For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Willie Jennings defines joy in a surprising and profoundly physical way—as an act of resistance against despair and death. He explains joy as, "Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living." Here, in a 2018 talk for the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, Willie Jennings comments on the powerful, embodied act of resistance that joy calls for, examining its scope and cultural context, exploring the musical form of the blues as a space for commonly held joy, and envisioning a pathway of life through the valley of the shadow of death.About Willie JenningsWillie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. You can hear him in podcast episodes 7, 13, and 57 of For the Life of the World.Show NotesWatch Willie Jennings's 2018 lecture "Gathering Joy"—from the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, sponsored by the John Templeton FoundationFrom The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien: "‘Despair or folly?’ said Gandalf. ‘It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the enemy! For he is very wise and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.’ ‘At least for a while,’ said Elrond. ‘The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.’”“The first thing that must be said about joy is that it is a work.”“The Black church folks I knew understood that joy work begins with renouncing despair, renouncing despair by angling one's body against it.”James C. Scott: Domination and the Arts of Resistance“Despair has always been a currency born of death.”“This is the art of making pain productive without ever trying to justify or glorify suffering.”Hebrews 12:2“Jesus's joy was a joy found in contradiction, not in the resolution of contradiction.”“Joy work, my friends, always lives close to addiction. Addiction is the anti-side, the shadow side of joy work.”“Even faith, any religious faith can be captured in addiction once it aligns itself with death.”“Joy work rooted in Jesus is always work of the creature, vulnerable, fragile, and unstable, and in need of community and communion.”“Music and joy have a long and celebrated history together among Black diaspora peoples. This sonic space often becomes a womb for joy, where it could live and breathe, take flight through sound, weaving together bodies and places in joy and habitation, the joy of the body and the joy of the place becoming one.”“The blues at essence is a method of working contradiction and dissonance into a statement of pain.”“We are yet to fully appreciate the role of the blues in creating sonic space, a space that many people can inhabit at the same time.”“Too many Christians however, continue to promote segregated joy work through the limited ways we imagine life together bound as it is by racial reasoning and geographic segregation.”John 15: 8-13Albert J. Raboteau: “Slave Religion”“A joy that moves through boundaries and overcomes social fragmentation requires the desire to locate joy work in new spaces that become more than a search for new commodities to consume.”Production NotesThis podcast featured theologian Willie JenningsEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Martin Chan, Nathan Jowers, Logan Ledman, and Annie TrowbridgeA 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

As we're knit in the womb, a primal cry emerges from the very fact of our being, the very fact of our dependence, the fact of our contingency, the fact of our ultimate need: Do you love me? Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms and bestselling author of If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For, joins Evan Rosa for a discussion about the hope and resilience and human identity that emerges from being known and loved; what it means to live a life worth living; his own struggle with mental illness and therapy; the connection between mystery, not knowing, and the sort of surprise that makes life worth another day.In this episode, we talk in some detail about the beautiful and heartbreaking founding story that led Jamie to start To Write Love on Her Arms, which includes references to self-harm and contains an expletive, which in Jamie's words is "more about identity than profanity". And if you are or anyone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or if you need help even right now, call or text 988. 988 is the new nationwide number for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.Show Notesjamietworkowski.comFollow Jamie Tworkowski on TwitterIf You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped ForSuicide & Crisis LifelineTo Write Love on Her Arms“Being loved looks like being known.”Rebecca Solnit’s 2020 article describing hope as a commitment to the future.“I've really come to believe that getting help, asking for help, recovery counseling for some people, sobriety, that it's not easy, but it's worth it.”Giving up the need for control.Clem Snide, “I Love the Unknown”Looking past the things we feel are missing.To Write Love On Her Arm: “that phrase at first, it was a, a goal for one person and pretty quickly because of this growing audience, it became a goal on a bigger scale.”“And I hope that other people, in this case the listener who might be struggling, I hope that you would stay for the surprises: to be surprised by life, by love, by joy, by God; that there would be moments that you will experience and, and as a result, be so glad that you chose to keep going, that you chose to stay.”Production NotesThis podcast featured author Jamie TworkowskiEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance and Episode Art by Luke StringerA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

How do you heal from trauma—whether individual, familial, or collective? Can Christian spirituality help? The tumultuous time we find ourselves in serves up regular doses of the suffering and pain of others—war wages destruction, migrants are left to die of heat exposure, hate crimes based in bigotry and fear of ethnicity or orientation or identity leave us all feeling numbed to our humanity; and with the aid of our phones, we even risk a dependency relationship with that trauma. It's constantly leveraged for political gain, power, money, or ugly fame. If we see the game of human culture as a zero-sum struggle for power, someone's political gain is always another's loss. Someone's joy another's sorrow.How are we supposed to find our human siblings? Add to this the unspoken trauma that haunts so many of us—myself, you listeners, that person in your life who seems strong and impervious to harm—we all carry our lifetime's worth of trauma even if we act like it's not there. But as Bessel Vander Kolk's best selling title captures so well, even when your conscious mind does that surreptitious work to ignore, deny, suppress, or forget trauma—"the body knows the score." But perhaps so too the spirit knows the score.Today, Bo Karen Lee joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz for a conversation on trauma and Ignatian spirituality. Bo is Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary, and has written and taught contemplative theology, prayer, and the connection between spirituality and social justice.This conversation is a beautiful and sensitive—and sometimes quite raw—exploration of trauma and the human experience. But the clarity and courage reflected in Bo's presentation of how trauma threatens the human mind and body is matched by a powerful empathy and peace, as she reflects on moving through a spiritual journey from victim or bystander of trauma to a beloved, seen, known, and loved by God and other deeply caring helpers. The discussion that follows offers a concise introduction to the Ignatian spiritual tradition, as well as a holistic comment on how trauma at the individual, genetic, family, and national level can be acknowledged, addressed, and acted on.This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.AboutBo Karen Lee, ThM '99, PhD '07, is associate professor of spiritual theology and Christian formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned her BA in religious studies from Yale University, her MDiv from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, and her ThM and PhD from Princeton Seminary. She furthered her studies in the returning scholars program at the University of Chicago, received training as a spiritual director from Oasis Ministries, and was a Mullin Fellow with the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies. Her book, Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, argues that surrender of self to God can lead to the deepest joy in God. She has recently completed a volume, The Soul of Higher Education, which explores contemplative pedagogies and research strategies. A recipient of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, she gave a series of international lectures that included the topic, “The Face of the Other: An Ethic of Delight.”She is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and the American Academy of Religion; she recently served on the Governing Board of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and is on the editorial board of the journal, Spirtus, as well as on the steering committee of the Christian Theology and Bible Group of the Society of Biblical Literature. Before joining Princeton faculty, she taught in the Theology Department at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she developed courses with a vibrant service-learning component for students to work at shelters for women recovering from drug addiction and sex trafficking. She now enjoys teaching classes on prayer for the Spirituality and Mission Program at Princeton Seminary, in addition to taking students on retreats and hosting meditative walks along nature trails.Production NotesThis podcast featured Bo Karen Lee and Ryan McAnnally-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Annie Trowbridge and Luke StringerSpecial thanks to the Tyndale House Foundation for their generous support.A 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

Seldom do we think of the study of history as a journey of self-discovery. And if that claim has any truth, it's because we modern people tend to see ourselves as autonomous, independent, untethered, and unaffected by our biological and cultural genealogies. But there's a story in our DNA that didn't start with us. And Lisa Sharon Harper has been on a decades-long journey of self-discovery, piecing together her family's lineage from their arrival on America's shores—via slave boats, through the twists and turns of slavery and indentured servitude, through America's post-civil war attempt at Reconstruction, down into the shadowy valley of Jim Crow and twentieth-century Civil Rights struggle, all to her life in the present. Her book is Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It All. Evan Rosa recently spoke with Lisa at length about how race broke her world and how she traced her family line back beyond the founding of America. And in continued celebration of Juneteenth and the Black joy which has transcended centuries of oppression, the Black history that deserves to be named and known, and the Black freedom which is real and yet still not fully realized and repaired—thanks for listening today friends.How to Buy Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It All:lisasharonharper.comOnline RetailersAbout Lisa Sharon HarperFrom Ferguson to New York, and from Germany to South Africa to Australia, Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment and common action.Ms. Harper is the author of several books, including Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…or Democrat (The New Press, 2008); Left Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics (Elevate, 2011); Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Zondervan, 2014); and the critically acclaimed, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (Waterbrook, a division of Penguin Random House, 2016). The Very Good Gospel, recognized as the “2016 Book of the Year” by Englewood Review of Books, explores God’s intent for the wholeness of all relationships in light of today’s headlines.A columnist at Sojourners Magazine and an Auburn Theological Seminary Senior Fellow, Ms. Harper has appeared on TVOne, FoxNews Online, NPR, and Al Jazeera America. Her writing has been featured in CNN Belief Blog, The National Civic Review, Sojourners, The Huffington Post, Relevant Magazine, and Essence Magazine. She writes extensively on shalom and governance, immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement.Ms. Harper earned her Masters degree in Human Rights from Columbia University in New York City, and served as Sojourners Chief Church Engagement Officer. In this capacity, she fasted for 22 days as a core faster in 2013 with the immigration reform Fast for Families. She trained and catalyzed evangelicals in St. Louis and Baltimore to engage the 2014 push for justice in Ferguson and the 2015 healing process in Baltimore, and she educated faith leaders in South Africa to pull the levers of their new democracy toward racial equity and economic inclusion.In 2015, The Huffington Post named Ms. Harper one of 50 powerful women religious leaders to celebrate on International Women’s Day. In 2019, The Religion Communicators Council named a two-part series within Ms. Harper’s monthly Freedom Road Podcast “Best Radio or Podcast Series of The Year”. The series focused on The Roots and Fruits of Immigrant Labor Exploitation in the US. And in 2020 Ms. Harper received The Bridge Award from The Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation in recognition of her dedication to bridging divides and building the beloved community.Show Notes“I never really understood the power of family history in scripture until I had done my own family history and understood the power of the context within which people live. So I used to look at the list of names that Jesus came from--Jesus is, you know, son of Mary, son of doo, son of Joseph, depending on who you're reading, and, and this is, and this is his lineage.”“When we look at the context of American life, you cannot divorce it from the laws that were crafted to shape the flow of American life.”Colonial laws legislating mixed-race marriage.“Because on the first page of the Bible, we actually see very clearly: all humanity is created in the image of God.”“But normally we think of repentance in the personal like, oh, I did somebody wrong so now I need to repent of that. But what would it look like for a society to repent? What would it look like for the church to repent of the assumptions we've had about who we are and how we should operate as the church?”“The only way for people of European descent to find true peace is to lay down your arms and trust God to be God.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Lisa Sharon HarperEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaSpecial thanks to Lisa Sharon Harper and Katie Zimmerman at FreedomRoad.usProduction Assistance by Annie Trowbridge and Luke StringerEpisode Art by Luke StringerA 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

Does your approach to theology bring healing and reconciliation? Does it introduce Christianity as a way of life and peace, flourishing, justice, and shalom? Does your theology have space for diverse and difficult questions to occupy the same space? That kind of hospitable theology would indeed make a difference in our world. Today on the show, we're playing a conversation between Matt Croasmun and Amy Brown Hughes, Associate Professor of Theology at Gordon College and author of Christian Women in the Patristic World. Amy and Matt reflect on the promise and hope of a hospitable theology, grounded in a way of life, sensitive to the difference theology makes for the most pressing issues of our lives today.About Amy Brown HughesAmy Brown Hughes is Associate Professor of Theology at Gordon College. She received her Ph.D. in historical theology with an emphasis in early Christianity from Wheaton College and is the author (with Lynn H. Cohick, Wheaton College) of Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority and Legacy in the Second Through Fifth Centuries (Baker Academic). Amy also received a M.A. in history of Christianity from Wheaton College and her B.A. in theology and historical studies from Oral Roberts University. While at Wheaton, she worked with the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies, which encourages dialogue about the interplay between our modern world and early Christian texts. The overarching theme of Amy’s work as a historical theologian is that early Christian writers continue to be fruitful interlocutors in modern discussions of theology. Her research interests include Eastern Christianity, Trinitarian and Christological thought, Christian asceticism, theological anthropology, the intersection of philosophy and theology, and highlighting the contributions of minority voices to theology, especially those of women. Her dissertation, “‘Chastely I Live for Thee’: Virginity as Bondage and Freedom in Origen of Alexandria, Methodius of Olympus, and Gregory of Nyssa,” explores how early Christian virgins contributed substantively to the development of Christology. She regularly presents papers at the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society.Recently, Amy contributed to an edited volume of essays from a symposium on Methodius of Olympus at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany,Methodius of Olympus: State of the Art and New Perspectives(De Gruyter) and co-authored a series of essays about early Christian writers with George Kalantzis (Wheaton College) for the early Christianity section of a volume for Protestant readers of the Christian tradition (T&T Clark).Show NotesBrown Hughes’s experience with theology students: “they're making the connection now much more than I've experienced in the past with, oh, this actually has to matter.”A growing hunger for theology in churches: “The stuff that I do is not only mattering pedagogically in the academy for students, but also with the church as well, that it's starting to be something that they're starting to, like, want books and they want things recommended to them.”A discussion of one challenge in modern theology: an inclination for saying "I have more theology on my side or more on this side. And so therefore I'm more right.”A vision of theology: “I feel like theology can be a really hospitable place for people to actually access Christianity, where there are some big ideas and some values there that we can talk about.”Brown Hughes’s vision of a participatory theology focused on the flourishing of life: “with the United Nation's global goals, for instance like gender equality, no poverty, these different goals, they're worldwide conversations about how humans can flourish, largely speaking. So how can theology with how we think about humanity--how can we participate in those conversations? And I think that sort of requiring ourselves to think, "can we actually participate in that conversation" and say, "yes, I think we can." So how can we do that? Like what can we bring to bear on the conversation of eradicating poverty in the world?”Learn more about Gregory of NyssaA summary of the field: “theology's a little bit wilder, a little bit messier, but I think that's actually an opportunity for the future.”Production NotesThis podcast featured Amy Brown Hughes and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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

If we all weren't so cynical, we might expect professional ethicists—or say a professor of ethics or morality at a university—to also be a really morally virtuous and good person. And by extension, you might also expect a theologian to be a person of deeper faith. And that's because intellectual reflection about matters of justice, right and wrong, God and human flourishing all cut to the core of what it means to be human, and the things you discuss in an ethics or theology course, if you took those ideas seriously, just might change the way you live.Today, in our series on the Future of Theology, Matt Croasmun hosts Eric Gregory, Professor of Religion at Princeton University and author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship. Eric reflects on what it's like to teach theology in a secular institution—the good, the bad, and the ugly of that exercise; the complications of making professors of humanities, ethics, and religion into moral or spiritual exemplars; the centrality of the good life in the purpose of higher education; and the importance of discerning and articulating the multifarious visions of the good life that are presumed by the institutional cultures in which we live, and move, and have our being.About Eric GregoryEric Gregory is Professor of Religion at Princeton University. He is the author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and articles in a variety of edited volumes and journals, including the Journal of Religious Ethics, Modern Theology, Studies in Christian Ethics, and Augustinian Studies. His interests include religious and philosophical ethics, theology, political theory, law and religion, and the role of religion in public life. In 2007 he was awarded Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned an M.Phil. and Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale University. He has received fellowships from the Erasmus Institute, University of Notre Dame, the Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Tikvah Center for Law & Jewish Civilization at New York University School of Law. Among his current projects is a book tentatively titled, The In-Gathering of Strangers: Global Justice and Political Theology, which examines secular and religious perspectives on global justice. Former Chair of the Humanities Council at Princeton, he also serves on the the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Ethics and sits with the executive committee of the University Center for Human Values.Show Notes“Part of the virtue of the humanities, I think, is to kind of dislocate us and to kind of allow us to inhabit different worlds than the ones that we have prior to encountering these texts.”“There is a kind of healthy way in which unifying or directing the task of theology with respect to a particular vision of that good life that will be fleshed out in different ways by different theologies is one way to find a place for the discourse of theology.”“Universities are not just places of the production of information, but are also sites where people seek to ask questions about how they should live. And if universities can't do that, it's very difficult in our current culture to find spaces of reflection that allow that possibility.”“[Universities should have] a desire to shape whole persons and to not just view education as a commodity that we are delivering to customers, but to kind of reconsider what a liberal arts education might look like.”Production NotesThis podcast featured religious ethicist Eric Gregory and biblical scholar Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA 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 reflects on the May 24, 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Miroslav Volf has said that every Christian is a theologian. This is important not so much because it demands of an individual Jesus-follower to exert the best of her cognitive abilities, but because it demands of theologians that theology take seriously the experience, perception, and lived realities of human life. As part of our Future of Theology series, Keri Day (Princeton Theological Seminary) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss the purpose and promise of theology today, honing in on this phenomena and the temptation to see theology as an abstract exercise cut off from the particularities of faith. Keri Day is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. She’s author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America as well as Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives. About Keri DayKeri Day is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. She’s author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America as well as Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives. Production NotesThis podcast featured Keri Day and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Annie TrowbridgeEpisode Art by Luke StringerA 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

Jesus's teaching to be in but not of the world (John 17:14-15) has gone from a mode of prophetic witness that could lead to martyrdom, to bumper sticker ethics that either feeds the trolls or fuels the tribe. We're in a moment where the ways that Christianity's influence on culture—and vice versa—are writ large and undeniable. And yet, how are we to understand it? How are we to live in light of it? How does that relationship change from political moment to political moment? In this conversation, ethicist Luke Bretherton (Duke Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to reflect on the purpose of theology as a way of life committed to loving God and neighbor; the essential virtue of listening and its role in public theology; the interrelation between Church and World; the temptation to see the other as an enemy to be defeated rather than a neighbor to be loved; and how best to understand secularism and religiosity today.Show Notes Do you call yourself a theologian? “You can't understand the water you're swimming in without understanding something of the theological frameworks that have helped shape it”Where does the idea that our contemporary context is secular come from? “The world is as furiously religious as ever”People think that our modern age is like a shower, that we can just “step into the shower and be washed clean from the foul accretions of superstition and step out enlightened, rational men and women,” but we're actually in a ‘jacuzzi’ of ideasThe internet and plurality of opinionWhat happens when we step away from the institutional framework of the Church?“Who tells the children what Christianity is, who tells the children, what Islam is?”Do you actually want to show up on a Sunday? Then tension between believing and belongingSacrality and its many guises “The many forms of life which we don't necessarily name as religious, but they're functioning in that way”How do we name them? If you talk to an atheist, they feel marginalized in this country, but if you talk to an Evangelical Christian they feel the same way “Everyone feels under threat, whether you're a humanist or an atheist or a Christian or Muslim”“But if you take the victim view, it generates a failure of imagination, a failure of patience, and a failure of paying attention”Churches talk a lot about how to speak but not about how to listen “What does Christian listening look like in a pluralistic context?”Learning something about God by talking to an atheistListening is pointing to what is already there: “We point to what Christ and the Spirit are already doing. And it is a privilege is to participate in that.”What is truth?“It is how well you love God and neighbor. And the apprehension of the truth is measured by the quality of the relationships”“So, I think faith begins with hearing and listening first”What’s right with theology? How can we have a synthesis of tradition and critique? Having a sensitivity to political order and whether it is constructive or destructive is theological work Epistemic humility and interdisciplinary study The beauty in becoming aware of what you don’t know What is the state of the field right now? The overemphasis on the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the world as it is versus the world as it should beCynicism and redundancy“If all we’re saying is that wolves eat sheep, well, we kind of knew that already”What is a realistic hopefulness? What does ‘the world as it should be’ feel, taste, smell like? What is the purpose of theology? It “articulates what it means to heal a particular form of life in the light of who we understand God to be”“There shouldn't be an over-inflation of what theology, as a technical act, does. But neither is it nothing”“It is a cultivation of a faithful, hopeful and loving way of being alive”About Luke BrethertonLuke Bretherton is Robert E. Cushman Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2012, he was reader in Theology & Politics and convener of the Faith & Public Policy Forum at King's College London. His latest book is Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Eerdmans, 2019). His other books include Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of a Common Life (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was based on a four-year ethnographic study of broad-based community organizing initiatives in London and elsewhere; Christianity & Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), winner of the 2013 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing; and Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Routledge, 2006), which develops constructive, theological responses to pluralism in dialogue with broader debates in moral philosophy. Specific issues addressed in his work include euthanasia and hospice care, debt and usury, fair trade, environmental justice, racism, humanitarianism, the treatment of refugees, interfaith relations, secularism, nationalism, church-state relations, and the church’s involvement in social welfare provision and social movements. Alongside his scholarly work, he writes in the media (including The Guardian, The Times and The Washington Post) on topics related to religion and politics, has worked with a variety of faith-based NGOs, mission agencies, and churches around the world, and has been actively involved over many years in forms of grassroots democratic politics, both in the UK and the US. His primary areas of research, supervision, and teaching are Christian ethics, political theology, the intellectual and social history of Christian moral and political thought, the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, missiology, interfaith relations, and practices of social, political, and economic witness. He has received a number of grants and awards, including a Henry Luce III Fellowship (2017-18).Production NotesThis podcast featured ethicist Luke Bretherton and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction & Editorial Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Annie TrowbridgeIllustration: Luke StringerA 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

Over the past two centuries, colleges have slowly replaced theology departments with religious studies departments. But what happens when theology becomes religious studies? It can produce a more neutral, observational approach that might not fully appreciate the normative claims of religious adherents and their values, commitments, and beliefs.A careful historical and objective study of religious history and the dimensions of religious practice are deeply valuable. But engaging religious texts and voices without a serious appreciation for the normative elements—that is, the things about a theological or religious idea that means your life would have to change—that would be a problem. It would evacuate the true substance and meaning of theological claims as they're experienced by religious adherents. But it would also fail to form students of religion and the humanities in a way that poses significant challenges to their own lived experience. For living a life worthy of their humanity.Today, we share a conversation between Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun from November 2016. Tragically, Roberts died at the age of 61 on June 3, 2021. He was Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College. In this conversation, Roberts reflects on the contribution of theology to the humanities, the role of religious studies in a critical examination of theology, and the importance of appreciating the kinds of theological and moral claims that can change your life. May his memory be a blessing. Show NotesWhat happens when theology becomes religious studies? Is serious appreciation missing? How does theology contribute to the humanities? What is going right in Christian theology? Scholars like say what they do ‘is not theology,’ but they have the wrong definition of theology, according to Tyler“We who care about studying religion have ‘dropped the ball’” “It’s helpful to the Church to have external critique”Theology as a straw man What could theology be saying to those outside of the field?“The line between theology as data and theology as something else is pretty blurry” Theology reveals how self-critical religious people are “More interestingly to me is how those of us in religious studies, perhaps the academy more broadly, can learn how to think from theologians” ‘Critical ascent’The humanities can raise great questions, but can they articulate normative positions? Theology and credulity “It’s seemingly either/or, either you’re going to be critical, or you’ll believe anything” How religious people appear credulous in the eyes of the secular But in actuality, theology charts out how we come to our beliefs“There’s nothing particularly blind about this”Hermeneutics of suspicion Students are very good at pointing to the limitations of a textBut how can we engage in texts in ways that make students think about their own lives? “That’s a much harder task, and it’s one that many students, I find, aren’t that comfortable with” It’s hard! “Humanities is about reading not just what was true for the author, but what is true for me” “How can we take these texts as real options for us?”Christian theology has an important role to play in the pluralistic conversationHow does someone think constructively and critically at the same time? How theologians can teach us that Obituary: Tyler Roberts (1960-2021) (Political Theology)Production NotesThis podcast featured Tyler Roberts and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Luke StringerA 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