To true fans, baseball is so much more than a sport. Some call it the perfect game. Some see it as a field of dreams. A portal to another dimension. Some see it as a road to God. Others—”heathen” we might call them—find the game unutterably boring. Too confusing, too long, too nit-picky about rules.In this episode, Yankee fan John Sexton (President Emeritus of New York University and Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law) joins Red Sox fan Evan Rosa to discuss the philosophical and spiritual aspects of baseball. John is the author of the 2013 bestselling book Baseball as a Road to God, which is based on a course he has taught at NYU for over twenty years.Image Credit: “The American National Game of Base Ball: Grand Match for the Championship at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N. J.” Published by Currier & Ives, 1866About John SextonJohn Sexton hasn’t always been a Yankee fan. He once was a proud acolyte of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. A legal scholar by training, he served as president of New York University from 2001 through 2015. He is now NYU’s Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law and dean emeritus of the Law School, having served as dean from 1988 through 2002.He is author of Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (Yale University Press, 2019) and Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game (Gotham Books, 2013) (with Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz), among other books in legal studies.A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of 24 honorary degrees, President Emeritus Sexton is past chair of the American Council on Education, the Independent Colleges of NY, the New York Academy of Science, and the Federal Reserve Board of NY.In 2016, Commonweal Magazine honored Sexton as the Catholic in the Public Square. The previous year, the Arab-American League awarded him its Khalil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award; and the Open University of Israel gave him it’s Alon Prize for “inspired leadership in the field of education.” In 2013, Citizens Union designated him as “an outstanding leader who enhances the value of New York City.”He received a BA in history and a PhD in the history of American religion from Fordham University, and a JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Before coming to NYU in 1981, he clerked for Judges Harold Leventhal and David Bazelon of the DC Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger.He married Lisa Goldberg in 1976. Their two children are Jed and Katie Sexton. And their grandchildren are Julia, Ava, and Natalie.Production NotesThis podcast featured John SextonEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

There’s a common misconception that Judaism is a religion of law and Christianity is a religion of love. But the very love commandments at the heart of Jesus’s teaching are direct quotes from Deuteronomy 6. Jesus, after all, was Jewish.Joining Miroslav Volf in this episode is one of the most important Jewish thinkers alive today: Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His latest book is Judaism is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.Image Credit: “Vienna Genesis”, 6th century, Manuscript (Codex Vindobonensis theol. graec. 31), 333 x 270 mm, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ViennaFollow us on Instagram: @forthelifepod @yalefaithandculture @lifeworthliving.yaleFollow us on YouTube: Yale Center for Faith & Culture Life Worth LivingAbout Shai HeldRabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His most recent book is Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.Show NotesGet your copy of Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish LifeTwo stories that set the course for Judaism Is About LoveDeuteronomy 6 and the Love CommandsIs Judaism really a “loveless religion”?Christian students who don’t realize what wells Jesus drank from“The very inclination to dichotomize between love and law leads almost, I think, ineluctably to a misunderstanding of traditional Jewish spirituality, for which law is never an alternative to love,  but a manifestation of love.”“The deed is an expression of a posture of love. The deed cannot replace the posture. It has to express it.”“A majority culture telling a minority  culture that it is inferior and loveless.”Interpreting both Judaism and Christianity through a moral or ethical lens, rather than the mystical, affective, and spiritual dimensions of bothUnconditionality of God’s loveObedience to law vs unconditionality of love“My argument is that divine love, biblically speaking, comes without conditions, but with expectations. God does not say, do this or I will stop loving you. God says, I love you and I want you to do this.”Analogy to parental love for children“God believes in the centrality and urgency of human agency.”Eliezer Berkovits: embrace of human agency in JudaismZero sum games and God’s will and human agencyPerformance-oriented society, and “measuring up”Competition and being better than othersNot earning, but striving to live up toGraceWhat objectives exist for us toJohn LevinsonChosenessMoshe Weinfeld: “you were not chosen because you were wonderful.”Election isn’t earned, but don’t let grace become capricious.Abraham’s blessing and God’s love for IsraelRabbi Akiva: “Every human being on the face of the earth is loved simply by being created in the divine image.”Centering theology around creationNoah’s flood and a universal covenant with humanity as a wholeGod and Moses’s chutzpah to ask for forgiveness because Israel is so stubbornGrace is a Jewish idea, not invented by Christianity or the New Testament“Culture stripped of grace”Arbitrariness of electionExodus 34Psalm 145:9 God is good to  all. God's mercies are upon all of God's  creations.Mercy on everything that God has made, including animals and all sentient beings“Very good” and God’s assessment of creationLove for stranger and love for the enemyJudaism and expanding circles of concern“The temptation  to dehumanize is one that must always and everywhere be resisted. … every human being on the face of the earth is infinitely valuable without exception.”John Levinson’s “universal horizon of biblical particularism”Just War Theory“At the end of the If the Middle East and the land of Israel are ever to become less blood soaked,  what will be required is two  peoples engaging in profoundly empathic listening to one another's stories. There is no other way.”Moshe Una and the Religious Zionist Peace Movement“Jews dreamed of this place for thousands of years, and that this is a unique place where God's commandments can be fulfilled, and this is a place of religious yearning, religious aspiration, historical connection. And the second is, we have to teach our children that there is another people who feels the same way.”“So much of the protest of this war has, it seemed to me, really lacked empathy and actually perpetuated really destructive ways of thinking about this conflict.”What is Rabbi Shai Held’s vision of a life worth living?Medieval Mishnah on Genesis 1:27: “The human being  is created in God's image, but whether we become God's likeness is a function of the choices we make.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Shai HeldEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Problem-solving the crises of the modern world is often characterized by an economy and architecture of exploitation and instrumentalization, viewing relationships as transactional, efficient, and calculative. But this sort of thinking leaves a remainder of emptiness.Finding hope in a time of crises requires a more human work of covenant and commitment. Based in agrarian principles of stability, place, connection, dependence, interwoven relatedness, and a rooted economy, we can find hope in “Love’s Braided Dance” of telling the truth, keeping our promises, showing mercy, and bearing with one another.In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Norman Wirzba, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, to discuss his recent book Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis.Together they discuss love and hope through the agrarian principles that acknowledge our physiology and materiality; how the crises of the moment boil down to one factor: whether young people want to have kids of their own; God’s love as erotic and how that impacts our sense of self-worth; the “sympathetic attunement” that comes from being loved by a community, a place, and a land; transactional versus covenantal relationships; the meaning of giving and receiving forgiveness in an economy of mercy; and finally the difficult truth that transformation or moral perfection can never replace reconciliation.About Norman WirzbaNorman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, as well as director of research at Duke University’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. His books include Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis, Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land;This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World; and Food & Faith.Listen to Norman Wirzba on Food & Faith in Episode 49: "God's Love Made Delicious"Show NotesNorman Wirzba, Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of CrisisHow the crises of the moment boil down to one expression: whether young people want to have kids of their own.How Norman Wirzba became friends with Wendell BerryWendell Berry, The Unsettling of America“Love’s Braided Dance” from “In Rain”, a poem by Wendell Berry“You shouldn’t forget the land, and you shouldn’t forget your grandfather.”Return to agricultural practicesSacred gifts“An agricultural life can afford doesn't guarantee, I think, but it affords the opportunity for you to really handle the fundamentals of life, air, water, soil, plant, tactile  connection that has to, at the same time, be  a practical connection, which means you have to to bring into your handling of things the attempt to understand what you're handling.”AnonymityNorman Wirzba reads Wendell Berry’s “In Rain”Hyperconnectivity and the meaning of being “braided together”Love as Erotic Hope—”the first of God’s love is an erotic love, which is an outbound love that wants  something other than God to be and to  flourish. And that outbound movement is generated by God's desire for For others to be beautiful, to be good, and I think that's the basis of our lives, right?”Audre Lorde and patriarchyAffirming the goodness of ourselves and the world as created and loved by GodHow the pornographic gaze distorts the meaning of erotic loveDancing as a metaphor for God’s erotic loveDeep sympathy and anticipation, and the improvisational movement of danceWoodworking: taking time and negotiation“Sympathetic attunement” and improvisationManaging the unpredictable nature of our worldRevelation of who you are and who the other is—it’s hard to reveal ourselves to each otherHonesty and depth that is missing from relationshipsLearning the skill of self-revealingBelonging and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s sense that a people could be “loved by the land”Physiological, material reality of our dependence on each other, from womb to tomb“The illusion that we could ever be alone or stand alone or survive alone is so dishonest about our living.”Denying our needs, acknowledging our needs, and inhabiting trust to work through struggle together“It’s not about solutions.”“Some of the needs  are profound and deep and they take time and they are  never fully resolved. But it's this experience of knowing that you're not alone, that you're in a context where you are going to be cared for, you'll be nurtured, and you'll be forgiven when you make mistakes means that you can carry on together. And that's often enough.”Transactional vs covenantal approach to relationshipsGranting forgiveness and receiving forgivenessTransformation is not a replacement for reconciliationRather than denying wrongdoing or seeking to eliminate it, focusing on a renewed effort to be merciful with each other.Economy and architecture“So how is the land supposed to love you back if it has in fact been turned into a toxic dumping zone?”“Think about how much fear is in our architecture.”Building was vernacular—people were involved in the development of physical structuresJ. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers: Ents vs Saruman, natural agrarianism vs technological dominationJoy Clarkson, You Are a TreeRooted economy“Is anything worthy of our care?”When a parent chooses a phone and loses a moment of presence with children“Go to some one and tell them, ‘I want to try to be better at being in the presence of those around me.’”Be deliberateProduction NotesThis podcast featured Norman WirzbaEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Daniel Chua, a musicologist and Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, explores how music shapes our lives. He discusses ancient versus modern perspectives on music, emphasizing its transformative power and emotional depth. Chua highlights the joyful essence of Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' and connects jazz improvisation to philosophies of harmony. He also delves into John Cage's bold silence in music, advocating for attentive listening as a way to experience joy and interconnectedness. Ultimately, the conversation celebrates music as a pathway to understanding life.

Join acclaimed novelist Marilynne Robinson and theologian Miroslav Volf as they explore the intricate depths of Genesis. Robinson shares her journey in writing biblical commentary, emphasizing the goodness of creation amid suffering. They shed light on theodicy, discussing how human agency interacts with divine grace. Key biblical narratives come alive as they examine morality, the flood, and the flawed nature of humanity. Their conversation unpacks profound themes of faith and hope, illuminating how literature and theology intertwine.

Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove discuss the political, moral, and spiritual dimensions of poverty. Together, they co-authored White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, and they’re collaborators at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.About Rev. William BarberBishop William J. Barber II, DMin, is a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He serves as President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, and has been Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Goldsboro, NC, for the past 29 years.He is the author of four books: We Are Called To Be A Movement; Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing; The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and The Rise of a New Justice Movement; and Forward Together: A Moral Message For The Nation.Bishop Barber served as president of the North Carolina NAACP from 2006-2017 and on the National NAACP Board of Directors from 2008-2020. He is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement that gained national acclaim in 2013 with its Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina General Assembly. In 2015, he established Repairers of the Breach to train communities in moral movement building through the Moral Political Organizing Leadership Institute and Summit Trainings (MPOLIS). In 2018, he co-anchored the relaunch of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival— reviving the SCLC’s Poor People’s Campaign, which was originally organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., welfare rights leaders, workers’ rights advocates, religious leaders, and people of all races to fight poverty in the U.S.A highly sought-after speaker, Bishop Barber has given keynote addresses at hundreds of national and state conferences, including the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 59th Inaugural Prayer Service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Vatican’s conference on Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.He is a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award recipient and a 2015 recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award and the Puffin Award.Bishop Barber earned a Bachelor’s Degree from North Carolina Central University, a Master of Divinity from Duke University, and a Doctor of Ministry from Drew University with a concentration in Public Policy and Pastoral Care. He has had ten honorary doctorates conferred upon him.About Jonathan Wilson-HartgroveJonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and community-builder who has worked with faith-rooted movements for social change for more than two decades. He is the founder of School for Conversion, a popular education center in Durham, North Carolina, and co-founder of the Rutba House, a house of hospitality in Durham’s Walltown neighborhood.Mr. Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of more than a dozen books, including the daily prayer guide, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, New Monasticism, The Wisdom of Stability, Reconstructing the Gospel, and Revolution of Values. He is a regular preacher and teacher in churches across the US and Canada and a member of the Red Letter Christian Communicators network.Show NotesCenter for Public Theology and Public Policy’s ten-session online course: https://www.theologyandpolicy.yale.edu/inaugural-conferenceGet your copy of White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324094876Production NotesThis podcast featured Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, with Ryan McAnnally-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Ryan McAnnally-Linz is a scholar specializing in medieval Christian mysticism, particularly the works of Julian of Norwich. In this discussion, he delves into Julian’s life as an anchoress and the historical context of her writings. The conversation uncovers her transformative near-death experience and the mystical visions that birthed her comforting message, 'All shall be well.' They reflect on Julian’s theological insights on divine love, compassion, and the struggle between human frailty and divine grace, demonstrating her lasting impact on spirituality.

Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was an influential philosopher and beloved author and speaker on Christian spiritual formation. He had the unique gift of being able to speak eloquently to academic and popular audiences, and it’s fascinating to observe the ways his philosophical thought pervades and influences his spiritual writings—and vice versa.In this episode, Steve Porter (Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute, Westmont College / Affiliate Professor of Spiritual Formation at Biola University) joins Evan Rosa to explore the key concepts and ideas that appear throughout Dallas Willard’s philosophical and spiritual writings, including: epistemological realism; a relational view of knowledge; how knowledge makes love possible; phenomenology and how the mind experiences, represents, and comes into contact with reality; how the human mind can approach the reality of God with a love for the truth; moral psychology; and Dallas’s concerns about the recent resistance, loss, and disappearance of moral knowledge.About Dallas WillardDallas Willard (1935-2013) was a philosopher, minister and beloved author and speaker on Christian philosophy and spiritual formation. For a full biography, visit Dallas Willard Ministries online.About Steve PorterDr. Steve Porter is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College, and an affiliate Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation at the Institute for Spiritual Formation and Rosemead School of Psychology (Biola University). Steve received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Southern California and M.Phil. in philosophical theology at the University of Oxford.Steve teaches and writes in Christian spiritual formation, the doctrine of sanctification, the integration of psychology and theology, and philosophical theology. He co-edited Until Christ is Formed in You: Dallas Willard and Spiritual Formation, Psychology and Spiritual Formation in Dialogue, and Dallas’s final academic book: The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. He is the author of Restoring the Foundations of Epistemic Justification: A Direct Realist and Conceptualist Theory of Foundationalism, and co-editor of Christian Scholarship in the 21st Century: Prospects and Perils. In addition to various book chapters, he has contributed articles to the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, Philosophia Christi, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of Psychology and Theology, Themelios, Christian Scholar’s Review, etc. Steve and his wife Alicia live with their son Luke and daughter Siena in Long Beach, CA.Show NotesThe Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont CollegeDallas Willard Ministries (Free Online Resources)Dallas Willard, The Spirit of DisciplinesWillard as both spiritual formation teacher/pastor and intellectual/philosopherGary Moon, Becoming Dallas WillardDallas Willard MinistriesConversatio DivinaPhenomenology—“One of the principles of phenomenology is you want to kind of help others come to see what you've seen.”Willard “presenting himself to God” while teaching“The kingdom of God was in the room.”The importance of finding your own way into your spiritual practicesAn ontology of knowing and epistemological realism: “We can come to know things the way they are.”What does it mean to say that being precedes knowledge or that metaphysics precedes epistemology? What does that imply for spiritutal formation?What is real?Operating on accurate information about realityDallas Willard on Husserl: “What is most intriguing in Husserl's thought to me, the always hopeful realist, is the way he works out a theory of the substance and nature of consciousness and knowledge, which allows that knowledge to grasp a world that it does not make.”The Cambridge Companion to HusserlThe philosophical tradition of “saving the appearances”Mind-world relationshipThe affinity between concepts and their objectsDallas Willard on concepts and objects: “On my view, thoughts and their concepts do not modify the objects which make up reality. They merely match up or fail to match up with them in a certain way. Thus, there would be a way things are, and the realism there would be vindicated along with the possibility at least of a God's eye view.”Lying as a disconnection from the truth and therefore from the worldAgency in our choice to know God and pursue knowing GodThe role of sincerity and honesty in shared realityRichard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity”: “breaking free of the shackles of objectivity”Dallas Willard in “Where Is Moral Knowledge?”: “One way of characterizing the condition of North American society at present is to say that moral knowledge, knowledge of good and evil, of what is morally admirable and despicable, right and wrong, is no longer available in our world to people generally. It has disappeared as a reliable resource for living.”Knowledge used to justify violence versus knowledge used to counter injusticeMoral relativism vs moral absolutism—which is the problem today?Moral absolutism is often not rooted in knowledge, but a feeling of certaintyDallas Willard, *The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge* (also available here)Social causes for moral knowledge having disappeared from public lifeMoral knowledge provides the place to stand for justiceWhat is it to be a good person?Emmanuel Levinas and the face of the otherDallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy, “The life and words that Jesus brought into the world came in the form of information and reality.”Becoming a student of JesusWillard’s four fundamental questions: What is real? What is the good life? Who is the good person? How does one become good?Dallas Willard on how to understand Jesus’s words: “It is the failure to understand Jesus and his words as reality and vital information about life. That explains why today we do not routinely teach those who profess allegiance to him, how to do what he said was best. We lead them to profess allegiance to him, or we expect them to, and we leave them there devoting our remaining efforts to attracting them to this or that.”The contemporary issue of exchanging becoming more like Jesus for other ways of life.The real cost of changing one’s lifeFrederica Matthewes Green: “Everyone wants transformation, but no one likes to change.”“The good news of Jesus is the availability of the Kingdom of God.”Sociologist Max Picard, *The Flight From God* and philosopher Charles Taylor on “the buffered self.”Dallas Willard on taking Jesus seriously as a reliable path to growth“In many ways, I believe that we are at a turning point among the people of Christ today, one way of describing that turning point is that people are increasingly serious about living the life that Jesus gives to us. And not just having services, words, and rituals. But a life that is full of the goodness and power of Christ. There is a way of doing that. There is knowledge of spiritual growth and of spiritual life that can be taught and practiced. Spiritual growth is not like lightning that hits for no reason you can think of. Many of us come out of a tradition of religion that is revivalistic and experiential. But often the mixture of theological understanding and history that has come down to us has presented spiritual growth as if somehow it were not a thing that you could have understanding of. That you could know, that you could teach, that made sense. And so, we have often slipped into a kind of practical mysticism. The idea that if we just keep doing certain things, then maybe something will happen. We have not had an understanding of a reliable process of growth.”Jesus on “The Cure for Anxiety”Production NotesThis podcast featured Steve PorterEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Elizabeth Oldfield, journalist and host of The Sacred, reflects on living in a micro-monastery in London while discussing what it means to be fully alive in a chaotic world. She delves into the importance of community and spiritual practices that foster true connections. The conversation also tackles the destructive forces of anger and greed, advocating for gratitude and empathy as responses. Oldfield emphasizes our shared humanity and the power of love, urging listeners to embrace their inherent worth amid life's challenges.

Elizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, and came back to the White House again in 2017 to serve in the Trump Administration.Her job was to counter emerging right-wing extremism, fueled by long-standing anger, resentment, white supremacism, and Christian nationalism. By April 2020, she had resigned from the Trump Administration. Citing a failure of leadership and his imperiling of American security, she signed an August 2020 statement with 130 other Republican national security officials, boldly stating in no uncertain terms that Trump was unfit for office.In this episode, Elizabeth opens up about this experience, told in her recent book Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. As a person of Christian faith with over two decades of experience in public service and national security, she offers a fascinating inside take on the inattention to domestic terrorism; she elucidates the emergence of a new and Christian extremism, grounded in rage and willing to take violent action; she explains the Jan 6 attack through the perspective of homeland security; and she reflects on Christian resources for responding to the chaotic, politicized anger characterized in right-wing extremism and how we might act as instruments of peace.About Elizabeth NeumannElizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, and came back to the White House again in 2017 to serve in the Trump Administration, publicly resigning in 2020. She is author of Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, and is a frequent guest on national news outlets, and the Chief Strategy Officer at Moonshot. She is based in the Denver, CO area.Show NotesKingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace by Elizabeth NeumannElizabeth Neumann’s faith journey and background in public service.Christian, North Texas/Bible Belt, more theologically conservative—an “evangelical mutt”Body of Christ is made up of different communities—personally gravitating towards more nerdy churches, an emphasis on Bible studiesPublic service as a way to live out the faithWorking for George W. Bush campaigns for governor and president—federalism, conservative, to the states: faith-based community initiatives and Bush’s compassionate conservative agenda9/11 as a moment of changeWorking in Homeland Security, specifically in the Domestic Terrorism UniteInstances of domestic violent extremism: Pittsburg Tree of Life (2018), Christ Church in New Zealand (2019), and El Paso Walmart (2019)Do you think of them as domestic terrorism? Do you think of it as a kind of violence that’s brewing from within? How does the Department of Security try to understand threats to America from within?Intelligence is used to inform responses to challenges, yet the means to collect don’t work domestically and domestic material support of terrorism is not understood as criminalNo way to designate domestic terrorism groupsThe threat has been there all along; domestic extremists require a shift in the focus - many Americans (3%, roughly 8 million people) believe in the necessity of violence for political aimsWe don’t talk about it so people don’t know about it, but the church is equipped to discuss and address the underlying drivers that mobilize people to violenceHow did you experience perspective shifts?COVID in 2020, protests against COVID procedures, and the protests surrounding the murder of George FloydWeaponizing of crisis by Trump administration for re-election campaignThe ANTIFA movement; authoritarian responses from Trump that were illegal and unconstitutional; no longer anyone in the room to tell him noJanuary 6 highlighted a security failure that was both day of as well as a result of 20 years of ignoring a threat from withinWould you be willing to share a bit about what motivated your decision to leave the Trump administration?Presidential personnel interviews as a loyalty test; people being pushed out; how far were people willing to go for Donald Trump?Hatch Act: prohibits federal employees, including political appointees, from engaging in political activityChristian nationalist mindset—How does Christianity get radicalized?Extremism: when an in-group perceives a threat to its success or survival by an out-group and hostile action is necessary—this is the nature of contemporary politics which are saturated in fear and anger.The plausibility of violent actionViolence is not the option taught by Jesus and the ScripturesViolence has a historic presence in the Christian traditionChange in the presence of Christianity in society that is unsettling for some, but cannot be an excuse for extremists and violent actionWhat are the prospects of keeping it a peaceful community?Building protective factors and systems for healing brokennessUnmet needs cannot be allowed to be met by extremist ideology when the Church possesses the answers and the means to meet them; a call to properly investing in our communitiesThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan HaidtMotivated by emotions and experience—critical thinking is a vital skillWe are in a perpetual state of anger; we are called to not stay angryProcessing anger properly; being better at lament and grieving in a biblical wayTim Keller on idolatry and anger; an interfering with our idols; Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters?What is lying more deeply within us when anger is on the surface?The space to lament and grieve in society in a healthy wayThe Lord can meet us in our anger; he will take it when we bring it to him and ask for helpWhat does it mean to be a Christian peacemaker?Intentionally caring for communities; the quiet spaces in which the face of God is seen in others by loving them.Production NotesThis podcast featured Elizabeth NeumannEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give