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

Theologian Angela Gorrell discusses her book The Gravity of Joy, a theological memoir that lays bare the experience of finding the bright sorrow of joy alongside devastating grief, suffering, and pain. The book recounts her experience of joining the Yale Center for Faith & Culture in 2016 as an Associate Research Scholar for our Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project and to teach our Yale undergraduate course, Life Worth Living. That winter, the reality, the extent, and the dangerous potential of joy would become devastatingly clear. The highly abstract question of what it means to live a life worth living would become painfully acute. Interview with Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Support For the Life of the World by supporting the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give This episode contains some sensitive material about suicide. Use some discretion as you consider listening, and if you are feeling suicidal, thinking about hurting yourself, or are concerned that someone you know may be in danger of hurting themselves, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.Show NotesRead the book: The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found A devastating winter of lossSuicide and opioid deaths as “deaths of despair"“Despair is the feeling I think that people can feel when they feel like no one can reach them. No one can get to them. And for me, joy is a counteragent to despair because joy is the feeling that we get after recognizing truth, meaning beauty, goodness, our relationship to other people."Joy as a work of resistance against despair (e.g., Willie James Jennings)"Joy as an illumination that there is something more.”Grief vs Despair—what prevented your grief from becoming despair? Who reached you?“Even though I was a year and five months in grief… angry… constantly afraid of getting another call."Suicide watch in a women’s correctional facility—“These women are going to minister to me.""Is our study of joy too shallow?"Different kinds of joyJoy and sorrow—from the book: "Joy doesn’t obliterate grief. . . . Instead, joy has a mysterious capacity to be felt alongside sorrow and even—sometimes most especially—in the midst of suffering."The ocean as a spiritual sanctuary, the rain as an indicator that change is coming"I suddenly found myself rejoicing over what ought to be, what was to come. I suddenly believed that joy might make its way to me again. And just the mirror. Like what if of joy like found me on that beach, running in the pouring rain?"Women’s prison bible study—feeling welcome to a community without shame Humanizing one another in a dehumanizing institution: “The Gravity of Joy is my effort to humanize people who are incarcerated."God’s activity in suffering, pain, and joy: “God was always seeking after you."Romans 8:28 "All things work together for good"I hope people feel seen.About Angela GorrellDr. Angela Williams Gorrell is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary and author of The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found and Always on: Practicing Faith in a New Media Landscape. Prior to joining the faculty at Baylor University, she was an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, working on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, and a lecturer in Divinity and Humanities at Yale University. She is an ordained pastor with 15 years of ministry experience. Dr. Gorrell’s expertise is in the areas of theology and contemporary culture, education and formation, new media, and youth and emerging adults.

“For me, the spiritual task is to befriend reality in all its mess and complexity—to do that with grace." Krista Tippett joins Miroslav Volf for a conversation on the importance of engaging otherness on the grounds of our common humanity; her personal faith journey from small town Baptists in Oklahoma, to a secular humanism in a divided Cold-War Berlin, and then back to her spiritual homeland and mother tongue of Christianity in an expansive and engaging new way; the art of conversation, deep listening, cultivating hospitality; the spiritual task of befriending reality; and the challenge of being alone and being together as we seek to live a life worthy of our humanity.Support For the Life of the World by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/giveShow NotesJulian of Norwich today: "All shall be well." Read the Revelations of Divine LoveKrista Tippett and On BeingThe art of being human and speaking of faith in the twenty-first centuryThe animating questions behind the human enterpriseCreating a space for a conversations we couldn’t (but needed to) hearCertainties and beliefsWhat it means to be human, how we want to live, and what we want to be to each otherHospitality—intellectual virtue, social art, sophisticated technology for inviting the best of other people into the roomHow to invite someone into a good conversation, inviting them in their fullnessThe discipline and public service of holding back your own opinions for the sake of listeningBalancing listening and speaking in a good conversationWhat binds and unites various voices within the diversity of On Being?"My primary intention is not to find similarities, but to be fascinated by particularity and go deep into that."Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “Depth Theology”Drawing opposites and counterintuitives even within the same personSimilar themes emerging from very different mouths—struggle for justice, struggle for wholeness, aspiring to both praise and lamentThe complexity and fine textures of the melodies of humanityConfounding ourselves"There are no storybook heroes in the Hebrew Bible … it shows all the mess."Befriending reality, which has a lot about it we wouldn’t choose, like, or expect—and then make a life of meaning with that and from that.“For me, the spiritual task is to befriend reality in all its mess and complexity—to do that with grace."Christian faith as a “mother tongue”—spiritual complexity and Krista’s conservative Baptist upbringing: “I got a lot of lived theology.""There is an order—there is a love that infuses all of this."“I’m not defined by what I reject, and I’m very slow to judge anyone else’s deep beliefs."How Krista came back to Christianity while living in divided Cold War BerlinMoral exhaustion “I didn’t immediately head back to Christianity. First I got quiet, then I got intentionally quiet, and then I started wandered into praying ... and an imagination, and then that brought me back to my spiritual homeland."Julian of Norwich and “All shall be well”—the cosmic sense of those words“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…”"It’s a mystical statement. It doesn’t add up with what we can see and hear and touch. … At some cosmic level, which I can’t be articulate about, it makes sense for me."What kind of life is worthy of our humanity? We’re living in a time when we are open to hearing the truth about ourselvesWe alone, and we’re togetherRevisiting and grappling with binariesPrivileging the cultivation of knowing ourselves and spiritual technologies “It’s hard to be inextricable from other human beings.”We’re just as shaped by how we treat our enemies as how we treat our friendsNurturing the interior life as we’re tempted to focus on external appearancesInvest in ourselves in order to be present to the worldAbout Krista TippettKrista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a National Humanities Medalist, and a New York Times bestselling author. She grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and became a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin. She then lived in Spain and England before seeking a Master of Divinity at Yale University in the mid-1990s.Emerging from that, she saw a black hole where intelligent public conversation about the religious, spiritual, and moral aspects of human life might be. She pitched and piloted her idea for several years before launching Speaking of Faith — later On Being — as a weekly national public radio show in 2003. In 2014, the year after she took On Being into independent production, President Obama awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom.”Krista has published three books at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, social healing, science, and culture: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living; Einstein’s God, drawn from her interviews at the intersection of science, medicine, and spiritual inquiry; and Speaking of Faith, a memoir of religion in our time. In recent honors, she is a recipient of a Four Freedoms Medal of the Roosevelt Institute. She also received an honorary degree from Middlebury College, and was the Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor at Stanford University.Krista has two grown children. She is currently at work on a new book about moral imagination and the human challenges and promise of this young century.

"I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces. ... Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy.Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/giveShow NotesClick here to watch the full interview in videoClick here to learn more about the Theology of Joy and the Good Life projectDefining joy—an act of resistance against despair"Resisting all the ways in which life can be strangled and presented to us as not worth living"Singing a song in a strange landMaking productive use of pain, suffering, and the absurd—taking them seriousHow does one cultivate joy? You have to have people who can show you how to sing a song in a strand land, laugh where all you want to do is cry, and how to ride the winds of chaos."In contexts where your energies have to be focused on survival, it doesn’t leave a lot of energy for overt forms of complaint—you’re spending a lot of energy just trying to hold it together."The commercialization of joy in the empire of advertising—contrasting that with the peoples serious work of joyThe work and skill of making something beautiful out of what has been thrown awaySegregated joy—joy in African diaspora communitiesJoy is always embedded in community logicsThe Christological center of joyPentecost joy—joy togetherGeographies of joy: Christians tend not to think spatially, but we shouldPublic rituals bound to real spaceHoping for joyous infection, where the space has claimed you as its ownWhere can joy be found? The church, the hospital room, the barber shop and beauty shops—“things are going to be better"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 and 13 of For the Life of the World.

Matt Croasmun honors theologian Willie Jennings and his work in After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School.Show NotesWillie Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in BelongingArvo Pärt’s Te Deum“Be ware the hidden curriculum."White, self-sufficient masculinity: "a way of being that conflates knowing with owning, holding up possession, mastery, and control (vices all) as virtues” and “an ideal we cannot achieve"Racial paterfamilias: conflating person and propertyBeyond educationMutual belonging and deep connectionQuote from After Whiteness: The cultivation of belonging should be the goal of all education. Not just any kind of belonging, but a profoundly creaturely belonging that performs the returning of the creature to the creator and a returning to an intimate and erotic energy that drives life together with God. These words, intimacy and eroticism, have been so commodified and sexualized that we, Christians have turned away from them and fear that they irredeemably signify sexual antinomianism, moral chaos, and sin, or at least the need to police, such words and the power of they invoke. But intimacy and eroticism speak of our birthright formed in the body of Jesus and the protocols of braking sharing, touching, tasting, and seeing the goodness of God. There at his body, the spirit joins us in an urgent work, forming a willing spirit in us that is eager to hold and to help, to support and to speak, to touch and to listen, gaining through this work, the deepest truths of creaturely belonging: that we are erotic souls. No body that is not a soul, no soul that is not a body, no being without touching, no touching without being. This is not an exclusive Christian truth, but a truth of the creature that Christian life is intended to witness."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 and 13 of For the Life of the World.

"There is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work. In a genuinely developed society, work is an essential dimension of social life, for it is not only a means of earning one’s daily bread, but also of personal growth, the building of healthy relationships, self-expression and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world, and ultimately, for our life as a people." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 162)In the resurgence of worldwide populism, Pope Francis has said that employment is the biggest issue. And because of the global pandemic, work has become a fraught and challenging part of life. In this episode, Father Martin Schlag explores the concept of work in Fratelli Tutti, explaining the Catholic social ethic of the dignity of work and inclusion of all people into the human economy; the Pope’s perspective on private property and the suggestion that “the world exists for us all”; and the relevance of Catholic social thought and Fratelli Tutti for businesspeople, with a vision of work grounded in friendship, responsibility, dignity, justice, and love. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give Show NotesRead Fratelli Tutti in its entirety online hereFratelli Tutti is basically a summary of all of Pope Francis’s teaching.Pope Francis on politics and love: “The biggest issue is employment.""Bread and work”Psychological and sociological catastrophe of long term widespread unemploymentPope Francis defines poverty as the exclusion of the dignity of earning one’s own breadLeft and Right are categories that don’t work for the Catholic social tradition.Dignity and Catholic Social Ethics and Anthropology—labor and the common goodHuman dignity is grounded in the Image of God, as a representative of the absolute and unconditional; never as a means, always as an endHuman dignity formulated as friendship or fraternityThe right to work and rights in work: access, just wage, safety, rest, social security (health care, insurance, retirement benefits)Christian perspectives on private property: St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory—“your affluence belongs to the poor"Not communism but generosity and sharingPrivate Property: One of the most striking passages for the outside readerTwo Christian perspectives on private property: (1) Augustinian strand—private property as consequence of original sin and is regulated only by human law; “in paradise there was no private property” / (2) Aristotelian/Thomist tradition—private property is derived from natural law and the common good (this is the dominant Catholic tradition)Absolute vs Derived Rights. Property is a secondary, or derived, right.Property has a social mortgage, creates responsibility Horizontal vs Vertical dimensions of private propertyVertical dimension of private property: “The world exists for us all”; the universal destination of all goods;Horizontal dimension of private property: 7th commandment presupposes private property (“Thou shall not steal”); under human society, private property exists and needs to be protected by laws“We belong to the whole.” Aquinas: Human beings exist as part of a whole, a human being stops being a human being when they leave the polis/community or whole. Aquinas corrects that: Only to God do we belong.Catholic social teaching has four big principles: Human dignity, Common good, Solidarity, SubsidiarityAll people of good will. What two or three big takeaways are available for someone who does own property/business person?No to the idolatry of money. You need money in the world, but it’s only a means to an end, like gas in a carFriendship: How can you create meaningful work for others and yourself, creating variety of tasks, giving significance, give recognition, empowered, autonomously?Oppose elitism and false universalism: does my business have an inclusive mechanism, do we listen, have regular debates, does everyone contribute to decision making?Where societal change comes from: not come from the elites but from the peripheries “The People”What does a fraternal society look like in Pope Francis’ imagination?Consider the French revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”—liberalism built a politics on liberty; socialism built a politics on equality; but who has built a politics on fraternity?“Good politics combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts.” (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 197)'At times, in thinking of the future, we do well to ask ourselves, “Why I am doing this?”, “What is my real aim?” For as time goes on, reflecting on the past, the questions will not be: “How many people endorsed me?”, “How many voted for me?”, “How many had a positive image of me?” The real, and potentially painful, questions will be, “How much love did I put into my work?” “What did I do for the progress of our people?” “What mark did I leave on the life of society?” “What real bonds did I create?” “What positive forces did I unleash?” “How much social peace did I sow?” “What good did I achieve in the position that was entrusted to me?”’ (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 197)About Father Martin SchlagFather Martin Schlag is Alan W. Moss Endowed Chair for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas and is author of The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy. He studies the nexus of Christian faith with markets, trade and exchange, money, private property, and their net effect on social justice.

"A strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: Human life is one and all humans are members of one another" (Howard Thurman, The Luminous Darkness). Sameer Yadav honors Howard Thurman, minister, theologian, philosopher, civil rights activist. Thurman was the author of the influential book, Jesus & the Disinherited, which Martin Luther King, Jr. was known to carry around with him. LinksWho was Howard Thurman?About Jesus & the DisinheritedShow NotesBelonging and connectednessThe trauma of alienation in the Jim Crow segregationVitality of Christian faith and Black Christian resistance to slaveholder Christianity"The humanity we share with Jesus is one that cannot be reduced or dominated, but holds a value in union with God that goes beyond any attempt we can make to manipulate it for our own purposes."Thurman’s ministry and theology represents the bringing together of these three themes: (1) divine common ground with all living things, (2) the devastating effects of social injustice on human personhood, and (3) sharing in the humanity of Jesus uniquely revealed in the history of Black suffering and the resilience of Black joy.Christian mystical traditionInfluenced by Ghandi’s approach to non-violence (soul force)Jesus and the Disinherited—finding the inward strength to stand up to oppressionMysticism and activism belong in vital connection with each otherThurman’s impact on Martin Luther King, Jr. at Boston UniversityMLK was known to carry a copy of Jesus & the Disinherited with him wherever we went.From Preface of Luminous Darkness (1960): "The fact that 25 years of my life were spent in Florida and in Georgia has left deep scars in my spirit and has rendered me terribly sensitive to the churning abyss separating white from black. Living outside of the region, I am aware of the national span of racial prejudice and the virus of segregation that undermines the vitality of American life. Nevertheless, a strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: Human life is one and all humans are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it its the hard core of religious experience. My roots are deep in the throbbing reality of Negro idiom and from it I draw a full measure of inspiration and vitality. The slaves made a worthless life—the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body—worth living. They yielded with abiding enthusiasm to a view of life which included all the events of their experience without exhausting themselves in those experiences. To them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that which deeply was within them. They discovered God, who was not or could not be exhausted by any single experience or series of experiences. To know God was to live a life worthy of the loftiest meaning of life. People of all ages and times, slave or free, trained or untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their fellow pilgrims, who journey together with them in increasing self-realization, in quest for the city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God.” About Sameer YadavSameer Yadav (Th.D. Duke Divinity School) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. His research areas are in the philosophy and theology of religious experience, race and religion, and the theological interpretation of Scripture. He is the author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God: Toward a Theological Empiricism (Fortress Press, 2015), a number of articles published in various journals such as The Journal of Analytic Theology, Faith and Philosophy, and The Journal of Religion among others, as well as a number of chapters in edited volumes.

David Walker was an early 19th-century black abolitionist and activist, who wrote An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Ryan McAnnally-Linz celebrates his ideas in this influential pamphlet that gave dignity, hope, and courage to slaves and freed black people alike, urging them to continue fighting for their freedom while the United States struggled toward the end of slavery.This episode is part of our celebration of Black History Month; we offer these short reflections in appreciation and gratitude for the black voices who’ve shaped how we experience the world, how we think about it, and how we live in it.Show NotesRead about David Walker here.Read the entire Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.

Support For the Life of the World, give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture:  faith.yale.edu/giveShortly after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis in March 2013, he released an exhortation, very similar to an encyclical, but addressed to a Christian audience. "Evangelii Guadium” or the "Joy of the Gospel,” begins by articulating the most pressing challenges for the contemporary Church. First on his list is the economy of exclusion. What does he mean by that? He writes:Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.  (Evangelii Gaudium)Sister Helen Alford reflects on the economic implications of Pope Francis's Fratelli Tutti, including concerns about unrestrained free markets, the importance of allowing human life and dignity to frame our economic policy, what behavioral economics tells us about human relationality, and how we can understand the big picture of politics, economics, faith, and flourishing operating in Catholic social thought. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.Show NotesWhat is the goal of Fratelli Tutti? (And understanding it in light of 2015’s Laudato Si: Care of Our Common Home.)Integral ecology: how we relate to each other in our nature environment (ecology) and human environment (economy)Ecology and economy share a common root: oikos (home)An economy that puts life and human dignity at the center, which also means respect for the environmentThe economic donut principle: the inner ring is social minimum to take care of all people, the outer ring is the environmental ceiling for impact. We need to live within the donut!"Fratelli tutti wants to see the economy as situated within a bigger vision of human development"Economy is like the foundation of a house, it’s not built for its own sake, but to support the whole house and the people in it. The economy must serve the common good—for all of us, in an integrated way.The primacy of politics: "We need a political order that’s going to give proper direction to the economy.""We see how difficult it is to make a political system function today."The economy is a good tool but a bad master. It must serve, not rule.The problem with unrestrained free marketsUnderstanding the vision of human flourishing implied in the free market economy"The Ultimatum Game": An experiment in behavioral economicsRelational beings in the economy; relationships really count in economic interactionsBeings in relation; understanding the humanity at the core of economicsHow theology, biology, and economics all suggest cooperation and relationally is built into human beings.Long term ideas that impact our concept of work and the human personRarum novarum and solidarity between workers and owners, and solidarity between workers togetherSolidarity as a strategy for affirming dignity among all humanity"The shape of human flourishing and how to reach it"—Charles Taylor on Fratelli Tutti"Let us dream as a single human family.” Pope FrancisWhat is Pope Francis’s vision for a full and flourishing life? Human rights, human development and resources, moral and spiritual goodsIncreasing diversity, having dialogue with each other and living together in real encounter, loving each other within diversity

“Here we have a splendid secret that shows us how to dream and to turn our life into a wonderful adventure. No one can face life in isolation… We need a community that supports and helps us, in which we can help one another to keep looking ahead. How important it is to dream together… By ourselves, we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together. Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti)Last year, in the midst of a global nightmare, Pope Francis invited the world to dream together of something different. He released Fratelli Tutti in October 2020—a message of friendship, dignity, and solidarity not just to Catholics, but "to all people of good will"—for the whole human community. In this episode, social ethicist Nichole Flores (University of Virginia) explains papal encyclicals and works through the moral vision of Fratelli Tutti, highlighting especially Pope Francis’s views on faith as seeing with the eyes of Christ, the implications of human dignity for discourse, justice and solidarity, and finally the language of dreaming together of a different world.Support For the Life of the World: Give to  the Yale Center for Faith & CultureShow NotesRead the entire text of Fratelli Tutti online hereWhat is a papal encyclical? For “All people of good will”—not just CatholicsExamining the signs of the times, e.g., Fratelli Tutti will always be connected to its global context during a pandemic.What is Fratelli Tutti? What does its title mean?Brothers and Sisters All: Using Italian, a particular language, as a pathway to the universal, rather than traditional Latin titlePope Francis’ roots in Latin America: How his particularity as Latin American gives him a universal message; local and communal belonging; neighborhoods contributing to the common goodSeeing/Gazing: Faith as seeing with the eyes of Christ (Lumen Fidei)Undermining human dignity in social media discourse; the failure of grandstanding rather than encounter Solidarity as a dirty word: conflicts within Catholicism about how to understand and apply justice and solidarity in real lifeSolidarity requires encounter with the otherSocial friendship and fraternityHuman dignity in the tradition of Catholic social ethicsDreaming together: fighting against the temptation to dream alone, inviting us to imagine; cultivating a conversation that forms collective imagination and aesthetic reality. About Nichole FloresNichole Flores is a social ethicist who is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She studies the constructive contributions of Catholic and Latinx theologies to notions of justice and aesthetics to the life of democracy. Her research in practical ethics addresses issues of democracy, migration, family, gender, economics (labor and consumption), race and ethnicity, and ecology. Visit NicholeMFlores.com for more information.

Philosopher Kent Dunnington exposes the radical roots of Christian humility, exploring the centrality of humility to Christian ethics, the goal of humility in eliminating one’s own self-concern, why humility remains so appealing and so appalling, and how to respond to the abuse and weaponizing of humility to oppress. Interview with Evan Rosa.Join us in taking hold of life that is truly life.Will you partner with us in helping people envision and pursue lives worthy of our shared humanity?Give to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: faith.yale.edu/give About Kent DunningtonKent Dunnington is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. He teaches and writes in the areas of virtue ethics and theological ethics. Other research interests include addiction and criminal justice, inspired by his experiences teaching in prison. He is author Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice and Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory. He also contributed an essay entitled "How to Be Humble" to The Joy of Humility: The Beginning and End of the Virtues.Show NotesWhat’s so gripping about humility?Radical, entire sanctification and radical expressions of ChristianityThinking about the virtuesVirtues as a way of thinking about Christian influence on cultureWhat makes humility a lightening rod?Self-regard, human weakness and needHumility: Mark of failure, or a trait that marks right relationship with God?How human anthropology and human flourishing influences your views of humilityPagan perspectives on humilityYou’d expect that humility would lose its appeal, but many contemporary thinkers continue to laud itHumility as pro-social, promoting horizontal relationshipsAugustinian humility: Humility as central for vertical relationship with God and the gateway to Christian orientation toward the worldLove and humility: The love of God is an offense to pagan sensibilities.Jesus’s humility as Jesus’s weakness"We often forget just how deep Jesus’s weakness went… it’s almost like Jesus doesn’t have a self apart from the will of the Father.""The striking thing about Jesus is that he seems to be free of this whole project of having a self that could be identified over and against someone else."Definition of radical humility: no-concern about status and entitlements (cf., Roberts and Wood)Humility as a balancing act between excessive pride and excessive servilityThe radical humility of desert mothers and fathers—“they weren’t concerned with defining it, they were concerned with living it."Abba Macarius and the Unwed Mother—“I discovered I had a wife."Humiliation and serious critiques of humility as a cover for patriarchy and lauding servility and denigrationClarifying the horizontal scope of radical humility: Desert mothers and fathers took on radical humility for themselves, not as a guide for leading others.“If you’re someone who thinks Jesus’s life is the shape of the good life, then it becomes a pressing question: How far am I willing to go? Am I really willing to give up myself in love of other people?"“Do I really believe that selfless love is the shape of a good human life?"Resisting the temptation to repackage a safer humility“Pretty much anytime you find yourself espousing the virtue of humility to someone else, you’re on the wrong track."“I don’t think we have to be humble, but we can be. It’s a frightening invitation, but if it’s true it’s incredible that we could be freed from our concern to make ourselves significant enough to merit love."Christianity and power"I’m wary of turning humility into a virtue that can be leveraged for social gain. I still think of it primarily in terms of something that helps find our way into being creatures."