Trust, Truth, and the Knowledge Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

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

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

Hannah Arendt

N.T. Wright

Thomas Aquinas

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt

City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo

Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas

Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson

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

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.