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

Matthew Croasmun, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Drew Collins, Miroslav Volf, Evan Rosa, Macie Bridge
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Seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Theological insight, cultural analysis, and practical guidance for personal and communal flourishing. Brought to you by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

  1. Nov 4

    The Struggle to Be Honest: Truth, Lies, AI, and Humanity / Christian B. Miller

    Honesty may be the virtue we prize most in other people, and it is eroding fast. Philosopher Christian B. Miller, A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University and author of The Honesty Crisis, argues that we are living through not one honesty crisis but several at once, each driven by new technologies that make dishonesty more tempting and harder to catch. In this episode with Evan Rosa, Miller unpacks what has actually changed: why AI cheating feels efficient, effective, and evasive to students who assume everyone else is doing it; how sermon plagiarism moved from borrowed manuscripts to the internet to AI; and how celebrity culture, at every scale from pop stars to local pastors, widens the gap between a curated public image and a private self. Together they discuss honesty as far more than truth-telling, a virtue that covers cheating, stealing, misleading, BS-ing, and self-deception, along with Miller’s definition of honest behavior as not intentionally misrepresenting or distorting the facts as you see them, which frees honesty from any claim to possess capital-T Truth. Together they also consider why we are neither born nor raised honest, why honest motivation has to be other-centered rather than reward-seeking, how hard reality, trusted friends, and the Holy Spirit can break through self-deception, how rampant dishonesty leaves a society transactional and afraid, and why, in a fallen world with a Nazi at the door, honesty can be outweighed by compassion and justice. Episode Highlights ”So when you put those two together, greater temptation and also easier to get away with it, that’s a bad combination. It’s a bad formula for trying to preserve what I think is our most important virtue of honesty.””We have something that’s efficient, effective, evasive, and everyone else is thought to be using it.””I think it’s now we’ve gone so far, there’s no going back … we cannot assume that graded work in education at the middle school, high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels is actually, predominantly the work of the student as opposed to the work of an AI.””According to some survey data I’ve seen, at least 25% of pastors are using AI for sermon writing and preparation without acknowledgement. And so they’re standing up there presenting this material as if it were their own.””What I want to say is honest behavior is a matter of not intentionally misrepresenting or distorting the facts as you see them.””3,000 years ago, when people were saying the Earth is flat, they were wrong, but they weren’t dishonest.””Most people want to cheat if they think they can get away with it, and it’s suitably beneficial.””This is not just the Taylor Swifts, this is not just the LeBron Jameses of the world, massive celebrities. We are all celebrities to some extent.””You are unable to form genuine friendships and loving, caring relationships with anyone, because those presuppose trust and honesty, and dishonesty breaks down trust, and fractures the relationship… And instead, what ends up happening is you live in fear.””In these tragic, terrible situations, we have to balance honesty, which is important, with other values like compassion, kindness, caring, justice… Honesty is really important, but it’s not the only thing that matters.”About Christian B. Miller Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, where he studies virtue and moral character. He directed The Honesty Project, a $4.4 million initiative funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and earlier led The Character Project. He is the author of more than 130 articles and several books, including The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue, and, most recently, The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World (2026). He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his wife and three children. Helpful Links and Resources The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest World, Christian B. Miller: https://christianbmiller.com/the-honesty-crisis/The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, Christian B. Miller: https://christianbmiller.com/the-character-gap/About Christian B. Miller: https://christianbmiller.com/about-me/The Honesty Project, Wake Forest University: https://honestyproject.philosophy.wfu.eduOn B******t, Harry G. Frankfurt: https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691276793/on-b******t-0Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom, Thomas Jefferson: https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/honesty-first-chapter-book-wisdom/“Lying and Speaking Your Interlocutor’s Language,” Alexander R. Pruss: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/637086/pdfShow Notes The honesty crisisNot one crisis but several, each pairing greater temptation with easier escape from detectionTechnology as the cause, though not inherently evilCrib notes, honor codes, and the internetAI cheatingFour drivers of student AI use: speed, polish, near-undetectability, and assuming everyone else does itNo going back on assuming graded work reflects a student’s own effortTechnological advance as relational decline and eroded accountabilitySermon plagiarism, from borrowed manuscripts to online sermons to AIPastors using AI without acknowledgment, and the broken trust when it surfacesLying, cheating, stealing, misleading, fraud, self-deception, and BS-ingHarry Frankfurt’s On BullshitDeepfakes, AI companions, infidelity websites, and misinformationHonest behavior defined by the facts as you see them, not capital-T TruthFlat-earth believers, the Matrix, and trusting experts who let us downMost people cheat when it pays and detection seems unlikelyNot born honest, not raised honestWinnicott’s false self and early incentives to hideWhy honest motives must be other-centered, not self-protectiveCelebrity culture, curated public images, and feeling above the rulesEveryone with a platform, down to the local pastor, as a minor celebrityJefferson on honesty and wisdomSelf-deceptionDownplaying unwelcome evidence about a partner, or about ourselvesHitting bottom, trusted friends, and the Holy Spirit as ways throughEphesians 4:25 (NIV): "Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body."A dishonest society as transactional, friendless, and afraidThe Nazi at the door, when compassion and justice outweigh honestyAlexander Pruss on lyingPreserving valuable connections at the cost of corrupted ones#ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #Honesty #HonestyCrisis #AIEthics #AcademicIntegrity #MoralPsychology #Virtue #Philosophy #ChristianEthics #Podcast Production Notes This podcast featured Christian B. MillerEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA 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

    The Struggle to Be Honest: Truth, Lies, AI, and Humanity / Christian B. Miller

  2. Oct 21

    Heart of Flesh: Meditation, Psychology, Growth, and Self-Transcendence / Miguel Farias

    What happens when an ancient discipline built to remake the self in the context of a way of life and normative map gets sold back to us as lifehacking for stress relief and optimization? Experimental psychologist Miguel Farias, co-author of The Buddha Pill and founding director of the Brain, Belief, and Behaviour Lab at Coventry University, has spent two decades studying what meditation actually does to people, and what modern appropriation has forgotten about ancient tradition. “The possibilities of self-deception are endless. … The mind is clever, so you have to move beyond that level of cleverness.” In this episode with Evan Rosa, Farias returns to the oldest question in the contemplative traditions: What is this self, and how might it change? He moves from the Delphic command to “know thyself,” through the charioteer of Plato and the Katha Upanishad, to Teresa of Ávila’s interior castle and the delights of prayer that arrive as gift rather than achievement. Along the way he argues that modern meditation, including much Western Buddhist practice, rests on a naive confidence that we can do this alone, when nearly every tradition insists on the opposite: you need guides, community, and a map, because our capacity to fool ourselves runs deep. Together they discuss why insight alone rarely changes anyone, the difference between change and transformation, how cognitive psychology misread Pascal’s reasons of the heart, and the paradox of rigorous self-mastery practiced in order to let go. They also take up the question of Freud’s lasting relevance, mindfulness as a placating opiate rather than a rupture of conformity, why hours of daily meditation can coexist with selfishness, suffering as fuel for transformation rather than something merely to soothe, Francis of Assisi’s gratitude for Sister Death, and what a seeker without a tradition’s map can do when meditation stirs up more than expected. The conversation closes on Ezekiel’s promise of a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone, a week spent caring for the sick at Lourdes, and the claim that sudden awakenings come more often from encounters with other people than from sitting alone. Episode Highlights ”Here you do indeed have a major difference between all these spiritual traditions and modern meditation, including Western Buddhist meditation, which is very new in the sense that it has this exceedingly naive idea that you can do this by yourself.””No, no, no, no, do not trust yourself. That’s actually a major thing. You need other people… the possibilities of self-deception are endless.””You can meditate for 23 hours a day and have all these wonderful, blissful experiences. And then for the one hour that you’re not meditating, you can be the most selfish bastard on earth.””The mind is clever, so you have to move beyond that level of cleverness. And in many, many ways, what’s the best thing that meditation is doing for many people today is to help them learn how to unlearn many of the stupid things we have learned.””You exert this astonishing level of control so that you can entirely let go of it.””Now I tell my colleagues who do mindfulness, the way to hell is paved with good intentions. There’s a deep wisdom in this.””What these traditions… are talking about is really the transformational possibility of suffering. How suffering can be a tool, can be an energy, can be an oil, fuel for something deep.””If you start moving across too many wells, because you’re thirsty and you’re looking for water, if you move from well to well… and as you just sip from it, you may end up dying of thirst.””Most tales we have of sudden enlightenment are not the outcome of meditation, they’re the outcome of encounters with others.””What matters is that your heart is pure. It is a heart of flesh. It is a heart that allows light in. It is not a heart of stone.”About Miguel FariasMiguel Farias is an experimental psychologist, associate professor, and founding director of the Brain, Belief, and Behaviour Lab at Coventry University. He studied psychology and psychotherapy at the University of Lisbon before earning his doctorate in experimental psychology at Oxford, where he lectured. He co-wrote, with Catherine Wikholm, ”The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?” and is lead editor of ”The Oxford Handbook of Meditation.” His research spans belief, ritual, pilgrimage, and meditation, including the first randomized controlled trial of yoga and meditation in prisons. In 2026 he launched ”The Buddha Pill Podcast,” a documentary series on meditation. Special thanks to Steve Porter and the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College. For more information visit https://www.westmont.edu/about/institutes-and-centers/martin-institute. Made possible in part by the Templeton World Charities Foundation Helpful Links and Resources Miguel Farias website: https://miguelfarias.co.uk/Miguel Farias, Coventry University research profile: https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/researchers/dr-miguel-farias/The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?, by Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm: https://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Pill-Can-Meditation-Change/dp/1786782219The Oxford Handbook of Meditation, edited by Miguel Farias, David Brazier, and Mansur Lalljee: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/40700The Buddha Pill Podcast, Part 1, via Templeton World Charity Foundation: https://www.templetonworldcharity.org/blog/the-buddha-pill-with-miguel-farias-part1-what-is-meditationThe Interior Castle, by Teresa of Ávila (Christian Classics Ethereal Library): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.htmlPascal’s Pensées (Project Gutenberg): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htmCanticle of the Creatures, by Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Friars): https://friars.us/article/2025/01/11/franciscans-celebrate-800th-anniversary-of-canticle-of-the-creaturesShow Notes Colossians, Freud, and the old selfKnow yourself: the Delphic inscription behind philosophy and religionPlato and the Katha Upanishad on the charioteer and the horsesNot a perennialist: where the Buddha departed from his Hindu contextEmbodied ascetic practices for mastering the passionsTeresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.htmlDelights of prayer, and what effort achieves versus what arrives as giftPascal’s reasons of the heart, misread by cognitive psychologyA Thai temple advertising willpower, with an inner sanctuary for asking graceWhy the traditions distrust solo practice and insist on guides and communityA Hindu priestess on long hours of meditation coexisting with selfishnessInsight versus assimilationChange versus transformationUnlearning what a clever, overeducated mind has absorbedConformity and obedience in the most individualistic cultureThe paradox of rigorous self-control practiced so control can be surrendered, the margin where real creativity and uniqueness beginThérèse of Lisieux’s garden of saints against spiritual monocultureFreud taught in Oxford literature degrees, not psychologyTherapeutic meditation as placebo or opiate rather than a rupture of conformityWhy alleviating suffering and being transformed by it are different goals, with Christianity treating suffering as fuel for drawing closer to GodFrancis of Assisi’s Canticle and gratitude for Sister Death: https://friars.us/article/2025/01/11/franciscans-celebrate-800th-anniversary-of-canticle-of-the-creaturesAn unsettled atheist after a retreat, and an Iranian exile angry at religionMoving from well to well without drinking deeplyEnlightenment through encounters with others, not solitary sittingEzekiel’s heart of stone and heart of fleshA first week caring for the sick at Lourdes and a heart slowly exercised into new sensitivity#ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #Meditation #Mindfulness #Contemplation #ChristianSpirituality #PsychologyOfReligion #TeresaOfAvila #SpiritualFormation #Podcast Production Notes This podcast featured Miguel FariasSpecial thanks to Steve Porter and the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont CollegeMade possible in part by the Templeton World Charities FoundationEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA 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

    Heart of Flesh: Meditation, Psychology, Growth, and Self-Transcendence / Miguel Farias

  3. Oct 7

    Homesick: Alienation, Belonging, and World Decay in a Technological Age / Ian Marcus Corbin

    It took Odysseus ten years to sail home from Troy to Ithaca; we can fly the same distance in about an hour. But faster travel hasn't brought us any closer to home. We can know more, do more, and connect more than ever, and yet our ability to belong to our own reality seems to be shrinking. Philosopher Ian Marcus Corbin, who teaches at Harvard Medical School and directs Harvard's Public Culture Project, takes up that paradox in his new book, To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, and Corbin reads Eliot's lines as something like a mission statement for humanity: the point of the journey is not to escape reality or optimize our way around it, but to truly belong to it. In this episode with Evan Rosa, Corbin unpacks why so many of us feel, as Rilke put it, not really at home in our interpreted world, and why technology may leave us suffering too little to live out the old mythic lessons of departure and return. Together they discuss why coming home first requires a breaking, from the Lakota vision quest to Eliot's apophatic poetry, and what it means for a world to decay, leaving people with no past and no future, whether their culture has been devastated or they are being raised on ten-second clips. They also explore what Corbin calls “ownerism,” the high fences and heated pools we build when the world stops feeling like home, along with contempt for the world, collapsing birth rates, and the dream of escaping the planet, to Mars or into the metaverse. Along the way, Corbin draws on Simone Weil's wager that we could not be born at a better time than when we have lost everything, and on Father Zosima's call in Dostoevsky to love all of God's creation, every leaf and every ray of light, as a way back into belonging. Episode Highlights "For me, feeling like I belong in my world and I understand it and I fit it's never been a simple thing, and I've always had the sense that this is something I was questing towards.""That's either a world in decay or that's a world that hasn't had the chance to get fully formed in the first place. And I think that's an incredibly strange and dangerous place to be.""Maybe it takes you 10 years to get back to Ithaca or whatever. But… to be a young person striking out into the adult world with very little sense of what matters to you or who you are or where you come from, gosh… I wouldn't trade with them.""It looks to me honestly like a society hurtling. And I don't know what we're hurtling towards, but we're hurtling. And like with scant ability to look up and ask, 'Well, is that where we wanna go?'""The world is not a home to us, right? It is this empty, cruel thing. So the best I can do is throw up some really high fences, get a nice heated pool, right? Get a nice security system.""We can't just produce and promulgate whatever the consumer will click on because I am a weak man, and I will click on things, right, that aren't in the long run good for me.""Take a good teacher who cares a lot and take one really good book and 12 kids and put them in a room with no distractions and no telephones… and my goodness, you'll have the most transformative and beautiful experience of learning and community you could hope for.""Every good thing around you will die, as will you. And you have to be strong enough to stand there and take that punch, right?""Who's the crazy one here?… I sound woo-woo, but the system that I'm pushing back against is kinda suicidal."About Ian Marcus Corbin Ian Marcus Corbin is a philosopher on the neurology faculty at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, director of Harvard's Public Culture Project, and an instructor at the HMS Center for Bioethics. His first book, "To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World," was published by Yale University Press in 2026. He studied politics, religion, and philosophy at Gordon College, Oxford, Yale, and Boston College, and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Plough. Before all that, he founded and ran a contemporary art gallery in Boston's South End. Helpful Links and Resources To Arrive Where We Started: Belonging in the Modern World, by Ian Marcus Corbin: https://www.amazon.com/Arrive-Where-We-Started-Belonging/dp/0300263627Ian Marcus Corbin's website: https://www.ianmarcuscorbin.com/aboutIan Marcus Corbin on Substack: https://ianmarcuscorbin.substack.com/The Public Culture Project at Harvard: https://artsandhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/public-culture-projectRadical Hope Retrospective, an interview with Jonathan Lear: https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/virtues/magazine/radical-hope-retrospective-an-interview-with-jonathan-lear/Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/four-quartets-t-s-eliot/237356Show Notes Four Quartets and Duino ElegiesBelonging as a lifelong, never-finished questApophatic breaking: old certainties collapsing so something new can be seenLakota vision quest: fasting, sleeplessness, and a vision the elders help interpret into an adult role in the tribeRites of passage and the communal structure that catches you afterwardSmartphones, rural Uganda, and the lure of the cityCrow people, cultural collapse, and Jonathan Lear's Radical HopeRadical Hope Retrospective, an interview with Jonathan Lear: https://socialconcerns.nd.edu/virtues/magazine/radical-hope-retrospective-an-interview-with-jonathan-lear/Simone Weil on being born at the right timeWorld decayCritiques of Rawlsian liberalism from Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyreSurvey data on young adults lacking meaning and purposeTen-second clips, endless takedowns, and the struggle to form convictions worth dying forWittgenstein's rough groundMeme culture: real ingenuity inside a nihilistic vacuumHome as the place one starts from, and a generation sent out without oneOdysseus and the archetypal departure and returnProgress as a stand-in for providenceFalling birth rates and worldwide pessimism about the futureRilke and oikophiliaContemptus mundi and odium mundiMars and the metaverse as twin escape routes from EarthHans Jonas on a natural world emptied of careOwnerism: fences, heated pools, and a paranoid intuition of scarcityBlack Elk in New York CityConsumerism as a life lived in anticipationIris Marion Young and the myth of the calculating, self-made individualDostoevsky's Zosima and loving every leafOne good teacher, one good book, twelve students, no phonesLearning to look at death and finitude without turning awayPiety toward the places and moments we are givenGraduates booing AI boosterism at commencement, and a generation that may refuse the deal on offer#Belonging #Alienation #Philosophy #MeaningCrisis #TechnologyAndSociety #TSEliot #FaithAndCulture #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #Podcast #Yale #Harvard Production Notes This podcast featured Ian Marcus CorbinEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA 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

    Homesick: Alienation, Belonging, and World Decay in a Technological Age / Ian Marcus Corbin

  4. Sep 30

    Scandalous Witness: Christians Reckoning with History and Values / Lee C. Camp

    Everything is “maxxed” right now, and the news cycle in particular seems to be historymaxxing, insisting that things have never been worse than they are now. And the threats are real, from AI and global warming to election integrity—foreign affairs gone wrong, and violence abroad, in our homes, and in our schools. But the news maxxes us on fear, and so do politicians and corporations, because they want us to do something. If theologian Lee C. Camp is right, history was already maxed at the incarnation, and it came through a subversive way of life: humble, compassionate, at times angry, but radical and scandalous all the same. Camp, author of Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians and founder and host of the nationally syndicated podcast and radio show No Small Endeavor, argues that the idolatry of the nation state, and even the effort to legislate Christian morality and values into a political movement, is a subversion of Christianity. “I think people will better understand Christianity. They stop thinking about it as a religion and think of it more as an interpretation of human history.” In this episode with Evan Rosa, Camp revisits the newly released edition of the book, with a new preface, and makes the case that stories and history, far more than rational argument, are what change how we see the world. Together they discuss what it means to be formed by history and by story, the early twentieth-century Protestant roots of Christian nationalism, Christian values as a parody of Christianity, and the difference between bearing witness and wielding power. They also take up the gravedigger dilemma, the irony of fearful people bringing about the very decline they dread, and what it means to be a neighbor across ideological difference, with stops along the way at a firebombed bus in Camp's native Alabama, a row of Confederate gravestones in his hometown cemetery, and Eboo Patel's account of rival fire departments in Mostar. Episode Highlights "as conservatives increasingly get swept up into the American political moment, there's this new kind of idolatry, I think, of the nation state.""I generally find the whole Christian values movement destructive to Christianity … when you talk about you're wanting to prioritize certain so-called values and then by hook or by crook, you do whatever you need to to try to get those propagated. You've subverted Christianity.""I think people will better understand Christianity. They stop thinking about it as a religion and think of it more as an interpretation of human history.""we believe that death has been overcome by life. That hostility has been overcome by love. That the way even of love of enemies has trounced upon all of the handmaidens of death.""those who are insisting, no, we wanna bring Christianity back to the public square. By and large may be doing much, much more damage than the secularists ever were able to do to Christianity.""When you show up with curiosity in a public space it's remarkable what kinds of beautiful moments can occur.""that one story, you know, opened up a huge vista to me of like, what have I been blind to? What's been going on that I've not paid any attention to?""We can act as if we are not shaped by historical time, place, location, historical contingency, but that just makes us blind to it because we are, and that's just what it means to be human.""a lot of those are seen as scandalous because we've forgotten what Christianity is … we're screwing up right and left because we have refused to take seriously the basics of scripture and the basics of the Christian story.""you are my neighbor. Regardless of what you claim about the identity of Jesus or the identity of, of Muhammad, you are my neighbor. And I owe to you love and I owe to you respect and I owe to you hospitality."About Lee C. Camp Lee C. Camp is the creator and host of No Small Endeavor, a podcast and radio show exploring what it means to live a good life. For 27 years he taught theology and ethics at Lipscomb University in Nashville, concluding his tenure as a Distinguished Faculty Fellow. He is the author of "Mere Discipleship," "Who Is My Enemy?," and "Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians," now in paperback with a new preface. An Alabamian with a PhD in moral theology from Notre Dame, he shares life with his wife, Laura, three adult sons, and a havapoo named Otis. Helpful Links and Resources Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians, by Lee C. Camp: https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802877352/scandalous-witness/Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World, by Lee C. Camp: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/mere-discipleship-2nd-edition/229392Lee C. Camp's site, featuring the Scandalous Witness online course: https://www.leeccamp.com/scandalousNo Small Endeavor, Lee C. Camp's podcast and public radio show: https://www.nosmallendeavor.com/No Small Endeavor on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nosmallendeavor/Eyes on the Prize, the civil rights documentary series, PBS American Experience: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eyesontheprize/The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan O. Hatch (Yale University Press): https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-300-05060-8Show Notes Everything maxxed: a news cycle history-maxing on fearHistory maxxed at the incarnationScandalous Witness, begun after 2016, now in a new edition with a new prefaceA Christian voice beyond partisan left and rightEarly 20th-century Protestant liberalism and Christian nationalismWoodrow Wilson's post-presidency tour casting America as the world's savior19th-century Restorationist leaders: pacifist, anti-militarist, critics of robber barons and Jim Crow ChristianityIdolatry of the nation stateReligions of morality vs. religions of powerChristian values as a subversion of ChristianityChristianity as an interpretation of human historyThe kingdom of God breaking into historyBearing witness vs. wielding power, from the Moral Majority to MAGAThe gravedigger dilemma: defenders of public Christianity eroding respect for itFear bringing about what it dreadsIndividual vs. systemBroken friendships, churches, families; prudence over argumentHosting No Small Endeavor: hospitality and curiosity amid disagreementHume, reason, and the passionsHumans as creatures shaped by storyA seminary screening of Eyes on the Prize, a firebombed bus near his Alabama childhood home, and a new, systemic view of faithNietzsche and the philosopher's missing historical senseA teenage argument over baptism with a Southern Baptist history teacherAlexander Campbell, John Locke, and the myth of standing outside history: The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan O. Hatch: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-300-05060-8Two rows of Confederate gravestones in the hometown cemeteryThe fifteen propositions, read aloudProvocative, not novel: basic Christianity forgottenLetting familiar convictions feel strange againClassical political liberalism and its relative goodsMostar, Bosnia, and fire departments divided by faithNeighbor-love regardless of creed#LeeCamp #ScandalousWitness #ChristianNationalism #FaithAndPolitics #PoliticalTheology #ChristianWitness #NoSmallEndeavor #Pluralism #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld Production Notes This podcast featured Lee CampEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA 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

    Scandalous Witness: Christians Reckoning with History and Values / Lee C. Camp

  5. Sep 23

    How and Why We Grow: Relational Spirituality and Practicing Unto Virtue / Liz Hall and Todd Hall

    Human growth can seem to just happen—genes, care, and nurture set each of us on a trajectory across the lifespan. But how do people actually grow toward wholeness, and is virtue even the point? Psychologists Liz Hall and Todd Hall of Biola University’s Rosemead School of Psychology, coauthors of Relational Spirituality, bring psychological science and Christian theology together to answer. The conversation grows out of the Martin Institute’s Practice Unto Virtue project, which gathered theologians, psychologists, philosophers, and biblical scholars at Westmont College in spring 2026 to ask how Christian practices like prayer, fasting, and service form Christlike virtue. In this episode, Liz and Todd Hall explain a relational account of human transformation: We are formed in relationship, grow through relationship, and relationship is where growth is headed. Their answer to the workshop’s question is direct—virtue alone is not the telos of spiritual growth. The goal is intimacy with God, union with Christ, and practices and virtues matter because they grow out of that union, support it, and make more room for it. They discuss implicit, gut-level relational knowledge, attachment filters and relational contrast experiences, and why willpower, spiritual highs, intellectualizing, and spiritual bypass so often leave the deepest layer of the self untouched. They also take up whether suffering can lead to growth or whether we grow in spite of it, drawing on Crystal Park’s meaning-making model, Liz’s own cancer diagnosis, the practice of lament, Eleonore Stump on sin as inner fragmentation, and Gordon Smith’s picture of human agency nested within God’s love. With special thanks to Steve Porter and the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture at Westmont College, and to the Templeton World Charity Foundation, which helped fund the Practice Unto Virtue workshop. Episode Highlights ”What we’re aiming for is not a self-improvement project of little aspects of ourself that we’re building up like a tower of Legos or something.” (Liz Hall)”I wanna be very careful here not to say that suffering is what changes people … because that’s making something that’s intrinsically bad into maybe something good. We don’t wanna go there. But suffering provides an opportunity.” (Liz Hall)”Because of how intrinsically relational we are, the pathways to change are also relational. So the goal is relational. The pathways are relational.” (Liz Hall)”It’s not suffering per se that causes growth. It’s the processing of suffering in a particular way in the context of relationship.” (Todd Hall)”Our agency operates completely inside the circle of God’s love and action and is a response to it and a participation in the life and love of the Trinitarian God.” (Todd Hall)”It’s not just to become a better person for the sake of being a better person, which often reduces down to oh, that’s gonna promote my own happiness … No, it’s for the goal of deeper intimacy with Christ and union with Christ.” (Todd Hall)”They have limitations and sometimes I don’t like what comes out of their mouth … but all of that is grist for the mill, isn’t it?” (Liz Hall)About Liz Hall and Todd Hall Liz Hall and Todd Hall are professors of psychology at Biola University’s Rosemead School of Psychology and coauthors of Relational Spirituality: A Psychological-Theological Paradigm for Transformation. Liz, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, researches suffering, meaning-making, and lament; her newest book, with Kelly Kapic and Jason McMartin, is ”When the Journey Hurts.” Todd, a faculty affiliate of the Harvard Human Flourishing Program, is the author of The Connected Life and founder of the Relational Spirituality Academy, which trains Christian leaders in relational approaches to formation. They live in Southern California and have two adult sons. Helpful Links and Resources When the Journey Hurts, Kelly M. Kapic, Liz Hall, and Jason McMartin: https://ivpress.com/when-the-journey-hurtsRelational Spirituality, Todd W. Hall with M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall: https://ivpress.com/relational-spiritualityThe Connected Life, Todd W. Hall: https://www.ivpress.com/the-connected-lifeDr. Liz Hall, website and resources on lament and meaning-making: https://www.drlizhall.comRelational Spirituality Academy, Todd Hall’s training site: https://www.relationalspirituality.co/Practice Unto Virtue, Martin Institute Christian Formation Workshop 2026 sessions (Conversatio Divina): https://conversatio.org/collections/christian-formation-workshop-2026-practice-unto-virtue-the-role-of-christian-practices-in-virtue-formation/Crystal L. Park, ”Meaning Making Following Trauma” (Frontiers in Psychology): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8984472Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering: https://academic.oup.com/book/12824Gordon T. Smith, Called to Be Saints: An Invitation to Christian Maturity: https://ivpress.com/called-to-be-saintsShow Notes Integrating psychology and theologyPsychological science and Scripture woven into one picture of the person”Theology setting the scope of the good life, psychology fleshing it outSymptom-level change versus deeper relational transformationImplicit relational knowledgeGrowth as expanded capacity for relationship with God and others, not a stack of isolated strengthsPutting ourselves in the path of change through gratitude exercises and spiritual disciplinesControlling change as a way of coping with anxiety and emotional painMisguided approaches: willpower, spiritual highs, intellectualizing, spiritual bypassThe implicit self and gut-level memoryInterpersonal neurobiology and affective neuroscienceAttachment filters from early relationships, running automaticallyRelational contrast experiences as the engine of deep changeAugustine’s restless heart and a shared human disconnectionSuffering as accelerant, not a different pathway of changePost-traumatic and stress-related growthSuffering as opportunity for growth, never good in itselfWhen suffering breaks the habitual defenses that kept pain at bayGlobal and situational meaning, discrepancy, and distressCrystal L. Park, ”Meaning Making Following Trauma”: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8984472A cancer diagnosis and the harder question of trusting God with one’s own childrenDeep growth as identity-disrupting, so resisted even when desiredUnion with Christ as the goal of formation; human agency nested within divine actionGordon T. Smith, ”Called to Be Saints”Lament, gratitude, and identifying with Christ’s sufferingSin as inner fragmentation, and virtue as the healing that frees us for intimacy with GodSanctification and intimacy moving in both directionsGod as both context and goal of growthImperfect church communities as raw material for patience and agape love#ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #SpiritualFormation #RelationalSpirituality #AttachmentTheory #PsychologyAndTheology #Sanctification #Suffering #Lament #ChristianPsychology #Flourishing Production Notes This podcast featured Elizabeth Hall and Todd HallSpecial thanks to Steve Porter, The Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture at Westmont College, and the Templeton World Charity FoundationEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA 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 and Why We Grow: Relational Spirituality and Practicing Unto Virtue / Liz Hall and Todd Hall

  6. Sep 16

    Technology, Wonder, and Attention / Aaron Cline Hanbury

    Technology, Aaron Cline Hanbury suggests, is never a purely neutral tool. But the history of ethical thinking about technology shows that as long as there's been technology, there's been anxiety about it. Or perhaps more accurately, anxiety about what we might do with it. And increasingly, what it might do to us. A journalist, founding editor of Common Good magazine, and author of Wired for Wonder, Hanbury came of age as the internet entered the home and has spent his career reporting from the places where technology, faith, and everyday life collide. Rather than offering another list of screen-time tips, he asks a deeper question: How do we relate to the things we make? In this conversation with Evan Rosa, Hanbury wrestles with what it means to be human when the machines we’ve made can do more and more. He criticizes the seduction that we should embrace technology simply because it is inevitable. He explores how connection, efficiency, and unrestrained technological freedom quietly became unquestioned goods, why our powers of attention are eroding in real time, and wonders what it might take—personally, communally, and structurally—to reclaim our humanity through presence, and the rough ground of embodied life. About Aaron Cline Hanbury Aaron Cline Hanbury is a writer and editor whose essays and profiles have appeared in The Atlantic and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of the award-winning magazine Common Good and a past editor of RELEVANT. He writes about the places where technology, faith, and ordinary life meet. His book, Wired for Wonder: Dispatches on Technology, Culture, God, and Self, breaks open the tired binary between tech optimists and Luddites in the context of memoir, ethics, journalism, and theology. Helpful Links and Resources Wired for Wonder: Dispatches on Technology, Culture, God, and Self, by Aaron Cline Hanbury: https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9798889833451/Wired-for-WonderAaron Cline Hanbury's website: https://aaronclinehanbury.com/Aaron Cline Hanbury's Substack: https://aaronclinehanbury.substack.comAaron Cline Hanbury on X: https://x.com/achanburyCommon Good magazine: https://commongoodmag.com/author/aaron-cline-hanbury/Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Albert Borgmann: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo23186480.htmlThe Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/bookHannah Coulter, Wendell Berry's novel: https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/hannah-coulter/Show Notes Anxiety and technologyPatient zero for life online—coming of age as the internet entered the homeLow-church tradition, quick to adopt and ask questions laterJournalism as a front-row seat to three decades of changeEarly adopter or Luddite? Rejecting the spectrum's false endsThe device paradigm—technology as pattern, not neutral toolA hammer's telos, and why misuse cuts against a tool's designMade things have a maker—intentions baked into what we buildThe inevitability argument—get on board or get run overResistance is futile? The Borg, Cannes, and defeatismProgress as reversion—tobacco bans, ocean dumping, processed-food rollbacksFamily Guy, satire, and pulling tech ethics out of the esotericThe class and income divide the internet promised to eraseOnline radicalization vs the promise of mass educationChildren as the guinea pigs of early adoptionChromebooks, daycares, and offloading discomfort onto kidsTesting tech on the vulnerable—Jonathan Haidt on teen mental healthSocial media vs attention media—commodifying human focusThe plug-in drug—parents, screens, and pacified kidsFocused attention and the feeling of being fully aliveConnection, efficiency, freedom—goods we stopped questioningDunbar's number and the real limits of friendshipOnline ties without public accountability, and bad formationEmbodiment, particularity, and getting back to the rough groundWendell Berry's Hannah Coulter and attention that lasts: https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/hannah-coulter/Skepticism of individual fixes—structure, policy, and churchElementary-school parenting and “the bevy of required apps”#WiredForWonder #AaronClineHanbury #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #TechnologyAndFaith #AttentionMedia #DigitalMinimalism #ChristianEthics #AIandHumanity #DeviceParadigm Production Notes This podcast featured Aaron Cline HanburyEdited and Produced by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Noah SenthilA 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

    Technology, Wonder, and Attention / Aaron Cline Hanbury

  7. Aug 5 ·  Bonus

    Can Political Enemies Be Civic Friends? / Robert George (From the Archives)

    Civic friendship is not a nicety. For self-governing people, it is a necessity. What happens to a democracy when citizens stop seeing each other as citizens at all? Robert P. George is Princeton’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (and known for his enduring friendship with Cornel West) argues that “the collapse of civic friendship is a catastrophic threat to public life.” In this bonus segment from his November 2020 conversation with Evan Rosa, Robert George presents the difference between civility and mere ‘politesse; the habit of wrapping our emotions so tightly around our convictions that we assume a posture of infallibility; and the intellectual humility it takes to consider that a political enemy might have something to teach us as a civic friend. They also discuss the courage required to break ranks—George recounts how he and West, from opposite political poles, each found themselves treated as heretics in 2016 for declining to back their respective party’s nominee—and why he urges his students and his own children to cultivate humility, open-mindedness, and courage, knowing exactly what it can cost to stand by a conscientious belief. Episode Highlights ”Civic friendship is actually important for all sorts of policies, but for a self-governing people, for a democratic people, civic friendship is really critically important.” ”But if we do, as we are prone to do, wrap our emotions too tightly around our convictions, then we become dogmatists. Then we become unwilling to consider the possibility that we might be wrong and that a critic might be right.” ”This is hard, but it takes humility to recognize that I might be wrong, not merely about the less important superficial and more trivial things of life, but I might be wrong even about the most important things.” ”Civic friendship, civility is not just politesse … Civility is something deeper. It is genuinely listening to the guy who disagrees with you … listening with an openness to learning, considering whether in fact he might be right.” ”You can’t have an open mind unless you have intellectual humility.” ”You can become a heretic very fast by breaking ranks, even on a single issue, if the issue was even moderately important.” ”So I really encourage my young people … to try to develop the virtues of intellectual humility, open-mindedness, and courage, because sometimes courage is going to be needed.” About Robert P. George Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. A legal philosopher and public intellectual, he has chaired the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. His books include ”Making Men Moral,” ”In Defense of Natural Law,” and ”Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth,” and, with Cornel West, ”Truth Matters,” a dialogue on fruitful disagreement. A West Virginia native, he plays bluegrass banjo and guitar. Helpful Links and Resources Civic Friendship, Courageous Humility, and Seeking Truth Together, Episode 38 and the full interview for this clip: https://faith.yale.edu/media/civic-friendship-courageous-humility-and-seeking-truth-together Robert P. George’s website: https://robertpgeorge.com/ Robert P. George on X: https://twitter.com/McCormickProf Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment, George’s most recent book: https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/seeking-truth-speaking-truth/ Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division, by Robert P. George and Cornel West: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Truth-Matters/Robert-P-George/9798888451700 Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, George’s best-known scholarly book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-men-moral-9780198260240 Election of 1800, from the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello: https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/election-1800 Show Notes Civic friendship: indispensable and necessary for a self-governing people Fellow citizens recast as enemies to be defeated and destroyed Are elections as existential contests?—with the losing side expecting retaliation, the winning side claiming the norms Breakdown near the founding of the Republic The election of 1800, incumbent John Adams against Thomas Jefferson: https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/election-1800 Federalists seeing Jeffersonians as carriers of the French Revolution; Jeffersonians seeing Federalists as would-be British monarchists Antebellum America: North and South unable to imagine sharing one republic Is our identity constructed around belief? Emotional investment in conviction as a good thing in itself Wrapping emotions too tightly, and the slide into dogmatism A practical posture of infallibility Disagreement recoded as moral defect, and friendship ruled out Intellectual humility as the missing virtue Being wrong about the most important things, not just the trivial ones Civility as more than politesse Listening with an openness to learning, not waiting for a turn to speak Honoring the other as a rational creature with something to teach Open-mindedness without paralysis A conservative and a democratic socialist as frequent interlocutors: https://www.cornelwest.com/about/ Courage as a civic virtue Tribalism in formal institutions and informal friend circles alike Becoming a heretic by breaking ranks on a single issue Excommunication, suspicion, and the social cost of independent thought Two friends at opposite poles, both out of step in 2016 Counsel to students and to his own children: humility, open-mindedness, courage #CivicFriendship #IntellectualHumility #Civility #Polarization #RobertPGeorge #CornelWest #FaithAndCulture #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld Production Notes This podcast featured Robert George Hosted and Produced by Evan Rosa Production assistance and editing by Noah Senthil A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

    Can Political Enemies Be Civic Friends? / Robert George (From the Archives)

  8. Jul 30 ·  Bonus

    How to Die Well / Lydia Dugdale (From the Archives)

    Why don’t more doctors talk about death? Dr. Lydia Dugdale has been asking this question since she was a medical student. She is the Silberberg Professor of Medicine and directs the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and two books on how we die, including "The Lost Art of Dying." "Most medical professionals today are very unpracticed at talking to patients about their mortality," she says. Not only unpracticed, but even themselves afraid. In this bonus clip from Episode 232 with Macie Bridge, Dugdale traces the path from that early perplexity on the wards to the ars moriendi, the medieval art of dying, grounded in the idea that dying is part of living, so if you want to die well you have to live well. Lydia comments on the emergence of palliative care and the way it let physicians hand conversations about death to specialists; the doctor who inherited the priest's old place at the threshold between life and death; the death anxiety clinicians carry without examining; virtue as preparation for dying, and community as the other half of living well; the unrepresented patients of New York City who die alone; and a grumpy old man, hospitalized for 20 years, who wept when she read aloud what she had written about him. Episode Highlights “Most medical professionals today are very unpracticed at talking to patients about their mortality.” “we are really the intermediaries between life and death, I'm not saying we're priests, but that used to be the role of the priest. And so it is now the role of the physician. “If you want to die well, you have to live well.” We have to be all in or we end up like all of these patients here in New York City who have no one that I can reach out to as they're dying. “He started weeping and he said, someone finally saw me. Someone finally saw me. I've been in this hospital for 20 years and I didn't think anyone ever saw me.” About Lydia Dugdale Lydia Dugdale is a physician and medical ethicist who has spent fifteen years asking why medicine finds death so hard to talk about. She is the Silberberg Professor of Medicine at Columbia, directs the Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and co-directs clinical ethics at NewYork-Presbyterian Milstein Hospital, where she still sees patients. She edited "Dying in the Twenty-First Century" and wrote "The Lost Art of Dying," a modern ars moriendi. She trained at the University of Chicago and Yale-New Haven Hospital, holds a master's in ethics from Yale Divinity School, and in 2025 founded the nonprofit Heal the Nation. Helpful Links and Resources “Dying Alone,” the full Episode 232 with Lydia Dugdale and Macie Bridge: https://faith.yale.edu/media/dying-alone Lydia Dugdale's website: https://lydiadugdale.com/ The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom, Lydia Dugdale's book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-lost-art-of-dying-ls-dugdale Dying in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Lydia Dugdale: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534598/dying-in-the-twenty-first-century/ Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, which Dugdale directs: https://www.vagelos.columbia.edu/departments-centers/columbia-center-clinical-medical-ethics Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics on X: https://x.com/columbia_ccme Ars moriendi, the medieval art of dying, at the Morgan Library and Museum: https://www.themorgan.org/blog/new-acquisition-ars-moriendi-blockbook Ars moriendi block book, 1475, at the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/2021666798/ Lydia Dugdale at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/people/lydia-dugdale-md Show Notes Death anxiety in medicine Why doctors avoid frank conversations about mortality Palliative care's arrival as a discipline, and what it made possible Real gains in symptom relief for the sick and the dying The unintended cost: death conversations outsourced to specialists Clinicians as intermediaries between life and death The priest's old place at the threshold, now the physician's Nurses at the bedside, doctors calling the shots on treatment Existential questions physicians have never worked through A colleague who would never tell a patient they were dying, out of her own fear of death Digging into how other times and places handled mortality Ars moriendi: the medieval genre on the preparation for death Illustrated editions made for people who could not read Fifteen years and two books spent reviving the art of dying Living well as the precondition of dying well Virtue as preparation: hope, patience, joy against bitterness and despair The role of community in dying well New York's unrepresented patients, dying alone A reader estranged from his adult children who committed to years of repair after the book Relationship as ongoing work: rupture, forgiveness, iron sharpening iron A long-hospitalized patient nobody wanted assigned to their team Modeling care for young doctors, and being verbally destroyed in front of them Loneliness of the neighbor, the colleague, the checkout person Practice as the only way to get better at it #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #LydiaDugdale #TheLostArtOfDying #ArsMoriendi #MedicalEthics #DyingWell #Loneliness #EndOfLifeCare Production Notes This podcast featured Lydia Dugdale Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa Hosted by Evan Rosa Production Assistance by Noah Senthil A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

    How to Die Well / Lydia Dugdale (From the Archives)
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