Faith and Imagination: A BYU Humanities Center Podcast: Recent Episodes
BYU Humanities Center
How do we envision our highest ideals and deepest commitments? How do we name and express our most expansive sense of who we are? The Faith and Imagination podcast explores these questions by conversing with scholars and others who address our religious and spiritual lives creatively and insightfully. Sponsored by the BYU Humanities Center.
Conversation between podcast host Matthew Wickman and producer Cate Thorpe about the Season 6. Then Cate shares excerpts from some of the episodes from this season that stood out to her. We’re grateful, as always, to this season’s amazing guests: Darren Middleton, Callid Keefe-Perry, Emma Mason, Karen Swallow Prior, Diane Glancy, Makayla Steiner, Jason Crawford, …
Min-Ah Cho is an associate teaching professor at Georgetown University, where she specializes in constructive theology and Christian spirituality. She recently published a fascinating and thoughtful book titled The Silent God and the Silenced: Mysticism and Contemplation amid Suffering that explores the implications of reckoning with God’s silence for our spiritual and ethical lives.
Paul J. Pastor is a poet, writer, editor, and a former guest on this podcast. He is the executive editor for Nelson Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, where he publishes work that encourages spiritual renewal. In our last conversation, recorded four years ago, we discussed his poetry collection Bower Lodge. We speak today about his recent …
Katie Kresser is Seattle Pacific University’s resident Art Historian. She’s the author of books on John La Farge and on how the death of Christ ushers in the birth of art as a window onto the divine. A former guest on this podcast, she’s our guest again to discuss her new book on Christianity and …
Richard McLauchlan is an independent scholar, a professional biographer, and the author of Saturday’s Silence: R.S. Thomas and Paschal Reading. With Easter approaching, we thought we’d run again this episode on the subject of Holy Saturday, the day between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection that represents a period of suffering and silence. The poetry of R. …
Jason Crawford is Professor of English at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, where he teaches and writes about early modern literature and culture, with secondary interests in ancient drama and epic. He’s the author of several academic books and articles, and his work has also appeared in such venues as the Los Angeles Review of Books. …
We resume a tradition from the past years, discussing some favorite books we read in 2025. As always, our themes involve religion, spirituality, and the intersection of faith and intellect. This time we welcome Makayla Steiner, assistant professor of English at BYU. Matt’s list of honorable mentions: Douglas Coupland, Life After God; Paul J. Pastor, The Locust …
Diane Glancy is a prolific and acclaimed poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and professor emeritus at Macalester College. Her awards include the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, the American Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ …
Karen Swallow Prior is the author of several books, among them The Evangelical Imagination, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More. A prominent voice in the Christian public sphere, she is a frequent speaker, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, a contributing writer at Dispatch, and …
Emma Mason is Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick University in England. She’s the author and editor of several books, primarily on nineteenth-century English literature, most recently a study titled Christina Rosetti: Poetry, Ecology, Faith, and she edits, with Mark Knight, the book series New Directions in Religion and Literature for Bloomsbury …
As is traditional for this podcast, we conclude this season of episodes by reflecting together as a production team on the podcast as a whole, on our extraordinary guests, and on some moments in conversation with these guests that made a particular impression on us.
Andrew Skotnicki is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College. He has been a devoted minister to people in prison for more than a half century, and we discuss some of the lessons that ministry has taught him, problems he perceives with our system of criminal justice, and the blessings he has received from heeding …
Vanessa White is Associate Professor of Spirituality and Ministry, and Director of the Certificate in Black Theology and Ministry, at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She holds a dual appointment at Xavier University of Louisiana’s Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She belongs to several academic societies, among them the National Black Storyteller Association, the American …
Jeffrey Vogel is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. An expert thinker and writer on topics like divine silence and apophatic theology—or theology of what lies beyond saying—he is also the author of a beautiful new book, All Manner of Things: Meditations on Suffering, Death, and Eternal Life, which we …
This week we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination Podcast. Today’s highlighted guest, Christina Bieber Lake, sees the novel as an expressly theological exercise. Dr. Lake, the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College, is the author of the 2019 book Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of …
Benjamin Myers is the Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature and the Director of the Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University. A former poet laureate of the state of Oklahoma, Ben is the author of four books of poetry and two books of nonfiction. We discuss two of those books today, a 2020 critical work titled A Poetics …
Tiffany Eberle Kriner is associate professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. The author of the scholarly book The Future of the Word: An Eschatology of Reading as well as a number of articles and chapters in academic venues, Kriner is more recently the author of the memoir In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest …
Robert Flanagan has served as an Episcopal priest since 2003. He is chaplain at General Theological Seminary in New York and serves as dean’s advisor at Virginia Theological Seminary. We speak today about this 2022 book The Letters of an Unexpected Mystic: Encountering the Mystical Theology in First and Second Peter. We attend especially to how …
Abigail Carroll serves as pastor of the arts and spiritual formation at Church of the Well in Burlington, Vermont. She holds a PhD in American Studies from Boston University, and she is an accomplished poet whose third collection of poems, Cup My Days Like Water, a set of meditations on the Psalms, was published just last …
Benedict Shoup is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is currently writing a dissertation on the pneumatology and contemplative methodology—basically, the spiritual theory and practice—of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross. I met Benedict this past summer at a conference in Adelaide, Australia, where he gave …
Diane Glancy is a prolific and acclaimed poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and professor emeritus at Macalester College. Her awards include the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, the American Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ …
We’ve come to the end of Season 3 of the podcast. I talk with Sophia Snyder, the podcast’s producer, and we share a few thoughts about the podcast generally and especially about this season’s guests. We also discuss brief clips from a few of this season’s episodes and talk about them – a small sampling …
Chad Thralls is a scholar of Christian spirituality and mysticism who teaches at Seton Hall University. His primary area of focus is the contemplative spiritual life, and today we discuss his book Deep Calls to Deep: Mysticism, Scripture, and Contemplation.
Zachary Davis is the Executive Director of the Faith Matters Foundation, the host of the Ministry of Ideas, Writ Large, and Making Meaning podcasts, and the editor of Wayfare Magazine. We discuss the article he published in the inaugural issue of Wayfare, a beautiful piece on the history of pilgrimage that doubles as a story about his personal faith journey.
Stephanie Paulsell is Susan Shallcross Swarz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School and Faculty Dean of Eliot House at Harvard College. The author of a book on Virginia Woolf, the editor of a book on Toni Morrison, and writer of articles on many other literary figures as well as on …
Richard McLauchlan is an independent scholar, a professional biographer, and the author of Saturday’s Silence: R.S. Thomas and Paschal Reading. With Easter approaching, we wanted to re-release this 2021 conversation with McLauchlan about how Thomas’s poetry captures the meaning of the day between Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, a day of suffering and silence that speaks to …
Daniel Train is the associate director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts at Duke Divinity School, where he directs the Certificate in Theology and the Arts program. He is the coeditor of The Saint John’s Bible and Its Tradition: Illuminating Beauty in the Twenty-First Century (2018) and also …
Leonard McMahon is an assistant professor of pastoral care, spirituality, and political theology at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, and also founder and CEO of Common Ground Dialogue, a political consulting firm specializing in facilitating conversation around complicated social issues, bringing together divergent communities. We speak about his work …
The Reverend Douglas S. Hardy is Professor of Spiritual Formation at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City. Doug has earned degrees in psychology as well as theology, he is a practicing minister and spiritual director, and he recently completed a term as President of the Society for the Study of …
Jennifer Frey is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina, a faculty fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, and a Newbigin Interfaith Fellow with the Carver Project. She works extensively in moral philosophy and is particularly interested in matters of …
This week we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination Podcast. Kelsey Osgood is a freelance writer and the author of “How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia.” Her work has appeared in such venues as The New Yorker’s Culture Desk Blog, Time, Harper’s, the New York Times,…
Sally Read is an acclaimed poet whose work has been translated into five languages. She recounts her 2010 conversion to Catholicism in Night’s Bright Darkness, published in 2016, with further reflections on coming of age as a person of faith in her 2019 book Annunciation: A Call to Faith …
Barbara Quinn RSCJ is a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart, United States-Canada province, and a President Emeritus of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, or SSCS. She is also Associate Director of Spiritual Formation at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. We speak …
Russ Ramsey is a pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and is the author of several books, including Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death. We speak today about his latest book, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith, …
Joshua Hren is founder of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. His essays and poems have appeared in such venues as First Things, Catholic World Report, New Oxford Review, and LOGOS. His books include …
As the door closes on 2022, reflecting upon what we’ve learned, where we’ve been, and what we’ve read proves to be a thoughtful and important experience. In this episode, Matthew Wickman and George Handley rejoin to discuss a few of the insights and learning experiences they’ll be taking into this …
This week we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination Podcast. Robyn Wrigley-Carr is Associate Professor in Theology and Spirituality at Alphacrucis College in Sydney, Australia. She serves on the editorial board and is Book Review Editor for the Journal for the Study of Spirituality. She’s written …
Micah Mattix is poetry editor at First Things and professor of English at Regent University in Virginia. He has published a book of essays on poetry titled The Soul is a Stranger in This World, and his criticism has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The National Review. Sally Thomas is the author of the poetry …
Douglas E. Christie is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. His books include The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss, and the Common Life and The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology. His work explores the early foundations of Christianity and connects its spiritual traditions to important issues in our modern world. …
This week we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination Podcast. Katie Kresser is a Professor of Art History at Seattle Pacific University and author of the 2019 book Bezalel’s Body: The Death of God and the Birth of Art. On this episode, Matthew Wickman, founding director of the BYU Humanities Center, speaks with …
Denise Levertov was an outstanding poet who became one of the finest religious poets of the twentieth century, or any century. Cristina Gámez-Fernández is an outstanding scholar of Levertov’s work, and she joins the podcast to discuss Levertov’s religious poetry in the context of her distinguished career. Gámez-Fernández teaches at the University of Córdoba in …
Matthew Wickman is a professor of English at Brigham Young University. He served as the founding director of the BYU Humanities Center the past 10 years and is currently the host of this podcast, while also being the associate coordinator of BYU’s Faith and Imagination Institute. Matthew published an evocative book this year entitled “Life …
Andrew Prevot is an associate professor of Theology at Boston College. He is the author of the award-winning book Thinking Prayer: Theology and Spirituality amid the Crises of Modernity (2015), and we talk today about a new book to be published next year by Oxford University Press: The Mysticism of Ordinary Life.
John Gatta is professor emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut and University of the South, Sewanee. At that latter institution he held, for many years, the distinguished William R. Kenan chair of English, and he’s a former guest of the BYU Humanities Center. He’s the author of several books including an elegant, and …
Jessica Hooten Wilson is the inaugural Visiting Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University and senior fellow at Trinity Forum. She’s the author and editor of several books, including Giving the Devil His Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov, which won a book of the year award in arts and culture from Christianity Today in 2019, and a …
Matthew Croasmun is Associate Research Scholar and the Director of the Life Worth Living program at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and a Lecturer of Divinity and Humanities at Yale University. He’s also a staff pastor at the Elm City Vineyard Church, a dynamic, diverse, urban church he helped found in 2007 and where …
Host Matthew Wickman and producers Abby Thatcher and Bobbe May talk about Season 2 of the podcast, discussing meaningful themes and ideas from each of our season’s wonderful guests. They also look ahead to Season 3, beginning in September 2022.
Matt engages today in conversation with Charles Shiro Inouye [Ee-No-Oo-Eh], Professor of Japanese Literature and Visual Culture at Tufts University, where he has served as both a department chair and dean of the colleges for undergraduate education. Charles is the author and editor of several important books in Japanese literature and culture. Last year, he …
Paul J. Pastor is a poet and writer who lives in Oregon. He also serves as editor for two Christian imprints at Penguin Random House. We speak with him today about his remarkable recent collection of poems, Bower Lodge, which focuses exquisite attention on the natural world and discerns through its abundant traces of the divine.
Barbara Newman is the John Evans Professor of Latin and Professor of English, Classics, and History at Northwestern University. She’s the author of a dozen books, including a new one we discuss today. Titled The Permeable Self: Five Medieval Relationships, the book explores the phenomenon of coinherence – the deep, inextricable influences on our personhood by …
Irena Dragaš Jansen is a freelance writer who explores the power of art and faith. During the 1990s, she and her family were refugees of the war in Croatia and Bosnia. Now a US citizen and married to her husband, Scott, she is pursuing a master’s degree in art history at George Mason University and …
This week, we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination podcast. Makoto Fujimura is an acclaimed contemporary artist whose work has been exhibited across the world. He is founder of the International Arts Movement and a former presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts. Most recently, he is the author of Art …
Joshua M. McNall is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Church Relations Ambassador at Oklahoma Wesleyan University. He’s the author of several articles and four books, including one we discuss today that was published just last year. That book is Perhaps: Reclaiming the Space between Doubt and Dogmatism, a compelling look at the role of the …
Alice Fryling is a spiritual director and popular author of nine books on subjects like spiritual formation and relationships, including the well-received book Mirror for the Soul: A Christian Guide to the Enneagram. Today, we’re discussing her most recent book, Aging Faithfully: The Holy Invitation of Growing Older.
Glen Scorgie is professor of theology at Bethel Seminary, a licensed minister of the Baptist General Conference, and has served as president of the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association as well as the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality. We discuss his recent keynote lecture about ways that spirituality has become a widespread cultural phenomenon …
Laura Reece Hogan is an award-winning poet and theologian. Her book I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy won four first place Catholic Press Association book awards and her volume of poems, Litany of Flights, won the Paraclete Poetry prize. She is the holder of advanced degrees in theology and law and is …
Jessica Coblentz is an assistant professor of religious studies and theology at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. With Daniel Horan, she co-edited the volume The Human in a Dehumanizing World: Re-Examining Theological Anthropology and Its Implications, coming out later this year. She is the author of another book published just this year by Liturgical …
Yolanda Pierce is professor and dean of the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. In 2016 she served as Founding Director of the Center for African American Religious Life at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. She formerly worked at Princeton Theological Seminary. The Rev. Dr. Pierce is the …
Amy Julia Becker is an award-winning writer and speaker on personal, spiritual, and social healing. She is the author of four books, including To Be Made Well: An Invitation to Wholeness, Healing, and Hope, releasing in March. She also hosts the Love Is Stronger Than Fear podcast. We speak with her about her article “When Merit Drives Out …
Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology and Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. The author of several books, he’s also the director of a multi-year, Henry Luce Foundation-funded project entitled “Facing the Anthropocene.” We talk with him today about his sobering and powerful new book …
Today we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination podcast. Founding Director of the BYU Humanities Center Matthew Wickman raises questions of faith in times of crises with Reverend Dr. Sarah Bachelard. They discuss together how to experience God in a time of turmoil and uncertainty, and how to experience a disruption of our sense …
As we come to the end of another year, we all find cause and time to reflect on what we’ve done, who we’ve met, what we’ve learned, and what we’ve read this past year that has changed us, shaped us, or moved us to become someone more generous and thoughtful than who we were at …
Robyn Wrigley-Carr is Associate Professor in Theology and Spirituality at Alphacrucis College in Sydney, Australia. She serves on the editorial board and is book review editor for The Journal for the Study of Spirituality. She has written extensively about the twentieth century Anglo-Catholic writer, mystic, and spiritual retreat leader Evelyn Underhill, and is the author …
Daniel P. Horan is Director of the Center for Spirituality and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He’s the author of several books, most recently A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege and The Way of the Franciscans: A Prayer Journey through Lent, both published in 2021. A Franciscan friar, Dan is also …
This past summer, the Reverend Tish Harrison Warren and Matthew Wickman, Founding Director of the BYU Humanities Center, discussed prayer and abundance together on our podcast. Now, during this season of thanksgiving and considering upon abundance in our lives, and in the lives of those we love, we have decided to highlight this episode. In …
Heidi J. Hornik is Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Baylor University. A recent guest at BYU, she’s also the author of several books, including one we discuss with her today, The Art of Christian Reflection.