic force that repeatedly undermines US policy
• The Iraq War and democracy-promotion agenda and the self-defeating nature of moralistic, militarized crusades

Marshall Plan and Enlightened Self-Interest

• George Marshall and harsh punishment after World War I helped produce Nazi Germany
• The Marshall Plan models an "enlightened way of viewing the American self-interest": rebuilding Europe and Japan to secure U.S. security.
• He contrasts that with the neglect of the Levant, where aid and institution-building never matched military activism.
• Marshall's genius lies in locating the intersection between others' deepest needs and American capabilities.

Militarism, Iran, and Nuclear Risk

• Recent US-Israel-Iran confrontation as an "extremely dangerous moment"—with 60 percent enriched uranium unaccounted for
• JCPOA as an imperfect but effective diplomatic achievement, but dismantled in favor of militarism
• Claim: Bombing Iran scattered nuclear material and increased complexity rather than reducing the threat.
• He warns that one nuclear device could be delivered by low-tech means—a boat or helicopter—endangering civilians and US forces in the Gulf.
• The only realistic path forward: renewed multilateral diplomacy between US, Israel, Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and regional actors

Ethical Realism and Max Weber

• "Ethical realism"—Max Weber's distinction between the ethic of the gospel and the ethic of responsibility
• Statespeople bear responsibility for using force, yet the greatest can still say "here I stand and I can do no other."
• Claim: True leadership seeks a higher ethic where national interest aligns with genuine concern for others.

Gaza, Nationalism, and Two States

• Welcoming the end of active war between Israel and Hamas and critiquing reconstruction plans that ignore politics
• Conflict is fundamentally nationalist: a struggle for self-determination by both Jewish and Palestinian peoples
• Claim: Economic development without a credible political horizon will not prevent "another October 7th and another terrible war."
• In his view, only partition of mandatory Palestine into two states can meet legitimate self-determination claims.
• For example, "You can build skyscrapers in Gaza… and it's not going to work" without addressing nationalism.

Citizen Diplomacy and a Better Way

• Foreign policy is not only the work of secretaries of state; democratic citizens have responsibilities.
• American University of Beirut and the Gaza Baptist Hospital as fruits of citizen diplomacy
• Claim: Educational and medical institutions can change lives more profoundly and durably than military campaigns.
• Redirecting resources from bombs to universities and hospitals to reduce the need for future military interventions
• An invitation to citizen diplomacy: informed voting, sustained attention, and creative engagement for a more just peace

Production Credits

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

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Rabbi Michael G. Holzman joins Mark Labberton to explore the formation of his Jewish faith, the pastoral realities of congregational life, and the multi-faith initiative he helped launch for the nation's 250th anniversary, Faith 250. He reflects on his early experiences of wonder in the natural world, the mentors who opened Torah to him, and the intellectual humility that shapes Jewish approaches to truth. Their conversation moves through the unexpected depth of congregational ministry, the spiritual and emotional weight of the pandemic, the complexities of speaking about God in contemporary Jewish life, and the role of cross-faith friendships. The episode concludes with Rabbi Holzman's reflections on how the suffering in Israel and Palestine reverberates among Jews and Muslims in America.

Episode Highlights

• "I think we are desperately in need of ways to get Americans to agree that they're in the same community… simply by naming the Declaration of Independence as a piece of shared American scripture… we are inviting people and really challenging ourselves to think about the words in those documents seriously, and prayerfully."
• "My formation as a child was relatively non-theological… my mother just would sit there and say, 'Do you feel that wind?' And for me, knowing that it was in a national park mattered… being in such a grand and awesome space, under the enormity of the heavens."
• "The pursuit of truth with epistemic humility really became the cornerstone…if Moses wasn't allowed to see God's face, I'm never gonna see God's face—and yet we are all still pursuing what the meaning of this incredible text is."
• "I was a little bit unprepared… until you experience it as a pastor, you don't really understand the power of those things. That rootedness in this particular congregation gave me a sense of existential meaning that I didn't anticipate."
• "The thing that got me through that darkness was Saturday morning Torah study… just being there with the text and with these faces and these people… that to me was my path through the darkness."
• "When people are sitting over the text, the most palpable experience of God is this moment of understanding another human being… it's so vulnerable and it's so fleeting and it's so beautiful."
• "There is an experience happening on the ground of absolute suffering and horror on both sides… and there's a parallel experience happening for Jews and Muslims in America. It's powerful, spiritually powerful, emotionally powerful, and to people's core."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Faith 250 https://www.faith250.org/
• "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus
• "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" by Frederick Douglass https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
• "America the Beautiful" by Katherine Lee Bates https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/america-beautiful-1893
• I and Thou, Martin Buber https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780684717258/i-and-thou

About Rabbi Michael G. Holzman

Rabbi Michael G. Holzman is the Senior Rabbi of Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation (NVHC), where he has served since 2010. His work focuses on spiritual formation, civic engagement, multi-faith partnership, and the cultivation of communities grounded in dignity, learning, and ethical responsibility. He founded the Rebuilding Democracy Project, which developed into Faith 250, a national multi-faith initiative preparing communities for the 250th anniversary of the United States through shared reflection on foundational American texts. He teaches and writes on Jewish ethics, civic life, and spiritual resilience.

Show Notes

Faith 250 American Scripture

• Faith 250 as a response to political despair and a way for clergy to exercise agency
• Four core American texts explored as shared scripture across faiths
• Intent to counter politicization of the 250th anniversary through spiritual depth
• Multi-faith relationships grounding the initiative in shared civic and moral concern
• Emphasis on clergy as conveners of spiritually safe, local containers for reading
• The Declaration, New Colossus, Frederick Douglass, and America the Beautiful as "scriptural" portals to civic meaning
• "American scripture" as a means of naming shared identity and shared community

Jewish Formation and Torah

• Childhood shaped by nature, wonder, and ethical awareness rather than synagogue life
• Early encounters with the Everglades as formative experiences of spirit and awe
• Discovery of Torah study as a young adult across Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform settings
• Epistemic humility as a defining mark of Jewish study practice
• Pursuit of truth understood through the "through a glass darkly" frame of Moses
• Torah received "through the hand of Moses" as mediating truth and mystery
• Chevruta (paired study) as the engine of discovery, disagreement, and meaning

Pastoral Life and Congregational Meaning

• Surprised by the depth of pastoral work: weddings, funerals, life-cycle passages
• Intimacy of congregational leadership as a source of meaning rather than tedium
• Congregational relationships forming an existential and vocational anchor
• The role of community support during family medical crises
• How decades-long pastoral presence shapes shared covenantal life
• Teaching 12- and 13-year-olds to encounter the text as spiritual practice
• The power of intergenerational relationships in spiritual resilience

Pandemic and Spiritual Survival

• Early months of 2020 as a time of fear, isolation, and emotional strain
• Counseling families whose loved ones were dying without visitors
• Previous experience with depression creating early warning signals
• Telehealth therapy as a critical intervention
• Saturday morning Torah study on Zoom becoming the path through darkness
• Growth of the study community throughout the pandemic
• Predictable humor and shared reading as markers of communal stability

Textuality, God-Language, and Jewish Hesitations

• Jewish discomfort speaking explicitly about God for theological and cultural reasons
• Layers of humility, anti-mysticism, differentiation from Christianity, and historical experience
• Sacredness and mystery of the scroll growing in the digital age
• Physicality of the Torah scroll attracting deeper attention and reverence
• Hebrew as a source of multivalent meaning, sonic power, and spiritual resonance
• Reading together as the most common encounter with God: understanding another's soul
• Pastoral awareness of individuals' life stories shaping group study dynamics

Cross-Faith Devotion and Shared Honor

• Friendships with Muslim, Christian, and Hasidic leaders deepening spiritual insight
• Devotion in others sparking awe rather than defensiveness
• Disagreement becoming a site of connection rather than separation
• Devotion in other traditions prompting self-reflection on one's own commitments
• Stories of praying with and learning from ultra-Orthodox leaders
• Shared pursuit of truth across tradition lines as a form of civic and spiritual honor
• American religious diversity offering unprecedented exposure to sincere piety

Israel, Gaza, and American Jewish Experience

• Suffering, fear, and horror experienced by Israelis and Palestinians
• Parallel emotional and spiritual pressures faced by Jews and Muslims in America
• Concern about political manipulation of community trauma
• Generational trauma and its transmission, including Holocaust-era family stories
• Emotional resonance of global conflict in local congregational life
• Distinction and connection between geopolitical realities and American spiritual experience
• Call to honor emotional realities across neighborhoods and communities

Production Credits

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

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In this Thanksgiving reflection, Mark Labberton opens up about a period of darkness and despair, when as a younger man he considered ending his life. But when he was invited to share Thanksgiving dinner with a local couple, his eyes were opened to concrete acts of hope, friendship, and joy—all embodied in the simple feast of a community "Friendsgiving" potluck.

Every year since, Mark calls these friends on Thanksgiving Day, in gratitude for and celebration of the hospitality, generosity, beauty, friendship, and hope he encountered that day.

Here Mark reflects on the emotional and psychological difficulties he was going through, the meaning and beauty of friendship, how every dish of a Thanksgiving dinner is an act of hope and community, and how hospitality and generosity can uplift every member of a community.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with depression or considering suicide, there is help available now. Simply call or text 988 to speak with someone right away, share what you're going through, and get the support you need.

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller's fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He's the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• A story about Thanksgiving Day many years ago, during Mark Labberton's master of divinity degree at Fuller Seminary
• "… not just overwhelmed, but really undone"
• " … the possibility of ending my life …"
• Every Thanksgiving dish as an act of hope and community
• Beauty of friendship
• A magnificent extravaganza
• Sharing not just food but hope
• "Things had radically changed. And that in fact they had, they had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life."
• "For me, Thanksgiving Day holds this deep and pensive awareness that Thanksgiving doesn't always come easy, that often it's a difficult act, that it involves things that are sometimes impossible for certain people to carry. And at the same time, it's possible for other people to carry them in our place, which is what these friends did for me that day."
• If you're feeling despair, seek professional help. Call or text 988 for an immediate response with a counsellor.
• Seek community.
• "Whether you're in darkness or in light, whether your heart feels full of gratitude or whether it may not, I just hope that you'll be aware that God is with you, that you are not alone, that there are people that want to support you and help you, and that there are people that know you who would welcome you into a circle of celebration and gratitude today."

Production Credits

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

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To exist as a black male in America is to be perceived as a threat, where criminality is attributed by default and violence is justified from racial bias. And as a young man, Pastor Mike McBride learned through personal experience that following Jesus does not protect you from the violence of the state. How could it, when Jesus himself was crucified by religious- and state-sponsored violence?

In this episode, Pastor Mike (The Way Christian Center, Berkeley, CA) joins Mark Labberton to discuss the confluence of Black Pentecostal holiness, police brutality, gun violence prevention, Christian nationalism, political polarization, racial justice, and the urgent spiritual crisis facing the American church.

From his childhood in the San Francisco neighborhood of Bayview–Hunter's Point, to the trauma of a police assault in 1999, to national leadership in Ferguson, to confronting the rise of authoritarian Christianity, Pastor Mike traces the formation of his vocation and the cost of staying faithful to Jesus in a nation shaped by anti-blackness and state-sponsored violence. His story of survival, theological awakening, moral urgency, and hopeful action is rooted in the gospel's call to respond with peaceful action against the violence of the world.

Episode Highlights

1. "What is it about this gospel that their family members, their parents trust you with the salvation of their souls, but not the safety of their bodies."
2. "It forced me to really have a strong come to Jesus meeting about how am I being prepared to do what I was already feeling a lifeline calling of ministry while I was starting the work of justice as a first victim and crime survivor."
3. "It is some kind of delusion for us to follow Jesus who got crucified and killed by the state and then be surprised when we get crucified by the state."
4. "I think there was just this sensibility that was a part of our upbringing that this is what it means to be black in America."
5. "People are being discipled into racism. People are being discipled into anti-blackness."
6. "I hope that feeding the hungry clothing the naked healing the sick is not something that in 2025 Christians identify as some leftist socialist liberal Christianity or we've lost it."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Live Free USA https://www.livefreeusa.org
• Roots, Alex Haley https://www.amazon.com/Roots-American-Family-Alex-Haley/dp/030682485X
• Boston TenPoint Coalition / Eugene Rivers https://btpc.org/
• Oscar Grant Case (NPR Overview) https://www.npr.org/2010/07/09/128401136/transit-officers-verdict-sparks-violent-protests

About Michael McBride

Pastor Michael McBride (often known as "Pastor Mike") is the National Director of Live Free USA, a nationwide movement of faith leaders and congregations dedicated to ending gun violence, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of Black and Brown communities. A respected activist, pastor, and organizer, he has been a prominent voice in national efforts to address police violence, promote community-based safety strategies, and mobilize churches for racial justice. Pastor Mike is also the founding pastor of The Way Christian Center in Berkeley, California. His leadership, advocacy, and public witness have been featured across major media outlets, integrating faith, justice, and community transformation.

Show Notes

• Holiness, formation, and black pentecostal roots
• Growing up as the second oldest of six in Hunters Point with deep Southern family roots
• "We grew up just very much enmeshed in a black church, holiness culture."
• Strict holiness prohibitions: no movies, no drinking, no secular music, no dancing.
• Holiness as both constraint and survival strategy during the crack era
• The world of Southern Baptist school culture colliding with black identity
• Racial Identity, Civil Rights Memory, and Family Formation
• Annual watching of Eyes on the Prize as civic and spiritual ritual.
• Leaving school to attend MLK Day celebrations: "I dare you to say something about it."
• Roots, Alex Haley, and early consciousness of black struggle and survival
• State violence, trauma, and theological turning point
• March 1999 police assault: physical and sexual violence during a "weapons search."
• "You can be following Jesus faithfully and still be subjected to violence at the hands of the state."
• The dissonance of worshiping a crucified Messiah while denying contemporary crucifixions
• Youth in his ministry revealing they didn't tell him because "we didn't think the church would do anything."
• Call to ministry, theological awakening, and training
• Exposure to church history, patristics, Thomas Merton, and MLK Jr.
• Grant Wacker inviting him to Duke; scholarship leading to seminary training
• Influence of black theologians and faculty shaping his justice imagination
• Meeting Eugene Rivers and the birth of a vocation in violence reduction and organizing
• Ferguson, activism, and the crisis of Christian witness
• Returning from Cape Town when Mike Brown was killed; sudden call to St. Louis
• Tear gas, militarized police, and "the ugly underside of the American law enforcement apparatus."
• "Our marriages didn't survive that era."
• Ferguson as exposure of the divide within the American church: respectability politics, sexuality panic, racial division
• "People are being discipled into racism … into militarism … into economic exploitation."
• Political polarization and Christian Nationalism
• 2016–present: Trumpism as a carrier of a broader reactionary Christian political project.
• Concern for Christian authoritarianism masquerading as religious fidelity.
• "You should definitely live out your convictions… but that don't mean you should kill everybody else on your hill."
• Deep grief over the church's inability to discern the danger
• George Floyd, red lines, and the urgency of now
• Summer 2020 as national smelling salt: "the banality and the violence of this state."
• The ceiling on empathy in American evangelicalism
• Targeted universalism and the need for differentiated strategies for shared goals
• Wealth inequality, homelessness, hunger, and the moral failure of Christianized politics
• "I hope that feeding the hungry clothing the naked healing the sick is not something… Christians identify as leftist."
• Participatory democracy as spiritual stewardship
• The Trinity as a model of unity-with-difference
• Holiness as public witness: protecting bodies and souls
• A charge to oppose Christian nationalism and join justice-infused faithfulness

Production Credits

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

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How would the black church's public witness guide Christians through today's polarization, culture-war dynamics, and ideological captivity? Drawing from Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around, Justin Giboney joins Mark Labberton to reflect on Christian credibility (and lack thereof), the black church's public witness, and the deep forces shaping American polarization.

Reflecting on the legacy of the twentieth-century civil rights generation, Giboney describes how the black church's fusion of orthodoxy and social action offers a model for healing division, resisting ideological captivity, and embodying what he calls "moral imagination."

Citing the formative influences of his grandmother Willie Faye, the example of Mahalia Jackson, and the ongoing challenge of navigating truth, justice, family, unity, and political engagement in a fractured moment, Giboney explores discipleship in an ideological age, the cost of a credible public witness, and the hope of a church capable of transcending partisan allegiance to seek the good of neighbor and the glory of God.

Episode Highlights

"One thing that I saw in the civil rights generation is they were able to have a bigger perspective, even in songs like 'Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.'"

"Love is self-sacrifice. It's being willing to at my own expense in some instances give up what I have to others."

"This was a deliberate decision that they made to say, we're not gonna choose one of these two sides that these groups are creating for us."

"Within the public square, credibility is currency."

"I want all Christians to take that as their own and build on that."

Helpful Links and Resources

Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around by Justin Giboney https://www.ivpress.com/don-t-let-nobody-turn-you-around

The AND Campaign https://andcampaign.org/

Mahalia Jackson biography (PBS) https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mahalia-jackson-about-the-singer/602/

Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley https://ivpress.com/reading-while-black

About Justin Giboney

Justin Giboney is an attorney and political strategist in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also the co-founder and president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization focused on asserting the compassion and conviction of the gospel in the public square. He has served as an attorney, political organizer, and civic leader, and he regularly speaks and writes on the intersection of Christianity and politics.

Show Notes

• Justin Giboney describes being an attorney, political strategist, and ordained minister, and cofounder of the AND Campaign
• He explains the AND Campaign's mission to raise civic literacy among Christians and resist purely partisan frameworks in favor of a biblical one
• "Social justice and moral order, love and truth, compassion and conviction" as a united Christian vision rather than opposing camps
• Lit City literacy initiative in Atlanta bringing churches across racial and partisan divides together for shared mission
• Ten-week programs for Christians preparing to run for office or engage politics constructively
• Naming and confronting polarization as a dialectical division that splits what should be held together
• Intro and summary to Giboney's book, Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around, framed as applying civil rights wisdom to the current culture-war moment
• Giboney's grandmother Willie Faye and Mahalia Jackson as representative figures of the civil rights generation's theological and moral framework
• Moral imagination defined as the capacity to see what ought to be, not merely what is: "the ability to see what will be based on God's promises"
• Songs like "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" as examples of moral imagination sustaining courage and humility
• The necessity of Scripture's authority and why the black church's orthodoxy and orthopraxy shape public witness
• Giboney's critique of individualism and his insistence that love is fundamentally "self-sacrifice" rather than self-expression
• Historical correction: The black church neither mirrors conservative ideology nor progressive ideology; it deliberately resisted both.
• "If we go to the right, we lose our bodies… if we go to the left, we could lose our soul." The strategic theological posture of black church leaders
• Christian credible witness requires coherence, humility, and honesty—rather than partisan performance
• Credibility in public "is currency," requiring self-examination, confession, and honesty about ideological idols
• Civil Rights Movement disciplines: self-purification, preparation through prayer and fellowship, resisting bitterness before engaging action
• Parenting, resilience, and teaching his sons not to give disproportionate emotional energy to racist comments, while still confronting wrongdoing
• The role of community formation, honor, and integrated humanity within black church worship life
• Hopes for the church: rejecting secular assumptions about who can reconcile, cultivating humility across divisions
• AND Campaign's twenty-year vision: Christians uniting across party lines around shared commitments like racial justice, family, sanctity of life, and poverty
• Final exhortation: The black church's public witness is a gift and challenge to the entire American church, not just one community.

Production Credits

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

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What is the book of Revelation really about? For ages, it has been the source of sensationalism, idolatry, confusion, and end-times predictions. But at its root, it is about the power and worship of the Lamb who was slain.

Biblical scholar Michael J. Gorman joins Mark Labberton to explore how Christians can read the book of Revelation with wisdom, faith, and hope rather than fear or sensationalism. Drawing from his book Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness—Following the Lamb into the New Creation, Gorman offers a reorientation to Revelation's central vision: worshipping the Lamb, resisting idolatrous power, and embodying faithful discipleship in the world. Together they discuss Revelation's misuses in popular culture, its critique of empire and nationalism, and its invitation to follow the crucified and risen Christ into the new creation.

Episode Highlights

1. "The book of Revelation is about lamb power—not hyper-religious or political power. It's about absorbing rather than inflicting evil."
2. "This book is for those who are confused by, afraid of, and or preoccupied with the book of Revelation."
3. "We shouldn't look for predictions but for parallels and analogies."
4. "Worship, discipleship, and new creation—that's where Revelation hangs its hat."
5. "At its root, Christian nationalism is a form of idolatry."
6. "The only way to come out of Babylon is to go back into Babylon with new values and new practices."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Reading Revelation Responsibly – https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Revelation-Responsibly-Following-Creation/dp/1606085603/
• Reverse Thunder by Eugene Peterson – https://www.amazon.com/Reversed-Thunder-Revelation-Praying-Imagination/dp/0060665033
• St. Mary's Seminary & University, Baltimore – https://www.stmarys.edu

About Michael J. Gorman

Michael J. Gorman is the Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary's Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland. A leading New Testament scholar, he is the author of numerous books on Pauline theology and Revelation, including Reading Revelation Responsibly, Cruciformity, and Participating in Christ. Gorman's teaching and writing emphasize Scripture as a call to cruciform discipleship, faithful worship, and the hope of new creation.

Show Notes

• Introducing Reading Revelation Responsibly
• "This book is for those who are confused by, afraid of, and or preoccupied with the Book of Revelation."
• "Apocalypse" means revelation, not destruction.
• Emerging from twenty-five years of study and teaching, aimed at rescuing Revelation from misinterpretation or neglect
• Growing up amid 1970s end-times obsession—Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth and fearful youth-group predictions of the world's end
• Fear of the book of Revelation until he studied it with Bruce Metzger at Princeton Seminary
• Why he wrote the book: for people who have been scared or confused by Revelation's misuse
• Interpretation and misreading the book of Revelation
• Early questions: Does Revelation predict particular events or people?
• No predictions, but symbolic speaking into every age
• "Our task is not to find predictions but to discern parallels and analogies."
• Warning against mapping Revelation onto modern crises or personalities
• "When those predictions fail, the book gets sidelined or scoffed at."
• Keep one foot in the first-century context and one in the present
• Worship and discipleship
• The heart of Revelation is worship.
• "This is a book about worship—and about the object of our worship."
• Explaining the subtitle: Uncivil Worship and Witness—Following the Lamb into the New Creation
• "Uncivil worship" contrasts with "civil religion"—worship that refuses to idolize political power
• Influence from Eugene Peterson's Reverse Thunder and his own teaching at St. Mary's, where Peterson once taught Revelation
• Worship leads to discipleship: "Those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes."
• True discipleship mirrors the Lamb's humility and non-violence.
• The lamb and the meaning of power
• Interpreting Revelation's vision of the slain and standing Lamb as the key to understanding divine power
• "The crucified Messiah is the risen Lord—but he remains the crucified one."
• The Lamb appears twenty-eight times, a symbol of universality and completeness.
• "Revelation is about lamb power—absorbing rather than inflicting evil."
• Discipleship is cruciform: following the Lamb's way of self-giving love.
• The unholy trinity and the danger of idolatry
• Chapters 12–13 depict the dragon and two beasts—the "unholy trinity" of satanic, imperial, and religious power.
• "Power gone amok": political, military, and spiritual domination that mimic divinity
• How true worship resists empire and exposes idolatry
• Warning against reading these beasts as predictions of the UN or the pope; rather, they reveal recurring alliances of religion and politics
• "At its root, Christian nationalism is idolatry."
• When political identity eclipses discipleship, "political power always wins, and faith loses."
• Faith, politics, and worship today
• Christian nationalism as a modern form of "civil religion," conflating patriotism with divine will
• "It's only Christian in name—it lacks Christian substance."
• Idolatry is not limited to one side: "It permeates the left, the right, and probably the centre."
• Labberton agrees: false worship is endemic wherever self-interest and fear shape our loves.
• Both stress that Revelation calls the church to worship the Lamb, not the state.
• "Revelation critiques all human systems of false worship."
• Revelation's goal: Not destruction, but new creation
• "Destruction is penultimate—cleansing the way for renewal."
• Believers already live as citizens of that new creation.
• "The only way to come out of Babylon is to go back into Babylon with new values and new practices."
• Communal, not merely individual, discipleship: "Revelation is written to churches, not just believers."
• Reinterpreting Revelation 3:20: Jesus knocking isn't an altar call to unbelievers but Christ seeking re-entry into his own church.
• "Jesus always wants to come back in."
• Living revelation today
• Spirituality of hope, not fear or withdrawal
• "Reading Revelation responsibly means engaging the world through worship and witness."
• How true worship is dangerous because it transforms our allegiance.
• "Following the Lamb into the new creation is the church's act of resistance."
• Conclusion: "Worthy is the Lamb."

Production Credits

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

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Adverse childhood experiences are notoriously hard to overcome, and they can affect a person well into adulthood. But the grace of close, stable, nurturing relationships can offer hope.

Terence Lester—author of From Dropout to Doctorate and founder of Love Beyond Walls—joins Mark Labberton for a conversation about resilience, faith, and the redemptive power of seeing and being seen. Lester recounts his life's journey from poverty, homelessness, and gang membership in southwest Atlanta to earning his PhD in public policy and social change. Together, they explore the impact of childhood trauma on personal development; education as a form of love, justice, and community service; and the healing potential of local community and proximity. Lester's story is a testament to divine grace, human courage, and the transformative impact of compassionate words and faithful presence.

Episode Highlights

1. "The higher your ACE score, the more your body has to overcome… Every 'yes' cultivates a stronger relationship with pain. Your counterparts with lower scores may never develop those same muscles of resilience."
2. "Education is a tool that increases your capacity to serve others."
3. "People don't become what you want them to become—they become what you encourage them to become."
4. "I am a product of people who invested in me and of the things I've had to resist."
5. "You can't love your neighbour if you're not concerned about the neighbourhood that produces your neighbour."
6. "Each sentence spoken can become a seed of hope—or a curse that crushes it."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Terence Lester's website – https://terencelester.com/
• From Dropout to Doctorate – https://www.ivpress.com/from-dropout-to-doctorate
• I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People – https://www.ivpress.com/i-see-you
• Love Beyond Walls (Terence Lester's non-profit) – https://www.lovebeyondwalls.org
• ACEs Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) – https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html
• The Color of Compromise by Jamar Tisby – https://jemartisby.com/the-color-of-compromise/

About Terence Lester

Terence Lester is a speaker, activist, author, and founder of Love Beyond Walls, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about poverty and homelessness while mobilizing communities to serve those in need. A graduate of Union Institute & University with a PhD in public policy and social change, he is the author of I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People, When We Stand: The Power of Seeking Justice Together, and All God's Children: How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity. His latest book is From Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice. Through storytelling, advocacy, and faith-rooted organizing, Lester seeks to dismantle systemic barriers and call communities toward justice, empathy, and proximity.

Show Notes

• Education and social change
• Terence Lester describes sitting beside his father's hospital bed reflecting on vulnerability, legacy, and resilience.
• His father's words—"I'm proud of you"—affirmed the journey from poverty to doctorate.
• Growing up amid trauma, gangs, and homelessness in southwest Atlanta.
• The generational impact of systemic injustice and public policy shaping social outcomes
• Education as a tool for empowerment and community transformation, not self-advancement
• "Education is a tool that increases your capacity to serve others."
• How the post–Civil Rights era shaped identity and pride in blackness while still marked by inequality
• Frames poverty itself as a form of trauma, calling for empathy and systemic response
• Trauma, resilience, and the ACEs framework
• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) test as a tool for understanding trauma
• Lester shares his 10/10 ACE score—complete exposure to childhood trauma
• "Every 'yes' cultivates a stronger relationship with pain… You must climb out of a pit to reach emotionally stable ground."
• How adversity produced resilience, not fragility
• Connecting personal trauma to compassion in ministry among the unhoused
• How proximity to suffering forms the capacity for empathy and love
• Faith, identity, and calling
• Connecting resilience and faith: "I believe my being was intricately woven together by God."
• Psalm 139 and seeing himself as "fearfully and wonderfully made"
• Jesus's life as a model of proximity and compassionate visibility—"Jesus saw."
• The church as a community of affirmation and blessing
• How words spoken over others—curses or encouragement—shape identity
• "People don't become what you want them to become—they become what you encourage them to become."
• Community, visibility, and flourishing
• "You can't love your neighbor if you're not concerned about the neighborhood that produces your neighbor."
• Warns of a "compassion deficit" and urges the rebuilding of community communication
• Seeds and environments: people cannot flourish where conditions are hostile
• The need for better care for impoverished environments that stunt potential
• Community as the soil of hope—"People find hope and possibility in community."
• Lester's mother's resilience and faith—earning her own doctorate while raising two children
• "I am a product of her never giving up."
• The generational power of education and faith as liberation
• Hope, words, and the power of blessing
• Transformative and timely sentences: encouraging words of seeds or yeast—small yet life-altering
• How to speak life, not curses, over others
• "Each sentence spoken can become a seed of hope—or a curse that crushes it."
• Mentorship, community affirmation, and divine proximity as instruments of healing
• Interrogating falsehoods: "God is not the source of cursing."
• A call to faith-rooted compassion, proximity, and collective responsibility.

Production Credits

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

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How can we address the problem of violence against the poor? International Justice Mission exists to answer this question by protecting and rescuing victims, bringing criminals to justice, restoring survivors to safety and strength, and helping local law enforcement build a safe future that lasts.

In this episode, International Justice Mission's founder and CEO, Gary Haugen, joins Mark Labberton to reflect on almost three decades of IJM's fight against violence and slavery worldwide—and the spiritual formation that sustains it. Haugen shares the origins of IJM in response to systemic violence against the poor, the evolution from individual rescues to transforming justice systems, and the remarkable rise of survivor leaders transforming their own nations. Together they reflect on courage, joy, and faith amid immense risk—bearing witness to God's power to bring justice and healing through ordinary people.

Episode Highlights

1. "Protecting the poor from violence is God's weight, but it's our work, and we're gonna seek to do it Jesus's way."
2. "In this era, I just think what the world is aching to see is the followers of Jesus who have a incandescent freedom from fear and a life-giving joy."
3. "Most of this violence will go away if government does just even a decent job of enforcing the law."
4. "Our first commitment is to help each other become more like Jesus—and from that strength, to do justice."
5. "The greatest miracle of IJM is not only the results—it's the freedom from fear and the joy with which they've done it."
6. "God saw them in their darkness, and they now testify to the goodness of an almighty God who loved them."

Helpful Links and Resources

International Justice Mission – https://www.ijm.org

Gary Haugen, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence –

https://www.amazon.com/Locust-Effect-Poverty-Requires-Violence/dp/0199937877

Gary Haugen, Just Courage: God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian – https://www.amazon.com/Just-Courage-Expedition-Restless-Christian-ebook/dp/B001PSEQR4

Riverside Church Sermon by Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam" — https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam

William Lloyd Garrison biography – https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Lloyd-Garrison

Rwanda Genocide Investigation (UN Historical Overview) – https://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda

About Gary Haugen

Gary Haugen is the founder and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), the world's largest international anti-slavery organization. Before founding IJM in 1997, he served as the director of the United Nations' investigation into the Rwandan genocide and previously worked at the US Department of Justice, focusing on police misconduct. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, Haugen has dedicated his life to ending violence against the poor and mobilizing the global church for justice.

Show Notes

• The founding of IJM in 1997 as a Christian response to violence against the poor
• Gary Haugen's formative experience directing the UN's genocide investigation in Rwanda
• Realization that hunger and disease were being addressed—but violence was not
• Early cases in the Philippines, South Asia, and Peru exposing police-run brothels and child slavery
• IJM 1.0: rescuing individuals from slavery and abuse, case by case
• IJM 2.0: strengthening local justice systems to prevent violence before it happens
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Jericho Road" as a model for systemic transformation
• Formation of small multidisciplinary teams—lawyers, investigators, social workers
• IJM's evolution from rescue operations to building sustainable justice infrastructure
• Twenty-year celebration: Liberate conference and the global IJM staff retreat
• IJM's culture of spiritual formation: daily solitude, prayer, and community rhythms
• A Christian order of justice rooted in prayer, silence, and shared joy
• Spiritual formation as the foundation for sustainable justice work
• Experiments in Cambodia, the Philippines, and South Asia reducing violence by up to 85 percent
• Replication of IJM's model across 46 regions to protect 500 million vulnerable people
• Goal by 2030: one million freed from slavery, 300 million living under protection
• Empowering survivor leaders: from victims to advocates and elected officials
• Stories of transformation like Pama in South Asia leading the Release Bonded Laborers Association
• The Kenyan case of Willie Kimani—murdered IJM lawyer whose legacy reformed police accountability
• IJM's resilience: pursuing justice for six years until conviction of perpetrators
• Theological grounding: justice as God's work, pursued in Jesus's way
• Haugen on resilience: "It's a marathon, not a sprint"
• Joy and freedom from fear as hallmarks of IJM's culture
• How IJM balances global crisis fatigue with focused mission clarity
• Future challenges: technology-driven oppression—live-stream child abuse and forced scamming
• Global body of Christ as the essential network for courage and joy
• Sustainability and local leadership as the future of global justice movements
• Spiritual communities as the seedbed for future justice leaders

Production Credits

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

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What is the theological meaning of American history? In this episode, American church historian Grant Wacker joins Mark Labberton to explore the theological dimensions of American history, the legacy of Billy Graham, and the evolving face of evangelicalism. Wacker reflects on his Pentecostal upbringing, his formation as a historian, and his conviction that faith and scholarship must speak honestly to one another. Together they trace how religion has both shaped and distorted American life—from the enduring wound of slavery to the reformist spirit woven through its history. Wacker, now in his eighties, offers his perspective on evangelicalism's past, present, and global future.

Episode Highlights

1. "Religion has always been at the forefront of rationalizing and making enslavement seem perfectly normal—perfectly natural. It's just the order of things."
2. "Many of the very finest religious historians are not believers—and they do superb work in understanding where religion lies."
3. "I don't think there is Christian nationalism out there. What there is is that there is nationalism that draws on Christian categories to legitimate itself."
4. "I don't think what we're looking at is a religious movement. We're looking at a political movement that uses religious categories."
5. "We should write about others the way we wish they would write about us."
6. "You Americans are always asking the Holy Spirit to bring revival. What you ought to be doing is asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to the revival that is already flourishing."

Helpful Links and Resources

• America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation by Grant Wacker — https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Pastor-Graham-Shaping-Nation/dp/0674052188
• Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture by Grant Wacker — https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Below-Pentecostals-American-Culture/dp/0674011287
• One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham by Grant Wacker — https://www.amazon.com/One-Soul-Time-Religious-Biography/dp/0802885500/
• Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis — https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Crisis-Steven-Janice-Lectures/dp/1469621819
• Religion in American Life: A Short History — ****https://www.amazon.com/Religion-American-Life-Short-History/dp/0199832692/

About Grant Wacker

Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. A leading scholar of American religious history, he is the author of numerous books including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture and America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. His research has helped shape modern understanding of American evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and the intersection of faith and culture.

Show Notes

• Wacker's path to the study of history through mentorship at Harvard Divinity School and a fascination with theology's relationship to historical reality
• He distinguishes between observing "religion operating in history" and perceiving "the divine hand," emphasizing the tension between secular and theological approaches to the past.
• Four major contexts that define the American story: geography, capitalism, immigration, and race
• Eleven domains where the power of religion—and possibly divine influence—can be seen, from colonization and enslavement to revivalism and reform.
• "We are a people of plenty—prosperous partly because of the accident of geography."
• Reformed and Wesleyan theology as twin engines shaping the nation's moral and social imagination.
• Humility as "at the heart of Reformed theology: we don't run our lives; something else is running the show."
• Wesleyan theology, by contrast, stresses human enablement and responsibility: "If we are able to do it, we are responsible for doing it."
• Catholic contributions to the American story, especially the richness of liturgy and the continuity of two thousand years of history
• Reflections on racial sin as a "permanent wound," calling religion both complicit in and necessary for confronting slavery's legacy
• Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, highlighting how both sides invoked Scripture without self-awareness or self-critique
• "Religion has always been implicated in making enslavement seem natural—as natural as breathing."
• Describes evangelicalism's deep roots in pietism and revivalism, its mainstream dominance by the late nineteenth century, and its later fragmentation.
• "Evangelicalism became the main line—it was the standard way Protestantism operated."
• Outlines the modern trifurcation: fundamentalists, liberals, and a centrist evangelical river that remains influential.
• "Christian nationalism" is largely a political, not religious, phenomenon: nationalism using Christian categories to legitimize itself.
• "Religion is rarely an independent variable in determining how people vote."
• Richard Bushman (paraphrase): Have we written about [the subjects of academic history] as fairly and honestly as we can, or have we distorted their story in order to make ourselves look good?
• A call for fairness in historical judgment: "Write about them the way you wish they would write about you."
• Prediction: Evangelicalism's future lies "south of the equator"—in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Quotes a Jesuit: "Americans keep asking for revival; they should ask to see the revival that's already happening."
• On Christian nationalism: "The question is not whether religion and politics collude—they always have—but whether we can be self-conscious and humble about it."
• Identifies power, prosperity, and digital speed as the toxic combination shaping contemporary polarization.
• "Speed is a narcotic for humans—we want to be connected now."
• Reflects on Billy Graham's unifying role and his progressive evolution on race and nuclear disarmament: "He became increasingly moderate, increasingly inclusive."
• Notes Graham's three conversions—to Christ, to racial justice, and to peace.
• "The United States and the Soviet Union are like two little boys in a bathtub filled with gasoline, playing with matches."
• On teaching and legacy: "My students are earnest—they want to do well for the world they live in."
• "Whatever good has come—it's a gift, not earned."
• Humility, humor, and grace as rare marks of faith and scholarship integrated

Production Credits

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

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"Migration is grace," says UCLA professor Robert Chao Romero, author of Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity. In this episode, he joins Mark Labberton to discuss the immigration crisis through stories from Southern California, theology of migration, and the challenge of Christian nationalism for the American response to the immigration crisis we face.

Romero narrates heartbreaking accounts of ICE raids, racial profiling, and dehumanization, while also offering hope rooted in scripture and the early church. He points out the "Xenodochias" of the ancient and medieval church that cared for migrants. And he shows how biblical narratives—from Abraham to Jesus—reveal God's mercy in migration. Romero calls Christians to see the image of God in migrants, resist the "Latino threat narrative," and reclaim the church's historic role in welcoming the stranger.

Episode Highlights

1. "Migration is grace. … You wouldn't have a Bible without migration."
2. "Jesus lived and died as an outsider in solidarity with all outsiders, and he rose to new life among outsiders."
3. "The gospel is an outward pushing invitation… it is the pushing out actually into the far and remote places of suffering in need."
4. "This level of targeting of the Latino community has not happened since 1954 and Operation Wetback."
5. "We think that crossing the US border is like crossing the Jordan into the promised land, and we're baptized into the Yankee Doodle song."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Brown Church by Robert Chao Romero
• UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies
• Fuller Seminary's Centro Latino
• CLUE: Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice
• World Relief

About Robert Chao Romero

Robert Chao Romero is an associate professor in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and in the Asian American Studies Department. With a background in law and history, his research and teaching explore the intersections of race, immigration, faith, and justice. He is the author of Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity (IVP Academic), which chronicles the long history of Latino Christian social justice movements. Romero is also an ordained pastor, active in local church ministry and theological reflection on immigration, Christian nationalism, and the global church.

Show Notes

Immigration Crisis and ICE Raids

• Student testimonies of fear and trauma at UCLA during immigration crackdowns
• Stories of ICE targeting bus stops, car washes, and Home Depots in Southern California
• Latino citizens, veterans, and even high school students detained despite legal status
• A man fleeing ICE was killed in traffic, sparking vigils and protests

Historical Parallels and Christian Nationalism

• Comparison to Operation Wetback of 1954, when over one million were deported
• Escalating racial profiling, reinforced by Supreme Court decisions
• "Latino Threat Narrative" portrays Latinos as criminals and unwilling to assimilate
• Christian nationalism merges citizenship and faith, echoing "manifest destiny"

Theology of Migration and Outsiders

• Migration as grace: God intervenes with compassion in nearly every biblical migration story
• "We live alongside the world. We don't belong to the world."
• " Jesus lived and died as an outsider in solidarity with all outsiders, and he rose to new life among outsiders." (Jorge Lara-Braud)
• Jesus as an asylum seeker in Egypt; Ruth and Joseph as biblical migrants
• Early church created "xenodochias"—ancient and medieval social service centers for immigrants and the poor
• Outsider theology: Christians as strangers and aliens, called to care for outsiders
• "Jesus lived and died as an outsider in solidarity with all outsiders."

Policy Challenges and Misconceptions

• Millions of mixed-status households trapped by the "10-year bar" in immigration law
• Asylum seekers legally present cases at the border under U.S. law
• Refugees undergo extensive vetting, often over decades
• Common myths about immigrants as "illegal" are contradicted by law and history

Faith, Empathy, and the Church

• Empathy as central to Christian response, counter to narratives of fear and scarcity
• Latino pastors passing on both the gospel and nationalism from missionary influence
• The church historically provided refugee care before the UN Refugee Agency existed
• Worship with immigrant congregations as a source of hope and resilience
• Orthodox theology: worship joins heaven and earth, every tribe and nation before the Lamb

Production Credits

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

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Millions of people today face dire medical and mental health challenges. What role should the church play in foreign humanitarian aid to address starvation and deadly illness? In this episode, Eric Ha, CEO of Medical Teams International, joins Mark Labberton for a sobering, hopeful conversation on global humanitarian crises and the role of the church in responding to both the physical and spiritual needs of those who are suffering. Drawing from his years at International Justice Mission and now at Medical Teams International, Ha shares vivid accounts from refugee camps in East Africa and migrant communities in Colombia. He reflects on the collapse of US foreign aid, the limits of humanitarian response, and the urgent need for churches to reclaim their historic role in caring for the vulnerable. Ha wrestles candidly with the calling of Christian communities to embody God's expansive love even amid staggering need.

Episode Highlights

1. "These humans that bear the image of the divine and the eternal, and the holy and the sacred."
2. "Last year, Medical Teams staff helped deliver fifty thousand babies—that's a delivery every ten minutes, somewhere around the world in these extraordinarily harsh settings."
3. "Finding the thread and kernel of hope is actually a lot more challenging."
4. "For thousands of years prior to the UN, the infrastructure and ecosystem for the care of refugees was the church. It was God's people."
5. "The gospel is an outward pushing invitation.… It is the pushing out actually into the far and remote places of suffering in need, and to see the presence of God."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Medical Teams International
• International Justice Mission
• UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency
• PEPFAR—The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
• Clinton Global Initiative

About Eric Ha

Eric Ha is the chief executive officer of Medical Teams International, a Christian humanitarian relief organization providing life-saving medical care for people in crisis worldwide. Before joining Medical Teams, he served more than a decade in senior leadership roles at International Justice Mission, advancing global efforts to combat human trafficking and slavery. A lawyer by training, Ha brings a deep commitment to justice, compassion, and the mobilization of the church in service of the vulnerable.

Show Notes

Global Humanitarian Crises and Refugee Care

• Eric Ha shares his journey from law and IJM to leading Medical Teams International
• Medical Teams founded in response to Cambodia's killing fields, continuing nearly 50 years of healthcare missions
• Primary healthcare for refugees: maternal care, vaccinations, mosquito nets, antimalarials, antidiarrheals, and mental health
• Serving 9 million people in East Africa, including Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Sudan
• Refugee camps lack electricity, clean water, and adequate shelter—average displacement nearly 20 years
• Medical Teams delivers maternal care that dramatically reduces mortality, helping deliver 50,000 babies last year

Healthcare and Human Dignity

• The crisis is not statistics—it's humans bearing God's image, glimpses of laughter, joy, and resilience
• Colombia: working with Venezuelan migrants amid drastic cuts in U.S. aid (down to 10% of prior levels)
• Withdrawal of foreign aid leaves communities devastated and forces NGOs to scale back
• Transition from justice work at IJM to medical humanitarian work brings both immediacy of impact and insufficiency of resources

Hope and Despair in Humanitarian Work

• Theories of change at IJM allowed for hope in systemic reform; displacement crises feel harder to solve
• Challenge of holding onto hope in the face of preventable death and suffering
• Churches historically provided refugee care before the UN; today, withdrawal of aid exposes the need for church re-engagement
• Need to reimagine church-government partnerships in humanitarian response

Empathy, Collaboration, and Mental Health

• Empathy as essential orientation in humanitarian work, easily lost without intentionality
• Competitiveness and survivalism among NGOs risks eclipsing empathy
• Mental health needs are massive: trauma among children in refugee camps threatens future stability
• Clinton Global Initiative highlights Medical Teams' commitment to expand mental health care for children in Sudan
• Training local health workers and communities to recognize trauma and create safe spaces for children

Invitation to the Church and Listeners

• The gospel calls us outward, not inward—expanding our experience of God's vastness through engagement with suffering
• Churches must discern how to integrate humanitarian concerns without distraction, embracing their historic role in refugee care
• Prayer requests: for hope, for patience to wait on the Lord, and for wisdom in making hard decisions
• "We are invited into a different orientation—the empathy piece is so critical because it is the thing that allows us to engage."

Production Credits

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

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The church is so much more than a building—but when it comes to managing the physical property of church real estate, we often overlook the great good that can emerge from the land and structures. In this episode, social entrepreneur, strategic executive, and author Mark Elsdon joins Mark Labberton on Conversing to explore how churches and faith communities can reimagine their assets—land, buildings, and money—as instruments for mission, community transformation, and spiritual flourishing. From his decades of work at Pres House in Madison, Wisconsin, to his role as consultant, author, and co-leader of RootedGood, Elsdon shares stories of innovation, courage, and the hard but hopeful work of repurposing property and resources for God's mission in the world.

Episode Highlights

1. "It isn't about property, nor is it about money. It's about people's lives and it's about God's work in people's lives."
2. "We often have the faith of our forebears in the church. But the question is, do we have the courage of them?"
3. "I don't think God's going away. I don't think God's declining. But the way people are engaging their faith is really changed and is changing."
4. "Sometimes I talk about this as like the Blockbuster Video moment… People still want experiences of the divine. They just don't want to access it primarily on a Sunday morning."
5. "Constraints can produce creativity and, in the life of faith, can also produce a willingness to trust."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Mark Elsdon's Website
• We Aren't Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry, by Mark Elsdon
• Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition, by Mark Elsdon
• RootedGood - resources for congregations, judicatories, and other church leaders related to social enterprise and church property
• Good Futures Accelerator course
• How-To Guides
• Threshold Sacred Development - A mission-aligned property development company focused on supporting churches doing community-oriented development

About Mark Elsdon

Mark Elsdon lives and works at the intersection of money and meaning as an entrepreneur, non-profit executive, author, and speaker. He is the author of We Aren't Broke: Uncovering Hidden Resources for Mission and Ministry (2021) and editor of Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition (2024). In addition to his role as a director with RootedGood, Mark is also executive director at Pres House, where he led the transformation of a dormant non-profit into a growing, vibrant, multi-million-dollar organization.

Mark has a BA in psychology from the University of California–Berkeley, a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin School of Business. He is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA, and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Mark is an avid cyclist and considers it a good year when he rides more miles on his bike than he drives in his car.

Show Notes

• Mark Elsdon reflects on thirty years of ministry, beginning with campus work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• Launch of a $17 million student housing project that became a transformative ministry for thousands of students.
• Elsdon's discovery: "It isn't about property, nor is it about money. It's about people's lives and it's about God's work in people's lives."
• Creation of a sober housing program at Pres House that has saved the state of Wisconsin more than a million dollars in addiction-related costs.
• Innovative blend of mission, ministry, and real estate development to foster student flourishing.
• The unique impact of housing students in recovery alongside the wider student population.
• Elsdon's MBA studies at UW–Madison and his calling at the intersection of money and mission.
• The "Blockbuster Video moment" for American Christianity: people still seek meaning, community, and transcendence, but not in traditional formats.
• Challenges churches face with aging buildings, declining attendance, and financial strain.
• How repurposing property reveals new opportunities for mission and ministry.
• RootedGood's "Good Futures" Accelerator course: helping churches rethink land, buildings, and resources for social enterprise and revenue generation.
• Example of two congregations in Madison merging to create an environmentally sustainable multifamily housing project and community center.
• Redefining church property as community space: "flipping the script" so the building belongs to the neighborhood, with the church as anchor tenant.
• Courage, risk-taking, and letting go of past models are essential for churches to reimagine their future.
• The critical role of pastoral and lay leadership in sparking change and vision.
• Storytelling as central to church renewal: "We often have the faith of our forebears in the church. But the question is, do we have the courage of them?"
• Learning from the pandemic: every church has the capacity for innovation and adaptation.
• Honouring grief and loss while embracing resurrection hope in church property transitions.
• Example from San Antonio: members resisted redevelopment until their need for funerals in the sanctuary was acknowledged—turning "either/or" into "both/and."
• Affordable housing crisis intersects directly with church land opportunities.
• Turner Center study: California churches and colleges hold land equal to five Oaklands suitable for affordable housing development.
• Elsdon warns against cookie-cutter "models" and emphasizes local context, story, and creativity.
• Forecast: up to 100,000 church properties in the US may be sold or repurposed in the next decade.
• Elsdon's hope: more repurposing than selling, with land and buildings becoming assets for life-giving mission.
• The value of constraints: "Constraints can produce creativity and, in the life of faith, can also produce a willingness to trust."

Production Credits

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

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Unity is acting together even when we don't think alike. And one of the primary aims of the American Constitution is to support a democracy of those unified in diversity. Yuval Levin joins Mark Labberton to explore the precarious state of American constitutional life and the imbalance of power between the branches of the U.S. government. Drawing from his book America's Covenant, Levin argues that the Founders designed the Constitution above all to preserve unity in a divided society. Yet today, he warns, the imbalance of power—particularly the weakness of Congress and the rise of presidential authority—threatens democratic legitimacy. In this conversation, Levin reflects on originalism, the courts, Donald Trump's expanding influence, and the dangers of both passivity and autocracy. With clarity and urgency, he calls for renewed civic engagement and for Congress to reclaim its central role.

Episode Highlights

1. "Unity doesn't mean thinking alike. Unity means acting together. And the question for a modern political society is how do we act together when we don't think alike?"
2. "The biggest problem we have is that Congress is under-active, radically under-active and has turned itself into a spectator."
3. "The president is in charge of the executive branch, but the executive branch is not in charge of the American government."
4. "I am very concerned about this kind of Caesar-ism. I think it is very dangerous."
5. "What we're seeing is constitutional creep, where the president is pushing and nobody's pushing back, and only Congress can do it."
6. "I worry a lot about Donald Trump. But the reason I worry is because Congress isn't doing its job."
7. "The politics of an autocratic state is a politics of spectators, and we just cannot become spectators."
8. "All of us will find ourselves in the minority sooner or later."

Helpful Links and Resources

• America's Covenant: The Constitution and the Path to National Unity, by Yuval Levin
• American Enterprise Institute (Find Yuval Levin's current research and publications)
• New York Times Opinion – Yuval Levin's columns at the New York Times

About Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. He is the founder and editor of National Affairs, senior editor of The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024), which examines the U.S. Constitution through the lens of national unity in a divided society.

Show Notes

• Constitutional unity and division
• Yuval Levin summarizes America's Covenant as a reintroduction to the Constitution framed around the challenge of unity in diversity.
• "Unity doesn't mean thinking alike. Unity means acting together."
• The Constitution prioritizes bargaining, negotiation, and legitimacy over efficiency.
• Congress was designed as the "first branch" of government to embody pluralism and force compromise.
• The decline of Congress and rise of the presidency
• Levin argues Congress is radically under-active, ceding ground to presidents and courts.
• "The biggest problem we have is that Congress is under-active, radically under-active and has turned itself into a spectator."
• Excessive focus on the presidency erodes democratic legitimacy.
• Current frustrations stem from misunderstanding the system's design: it resists narrow majorities and forces broad coalitions.
• Courts, originalism, and the unitary executive
• Levin affirms he is an originalist: "a philosophy of judicial interpretation … a mode of self-restraint for judges."
• Supreme Court decisions in recent years repeatedly signal: "Congress, do your job."
• He outlines the unitary executive theory: the president controls the executive branch, but not the government as a whole.
• "The president is in charge of the executive branch, but the executive branch is not in charge of the American government."
• Trump's expanding power
• Levin warns of the growing push to centralize authority in the presidency.
• "I am very concerned about this kind of Caesar-ism. I think it is very dangerous."
• Trump's second term differs because restraints have vanished; his circle now encourages unrestrained executive action.
• Disruption of long-held norms has weakened trust in American institutions globally and domestically.
• Constitutional crisis vs. constitutional creep
• Levin distinguishes between "creep," "conflict," and "crisis."
• He argues the U.S. is experiencing constitutional creep: unchecked executive power without Congress pushing back.
• True crisis would involve direct defiance of the courts—something still possible but not yet realized.
• The role of citizens and civic responsibility
• Levin stresses the danger of passivity: "The politics of an autocratic state is a politics of spectators, and we just cannot become spectators."
• Citizens should keep writing to Congress, vote with clear expectations, and engage in local governance.
• State legislatures, though less visible, often function better than Congress today.
• Clear thinking itself, Levin suggests, is a moral act for a healthy republic.

Production Credits

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

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There's no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible. Every reading is inflected by first-person experience, cultural context, history, and more. In this episode, biblical scholars Janette Ok and Jordan J. Ryan join Mark Labberton to reflect on The New Testament in Color, a groundbreaking new biblical commentary that brings together diverse voices across racial, cultural, and social locations. They share how their own ethnic and cultural backgrounds as Asian American and Filipino Canadian readers shaped their understanding of Scripture, the importance of social location, using the creeds as guardrails for hermeneutics, and how contextual interpretation deepens biblical authority rather than diminishing it.

Episode Highlights

• "There is no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible." —Mark Labberton
• "It really dawned on me the importance of being aware of who I am, my family background, my history in the United States, all these things." —Janette Ok
• "Filipinos I think are always sort of on the margins… trying to understand how Asian we really are or aren't." —Jordan J. Ryan
• "Objectivity is nothing more than the fruit of authentic subjectivity." —Jordan J. Ryan quoting Bernard Lonergan
• "Colorblindness is actually something that's not true… particularity is fundamental to the gospel." —Janette Ok
• "It was one of the most freeing experiences that I've had because it finally gave me permission to do the thing that I'd always wanted to do." —Jordan J. Ryan

Helpful Links and Resources

• The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Commentary on the New Testament (IVP Academic)

About Janette Ok

Janette Ok is associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. A leading scholar in Asian American biblical interpretation, she is a co-editor of The New Testament in Color and author of Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter.

About Jordan Ryan

Jordan Ryan is associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, and author of The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus and From the Passion to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. His research explores Acts, archaeology, and Filipino American biblical interpretation.

Show Notes

• The New Testament in color and contextual biblical Interpretation
• "There is no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible."
• Janette's growing up in a Korean immigrant church in Detroit, carrying "the weight of assimilation."
• Asian American literature, especially Bone by Fae Myenne Ng
• Opening our eyes to the power of articulating immigrant experience
• Jordan Ryan's mixed-race Canadian upbringing—Filipino mother, white father—and early encounters with Scripture through unhoused communities.
• "Filipinos are always sort of on the margins of Asian America." —Jordan Ryan
• Contextual reading of the bible
• All readings are contextual, contrasting liberation theology, unhoused readers, and Western academic traditions
• Challenges and dangers of contextualization
• "The first danger is to think that we can remove ourselves from the work of textual interpretation."
• Social location is not an external lens but intrinsic to the gospel.
• "Objectivity is nothing more than the fruit of authentic subjectivity."
• Archaeology that informs contextual questions
• "Colorblind" readings ignore particularity and miss the incarnational nature of Scripture.
• Biblical authority and the living word
• Biblical authority as central: "It's why I teach at Wheaton College and not somewhere else."
• "When we say the Bible is the living Word of God… it means it has to speak to us today."
• Preachers already contextualize every Sunday; The New Testament in Color makes this explicit and communal
• New Testament in Color was initiated by Esau McCaulley in 2018
• Preceded by works like True to Our Native Land and Women's Bible Commentary
• Distinctive by gathering scholars from African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and European American backgrounds in one volume
• Goal: Embody diversity without sacrificing particularity or biblical trust.
• Commentary on Acts, including Filipino American theology and diaspora identity
• "It was one of the most freeing experiences that I've had."
• He traced themes of foreignness, colonialism, and God's care for the imprisoned in Acts
• 1 Peter and Asian American biblical interpretation, wrestling with exile, belonging, and "perpetual foreigner" stereotypes
• Home as central theological concern—"not everyone feels at home in the same way." —Janette Ok
• Editing, diversity, and reader reception
• Balancing freedom with theological boundaries rooted in the creeds
• Diversity created unevenness, but also richness and authenticity.
• "The fingerprints that make it so living." —Janette Ok
• Professors report the book resonates with students of color whose lived experiences often feel absent in traditional scholarship
• "Sometimes people don't know where to begin… I encourage my students to always consult scholars who read and look differently from themselves."

Production Credits

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

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Creativity doesn't come easy. It is often an act of resistance against chaos and other de-personalizing forces. In this episode, author Mitali Perkins joins Mark Labberton to discuss her latest book Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives. Known for her acclaimed novels for young readers—including You Bring the Distant Near and Rickshaw Girl—Perkins reflects on the creative life as both a gift and a struggle, marked by tenderness and tenacity. With candour about rejection, moments of mortification, and the relentless call to keep making, Perkins offers encouragement for artists who want their work to be both beautiful and just.

Episode Highlights

1. "I was very, very close myself to giving up on the creative life."
2. "Any time we're bringing order from chaos, there's going to be pushback—and it's diabolical pushback."
3. "Stories widened my heart, they widened my mind, they gave me a sense of calling that I was not just here for myself."
4. "We can't put on our faith like lace and bows; it has to be in the bones of the story."
5. "When I feel that embarrassment, that mortification, if I can just stay and do something physical to honour my work, goodness comes pouring back."
6. "To not write it, after hearing your passion to combat this foe of our age, would be exactly what the diabolical enemy wants us to do."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives by Mitali Perkins
• You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins (National Book Award finalist)
• Rickshaw Girl (adapted into a film)
• Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children's Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls by Mitali Perkins
• The Dangerous Act of Worship by Mark Labberton
• Kiva Microloans

About Mitali Perkins

Mitali Perkins writes novels for young readers that cross borders and break down walls. Her books include You Bring the Distant Near, a National Book Award nominee; Rickshaw Girl, now a feature film; and Tiger Boy, winner of the South Asia Book Award. Born in Kolkata, India, Perkins immigrated to the United States as a child and has published with major houses including Penguin Random House, Charlesbridge, Candlewick, and Little, Brown. Her newest book for adults, Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives, encourages artists to persist with both tenderness and tenacity. She speaks widely at schools, libraries, and conferences. More at mitaliperkins.com.

Show Notes

• Perkins describes the heart of Just Making as born from nearly giving up on the creative life during the pandemic.
• Creativity, tenderness, and tenacity
• "I was very, very close myself to giving up on the creative life."
• Just Making: a survival guide for writers and artists facing rejection, discouragement, and the sense that their work doesn't matter
• The struggles of the creative life
• Perkins speaks candidly about rejection, failed manuscripts, and the long twelve-year gap between her first and second published books.
• "You end up looking at the exterior packaging—my career looks amazing on social media—but inside it's pride, vainglory, rejections, bad reviews."
• Practices such as finding "third spaces" and championing one's own work sustain her through rejection.
• Childhood, immigration, and storytelling
• Born in Kolkata, India, Perkins immigrated to New York at age seven.
• She calls herself a "feral reader," devouring fourteen hundred novels in four years as a child
• "Stories widened my heart, they widened my mind, they gave me a sense of calling that I was not just here for myself."
• Obstacles and motivation during her upbringing as the daughter of refugees
• Encountering faith through story
• Growing up in a Hindu home and finding coming to Christ in college
• Through reading the Gospels and C.S. Lewis, she encountered Jesus as "the true story behind all the stories."
• Conversion and baptism while a student at Stanford
• Writing, justice, and flourishing
• "We can't put on our faith like lace and bows; it has to be in the bones of the story."
• Fiction that tackles themes of poverty, gender, courage, and flourishing
• Justice is defined not only as righting wrongs but fostering shalom—wholeness and human flourishing.
• Publishing industry and perseverance
• Perkins recounts the twelve-year struggle to publish her second book, revising manuscripts dozens of times.
• "It was twelve years between my first book and my second book."
• Tenacity grounded in prayer and a sense of God's invitation: "I've got the heavy yoke; will you walk with me?"
• Moments of humiliation
• Perkins shares a public humiliation at a book signing where no one lined up for her book. Choosing not to leave, she pulled out her manuscript and began editing
• "When I feel that embarrassment, that mortification, if I can just stay and do something physical to honor my work, goodness comes pouring back."
• How Rickshaw Girl was published and adapted into a film
• Coaching for creatives
• Perkins counsels Mark Labberton on his unfinished book about fear
• "To not write it, after hearing your passion to combat this foe of our age, would be exactly what the diabolical enemy wants us to do."
• How to embrace imperfection and see writing as part of a larger communal conversation
• Community and the impact of children's literature
• Direct engagement with children in classrooms and libraries
• How young readers form friendships with her characters and are inspired toward justice
• How books like Rickshaw Girl and her forthcoming The Golden Necklace connect global justice issues with young readers' imaginations

Production Credits

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

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What are the implications of Jesus's radical ethics of love and shalom? How far are Christ followers meant to go with the compassion and witness of the gospel?

Philosopher Tom Crisp (Biola University) reflects on how a powerful religious experience transformed his academic career and personal faith. Once focused on metaphysics and abstract philosophy, Crisp was confronted in 2009 by the radical compassion of Jesus in the Gospels. That moment led him toward the Catholic Worker movement, the teachings of Dorothy Day, and ultimately, deep involvement in labour and immigrant justice through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE).

He describes participating in civil disobedience, forming solidarity with marginalized communities, and serving as a nonviolent presence in immigration courts where migrants face arrest and deportation. Through these stories, Crisp testifies to the cost and invitation of discipleship: following Jesus into the margins with courage, humility, and love.

Episode Highlights

• "What struck me was Jesus's deep compassion, mercy, fiery concern for people in the margins. And it came to me as deeply convicting."
• "I immersed myself in the writings of Dorothy Day… she's had an enormous influence on how I've come to think about what it would look like to be a Jesus follower in our context."
• "I was having this very powerful sense of God's presence, feeling broken by it, feeling like I'd hit a turning point in my life."
• "If Jesus really is the Jesus of the margins that I'm seeing in the Gospels, then I need to figure out how to get to the margins."
• "This isn't a matter of guilt, it's invitation… we're always being invited further in."
• "When you're with someone who's been separated from their children, when you're with someone who's shaking with fear… it's just a completely different thing."
• "So a horrific violation of human rights is happening around us in our immigration courts, and it's happening here in Orange County."
• "We are trying to be a presence of love for everybody there."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE)
• Shalom Ethics: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself, by Thomas M. Crisp
• The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, by Shane Claiborne

About Tom Crisp

Tom Crisp is professor of philosophy at Biola University, specializing in ethics and justice. After completing his PhD at Notre Dame, Crisp shifted his academic work toward Christian ethics following a transformative religious experience in 2009. He is a community member of the Orange County Catholic Worker and active in Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), advocating for immigrant and labour rights through nonviolent action and accompaniment.

Show Notes

• Religious Experience and Transformation
• Tom Crisp recounts his 2009 religious awakening while reading the Gospels.
• "Fire—my soul is blowing apart, I need to quit my job."
• Realization of Jesus's "deep compassion, mercy, fiery concern for people in the margins."
• Movement from abstract philosophy to Neighbour Love Command.
• Catholic Worker movement and Dorothy Day
• Influence of Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution and new monastic movement.
• Encounter with Dorothy Day's writings as a model of radical discipleship.
• Involvement with the Orange County Catholic Worker community.
• Attraction to Catholicism
• Inspired by Notre Dame liturgy and Benedictine practices.
• Influenced by saints like St. Francis, Maximilian Kolbe, Oscar Romero.
• "As I spend time in Catholic spaces, I feel the presence of this cloud of witnesses."
• CLUE and Nonviolent Action
• History of CLUE: founded by Rev. James Lawson, trained in Gandhian nonviolence, connected to Martin Luther King Jr.
• Focus on labour justice and immigrant rights.
• Training in nonviolent presence, civil disobedience, and accompaniment.
• Example: shutting down LAX in a five-hundred-person protest for hotel workers.
• Court Observation and Migrant Accompaniment
• CLUE partnership with Orange County Rapid Response Network.
• ICE arrests of migrants who believed they had lawful parole status.
• "A horrific violation of human rights is happening around us in our immigration courts."
• Strategy of nonviolent presence to "dramatize bureaucratic and physical violence."
• Clergy presence offers spiritual authority and comfort.
• Judges and ICE agents sometimes allow moments of prayer or comfort before deportation.
• "We want to accompany migrants into this dark, dark space and be there as a source of comfort to them."
• Formation and Solidarity
• "When you're with someone who's been separated from their children, when you're with someone who is shaking with fear … it's just a completely different thing."
• Experience of humility, solidarity, and courage among migrants and workers.
• Philosophy, theology, and action integrated in discipleship.

Production Credits

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

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"Habit eats willpower for breakfast." As the apostle Paul says in Romans 7, we do the evil we don't want to do, and we don't do the good we want to do. Pastor and author John Ortberg joins Mark Labberton on Conversing to discuss his latest book Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn't Enough. Drawing on decades of pastoral ministry, the wisdom of the Twelve Steps, and the profound influence of Dallas Willard, Ortberg explores the limits of willpower, the gift of desperation, and the hope of genuine transformation. With humour, honesty, and depth, he reflects on why human will is insufficient, why churches struggle to embody desperation, and how communities of honesty and grace can become places of real healing.

Episode Highlights

1. "Habit eats willpower for breakfast."
2. "The first step is a deeply despairing step. I can't, and it feels like hell and death—and that opens people up to God."
3. "If you have a wimpy step one, you will have wimpy steps two through twelve."
4. "Desperation really is a gift."
5. "Failure and pain so often become helps in our meeting God."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Find more from John Ortberg at becomenew.com
• John Ortberg, Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn't Enough
• Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart
• Kent Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice
• Stephen R. Haynes, Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting?

About John Ortberg

John Ortberg is a pastor, speaker, and bestselling author dedicated to spiritual formation and transformation. He served as senior pastor at Menlo Church from 2003 to 2020, and has written numerous books, including The Life You've Always Wanted and Faith & Doubt. He studied at Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a trustee at Fuller. His most recent book, Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn't Enough, reframes the Twelve Steps as a wisdom tradition for all seeking deeper life with God.

Show Notes

• The Nature of Willpower and Habit
• John Ortberg reflects on Dallas Willard's framework for understanding persons.
• "Habit eats willpower for breakfast."
• The human will is essential, but terrifically weak when confronting sin, ego, or deep habits.
• The Gift of Desperation and the Twelve Steps
• First step: "We admitted we were powerless."
• "The first step is a deeply despairing step. I can't, and it feels like hell and death—and that opens people up to God."
• Desperation becomes a gateway to spiritual power.
• "If you have a wimpy step one, you will have wimpy steps two through twelve."
• Comparing church and AA
• Ortberg: "Desperation really is a gift."
• The church often resists being a community of desperation.
• Honesty is not the same as desperation; both are needed for transformation.
• Why AA's structure works: fellowship plus program.
• "Failure and pain so often become helps in our meeting God."
• Storytelling and Transformation
• Testimonies and stories at the center of AA's power.
• Why narrative makes meaning for human life.
• "Story is the essential unit of meaning for personhood."
• Spiritual Practices and Confession
• Step 5: "Confess to God, ourselves, and one other person the exact nature of our wrongs."
• John recalls confessing to a close friend: "John, I love you more right now than I've ever loved you before."
• The liberating power of being fully known and loved.
• Addiction, Sin, and Disease
• The debate: is addiction a disease, a habitus, or sin?
• Disease language reduces shame but risks erasing agency.
• The overlap of sin, brokenness, and habit.
• The challenge of shame, judgment, and superiority in church contexts.
• Fellowship and Program
• "If you have program but not fellowship, you're dead. If you have fellowship but not program, there is no hope."
• AA as a model for church life: communal honesty plus concrete practices.
• The gospel calls for grace-filled action, not passivity.

Production Credits

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

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Who are the black evangelicals? How has contemporary evangelicalism reckoned with racial justice? Theologian Vincent Bacote joins Mark Labberton to discuss Black + Evangelical, a new documentary exploring the in-between experience of black Christians in white evangelical spaces. Bacote—professor of theology at Wheaton College and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics—shares his personal faith journey, early formation in the Navigators, growing racial consciousness, and decades-long engagement with questions of race, theology, and evangelical identity. Together, they work through the tensions, challenges, and possibilities for a more truthful and hopeful evangelical witness.

Episode Highlights 1. "The goal of the documentary is not to be a kind of hit piece about the evangelical movement. It's to tell the story of the church." 2. "To be for Black people is not to be against somebody else." – Tom Skinner 3. "I couldn't understand why the Bible people weren't leading the way on questions of race." 4. "Participation in evangelical spaces can't mean leaving part of yourself outside." 5. "Realism allows you to have honesty, but also remember the good news is the greatest news of all." 6. "God wants all of us—our whole selves—not a muted version."

Helpful Links and Resources * Black + Evangelical Documentary (Christianity Today) * Black + Evangelical Documentary Trailer * The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life by Vincent Bacote * Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News by Vincent Bacote * Breaking Down Walls by Raleigh Washington & Glen Kehrein * Tom Skinner's Urbana 1970 Address (Full Audio) * The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

About Vincent Bacote Vincent Bacote is professor of theology at Wheaton College and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics. He is the author of several books, including The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life and Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News: In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology. His research and teaching address public theology, ethics, and the intersection of race and evangelical identity. Bacote is a widely cited commentator and a frequent voice in conversations about Christian faithfulness in public life.

Show Notes * Mark Labberton welcomes Vincent Bacote, professor of theology at Wheaton College and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics. * Introduction to the Black + Evangelical documentary, a project Bacote helped conceive and produce. * Bacote's upbringing at Shiloh Baptist Church of Glenarden, Maryland—unknowingly part of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. * Conversion experience around age ten, preceded by years of genuine faith. * College years at the Citadel; involvement in the Navigators campus ministry. * Influence of a summer training program in Memphis focused on African American ministry. * Early exposure to evangelical culture through radio preachers like Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, John MacArthur, and James Dobson. * Initial tensions over the lack of evangelical engagement on issues of race. * Graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with the initial goal of becoming a pastor. * Encounter with Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein's Breaking Down Walls, grounding racial reconciliation in Ephesians 2. * Observations of the scarcity of black theologians in evangelical seminaries. * 1993 Geneva College conference on black evangelicals—learning from leaders like Bill Pannell, Tom Skinner, Tony Evans, Carl Ellis, and Eugene Rivers. * Writing an editorial titled "Black and Evangelical: An Uneasy Tension?" for the student paper at Trinity. * Realization that evangelicalism is both a biblical and socio-cultural movement with contextual blind spots. * Arrival at Wheaton College in 2000 with a focus on public theology and ethics beyond race alone. * Genesis of the Black + Evangelical project at a 2008 Fuller Seminary gathering with Ron Potter. * Partnership with Christianity Today and filmmaker Dan Long to shape the documentary. * Filming over forty hours of interviews with twenty-four participants, distilled into a ninety-four-minute film. * Mark Labberton highlights Tom Skinner's impact and his "Blackface" critique of white evangelicalism. * Bacote reflects on his "racially optimistic" early years and growing awareness of systemic realities. * Analysis of the Promise Keepers movement and the need for sustained relational work beyond large gatherings. * Challenges in building genuine multiethnic churches versus surface-level diversity. * The documentary's aim: to tell the church's story, honour lived experiences, and inspire commitment to mission. * Bacote's "four stages" for minorities in evangelical institutions: delight, dissonance, distress, and decision. * Emphasis on "sober hope"—honesty about pain while holding onto the good news. * The gospel's call to bring one's full self into the life of the church. * Closing encouragement to watch and share Black + Evangelical as a story worth hearing for the whole church.

Production Credits

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

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Conservationist and environmental advocate Ben Lowe discusses our ecological crisis, the role of Christian faith and spirituality, and how churches can respond with hope, action, and theological depth.

He joins Mark Labberton for a grounded conversation on the intersection of faith, climate change, and the church's role in ecological justice. As executive director of A Rocha USA, Lowe brings over two decades of experience in environmental biology, ethics, and faith-based conservation to explore how Christians can engage meaningfully with environmental crises. They move from scientific clarity about climate urgency to the theological blind spots that have hindered the Christian response.

Together, they explore how churches across the US and beyond are reclaiming creation care—not as a political issue, but as a form of discipleship and worship. With stories ranging from urban stream cleanups to coral reef restoration, Lowe emphasizes small, local, relational efforts that respond to God's ongoing work in the world. At the heart of the conversation lies a call to moral will, theological clarity, and faithfulness in the face of ecological grief.

Episode Highlights

"The world is good—but it's groaning."

"Small does not mean insignificant. … We have the solutions. The problem is not our technical ability—it's our moral and political will."

Learn More about A Rocha

Visit arocha.us for more information.

About Ben Lowe

Ben Lowe is executive director of A Rocha USA, a Christian conservation organization engaged in ecological discipleship, community-based restoration, and climate advocacy across the US and globally. He holds a PhD in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida and a BS in environmental biology from Wheaton College (IL). Ben has spent over two decades working at the intersection of faith, science, and environmental justice, and is passionate about equipping churches to participate in God's restoration of creation.

Since his first encounter with A Rocha as a Wheaton student in 2003, Ben has served on A Rocha staff teams and boards, nationally and internationally, most recently as deputy executive director of A Rocha International. Ben's training as a scientist and a minister inform his leadership and development of A Rocha USA's national strategy and team.

Originally from Singapore, Ben was the founding national organizer of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action and has served on the boards of A Rocha USA, A Rocha International, the Au Sable Institute, and Christians for Social Action. He is the author of multiple books, and his work has been featured in media outlets including Audubon Magazine, Christianity Today, and the New York Times. He has a bachelor of science in environmental biology from Wheaton and a PhD from the University of Florida focussed on the human, religious, and ethical dimensions of environmental change and conservation. Ben is based in the warm and watery state of Florida, where he can often be found kayaking on the Indian River Lagoon.

Show Notes

• Earth Day began in 1970, a pivotal moment for environmental awareness—"That means that I was a junior in high school when the world embraced this name as a way of trying to bring attention to the whole world about environmental issues."
• Mark Labberton opens with concern for "the political moment that we're in … in the United States and in other places around the world."
• Ben Lowe introduces the biblical framing: "This world is good, but it's also groaning."

Why Climate Action Still Matters

• "We don't know where we would be, were it not for Earth Day fifty years ago."
• "The question is not whether we know what to do, but whether we're doing the right thing and we're doing enough of it."
• "It's never too late to take action and to get engaged."

Scientific Consensus and Urgency

• "The science has gotten a lot more sophisticated and a lot clearer."
• "We're not talking about hypothetical issues anymore. We're talking about issues that many, if not all of us, are tangibly experiencing now."
• "Things are moving faster, further, and at a greater scale and magnitude than we were hoping to be experiencing right now."

Oceans, Heat, and the Limits of Natural Buffers

• "The oceans are a huge gift to human society, and they have been buffering and absorbing a lot of the heat and the carbon that we've been emitting."
• "The oceans are not limitless. … We are seeing signs that the oceans are warming more than they can sustain."
• "Every year now we have these hurricanes that are huge in terms of their scale and the amount of water that they can suck up from these overheated oceans."

Practical Impact of Climate Change

• "My homeowner's insurance rates more than doubled in the last few years."
• "We're just getting all these signs coming from all of our systems that are warning us that we are on a completely unsustainable path."
• "The silver lining to us being the driver of so many of these problems is that we can also choose to be part of the solution."

Role of the Church in Ecological Transformation

• "The church can really shine a light of hope, of love of the good news that God promises for this world in the midst of all that."
• "Small does not mean insignificant."
• "We have the solutions we need. … The problem is not our technical ability, it's our moral and political will that has been lacking."

Global Clean Energy Transition

• "We are in a great transition, but that transition is happening and it's sort of unstoppable."
• "The question is how quickly will it happen and will we be able to move it forward quickly enough?"
• "Christians have a particular contribution. … We can bring the moral will to help shape the decisions."

A Rocha's Global and Local Work

• "A Rocha is a network of Christian conservation organizations in about twenty-five countries around the world."
• In Florida, "we're helping to work with local partners, universities, high schools, churches, to conserve the lagoon."
• "In Austin, Texas … we have a lot of Spanish-language programming … to help connect recent immigrants with the communities that they're living in."

Partnering with Churches for Creation Care

• "The cutting edge of what we're moving into now though is our work with churches."
• "Research … is showing that there is a shift happening with more and more Christians in churches becoming aware of the problems in God's world."
• "Now we have more and more people coming to us, so much that we're growing, but we're not growing fast enough and we have to turn some people away."

Localized Action and Practical Partnerships

• "We launched a cohort of Vineyard USA churches … to support Vineyard congregations that want to get more involved."
• "We walk them through a process of discerning … the ways that God might be inviting them to participate in what God's already doing."
• "We're working with a church on Oahu in Hawaii that bought a defunct golf course … we're working together to help restore the native habitat."

Creation Care as Worship and Witness

• "We see this as being in God's hands … and us as playing a faithful role in responding to what God is doing."
• "What would a follower of Jesus do in this situation?"
• "Everything that we do to care for creation … the offering itself is one that we direct to God as the creator."

Theological Reformation, Not Innovation

• "It's not theological change so much as it's theological reformation. This is orthodoxy."
• "We don't see this work as of our own initiative. What we see ourselves doing is responding to what God is already doing."

End Times Theology and Ecological Responsibility

• "We don't treat anything else in life that way. We don't treat our bodies that way. We don't treat our children that way."
• "It has been biblically orthodox from the very beginning to care for God's world."
• "It's not because we're Christian, it's because we've not been Christian enough."

Political Identity vs. Christian Witness

• "We see these issues first and foremost through our political lenses instead of through our theological biblical Christian lenses."
• "These issues transcend any particular political ideology or party."
• "They're moral issues, they're faith issues, they're spiritual issues, and for us, they're an integral matter of our Christian discipleship and witness."

How A Rocha Helps Churches Avoid Partisan Pitfalls

• "We try to say, all right, what does God call us to do as people, as his image bearers in the world today?"
• "Let's do a stream cleanup together."
• "You kind of learn as you go … and before you know it, you look back and you realize, oh gosh, how far I have come."

Discipleship and Environmental Stewardship

• "The longer I'm in this work, the more I'm learning how to care for creation and help others do the same."
• "The closer I grow to Christ too, and the more I find myself being conformed into what the Bible calls us to be."
• "It's not always an easy journey, but it's a really good and life-giving and sanctifying journey."

Mark's Personal Reflection: Replanting His Garden

• "It has utterly changed the way that I now look out the kitchen window."
• "Just that small change has given me a better sense of life, a better sense of creation … a better sense of the importance of having a world that you can meditate on."

Ben Lowe's Formative Experiences in Singapore and the Black Hills

• "We'd sort through the catch with them and they'd give us the things that they couldn't sell."
• "Being able to step out into a national forest and breathe the air … reminds me that … there is still so much good in this world worth protecting."

Production Credits

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

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Introducing Credible Witness, a new podcast produced by Mark Labberton and the Rethinking Church Initiative.

In this episode of Conversing, Mark features the full premiere episode of Credible Witness, and is joined by host Nikki Toyama-Szeto and historian Jemar Tisby.

Exploring how Christian witness to the gospel of Christ has become compromised—and what might restore its credibility. Reflecting on five years of candid, challenging conversation among diverse Christian leaders during the wake of George Floyd's murder and rising Christian nationalism, the three discuss the soul-searching, disillusionment, and hope that emerged.

Together, they examine the cultural fractures, theological tensions, and moral failures that have pushed many to extremes, elevating strident voices as an increased number of people to leave the church.

They articulate the mission and vision of Credible Witness, testify to a persistent hope in Jesus and the power of honest community, face painful truths, and imagine a church that more truly reflects the love, justice, and mercy of God.

Key Moments

1. "We absolutely get that… but we're still on board with Jesus. And Jesus has always been with us and hasn't left us."
2. "This isn't about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus."
3. "We've got a better story to tell."
4. "It was the church that was putting the church at risk."
5. "The church has a reputation in the United States… and not a good one by and large."

About the Guests

Nikki Toyama-Szeto is the host of Credible Witness, and is executive director of Christians for Social Action, equipping the church to pursue justice and follow Jesus in the tension of our times.

Jemar Tisby is the author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism, and founder of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective. He is the host of Pass the Mic.

Show Notes * "This isn't about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus." —Jemar Tisby * Nikki introduces Credible Witness as a space for honest stories of faith amid moral complexity and social tension * Mark recalls the origins of the conversation in summer 2020: COVID-19, George Floyd, church division, and racial injustice * Jemar Tisby clarifies the mission for imagining a more credible Christian witness * Nikki reflects on trust-building in a space that welcomed "tricky truths" and honesty without pretense * The group's five-year journey begins as a short experiment but grows into a lasting community of deep discernment * "We weren't trying to replicate any harm." —Jemar Tisby * The group names white Christian nationalism and silence on injustice as threats to the church's credibility * Ephesians 2 and the power of "coming together of the unlikes" as a witness to the resurrection * "It was the church that was putting the gospel at risk." —Mark Labberton * Nikki explains how church neutrality began to speak volumes: "Choosing silence was actually a loud voice." * Discussion on the failure of integrity: "Too many things in isolation" eroded credibility * Jemar highlights story as central to public theology: "We've got a better story to tell." * The group wrestles with algorithmic distortion and toxic digital narratives shaping Christian identity * "Not just message, but embodiment": The church's credibility depends on lived ethics, not just theological claims * Mark emphasizes self-examination: "Are we credible?" * Dissonance and disagreement as gifts: "What kept people in the room was the gift of dissonance." —Nikki Toyama-Szeto * Jemar recalls moments of tension over how to prioritize justice issues while remaining unified in Christ * The group's diversity as a deliberate strategy: different traditions, backgrounds, and responsibilities within the church * Nikki names divine timing: the conversation is more urgent now than when it began * "We're not all supposed to be the same... That's how everything gets covered." —Jemar Tisby * Mark frames the church's failure as internal implosion—not external threat * "Why is the church seemingly so unchanged?" —Mark Labberton * Nikki describes how marginalized voices carry wisdom for the way forward * Jemar articulates the podcast's goal: a mirror and a window for listeners to see both themselves and the larger church * Nikki closes with an invitation to slow down and listen generously: "Pull up a chair..."

Production Credits

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

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In the aftermath of the devastating Eaton Canyon Fire in Altadena, California, three Pasadena community leaders—Mayra Macedo-Nolan, Pastor Kerwin Manning, and Megan Katerjian—join host Mark Labberton for a sobering and hopeful conversation on what it takes to rebuild homes, neighbourhoods, and lives. Together they discuss their personal losses, the long-term trauma facing their neighbours, the racial and economic disparities exposed by disaster, and how the church is rising to meet these challenges with grit, grace, and faith.

Their stories illuminate how a community holds fast when the media leaves, when vultures circle, and when the work is just beginning. This is a conversation about sacred presence, practical resilience, and the enduring witness of faithful service—even in the ashes.

Mayra Macedo-Nolan is executive director of the Clergy Community Coalition of Greater Pasadena

Kerwin Manning is senior pastor of Pasadena Church

Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope Ministries

Helpful Links and Resources

• Door of Hope Pasadena – Family homelessness intervention and fire assistance program
• Pasadena Church – Kerwin Manning's congregation and relief center
• Clergy Community Coalition of Greater Pasadena – Mayra Macedo-Nolan's organization supporting pastors and churches
• Isaiah 61:3 – "Beauty for ashes" verse referenced by Kerwin
• Andre Crouch – "Soon and Very Soon" – Gospel anthem of hope quoted by Pastor Kerwin

Show Notes

• CCC (Clergy Community Coalition) rapidly pivoted to virtual meetings the morning after hurricane-force winds and fire struck Altadena.
• "We moved it to virtual … and then we had no idea what was gonna happen that evening and overnight." —Mayra Macedo-Nolan
• After the fire started, fifty-six participants gathered online, including city leaders and faith-based partners, forming a core response network.
• "Everybody wanted to be together … especially in a crisis like this." —Mayra
• Pastor Kerwin and his wife Madeline evacuated with almost no notice after hearing the sheriff outside their door.
• "We, Madeline and I, like so many others, were fleeing for our lives." —Kerwin Manning
• For weeks, they didn't know whether their home was still standing; the priority became their church and community.
• "We didn't know if our home was standing … we were more concerned about our church, our community." —Kerwin
• Pasadena Church began relief work immediately—even before confirming their own housing stability.
• "This is the first interview or anything I've done online back in my home." —Kerwin
• Door of Hope's CEO evacuated with her children and lost her home; she quickly organized shelter responses for others.
• "I found out that my house had been entirely destroyed." —Megan Katerjian
• Within ten days, Door of Hope launched a formal housing assistance program for fire-affected families.
• "Door of Hope had launched what we call the Eaton Fire Housing Assistance Program." —Megan
• The CCC became a spiritual and logistical backbone for Altadena's recovery, activating two decades of community-building.
• "This was a time that it was really important for the local clergy to be in conversation with one another." —Mayra
• Pasadena Church became a distribution hub, serving as far east as any organization in the city.
• "We wore our church members out." —Kerwin
• Over two months, the church distributed daily essentials from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., shifting to a long-term weekly rhythm.
• "We thought we would do it for a couple of weeks … we were doing it every day … for about two months straight." —Kerwin
• "We might run out of water, we might run out of toothpaste, but we refuse to run out of smiles and kindness." —Kerwin
• Altadena's west side—long a haven for black and brown families—suffered the worst structural damage and displacement.
• "Altadena had been a haven really for black and brown families who couldn't purchase homes anywhere." —Mayra
• Many affected residents were informal renters or multigenerational households without clear legal housing claims.
• "These are the stories of people … for whom there is no path back to Altadena anytime soon." —Megan
• Eleven churches were lost or damaged, including small and under-resourced congregations still unsure about rebuilding.
• "We lost ten houses of worship, and one was partially burned … essentially eleven." —Mayra
• Local churches served both members and neighbors regardless of formal affiliation, often the first to show up with aid.
• "We don't do any of this work alone." —Megan
• CCC supports over a hundred churches across Pasadena with infrastructure, grants, emotional care, and community strategy.
• "We want them to be okay … and then as they serve their church members and the neighbors surrounding their church." —Mayra
• Door of Hope offered security deposits, rent, emergency shelter, tool replacement, and even vehicles to affected families.
• "Beauty for ashes"
• "We just have to do more of it." —Megan
• Volunteers gave out handwritten cards from kids across the country; some were shared at distribution events.
• "I've got a box full of cards from kids … just like it's going to be okay. We're praying for it." —Kerwin
• A guiding pastoral metaphor: vultures circling a wounded deer, and the need to protect the vulnerable from predation.
• "The vultures were circling … and I covered the deer … and the vultures left." —Kerwin
• "The needs have not slowed. … Finances always follow just heart and compassion and awareness." —Megan
• "You learn so much in the middle of crisis. One of the things that crisis does is it confirms character and you realize like what people are made of when you're going through something."
• "Until. Until the need is gone, until we don't have to do it anymore." —Kerwin
• The immigrant community faces a second "fire"—ICE raids and deportation threats layered atop housing loss.
• "The intersection of those … the two fires, the fire that we didn't know we were gonna have, and the fire that we knew was coming." —Mayra
• CCC pastors protested ICE actions together, maintaining peace through community presence and music.
• "The pastors were there … and then it's just … it's a sacred party." —Mayra
• Latino cultural traditions of protest, grief, and celebration shaped a healing, communal public presence.
• "We cry and we're gonna probably celebrate and eat food and dance together." —Mayra
• Local leaders are pushing back against a ten-year recovery timeline with a goal of rebuilding within three to five years.
• "We reject that. She said three to five years, that's what we're gonna push for." —Mayra
• Community grief deepened when the first burned lot was sold; hope emerged again when the first rebuilding began.
• "There they go … it's gonna start selling." / "We think there was … this collective celebration." —Mayra
• "Soon and very soon we're gonna see the King." —Kerwin
• Kerwin invoked Isaiah 61:3: "Beauty will rise" as a spiritual theme for their church's recovery ministry.
• "We believe that we're able to continue to do what we're doing knowing that, trusting that beauty's gonna rise." —Kerwin
• The phrase "Altadena is not for sale" became a rallying cry—although some elders opted to relocate for peace.
• "It's up to you. Our prayer is that more people will want to stay than leave." —Kerwin
• Ongoing challenges include zoning delays, state and county coordination issues, and political friction at the national level.
• "The church has always been a vital provider of resources, critical social services and resources in communities on an ongoing basis in normal time." —Mayra
• "The greatest sense that you get from being there is people are together. There's a sense of unity and community protection that is very palpable."
• A sacred party
• Resilience and God's presence and strength
• "It feels like our president doesn't like us … our governor … whatever they've got going on affects us." —Kerwin
• "The church … is always a vital provider … of resources, critical social services … in normal time." —Mayra

About the Guests

Mayra Macedo-Nolan is executive director of the Clergy Community Coalition of Greater Pasadena, where she leads efforts to strengthen faith-based response to systemic inequities in housing, education, and social services. Formerly on pastoral staff at Lake Avenue Church, she's spent two decades in community leadership in Pasadena and Altadena.

Pastor Kerwin Manning is senior pastor of Pasadena Church and a founding leader in the Clergy Community Coalition. A long-time advocate for youth and justice, he's served the Pasadena community with a heart for unity, compassion, and spiritual renewal.

Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope, a Pasadena-based non-profit serving homeless and at-risk families. With over twenty years in non-profit leadership, Megan is also an ordained pastor with deep roots in faith-based social services and community development.

Production Credits

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

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Are the best days of the church behind us? Or ahead? Kara Powell and Ray Chang join Mark Labberton to discuss Future-Focused Church: Reimagining Ministry to the Next Generation, co-authored with Jake Mulder. Drawing on extensive research, practical frameworks, and decades of leadership at Fuller Seminary and the TENx10 Collaboration, Powell and Chang map a path forward for the church—one rooted in relational discipleship, kingdom diversity, and tangible neighbour love. In a moment marked by disaffiliation, disillusionment, and institutional fragility, they offer a hopeful vision: churches that are brave enough to listen deeply, lead adaptively, and partner with the next generation in mission. This conversation unpacks their "Here to There" framework, the role of human agency in ecclesial change, and why honouring young people isn't pandering—it's planting seeds for the future of faith.

Episode Highlights

1. "We believe the best days of the church are ahead."
2. "Leadership begins with listening."
3. "Unless strategy emerges out of culture, or unless the culture is changed, it's really hard to lead."
4. "Everything rises when we focus on young people."
5. "Agency is the intersection of knowing, being, and doing."

Helpful Resources and Links

• Future-Focused Church by Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Ray Chang (InterVarsity Press)
• Fuller Youth Institute—Research and innovation for youth ministry
• TENx10 Collaboration—Movement to help faith matter more for ten million young people over ten years
• Asian American Christian Collaborative—Equipping Asian American Christians for faithful public witness
• "Churches and Change: Adaptive Leadership"—Heifetz on adaptive vs. technical change (Harvard Business Review)
• Rethinking Church in the 21st Century (Fuller Seminary)—Ongoing work in contextual theology and church innovation

About Kara Powell

Kara Powell is the chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary, executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, and founder of the TENx10 Collaboration. A leading voice in youth ministry and church innovation, she is author or co-author of numerous books including Sticky Faith, Growing Young, and 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager. She is co-author of Future-Focused Church: Reimagining Ministry to the Next Generation.

About Ray Chang

Ray Chang is executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration and president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative. A pastor, activist, and writer, Ray's work focuses on racial justice, next-gen discipleship, and building churches that reflect the diversity of God's kingdom. He is co-author of Future-Focused Church: Reimagining Ministry to the Next Generation.

Show Notes

• Kara Powell is chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary and executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute
• Ray Chang is executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration and president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative
• Future-Focused Church offers a framework for adaptive change, grounded in Scripture, research, and practical leadership
• "Leadership begins with listening"—Kara shares the importance of appreciative inquiry and asking youth what matters to them
• Ray describes today's church as "a church actively trying to define and redefine itself in tumultuous and complex times"
• Simple but powerful framework: Here to There—understanding where we are and where God is calling us next
• Three checkpoints of a future-focused church: relationally discipling young people, modelling kingdom diversity, tangibly loving our neighbours
• "Everything rises when we focus on young people"—churches flourish when the next generation is centered
• Data shows only one in three senior pastors rank young people among their top five priorities
• Kara: "I wish the problem was that young people were overly prioritized—sadly, it's the opposite"
• Church innovation isn't just strategic, it's adaptive: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."
• Ray explains why Covid exposed the difference between technical and adaptive change in the church
• Kara: "We overestimate what we can accomplish in one year and underestimate what we can do in three to five."
• Biblical foundations explored—Paul's epistles blend being and doing; Galatians 5 offers a model of fruitful action
• Human agency as divine invitation—Ray: "God invites us to partner in God's work for the flourishing of humanity"
• Kara's church story: youth sat in the front, fully engaged—"They prioritized us"
• Simple action steps from churches include showing up to youth events and publicly celebrating young people's milestones
• Mark Labberton challenges the idea of "pandering" to youth—Kara responds with data and theological reflection
• Ray reflects on the complex dynamics in immigrant and second-gen Asian American churches—"placelessness" and a search for belonging
• Importance of community: following Jesus together, across generations, cultures, and neighbourhoods
• Kara reframes giving: "Young people want to give to people and to purpose—not to perpetuate programs"
• "Culture is where values are held; unless strategy aligns with culture, it will be resisted"—Ray on organizational change
• Intergenerational relationships are critical—older adults model faith and love through presence and commitment
• The book offers not just direction but formation: process, practice, and people matter as much as the goal
• "If there's ever a moment to care about the church—and young people—it's now."

Production Credits

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

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With a B3 organ, a prophetic imagination, and a heart broken wide open by grace, gospel music legend Andraé Crouch (1942–2015) left an indelible mark on modern Christian worship music. In this episode, Stephen Newby and Robert Darden offer a sweeping yet intimate exploration of his life, spiritual vision, and genre-defining genius.

Together with Mark Labberton, they discuss their new biography Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch. Through laughter, lament, and lyrical memory, Newby and Darden—both scholars at Baylor University and co-authors of the first serious biography of Crouch—share stories of discovering Crouch's music, the theological and cultural forces that shaped it, and why his legacy matters now more than ever. They offer insights about modern musical history, spiritual reflections, and cultural analysis, inviting us into the soul of a man who helped bring modern gospel into being.

Episode Highlights

1. "Musical genius is where observation, curiosity, imagination, and humility are baked in the oven."
2. "He was always tracking what was going on in the room and in his heart. He understood the cues, clues, and codes of what God was doing."
3. "Andraé felt it was important that the music was just as inspired as the lyrics. It was total praise."
4. "'Soon and Very Soon' is an ancient future song—we have to keep singing it, especially now."
5. "Andraé burned out a lot of musicians—but all of them adore him to this day."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch by Stephen Newby and Robert Darden (Penn State University Press)
• Black Gospel Music Preservation Project (Baylor University)
• "Jesus Is the Answer," by Andraé Crouch
• "Through It All," by Andraé Crouch
• "Soon and Very Soon," **by Andraé Crouch
• People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music by Robert Darden

About Stephen Newby

Stephen Michael Newby is a composer, conductor, and scholar. He serves as the Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship at Baylor University and is a professor of music in the Baylor School of Music. A widely recognized expert on gospel, jazz, and black sacred music, he is also affiliated with the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project as an ambassador and collaborator. He is co-author of Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch.

About Robert Darden

Robert F. Darden is emeritus professor of journalism at Baylor University and founder of the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project. A former gospel music editor at Billboard magazine, Darden is the author of numerous books on gospel music history, including People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music and Nothing But Love in God's Water. He is co-author of Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch.

Show Notes

• Andraé Crouch called the "father of contemporary modern gospel" for his groundbreaking influence on the genre
• Guest Stephen Newby holds the Lev H. Pritchard III Chair in Black Worship and Music at Baylor University
• Guest Robert Darden is emeritus professor of journalism at Baylor and founder of the Black Gospel Music Preservation Project
• Labberton celebrates the book's narrative, musical, and sociocultural scope
• Crouch grew up in a Pentecostal context that encouraged musical exploration and spiritual improvisation
• Gospel rooted in KoGIC (Church of God in Christ) tradition, blending Beale Street sounds with evangelical fervour
• Darden describes Crouch's early music as "jazz, pop... but wait, it is gospel—they're singing about Jesus"
• Crouch and his sister Sandra composed "Jesus Is the Answer," considered the first modern praise and worship song
• The book includes more than two hundred interviews from gospel musicians, friends, and collaborators
• Crouch read the room and followed the Spirit—every performance was improvisational, responsive, alive
• "Through It All" composed after the heartbreak of a failed relationship; the grief birthed one of his most lasting songs
• Gospel music as lament and praise: "We hear the pain, we hear the resolve, we hear the lament turning to praise"
• Crouch's "Take Me Back" begins with Billy Preston on B3 organ—"He hasn't forgotten the church," says Newby
• Earth, Wind & Fire, Motown, and classical influences shaped Crouch's orchestration and arrangements
• Darden: "He wanted the music to sound as good as the words. It was obsessive—but it was for God."
• Andraé's collaboration with producer/drummer Bill Maxwell led to a string of gospel albums with unmatched quality
• "We are going to see the King": the timeless hope of "Soon and Very Soon" rooted in the black spiritual tradition
• Crouch's music was not only groundbreaking—it was pastoral, prophetic, and profoundly personal
• Evangelistic to his dying breath, Crouch witnessed to hospital staff and janitors alike
• The book's subtitle "Transformative Music and Ministry" is more than academic—it's biographical theology
• Newby and Darden's friendship mirrors Crouch and Maxwell's cross-cultural collaboration
• Soon and Very Soon offers readers a chance to read with phone in hand—listening and learning simultaneously
• "Jesus is the answer" remains a musical and theological call across generations

Production Credits

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

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During a moment of historic turbulence and Christian polarization, Trinity Forum president Cherie Harder stepped away from the political and spiritual vortex of Washington, DC, for a month-long pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago—a.k.a. "the Camino" or "the Way."

In this episode, she reflects on the spiritual, emotional, and physical rhythms of pilgrimage as both counterpoint and counter-practice to the fracturing pressures of American civic and religious life. Together, she and Mark Labberton consider how such a posture of pilgrimage—marked by humility, presence, and receptivity—can help reshape how we understand Christian witness in a fraught and antagonistic time.

Harder explores how her Camino sabbatical offered her a deeply embodied spiritual liturgy—one that grounded her leadership and personal formation after years of intense service in government and faith-based institutions. She also reflects on the internal and external catalysts that led her to walk three hundred miles across Portugal and Spain, including burnout, anxiety, and the desire to "walk things off." What emerged was not a single epiphany but a profound reorientation: a reordering of attention, a rediscovery of joy, and a new kind of sociological imagination—one that sees neighbourliness through the eyes of a pilgrim, not a partisan.

Episode Highlights

1. "Being a pilgrim, one is a stranger in a strange land, one has no pretensions to ruling the place. … It's a different way of being in the world."
2. "There was a widespread belief in the importance of persuasion … a very different posture than seeking to dominate, humiliate, and pulverize."
3. "Every day is literally putting one foot in front of the other. And you spend each day outside—whether it's in sunshine or in rain."
4. "There's a pilgrim sociology that is so counter to how we interact in civic space today. … It's a different way of being in the world."
5. "You're tired, and there's an invitation to stop and to pray."
6. "I didn't have an epiphany, but what I had instead was a daily practice that fed my soul."

Helpful Links and Resources

• The Trinity Forum
• The Way (film) – a film about the Camino starring Martin Sheen
• Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain by Jack Hitt
• Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (Project Gutenberg)
• Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann
• Camino de Santiago Overview – Wikipedia

About Cherie Harder

Cherie Harder is president of the Trinity Forum, a non-profit that curates Christian thought leadership to engage public life, spiritual formation, and the arts. She previously served in multiple leadership roles in the US government, including in the White House under President George W. Bush, and as policy director to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. A graduate of Harvard University, she is a writer, speaker, and advocate for grace-filled public discourse and thoughtful Christian engagement in civic life.

Show Notes

• Cherie Harder is president of the Trinity Forum, a non-profit based in Washington, DC, and focused on Christian thought leadership.
• She previously served in the White House and as policy director for the Senate Majority Leader.
• Harder reflects on how leadership now requires "counterforce just to stay in the same place."
• She critiques the rise of "performative belligerence" in both civic and Christian life.
• "There's a premium placed on humiliating and deeply personally insulting the other side—and somehow that's seen as strength."
• She contrasts past politics, which valued persuasion, with today's polarization, which valorizes domination.
• "Persuasion takes others seriously. It assumes they're reasonable and open."
• The Camino de Santiago and pilgrimage
• Harder walked over three hundred miles, from Lisbon to Santiago, along the Portuguese Camino.
• She frames pilgrimage as an act of spiritual resistance against anxiety, burnout, and cultural chaos.
• "I need to find a way to walk this off."
• The daily rhythm of the Camino offered physical and spiritual rest: wake, walk, eat, reflect, rest, repeat.
• "Every day was the opportunity to just move, to see, to attend to what was in front of me."
• She was struck by the liturgical nature of walking: "There's no perfect walk, but you have to start."
• Each step became a form of prayer, an embodied spiritual practice.
• Embodied spiritual formation
• Harder calls the Camino "a liturgy of the body"—a spiritual discipline grounded in physical motion.
• "Being in your body every day changes you—it makes your needs visible, your limits felt, your joy more palpable."
• She found that physical needs—food, rest, shelter—highlighted spiritual hungers and gratitudes.
• The rhythm reoriented her from leadership stress to lived dependence on grace.
• "I didn't have an epiphany. But what I had instead was a daily practice that fed my soul."
• Spiritual renewal and rhythmic practices
• Harder affirms that the Camino gave her a hunger for spiritual rest she hadn't fully realized.
• "It showed me the deficiency was greater than I thought … I've missed this."
• She explores how practices of solitude, walking, and prayer can carry over into her work.
• Mark Labberton proposes Sabbath-keeping as one way to embody pilgrimage back home.
• "We may not all get to Portugal—but we can still find a Camino in our days."
• Harder is now exploring how to sustain "a rhythmic alteration of how we hold time."
• Pilgrim sociology and neighbourliness
• Harder describes a "pilgrim sociology"—a social vision rooted in vulnerability, curiosity, humility, and shared burdens.
• "We're in a strange land. We're not here to rule, but to receive."
• The Camino fostered solidarity through shared hardship and generosity.
• "You literally carry each other's burdens."
• She draws a sharp contrast between the posture of a pilgrim and the posture of a combatant.
• "It leads to a much kinder, gentler world—because it's not a posture of domination."
• Spiritual lessons from the Camino
• The convergence at Santiago prompted reflection on heaven: "All these people, from different paths, looking up at glory."
• She was reminded of Jesus's words, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
• "The Camino literally means 'the Way.' You're relying on direction that is true."
• The historic path invites pilgrims into the long, sacred story of the church.
• "You feel part of something bigger—millions have gone before you."

Production Credits

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

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For Christians, morality is often set by our interpretation of Jesus. In this episode, Reggie Williams reflects on the moral urgency of resistance in the face of rising nationalisms and systemic racial injustice that persists.

Reggie Williams is associate professor of black theology at Saint Louis University, and author of Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus. Exploring the transformative and fraught legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he draws from Bonhoeffer's encounter with black Christian faith in Harlem. He traces both the revolutionary promise and the colonial limits of Bonhoeffer's thought—ultimately offering a compelling call to face the challenge of colonialism embedded in Christian theological frameworks, and unmask and dismantle the assumptions of white Western dominance within theology.

Episode Highlights

• "Even the most sincere and most brilliant, and even pious Christian, if we're not paying attention to the way in which we are formed, repeats the problems that he's trying to address in society."
• "Our interpretation of Jesus shapes our morality as Christians."
• "Hitler and Dietrich both understood their crisis as christological—just with radically different ends."
• "Christ is actually present in the world in space and time—but for Bonhoeffer, that was the West. That's a problem."
• "The arbiter of culture owes it to the rest of the world not to be cruel. But what if the whole project needs to be undone?"
• "Access for black people has always meant white loss in the white imagination. That's the virus in the body politic."

Helpful Links and Resources

• Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus by Reggie Williams
• Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Just Peacemaking by Glen Stassen

About Reggie L. Williams

Reggie L. Williams is associate professor of black theology at Saint Louis University. A scholar of Christian social ethics, he focuses on race, religion, and justice, with a particular interest in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological development during his time in Harlem. Williams is the author of Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus and a leading voice on the intersections of colonialism, theology, and ethics.

Show Notes

• Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus reframes theological ethics through the lens of Harlem's Black Church experience
• Reggie Williams explores how racialized interpretations of Jesus shape Christian morality
• Glen Stassen's just peacemaking framework helped form Williams's commitment to justice-oriented ethics
• Bonhoeffer's exposure to black theology in Harlem was transformative—but its disruption didn't last
• "The church must say something about those targeted by harmful political structures."
• Bonhoeffer saw racism as a theological issue after Harlem, but still defaulted to Western Christology
• "Christ is located in the real world—but for Bonhoeffer, that meant colonial Europe and America"
• Williams critiques Bonhoeffer's failure to see Christ outside the imperial West
• "Behold the man"—Bonhoeffer's formulation still echoes a European epistemology of the human
• The human as we know it is a European philosophical construct rooted in colonial domination
• Bonhoeffer's Ethics critiques Nazism but still centres the West as the space of Christ's incarnation
• "The unified West was his answer to fascism—but it still excluded the harmed and colonized."
• Even as a resister, Bonhoeffer operated within metaphysical frames of white supremacy
• "A reformed imperial Christianity is still imperial—we need a theological break, not a revision."
• Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship reflected troubling views on slavery—he changed over time
• "From 1937 to 1939 he moves from withdrawal to coup attempt—his ethics evolved."
• Reggie Williams argues the theological academy still operates under Bonhoeffer's colonial presumptions
• "White Christian nationalism is a sacred project—whiteness floats above history as God's proxy"
• Racial hierarchy was created to justify economic domination, not the other way around
• "Black access is always imagined as white loss in the American imagination"
• The DEI backlash reflects a long pattern of retrenchment following black progress
• "How we treat bodies is how we treat the planet—domination replaces communion"
• Bonhoeffer's flaws do not erase his significance—they remind us of the need for grace and growth
• "He's frozen in time at thirty-nine—we don't know what he would've come to see had he lived."
• Mark Labberton calls the current moment a five-alarm fire requiring voices like Williams's
• "We are at the precipice of the future all over again—the old crisis is still with us."
• The church's complicity in empire must be confronted to recover the radical gospel of Jesus
• The moral imagination of the church must be unshackled from whiteness, ownership, and dominance

Production Credits

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

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“More of the church is committed to their immigrant neighbours than the media or politicians would like the public to believe.” (Myal Green, from the episode)

Myal Greene (president and CEO of World Relief) joins host Mark Labberton to discuss the global humanitarian crises, refugee resettlement, and the church’s responsibility to respond with courage and compassion. From Rwanda's post-genocide reconciliation following 1994 to the 2025 dismantling of humanitarian aid and refugee programs in the US, Greene shares how his personal faith journey fuels his leadership amid historic humanitarian upheaval. Rooted in Scripture and the global moral witness of the church, Greene challenges listeners to imagine a more faithful Christian response to suffering—one that refuses to turn away from the world’s most vulnerable. Despite the current political polarization and rising fragility of moral consensus, Greene calls on the church to step into its biblical role: speaking truth to power, welcoming the stranger, standing with the oppressed, and embodying the love of Christ in tangible, courageous ways.

Episode Highlights

1. “Inherently, reconciliation of people who have done the worst things imaginable to you is not a human thing.”
2. “To truly be a follower of Christ, you can't be completely for a politician or completely for a political party.”
3. “What we’ve seen is that more of the church is committed to their immigrant neighbours than the media or politicians would like the public to believe.”
4. “The challenge for pastors is: How do I talk about this issue without losing my job or splitting my congregation?”
5. “If we’re failing to define our neighbour expansively—as Christ did—we're always going to get it wrong.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• World Relief
• Open Doors World Watch List 2025
• 2024 Lifeway Research on Evangelicals & Immigration
• PEPFAR Program – US Department of State
• National Association of Evangelicals
• Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Ron Sider
• Good News About Injustice, by Gary Haugen
• Walking with the Poor, by Bryant Myers

About Myal Greene

Myal Greene has a deep desire to see churches worldwide equipped, empowered, and engaged in meeting the needs of vulnerable families in their communities. In 2021, he became president and CEO after serving for fourteen years with the organization. While living in Rwanda for eight years, he developed World Relief’s innovative church-based programming model that is currently used in nine countries. He also spent six years in leadership roles within the international programs division. He has previous experience working with the US government. He holds a BS in finance from Lehigh University and an MA from Fuller Theological Seminary in global leadership. He and his wife Sharon have three children.

Show Notes

• Myal Greene’s call to faith-rooted leadership in alleviating poverty
• Greene’s path from Capitol Hill to World Relief, shaped by his conversion in his twenties and a deepening conviction about God’s heart for the poor
• “God was working in me and instilling a deep understanding of his heart for the poor.”
• Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Ron Sider
• Good News About Injustice, by Gary Haugen
• Walking with the Poor, by Bryant Myers
• Psalm 31:7–8: “I’ll be glad and rejoice for you have seen my troubles and you’ve seen the affliction of my soul, but you’ve not turned me over to the enemy. You’ve set me in a safe place.”
• “ Not only will God transform your life, but what it means to actually have experienced that and to feel that and to make that a very real personal experience.”
• 2007 in Rwanda
• Rwanda’s one-hundred-day memorial period for the 1994 genocide
• “The effects of the genocide were always there. You wouldn’t be able to see it, but it was always there.”
• Gacaca courts (system of transitional justice to handle the numerous legal cases following the 1994 genocide).
• “People would come and talk about what happened. … The attempts at apology, the attempts at reconciliation were powerful.”
• ”There are so many stories from Rwanda of true reconciliation where people have forgiven the people who’ve killed their family members or have forgiven people who’ve done terrible things to them.”
• ”How did the Gachacha courts see an interweaving or not of Christian faith in the process of the acts of forgiveness?”
• The church’s role: “The hard part and the amazing part of Rwanda is that reconciliation is deeply connected to individual cases.”
• “Inherently, reconciliation of people who have done the worst things imaginable to you is not a human thing.”
• World Relief's Legacy & Mission
• Founded in 1944 at Park Street Church, Boston, in response to World War II European displacement.
• “Feeding 180,000 people a day in Korea during the Korean War.”
• “We boldly engage the world’s greatest crises in partnership with the church.”
• The global displacement crisis
• Over 122 million forcibly displaced people worldwide—up from under 40 million in 2007 (a fourfold increase)
• “A handful of the most fragile nations of the world are experiencing extreme violence, fragility, rising poverty, the effects of climate change, and people are being forced to flee and put into d desperate situations.”
• “The generosity of the country is not being seen at a time when people in crisis face the greatest need.”
• World Relief is “one of ten refugee resettlement agencies, and we have been a refugee resettlement agency partnering with the US government since 1980 to do the work of welcoming refugees who come to this country. And we’ve partnered with every presidential administration since Jimmy Carter to do this work and have, have done so proudly.”
• Trump’s immigration and refugee resettlement policies
• Refugee resettlement has been halted since January 20, 2025—an estimated one thousand people per month left unwelcomed
• “At a time when people experiencing crisis are facing the greatest need, the generosity of the country is not being seen.”
• 120,000 refugees were welcomed in 2024.
• “We expected around 12,000” in 2025.
• “Should Christian organizations receive federal funding?”
• Cuts to federal humanitarian funding
• USAID interruptions directly affect food, health, and medical services in fragile states like Sudan, Haiti, and DRC.
• On PEPFAR: HIV-AIDS specific program established by George W. Bush
• PEPFAR: “25 million lives have been saved … now it’s among the casualties.”
• “Have these [federal cuts to humanitarian aid] increased philanthropic giving or has philanthropic giving dropped almost as a mirror of the government policy change?”
• Church response and misconceptions
• How should we manage uncertainty?
• When to use one’s voice to speak truth to power?
• “Polling shows evangelicals overwhelmingly support refugee resettlement—even Trump voters.”
• “Over 70 percent of evangelicals believe the US has a moral responsibility to welcome refugees to this country. Sixty-eight percent of of evangelicals voted for Trump agree with that statement as well.”
• Lifeway Research found only 9 percent of evangelicals cite the Bible or their pastor as their main source on immigration. “It would sit uncomfortably to any pastor if that were true about any other major issue.”
• “Pastors find themselves in this difficult place where they're trying to figure out, ‘How do I talk about this issue without losing my job and splitting my congregation?’”
• ”The dissonance between the way the press represents evangelical opinions about immigration”
• “Whether the church’s voice has enough authority to be able to actually affect people’s real time decisions about how they live in the world”
• “To be a truly a follower of Christ, you can’t be completely for a politician or completely for a political party because then you put that ahead of your faith in Christ.”
• “You have to be able to have that freedom to disagree with the leader or the party.”
• “A dog with a bone in his mouth can't bark. … I think that that's where we find ourself as a church right now. We want certain victories through political means, and we're willing to sacrifice our moral authority in order to get those. And I think that that's, that's a very dangerous place to be in as a church.”
• How Lifeway Research approaches their understanding of “evangelical Christian”
• “What is the authority of the church, and how is it exercising or failing to exercise its voice right now?”
• Hope for a compassionate church
• “The real movement happens when the church unites and uses its voice.”
• “One in twelve Christians in America will either be deported or live with someone who is subject to deportation.”

Production Credits

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

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What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Angela Williams Gorrell joins Mark Labberton to discuss her latest book, Braving Difficult Decisions. With poignant storytelling and theological depth, Gorrell shares how this book was born out of personal crucibles and a yearning to make sense of liminal, paralyzing spaces we all encounter—individually and communally. Together they explore how discernment is not just about decision-making but also about cultivating a life of wisdom, attentiveness, and spiritual depth.

Rooted in Christian tradition yet capacious across communities and contexts, Gorrell invites listeners to slow down, ask deeper questions, and consider the spiritual, emotional, and communal terrain that shapes every meaningful decision.

Episode Highlights

1. “To not make a decision is to make one as well.”
2. “This journey is about an inward journey that says, how do I look at the state of my own soul?”
3. “Sometimes good decisions don’t feel good.”
4. “What if the best idea isn’t the good idea? And what if the data can’t tell us that?”
5. “Lady Wisdom invites us to dine—to sit at a table with God and others, and not rush the meal.”

Helpful Links and Resources

• Braving Difficult Decisions, by Angela Williams Gorrell
• The Gravity of Joy, by Angela Williams Gorrell
• Life Worth Living course at Yale
• www.angelagorrell.com
• @angelagorrell on Instagram

Show Notes

• The “liminal space” of facing a difficult decision, arriving at a crossroads
• Defining discernment as “a practice, not a single moment of choice”
• The book stems from her decision to leave a tenured-track faculty position, and a painful personal choice about marriage
• Perpetua and Felicity—early Christian martyrs
• Individual discernment and soul work
• Life Worth Living at Yale
• “Can I be suffering and my life still be good?”
• The deeply heartbreaking experience of grappling with the question of divorce
• “I really struggled to find a book that was like, you can be deeply Christian, deeply spiritual, and make this very difficult choice.”
• “You have to put them in your own heart and soul. You have to grapple with these ideas, and then you write them.”
• Should we avoid difficult decisions?
• Discerning, then acting
• “To not make a decision is to make one as well.”
• “I wanted to write a book that spoke to that liminal space where we feel paralyzed.”
• “Good decisions don’t always feel good—they might still break your heart”
• Discusses difference between chronic pain and acute pain in decision-making
• Discernment helps identify not just what is “right,” but what leads toward peace
• Michaela O’Donnell and chronic pain
• Discernment is about “looking at the state of your own soul and becoming a steward of it”
• “This story that God is nurturing in the world—that story doesn’t hinge on like this decision in your life.”
• Self-examination, and feeling alone in the decision
• Community-based decision-making
• “There are all these false binaries.”
• “What baggage do you have from the past? And how do you make sure that you're not seeing the present moment through the past?”
• Being as gracious as possible
• “ What is a way that we can create space to really hear from God?—to hear from each other, and to move forward in a way that we're doing change together and not to each other.”
• “They need to figure out something together that matters deeply.”
• The book offers a pathway for congregations and organizations discerning together
• “How do we do change with people?”
• Encourages communities to take time, name past wounds, and define who makes decisions
• Identifies the importance of setting clear expectations, timelines, and spiritual framing
• “Listening to everyone takes time, but it leads to deeper collective ownership.”
• Invites communities to ask: What values do we want to embody in this moment?
• “Sometimes the most valuable part of the process is the slowness.”
• Wisdom, complexity, and culture
• Decision-making in our polarized society must account for nuance, empathy, and complexity
• “What if the data tells us one thing, but the Spirit tells us something else?”
• Resist “data-driven” decisions as totalizing; discernment includes emotion, history, and spirituality.
• “Sometimes good decisions don't feel good, you know? Sometimes a life worth living is not about pursuing happiness.”
• “Lady Wisdom invites us to come and to dine at her house and to sit at a table together.”
• Names systemic fatigue: “Organizations optimize while their people starve.”
• Decision-making is affected by race, gender, trauma, context—“there is no one-size-fits-all path”
• Discernment as a practice, not a moment
• Braving Difficult Decisions includes exercises and frameworks, such as the “iceberg model”
• “Most big questions are like an iceberg. There’s all this ice beneath the surface that you don't see. That’s really the stuff that people are grappling with.”
• Encourages ongoing wisdom practices: surrender, self-reflection, value-alignment
• The book is not just a guide for one hard moment, but a long-term companion
• Ideal for pastors, therapists, educators, spiritual directors, and leaders

About Angela Williams Gorrell

Rev. Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell is an author, speaker, and consultant. Gorrell speaks and writes about finding the life worth living, joy, meaning, and purpose, and the intersection of spiritual and mental health. She is the author of Always On, The Gravity of Joy, and Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. Angela’s research has been highlighted in media sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Gorrell has taught at several schools including Yale University and Baylor University. She has provided thought leadership and consulting for numerous organizations including the US Army and the NBA. You can find her at her website www.angelagorrell.com or on instagram @angelagorrell.

Production Credits

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

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Mental, emotional, and spiritual healing requires more than clinical technique—it demands sacrificial empathy, institutional trust, and a profound affirmation of the image of God in every human being. In this episode, clinical psychologist and Pine Rest CEO Mark Eastburg joins Mark Labberton to discuss the rising need for mental health care—especially for children, adolescents, and those recovering from severe trauma.

Eastburg offers insights about the post-pandemic mental health landscape; psychological and emotional resilience; trauma-informed therapy; deep listening; and the theological, moral, and social commitments that drive Eastburg’s approach to mental and spiritual health. They also discuss the systemic injustice underlying many mental health disparities, inviting us to see mental health care as a vital form of justice work rooted in compassion, dignity, and Christian witness.

Episode Highlights

1. “We’re in the healing moments business. That’s what we do … and I think those healing moments are the building blocks of the kingdom of God—just like atoms are the building blocks of the material world.”
2. “We’re in the healing moments business. … Those healing moments are the building blocks of the kingdom of God.”
3. “Mental health work is justice work … especially when we’re helping people who’ve been victims of injustice get back into community.”
4. “If you just react to people’s symptoms, you’ll get more symptoms. But if you can see the beautiful human being underneath, you’ll see more of that.”
5. “A Christian approach to therapy starts with the belief that every person is made in the image of God—and they are someone’s favourite brother or sister.”
6. “Jesus’s care for the outsider, for the downtrodden, the excluded—that has to define what we mean when we say we express the healing ministry of Christ.”

About Mark Eastburg

Mark Eastburg, PhD, is president and chief executive officer of Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, one of the five largest free-standing behavioural health organizations in the United States. With a doctorate in clinical psychology from Fuller Theological Seminary, Eastburg has served in both clinical and leadership roles at Pine Rest for over three decades. He is a passionate advocate for trauma-informed care, access to mental health services, and a faith-integrated approach to healing grounded in human dignity and Christian compassion.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services
• American Rescue Plan

Show Notes

• Mental Health Landscape post-Covid
• Surge in mental health needs for children and adolescents, especially after pandemic lockdowns
• Dramatic increase in psychiatric crises among youth: anxiety, self-harm, aggression
• Tele-therapy rose during Covid, but adolescents strongly prefer in-person care
• “The post-Covid world—everything seems to have become more intense.”
• The symptoms of the adolescent mental health crisis
• Rise in social media use and marijuana legalization amplifying symptoms
• Anxiety, substance abuse
• “We are really shaped and developed by practices.”
• The experience of children in foster care
• Trauma-informed care essential for children with abuse and neglect histories
• Empathy requires the therapist to engage in “sacrificial vulnerability”
• Human mutual vulnerability—”The therapist, to express such empathy, has to themselves be prepared to manifest their own vulnerability to the person who has their own underlying vulnerabilities.”
• Sage advice for therapists: “If you just react to people symptoms, you’re going to get more symptoms. But if you could look past the symptoms and see what he liked to call ‘the beautiful human being underneath everybody,’ anyone that you interact with, you'll see more of that.”
• Sacrificial empathy
• Working toward healing moments—the building blocks for the kingdom of God
• Christian psychotherapy: “the ability to look at people as made in God’s image.”
• Mental illness is another form of marginalization and exclusion
• “People are more than a set of symptoms to be treated.”
• Managing a crisis versus seeing a person
• How Pine Rest approaches mental health care
• Pine Rest’s new $100 million pediatric behavioural health center in Michigan
• “Instead of waiting months for care, kids can just walk in and we’ll sort it out.”
• New specialty clinics for autism, depression, eating disorders, and anxiety
• The universality of how mental health touches our lives
• Who sustains mental health care financially?
• What stokes a readiness for empathy?
• Deeper friendships and safe relationships of belonging as the foundation for mental health
• Stories of youth overcoming institutionalization and abuse through care
• “When a therapist sees the image of God, not just the behaviour, healing begins.”
• Cyprian of Carthage: “Let us be philosophers not in words, but in deeds.”
• “We often misperceive one another and then we misname one another and then we act in relationship to that person with the wrong name and the wrong perception.”
• Empathy, trauma, and Christian therapy
• “Our actions, our words can re-traumatize if we’re not approaching with care.”
• Connection between sacred empathy and human flourishing
• “You can’t manage people like machines—you have to wish for their flourishing.”
• The church, community, and mental health
• The role of church and community institutions in fostering resilience
• “You can’t train enough therapists to solve the crisis—we have to go upstream.”
• Stories of church communities embracing those with mental illness
• “Belonging precedes healing. If someone feels cared for, they’re more likely to show empathy.”
• Global suffering, Western understanding of “avoiding suffering,” and the search for meaning
• Contrast between global Christians and Western assumptions about suffering
• “While I think our work here at Pine Rest Mental Health—we're here to relieve suffering—there is suffering that is full of meaning and full of lessons to teach.”
• Christian healing values clashing with other predominant Western medical approaches
• “Suffering doesn’t equal God’s abandonment—it’s often where God meets us.”
• Concerns about over-medicalizing suffering and ignoring its spiritual richness
• Lessons from early Christian health-care pioneers—“the reckless ones” who ran toward the sick
• “There is suffering full of meaning and lessons that Western models tend to miss.”
• Justice, dignity, and the Christian vocation to empathic care
• “Mental health care is justice work—especially for those traumatized or left out.”
• “People suffering, struggling with mental illness are often the victims of injustices.”
• The practice of psychotherapy and mental health care as pursuing social justice
• Connections between structural injustice and mental illness
• Biblical vision of justice includes care for those seen as defective or excluded

Production Credits

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

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What is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)? And what does it have to do with conservative political power in the United States and abroad?

Leah Payne and Caleb Maskell join Mark Labberton for a deep dive into the emergence and impact of the New Apostolic Reformation—a loosely affiliated global network blending Pentecostal Christian spirituality, charismatic authority, and political ambition. With their combined pastoral experience and scholarly expertise, Payne and Maskell chart the historical, theological, and sociopolitical roots of this Pentecostal movement—from Azusa Street and Latter Rain revivals to modern dominion theology and global evangelicalism. They distinguish the New Apostolic Reformation from the broader Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, and explore the popular appeal, theological complexity, and political volatility of the New Apostolic Reformation.

Episode Highlights

• “Isn't this just conservative political activism with tongues and prophecy and dominion?”
• “At no point in time in the history of these United States … have Protestants not been interested in having a great deal of influence over public life.”
• “You can be super nationalistic in Guatemala, in Brazil, in India, and in the United States. … It is a portable form of nationalism.”
• “They are not moved by appeals to American democracy or American exceptionalism because they have in their mind the end times and the nation of Israel.”
• “Charismatics and Pentecostals, unlike other forms of American Protestantism … do not have a theological value for democracy.”

Main Themes

• Pentecostalism’s history and global influence
• Charismatic Christianity versus Pentecostalism
• Defining and explaining the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)
• C. Peter Wagner, Lance Hall, and Seven Mountain Mandate
• Dominion theology, Christian nationalism, and the religious Right
• Pentecostals and Trump politics
• Zionism in charismatic theology
• Vineyard movement, worship music, and intimacy with God

Linked Media References

• About Vineyard USA
• God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music by Leah Payne
• The New Apostolic Churches by C. Peter Wagner
• This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti
• Atlantic Article: “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows” by Stephanie McCrummen
• Bonhoeffer's America: A Land Without Reformation, by Joel Looper
• Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity, by Joel Looper

Show Notes

• Leah Payne defines Pentecostalism as “a form of American revivalism”
• William J. Seymour
• Marked by interracial desegregated worship and spiritual “fireworks” like tongues and prophecy
• Mystical experiences of God
• Desegregation and physically touching one another in acts of miraculous healing
• The Azusa Street Revival (1906) identified as a global catalyst for Assemblies of God denomination
• There is no founding theological figure, unlike Luther or Calvin
• Caleb Maskell emphasizes Pentecostalism’s roots in “a founding set of experiences,” not a founding theological figure
• “Limits to what makes a church”
• Lack of ecclesiological clarity leaves Pentecostalism open to both renewal and fragmentation
• Leah highlights Pentecostalism as “a shared experience … a shared series of practices.”
• “Holy Rollers” and being “slain in the Spirit”
• “A different way of knowing”
• “Christians are made through an encounter with Jesus.”
• The global “charismatic movement” and how it has had cross-denominational Influence
• “Charismatic” was a mid-twentieth-century term for Spirit-led practices arising within mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions
• Charismatic means “gifted” or “being given gifts”
• “‘Charismatic’ has typically been a more inclusive word than ‘Pentecostal.’”
• Emphasis on personal spiritual gifts and intimate worship styles
• “They are not respecters of institutions.”
• Figures like Oral Roberts and Amy Semple McPherson were “too big” for denominational constraints
• “Too-bigness” as driven by both an over-inflated ego and spiritual mysticism
• Frederick Buechner: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
• Spellbound, by Molly Worthen (see Conversing episode 212)
• What are the origins and key ideas of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)?
• New Apostolic Reformation: “a form of institutionalized charismatic identity that builds on grassroots consensus.”
• “NAR” coined by C. Peter Wagner at Fuller Seminary in the 1990s
• Wagner promoted post-denominationalism and “reality-based” church governance centred on individual charismatic gifts
• Emerged from a “larger soup” of charismatic ideas—often practiced before being systematized.
• Closely tied to the “Seven Mountain Mandate”: that Christians should influence key societal sectors—family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government
• The role of dominion theology and political alignment
• “The convergence of egos, the convergence of ethos … is a natural thing to see emerging.”
• “Dominion is really just two or three logical steps from an obsession with cultural relevance.”
• Payne sees dominionism as a Pentecostal-flavoured version of a broader conservative political strategy.
• “Charismatics and Pentecostals are everywhere … so we should expect them on the far right.”
• Many deny the NAR label even as they operate in its mode.
• ”When Bob Dylan’s in your church, suddenly your church is relevant, whether you like it or not.”
• Defining “Dominionism”
• “Dominion is really just two or three logical steps from an obsession with cultural relevance. Cultural relevance says church should fit—not prophetically, but should fit all but seamlessly—into modes of culture that people are already in.”
• What are the “Seven Mountains of Culture”?  Family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government—”the world would go better if Christians were in charge of each of those arenas.”
• “At no point in time in the history of these United States and the history of European settlers in the new world have Protestants not been interested in having a great deal of influence over public life.”
• Trump, Zionism, and global Pentecostal nationalism
• Christian nationalism versus religious Right
• “They are not moved by appeals to American democracy. … They think the nation of Israel is the nation of all nations.”
• “Isn’t this just conservative political activism with tongues and prophecy and dominion?”
• Anti-institutional and anti-structural
• How Trump seeks power and ego affirmation
• Christian theocratic rule?
• ”It may simply be a part of what it is to be a Christian is to say, at some level, within the spheres that I’m given authority in, I ought to have the right kind of influence, whatever it is.”
• “ I think what’s scary about the moment that we’re in right now is in fact the chaos.”
• A book about Donald Trump—God's Chaos Candidate, by Lance Wall
• ”The beliefs in divine prophecy are so widespread that they transcend partisanship.”
• Black Pentecostalism: immune to the charms of Trump and populist conservatives
• Trump’s Zionist overtures strategically captured charismatic loyalty
• The rise of global Pentecostal nationalism in countries like India, Brazil, and Guatemala parallels US patterns.
• “They don’t actually care long-term about American democracy.”
• “They are not moved by appeals to American democracy or American exceptionalism because they have in their mind the end times and the nation of Israel.”
• Prosperity gospel
• Dominionism and the Roman Catholic “doctrine of discovery”
• The gospel of Christ as “sorting power”
• “It is a portable form of nationalism.”
• Concerns about power, order, and eschatology
• Mark Labberton reflects on Fuller Seminary’s controversial role in NAR’s intellectual development.
• Payne critiques the equation of widespread Pentecostal practices with far-right dominionism.
• “What’s scary … is the chaos. And a number of people associated with NAR have celebrated that.”
• NAR theology often prioritizes divine chaos over institutional order.
• Warnings against super-biblical apostolic authority and spiritual authoritarianism.
• Pentecostalism beyond politics
• “There’s a vivid essentialism—make everything great and all the nations will gather.”
• Vineyard worship as a counterweight to dominionism—emphasizing intimacy and mystical union with Christ.
• “That emphasis on Jesus as a friend … is a really beautiful image of God.”
• Vineyard music helped export a gentle, intimate charismatic spirituality.

About Leah Payne

Leah Payne is associate professor of American religious history at Portland Seminary and a 2023–2024 public fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). She holds a PhD from Vanderbilt University, and her research explores the intersection of religion, politics, and popular culture. Payne is author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: a History of Contemporary Christian Music (Oxford University Press, 2024), and co-host of Rock That Doesn’t Roll, a Public Radio Exchange (PRX) podcast about Christian rock and its listeners, and Weird Religion, a religion and pop culture podcast. Her writing and research has appeared in The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today.

About Caleb Maskell

Caleb Maskell is the associate national director of theology and education for Vineyard USA. Born in London, he immigrated with his family to New Jersey in 1986, at the age of nine.

Caleb has been involved in leadership in the Vineyard movement for twenty-five years. After spending a gap year at the Toronto Airport Vineyard School of Ministry in 1995, he went to the University of Chicago to study theology, philosophy, and literature in the interdisciplinary undergraduate Fundamentals program. While there, he joined the core planting team of the Hyde Park Vineyard Church, where he served as a worship leader, a small group leader, a setter-up of chairs, and whatever else Rand Tucker asked him to do.

After college, full of questions that had emerged from the beautiful collision of serious academic study and the practical realities of church planting, Caleb enrolled in the MDiv program at Yale Divinity School. For four years, he immersed himself in the study of theology, church history, and Scripture, while also leading worship and working with middle school and high school youth groups. After graduating in 2004, he worked for three years as the associate director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.

In 2007, along with his wife Kathy and their friends Matt and Hannah Croasmun, Caleb planted Elm City Vineyard Church in New Haven, Connecticut. That year, he also began a PhD program at Princeton University, focusing on the history of American religion, with an additional emphasis in African American studies. After moving to Manhattan for four years while Kathy went to seminary, the Maskells ended up in suburban Philadelphia, where Caleb completed his PhD while teaching regularly at Princeton Theological Seminary, and serving as the worship pastor at Blue Route Vineyard Church.

Since 2010, Caleb has led the Society of Vineyard Scholars, which exists to foster and sustain a community of theological discourse in and for the Vineyard movement. Caleb is passionate about developing leaders and institutions that will help to produce a healthy, courageous, and hospitable future for the church in the twenty-first century. Caleb and Kathy now live with their two kids, Josiah and Emmanuelle, in the heart of Denver, where Kathy pastors East Denver Vineyard Church.

Production Credits

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

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Historian and journalist Molly Worthen explores the mysterious and potent force of charisma, and its power to shape American identity, culture, politics, and religion. She explains how storytelling, transcendence, and authority are used by America’s most charismatic leaders.

Drawing on her new book, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump, Worthen shares how charismatic authority reveals deep human desires for meaning, agency, and transcendence. The conversation explores themes of vulnerability, spiritual hunger, religious disaffiliation, and the evolving nature of belief and belonging in modern society.

Worthen unpacks the often-overlooked distinction between charisma and charm or celebrity, examining the role of storytelling in cultivating authority and devotion.

She also shares how researching this subject intersected with her own spiritual journey, culminating in her recent conversion to Christianity.

Key Moments

• Molly Worthen discusses her latest book, Spellbound.
• Charisma: a relational, story-driven phenomenon, not mere charm or celebrity
• Our religious impulse persists despite declining traditional affiliation
• Worthen’s personal spiritual journey: from intellectual agnosticism to Christian faith while writing the book
• Donald Trump’s narrative charisma and religious-political appeal examined in depth
• Human longing for transcendence and meaning as the root of charismatic power

Episode Highlights

1. “Evangelism is just telling people what happened to you.”
2. “The heart of charisma is the leader’s ability to tell a story … that does a better job at explaining the chaos and the suffering.”
3. “We want the comfort of knowing that some force larger than us is ultimately in charge—and yet we also seek agency.”
4. “I came to realize I was writing a book that was fundamentally about spiritual hunger—and that I myself had that hunger too.”
5. “Authenticity as a personal style has no necessary relationship with honesty.”
6. “We kid ourselves if we think more sources solve the mystery of charisma—reality is an asymptote we never perfectly reach.”

About Molly Worthen

Molly Worthen is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in North American religion, politics, global Christianity, and the history of ideas. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times and author of several books, including Apostles of Reason and The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost. Her most recent book is Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump.

Show Notes

• Authority—who should we listen to?
• Internal battles within American evangelicalism
• The definition of charisma and its distinction from charm, celebrity, and power
• Charisma: “ the allure in a leader that gives him or her the power to move a crowd that is premised on a relationship. … You need two parties at least. It’s not solely a quality of fluorescence that shines out from the individual without other people to interact with it.”
• The leader’s ability to tell a story that explains the audience’s experience of life
• Paradoxical quality: we want our decision to make a difference in our fate, but we also want some being or force larger than us to make it all okay.
• “ It’s not just about looking at the one who is the special anointed one, but it’s that somehow through that person, I too, or we too, see ourselves more clearly.”
• Special revelation and stories of experiencing God in particular ways
• “Capturing the ineffable”
• Role of charismatic leaders in American religious and political life
• Impact of Joseph Smith, Anne Hutchinson, JFK, and Adlai Stevenson
• Why institutional religion no longer captures spiritual impulse for many Americans
• Storytelling as the essence of charismatic authority
• Evolution of American individualism and the cult of authenticity
• How mass media, trauma, and cultural crises shape charismatic influence
• Coming to terms with the limits of your “source base”—”Reality is an asymptote.”
• “It’s that sort of transcendent storytelling ability that is the heart of charisma.”
• Mormonism and the charisma of Joseph Smith
• Leaders like JFK and Adlai Stevenson offered different models of modern charisma
• “So much of my book is really about the fortunes of established institutions in American culture because charismatic figures always define themselves vis-à-vis institutions.”
• Routinizing charisma (cf. Max Weber)
• “The gap or the consistency between what our subjects are, are thinking and intending consciously and what they actually do.”
• Intuition versus analysis—steeping in cultural milieu and operating out of personal life experiences
• The Puritan heretic Anne Hutchinson
• “Very few humans are out-and-out cynics.”
• Charismatic figures aren’t always attractive or eloquent—they resonate through meaning-making.
• “ The religious impulse is finding a place to land other than organized religion.”
• Protestant roots of American consciousness tied to authority and self-discovery
• Humanist psychology and positive thinking
• “The age of the gurus”
• Charisma and Contemporary Politics: Donald Trump
• Trump’s story of victimhood, self-made success, and defiance of institutions as a charismatic myth
• Trump’s stream-of-consciousness style perceived as authenticity by many followers.
• “For example, his rambling stream-of-consciousness speaking style that actually is a core to his appeal, I think, for many Trump supporters because it comes across as a kind of authenticity—as a willingness to tell it how it is and speak off the top of his head. And authenticity as a personal style has no necessary relationship with honesty in terms of correspondence to, you know, empirically verifiable facts.”
• The alignment between his narrative and the prosperity gospel
• ”While Donald Trump is no one's idea of an orthodox Christian, he grew up in Norman Vincent Peale's church in New York City, Marble Collegiate Church, hearing the prosperity gospel, the gospel of positive thinking.”
• ”I think Trump has a, has a really acute spiritual instinct for. That picture of reality one in which we can really reshape reality with our minds.”
• Early support from independent charismatic church networks shaped his rise.
• Importance of positive thinking theology (e.g., Norman Vincent Peale) in his spiritual instincts.
• “I suppose I was about two-thirds of the way through the rough draft of this book when I was rudely interrupted by the Holy Spirit. I have always studied Christianity as a very sympathetic and, frankly, envious outsider and never was entirely happy with my agnostic fence sitting, but also wasn't actively looking to resolve my metaphysical questions.”
• “ I’ve always had this conviction that humans are fundamentally religious creatures and they have this impulse to connect to a transcendent source of meaning to worship.”
• “I came to realize that I was writing a book that was fundamentally about spiritual hunger and how humans cope with it. But that I myself had had that hunger as well—that I’m not immune to that feature of the human dilemma.”
• “We want to be pulled into something transcendent, where we are more fully ourselves.”
• Praying for a mystical experience—at least being “strangely warmed”
• ”God had already done something to my desires—I was walking in the direction of Jesus already.”
• “ I always see every kind of historical problem as somehow having to do with contesting visions of human nature.”
• “There’s this silly misconception that Christianity is intellectually stultifying—that to become an orthodox, traditional Christian is to shut off all kinds of questions and accept a black-and-white way of thinking. And that has not been my experience.”
• Research project on miracles
• “ Evangelism is just telling people what happened to you.”
• Conversion was driven by rigorous academic inquiry into the resurrection and New Testament
• Experience echoed themes in the book: story, vulnerability, and being seen
• Her analysis: “God had already done something to my desires before the arguments convinced me.”
• Post-conversion excitement about theological study, healing, and miracles

Production Credits

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

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Cancer is among the most common and feared diseases in the modern world. Dr. Selwyn Vickers—president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—joins host Mark Labberton to discuss how precision oncology, data, and faith are transforming cancer treatment.

A distinguished cancer surgeon and pancreatic cancer researcher, Vickers explains how groundbreaking advances in genomics, immunotherapy, and AI are transforming once-lethal diagnoses into survivable and even chronic conditions. Together, they explore not only the cutting-edge science of cancer care but also the spiritual, emotional, and social dimensions that affect every patient and caregiver.

Resonating with themes of suffering, hope, and resurrection, this conversation offers clarity, compassion, and courage for all who are affected by cancer—from those newly diagnosed, to medical professionals, to grieving families and curious listeners.

Episode Highlights

• “We’re getting to a point where we will, in the next five to seven years, have a much better chance to cure people—and to make pancreatic cancer a chronic illness.”
• “We are in what’s somewhat coined the golden age of cancer research.”
• “Cancer is a disease that creates an existential threat in ways no other illness does.”
• “If a tumour forms, it means your body’s immune system has made a social contract with the cancer.”
• “We changed the diagnosis in 10–12 percent of the patients who come to us—sometimes from cancer to no cancer.”
• “Cancer care is a team sport. And our patients often inspire us more than we help them.”

Helpful Links & Resources

• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• BioNTech – creators of mRNA vaccines for COVID and cancer
• CAR T-Cell Therapy Overview (Cancer.gov)
• Tim Keller on cancer and hope
• Emma Thompson’s Wit (HBO)
• BRCA1 and BRCA2 Genes and Cancer Risk
• MSK-IMPACT: Next-Gen Tumor Profiling

About Selwyn Vickers

Selwyn M. Vickers, MD, FACS, is the president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and the incumbent of the Douglas A. Warner III Chair. He assumed the role on September 19, 2022.

Vickers is an internationally recognized pancreatic cancer surgeon, pancreatic cancer researcher, and pioneer in health disparities research. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He has served on the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Board of Trustees and the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees. Additionally, he has served as president of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract and the Southern Surgical Association. Vickers is the immediate past president of the American Surgical Association. He also continues to see patients.

In 1994, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery, where he was later appointed to professor and the John H. Blue Chair of General Surgery. In 2006, Vickers left UAB to become the Jay Phillips Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Born in Demopolis, Alabama, Vickers grew up in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville. He earned baccalaureate and medical degrees and completed his surgical training (including a chief residency and surgical oncology fellowship) at the Johns Hopkins University. Vickers completed two postgraduate research fellowships with the National Institutes of Health and international surgical training at John Radcliffe Hospital of Oxford University, England.

Vickers and his wife, Janice, who is also from Alabama, have been married since 1988. They have four children.

Show Notes

• The ongoing threat and fear of cancer
• How Selwyn Vickers got into medicine
• Pancreatic cancer: Vickers’s expertise
• “We are in what’s somewhat coined the golden age of cancer research.”
• Sequencing the human genome
• “Is there a drug that might target the mutation that ended up creating your cancer?”
• Cancer as both a medical and existential diagnosis
• The revolution of precision oncology through human genome sequencing
• ”It takes a billion cells to have a one centimetre tumor.”
• Immunotherapy: checkpoint inhibition, CAR T-cell therapy, and vaccines
• Cellular therapy:   ”Taking a set of their normal cells and re-engineering them to actually go back and target and attack their tumors. … We’ve seen patients who had initially a 30 percent chance of survival converted to an 80 percent chance of survival.”
• “We know in many tumours there’s something called minimal residual disease.”
• “Immunizing yourself against cancer is a significant future opportunity.”
• Managing the power of data with AI and computational oncology
• Cancer-care data explosion: the role of computational oncologists
• Cancer vaccines: breakthrough mRNA treatment for pancreatic cancer
• ”Didn’t ultimately win. We had to suffer through her losing her life, but was so appreciative that she got much more than the six months she was promised.”
• Tumour misdiagnoses and the importance of specialized expertise
• Pancreatic cancer challenges: immune cloaking and late-stage detection
• In the past, one in four would die from the operation for removing pancreatic cancer
• Long-term survival
• Future of cancer detection: AI-based medical record analysis and blood biopsies
• More accurate blood tests to confirm conditions
• Using AI to select those who are high-risk for cancer
• Pastor Tim Keller died of pancreatic cancer.
• In the past, “your doctor … helped you learn how to die.”
• ”[God’s] given man the privilege to discover those things that have been hidden. And over time we've gradually uncovered huge opportunities to impact people’s lives.”
• The state of breast cancer research and treatment
• “If you get the diagnosis of breast cancer, you have a 90 percent chance to survive and beat it over a five-year period of time.”
• ”In general, we’re in a great state of understanding how to treat breast cancer, how to detect it early, and then have selective and targeted mechanisms to prevent it from coming back.”
• Prostate cancer research and treatment
• Theranostics: using a specific antibody to target cancer cells specifically
• Pediatric cancer:  ”We actually treat more children for cancer than any hospital in America now, but in general, the survival for pediatric cancers is greater than 80 percent.”
• Emotional, psychological, and spiritual toll of cancer: importance of psycho-oncology
• How Sloan Kettering developed psycho-oncology to help cancer patients with mental and spiritual health
• Personal story: how a cafeteria worker empowers patients through food choices
• “We give back to them the right to choose what they get to have on their tray.”
• Cancer treatment is a team sport.
• Wit (film, Broadway play)—actress Emma Thompson plays a cancer patient studying the work of John Donne on death
• Socioeconomic and racial disparities in cancer care outcomes
• The healing role of community, support teams, and compassionate listening
• The importance of listening to cancer patients who are preparing to die
• The spiritual courage of patients and the transformative power of faith
• “Our patients often help us. We see the grace with which they often handle that journey.”
• The inspiration behind becoming a doctor: family legacy and human impact
• Terminal care: the sacred responsibility of walking with patients to the end
• Cancer research and treatment as a Christian vocation and expression of humanity

Production Credits

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“Leadership is defined by listening.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton explains the essential role listening plays in leadership and successful communication.  Leaders are often known for what they’ve said publicly or privately, but in actual fact, the experience of leadership and the effectiveness of leadership is determined by the mutuality of listening and learning that goes on between the primary leader and the team that they’re working with at any given time. Here, Mark shares from his decades of leadership experience as a Presbyterian minister and seminary president.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• Relationships of trust
• “ Listening is as critical to the existence of leadership as it is to the partnership of leadership.”
• “ If we don't have listening, then the partnership that leadership requires simply can't exist.”
• What leadership is really about: the people you’re leading are known, served, discovered, changed, renewed
• Tone-deaf leaders: leaders who are out of touch
• If you don’t want to be out of touch or tone deaf, “enter the room listening.”
• “Leaders are often known for what they’ve said publicly or privately, but in actual fact, the experience of leadership and the effectiveness of leadership is determined by the mutuality of listening and learning that goes on between the primary leader and the team that they’re working with at any given time.”
• Mutuality of learning and listening together—adding oxygen to the room
• Bringing part of yourself versus bringing your whole self to a leadership relationship
• “ Let’s not listen to one another first critically and negatively. Let’s listen to one another with hope, with earnestness, with a genuine desire to receive their perspective and letting that actually inform how we lead.”
• “When I ran into people who are having difficulties with their senior leader, it’s almost always around the leader’s failure to listen. At one level or another, they are not hearing the people that they’re leading.”
• “A leader who doesn't listen is like a person deciding to jump off a cliff. …  The longer they don’t listen, the more they are isolated by themselves and at risk.”
• Leadership enriched by an understanding of each other
• “A shared communion of decision making”

Production Credits

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

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Strong leadership is born not from control, but from authentic community and the cultivation of people and teams. Nathan Hatch, former president of Wake Forest University and esteemed historian, joins Mark Labberton to reflect on the nature of transformative leadership. Drawing from his decades of experience at Notre Dame and Wake Forest—and from his new book, The Gift of Transformative Leaders—Hatch explores how leaders cultivate thriving institutions through humility, vision, and empowerment. Hatch shares his personal journey from growing up in a Presbyterian home to leading major universities, while reflecting on the comomunity, character, instincts, and freedom required for lasting institutional impact.

Episode Highlights

• "Organizations aren't self-generating—you bet on people, not on strategy."
• "Organizations are best served when you have a team of like-minded people, each using their own strengths."
• "Leadership has to flow out of who you are authentically—you can't try to be someone else."
• "If you have exceptional people, it takes management of a different form—it's collaboration."
• "Leadership is not about control but about strength: hiring strong people is harder, but it's transformative."
• "People read your real meanings, not your words—authenticity is the heart of leadership."

Helpful Links & Resources

• The Gift of Transformative Leaders, by Nathan Hatch
• University of Notre Dame
• Wake Forest University
• Jim Collins - Good to Great

About Nathan Hatch

Dr. Nathan O. Hatch is President Emeritus of Wake Forest University and one of America’s leading scholars of religion and higher education. Prior to his presidency at Wake Forest (2005–2021), Hatch served as provost at the University of Notre Dame. His groundbreaking scholarship in American religious history includes The Democratization of American Christianity, and his latest book is The Gift of Transformative Leaders. Hatch is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and continues to speak and write on leadership, higher education, and culture.

Show Notes

• Raised in a Christian home; son of a Presbyterian minister and teacher
• Influenced early by history teacher and work experiences in Cabrini Green, Chicago
• Studied at Wheaton College, Washington University in St. Louis, and Johns Hopkins University
• Became an unlikely but successful historian at the University of Notre Dame
• Leadership philosophy shaped by early experiences with supportive professional teams and deep community and friendship
• How did the past come to change and create the world we live in?
• Transitioned from historian to administrator, balancing scholarship and administration
• Provost at Notre Dame: emphasized empowering faculty through development and resources
• President at Wake Forest: built strong leadership teams, expanded institutional vision
• Reflections on Father Theodore Hesburgh’s visionary leadership at Notre Dame
• “Organizations aren’t self-generating. … [it takes] a vision and leader.”
• "Leadership must be authentic; it must come out of who you are."
• The transformative impact of great leadership teams over hierarchical control
• Importance of raising institutional aspirations and empowering individuals to flourish
• "Hiring strong people makes the leader stronger, not weaker."
• Nathan Hatch’s book, The Gift of Transformative Leaders
• Profiles 13 leaders who exemplify commitment, character, and institution-building
• Focus on people-centric leadership: authenticity, humility, vision
• Leaders described as radiating positivity, cultivating others, and advancing institutional missions
• Catholic and Protestant institutional differences in faith expression
• Creating inclusive religious life in pluralistic academic communities
• Investing in character education through initiatives like Wake Forest's scholarship programs
• Building culture: "Noticing people, investing in them, seeing their potential."
• “How do we help young people live their life?”
• Identifying and empowering exceptional talent
• Embracing unconventional hiring practices
• Building thriving, collaborative, life-giving teams
• Cultivating environments where people pursue a common good
• Navigating faculty-administration relationships with authenticity and transparency
• Facing organizational financial challenges without losing people-first priorities
• Leadership in contexts with limited resources: raising people’s potential
• Authenticity and empathy are foundational to leadership
• Humility and commitment to the common good are non-negotiable
• Leaders must genuinely invest in the flourishing of others
• Institutions are transformed not by structures alone but by transformative people

Production Credits

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

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Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nicholas Kristof (opinion columnist, the New York Times) reflects on his career of reporting from the front lines of injustice and human suffering, discussing hope, human resilience, and the urgency of responding to global injustice.

An advocate for empathy-driven journalism that holds power accountable and communicates the stories of the most vulnerable, Kristof joins Mark Labberton in this episode to discuss his life’s work of reporting from the world’s most troubled regions—from Gaza to Congo, from rural Oregon to global centres of power. Known for his unsparing storytelling and deep empathy, Kristof shares the family roots and personal convictions that have shaped his lifelong pursuit of justice and hope.

They also explore how despair and progress coexist, the role of faith and empathy in healing, and how local acts of courage can ripple globally. Grounded in gritty realism, but inspired by everyday heroes, Kristof invites us to resist numbness and embrace a hope that fights to make a difference.

• Stories from Gaza, Congo, Pakistan, and beyond
• Balancing heartbreak and hope in humanitarian reporting
• Why empathy must be cultivated and practiced
• The global impact of Christian activism and its complexities

Episode Highlights

“Side by side with the worst of humanity, you find the very best.”

“We focus so much on all that is going wrong, that we leave people feeling numb and that it’s hopeless … but people don’t want to get engaged in things that are hopeless.”

“Empathy is something that, like a muscle, can be nurtured.”

“The worst kinds of evil and the greatest acts of courage are often just one decision apart.”

“We are an amazing species—if we just get our act together.”

“You can be sex positive and rape negative. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency there.”

About Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, and is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, **where he was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Born, raised, and still working from his rural Oregon home, Yamhill, he is a graduate of Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

He is the co-author, with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, of five previous books: Tightrope, A Path Appears, Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. In 2024, he published a memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.

Books by Nicholas Kristof

Tightrope

A Path Appears

Half the Sky

Thunder from the East

China Wakes

Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life

Helpful Resources

International Justice Mission

Dr. Denis Mukwege – Nobel Peace Prize

PEPFAR: The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

Tim Keller’s Final Interview with Kristof (NYT)

Show Notes

• A voice of conscience
• How a global orientation for journalism developed
• Kristof reflects on his humble roots in Yamhill, Oregon, as the son of two immigrants
• “My dad was a Armenian refugee from Eastern Europe. His family had spied on the Nazis during World War II. They got caught. Some were executed by the Nazis, others were executed by the Soviet communists, and my dad was very lucky to make it out alive and was sponsored by a family in the US in 1952.”
• “I think that one fundamental mistake that bleeding hearts make, whether they’re bleeding hearts in journalism or in the non-profit community or in advocacy, is that we focus so much on all that is going wrong that we leave people feeling numb and feeling that it’s hopeless, so there’s no point in engaging. And there’s pretty good evidence from social-psychology experiments that people don’t want to get engaged in things that are hopeless. They want to make a difference. And so I think that we need to both acknowledge all the challenges we face but also remind people that there can be a better outcome if they put their shoulder to the wheel.”
• Extraordinary changes for justice and what’s going right
• David Brooks: “A deeply flawed country that also managed to do good in the world.”
• ”It just breaks my heart that kids are dying unnecessarily.”
• On losing PEPFAR foreign aid: “I hope that this damage can be repaired and that bleeding hearts of the left and the right can work together to try to help restore some of these initiatives.”
• The tragedies that followed from dismantling USAID
• Kristof’s book Chasing Hope
• “The fact is that I've seen some terrible things, and I think I may have a mild case of PTSD from, you know, seeing too much.”
• Nicholas Kristof on Gaza: “I don’t see Israel and Hamas as morally equivalent, but I absolutely see an Israeli child, a Palestinian child, and an American child as moral equivalents.  And we don’t treat them that way.”
• “What human beings share is that when terrible things happen, some people turn into psychopaths and sociopaths, and other people turn into heroes.”
• Cowardice and malevolent tendencies
• Empathy can be nurtured
• Children dying without anti-retroviral drugs in South Sudan
• Empathy Project in Canada
• Mass literature to inspire perspective taking
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Black Beauty and animal rights/well-being
• Kristof’s run for Oregon governor
• Eastern Congo and UNICEF
• “A child is raped every thirty minutes in Eastern Congo.”
• Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize laureate treating women brutally injured by militia rape in Bukavu, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Small gestures of compassion as an empathy grower for local communities
• “One of the lessons I think of Congo is that violence can be and inhumanity can be terribly contagious.”
• Genocide in Rwanda in 1994
• The global sex-trafficking crisis
• “We don’t have the moral authority to tell other countries to do better unless we clean up our own act.”
• The American sex-trafficking crisis: systemic failures such as foster care pipelines into trafficking
• “There are no statistics, but I think it’s plausible that a girl in foster care is more likely to emerge to be trafficked than she is to graduate from a four-year college.”
• American sex-trafficking practices by PornHub and X-Videos: “Their business model is monetizing kids.”
• “You can be sex positive and rape negative. I don’t think there’s an inconsistency there, and I, I think we’ve just blurred that too often.”
• Christianity’s disappointing response to injustice
• Nicholas Kristof’s engagement with the activism and theology of the Christian church
• William Wilberforce’s anti-slavery movement in the 1780s
• President Bush’s establishment of PEPFAR in 2003: “This incredible program to reduce the burden of AIDS that has saved 26 million lives so far. It’s the most important program of any country in my adult lifetime in terms of saving lives.”
• “Evangelicals are very good in terms of tithing and donating money to good causes, but they’ve often opposed government programs  that would create opportunity and address these problems.”
• “Liberals are personally stingy, but much more supportive of government programs that that make a difference.”
• Criticizing the dismantling of global aid programs like USAID: “How can you read the Gospels and think this is good?”
• “I think being part of a religious community has led people to do good works together.”
• Christian advocacy for freedom of religion
• Kristof on scripture and belief: “We read the Bible and develop our religious views, and I think so often just reflects our priors rather than what the text says.”
• A closing example of hope: The Afghan war
• “We are an amazing species if we just get our act together.”

Production Credits

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

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In this episode, Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, joins Mark Labberton to discuss the seismic political, moral, cultural, and spiritual crises facing American evangelicalism and how to respond.

Reflecting on his own journey from the Southern Baptist Convention to his current role, Moore offers a candid and theologically rich diagnosis of a movement he describes as simultaneously fragmented, bored, and longing for renewal.

Drawing parallels to historical awakenings and moments of global upheaval, Moore challenges listeners to consider what faithful Christian witness looks like in a time of digital saturation, political idolatry, and ecclesial disillusionment. Together, they wrestle with how evangelical institutions can resist becoming co-opted by market forces or ideologies, and instead return to the soul of the gospel—Jesus himself.

Episode Highlights

“We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture.” (Russell Moore)

“The good news is so clouded with distorted noise.” (Mark Labberton)

“You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem.” (Wendall Berry, cited by Russell Moore)

“Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication.” (Nicholas Carr, cited by Russell Moore)

“Christian Nationalism is like ‘Bizarro Evangelicalism’ … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness.” (Russell Moore)

Karl Barth on Christian disillusionment during World War I: “We  we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened.” … “ He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God.”

About Russell Moore

Russell Moore is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin Random House).

The Wall Street Journal has called Moore “vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate.” He was named in 2017 to Politico Magazine’s list of top fifty influence-makers in Washington, and has been profiled by such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and the New Yorker.

An ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and, before that, as the chief academic officer and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics.

Moore was a Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and currently serves on the board of the Becket Law and as a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C.

He also hosts the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show and is co-host of Christianity Today’s weekly news and analysis podcast, The Bulletin.

Russell was President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2013 to 2021. Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.

A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons. They live in Nashville, where he teaches the Bible regularly at their congregation, Immanuel Church.

Show Notes

• Comparing Christianity Today and Fuller Theological Seminary
• Religious reconsiderations post-World War II
• “My grandfather was blown out of a tank by the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge and came back. He went an unbeliever, came back really feeling his mortality and, and searching for answers. And ended up at a revival meeting where he came to know Christ.”
• A false choice presented to Christians: “You had this false choice being presented to Christians … you either go with an ever narrowing, ever quarrelsome sort of group of fundamentalists or you liberalize.”
• Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The recent history of Evangelical Christianity
• A Movement in Crisis: What is the state of Evangelicalism in America?
• Revival preachers and entrepreneurialism: a religious, market-driven reality
• “Lifelessness and deadness”
• “ I can't think of a single church that has split over Christology. Most of the arguments have to do with politics and, and related sort of cultural issues because that's what people really care about and what they really think often is important.”
• Tumult of the digital economy
• Alienation, dehumanization: “We can simultaneously think of ourselves as gods and as sets of data and algorithms.”
• Speed of change and life
• Teaching ethics: a final exam question students have never thought about
• How to prepare people for ethical problems and real-life challenges
• Mental health crisis: “high rates of depression and anxiety driven by a piece of glass that everybody carries in his or her pocket that can connect that person with all of the information in the entire world.”
• 100 years since the invention and use of the microphone
• No microphones, but extraordinary voices
• “The dials are askew, because the sound that evangelicalism is evoking in so many quadrants is a sound that is hostile and grading and brash and arrogant.”
• “The good news is so clouded with distorted noise.”
• Secularization
• How Evangelicalism appeals to people: End Times Prophecy, Marriage and Family Values, and Shocking Attention-Grabbing
• “Real life takes on the characteristics of the internet.”
• Wendall Berry: “You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem.”
• Can you give us some hope?
• “Hope that is seen is not hope. Instead, there's suffering that creates endurance. Endurance that creates character, character that creates hope, and hope does not put to shame.”
• Ezekiel and the valley of the dry bones
• What is the work of Christianity Today right now?
• Redefining who is “us.” Who is the “we” of Evangelicalism?
• “We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture.”
• 2 Corinthians 4: “The glory of God reflected in the face of Jesus Christ.”
• Karl Barth and disillusionment during World War I: “We  we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened.” … “ He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God.”
• How to cultivate freedom
• “One of the major challenges to a freedom is loss of attention.”
• “I have to be free from the constant whirl—and what he meant at the time was the radio, you know, which is nothing compared to what we have—because my attention is necessary for me to be able to serve and to give.”
• “Kingdom of God is like yeast.” Waiting, attention, and a longer view of time
• “How do you then hold onto this freedom that we're describing in a way of connected disconnectedness or disconnected connectedness or something?”
• Nicholas Carr: “Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication.”
• Revelation and the Book of Daniel: “Seal all this up for now. … Don’t worry about it.”
• Nebuchadnezzar demanding  that. Shadrach, Mishak, and Abednego bow down and worship the golden statue.
• Evangelical Pastors: Preaching the Bible versus advocating a political vision
• Galatians 1 and 2—Paul’s not yielding to false teachers in order to preserve the Gospel
• New Apostolic Reformation
• Christian Nationalism: “Bizarro Evangelicalism … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness.”
• “Blood mysticism”
• Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes
• Keeping guard up in conversations with disagreement
• “Simply asking for Christians to be who we say we are.”

Production Credits

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

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“If a person is entrusted to care for a building and decides to tear it down, there's a moral imperative to disclose whether there are people inside. There are 20.6 million people and 566,000 children living inside PEPFAR.”

PEPFAR is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. And as of March 25, 2025, its congressional reauthorization has expired.

For more than two decades, its website states, “the U.S. government has invested over $110 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history—saving 26 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries.”

Now, some estimate that over 20 million people will lose access to antiretroviral drugs, which may result in up to 1,650,000 deaths over the coming year.

In this episode, Mark Labberton speaks with Mindy Belz, an award-winning journalist and longtime war correspondent, to explore the urgent moral and humanitarian implications of PEPFAR’s uncertain future. Drawing on Belz’s deep reporting experience in conflict zones and her time covering global health efforts, their conversation traces the remarkable legacy of the U.S. government’s investment in HIV/AIDS relief, the stakes of congressional inaction, and the broader questions this crisis raises about American moral leadership, Christian charity, and global responsibility.

Together they discuss:

Mindy Belz’s background as a journalist and war correspondent

The significance of PEPFAR in the global battle against HIV/AIDS

The pivotal leadership role the U.S. government has played in supporting AIDS relief efforts for the past two decades

The devastating impact that losing PEPFAR would have on human life around the world, particularly in Africa

And, perspectives on charity, moral conscience, and faith in American Christianity

Helpful Links

mindybelz.com

Mindy’s Article about PEPFAR: “1,650,000: How killing a global program to fight HIV/AIDS kills”: “PEPFAR contracts ended under Trump mean 20 million people on treatment now face HIV disease again. Without more reinstatements that could lead to a death toll of 1.6 million in a year's time.”

About PEPFAR, the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”: Through PEPFAR, the U.S. government has invested over $110 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history – saving 26 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries.

From ThinkGlobalHealth: “PEPFAR Misses Reauthorization Deadline: What's Next for Global HIV Fight?”

Mindy’s book They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East

Follow Mindy on X @mindybelz

Follow Mindy on Substack: Globe Trot

About Mindy Belz

Mindy Belz is an award-winning American journalist. For over two decades, she has covered wars and victims of conflict in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Sudan and the Balkans. She recounts some of her experiences in a 2016 award-winning book, They Say We Are Infidels.

Her work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Plough Quarterly, and other publications. The New York Times calls her “one of the bravest and best foreign correspondents in the country.”

Mindy currently is editor of the 2024 Christianity Today Globe project. Her news roundup, Globe Trot, is read by thousands each week and available on Substack. She speaks internationally and has taught journalism courses in Uganda, India, Hungary, and the United States. She is the former senior editor at World Magazine.

A mother of four and grandmother of three, Mindy was married for 40 years to Nat Belz, who died in 2023. She lives in North Carolina.

Show Notes

Mindy Belz: A Journalist in the Trenches

• Mindy Belz and her career at World Magazine
• Mindy’s coverage of the AIDS pandemic in East Africa and the war in Sudan
• The rise of Islamic extremism, Al-Quaeda, and crossing the Tigris into Iraq
• Her early experiences in journalism and what drew her to war reporting
• How she came to report from the Middle East and other conflict zones
• The challenges Mindy faced as a woman journalist
• “We've all experienced some of the conflict in the world. We've all experienced some terrorism and violence … this is a part of life in a broken and fallen world, and so learning from women, from men, from children incredible resilience in the face of terrible breakdowns is that I just consider a real privilege of my work.”
• Working with a Sudanese NGO—finding starving people, barely surviving
• “For Americans, we always get to walk away. I'm really aware in whatever hard situation I'm in, there's little voice at the back of my brain that's saying, ‘Don't forget you get to go home.’”

What is PEPFAR?

• “ President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” developed by George W. Bush in 2003
• Trendsetting program to battle HIV/AIDS
• Anti-viral drug program to prevent the spread (but not cure) the disease
• “We still don’t have a real cure for HIV.”
• “You have 20 million people who are currently taking antiretroviral drugs that are funded under PEPFAR and most of those people just suddenly could not have access to their medicine and, and that means that we are watching even now the disease grow.”
• “The Trump administration has basically shuttered the program and they have done so without the oversight of Congress.”
• Nicholas Kristof’s NYT March 15 article estimates that 1.6 million people could die over the next year. Link: “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.”
• “The scale of the devastation is mind-bending.”
• What can we do?
• “Congress is not exercising its oversight responsibilities right now.”
• “If a person is entrusted to care for a building and decides to tear it down, there's a moral imperative to disclose whether there are people inside. There are 20.6 million people and 566,000 children living inside PEPFAR.”
• What is the role of our government?
• “I've also seen PEPFAR working and working incredibly. I routinely and in lifesaving ways.”
• Understanding moral conscience
• “We are needing to call our nation not to a Christian identity, which I think is the, the false attempt of Christian nationalism, but to a moral identity. That people of faith, little faith, no faith, other faiths, can enter into and share. And I think some element of that has been operational in the United States for a very long time. And now all of that is being dismantled and being labeled, as you say, by a really cheap word like charity, as though there's no wider frame than simply compassionate sentimentality, as opposed to something that's really taking the moral realities of the world and all of their urgency seriously. And not pretending that we need to be (as we've sometimes tried to be as a nation) the healer of the nations, but to say that we should actually be a force for taking these issues with great national seriousness, and not just repudiating it because it's not inside the boundaries of our own country.”
• “Use the influence and the economic force of the United States to fund local programs.”
• “ We have the resources to go and make a difference in this situation. And by doing that we set an example for others to do it.”
• “We  have adopted an attitude of scarcity.”
• The impact and efficacy of antiretroviral drugs to improve the lives of people with HIV/AIDS—”To suddenly cut them off is an act of cruelty.”
• “This is a system, not just medication.”
• “If we’re suddenly saving $5 billion a year, what is that going to be used for?”
• ”If these things are all happening by executive decision, and Congress does not have a meaningful role, then essentially the people are cut out of the conversation.”
• “People who become sicker with HIV will become more likely to have tuberculosis, more likely to be suffering from other diseases than side effects of the virus itself.”

Where Is God in All of This?

• “It's a dangerous world. Go anyway.”
• “We have to trust that the hand of God is there and that it will meet us in the midst of those hard situations.”

Production Credits

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

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"Listening is everything. Without listening, there’s no music, no art, no understanding—just noise.” (Charlie Peacock, from the episode)

Acclaimed musician, producer, podcaster, and author Charlie Peacock joins Mark Labberton to reflect on music, art, attention, listening, faith, and spirituality. From his groundbreaking work in pop music production (e.g., Amy Grant, Switchfoot, the Civil Wars), to his deep engagement with faith and mentorship, Charlie explores how attention shapes creativity, why making space for beauty is a spiritual discipline, and how a life of music can be an act of service. Through stories of artistic risk, collaboration, and calling, this conversation explores the rhythms of a flourishing life.

In this episode, they discuss:

Charlie’s new memoir, Roots and Rhythm: A Life In Music

The communal nature of making and producing music

The unsung music heroes from Charlie’s life

Non-neutrality and the interdependence of all things

Hearing and visualizing music

The intersection of creativity, spirituality, and paying attention,

How listening transforms both art and relationships,

Life lessons from jazz, pop, and worship music production,

And the role of both sound and silence in artistic and spiritual life.

About Charlie Peacock

Charlie Peacock is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician and producer, having produced Amy Grant, Switchfoot, the Civil Wars, and many more artists. A three-time recipient of the Gospel Music Association’s Producer of the Year Award, he’s named by Billboard’s Encyclopedia of Record Producers as one of the five hundred most important producers in popular music history. His latest book is Roots and Rhythm: A Life In Music, and you can listen to his podcast, Music & Meaning. For more information visit charliepeacock.com.

Episode Highlights

"If you’re not paying attention, you’re missing the song that’s already being sung around you."

"A mentor doesn’t hand you a map; they help you learn how to navigate."

"Faith and art are both about trust—trusting the unseen, the unfinished, and the uncertain."

"The hardest and best lesson for any artist: keep showing up and doing the work."

"Music isn’t just a product—it’s a means of connection, healing, and worship."

Show Notes

• Charlie Peacock, Roots & Rhythm
• Music and community
• The unsung music heroes from Charlie’s life
• Non-neutrality and the interdependence of all things
• Hearing and visualizing music
• Michael Polanyi tacit understandings
• Re-creation of the old into the dramatically new—e.g., Notre Dame Cathedral
• The joy of generational community
• Jazz: spirit, skill, and ability
• “That’s what I love about jazz improvisation. There was nothing and then there was something. Over and over again. … When you have those people in a room making music … it’s hard to go to sleep at night.”
• “I have been pursued by a loving Creator … God-haunted since I was a little boy.”
• “I wanted to know everything. … how, why, what, when … everything.”
• “Never once was there a moment when I was out of God’s grip.”
• Charlie Peacock’s Secret of Time: “God gives you time to be saved.”
• John Coltrane’s spiritual journey
• “250 people a night…”
• “I took the F-word out of two songs, and stopped taking 10% from the bar tab.”
• Hans Rookmaaker
• Inklings
• Time in England and the Netherlands, including time at L’Abri (run by Francis and Edith Schaeffer)
• “An artist and a follower of Jesus, and how those two could be congruent …”
• “Our death is life to life. The kingdom has already begun. We have been living it. And we will continue to live it.”
• “Playing with the entire history of music in your brain.”
• The Civil Wars: “We re-presented hyper-dynamics. … A lot of people have never heard that before. … It invites you in and lets you sit back.” (e.g., pianissimo to forte)
• Over-compressed music.
• “That lean in to the music is a part of your participation. … I’m committed to this music.”
• “I produced music in the ‘80s. I know how to ruin a record. … Big hair and big snare. … But really it had to do with technology.”
• Music in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s
• Neil Postman: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
• “When I use this tool I have to make sure it doesn’t use me.”
• “My subtext is that this is a book about epistemology. … To say, ‘This is how I know what I know.’ It came through God, people, and place.”
• A worker-bee in the music business
• “Like a house with a party going on”
• Vocation, epistemology, and how an artists become who they are

Production Credits

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

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“They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane. … There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. Since when has anybody said mercy for some and not for all? … Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up.  … This is not an impossible crisis to solve. … We need to not be divided by our political affiliations. As Christians, we stand with Christ, who critiques all human institutions.” (Alexia Salvatierra, from the episode)

The immigration crisis on US borders reveals a deeper crisis of humanity—another example of democracy at a turning point. What should be the Christian response to the current immigration crisis? How can the individuals and small communities take effective action? And who are the real people most affected by immigration policy in the United States?

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes theologian, pastor, and activist Alexia Salvatierra. She shares stories from the front lines of immigration justice.

Alexia Salvatierra is an ordained Lutheran pastor and a leading voice in faith-based social justice movements. She serves as assistant professor of integral mission and global transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a key organizer in immigrant advocacy for over four decades. She co-authored Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World and works extensively with grassroots organizations to address the intersection of faith, justice, and policy.

Together they discuss:

• Personal testimonies and policy insights based on stories of real people facing the immigration system in the United States
• The challenges immigrants face under an increasingly unforgiving system
• How faith communities can respond with faithful courage and productive grief, instead of outrage
• The global nature of the immigration, refugee, and foreign-aid crisis
• The width of God’s mercy and the effectiveness of immigration and refugee public policy
• A call to action for Christians to become “gracious disrupters” and stand with the vulnerable

Helpful Links and Resources

• World Relief – Christian organization supporting refugees
• Lutheran Social Services – Organization falsely accused of money laundering

Show Notes

• Immigration policy and the church’s response
• The impact of executive orders on deportation and asylum seekers
• Faith-based advocacy for immigrants
• The role of Latino churches in immigrant support
• How Christians can move from outrage to courageous action
• Immigration reform
• Faith-based activism
• ICE raids on churches
• Asylum seekers and deportation
• Christian response to immigration crisis
• Latino churches and advocacy
• Political fear versus Christian courage
• The role of the church in justice
• Broken immigration system
• Policy changes under different administrations

Immigration Today: Stories and Case Studies

• An Assemblies of God pastor from Guatemala, facing deportation despite three qualifying cases for legal residency—South Los Angeles
• “ That’s what we mean by a broken system, is there’s all these little wrinkles in the system that don’t work.”
• Detention at a deportation facility called Adelanto
• ”They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane.”
• Asylum, ankle bracelets, and “legitimate fear”
• “ They said he was a criminal because he had entered without authorization twenty years before when he was a teenager.”
• ICE agents attempting to detain a man during a worship service
• ICE and “sensitive locations”—Is a church an ICE “sensitive location”?
• Hispanic Theological Education Association
• Latino Christian National Network
• “That arrest has  provoked intense fear. …  they’re terrified to go to church.”
• The impact of anti-immigration policies on church attendance and spiritual care
• A desperate mother of a special-needs child preparing legal custody papers in case of deportation
• The economic and moral contradictions in mass deportation efforts
• “Cities that have municipal sanctuary laws are threatened with suit by the new administration.”

The Global Immigration and Refugee Crisis

• “All around the world immigration is in crisis.”
• 1980 Refugee Act
• “All the countries who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have to take refugees.”
• The concept of “Refoulment”—”which means that you’re sending someone back to die.”
• “Not only are all refugee programs stopped, but current refugees are not getting the support that they need.”
• “ Costa Rica is a five-million-person  country and they’ve taken two million refugees.”

American Immigration During the Trump Administration

• Elon Musk saying “ that Lutheran Social Services was a money-laundering machine.”
• Current administration’s policies as “ bold, unilateral, and so comprehensive and unnuanced”
• “If the Trump administration is successful at deporting ten million people, many of whom have been here over twenty years, thirty years, um, where will we find the labor that we need?”

Policy and Legal Discussion

• The end of Deferred Deportation under the Trump and Biden administrations
• Executive orders eliminating prioritization of deportation
• The freezing of USAID and refugee support programs
• “All foreign aid has always been strategic. It’s never not.”
• “Global warming refugees”
• “The current president of Venezuela loves gangs.”
• “Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up. …  this is not an impossible crisis to solve.”
• The bipartisan immigration bill that Trump advised Republicans to block
• Historical immigration policies and their effectiveness
• “Policy does make a difference.”
• Objection to open borders: What about mercy for Americans? A false dichotomy. God’s mercy is wide.
• “We have a number of believers in Congress who are acting out of fear right now and not out of faith.”

Call to Action

• How faith communities can support immigrants
• “Immigrant churches are taking the brunt of this.”
• Why outrage doesn’t help the process
• Ways to engage with legislators and advocate for reform
• The importance of standing with immigrant churches in this moment
• Supporting organizations like World Relief and Lutheran Social Services
• “The bulk of the people in the United States, the majority, have not had to grieve on this level. Not had to grieve with this intensity, with this constancy. Our spiritual muscles are weak—in terms of knowing how to grieve and keep going and trust God. ‘Though he slay me, I will worship him.’”
• “Encourage literally means ‘to get more courage.’ You know, to give courage, to get courage. And so I just would want everybody to stop being outraged and start being courageous.”

Production Credits

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

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“If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the full-bodied, empathetic nature of listening and the communication process. He reflects on good listening, the empathy it requires, and what it means to truly recognize and successfully understand each other.

Listening and perceiving are bound up together in a fundamental way, offering us an opportunity to enter into another’s experience, truly seeing and recognizing them and receiving who they are.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• “Listening is almost always seeing.”
• Full-bodied listening and how perception adds to our understanding of each other
• “If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”
• Examples of bad listening: “pinning words on the speaker.”
• Recognition for the speaker: “My listening reflects that I'm actually perceiving them.”
• The fun and joyful work of communication
• Total body experience of listening and perceiving is about empathy.
• Empathy and entering the speaker’s world and experience
• The difference empathy makes
• “Empathy, even when you're wanting to give it doesn't make it automatic.  It often has to be something that emerges out of the communication experience itself.”
• Hearing, perception, and full-bodied communication
• “How we see and receive another person’s being…”
• Achieving a communication breakthrough: “Oh, I see!”
• ”It is like amazing grace is playing in the background. And I want to say ‘I once was blind, but now I see’ that's what it feels like a real revelatory discovery.”

Production Credits

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

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“‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ …  That is the core of our Christian belief.”

“I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad brush.”

(Condoleezza Rice, from this episode)

In this episode, Condoleezza Rice joins Mark Labberton to discuss the state of US foreign and domestic policy in light of Christian moral convictions. Secretary Rice served as the 66th US Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, has been on the faculty of Stanford University since 1981, and is currently the director of the Hoover Institution.

Together they discuss:

The state of US foreign policy and international relations

How to think about American involvement in global politics

The importance of US foreign assistance

American patriotism and Christian devotion

And Condoleezza Rice’s prayers for American leaders right now: discernment, judgment, compassion, and policy that reflects the dignity of all human beings.

About Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As professor of political science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as director, then senior director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For more information, visit her profile at the Hoover Institution.

Show Notes

• The state of US international relations
• “ The beginning of any administration is a bit chaotic”
• “I continue to hope that we will find a way to help Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin doesn't benefit from the aggression that he committed.”
• “The United States will undoubtedly play a different role. … That is the outcome of what's been eighty years of post World War II American engagement. … And so we need to ask, what are our values? What are our interests? And I think we're going to, we're going to see a good, solid American role in foreign policy.”
• Is the world order in the process of receiving a shock treatment?
• “ We really do need to rebuild our defense industrial base.”
• USAID: “ I'm a great believer that foreign assistance is one of the important tools in our toolkit of foreign policy.”
• “ I actually am one who believes that the absorption of USAID into the State Department is the right answer.”
• On US foreign assistance
• “A lot of what we do is purely humanitarian, purely life saving. We should. Just do that. Some of what we do is also strategic. What countries do we help to develop to be less fragile so that they don't become hubs for terrorism? …  And sometimes our assistance is to stabilize places in the world so that we don't face a security problem down the road.”
• Developing infrastructure
• “Am I patriotic? Do I love my country? Am I a nationalist? Absolutely. Am I Christian? Yes. And so I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad crust.”
• “But if we think about what it means to be Christian, it means to care about every human being, because every human being is created in the image of the Lord, and therefore every human being has worth.”
• “One of the closing comments from President Bush was, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected. …  that is the core of our Christian belief.”
• What is  the state of the Christian influence in American politics and life?
• Emulating the early church in establishing orphanages and hospitals, “and  to be a voice on behalf of those who are dispossessed.”
• Religious Freedom
• “When I was secretary of state, not because I was Christian, but because I was secretary of state, I would take a list of religious objectors with me to countries like China.”
• “The evangelical church has been very involved in human trafficking issues. We actually do have a problem of modern slavery.”
• “The church has a lot of potential to be a really good force in the world.”
• Condoleeza Rice’s most passionate prayers for the nation and the world right now
• “My most passionate prayer is that our leaders would have—and I actually pray this prayer— that they would have judgment and discernment, that they would have compassion, that they would lead from a position of knowing how much America has, and that they would understand that our role in the world derives from our universal belief in human freedom and that it is the only way that human beings have the dignity that they should have as having been created by God.”
• “I think one of the reasons we've had a bit of a backlash against some foreign assistance is that people wonder, ‘Well, are you thinking about Americans in the same way?’”

Production Credits

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

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“ When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

Why is it so hard to communicate? To accomplish the simple task of delivering and receiving information?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton suggests that real and successful communication is a miracle, and an infrequent one at that. Our failure to communicate regularly demonstrates just how far we are from adequately listening to one another. Ultimately, if we want to seek the miracle of communication, we need to take the responsibility to “close the loop” and do the work of hearing, listening, and acknowledging receipt.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• Endless communication meetings talking about the failure of our communication
• News media’s failure to communicate
• Marital failures to communicate
• Parent-child failures to communicate
• Overcommunicating with too much information
• Undoing miscommunication
• “Communication is a miracle and not a frequent one.”
• Why is it so hard to communicate?
• “ In many ways, the stakes are against us when we’re really trying to communicate.”
• Ears, eyes, space, time, sounds, lighting
• How far we are from adequately listening to one another
• Acknowledging receipt of a message
• “The world is pushy. Culture is pushy.”
• Clarity of mind and heart
• ”When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.”
• The importance of closing the communication loop
• “If I’m seeking the miracle of communication, then I have to live into the responsibility of closing the loop of communication and not just being a passive recipient of what it is that’s been said.”
• Failure to close the loop is what allows us to measuring the infrequency of true, successful communication.

Production Credits

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

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This is a turbulent time for American democracy. Years, perhaps decades, of social change is manifesting in the form of distrust, violence, chaos, fear, loneliness, and despair.

But Conversing, along with Comment magazine, is about hope, healing, and hospitality.

For this special 200th episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton invites Anne Snyder (Editor-in-Chief, Comment magazine) for a close reading and discussion of the 2025 Comment Manifesto, a hopeful new document offering a vision of Christian Humanism for this era.

Together they discuss:

The meaning and intent behind a new Comment magazine Manifesto for Christian humanism

The Incarnation of Christ for what it means to be human

Hospitality in an era of exclusion

Healthy institutions and the importance of communal agency

Individualism vs communitarianism

Learning to perceive the world in fresh, surprising ways

About the Comment Manifesto

To read the Manifesto in its entirety, visit comment.org/manifesto/, or scroll below.

To watch a reading of selections from the Comment Manifesto, click here.

About Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the Editor-in-Chief of Comment magazine, which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit https://comment.org/ for more information.

For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Anne also oversees our Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).

Show Notes

• Giving thanks for 200 episodes of Conversing!
• 2000 years of Christian thought to the public square
• James K.A. Smith, the former editor of Comment Magazine
• Seeking a positive moral vision
• A turbulent moment for democracy
• MANIFESTO SECTION 1 “We are Christian humanists…”
• What it means to be human in our age—our infinite dignity, relationship to the earth, and woundedness
• The significance of Jesus Christ for what it means to be human
• What the Incarnation of Christ means for our world
• “So many people we know and love and respect feel ecclesially homeless, obviously politically homeless.”
• MANIFESTO SECTION 2 “We believe it’s time to build…”
• Agency
• Called to a co-creative project
• Productive and constructive
• “Contributing the true and good and beautiful in a messy world.”
• MANIFESTO SECTION 3 “We believe in institutions…”
• Collective, common, and communal
• Institutions, as part of the social architecture of our world, can be extraordinarily positive.
• “I always get asked, ‘Why do you believe in institutions? Why? You don’t need to! They’re gone! They’re dead!’”
• “Healthy institutions are channels within which you can actually realize your sense of agency in a way that might be more moving than you ever would have imagined just by yourself.”
• Yuval Levin’s take on community (paraphrased): “All the tumult we're experiencing, we're just having a big fight about what kinds of what community means.”
• Polarization
• MAGA as a kind of community
• “I consider myself a bit of a communitarian.”
• Christian humanism throughout history always has four projects connected to it: Theology, character formation, political economy, and aesthetic.
• MANIFESTO SECTION 4 “We believe in the transformative power of encounter—encountering reality, encountering those unlike us.”
• Addressing the fractured social fabric and isolation of this age
• Encounter and trust
• Hospitality— ”taking one another's being and doing in the world seriously enough”
• Enter the room listening
• MANIFESTO SECTION 5 “We believe Christianity is perpetually on the move. There is no sacred capital.”
• “This is our most aggressive claim.”
• Distinguishing Comment from peer publications such as First Things
• “All cultures are fallen, and we’re part of another kingdom.”
• Galatians 5 and the Fruit of the Spirit
• Civilizational Christianity
• The smallness of “faith, family, flag”
• “So much of my Christian identity has been rewritten by experiences of Christian faith that are completely outside the, the social reality that is my fundamental location.”
• ”When Christianity seems to be running the dangerous risk of being captured, captured by a certain kind of ideological political social frame that feels as though it's really making itself primary simply by its Napoleonic capacity for self-crowning, that is a very, very dangerous thing.”
• MANIFESTO SECTION 6 “We believe there are different ways of knowing—that the thinker and the practitioner have equally valuable wisdoms worth airing, that relationship and context matter for the ways in which we perceive reality, that the child with Down syndrome perceives truths that a Nobel Prize winner cannot, and that there is a need for those who inhabit these myriad ways to share space and learn how to pursue understanding—perhaps even revelation—together.”
• Perceiving the world differently
• Down syndrome and the expression of a different kind of knowing or wisdom
• Full circle with the first principle of the imago Dei
• Functioning out of either confidence, uncertainty, or anxiety
• Mark Labberton’s friend Dustin (R.I.P), who had cerebral palsy
• Fatigue, trying to get our bearings
• Looking for moral and eschatological coherence

Production Credits

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

The 6 Primary Sections of the 2025 Comment Manifesto

To read the Manifesto in its entirety, visit comment.org/manifesto/.

1. We are Christian humanists, those who believe that Jesus Christ—God become man—is the ultimate measure of what it means to be human. We believe that every human being is created in the image of God, whole persons who are at once fallen yet gloriously endowed, finite and dependent, yet deserving of infinite dignity. We seek to stay true both to the wonder and to the woundedness of life this side of the veil, even as our eschatology floods us with hope: Jesus has walked with us, died, risen, and ascended, and he will come again to make all things new.
2. We believe it’s a time to build, that the creative imagination and the Christian imagination are mysteriously linked. We want to begin with the Yes in Christ, not our own noes. While there is an important role for criticism baptized in a study of what is true, good, and beautiful, it is a means to an end—the basis for wise repair and imagination, not the justification for destruction or erasure. We are committed to keeping orthodoxy and orthopraxy married, taking seriously our job to translate between them.
3. We believe in institutions: government, guilds, families, schools, universities, the church. We recognize that in our age of individualism, institutions are often painted as the enemy. We try to change that, seeking to shape the character of today’s most formative institutions while exploring what kind of reimagined social architecture might compel the next generation’s trust.
4. We believe in the transformative power of encounter—encountering reality, encountering those unlike us. Loving enemies is bedrock for Comment, hospitality core. We are champions of the difficult room. We believe in the deeper truths that can be discovered when different life experiences and distinct sources of wisdom are gathered around one table. We intentionally publish arguments with which we disagree, including those who don’t hail Christ as Lord, not for the sake of pluralism without conviction, but because Christians have always better understood the contours and depths of their faith when crystallized through exchanges with strangers turned friends.
5. We believe Christianity is perpetually on the move. There is no sacred capital. While the audience we serve is navigating a North American context, we serve this audience from an understanding that Christianity is an intercultural, polyglot religion. At a time of rising religious ethno-nationalism, we insist that no culture can claim to represent the true form of Christianity, and we actively seek for our authors and partners to reflect the global reality of the church.
6. We believe there are different ways of knowing—that the thinker and the practitioner have equally valuable wisdoms worth airing, that relationship and context matter for the ways in which we perceive reality, that the child with Down syndrome perceives truths that a Nobel Prize winner cannot, and that there is a need for those who inhabit these myriad ways to share space and learn how to pursue understanding—perhaps even revelation—together.

...

Our theory of change takes its cues from the garden, less the machine. We are personalists, not ideologues. We follow the logic of Jesus’s mustard seed, of yeast transforming a whole pile of dough, of the principle of contagiousness and change happening over generations. We believe in the value of slow thought. We are skeptical of the language of scale in growing spiritual goods. While we wish to be savvy in unmasking the either/or reactivity of our age and will always call out dehumanizing trendlines, we are fundamentally animated by the creative impulse, by a philosophy of natality expressed through hospitality. This feels especially important in this time between eras when no one knows what’s next, and we need one another to recalibrate, to reflect, and to shape a hopeful future.

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”I grew up thinking that Christianity was basically cruel and hypocritical.”

“The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.”

“That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.”

—Jonathan Rauch, from the episode

We’re at a crossroads, where Christianity and secularism in America are both operating at cross-purposes, and both need a critical reassessment of their role in democratic public life.

In his new book, Jonathan Rauch “reckons candidly with both the shortcomings of secularism and the corrosion of Christianity.” He “addresses secular Americans who think Christianity can be abandoned, and Christian Americans who blame secular culture for their grievances.”

Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode),  Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch.

He is also a celebrated essayist, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

In this episode Mark Labberton and Jonathan Rauch discuss:

• Republican virtue
• What Jesus and James Madison have in common
• The political idolatry of secularism
• The differences between the thin church, sharp church, and thick church
• The political orientation of the church in exile
• Tyrannical fear
• The Morman church’s example of civic theology “of patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation”
• The promise of power in exchange for loyalty

About Jonathan Rauch

Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode),  Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch.

Show Notes

• Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy
• The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
• Reasonable, civic mindedness
• “Graciousness toward a faith you don’t share.”
• “Of course I knew I was Jewish. I also knew that the idea of God seemed silly to me. I just never, never could believe it.”
• The Rev. Dr. Mark McIntosh
• 2003 Atlantic article: “The dumbest thing I ever wrote” celebrating secularism in America (”Let It Be,” The Atlantic, May 2003)
• “ It turned out that when Christianity started to fail, people started looking for substitutes, because they were looking for a source of identity and values and transcendent meaning.”
• Political idolatry of secularism
• “A major reason the country is becoming ungovernable is because of Christianity’s crisis. We can no longer separate the two, and that’s why I, a very secular person, am writing a book about Christianity.”
• “Moving away from the teachings of Jesus…”
• “The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.”
• Mark’s description of his father: “ My dad used to save certain neck veins for the discussion of religion because he felt like it was something that should be avoided, at that time, at all costs, particularly its most zealous kind. And his primary critique was that what religious people do is that they take great things and make them small. …   What shocked me when I became a Christian was this discovery that Jesus and my dad had this same theme in common, that Jesus often objected to the small making of various religious authorities of his day.”
• “God’s capacious grace, creativity, purpose, and love”
• Will the church live in its identity as followers of Jesus?
• “Christianity is a load-bearing wall in our liberal democracy.”
• “Republican virtues” (not the party): lawful, truthful, civic education, tolerant, pluralistic
• Christianity’s role in upholding the unprecedented religious freedom
• “When Christians begin demanding things that are inconsistent with those core values, that makes everything else in the country harder.”
• “The thin church is a church that blends into the surrounding culture and it becomes diluted.”
• “The sharp church is …  where the church takes on the political colorations of the surrounding environment, aligns itself with a political party.”
• Divisive and polarizing
• “The third is the thick church. And there, the challenge is that you want a church to be counter cultural. You want it to have a strong sense of its own values. Otherwise, it's just not doing the work. So it needs to ask a lot of its followers. It needs to give a lot back in exchange. That's what sociologists mean by, by thick communities and groups. At the same time, it needs to be reasonably well aligned with our constitution and our liberal democratic values.”
• Church of fear
• Fear of demographic decline
• Cultural fear and losing the country to the woke Left
• Fear of emasculation
• Plain old political fear: “Our side needs to win.”
• Fear as a major theme of the Bible
• Fear of God as “the beginning of wisdom”
• “A communion of unlike people. … A workshop in which the character of God … is meant to be learned.”
• Immaturity and lack of wisdom in the church
• “The chief defense of the faith in the world that Jesus died and rose is that unlike people find communion with one another in a union that only Jesus Christ's death and resurrection could actually accomplish.”
• “Tyrannical fear”—a drive for dominance
• “Fear is part of the human condition. Yet what's so countercultural about Christianity, is its teaching that you can't be governed by that fear. You can't let it run your life and go around in a state of panic. And that Jesus Christ himself had lots to be fearful of, as we know from the end that he came to, and yet comported himself in this calm and dignified way, did not let fear triumph over him. That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.”
• “Fear casts out love.”
• Trump administration[’s] … demonstration of a capacity to have literally no compassion, no empathy.”
• The paradigm of Exodus versus the paradigm of exile
• Isaiah 58: “ Now as strangers in a strange land in Babylon, I'm going to ask you: Who are you now? Who do you trust now? Who are you going to put the full weight of your life on now?”
• “Exilic Church”
• “ Christianity is not about owning the country or winning in politics.”
• “It can’t be a coincidence that at a moment when (at least) white Protestantism in the United States is obsessed with political influence and has mortgaged itself to the least Christlike figure possibly in American political history (in any case, right up there) that its numbers are shrinking catastrophically.”
• “The irony of the cross always is this self emptying power.”
• [Trump] is saying, “I will give you power, and in exchange, you will give me unquestioning loyalty.”
• Comparing Trump’s transaction (at Dordt University in Iowa) “If you vote for me, you will have power” with the temptation of Christ in the desert: “All of this will be yours if you bow down to me.”
• Transactional relationship with power
• The Mormon church’s “ civic theology … of patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation”
• Jesus: “Don’t be afraid, imitate Jesus, and forgive each other.”
• Madisonian liberalism: “Don’t panic if you lose an election, protect minorities and the dignity of every individual, and don’t seek retribution if you win, share the country.”
• “When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he said, ‘It would be a good idea.’”
• Black church and MLK Jr.—”emphasis on Reverend”
• “You accept the stripes and the crown of thorns. You turn the other cheek.”
• Profoundly counterintuitive countercultural example

Production Credits

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

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“Is Trump interested in being Constitutionally faithful?” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

“What we're watching here is the operation of the will of an individual on the system, and the system is really meant to answer to the negotiated will of a plural body.” (Yuval Levin, from this episode)

“ I think character is destiny, especially in the American presidency, because the presidency really is one person.” (Yuval Levin, from this episode)

The transition of power from one presidential administration to another always has the potential for turbulence—often a surreal, perplexing, or disorienting process. But is there anything peculiar or problematic about the opening days of Donald Trump’s second term in office? Is there anything unconstitutional?

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes back Yuval Levin for a conversation about the political and social impact of Donald Trump’s first month in office in light of Constitutional law and the Separation of Powers.

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Currie Chair in Public Policy. His latest book is American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. He’s founder of National Affairs, senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor of National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.

Together they discuss:

• The authority of the Constitution over the presidency
• The importance of character in the office of the president
• The separation of powers and the threat of presidential overreach
• What American citizens should be genuinely worried about right now
• The importance of cross-partisan policymaking and a variety of political voices
• Why we should worry, but not panic

About Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.

At AEI, Levin and scholars in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies research division study the foundations of self-government and the future of law, regulation, and constitutionalism. They also explore the state of American social, political, and civic life, focusing on the preconditions necessary for family, community, and country to flourish.

Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.

In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024).

He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Show Notes

• A time of “presidential gigantism”
• “Is Trump interested in being Constitutionally faithful?”
• Pluralism and vigorous debate
• Swamping a weak, divided Congress
• Separation of Powers
• Legislature vs Executive Branch
• “ Nobody really ever expected the president to be representative. Presidents are elected to be accountable. Congress is elected to be representative.”
• “What we're watching here is the operation of the will of an individual on the system, and the system is really meant to answer to the negotiated will of a plural body.”
• Performative nature of political roles
• “Random grab-bag of power plays.”
• Fear of a “lawless president”
• “The beginning of  a new administration is unavoidably a little surreal.”
• “ It's important not to over-read the strength that's evident at the outset here because we don't really know how much of this will play out.”
• Elon Musk as Pseudo-President
• “ The president does command the executive branch. On the other hand, the president does not command the federal government.”
• “ When the question is, does the president have to follow the law, the answer to that is going to be yes.”
• Is the Supreme Court going to keep Trump in check?
• Overturning Chevron deference
• “Character is destiny.”
• “ I think character is destiny, especially in the American presidency, because the presidency really is one person.”
• “ The fact that character's destiny in the presidency is not good news for Donald Trump and is not good news for the country while he is president because the biggest problem with Trump is his character, is the lack of a sense of personal responsibility and self restraint, the lack of a respect for the need for stability and coherence in leadership, And to have an administration that has that character is going to challenge our system and I think just create problems for the country in some important ways.”
• ”In moments of decision and crisis, it's the president's character that determines how things go.”
• “ My biggest worry about Trump is not one policy or another. There's some I like and some I don't. But it's that ultimately the presidency is one person, and this one person is just not a good fit for that office.”
• Presidential overreach
• Loyalty tests and punishment
• “ What the president really does is make hard decisions.”
• Having room for opposition
• “Administration is impossible when people on the ground are afraid to tell you what's going on.”
• Alarm Bells
• First: “The possibility of the administration just willfully ignoring a court order.”
• Second: “Ignoring signals of trouble, ignoring dissent, ignoring opposing voices, a sense that they're ignoring reality and pretending things are happening that aren't. That's very dangerous in the presidency.”
• Third: “It's also worth worrying about the tendency for vengeance and for personal vendettas for using the power of prosecution and of law enforcement for political purposes, even for personal purposes.”
• Character and mindset
• Congress has 535 people. The presidency comes down to one person.
• Dangers on the horizon
• Checks and balances
• Laying the groundwork for a third Trump term?
• “On the whole  our institutions have proven fairly strong.”
• “It is better to worry than to panic. Worry lets you make distinctions …”
• Yuval Levin’s American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again
• What is the voice of citizenship right now?
• Appropriations
• “Governors are some of the sanest people in our politics in this moment.”
• “I don't think that the lesson of Trump's first term should be that people who oppose him should just sit it out and wait. I think the lesson on the contrary is that the Trump administration does respond to pressure.”
• “Policy change should happen through cross partisan negotiation in Congress.”
• “President Trump has said, for example, that in his first month in office, he wants to have met every house Republican.”
• A variety of voices
• “In a way, the mindset of what's the thing we would do if we could magically do anything is the problem, not the solution. And it's how Donald Trump is thinking, what would I do if I were the emperor? I think the most important thing in this moment is for him to realize that he is not the emperor, and that our system never lets us do that thing we would want to do. That's the beauty of the system.”
• “The other great political question. What can I get done that I also want to achieve?”
• “God Bless America.”

Production Credits

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

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“The gift of listening is the laying down of presumption. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you would say about this or that or the other thing. I don’t understand how you have experienced life. I don’t share in that emotional moment. I don’t have that same vocabulary. I don’t have that same life experience.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the reality and meaning of the fact that “I am not you.”

He considers the importance of differentiation between speaker and listener, and the best posture of the listener not only to gain information, but to contribute back to the speaker and the conversation itself, opening up a deeper and more imaginative exchange.

Learning to appreciate and pursue knowledge of “differentiated others,” listening in this context becomes an antidote to presumption. The less presumptuous we are about others, the more knowledge and perspective we’re likely to gain.

Listening is also more than immediate reflection. Better than restatement would be to probe the speaker’s interest and awaken their imagination, thereby creating new possibilities for everyone involved.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate, inspire, and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection—a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• The gift of listening is not just similarities, but differentiation
• The adventure of knowing another person
• Mature listening
• Expanding the heart and mind through true differentiation
• Letting differentiation be a gift, and not a threat—leading to compassion, mercy, justice, and enlivened exchange
• “A chance to be more than our mere selves.”
• We’re each coming from different bodies, contexts, backgrounds, etc.
• Understanding the volley or back-and-forth
• “Sometimes listening is just an excuse for being quiet while we develop our own lines that we’re preparing to say to the other person. That is not listening. That’s something else. That’s about plotting and planning, or it’s about fear, or it’s about anxiety …”
• Earnest, genuine listening means becoming a genuine learner, without presumptions.
• “The gift of listening is the laying down of presumption. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you would say about this or that or the other thing. I don’t understand how you have experienced life. I don’t share in that emotional moment. I don’t have that same vocabulary. I don’t have that same life experience.”
• What happens when you are wrongly presumptuous about other people
• Listening is an unmasking of presumption.
• Exposing our presumptions
• Reflecting the words of the other is not enough; genuine listening unearths and awakens the imagination of the other
• Reaching genuine depth of conversational volley
• “These things are critical in leadership, because communication is a miracle—and not a frequent one.”

Production Credits

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

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“I’m one of the thousands and thousands of people in Altadena who have lost our homes to the fire and are trying to pick up the pieces and find out what to do next.” (Megan Katerjian, from the episode)

What is it like to lose your house in a fire?

The Eaton Fire in Los Angeles County started on January 7, 2025, and within twenty-four hours had burned over fourteen thousand acres of Altadena, California, and surrounding areas. Thousands of people have lost their homes (some without any guarantee of home insurance or FEMA aid), thousands of schools have closed, and life in this beautiful city has been completely transformed.

Today’s guest, Megan Katerjian, went from helping local homeless families find housing to experiencing homelessness herself, when her family’s northwest Altadena home burned down in the Eaton Fire. She is CEO of Door of Hope and has a twenty-year career in fundraising, policy advocacy, program development, volunteer engagement, and pastoral ministry.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Megan to discuss her experience and perspective. Megan courageously and vulnerably opens up about the pain of losing a meaningful space of care and comfort, and shares about the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual realities of what this traumatic experience has been like.

Together they discuss:

• Megan’s story of losing her house in the Eaton Fire
• The insights Megan gained about homelessness through experiencing her own version of it
• Megan’s work and ministry as CEO of Door of Hope, a Christian non-profit, based in Pasadena, serving Los Angeles County. From their website: “One of the only homeless providers that can shelter any kind of family together in their own private unit, including single moms, single dads, and two-parent families together with their children.”
• The meaning of a social safety network
• The effect of trauma on decision-making
• What approach to self-care and restoration she is pursuing
• The social and economic impact of homelessness
• The difference between financial and relational poverty
• And how you can help those affected by the Eaton Fire

If you are unhoused for any reason, including having lost your home in the Los Angeles fires, visit DoorofHope.us for reliable information and practical resources. For additional information, visit Fuller Seminary’s Wind and Fire Resources page.

Additional links:

Summary of Eaton Fire

City of Pasadena Eaton Fire Updates

About Megan Katerjian

Rev. Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope, and has a twenty-year career in fundraising, policy advocacy, program development, volunteer engagement, and pastoral ministry, working for non-profits in Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Africa, as well as churches in California.

Megan holds two master’s degrees from Fuller Seminary, a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, and a certificate in non-profit management.

Megan lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fires in east Los Angeles County in January 2025.

Show Notes

• Learn more about Door of Hope: Empowering families facing homelessness to transform their lives
• Megan Katerjian shares about what the past month has been like after losing her house in the Altadena fires
• Temporary housing to transitional housing
• “I’m one of the thousands and thousands of people in Altadena who have lost our homes to the fire and are trying to pick up the pieces and find out what to do next.”
• Integrating Jesus and justice
• How Door of Hope works with Pasadena homeless
• The power-control cycle single mothers face
• A mother’s story of going from brokenness and despair to hope and empowerment
• Altadena’s fires
• Megan Katerjian tells her story of finding and then losing her home in northwest Altadena
• “It’s about the meaning of the home rather than the physical space.”
• Trauma-informed design: colors and arrangements bring the feelings of safety and comfort
• “I don’t think I’ve ever sobbed that hard in my life.”
• Losing a life-giving environment of comfort and peace
• How to pray for the devastation of the fires in Southern California
• Self-care
• “I can’t watch the news right now. … The fire coverage is really triggering.”
• Taking time off to grieve and pick up the pieces
• Being with people who went through the same experience
• Leaving town for respite in Goleta, California
• “I talked to God in very distracted conversations.”
• “The sun rises and sets every day, and God is present every day. And just that steadiness and that calm and that reminder was really, really important for me.”
• Expanding empathy and understanding of homelessness
• The irony of learning about homeless
• The impact of trauma-brain on the ability to make important decisions; slower processing
• “What the world might interpret as laziness or lack of motivation could just be the impact of trauma.”
• The “Social Service Shuffle”: good leads, bad leads, time wasted, etc.
• FEMA and “a sea of cots”
• “If I had nothing in my bank account and didn’t have a friend who had set up a GoFundMe page, I would be panicking right now.”
• “Homelessness is not just about financial poverty, it’s about relational poverty.”
• The benefits of a thick social safety network
• Walking through Asheville, North Carolina, after the hurricane flood
• Impact on the housing market for renting and buying homes
• Will any landlords be willing to take a Section 8 voucher?
• Multi-generation black homeowner families who have lived in Altadena for many years after redlining moved them out of Pasadena
• “The economics look a little different.”
• Three families in the same home—”what does their social safety network look like?”
• Door of Hope pivoting to create  the Eaton Fire Housing Assistance Program
• Working with FEMA and home insurance
• Working with the church to respond to the crisis and provide a family of care, support, and love
• Self-care as restorative rather than selfish
• A call to action: Please act and help those impacted by the fires in Southern California

Production Credits

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

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A special episode for the inauguration of Donald Trump’s second term, as the forty-seventh president of the United States. Whether you’re filled with hope and joy, or anxiety and fearfulness, how can we pursue a common citizenship that is grounded in faith and moral sensitivity, focused on justice and love, and rightfully patriotic?

Today, Mark welcomes friends Pete Wehner (columnist, The Atlantic, and Fellow, Trinity Forum), Anne Snyder (editor-in-chief, Comment magazine), and David Goatley (president, Fuller Seminary).

Together they discuss:

The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term in office;

The meaning of patriotism in an unfolding, rambunctious democratic experiment;

Repentance, repair, and understanding;

How to keep a moral-ethical grounding in political life;

Balancing open curiosity and genuine concern;

What rejuvenates and renews us during anxious political times (exploring beauty in nature and art);

Learning disagreement in a post-civility era;

Peacemaking instead of polarization;

Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal;

And how to pray for Donald Trump as he enters his next term in office.

About Peter Wehner

Peter Wehner, an American essayist, is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports, and friendships.

Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which the New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.

About Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, **which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit comment.org for more information.

For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Anne also oversees Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).

About David Goatley

David Emmanuel Goatley is president of Fuller Seminary. Prior to his appointment in January 2023, he served as the associate dean for academic and vocational formation, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Research Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry, and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Campbellsville, Kentucky, for nine years (1986–1995).

In addition to his articles, essays, and book chapters, Goatley is the author of Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion and A Divine Assignment: The Missiology of Wendell Clay Somerville, as well as the editor of Black Religion, Black Theology: Collected Essays of J. Deotis Roberts. His current research focuses on flourishing in ministry and thriving congregations, most recently working on projects funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Duke Endowment.

Show Notes

• What each guest values and honours about America, expressing commitment and affection as citizens
• “Any presidential inauguration is weight bearing.”
• Pete Wehner: a first-generation American
• From ideals to reality about the history of America
• “ I’m the kind of patriot who is committed to the country being the best that it can be.”
• “Rambunctious unfolding-still … democratic experiment.”
• The scene for Inauguration Day 2021
• Strength and vitality of American life
• What are your commitments and hopes for the next four years?
• “Some of my siblings for whom their angst is new, and I’m happy to say, welcome to my world.”
• The posture of believers and people of good will to “keep a moral ethical grounding”
• “Justice, especially for the dispossessed, the aliens, the powerless”
• Pulled in different directions
• Eugene Peterson formulation: “There’s the Jesus truth, and the Jesus way.”
• Called to be different things at different moments
• Name reality as best we can
• “Is it possible to be both prophetic and the force of unity at the same time?”
• Will there be a World War III in the next decade?
• Creative ways to develop resilience
• “A great chastening”
• “I feel both curious and really concerned.”
• When patience runs out
• “ I'm socially and humanly curious—and strangely a little hopeful for new frames of how we are with one another—but I am steeling myself for turbulence and violence at a time when it feels like we can't afford those things.”
• The shifting global stage
• The need for deep compassion and energy that doesn’t stop listening or caring
• What rejuvenates and renews you in this moment?
• Being outside, natural beauty, artistic beauty, and staying actively in community with people who will stay reflective.
• Turning off the news
• National Gallery of Art’s Impressionist exhibit (link)
• “For most of us, our day-to-day lives, even in the political realm, are not really driven primarily by what's happening with the presidency.”
• Jon Batiste
• “Healthy, substantive arguments that are not ad hominem”
• Are we living in the post-civility era?
• Peacemaking instead of polarization
• Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal
• “Something has gone deeply wrong in the white evangelical world”
• “ I'm completely fine with deconstruction as long as there’s reconstruction.”
• “There’s a great line that the ancient Greeks used, Bobby Kennedy used that in a speech of his in the late ‘60s, where he said that the task was to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
• Prayers for Donald Trump
• That the Spirit of God would overshadow Donald Trump and political leaders
• That “Not our will but Thy will be done.”
• For moral sensitivity
• ”I'll just be candid here. I have a sense that he's a, he is a person with a lot of brokenness in his life.”
• “We’re part of a story, and there’s an author. … But those chapters aren’t the whole story.”
• A notorious chapter in American history

Production Credits

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

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“The Good News is still good news.”

“I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. …  The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”

(Walter Kim, from this episode)

How does evangelicalism relate to the dominant political powers of our world?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes Walter Kim to Conversing. As the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and host of the Difficult Conversations podcast, Walter holds on to deep Christian orthodoxy alongside the most vigorous and necessary intellectual, personal, ethical, and theological reflections, offering a vision of leadership and spiritual-moral imagination to bolster the future of evangelicalism.

Together they discuss:

Christianity, pluralism, and polarization

The fraught meaning of “evangelicalism” in America and what it means to be a “good news person” in this political moment

The human impulse to wield power and the temptation of evangelicals to join with empire

The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding and the necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism

How evangelicals are retelling and recasting the story of the gospel in today’s political climate

About Walter Kim

Walter Kim serves as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a role he’s held since January of 2020. Previously, he was the pastor of Boston's historic Park Street Church, and has served other churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He received a BA from Northwestern University, an MDiv from Regent College, and a PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. He hosts the Difficult Conversations podcast.

Show Notes

• Long-term faithfulness to the gospel in the maelstrom of challenges and difficulties
• ”My experience has been one of extremes. … There is the lived reality of polarization, at which I find often myself right in the centre.”
• ”Sober self-assessment … one should always, as a Christian, be self-suspicious: Am I compromising? … Am I responding in faith or out of fear?”
• “Purveyor of the good news in action.”
• “Our labour in Christ is not in vain … ultimately Christ remains Lord and Savior of all.”
• The word “evangelical” and the state of US evangelicalism
• What does it mean to be a “good news person”?
• World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly
• Laussane and a gathering of five thousand evangelicals from around the world
• “It’s not a branding issue. It’s a substance issue.”
• “Global church with a polycentric distribution of leadership and resources”
• “Whatever our maelstrom and vortex may be in America, it pales in comparison to what brothers and sisters are experiencing throughout the world.”
• “I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. …  The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”
• Religious community vs “the other”
• How does the church relate to dominant powers?
• Image of God is not just an abstract idea
• “The democratization of the image of God to all people—not just to the rulers—was a profoundly prophetic statement.”
• Tower of Babel: A story not just about hubris, but about hoarding power and the ways political imperialism can use religion for its own purposes.
• “This is not a uniquely American problem. … This is a problem of humanity.”
• Evangelicals who have given themselves to empire
• Marring God’s image and remaking God in our own image
• Pluralism and Christianity
• The capacity for self-reflection
• The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding, and the rise of Christian nationalism
• “What’s different now is the pluralism.”
• The necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism
• Ingredient 1: The belief that America was founded as a Christian nation
• Ingredient 2: A sense or feeling of loss
• Ingredient 3: The answer to regaining what you lost is political
• Descriptive versus prescriptive: Was America founded as a Christian nation?
• Hope in the loving and just reign of God
• No national church: “living under their own vine and fig tree.”
• The reason we don’t privilege Christianity in the Constitution
• Lilly Endowment project
• “The Good News is still good news.”
• “Retelling and recasting the story … as a message of hope.”
• “ This initiative is an opportunity for us to tell the beautiful story of Jesus, while not neglecting the ways that story has been marred.”
• Luke 4: Jesus’s first public speech. “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind, release for the oppressed. And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Production Credits

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

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“An attentive, earnest ear.”

“We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”

“Entering the room listening gave me an  opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. …  It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”

(Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton offers a principle he learned from his parents: enter the room listening. He reflects on the purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point; the character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”; what listening does for the speaker; some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment; and the observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of this advice.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• How Mark’s parents taught him from an early age to “enter the room listening.”
• Start by paying attention to others.
• The gift of listening and hospitality
• What listening does for the speaker
• “It gave the speaker permission to go on.”
• “We’re in a crisis of conversation in our culture.”
• “An attentive, earnest ear.”
• The purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point
• The character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”
• “ When I became a Christian, I was stunned by the fact that Jesus had so much to say and that I had so little clue about what it was that He was describing.”
• “ I was called to be a listening disciple, not a speaking disciple.”
• “We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”
• “What I'm bringing into the room only occasionally should be the thing of first importance. Instead, I think what I realized was that the thing of first importance was what was already happening in the room and that I was getting to join and find a place in it.”
• Some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment
• The observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of entering the room listening
• Emotional attunement and “reading the room”
• Enhanced experience of the speaker and their words
• “And  I was just aware that I was at a feast. And that I would want to share in all that the room had to offer.”
• “I learned a lot about my parents by watching how my parents would listen to their guests and how they would treat their guests.”
• “Entering the room listening gave me an  opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. …  It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”

Production Credits

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

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”And then finally, word comes over the telegraph that the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect. Jubilation!“

(Jemar Tisby, from the episode)

The African-American Christian tradition often celebrates an all-night Watch Night service on New Year’s Eve. But where does this beautiful liturgical practice come from? It dates all the way back to December 31, 1862, on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation going into effect the following day.

In this episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton welcomes historian Jemar Tisby to reflect on the history of the New Year's Eve Watch Night service.

Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is professor of history at Simmons College, a historically black college in Kentucky.

Recent Books by Jemar Tisby

The Spirit of Justice *Available now

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

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

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby (PhD, University of Mississippi) is the author of the new book The Spirit of Justice, the New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise, and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. He is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century and serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college. Jemar is the founding co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast, and his writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and the New York Times, among others. He is also a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN, speaking nationwide on the topics of racial justice, US history, and Christianity. You can follow his work through his Substack newsletter, Footnotes, and on social media at @JemarTisby.

Show Notes

• The Color of Compromise (available here)—the larger narrative of (Christian) America’s racist history
• Watch Night Services—spending all night at church on New Year’s Eve
• Black Christian tradition dating back to Emancipation Proclamation on December 31, 1862
• ”The time between when Lincoln announced the proclamation, and when it went into effect on January 1st, 1863, was a time of tense anticipation and uncertainty.”
• “ What people were concerned about was, would the Confederates come back and make a deal with Lincoln?”
• “What I like to encourage people to do is put yourself back in that moment as best you can. You have been part of a group of people that have been enslaved since your feet first hit the shores of North America, that generations of your family members, friends, church members have been enslaved, have been enslaved, prayed for freedom, have tried to escape to freedom, have been punished for trying to escape or organize for freedom. And finally, in this massive conflagration called the Civil War, you get the president of the United States saying that you will be free at this certain time. And all of those hopes, all of those prayers, all of those dreams, all of those longings are concentrated in the moments before midnight.”
• ”And then finally, word comes over the telegraph that the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect. Jubilation!“
• “It was in the context of a Christian religion. And so they were understanding this in the context of the Exodus and the Hebrews being freed from Pharaoh through God's intervention. And they're being freed from the pharaohs of the plantation to the promised land of freedom. And they sang spiritual songs and hymns. And ever since then, there's been a tradition of Black Christians gathering on New Year's Eve to have Watch Night service, to celebrate freedom, to anticipate the coming year and to ask for God's blessing.”
• “ May the joy of remembering the power of the Emancipation Proclamation help motivate us as we think about our work and our life in this coming year.”

Production Credits

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

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“Each Advent, I do something unusual; I reread King Lear. Revisiting Shakespeare’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family, friendship, personality, and nation has become part of my annual rhythm. That might seem odd, particularly during this most difficult of years: With short winter days, and so much national, international, and personal pain all around us, who needs more darkness? As a Christian, I do.”

(Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton shares about his annual ritual of re-reading William Shakespeare’s King Lear, a practice to see darkness as well as see light. Mark reads from his December 23, 2020 essay in The Atlantic, and comments on King Lear’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family and friendship, personality, and nation.

Here Mark reflects on Advent as a season of waiting in the dark, before the light of Incarnation is known and beheld; the vulnerability and struggle of the human condition we all share—and King Lear’s ability to reveal it; the value of staring directly into the darkness; and importance of finding a way to look into the darkness without being overwhelmed by it.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• “Why I Read King Lear Each Advent,” by Mark Labberton, The Atlantic, December 23, 2020
• “Each Advent, I do something unusual; I reread King Lear. Revisiting Shakespeare’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family, friendship, personality, and nation has become part of my annual rhythm. That might seem odd, particularly during this most difficult of years: With short winter days, and so much national, international, and personal pain all around us, who needs more darkness? As a Christian, I do.”
• “ Paying attention provokes and distills our humanity. But our distractibility is relentless, especially today, and it may be exceeded only by our capacity for denial.”
• The vulnerable pulse and impulse of being human
• “ My soul trembles as King Lear names and exposes human greediness for love, combustibly combined with the treacherousness of our own self interest. It all hits rather too closely to home, speaking not just to Shakespeare's time but to ours as well, speaking not just to Lear's struggles but to our own.”
• The shocking immediacy of King Lear, still felt 400 years later
• Hearkening back to the darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic
• “Resilient, sacrificing beauties of being human”
• Collective groaning, lament, and grief
• Seeing our troubles acutely, undistracted by hope
• ”The waiting and the darkness begin to give way to hope. And then Christmas is here.”
• “ We need to find a way to look into the darkness without being overwhelmed by it. To be able to stare in safety. Which brings me back to Lear. Being absorbed in the darkness of that story has taught me to breathe in the presence of darkness in our story. In other words, Lear helps me see, feel, and measure life differently.”

Production Credits

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

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“I think my hope is that by this time next year, we would have survived this. … The hope is to survive. … It’s really hard to think beyond that.”

“We need to repent from apathy. We need to fight this normalization of a genocide.”

—Rev. Dr. Munther Issac, from the episode

In the long history of conflict in the Middle East, both Jews and Palestinians have felt and continue to feel the existential threat of genocide. There remains so much to be spoken and heard about the experience of each side of this conflict.

Today we’re exploring a Palestinian perspective.

Ministering in present-day Bethlehem, pastor, theologian, author, and advocate Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac joins Mark Labberton to reflect on the state of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, now a year following Isaac’s bracing and sobering Christmas sermon, which was graphically represented in a sculptural manger scene of “Christ in the Rubble”—a crèche depicting the newborn Jesus amid the debris of Palestinian concrete, wood, and rebar.

Together they discuss the experience, emotions, and response of Palestinians after fourteen months of war; the Christian responsibility to speak against injustice of all kinds as an act of faith; the contours of loving God, loving neighbours, and loving enemies in the Sermon on the Mount; what theology can bring comfort in the midst of suffering; just war theory versus the justice of God; the hope for survival; and the Advent hope that emerges from darkness.

A Message from Mark Labberton

Since October 7 of 2023, the world has been gripped by the affairs that have been unfolding in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. And the world is eager, anxious, fearful, angry, and divided over these affairs. All of this is extremely complicated. And yet, as a friend said to me once about apartheid (I’m paraphrasing): It’s not just that it’s complicated (which it is), it’s actually also very simple: that we refuse to live as Christian people.

By that, he was not trying to form any sort of reductionism. He was simply trying to say, Are we willing to live our faith? Are we willing to live out the identity of the people of God in the context of places of great division and violence and evil? The Middle East is fraught historically with these debates, and certainly since the of the nation-state of Israel in 1947, there has been this ongoing anguish and understandable existential crisis that Jews have experienced both inside Israel and around the world because of the ongoing anti-Semitic hatred that seems to exist in so many places and over such a long, long period of time.

Today we have the privilege of hearing from one of the most outstanding Christian voices, a Palestinian Christian pastor, Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, who is the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He is also academic dean of the Bethlehem Bible College and a director of the highly acclaimed and influential conference called Christ at the Checkpoint.

Munther in this last year has been the voice of Christian pleading. Pleading for an end to the war, pleading for the end to violence, pleading for the end to all of the militarism that has decimated parts of Israel, but also, and even more profoundly, the decimation that has leveled approximately 70 percent of all Palestinian homes in Gaza.

This kind of devastation, the loss of forty-five thousand lives and more in Palestine, has riveted the world’s attention. And Munther has been a person who has consistently spoken out in places all around the United States and in various parts of the world, trying to call for an end to the war and for a practice of Christian identity that would seek to love our neighbours, as Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount, including sometimes also loving our enemies.

The reason for the interview with Munther today is because of the one-year anniversary of Something that occurred in their church in Bethlehem, a crèche with a small baby lying in the Palestinian rubble. Seeing and understanding and looking at Christmas through the lens of that great collision between the bringer of peace, Jesus Christ, and the reality of war.

In the meantime, we have a great chance to welcome a brother in Christ ministering with many suffering people in the Middle East, Jew and Gentile, and certainly Palestinian Christians.

About Munther Isaac

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian. He now pastors the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour. He is also the academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College, and is the director of the highly acclaimed and influential Christ at the Checkpoint conferences. Munther is passionate about issues related to Palestinian theology.

He speaks locally and internationally and has published numerous articles on issues related to the theology of the land, Palestinian Christians and Palestinian theology, holistic mission, and reconciliation.

His latest book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza (get your copy via Amazon or Eerdmans), will appear in March 2025.

He is also the author of The Other Side of the Wall, From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth, An Introduction to Palestinian Theology (in Arabic), a commentary on the book of Daniel (in Arabic), and more recently he has published a book on women’s ordination in the church, also in Arabic. He is involved in many reconciliation and interfaith forums. He is also a Kairos Palestine board member.

Munther originally studied civil engineering in Birzeit University in Palestine. He then obtained a master in biblical studies from Westminster Theological Seminary and then a PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

Munther is married to Rudaina, an architect, and together they have two boys: Karam and Zaid.

Follow him on X @muntherisaac.

Show Notes

• The complexity of conflict in Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East
• “It’s very simple: We refuse to live as Christian people.”
• Get your copy of Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza via Amazon or Eerdmans
• “Christ in the Rubble”—the one-year anniversary
• Munther Isaac’s Christmas sermon, “Christ Under the Rubble” Video
• A Letter from all churches in Bethlehem: “No war”
• “ I can't believe how used we got to the idea of children being killed.”
• “We need to repent from apathy. We need to fight this normalization of a genocide that’s taking place in front of the whole world to see.”
• Fourteen months of non-stop bombing
• “We’re still feeling the anger.”
• ”We’re still feeling the pain. We’re still feeling the anger. And in a strange way, even more fearful of what is to come, given that it seems that to the world, Palestinians are less human.”
• “We couldn’t go to church as normal.”
• “ It’s our calling to continue as people of faith. To call for a change, and to call for things to be different in our world, even to call for accountability. And of course, I feel that my message should be first to the church, because I’m a Christian minister.  I don’t like to lecture other religions about how they should respond. And I feel that the church could have done more.”
• Freedom to speak out: “You can’t say these things in public.”
• Anti-Semitism and hatred toward Jews
• “ This kind of hatred and prejudice toward the Jews, which led to the horrors of the Holocaust, to me, it stems from the idea of ‘we’re superior, we’re better, we’re entitled,’ and blaming someone else. It comes from a position of righteousness and lack of humility. And certainly Jews have always been the victim of such hatred and blame.”
• “ At the same time, we as Palestinians cannot but wonder why is it us that we’re paying the price for what happened on someone else’s land? We’re paying the price.”
• Loving God, loving neighbours, and loving enemies
• Jesus’s politically charged environment
• Violence, just wWar theory, and “the justice of God”
• Using children as human shields for militants
• “ We cannot again bypass what Jesus was challenging us to do, even if it's not easy at all. It was Jesus who confirmed that loving God and loving neighbour summarizes everything. It wasn’t like I came up with this novel thing, but I think we somehow found other ways to define what it means to be a Christian.”
• “What theology would bring comfort?”
• Matthew 25, judgment, and ministering to Jesus through “the least of these”
• “ ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.’ So he’s clearly talking about victims of unjust structures, those who are thirsty for justice, those who are hungry.”
• Hopes for peace
• “I’m going to be very real, Mark. I think my hope is that by this time next year, we would have survived this.”
• “They estimate that 70 percent of the homes of two million people are destroyed.”
• Violence and destruction connected to a biblical argument about the legitimacy of Palestinian genocide
• The vulnerability of Israel and the vulnerability of Palestine
• “ And it’s important to say these things. Because if we don’t say them, then we … leave the task of imagination to those who are radical—to the extremists and exclusivists.”
• Munther Isaac’s thoughts on the Zionist movement
• Advent reflections on the darkness at the centre, from which hope and life might emerge

Production Credits

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

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“We learn the most from those who came before us, not by gazing up at them uncritically or down on them condescendingly, but by looking them in the eye. And taking their true measure as human beings, not as gods.” (Daniel Gidick, quoting historian John Meacham)

“When does the revolution end? … It doesn’t.” (Daniel Gidick on Thomas Jefferson)

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” (Daniel Gidick, quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Teaching high school history in our current social and political moment represents a formative transmission of the past to the present. Not to mention that a high school level US history course is often one of the final steps toward citizenship and public participation for young adults entering American society.

In this episode, Mark welcomes high school history teacher Daniel Gidick for a discussion of how the teaching of history and the education of young people influence human society.

Together they discuss the connection between history and contemporary society; the stories of conflict and human interest; the joy and challenge of secondary education; the politicalization of high school history; how students adopt a connection to the past; the importance of fact-based history teaching; how history affects American democratic citizenship; and the personal connection Daniel has with the study of United States history.

About Daniel Giddick

Daniel Gidick teaches US history and government at Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Show Notes

• US history and the constant turmoil of the social landscape
• History as “stories of human conflict and human interest”
• Inspirational historical figures
• The depth and impact of high school teachers on young people
• “Battlefield breakfast”
• “The last teacher they’ll have before they take on the greatest title that you can have (other than parent), which is citizen.”
• “A parodied speech of Eisenhower’s D-Day speech” to motivate test takers
• Historical documents
• The politicization of high school history
• Jon Meacham: “We learn the most from those who came before us, not by gazing up at them uncritically or down on them condescendingly, but by looking them in the eye. And taking their true measure as human beings, not as gods.”
• American Civil War
• State versus national power
• “When in doubt, the answer of the division of history is: slavery.”
• The New Deal: “The pivot point of the twentieth century.”
• Immigration
• How do students feel about America?
• “Lincoln has to be dead by Christmas.”
• “When does the revolution end? … It doesn’t.”
• A connection to the past, finding relevance
• What is your theory of history?
• Fact-based historical teaching
• How history affects American democratic citizenship
• An inflection point in American history
• “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” (FDR)
• “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” (FDR)
• “One of the points of reflecting on the past is to prepare us for action in the present.” (Jon Meacham)

Production Credits

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

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“In October 1975, I was shot six times. And while I was on the hospital gurney, doctor told me I was going to die. I heard a very clear voice that spoke to me and said, you're not going to die. You're going to be a chaplain at San Quentin prison.” (Chaplain Earl Smith)

Chaplain Earl Smith believes that ministry to the incarcerated is about so much more than rehabilitation. It’s about regeneration. Using the power of his own story of transformation from gang member to pastor, Chaplain Smith has maintained a faithful presence and witness for many decades of pastoral service to the incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, and now to professional athletes (including the Golden State Warriors, San Francisco 49ers, and the San Francisco Giants).

Today on the show Mark Labberton and Chaplain Earl Smith discuss the moral and spiritual factors of prison chaplaincy and ministry for those on death row; the meaning of freedom and education; how he ministered to the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood; the difference that positive mentoring and coaching makes in young people’s lives; and the transformative power of the gospel to go beyond rehabilitation to regeneration.

About Earl Smith

Born and reared in Stockton, California, the cycle of events in Earl’s life came to a head in 1975 when he was shot 6 times while living the life of a minor gangster. Although expected to die, Earl’s father’s faith, prayers, and love seemed to bring him through. The words of his father have motivated him, since that event, “you are a rebel, but you are God’s rebel, and God is going to use you to His glory.”

In 1983, at the age of 27, Earl became the youngest person ever hired as a Protestant Chaplain by the California Department of Corrections.

He is author of Death Row Chaplain: Unbelievable True Stories from America's Most Notorious Prison.

Chaplain Smith currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Franklin Home, a Transition Living/Reentry Home for men and is the Team Pastor for the San Francisco 49ers’ and the Golden State Warriors. From 1998 to 2006 Chaplain Smith was the Chapel Leader for the San Francisco Giants. Chaplain Smith has ministered to teams playing in NFL Super Bowls, MLB World Series and NBA Championships. In 2000, Chaplain Smith was recognized as the National Correctional Chaplain of the Year.

Chaplain Smith has appeared on numerous broadcasts, including HBO, CNN, The 700 Club, Trinity Broadcasting Network and The History Channel. Earl has been featured in Christianity Today, Ebony, Guidepost, Ministry Today, Newsweek, People’s Weekly, The African Americans and Time.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Death Row Chaplain: Unbelievable True Stories from America's Most Notorious Prison
• How Mark and Chaplain Smith met
• The value of education
• “I had to stop my education because of the execution schedule at San Quentin.”
• How Earl Smith got into prison chaplaincy
• “In October 1975, I was shot six times. And while I was on the hospital gurney, doctor told me I was going to die. I heard a very clear voice that spoke to me and said, you're not going to die. You're going to be a chaplain at San Quentin prison.”
• What San Quentin prison is like
• “We used to call San Quentin the Bastille by the Bay. The thing that really stood out for me was the fact that for 13 of the first 16 months I was there, the prison was locked down. The day I interviewed, two people were killed, so they stopped my interview twice. So I understood where I was. I understood the context of confinement. What I also went in there understanding was. It was not about rehabilitation. It was about regeneration.”
• “I believe that that's part of chaplaincy is not to allow the confines of the wall to dictate who you are.”
• A sense of liberty
• Fear and reality
• Earl Smith’s ministry to the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood
• How faith shaped a capacity to be free from fear for the sake of love
• Mass incarceration and the new Jim Crow
• The drug epidemic and its impact on mass incarceration
• “How can you help us prepare these guys to come home?”
• “Whether you're on condemned role, if you have a life without the possibility of parole, or life sentence, or whatever it is, my job is still to share the same gospel message.”
• “Present your body as a living sacrifice.”
• Pastoral care in the prison system
• Calling prisoners by their first names instead of their numbers
• “When you've done it onto the least of these, you've done it to me, so there's a value in your presence.”
• Chaplaincy to professional athletes
• “The states that have the largest prison systems are also the states that send the most professional athletes in the pro sports.”
• Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers
• The difference that positive mentoring and coaching makes in young people’s lives
• “Every man wants someone to acknowledge there's something positive in what you're doing.”
• “They May Know Your Number, But God Knows Your Name” (Clifton Jansky, country western singer)
• God’s way of paying attention to us; “how vested God is in our pursuit of being fully human” (reference to Marilynne Robinson)
• Performance and identity (reference to Ben Houltberg)
• Jerry Rice, #80 and “who wore the number before you?”
• Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action
• “God is a relational God. … Sports is relational.”
• When did chaplaincy in sports become a thing?
• Pat Ritchie’s chaplaincy
• Understanding the value and difference chaplaincy makes
• Documentary and Film Adaptation: Death Row Chaplain
• “A story not of rehabilitation but regeneration”
• “That's really what the story is about. Some of my yesterday, some of my today. And what I believe to be my tomorrow.”

Production Credits

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

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“Things had radically changed. … They had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton opens up about a period of darkness and despair, when as a younger man he considered ending his life. But when he was invited to share Thanksgiving dinner with a local couple, his eyes were opened to a concrete hope, friendship, and joy—all embodied in the simple feast of a community potluck.

Every year since, Mark calls these friends on Thanksgiving Day, in gratitude for and celebration of the hospitality, generosity, beauty, friendship, and hope he encountered that day.

Here Mark reflects on the emotional and psychological difficulties he was going through, the meaning and beauty of friendship, how every dish of a Thanksgiving dinner is an act of hope and community, and how hospitality and generosity can uplift every member of a community.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with depression or considering suicide, there is help available now. Simply call or text 988 to speak with someone right away, share what you’re going through, and get the support you need.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• A story about Thanksgiving Day many years ago, during Mark Labberton’s master of divinity degree at Fuller Seminary
• “… not just overwhelmed, but really undone”
• “ … the possibility of ending my life …”
• Every Thanksgiving dish as an act of hope and community
• Beauty of friendship
• A magnificent extravaganza
• Sharing not just food but hope
• “Things had radically changed. And that in fact they had, they had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life.”
• “For me, Thanksgiving Day holds this deep and pensive awareness that Thanksgiving doesn't always come easy, that often it's a difficult act, that it involves things that are sometimes impossible for certain people to carry. And at the same time, it's possible for other people to carry them in our place, which is what these friends did for me that day.”
• If you’re feeling despair, seek professional help. Call or text 988 for an immediate response with a counsellor.
• Seek community.
• “Whether you're in darkness or in light, whether your heart feels full of gratitude or whether it may not, I just hope that you'll be aware that God is with you, that you are not alone, that there are people that want to support you and help you, and that there are people that know you who would welcome you into a circle of celebration and gratitude today.”

Production Credits

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

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“We’ve just created a hereditary aristocracy in this society, and it has created a populist backlash.” (David Brooks, from the episode)

There’s a growing chasm that divides the affluent and non-affluent in American society, and it’s perhaps most pronounced in higher education. The elite meritocracy suggests that we should reward individual ability, ambition, and accomplishment. But what is “merit” anyway? What is “ability”? And how do they factor in our idea of “a successful life”?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes David Brooks (columnist, New York Times) for a conversation about elite meritocracy in higher education.

Together they discuss the meaning of merit, ability, success, and their roles in a good human life; hereditary aristocracy and the populist backlash; power and overemphasis on intelligence; the importance of curiosity for growing and becoming a better person; the value of cognitive ability over character and other skills; the centrality of desire in human life; moral formation and the gospel according to Ted Lasso; ambition versus aspiration; and the impact of meritocracy on the political life and policy.

About David Brooks

David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. He is also the author of The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, and founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project.

Show Notes

• “How the Ivy League Broke America” (via The Atlantic)
• “The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new.”
• Money and the elite meritocracy
• “Every nation has a social ideal. And for the first half of the twentieth century, and the last half of the nineteenth century, our social ideal was the well-bred man.” (e.g., Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush)
• “Rich people rigged the system.”
• “Now, if you come from a family in the top 1 percent, your odds of going to an Ivy League school are seventy-seven times higher than if you come from a poor family. And a lot of schools around the country have more students in the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent.”
• “We now have this chasm between the children of the affluent and the children of the non-affluent.”
• Shocking stats: “By eighth grade, children of the affluent are four grade levels higher than children of the non-affluent. People who grew up in college-educated homes live eight years longer than people in high-school-educated homes, they’re five times less likely to die of opioid addiction, they’re twenty-two times less likely to have children out of wedlock, they’re two and a half times less likely to say they have no close friends.”
• “We’ve just created a hereditary aristocracy in this society, and it has created a populist backlash.”
• Too much power
• What is “merit”? How do you define “merit”? Who has “ability”?
• IQ is not a good indicator of merit.
• “Our meritocracy measures people by how well they do in school. The definition of intelligence is academic ability.”
• “What’s the correlation between getting good grades in school and doing well in life? The correlation is basically zero.”
• “We measure people by how they do in one setting, which is the classroom. And then we use that to declare how prepared they are for another setting, which is the workplace.”
• “Augustine said, we're primarily not thinking creatures, we're primarily desiring creatures.”
• Leon Kass (University of Chicago): “What defines a person is the ruling passion of their soul.”
• “We become what we love.”
• Predominant emotion of fear
• Curiosity, the love of learning, and getting better every day
• “You’re plenty smart. You’re just not curious.”
• Tina Turner’s memoir, discovering her voice and self-respect.
• “What matters is being a grower, the ability to keep growing.”
• “Getting old takes guts.” (David Brooks’s eighty-nine-year-old father)
• A sense of purpose
• The drive for the future, to be bold
• Henry Delacroix and the genius of America to drive for boldness, hard work, growth, and energy
• Moral materialism
• Vincent van Gogh said, “I’m in it with all my heart.”
• Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola, L’Oeuvre
• Yo-Yo Ma, cello, elite performance, and passionate humanity: “I’m a people person.”
• “Look at these creatures. They’re amazing!”
• Ordinary people in ordinary circumstances
• “Social intelligence” is not really intelligence—it’s an emotional capacity.
• Individuals and teams
• “What makes a good team? It’s not the IQ of the individuals. It’s the ability to take turns while talking. It's the ability to volley ideas and to feed into a common funnel of thought.”
• Project Based Learning
• Most Likely to Succeed (documentary, High Tech High)
• The Hour Between Dog and Wolf John Coates
• Self-awareness and adeptness reading your own body
• Emotional agility
• “The mind is built for motion. That what we do in life, we don’t solve problems, we navigate complex terrains.”
• “We’re all pilgrims. And we’re all searching for the journey that will transform us. And so it’s, the mind is not this computer designed to solve problems. The mind has helped us navigate through a space. And if we do it well, then we become transformed.”
• Applying meritocracy to the 2024 election
• “If you segregate your society on IQ, You're inherently segregating on elitist grounds.”
• “The rebellion that is Donald Trump.”
• Jesus’s form of selection—“When Jesus was selecting his twelve, he didn’t give them all a bunch of standardized tests. … He saw that each person was made in the image of God.”
• “And to me, what (frankly) the Christian world offers us is a re centring of the human person.”
• Controlling the passions of your heart
• Christian humanism
• Ecce Homo
• Rene Girard and mimetic desire
• Ambition vs. Aspiration
• The gospel of Ted Lasso and David Brooks’s favorite definition of moral formation: “My goal is to make these fellas better versions of themselves on and off the field.”
• Still Evangelical (essay by Mark Labberton)
• “Am I yet evangelical?”

Production Credits

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

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Our increasingly reactionary political environment doesn’t lend itself to nuanced, patient understanding of events like the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump. What historical and philosophical resources can help us gain insight and wisdom? How can we successfully know and encounter each other in such a divided society?

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

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

About David Brooks

David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (Random House, 2023). He is also the author of The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, and founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project.

Show Notes

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

Production Credits

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

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How should we respond to the anxiety, fear, and catastrophizing of Election Day? Is there an alternative to fight, flight, or freeze? Can people of Christian conviction stand firm, grounded in faith, leaning into the storm?

In this special Election Day episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton welcomes Peter Wehner (columnist, the New York Times, The Atlantic) and David Goatley (president, Fuller Seminary) to make sense of the moral, emotional, and spiritual factors operating in the 2024 US general election.

Together they discuss the emotional response to political media; faithful alternatives to the overabundance of fear, anxiety, and catastrophizing; how the threat of affective polarization divides families and friendships; biblical attitudes toward troubling or frightening political and cultural events; how to respond to vitriol, anger, cynicism, hate, and manipulative language; and how the church can help restore trust and be a faithful witness, standing firm through the political storm.

About Peter Wehner

Peter Wehner, an American essayist, is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports, and friendships.

Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which the New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.

About David Goatley

David Emmanuel Goatley is president of Fuller Seminary. Prior to his appointment in January 2023, he served as the associate dean for academic and vocational formation, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Research Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry, and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Campbellsville, Kentucky, for nine years (1986–1995).

In addition to his articles, essays, and book chapters, Goatley is the author of Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion and A Divine Assignment: The Missiology of Wendell Clay Somerville, as well as the editor of Black Religion, Black Theology: Collected Essays of J. Deotis Roberts. His current research focuses on flourishing in ministry and thriving congregations, most recently working on projects funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Duke Endowment.

Show Notes

• Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Worst-Case Scenarios
• The regular appeal to “the most important election of our lifetimes”
• Assuming the worst about others
• “We are at a fork in the road for a certain kind of vision of who we want to be.”
• “As an African American, many of us always live in the crosswinds.”
• Living with fragility, vulnerability, and uncertainty
• Hymn: “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand”
• Anger, Antipathy, and Fear
• Passions and beliefs—and an electoral system built to amplify those
• “They’re more amplified than in the past.”
• Families and friendships that divide over politics.
• Feeling like we “share a continent but not a country”
• Affective polarization—”There’s a sense of the other side being an enemy.”
• Catastrophizing
• Recalibrate, reset, and rethink
• Hoping that calmer heads prevail
• Church splintering and aligning with partisan politics
• “God will use all things—not that God intends all things.”
• The political balance wheel
• “Fear is not a Christian state of mind.”
• “Hope is based on something real.”
• “The long game for believers is to hearken back to the early church and remember that Jesus is Lord, and the emperor is not.”
• Political toxicity that infects the household of faith
• “We have to do all that we can to live with peacefully with each other.”
• Vitriol, hubris
• “It’s important to name things. … If you don’t name them—if you try to hide them—then you can’t begin the process of healing.”
• “Faith is subordinate to other factors that they’re not aware of.”
• The Era of Fear: What informs our fears? What can we do about our fears?
• Fear of the Lord that sets us free
• Firmness as an alternative to fighting or fleeing
• “Valuing the vibrant diversity of God”
• “Expand your reading.”
• Breaking out of conformity and homogeneity
• “Meeting the moment”: Inflection points in a human life or a society’s life—a moment for leaders to rise up, speak, and shape
• Example: Winston Churchill and Great Britain pre–World War II (from pariah to prime minister)
• Example: Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and the agenda to make schools phone-free
• These aren’t the conditions for human flourishing
• “We’ve got to be faithful. We may not be successful.”
• Cultivating a political garden to prepare the soil for shared core values of decency, respect, fairness
• “… what we have loved, / Others will love, and we will teach them how” (William Wordsworth, “The Prelude”)
• Loving the right things
• Voting
• “Complicating my view of the world.”
• “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
• Before voting: “A prayer to submit myself to the will of God.”
• “Tell me how you came to believe what you believe … over time it can create a feeling of trust”
• “What don’t I see? What about my own blindspots?”
• Stunned by the profundity and sobering word that “God will not be mocked”
• Expressing convictions through voting

Production Credits

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

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The history of racism has a parallel history of resistance. Courageous women and men have responded to injustice with lives of faith, hope, and love—bearing witness to the spirit of justice. They have inspiring stories we can learn from today. But who is willing to tell those stories? And who is willing to hear them?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes historian Jemar Tisby to discuss his new book, The Spirit of Justice—a summoning of over fifty courageous individuals who resisted racism throughout US history. The book is a beautiful quilt of stories and profiles, stitched together through Tisby’s contemporary cultural analysis.

Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is professor of history at Simmons College, a historically black college in Kentucky.

Recent Books by Jemar Tisby

The Spirit of Justice *Available now

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

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

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby (PhD, University of Mississippi) is the author of new book The Spirit of Justice, New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise, and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. He is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century and serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college. Jemar is the founding co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast, and his writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and the New York Times, among others. He is also a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN, speaking nationwide on the topics of racial justice, US history, and Christianity. You can follow his work through his Substack newsletter, Footnotes, and on social media at @JemarTisby.

Show Notes

• The Color of Compromise (available here)—the larger narrative of (Christian) America’s racist history
• Myrlie Evers Williams on her husband Medgar Evers’s death
• Myrlie Evers Williams: “I see something today that I hoped I would never see again. That is prejudice, hatred, negativism that comes from the highest points across America. She told us then with the candor that comes with old age, she said, and I found myself asking Medgar in the conversations that I have with him. Is this really what's happening again in this country? And asking for guidance because I don't mind admitting this to the press, I'm a little weary at this point.”
• Fighting for justice
• “Black people are born into a situation in which we are forced to defend, assert, and constantly so, our humanity. And that is in the midst of constant attacks on our humanity, big and small, whether it is the vicarious suffering that we see when there's another cell phone video of a black person being brutalized by law enforcement, whether it is, you know, We all have memories of the first time we were called the N word, uh, whether it is going into the workplace and wondering if you didn't get that raise or you were passed over for that promotion, if it had anything to do with the color of your skin, even subconsciously. And so we are born into a situation in which resistance is a daily reality.”
• Sister Thea Bowman, Black Catholic Mississippian Nun
• “Her holiness leaps off the page.”
• Simmons College, Louisville, KY
• Jim Crow Era: “How do you tell the story of the Jim Crow era without centering the white supremacy, the violence, the segregation—How do you center black people in that era?”
• William J. Simmons, Men of the Mark
• The history of Simmons College as an HBCU
• Ida B. Wells
• Harriet Tubman (Araminta Ross) and the Underground Railroad
• Nursing, training, service, and freeing the slaves
• Combahee River Raid (led by Harriet Tubman)—she received a full military burial
• “We need the spirit of justice because injustice is present.”
• Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn
• “And in all kinds of ways, black people chose to fight their oppression.”
• Romans 5: Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame.
• “Hope is a decision.” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)
• “They chose hope.”
• William Pannell, Fuller Theological Seminary—My Friend the Enemy (1968)
• Rodney King and “the coming race war”
• William Pannell’s impact on Mark Labberton
• Film: The Gospel According to Bill Pannell
• “When you see what's really motivating people, what's really stirring up fear and hatred, which can lead also to violence. It's still around race.”
• Racial anxiety and politics: “This is no longer a white man’s America.”
• The Holy Spirit
• “I’m getting so Pentecostal in these days.”
• Psalm 11:7: “God is a God of righteousness. God loves justice.”
• “When I think about what exactly the spirit of justice is, I think it's the fingerprint of God on every human being made in God's image that says I'm worthy of dignity, respect, and the freedom to flourish. And when that is taken away from me because of oppression and injustice, I have this spirit within me to resist.”
• “The spirit of justice gives us that resilience, that strength to become determined all over again. This is not a power that we find within ourselves to get back up again every time the backlash pushes us back. It is a power. the supernatural power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, that also empowers us for the work of justice.”
• How to make a difference
• The variety of black experiences
• Jemar Tisby’s first picture book and young reader’s edition

Production Credits

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

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“Sometimes I’m not sure even believers understand the power that exists in their sheer humanity. That there really is something that God has placed on the inside of us that when we come to some form of collected agreement—not uniformity, but just some kind of collective unity around something—that really wonderful, great, powerful things can happen.” (Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson)

Growing up in Oakland, California, Jackie Thompson didn’t know that sociologists were referring to her neighbourhood as “The Killing Zone”—a part of the city with the highest concentration of homicides. Now, as senior pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson continues to serve the Oakland community throughout its ups and downs, offering a Jesus-centred vision of justice and hope, present to the pain and suffering of the city.

In this episode Thompson joins Mark Labberton for a discussion of her local pastoral ministry in Oakland, California. Together they discuss Jackie’s life and experience as a one of the first women to be appointed senior pastor in a black Baptist church; her college experience at UC Berkeley; what it means to respond to the call of social justice and biblical faith; the blessings and challenges of pastoring a large black church in Oakland; how to centre local ministry on the pain and suffering of a community; the temptation of power; the political season and candidacy of Kamala Harris; and how to “fight for a vision of the kingdom of God where there is enough for everybody.”

About Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson

Described as a transformational preacher, dynamic leader and ministry trailblazer, Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson is an inspiring example of what God can do with a life committed to the call. She currently serves as the beloved senior pastor of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in her native Oakland, California. Her 2019 election made history nationwide as the first woman called to serve as senior pastor of this historic African American Baptist Church founded in 1919. Before being called in this capacity, Thompson served as the assistant pastor at Allen Temple and as youth minister at Shiloh Baptist Church of Washington, DC, the first woman to serve in both capacities.

Committed to excellence in scholarship, Thompson received her bachelor of arts in political economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master of divinity from Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. While at Howard, she received the Nannie Helen Burroughs Award for Academic Excellence and the Henry G. Maynard Award for Excellence in Preaching and Ministry. Believing in the importance of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, Thompson continued her studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where she was awarded the doctor of ministry degree in African American church leadership.

She is a member of the NAACP and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Her activism and leadership have been recognized by various chapters honouring her with the Community Excellence Award and as Distinguished Woman of the Year. Among other honours, Thompson has been inducted into the distinguished Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers.

Thompson is a gifted preacher, administrator, and published author travelling and ministering extensively nationally and internationally, often in arenas previously unchartered by women. In addition, she has been called on by local and national print and electronic media as an opinion leader to offer perspective and hope amid the pressing issues of the day. She is currently on the teaching staff of the Berkeley School of Theology in the area of public theology and preaching.

Her mission is to see transformation in the lives of others and is humbled by every opportunity to serve.

Show Notes

• Learn more about Allen Temple Baptist Church: https://www.allen-temple.org/
• Growing up in “The Killing Zone” in Oakland, CA
• “There was a really big difference in how we look at something and describe it and how the people who experienced it describe it themselves.”
• “At twelve years old, we started visiting all kinds of churches in Oakland, right? So I've been to every church just about storefront, larger church, every one.”
• The experience of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland
• Matthew 28:18–20
• Dr. J. Alfred Smith—one of the most beloved heralded African American pastors in the United States
• Restlessness
• Youth ministry in Oakland
• Social justice and biblical faith
• The power of a pastor: “I miss your voice in the choir!”
• Choir for young adults
• The ministry of Dr. J. Alfred Smith—”God was absolutely central and primary, and the point of action that held everything together. And then you had this galaxy of every kind of life experience that was being represented, talked about, honoured, celebrated from children to all, all generations and ages, but also women.”
• “Pastoring was never something I wanted to do. … But what happened was life.”
• “She’s a very dignified, prideful black mom. … And she said, ‘I don’t recognize you before.’”
• Trailblazing as the first female assistant pastor of a major black baptist church
• An imaginative tour of Oakland
• Oakland is a tale of two cities—the hills and the flatlands
• Shifting the narrative about Oakland, violence, justice, and power.
• “I believe part of our responsibility, particularly at Allen Temple, but not just Allen Temple, as people of faith, as people who say that we are followers of the way and that we believe in Jesus—that we call power structures to account.”
• “Fight for a vision of the kingdom of God where there is enough for everybody.”
• Walter Brueggemann: “The numbness that can come with royal consciousness”
• Remaining connected to the epicentre of people’s pain
• Joshua crossing the Jordan: twelve stones to build a memorial
• Good Samaritan on the Jericho road
• The history of Oakland’s ups and downs
• Washington, DC, and the power centre of the world
• “There are no permanent friends. There are no permanent enemies. They’re just permanent interests. … What that taught me is that the players around the table will change. As long as the interest in the centre of the table stays the same, it does not matter how the players change.”
• Oakland as microcosm for other urban cities
• “The temptation is always power.”
• “I try and keep the centre of the cross with the vertical and the horizontal meet before the eyes of the people in a way that they can see it, that they can grab hold to it, and they can decide how that, that’s how will they, they centre and position themselves in there for the cause of the kingdom.”
• “What is the burden that you feel like you're primarily carrying?”
• “Sometimes I’m not sure even believers understand the power that exists in their sheer humanity. That there really is something that God has placed on the inside of us that when we come to some form of collected agreement—not uniformity, but just some kind of collective unity around something—that really wonderful, great, powerful things can happen.”
• Comparing Obama’s nomination to Kamala’s nomination
• Focusing on the needs of the people
• Thompson’s preaching as centring the pain on a deeper centre of Jesus Christ

Production Credits

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

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When it comes to voting, how should we balance character and policy?

“If I'm voting for a politician,” journalist David French suggests, “I have a test. One is: Do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they’re seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two: Do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies?”

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes journalist David French (opinion columnist for the New York Times; formerly The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and National Review) for a discussion of character, policy, and principles for faithful, virtuous engagement in polarized American politics.

French’s commitment to Christian faith, moral character, and reasoned policy has emerged from his experience as a former commercial lawyer, military lawyer, and former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. A political conservative, French has throughout his career been an advocate for First Amendment rights, pro-life individuals and organizations, and the ideals of democracy. He describes himself as “an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy.”

Together, Mark and David discuss his Christian upbringing; his personal partisan commitments; the importance of character in party politics; the importance of nuanced and reasoned policy; why he’s voting for Kamala Harris in order to save conservative politics; two Bible verses for this election season; how to respond to our culture of fear; and how to secure a more courageous, loving, and humble politics.

About David French

David French is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, and previously wrote for The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and National Review. He is a New York Times bestselling author of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.

He describes himself as “an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy.”

He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and a former lecturer at Cornell Law School. He has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom. David is a former major in the United States Army Reserve. In 2007, he deployed to Iraq, serving in Diyala Province as Squadron Judge Advocate for the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, where he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Show Notes

• Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
• “I was a First Amendment litigator with a writing hobby.”
• Background in the Acapella Churches of Christ: a Restoration Movement from the early-19th century
• “It turned into something kind of separatist, sectarian, and ferociously legalistic.”
• “I grew up with a real grounding. grounding and reading the Bible, which actually, ironically enough, was the seed of me leaving the church of Christ.”
• “I was a Cold War conservative and a conservative Christian. And they were related, but not, but they weren't inextricably tied together. So for me, my, you know, ideology was downstream of my faith, but I didn't think that my ideology was the inevitable result of my faith.”
• Pro-Life Activism
• Representing pro-life individuals
• Existential clash: the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States
• Why David French is voting for Kamala Harris in order to save conservative politics
• “My party loyalty has always been related to two things. One is the ideology of the party and the other one is the character of the party. And the party leaders and the people that I vote for, I've always had a character test and an ideological test.”
• Bad character and bad policy—”why would I be attached to that? There’s no claim on my loyalty there.”
• The importance of character
• “If the conservative perspective that I have wants to have any purchase in American politics, MAGA has to lose. Donald Trump has to lose.”
• Federalism: a practical understanding that smaller government is better.
• Republican Party increasingly embracing a pro-choice platform
• “If you're going to have a healthy two party system, the distinctions should be around good people of high character approaching policy solutions from different perspectives.”
• “One of these parties has sort of left the norms of American. political engagement.”
• “I voted for Mitt Romney more than Mitt Romney's probably voted for Mitt Romney.”
• “If I'm voting for a politician, I have a test. One is: Do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they're seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two: Do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies?”
• “I have very little patience for those people who say I'm somehow not a Christian for voting for a pro-choice candidate. When they're voting for a pro-choice candidate who's been adjudicated a sex abuser, that is difficult for me to discern how that is a more Christian stance.”
• Clear, independent thinker
• Logical reasoning and courageous statements
• A living faith by which we think through ideas
• “There's a fine line between stubbornness and courage.”
• “In these last 10 years, I've really had to ask myself: Who are you really?”
• David French’s parents’ example of faith and virtue
• Learning from World War I and World War II history
• “Some of the worst things that have happened in American history have happened because people didn't want to do hard things.”
• “I think the sanctification process, though, is difficult. It means that you're being exposed to constantly your own sin is being exposed to yourself.”
• Mark asks: “What do you want Christian people, thoughtful, committed, curious, uncertain, tenuous Christian people to, to do between now and the election?”
• 2 Timothy 1:7—“God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of sound mind.”
• Micah 6:8—”What does the Lord require of you, O man? What is good? To act justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before the Lord your God.”
• Ideological diversity: be curious, seek disagreement
• “If you just show affection for people and curiosity towards their views, anger tends to drain out of a room.”
• “College students are full of anxiety about conflict.”
• “Fear not.”
• The A Team—arming up for battle
• “And they find out that a lot of these folks that they were taught were going to be their enemies are actually just super kind, normal folks.”
• “They're equipping them to fight, not to love their neighbor, fight their neighbor, not love their neighbor.”
• Mark asks: “What handles would you give people in living in a fear dominated moment in American history?”
• “In receiving anger and fear, do not try to build up a bulletproof thick skin. … Because you know what that does? It often walls you off from legitimate criticism.”
• Thick skin, soft heart.
• “An enormous amount of fear is rooted in a sense—a feeling—of non-belonging and loneliness. Isolation and loneliness.”
• “People who are more isolated and alone are drawn to these authoritarian movements.”
• “Ease the loneliness, build the connection. … Lean into relationship and presence.”
• “It was just stunning to me that, against all evidence of scripture, Christians were consigning people to eternal damnation over a vote in a presidential election.”
• Miles Law: “Where we stand is based on where we sit.”
• Kindness, humility, not living a fear-based angry life
• “If you're in a community where the fruit of the spirit dominate, you can withstand a lot of disagreement.”

Production Credits

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

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“It’s sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.” (Elizabeth Bruenig, from the episode)

Despite sin, there remains an inherent beauty and goodness throughout creation … including humanity.

And even in the most divisive circumstances, when we appeal to the beauty and horror in our shared human condition, we might be able to find common ground for mutual understanding and collaboration. And sometimes, in the best circumstances, we might even find a beautiful and life-giving encounter with the other.

In this episode, celebrated journalist and self-described “avid partisan of humankind” Elizabeth Bruenig (staff writer for The Atlantic, and formerly the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Republic) joins Mark Labberton to talk about journalism, her journey toward Catholicism, the complex moral and emotional lives of human beings, capital punishment and violence, and the prospects for introducing beauty into polarized politics and horrifying evil.

About Elizabeth Bruenig

Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was previously an opinion writer for the New York Times and the Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. She has also been a staff writer at The New Republic and a contributor to the Left, Right & Center radio show. She currently hosts a podcast, The Bruenigs, with her husband, Matt Bruenig. Elizabeth holds a master of philosophy in Christian theology from the University of Cambridge. At The Atlantic, she writes about theology and politics.

Show Notes

• Elizabeth Bruenig shares about her religious and philosophical background
• Bruenig shares about her journey toward Roman Catholicism
• The Eucharist and embodied experience of God
• The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist
• “I don't need to be studying and getting degrees, I need to just be living my life radically as a Christian.”
• Journalism, paying attention, and compassionate
• “I'm very interested in people and people's moral lives. Things like honor and shame, guilt—you know, very complex emotions—interest me a lot, and I think everyone has them all the time. People have these spiritual, ethical, moral struggles going on inside them. And so everybody is a little universe unto themselves.”
• What it means to be a Staff Writer
• Journalism with narrative, story, opinions, and arguments
• “I have found that to be a very successful way of garnering stories. It's just to listen to people.”
• “The first execution I ever witnessed, I witnessed for the New York Times, it was during Trump's spree of federal executions. I think they executed something like 13 people in six months, really unprecedented. I wanted to report on that.”
• Media witnesses as
• The Executions of Alfred Bourgeois, David Neal Cox, James Barber, Kenny Smith, and Alan Miller
• “I have had the opportunity to speak with men who were about to die.”
• “The Man I Saw Them Kill”
• “The idea of execution promises catharsis. The reality of it delivers the opposite, a nauseating sense of shame and regret. Alfred Bourgeois was going to die behind bars one way or another, and the only meaning in hastening it, as far as I could tell, was inflicting the terror and the torment of knowing that the end was coming early. I felt defiled by witnessing that particular bit of pageantry, all of that brutality cloaked in sterile procedure. So much time and effort goes into making executions seem like exercises of justice, not just power. Extreme measures are taken at each juncture to convince the public, and perhaps the executioners themselves, that the process is a fair, dispassionate, rational one. It isn't. There was no sense in it, and I can't make any out of it. Nothing was restored, nothing was gained. There isn't any justice in it, nor satisfaction, nor reason. There was nothing, nothing there.”
• Faith, the void of execution
• “I find that reading great essays summons language in me.”
• On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
• “Beauty inspires reproduction”
• “It's sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.”
• “I had a religious conviction going into the first execution that I was at that executions were wrong and it wasn't really based on anything that I could point to. I just had the, you know, very simple notion that killing people is wrong and that it's wrong in, in all cases, even if the person is a very bad person.”
• Two executions in the New Testament: the one Jesus halts, and the one that kills Jesus
• Execution as a subhuman act
• The logic of criminal justice system and capital punishment
• The difficulty of introducing beauty into polarized politics
• “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8)
• Groaning beauty
• “All of creation groans under the weight of sin.”
• “The holiness of creation, the goodness of it, is so strong that it can't be, I don't think, entirely blotted out by sin. I just don't think that humans have the power to rob of beauty that which was made beautiful.”
• Finding beauty in visual culture, pop culture, museums, essay writing, and art
• On Beauty, Eula Biss— “… her prose, you know, glitters to me. I think it's fantastic. Not too melodramatic, restrained. And elegant.”
• Marilynne Robinson, imagination and beauty
• The political landscape
• Fears
• “I think when what's up for debate is like the rule of law, then I'm going to go with the candidate who whatever other faults is actually in favor of the rule of law. I think that's very important.”
• Assisted Suicide and Physician Assisted Suicide
• “I don't think I can write without bringing in theology, because it's so much a part of what I consider to be true. And so to give readers an honest view into what I'm thinking I have to provide the theological Issues that I'm thinking through.”

Production Credits

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

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“We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we’ve departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I’m afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value.” (Marilynne Robinson, from the episode)

Today on the show, Mark Labberton welcomes the celebrated novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson to discuss her most recent book, Reading Genesis. Known for novels such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila, she offers a unique perspective on ancient scripture in her latest work of nonfiction.

In this enriching and expansive conversation, they discuss the theological, historical, and literary value in the Book of Genesis; the meaning of our shared humanity; fear and reverence; how to free people from the view of God as threatening; the complicated and enigmatic nature of human freedom; the amazing love, mercy, and long-suffering of God on display in the unfolding drama of the Genesis narrative; and overall: “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”

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 of universities, including Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho and now lives in Iowa City.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
• Mark introduces Marilynne Robinson and her most recent foray into biblical interpretation
• Overarching narrative of God’s time vs. Human time
• Theological, biblical, historical, and literary categories
• Why Genesis? Why biblical commentary?
• “Genesis is the foundational text, and God’s self-revelation is the work of Genesis.”
• The expansiveness of the creation narrative from the beginning of everything to two people hoeing in a garden.
• Elohim and the universal God-name
• Monotheism and the enormously cosmic assertion of the nature of God
• From cosmology to granular human existence
• Amazement and the Book of Genesis
• “God saw the intentions of our heart and they were only evil always.”
• Conjuring the idea of a vindictive God—as opposed to a merciful, long-suffering, and loving God
• “It's hard to wiggle people free from the idea that God is primarily threatening.”
• The role of fear in sin, temptation, and evil
• “I think the fall is a sort of realization of a fuller aspect of our nature, which is painful to us and painful to God. But it's our humanity.”
• From the book: “The narrative of scripture has moved with astonishing speed from let there be light to this intimate scene of shared grief and haplessness. There is no incongruity in this. Human beings are at the center of it all. Love and grief are, in this infinite creation, things of the kind we share with God. The fact that they have their being in the deepest reaches of our extensionless and undiscoverable souls only makes them more astonishing. Over and against the roaring cosmos, that they exist at all can only be proof of a tender solicitude.”
• Ancient Near Eastern mythology
• “Meaning cannot leak out of this. It’s absolutely meaningful.”
• Genesis is a “particular series of stories that are stories of the tumbling, bumbling, faithful, faithless, violent, peaceable, loyal, disloyal agency of human beings.”
• Mystery
• Theology as a vision, a revelation
• “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”
• The impact of Genesis in the history of our understanding of humanity, freedom, relationships, and so much more.
• Law as a liberation of one another: it limits your behavior and is emancipating to everyone around you.
• God’s patience with human freedom and the ability to go wrong
• The enigma of freedom
• “From the very beginning, the Bible seems aware that we are our enemy and that we are our apocalyptic beast.”
• “Our freedom is very costly. It’s costly to us. It’s costly to God.”
• Imagination and the dynamics of freedom
• “An enhanced reverence for oneself has to be rooted in a reverence for God.”
• “The idea of the sacredness of God and the sacredness of the self.”
• Fear and reverence
• “You are holding in your imagination … and helping us to see, feel, and hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary human beings, who are both (like Psalm 8), ‘a little lower than the angels,’ and at the same time, ‘we are dust and to dust you will return.’”
• Paying attention
• Marilynne Robinson’s upbringing, access to nature, access to books, and plenty of solitude
• Joseph and the ending of the Genesis narrative: How might the story of Joseph speak to our time?
• “We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we've departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I'm afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value. We are a danger to everything we value. And the fact that we can persist in doing that or tolerating it … there we are, you know? … We've always been strange, we human beings.”
• The perplexity of freedom
• “The way that Joseph understands his history is a comment on the idea of divine time.”
• “Joseph did enslave the Egyptians.”
• “There is no bow to tie around anything. There's simply whatever it yields in terms of meaning and beauty and so on.”
• Matthew 28 and the Great Commission
• “Christianity sliding into empire”
• The value of resolution and the open-ended nature of the Genesis narrative

Production Credits

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

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“I’m here because you’re here.”

Berkeley, California is known for being the home to the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. It was and is the site of many protests, drawing vocal minorities to Sproul Plaza and People’s Park for demonstrations, activism, and public assembly. So it’s come to symbolize what it means to speak out and be heard. But what does it mean to minister to an energized public square?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton thinks back to his time ministering in Berkeley, CA. First Presbyterian Church remains a close neighbor to the University of California, Berkeley campus. He describes an approach to public engagement marked by generous listening, a desire to know the individuals so moved to protest and speak out, and offer faithful presence to a community dedicated to protest and activism.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• Berkeley, CA
• People’s Park
• Sproul Plaza (site of famous Free Speech Protests of the 1960s)
• How to intensify their thirst?
• “What I really wanted was a conversation.”
• “Listening to God, which is what the life of Christian worship actually is.”
• “Living a life of listening, which is central to all Christian discipleship.”
• “I’m here because you’re here.”
• “I wish there had been a lineup of protesters outside first press asking, ‘How dare you?’… why are we not gathering protestors?”
• “I was wanting to so authentically speak and preach and live the gospel, that we would be the peculiar people that would cause people to say, ‘Why are you so peculiar?’—not just in that sense of church oddness, but in that deeper sense of why are you the peculiar people of unexplained mercy, unexplained forgiveness, unexplained passion for justice, unexplained sensitivity to individuals, and to societal, social, and systemic needs.”

Production Credits

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

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“Wisdom is not just about knowledge. Wisdom adds to knowledge with discernment, with understanding, with a moral sense of what’s right and wrong.”

We live in a time of overflowing and interweaving crises. A global pandemic exacerbates a mental health crisis caused social media technology. The upheaval of American electoral politics caused by an erosion (or breakdown?) of social and relational trust. The rise of nationalism, the proliferation of war, and longing for justice in the realms of gender and race.

Underneath it all appears to be a crisis of knowledge and its convergence around skepticism of science, a culture of suspicion, and confusion about basic factual information, let alone right and wrong.

We need wisdom. Badly. But in times of crisis and chaos, where are we to turn for wisdom?

In this episode Mark Labberton is joined by longtime friend Francis Collins, physician, researcher, and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Known for his leadership in mapping the human genome, his public service at the NIH spanned three presidencies and culminated with overseeing the national response to Covid-19 pandemic.

The author of many books, including his bestselling The Language of God, Collins’s new book is The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust, a reflection on the crisis of truth, science, faith, and trust, and how the exhausted middle might chart a path toward a better future.

About Francis Collins

Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, is the former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As the longest serving director of NIH—spanning twelve years and three presidencies—he oversaw the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, from basic to clinical research.

Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. He served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993 to 2008.

Collins's research laboratory has discovered a number of important genes, including those responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease, a familial endocrine cancer syndrome, and most recently, genes for type 2 diabetes, and the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare condition that causes premature aging.

Collins received a BS in chemistry from the University of Virginia, a PhD in physical chemistry from Yale University, and an MD with honours from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to the NIH in 1993, he spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007 and the National Medal of Science in 2009.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust
• “The crisis behind the crisis. It’s the crisis of culture. It’s the crisis of mind and heart. It’s the crisis of society. It’s the crisis of faith.”
• Collins occupying various roles through this book: professor, advocate, mentor, philosopher, coach, scientist, pathologist, and perhaps most saliently, cultural diagnostician.
• Being on the road to wisdom
• Helping those in the exhausted middle, to offer ways to do something to address cultural crises
• Collins summarizes the arc of the book
• TRUTH: “There is such a thing as objective truth. But it is not necessarily very popular in many circumstances.”
• “Facts—established facts—are now sometimes called into question because somebody doesn’t like the fact.”
• Jonathan Rauch on the “Constitution of Knowledge”
• “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. He doesn’t say the counter that lies will imprison you, but you might have to think about that.”
• Science as a pathway to the truth
• Anecdotes vs. empirical science
• “We have to bring faith into this conversation if we’re trying to shape a future that it gives you a chance to tap into all the wisdom that's there.”
• TRUST: “I found in my own experience, some of the information that turned out to be most life-changing came from a source that I never would have considered as part of my reliable circle of buddies, but I needed to hear it.”
• “Wisdom is not just about knowledge. Wisdom adds to knowledge with discernment, with understanding, with a moral sense of what’s right and wrong.”
• “Our society is in trouble.”
• Where will the solution come from? No politicians, not media, but only us.
• Empowering people to be part of the solution
• “Love is your calling. Anger and fear are not your calling.”
• “Listen to understand.”
• Don’t distribute information unless you’re sure it’s true.
• Build bridges with neighbours and within communities.
• Braver Angels Website
• “If you put information in front of people that’s well established, they’ll make rational decisions. And I assume that’s what science is all about.”
• Collins’s experience leading the charge to develop Covid-19 vaccines, and then managing the resistance to vaccines
• “People of faith in many instances were the most likely to fall into the category of not trusting what science had to say.”
• The cultural crisis beneath the medical crisis of Covid vaccine skepticism
• Collins reflects on public health responses to Covid-19 (school closures, mask mandates, etc.)
• Systemic breakdown caused by fear, anxiety, distrust, and suspicion
• Collins comments on Anthony Fauci’s public service throughout Covid-19
• Discrediting and redefining science, subverting faith
• Postmodernism and the erasure of objectivity and reason in science
• “Nothing is true except our perspective.”
• Francis Collins’s perspectives on the Christian church
• Christians’ ungrounded fear that this is a war
• Tim Alberta’s book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
• “Seeing through a glass darkly.” (1 Cor 13)
• A book of hope and whole human experience
• “There are profound reasons for each of us to engage. This is an argument about not standing aside. It’s crucial to see that what we are fighting for is great and glorious, and worth every bit of the effort from each of us. Truth, science, faith, and trust are not just sources of relief from a painful period in our country’s life. They represent the grandest achievements and insights of human civilization. They literally hold down the promise of a better life for every person on this planet in material terms, in spiritual terms, and in social and cultural terms. To take up this challenge is therefore not an act one of exhaustion or desperation. But one arising from the hopeful pursuit of the promise of greater flourishing of our entire humandom.”

Production Credits

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

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Is perfection possible? And if so, is it worth the cost to your mental and spiritual health?

The quest for perfection haunts many people: students, athletes, employees, parents—and the children of those parents!

While this quest is often framed as the pursuit of excellence, virtue, and success, perfectionism often results in various maladaptive behaviours—such as procrastination, people-pleasing, relational stress, and mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression disorders.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Dr. Kenneth Wang, Professor of Psychology at Fuller School of Psychology, to talk about the psychological and spiritual dynamics of perfectionism.

Together, they explore the connections between perfectionism and a range of personal and mental health issues, such as depression, achievement, religiosity, racial identity, and self-esteem. They reflect on the cultural obsession with perfection; the severe psychological and social burdens of trying to be perfect; the toxicity of comparison to others; the meaning of being “good enough”; and the spiritual impact of encouraging perfection in education, career, relationships, and personal life.

About Kenneth Wang

Kenneth Wang is Professor of Psychology at Fuller School of Psychology. He’s an experienced therapist, and has conducted extensive research that spans the psychology of religion, to mindful meditation, to coping with trauma, mental health and race, moral character and virtue formation, diversity, and cross-cultural adjustment. His expertise is in the psychological study of perfectionism in familial, educational, religious contexts—looking at the phenomenon across a variety of cultures. Visit Dr. Kenneth Wang’s website to take an online assessment for perfectionism and consider guidance and coaching from Dr. Wang.

Show Notes

• Societal perfectionism and the lure of the perfect through technology
• Comparing perfectionism in Asia vs America
• Comparing ourselves to others
• “Editing for the perfect shot”
• “There’s no time to relax or rest.”
• “One thing that's underlying challenges of perfectionism is that we compare ourselves with others and we feel like we're not good enough.”
• Rank-ordered report cards in Taiwan
• The psychological weight of pressure to perform
• Competition and perfectionism
• The elusive search for contentment
• The difference between performance and perfectionism
• Perfectionism’s two core dimensions: (1) striving to meet very high standards of excellence / (2) discrepancy or evaluative concerns—being truly bothered by any amount of imperfections
• “Extreme perfectionists can’t tolerate any imperfection.”
• Shame, rumination, and anxiety
• Kenneth guides Mark through a live perfectionism evaluation
• “Is your best good enough?”
• “Adaptive perfectionism”
• “I did the best I could” vs “I’m sure I always could have done better.”
• Cross-cultural dimensions of perfectionism: wanting to fit in, the exhaustion of trying to get things right, and language apprehensiveness
• Timidity and fear to make a mistake
• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and perfectionism
• The view of oneself: performance achievement mentality, seeking validation, unstable self-worth
• Perfectionists magnify imperfections
• Inner critic
• Kenneth Wang’s recovery as a perfectionism
• Can perfectionists forgive themselves for displeasing others?
• How to deal with the emotions that come along with perfectionist catastrophizing
• Training mental muscles to become more resilient to negative emotions
• How to “sit with emotions”
• Japanese Kintsugi practices and the visibility of a history of brokenness: gold paint that highlights brokenness and imperfect repair
• Theological reflections on perfection: “Only God is perfect.”
• How does Christianity speak into perfectionism with grace and truth?
• “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
• Shame and giving up on our illusions of perfection
• Coping with inadequacy
• Allowing God to lead us into the broad place instead of the narrow place
• Fuller Theological Seminary’s “Imperfect Culture Lab”

Production Credits

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

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The news media offers a steady drip of audacity, nerve, and offence—something for each end of the political spectrum and every corner of the public square.

But when we integrate audacity with a humble confidence, it can lead to powerful acts of love and justice.

The gospel makes an audacious claim about God’s grace. It makes an audacious demand that we love our neighbours in humility. And that combination of audacity and humility keeps us seeking to engage in real conversations about ultimate things—despite our differences, despite resentments, despite all the reasons to give up on building something together.

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the meaning of audacity, humility, and courage when the church engages in public life.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• What is audacity?
• Virtuous audacity, e.g., The Audacity of Hope (like Barack Obama)
• Injurious audacity, e.g., preposterous, foolish, offensive, distorting, railroading, steamrolling, shutting down, closing off
• But an additional form of audacity “has led to the humblest and most sacrificial forms of human service and love and compassion and mercy and justice.”
• Imagine a crowd of Berkeley, CA, protesters lined up before you, demanding: “How dare you?”
• Audacity and courage
• “It actually helped galvanize in my own voice—in my heart, in my lungs, in my mind—a sense of what I hope was humble confidence in proclaiming a gospel that I did and do believe is true.”
• “How do we actually engage in real conversation about ultimate things?”
• Adopting a stance of “we are all in this together”
• “How dare we believe and speak in God’s name?”
• “Indeed how dare I, and then also how dare I not if this is actually true?!”
• Integrating humility, confidence, courage

Production Credits

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

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How should we approach disagreements when our deepest convictions and commitments are challenged or questioned? A healthy society is built around the ability to navigate these kinds of disagreements with responsibility and respect, but in our increasingly polarized society, it’s becoming harder and harder to cultivate the habits, skills, and virtues that can keep us united amid our vehement disagreements.

In this episode Mark welcomes legal scholar and law professor John Inazu to discuss how to approach disagreement with wisdom, care, and a commitment to the well-being of the other. John is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He speaks and writes frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, and religious freedom. His latest book is Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect.

Together Mark and John discuss the role of fear management when approaching difficult conversations; how to appreciate the complexity and diversity of perspectives in others; the role of empathy in communication; how to learn to disagree constructively in different life contexts from work to home to politics; how authority, power dynamics, and social roles factor in productive disagreements; the light and dark sides of civility; and how to navigate and negotiate our disagreements with compassion and love.

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 University Press, 2012)—and has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, The 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

• Get your copy of Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (https://www.jinazu.com/learning-to-disagree)
• John Inazu’s background as a legal scholar and expert on first amendment rights, including the freedom to assemble peaceably, or “the right to peaceful assembly”
• How to learn from lawyers about how to disagree
• How does fear factor into communicating through disagreement?
• What neuroscience has taught as about fear
• “I can understand why you feel that…”
• Well-practiced habits
• Be prepared to engage differently
• Learning how to practice communication outside of a toxic social media or online context
• Empathy and the complexity of others’ views
• Canadian psychological research on empathy
• Avoiding abstraction in order to cultivate empathy
• David Brooks’s book, How to Know a Person
• How to understand fundamental versus surface-level differences
• Heated political issues and the social roles we inhabit
• Power dynamics, authority, and responsibility
• Power dynamics in the classroom
• How to approach disagreement in political protests on college campuses, e.g., Columbia University
• “Part of that responsibility is recognizing that people are hurting in very deep ways. … We’re not talking about abstractions or debating some historical event, we’re talking about real felt emotions.”
• “I'm aware that the capacity for interpersonal interaction has fallen off and it becomes more and more a school, or an environment, or a culture in which disagreement is not allowed.”
• Civility as a virtue or a vice?
• Purely cognitive rationality vs complex, emotional passions
• Fannie Lou Hamer and playing by a different set of social norms and rules
• Polarization and political tensions in partisan America
• “Totalizing positions” and the shrinking possibility of genuine communications
• Shirley Mullen’s book, Claiming the Courageous Middle
• How to uphold convictions without surrendering any ultimate truth claims
• How John Inazu has been shaped, formed, and influenced
• Curiosity and patience
• Close relationships that do formative work
• The Antidote for our cultural moment: “A lot of very small and very personal efforts where individual lives change postures … and contribute to social change with storytelling and exemplars and costly practices.”
• Small incremental steps: Jesus’s metaphor that the Kingdom of God is like yeast
• What would happen if American Christians started listening to the global church?
• What is the role of the imagination in learning to disagree?

Production Credits

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

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“The mystery has great meaning.”

Joy and sorrow don’t have to be dissonant opposites, author Amy Low suggests. There can be harmony in the space between triumph and tragedy. In her recent memoir, The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room, she recounts her battle with Stage IV metastatic colon cancer following the end of her marriage.

Her gracious, generous wisdom is beautifully expressed on her book’s back cover: “Through the swirl of prolonged trauma and unbearable grief, a vantage point emerged—a window that showed her the way to relish life and be kinder to herself and others while living through the inevitable loss and heartbreak that crosses everyone’s paths.”

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Amy for a conversation about the lessons she’s learned from living with cancer, including: how to come to terms with our own deaths; dealing with divorce and a traumatic end of a relationship; how to walk the path of forgiveness and humility; the immense complexity and beauty of humanity; how to explore the meaning of mystery without fear; the role of friendship and community in dealing with cancer; and the hope of imagining heaven.

About Amy Low

Amy Low, author of The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room, has been a storyteller all her life. She grew up in and continues to live life through parables and metaphors. She sees her life as an invitation to discovering the new every day and even records some of these discoveries in her Substack, Postcards from the Mountain. As the managing director for fellowships and non-profit journalism at the Emerson Collective, she directs efforts to empower individuals and newsrooms to strengthen our shared conversation in the public square. Most important, Amy is mom to Connor and Lucy. Her proudest achievement is raising a son and daughter who are unafraid, grateful, and curious, whether in class, at home, on stage, or especially in the band.

Get your copy of The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room.

Follow Amy’s story through her Substack, Postcards from the Mountain.

Being in the last room of one’s life

The profundity and sacredness of discussing one’s “last room”—”the most human place of all”

Bravery, imagination, and generosity

Amy Low’s cancer diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic colon cancer at 48 years old

Discovering metastases

Living in the last room: an unusual place to inhabit in mid-life

There are different ways to live in the last room.

St. Paul’s “last room” as described in the Letter to the Philippians

Lament and levity

Grief and being with people in their last rooms

Being fully alive in the midst of facing one’s death

“I can say with confidence for me that divorce was far harder than cancer. When I had to grapple with the gravity of my disease and the diagnosis and what I was going to face … I had come through a space of the woods that I can say was far more ominous, far harder, far more heartbreaking.”

Divorce

Forgiveness and receiving care from her ex-husband

How to create a new story in the wake of tragedy and trauma

Forgiveness as “releasing people from the negative consequences of their behavior”

“Giving yourself permission to be truly loved, and to be truly released from shame.”

Fear

Amy’s honest, artful, candid expression of her story

“Metaphors are places that hold ambiguity.”

Finding peace with ambiguity and mystery

Joy and purpose

“The worst thing anyone ever said to me was, you know, this whole thing is like so random. … And I thought, ‘No. No. The minute you call this random, the minute this doesn’t have any meaning.”

“The mystery has great meaning.”

Grappling with the tension of purpose and pain

How specific friends stood by Amy in approaching the experience of her cancer diagnosis

“Don’t just do something. Stand there.”

The challenge of receiving without giving much back—and reframing the meaning of “giving back”

The hope of imagining heaven

Heaven on earth as parachuting hot dogs

“The great hope is that we all wake up and we laugh at the good stuff and be brave at the hard stuff.”

Production Credits

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

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“A certain degree of faith in Providence and a certain degree of confidence in America … May that combination not be overwhelmed by some disaster.” (New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, offering a blessing for election season)

Contemporary political debate and commentary operates from deeply moral sources. People tend to vote their conscience. Our values and ideals, our sense of right and wrong, and our beliefs about what contributes or detracts from the common good often inform our politics.

And across the political spectrum, Americans of all stripes exercise their citizenship and public engagement through a religious faith that grounds it all. So, what better space to explore this conjunction of faith, morality, and political life than The New York Times Opinion section?

Today on the show, Ross Douthat joins Mark Labberton to discuss how his faith and theological commitments ground his moral and political perspectives. Douthat joined The New York Times as an Opinion columnist in 2009, and regularly appears on the weekly Opinion podcast, “Matter of Opinion.” He’s also a film critic for National Review and was previously senior editor at The Atlantic.

In this episode, they discuss the spiritual and political background of Douthat’s youth and how Roman Catholic Christianity grounded his religious and political views; the challenges for how the Catholic Church and its moral teachings can adapt to contemporary culture; how faith and morality can speak to our dynamic political moment during the 2024 election season; and finally Ross’s hope and faith in divine providence met with confidence in America’s resilience and capacity for good.

About Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Opinion columnist in 2009, and regularly appears on the weekly Opinion podcast, “Matter of Opinion.” He’s also a film critic for National Review. Previously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of several books, including The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery (2021), The Decadent Society (2020), To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism (2018), Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (2012); Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (2005), and, with Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008). His newest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, will be published in early 2025.

Show Notes

Ross Douthat’s spiritual background as Episcopalian, Pentecostal-Evangelical, and eventually Roman Catholic

Our “spiritually haunted environment”

How Catholicism has changed from Pope John Paul II to Pope Francis

Adapting moral teachings to contemporary challenges

“Many, many of the problems in our culture and the reasons for people's unhappiness are related to issues of sex and relationships.”

“Jesus says incredibly stringent and strenuous things in the Gospels about sex.”

“I think if the church stops having some sort of countercultural message on those issues, then it won't actually be speaking to the big challenges and derangements of our time.”

“All of the developed world is heading over this demographic cliff…”

People aren’t getting married anymore. They aren’t forming relationships anymore.”

Pope Francis, pastoral sensitivity, and making moral concessions to contemporary culture

Pope Francis squelching the Latin mass

Commenting on the dynamics and craziness of our political moment

“Over the course of my career, I have tried to spend a lot of time with the idea that Catholicism in particular, and I think Christianity in general, should stand a little bit outside of partisan categories.”

How the Republican Party can address the needs of the working class

Ross Douthat’s views during the Trump Era

Providence and appealing to God’s control

"Man proposes, and God disposes.”

“The world has grown weirder in general, in the last decade, than it was when I was in my twenties.”

Providence and freedom

Ross’s thesis in The Decadent Society: “The Western world and really the whole planet was sort of stuck stagnant. We'd achieved this incredible level of wealth and technological power, we'd filled the earth and subdued it to some degree, but we were suffering from uncertainty, malaise, and ennui because we didn't know what to do next.”

Space travel and Elon Musk

Looking for help from some other power: God, Aliens, or A.I.

The unique perspective Ross Douthat brings to The New York Times

“As the world has grown weirder, I've felt a little more comfortable being weird myself, and that so far hasn't gotten me fired.”

“You know, not to brag, but yeah, I'm probably the weirdest columnist at a major American newspaper.”

Offering a blessing for the nation’s experience between now and election day

“Life in the United States is an underrated good. Americans have become very pessimistic, very unhappy with each other, sometimes unhappy with themselves … And I think actually, beneath that difficult surface, America has a lot of real strengths and real resilience and American culture is better positioned, I think, than a lot of cultures around the world to navigate the next 50 to 100 years of human history. So I think that should give people some confidence.”

“A certain degree of faith in Providence and a certain degree of confidence in America.”

Production Credits

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

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Sacred spaces are not secret spaces. The church enacts a gospel reality that is inherently universal and transparent in the world. And what better metaphor than building a church sanctuary made of glass to communicate the invitation of the gospel to the world?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the significance of the implications of this architectural decision. He also considers the opportunities for community conversation; the invitation to communion, dialogue, and unity; and a fearless, gospel-centered transparency between the church and the world.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

Preaching in a glass-walled sanctuary at First Presbyterian Berkeley, CA

“It’s one cross, in the world and for the church… but it’s for everyone.”

The “live theater” of preaching in a glass-walled sanctuary

We live in a church and world of both stillness and movement—which is embodied in Jesus’s ministry

“I wanted to feel like what I was doing in the sanctuary would land as much with realistic speech and tone and assumption in the streets of Berkeley as it would land inside the sanctuary.”

“It was a good way to hold my feet to the fire. Would I say this if I was standing exposed as it were on the street outside? Or would I only say this inside the closed walls of, yes, a clear glass wall church? So it became a metaphor—a reality—a vivid visual play that was part of every Sunday.”

Utter transparency of glass over stone walls

In a sacred space there is a transparency.

“The same kind of tyranny against faith exists inside us, but also around us. And now we're together going to share in the celebration of the Lord's table. ‘Come all you who are hungry. Eat and drink of this body and this bread.’ We're doing that in public view.

How do we live the claims of the gospel in a way that’s humble—not arrogant, not presumptuous, not full of pride, not insider-outsider, not us-versus-them… we are the us.”

“The gospel is for all of us.”

Production Credits

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

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“When we pursue excellence it doesn’t have to come at the cost of our emotional and relational health.” (Ben Houltberg)

How do we form an identity and sense of self? Do we define ourselves based on the fragile glass shelter of what we achieve or how well we perform? If so, how does that affect our sense of meaning and purpose in life?

With the 2024 Paris Olympics underway, it’s easy to imagine how an elite athlete at the top of her game might form an identity based on her athletic or competitive performance.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes developmental scientist Ben Houltberg to reflect on the pursuit of achievement and excellence, exploring what’s at stake for our psychological and spiritual health when we find our identity and life’s meaning in our performance.

Together they discuss: the glass shelter of athletic achievement and the opportunity that emerges when it inevitably shatters; the various performance contexts of family, relationships, education, sports, career, and religion; the dangers of conditional acceptance based on performance; the performance-enhancing impact of healthy coaching and mentoring relationships; the transformative effects of unconditional love; and ultimately, how to be free from a performance-based identity.

About Ben Houltberg

Benjamin Houltberg is a developmental scientist, experienced marriage and family therapist, and president and CEO of Search Institute. He is associate research professor at the University of Southern California, and was previously associate professor of human development at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology. Follow him @benhoultberg, and learn more about Search Institute online.

Show Notes

About Ben Houltberg: developmental scientist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and CEO of Search Institute

About “performance-based identity”

Olympics and athletic performance-based identity

“When we pursue excellence it doesn't have to come at the cost of our emotional and relational health.”

“What is my purpose?”

Olympic athlete Simone Biles’ public breakdown and dominant return to gymnastics

“If you think about the natural trajectory of an elite athlete, it is towards a performance-based identity.”

How elite athletes form their identity in their athletic performance.

“A Glass Shelter” of athletic achievement: what happens when that glass shelter breaks?

When the glass shelter breaks, it becomes a transformative opportunity.

“Whether it was youth sports and training for a marathon, or whether it was in elite athletes or whether it was in different large organizations and their staff employees … the profile emerges that it is in some ways a human condition: that performance-based identity can really trap us into an approach to life and an approach to relationships and approach to competition that is undermining us and will eventually lead to a shattered sense of self.”

Actor vs performer in the world (Action vs. Performance)

Influenced by what other people think we are

How to understand “performance context” across domains of sports, education, career, relationships, family, morality, and society at large

The dangers of limiting our identities to performance

Conditional acceptance based on performance

Human relationships, connectivity, and collectivism as performance enhancing

Coaching and mentoring to deal with the stress of performing

NCAA sports

Helping young people find “the spark”—their passion and potential and purpose

How the Search Institute studies performance-based identity

Christian faith and unconditional love

How to be free from a performance-based identity

Finding our identity in beauty, connection, and commonality

Production Credits

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

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People have been given so many reasons to despise Christianity. What would it be to communicate with and for the “cultured despisers of the faith”? This was the audience Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote to in his seminal work, The Christian Faith, and it is the audience Mark Labberton sought to speak to when preaching at First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California.

In this Conversing Short, Mark considers the importance of communicating the gospel in its fullness to a culture that understandably despises Christianity, rather than domesticating it as the ecclesiastical industrial complex has.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

19th-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher

"Cultured despisers of the faith” (introduced in The Christian Faith and On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers)

Darwin, Freud, and Nietzsche

“If you were a cultured person, you would have abandoned the faith.”

“People's life circumstances have, for understandable reasons, left them in a position to despise the faith.”

Reflecting Jesus or reflecting the “ecclesiastical industrial complex”?

Christian questions about what really matters

“The gospel itself, by God's revelation in Christ, if that's true, is a shocking surprise to the world.”

How the Gospel has been domesticated by the Church

Annie Dillard: if we understood the power of what we’re dealing with, we’d hand out crash helmets and seatbelts in church.

Production Credits

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

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“Out of the greatest misery and the most devastating loss can come unimagined growth, and, in some cases, joy and happiness.”

Mark Labberton welcomes pioneering social entrepreneur Mawi Asgedom, an award-winning innovator, author, and advocate for social-emotional learning (SEL). Sharing his story of struggle, resilience, and redemption, Mawi describes his extraordinary journey from war-torn Ethiopia to a Sudanese refugee camp, to a childhood on welfare in an affluent American suburb, to Harvard graduate, to sharing a stage with Oprah Winfrey, to reimagining educational technology to improve youth mental health and thriving.

Together they discuss the essential life lessons Mawi has learned and taught through his remarkable personal history, including the difficult cultural transition as an Ethiopian refugee in the Chicago suburbs, the pain of losing his brother followed by the pain of losing his faith, the power of positivity and mature Christian faith, and his vision for helping children develop social-emotional skills to navigate life.

About Mawi Asgedom

Mawi Asgedom is an award-winning innovator, author, and advocate for social-emotional learning (SEL). He has spent over 20 years helping youth unlock their potential, training millions of educators and students, and collaborating with leading youth development organizations. His book, Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard, is a survival story of overcoming war, famine, suffering, and countless obstacles. He is the creator of Inner Heroes Universe, and his work has been featured by various media outlets, including Oprah Winfrey, who named her interview with Mawi one of her top 20 moments. A father of four school-aged kids, Mawi can often be found coaching youth sports on the weekends.

Show notes

Read Mawi Asgedom’s book: Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard

A story of challenge, struggle, pain and suffering; but also a story of God's faithfulness, and Mawi’s resilience, joy, devotion, love, intelligence, and hard work

Mawi’s childhood and origin story

Life in Tigray, Ethiopia

Civil War that led to the establishment of Eritrea

Mawi’s mother’s incredible journey from Ethiopia to Sudan, facing the dangers of hyenas, rebel forces, and homelessness with her three children

The normalcy of suffering

Describing the refugee camp in Sudan

How Mawi understands his personal history and life experience

A Nail Through the Finger: how parents in dire circumstances teach children to survive

“Where I come from, people expect a lot of bad things to happen. It's just part of how life is. In the States, people get really upset if any bad things happen.”

Mawi’s experience of cultural assimilation

His family’s relocation to Wheaton, Illinois, outside of Chicago, through World Relief

“Sweetness passed us by before we called it sweet.”

The cultural shock of moving to the U.S. and being the only Ethiopian family.

Challenges of isolation, language barriers, and racism

"Facing bullying and discrimination tested my resilience."

“That took me quite a long time to be able to step into who I really was and be like, ‘I got nothing to be ashamed of. I am proud of my mom and dad. I'm proud of my background. I'm proud of every part of who I am.’ It took me a long time to be able to feel that and say that. I think that was probably the invisible kind of scar from that experience.”

“On the rise to become an exceptional achiever…”

The greatest poverty is a poverty of relationship: “I spoke one time at a correctional facility outside of Chicago … and he said, ‘I'd rather be a refugee and go through stuff you went through with a family that I was close to who loved me than be in this country by myself.’ And I thought about it and I was like, this student is correct. The greatest poverty really is a poverty relationship. It's when you have no one.”

Mawi’s relationship with his brother

Mawi’s friend, Mark Linz, missionary to Ethiopia

Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who gives me strength.”

“I believe that Mark. I believe there's something I could do. I don't have to worry about the fact that I live in a Section 8 housing. I don't have to worry about the fact that my father is unemployed, but these other kids in my school, their parents have great jobs. I believe that the creator of the universe loves me.”

The terror and grief of losing his brother in a drunk driving accident

Maintaining positive momentum through horrific, unimaginable, devastating challenges

“Out of the greatest misery and the most devastating loss can come unimagined growth, and, in some cases, joy and happiness.”

The agony of loss and the healing and learning that came from the experience of grace

Mawi’s Harvard experience

Losing Christian faith at Harvard: “I still remember one of the most shocking moments in my life. It was so shocking to me, Mark. I woke up, I think it was my second day of my sophomore year in my room. And I realized something: I didn't believe in God anymore. And it was a shocking existential moment. One way to think about it is: Losing Jesus was a different version of losing my brother. … When you're a true follower of Christ and you are connected to Christ and you pray every day, read the word every day and you put your faith in him. It's not a small loss. It's a massive loss.”

Depression and hopelessness

Maturing past a faith that had no room for doubt: “My faith now is rooted in doubt. It's rooted in the idea that there's so much I don't know, and, and yet I choose to have faith in Jesus.”

Social-emotional learning

Mawi’s entrepreneurial mindset

Mawi’s adolescent struggle with confidence and self-esteem

Mawi’s foray into working with children

“One of the most important things I learned, Mark, is the best way to help kids is to help the adults in their lives.”

Mawi’s new venture: Inner Heroes Universe, inspired by Pixar’s Inside Out

Using metaphors to make the abstract concrete: “an incredible inner world”

“I believe to reach the next generation, it's not going to work to try to convince them to do less media and to do things the way we had, the old way. We have to go to where they are and create rich media.”

“Imagine if you could only communicate positive psychology using art and storytelling. And you couldn't be didactic and you had to use imagination and creativity.”

Seeing through Mawi’s eyes and background: “a great instance of harvesting pain, of harvesting joy, of harvesting deep cultural difference, of harvesting challenging childhood experiences…”

Production Credits

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

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Imagine preaching in front of a crowd of protesters holding a banner: “HOW DARE YOU?” That’s what Mark Labberton did every Sunday preaching in the clear, glass-walled sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA.

In this Conversing Short, Mark reflects on this foundational, animating question that defined his public leadership during his 16 years as senior pastor of First Pres.

About Conversing Shorts: “In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• The clear glass walls of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA
• “You’re doing everything that you’re doing in public.”
• “I wanted to welcome the outside, inside.”
• Berkeley protestors
• An imaginary poster: “How dare you?”
• Accepting responsibility, being held to account by the City of Berkeley
• Preaching in God’s name
• Mark on the question, “How dare you?”: “And it felt like the question was legitimate. How dare you get this land? Why should it be given over to this purpose? What is it that you're worth? What are you actually bringing to the city? On what grounds can you make such outlandish claims? What are the implications of it? How will it show up that you actually live what you're saying? And therefore, how dare you do this both intrinsically? How dare you do this existentially? How dare you do it theologically? But also, how dare you do it culturally and politically and socially.”
• “What does it mean in this place at this time, surrounded by this community of believers and unbelievers, skeptics and critics of every kind?”
• Preaching to the “Cultured Despisers of the Faith” (a term coined by 19th century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher in The Christian Faith)
• “Having grown up largely outside the life of the Church … I was one of the cultured despisers.”
• Representing classic Christian faith in an entirely unclassical community like Berkeley
• “I felt like if the Christian faith can't show up and make some kind of intelligent, purposeful, meaningful, transformative difference, then there is no case to be made and I should just walk away.”
• What’s worth giving your life to?

Production Credits

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

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“The Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together.”

American political life today is fractured and splintered, but many still yearn for unity. How can we find social cohesion amid sharply felt differences? Political scientist Yuval Levin wants to bring us back to our founding document: the American Constitution. After all, the Preamble identifies as its primary purposes to “form a more perfect union” and “establish justice.”

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Currie Chair in Public Policy. His latest book is American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. He’s founder of National Affairs, senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor of National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.

Together they discuss the purpose of the US Constitution to bring social cohesion and unity; the malfunction of Congress to build coalitions across disagreement; the values of social order and social justice; the fragility of democracy; the difference between a contract and a covenant; and the American aspiration to live up to the covenantal relationship and mutual belonging implied in “We the people.”

About Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.

At AEI, Levin and scholars in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies research division study the foundations of self-government and the future of law, regulation, and constitutionalism. They also explore the state of American social, political, and civic life, focusing on the preconditions necessary for family, community, and country to flourish.

Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.

In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024).

He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Yuval Levin’s American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again
• Yuval Levin’s background as a Jewish American and his childhood immigration to the United States from Israel.
• Yuval has “the kind of vision that sometimes immigrants have, which combines a really deep gratitude for this country with a sense of what's unique about it, and what's wonderfully strange about it.”
• Yuval’s religious practice at a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Washington, DC.
• How Torah has shaped Yuval Levin’s life and thought.
• Torah is Hebrew for “law.”
• Annual cycle of reading and immersing oneself in a text.
• “The American Constitution is not divine. It’s the work of a patchwork of compromises, it has a lot of problems, by no means do I think that it’s analogous to the Hebrew Bible.”
• Why write a book about the American Constitution?
• How to understand the constitution as a framework for social cohesion and unity.
• “Even in the private lives of a lot of Americans, I think the sense of isolation, of alienation, breakdown of social cohesion is very powerful in the lives of a lot of people.”
• Constitution is intended to unify, but it’s been used to divide.
• James Madison as a primary figure in Yuval’s new book.
• “Americans tend to approach politics by thinking of other Americans as the problem to be solved.”
• “In any free society, there are always going to be divisions.”
• James Madison in Federalist 10: “He just says, simply: As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he’s at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. The fact that we disagree is not a failure. It is a reality. And yet, that doesn’t mean that we can’t be unified.”
• Unity doesn’t mean thinking alike, it means acting together.
• “The Constitution compels us into building coalitions with precisely the people we disagree with.”
• Yuval Levin explains the premises behind his book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
• Social order versus social justice
• “There are, as a general matter, more or less two ways of thinking about the purpose of a free society like ours. There is a way of seeing it as intended to address the challenge of chaos and disorder, and there is a way of seeing it as intended to address the challenge of inequality and injustice.”
• “… the premise of human fallenness, which says that we begin unready for freedom. And we need to be formed and shaped to be capable of freedom.”
• “I think it’s worth our seeing the Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together, which has these two sides to it. And so it has a lot to offer us.”
• Social order as “patient to a fault” and “prejudicial toward white or elite culture.”
• Ideological extremism.
• “The most dangerous kinds of abuses of the weak happen at the hands of majorities. And therefore, democracy itself has to be constrained by principles of justice that are kept beyond the reach of majorities.”
• The question of “simple majority rule.”
• Populism.
• Two minority parties, rather than a majority party.
• Coalition building is just not being allowed to play out.
• Shared action versus shared ideas.
• Congress is about acting together when you don’t think alike.
• “Clearly there is something broken about Congress… Everybody agrees the institution is dysfunctional. I don't think everybody agrees about what function it isn't performing.”
• “Their job is actually to negotiate with the other party.”
• “I think that's fed a kind of attitude among a lot of prominent politicians in America that says, fighting for my constituents means yelling at the other party, and refusing to give ground, refusing to give an inch. That's actually not what fighting looks like in our kind of democracy. That's what losing looks like. Fighting looks like effectively bargaining and negotiating so as to achieve something of what your voters want or need.
• Partisanship, reactionary politics, and cynicism
• “I've come to think that cynicism about politics is actually very naive.”
• “The people you're dealing with are not cynical Machiavellians. They really believe they're doing good here, and there actually is room to have an argument.”
• How does justice operate in the political approach Yuval Levin advocates?
• The first two purposes of the Constitution: form a more perfect union, and establish justice.
• Who gets to decide what is just?
• Human equality and dignity as the premises for justice
• Why wasn’t slavery abolished in the Constitution itself?
• Native Americans and the abuse of human dignity
• Analogy: relating to our political or religious tradition as analogous to the child–parent relationship
• Seeking a mature relationship with our traditions
• Yuval Levin on the fragility of democracy: “Our democracy is often at risk.”
• Contract (an agreement that can be broken) vs. Covenant (a relationship of belonging)
• “’We the people of the United States.’ That “we” is an aspiration.”
• Yuval Levin’s perspective on the American Church, and how it contributes to the current social crisis
• American evangelicals coming to identify as an “embattled minority” or a “moral minority”
• Judging the success of a religious community by their influence as a political block
• “The particularly Madisonian logic of the Constitution is that everyone is a minority. … And that is not a position of weakness, necessarily, in this society. This is a society that is unusually solicitous of minorities. And when it's at its best, it is especially solicitous of minorities.”

Production Credits

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

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“All of our emotions are there for a good reason. They’re positive. They want to help. And a little anxiety is good. … All of society is saying, ‘Get rid of emotion. It's awful. It's evil.’ It's not true.”

In this episode, Mark welcomes Pete Docter, executive producer of Inside Out 2, and the Oscar-winning director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out. Pete joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1990 at twenty-one years old as its third animator, and is now Pixar’s chief creative officer.

Mark and Pete discuss the ins and outs of Inside Out 2, including its themes about emotion, psychology, adolescence, and the discovery and acceptance of who we are. Pete reflects on the power of music to convey unconscious meaning, alongside the subtle and sophisticated animation techniques used by Pixar today. We learn about the new emotion characters (including Anxiety, Embarrassment, and Ennui), as well as those that almost made the cut. And Pete comments on the spiritual and moral dimensions that Inside Out 2 is able to explore.

About Pete Docter

Pete Docter is the Oscar-winning director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, and chief creative officer at Pixar Animation Studios. He most recently directed Disney and Pixar’s Oscar-winning feature film Soul with producer Dana Murray and co-director Kemp Powers, which is now streaming on Disney+.

Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio’s third animator, Docter collaborated on and helped develop the story and characters for Toy Story, Pixar’s first full-length animated feature film, for which he also was supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life and wrote initial story treatments for both Toy Story 2 and WALL•E. Aside from directing his three films, Docter also executive produced Monsters University and the Academy Award–winning Brave.

Docter’s interest in animation began at the age of eight, when he created his first flipbook. He studied character animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short films, one of which won a Student Academy Award. Those films have since been shown in animation festivals worldwide and are featured on the Pixar Short Films Collection, volume 2. Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature–winners Up and Inside Out and nominee Monsters, Inc., and Best Original Screenplay for Up, Inside Out and WALL•E. In 2010, Up also was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Show Notes

• Continuity and discontinuity in Inside Out 2
• Pete Docter comments on the main character/setting of Inside Out series: Riley and what’s going on inside her head.
• Some psychologists think there are 27 emotions
• Puberty and adolescence
• New emotions: Bringing Anxiety, Embarrassment, and Ennui (Boredom) into the picture
• Anxiety as the new protagonist
• Changing body and outgrowing an old sweater
• Riley’s pimple: “That was something that Kelsey Mann, the director, was big on from the beginning. He would say, we were so used to seeing characters represented in this perfect, idealized way. And yet, when we look at the mirror, we realize, ‘Hey, I don't measure up to that.’ That was kind of the message of the film from the beginning—is learning to accept yourself. You know, the flaws and all, because that's so much of our civilization is measuring ourselves against others. And especially that period in time growing up, you're suddenly socially aware, and where you fit in or don't.”
• From family to friends as the dominant group
• “All of our emotions are there for a good reason. They're positive. They want to help. And a little anxiety is good. Lisa L'Amour, who was a consultant on the film, her big thing is like, all of society is saying, ‘Get rid of emotion. It's awful. It's evil.’ It's not true.”
• Researching the psychology of emotion for the film, and experimenting with various emotions as characters
• Anxiety as subtly controlling
• Schadenfreude almost made Inside Out and Inside Out 2 as a gag.
• Anxiety is not directly related to puberty.
• “Who are we? What are the things that make us who we are? Is it just our experiences, our beliefs, our actions that we take? And all of those start to get folded into the film.”
• “For me, the creative process is all about the nitty gritty details.”
• “So really that's just what I'm trying to do is for us in that room, as we're making it: Are we engaged? Are we emotional?”
• The complexity of guilt and shame
• Learning that sincerity—the truth of the character—is the key
• Special Effects work in Inside Out 2
• The subtle and sophisticated storytelling device of Riley’s eyes.
• How digital animation works today—more like a puppet than a drawing.
• Music as an unconscious communicator
• Dr. Paul Ekman: Emotions are largely under the hood.
• Soul (2020) and the philosophy of dualism as a Greek concept
• Embodied souls—a colliding, intertwined, inseparable reality
• Understanding the instrumentality of the brain
• The amazing amount of goodness that Pixar has injected into the world
• Pete Docter on working with Amy Poehler, Tony Hale, and Maya Hawke
• “Our emotions are really on our team.”
• Fear as a dominant emotion for the era we live in
• Joy vs Sadness or Joy vs Fear
• How Pete Docter’s faith informs his approach to Inside Out
• “One other little bit of research we did that I was shocked by is that there's apparently a part of your brain that lights up especially when you watch animation.”

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“Reconciliation and reparations were never supposed to be two opposite things.” The Church is called to be a repairer of the breach. Drawing on the prophetic texts of Isaiah and Nehemiah, Brenda Salter McNeil joins Mark to discuss her latest book: Empowered to Repair: Becoming People Who Mend Broken Systems and Heal Our Communities.

Together they reflect on the Church’s responsibility for social justice; the call to engage politics for the common good; the nature of systemic injustice and systemic change; empowerment and mutual investment in change; and the importance of moving closer to injustice in order to become a “repairer of the breach.”

Brenda Salter McNeil is a leader in the international movement for peace and reconciliation. She is an Associate Professor of reconciliation studies in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, where she also directs the Reconciliation Studies program. She also serves on the pastoral staff of Quest Church in Seattle, WA. She is the author of numerous books on Christianity, reconciliation, and racial justice. Follower her @RevDocBrenda.

AB

• Mark introduces Brenda Salter McNeil
• Learn more about Empowered to Repair: Becoming People Who Mend Broken Systems and Heal Our Communities
• Isaiah 58 and “As If Worship”
• Isaiah 58:11-12—“And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
• Repair and reparations
• Brian Stevenson: “Real reparations would mean to repair what was actually broken.”
• “We want to see justice. We want to see change. … Reconciliation and reparations were never supposed to be two opposite things.”
• Why the Old Testament prophetic book of Nehemiah is relevant to the church in this political moment: “I wanted to use a narrative in scripture that showed us how do you actually organize people. That it's not just enough to preach about it on Sundays, there's a way that we've got to bring a diverse coalition of people together and show them that we can rebuild what is broken around us.”
• “How do we retain our identity and our dignity?”
• How asking the right questions can generate empathy and motivate action
• Nehemiah’s Prayer of Confession
• Honest confession, just telling the truth
• Brenda’s son Omari’s social post: “We are always left saddened but not shocked. This will happen again. Another black queen or king doing what should be considered a regular activity will be killed just because. Black people will express outrage while everyone else will continue on relatively unchanged. We'll exclaim, hashtag Black Lives Matter, and we will get countless comments about, What about all lives matter? I'm looking at you, white evangelical churches. The shock will wear off for the rest of the world and we'll be left to rebuild again by ourselves. This cycle is so ingrained in the Black American narrative that we have learned to quickly spring into actionable next steps because we've done this before and we will do it again. We've had no choice but to normalize the trauma and carry on. So to those who wonder, I have no hope that I or my future children will ever live in a world that is quote unquote equal or totally safe or fair, even though I will always fight for it. Sadly for me and so many others, I lost that dream as a little boy.”
• Our own humanity is being diminished in every act of injustice
• Is systemic change possible?
• Individualistic vs communal lenses
• The need to get proximate to injustice in order to become a repairer
• When does proximity help? What causes proximity to stick and create change?
• Empowerment and mutual investment
• The work of justice is ultimately God’s work
• Fannie Lou Hamer’s activism
• James Baldwin: “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
• Doing what we say
• “We might not change everything, but in our little corner of the world, we can make a difference in that spot and people get to see a glimpse of the kingdom. And that's life changing.”

About Brenda Salter McNeil

Brenda Salter McNeil is a teacher, preacher, and leader in the international movement for peace and reconciliation. Her mission is to inspire, equip and empower emerging Christian leaders to be practitioners of reconciliation in their various spheres of influence. She is an Associate Professor of reconciliation studies in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, where she also directs the Reconciliation Studies program. She also serves on the pastoral staff of Quest Church in Seattle, WA. Dr. Brenda is recognized internationally as one of the foremost leaders of reconciliation and was featured as one of the 50 most influential women to watch by Christianity Today. She is the author of Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0, A Credible Witness: Reflections on Power, Evangelism and Race (2008), The Heart of Racial Justice: How Soul Change Leads to Social Change (2005), coauthored with Rick Richardson, Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now, and her latest book, Empowered to Repair: Becoming People Who Mend Broken Systems and Heal Our Communities.

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Anne Snyder joins Mark to discuss the need for deeper listening in the work of genuine encounter and exchange in public life. They reflect on the contributions of public theology to contemporary life, the values of Christian humanism, and the mission and vision of Comment magazine. They also announce an exciting new partnership between Conversing and Comment.

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit https://comment.org/ for more information.

For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Anne also oversees our Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).

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Uli Chi and Mark discuss Uli's new book, "The Wise Leader," and how wisdom manifests in various contexts, from leadership roles to everyday life.

Uli Chi has spent his life practicing leadership in the intersection of for-profit and nonprofit businesses, the theological academy, and the local church. Uli serves as board chair of the Virginia Mason Franciscan Health System. He is vice chair and senior fellow at the De Pree Center and a fellow at the Center for Faithful Business at Seattle Pacific University. Uli serves on the faculty for Regent College’s MA in leadership, theology, and society.

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Shirley Mullen talks about the work of intentional engagement in our polarized contexts and advocates for actively bridging divides in our society.

Shirley Mullen is president emerita of Houghton College, where she served for 15 years, and author of Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future.

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W. Thomas Boyce discusses new research on sensitivity and resilience in childhood development and talks about how learning to see our children well helps them flourish and thrive.

W. Thomas Boyce is a pediatrician, professor emeritus of pediatrics and psychiatry at UC San Francisco, and author of The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive.

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Liz Jacobsen shares about teaching theater to high schoolers and about the power of art and storytelling to transform us.

Liz Jacobsen is a theater teacher, currently teaching at Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington.

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Jennifer Wiseman shares about the journey of her finding a career in science, the interactions and connections between science and faith, and the upcoming solar eclipse.

Jennifer Wiseman is an astrophysicist, author, and speaker, and she is director emeritus of the program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Michael Wear talks about the state of politics in the United States and the ways our faith is interwoven with public life.

Michael Wear is founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life.

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Esau McCaulley, discussing his new memoir, reflects on the way we tell Black stories and how we make sense of our narratives for the glory of God.

Esau McCalley is assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and the author of Reading While Black and How Far to the Promised Land, among other works.

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Nikki Toyama-Szeto shares about her work leading Christians for Social Action, the organization’s commitment to cultivating faithful engagement with issues of justice, and her experience as a Japanese American woman in leadership.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto is executive director of Christians for Social Action.

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Tim Alberta takes a deep dive into the contemporary state of American Evangelicalism in a time of extremism.

Tim Alberta is a journalist, author, and staff writer for The Atlantic.

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Caleb Maskell discusses the beginnings of Vineyard USA, which is celebrating its 50th year, and the hopeful future ahead.

Caleb Maskell is the associate national director of theology and education for Vineyard USA.

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Pamela Ebstyne King discusses her research and work on the topic of thriving, as well as her new podcast, With & For.

Pamela Ebstyne King is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science and executive director of the Thrive Center for Human Development.

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Andrew Hanauer describes the work of bridging the deep divides in American politics, the church, and faith communities more broadly.

Andrew Hanauer is the president and CEO of the One America Movement.

We invite you to take a brief listener survey at fuller.edu/survey in order to help the Conversing team guide the future of the show.

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Stephen Newby reflects on the ability of Gospel music to invite all people in and what that means for today’s world and church.

Stephen Michael Newby is the inaugural holder of The Lev H. Prichard III Endowed Chair in the Study of Black Worship and also serves as Professor of Music and Ambassador for The Black Gospel Music Preservation Program at Baylor University.

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Jemar Tisby reflects on Tom Skinner’s impactful speech “Racism and World Evangelism,” delivered at the 1970 Urbana Missions Conference, and considers the ways it resonates with the reality of the American church today.

Tom Skinner’s speech can be listened to here.

Jemar Tisby is the author of The Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and, most recently, How to Fight Racism: Young Reader’s Edition.

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Luann Pannell discusses mental health and training in law enforcement and shares about her two decades of work with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Luann Pannell is a Fuller alum, CEO of Exceptional Edge Consulting, and was director of police training and education at the LAPD for 18 years.

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Ben McBride talks with Mark about his new book, Troubling the Water: The Urgent Work of Radical Belonging, which outlines his journey and work in the “kill zone” in Oakland, CA.

Ben McBride is a visionary leader of radical belonging. The co-founder of the Empower Initiative, a capacity-building firm devoted to empowering organizations and communities, he is a leading expert in fostering belonging and public safety reform.

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Chris Henry talks about the importance of rhythm in the church year and about leadership in a post-pandemic world.

Chris Henry is senior pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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David Brenner describes the mission of the organization AI and Faith, which works to direct artificial intelligence research and technology towards human flourishing, with an eye towards ethics and a grounding in multiple faith traditions.

This is the fourth in a series on artificial intelligence, based in part on the work of AI and Faith, an organization which seeks to engage the world in the moral and ethical issues around artificial intelligence. Learn more at AIandfaith.org.

David Brenner is the board chair of AI and Faith.

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Phil Chen talks about the development of AI and the ethics of sourcing material for large language models like ChatGPT.

This is the third in a series on artificial intelligence, based in part on the work of AI and Faith, an organization which seeks to engage the world in the moral and ethical issues around artificial intelligence. Learn more at AIandfaith.org.

Phil Chen is an investor, a serial entrepreneur, and a senior advisor at Race Capital.

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Guy Kawasaki discusses some of the possible positive impacts of artificial intelligence for creativity, productivity, and society at large.

This is the second in a series on artificial intelligence, based in part on the work of AI and Faith, an organization which seeks to engage the world in the moral and ethical issues around artificial intelligence. Learn more at AIandfaith.org.

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and the creator of Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast.

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Mark Graves discusses the intersections of AI, technology, ethics, faith, and philosophy.

This is the first in a series on artificial intelligence, based in part on the work of AI and Faith, an organization which seeks to engage the world in the moral and ethical issues around artificial intelligence. Learn more at AIandfaith.org.

Mark Graves is a research fellow and director at AI and Faith and is a research associate professor of psychology at Fuller Seminary.