Call and Character Institute for Leadership and Service

Professors Kevin Gary and Julien Smith interview James KA Smith in this episode focusing on Smith's most recent book, How To Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now.

Our guest today, Fr. Gregory Boyle, is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.

A native of Los Angeles and a Jesuit priest, Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles, which also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city.

Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish- and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings.

Fr. Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. And his new book, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness, was published by Avid Reader Press in 2021.

The marginalization of death—its hiddenness—is strange and of course ultimately a fool’s errand. This past year and a half, living through a pandemic, has forced us to confront realities that many of us have spent years avoiding. Death is our neighbor. And yet many of us aren’t equipped to talk or think about its presence.

Our guest today, Lydia Dugdale, has written a bracing yet beautiful book, The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom. She is an associate professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. Prior to her 2019 move to Columbia, she was Associate Director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics and founding Co-Director of the Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine.

In many churches and faith communities, “faith” as a theological concept is a private matter—n practical attitude of belief or trust in God that stands independent of the pursuit of justice in society. In fact, the very idea of social justice is sometimes viewed with suspicion. Conservative churches worry that calls to social action are replacements for theological reflection or serious personal faith commitments. And progressive churches worry that those who are suspicious of “social justice” are simply content with the unjust status quo, and unwilling to put their faith into action.

Our guest today, Alexia Salvatierra, complicates this divide, and argues that grounded, serious theological reflection goes hand in hand with the pursuit of justice in the world. 

Today's episode is a conversation with Dr. Andrew Whitehead, a professor of sociology at IUPUI. We’ll be discussing a recurring topic here on the podcast—Christian nationalism in the United States. Like our previous conversations with Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Whitehead asks us to consider the substance and motivations for Christian nationalism in recent years, and whether there is a healthier way to think about living well together in a pluralistic society.

We’ve reached the end of our second season of Call & Character, and to wrap things up, we brought back two former guests—Justin Ariel Bailey and Jessica Hooten Wilson—to discuss the novels of Marilynne Robinson. We hope you enjoy what turned out to be a lively back and forth. 

If you enjoy our conversation today, check out Jessica’s article on Robinson in Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal (https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/oconnor-or-robinson-the-gargoyle-and-the-cathedral/).