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The relentless pull and pressure of partisan antagonisms and tribalism have fractured friendships, families, communities — and churches. In a time of conflict over what is good and confusion over what is true, what can church leaders do to cultivate a more faithful form of civic engagement? How can we learn to discern the call to love and justice amidst the clamor of political wars?
On our latest podcast, three wise men, as Cherie affectionately calls them, address these pressing questions. Curtis Chang, David French, and Russell Moore are each writers, scholars, and thinkers who have made courageous and insightful contributions towards a better Christian politics and we’re delighted to share their comments from an evening conversation in 2023 with you:
“Be of great hope. Because the after party is coming…It's the wedding feast of the lamb when Jesus returns to cleanse his church, made spotless. And in that moment, the restoration not of the church, but of the world at war where the swords are beaten into plowshares, the spears into pruning hooks. That's the after party that's coming. So if you know how the story ends, how can we not have great hope? - Curtis Chang
This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in early 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Curtis Chang, David French, and Russell Moore.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Divided We Fall, by David French
The Courage to Stand, Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul, by Russell Moore
Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel, by Russell Moore
The Storm Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home, by Russell Moore
Losing our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical Christians, by Russell Moore
The Anxiety Opportunity, by Curtis Chang
Ernest Hemmingway
The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop
Cass Sunstein
Constitution of Knowledge, by Jonathan Rauch
The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy
The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt
High Conflict, by Amanda Ripley
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
The Federalist Papers
City of God, by Augustine of Hippo
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A Life Worth Living
What makes a good life? What habits of attention, reflection, and action orient us towards knowing, desiring, and doing what is good, true, and beautiful? Such “big questions” may seem unanswerable and intimidating — but their exploration is at the heart of the human quest for meaning.
Drawing on his popular Yale course, theologian Miroslav Volf joined us to reflect on what makes for a flourishing life in our times:
“You realize that there are things that are much more important. I mean this is the life of fullness. This is his life of weight. [It is the] arduous life that is, in fact, the truly happy life.Despite the real challenge of human suffering and pain, Volf argues that happiness is possible and that an examined life that grapples with the good in our emotions, circumstances, and actions is a life worth living.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in early 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Miroslav Volf.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav Volf
Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Friedrich NietzscheRelated Trinity Forum Readings:
Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
How Much Land Does a Man Need, by Leo Tolstoy
Wrestling with God, by Simone WeilRelated Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan
Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura
Connecting Spiritual Formation & Public Life with Michael Wear
The Kingdom, the Power & The Glory with Tim AlbertaTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.
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The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory with Tim Alberta
American Christians are certainly not immune to the anger, division, and fear that characterize our political moment. For many, the prospect of another election year is a source of dread or of numb exhaustion; others have responded with aggression or defensiveness.
On our podcast, author and journalist Tim Alberta encourages us toward a better media diet, and to remember where our true allegiance lies:
“I would pray alongside of you that in our political and civic engagement, no matter who it is that we ultimately vote for, no matter what policies we support, that our allegiance is never to the Donkeys or to the Republicans. Our allegiance is never to a political figure.“We have a king, we have a kingdom, and the best way for us to retain our saltiness is to prioritize that allegiance and that allegiance alone.”
We hope this conversation, coming in a heated election year and at a time of great political import for our nation, is, in fact, a kind of spiritual balm to you. May Tim’s guidance help us to retain our distinctiveness as we engage in the public square for the common good.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in early 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Tim Alberta.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
American Carnage, by Tim Alberta
The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta
Rush Limbaugh
Robert Jeffress
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr
City of God, by Augustine
Politics, Morality and Civility, by Václav Havel
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan
Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura
Connecting Spiritual Formation & Public Life with Michael Wear
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Connecting Spiritual Formation and Public Life with Michael Wear
In the midst of what is proving to be a frustrating, fractious, and even frightening election year, how can Christians best respond to the situation in front of us, and how can we offer a positive contribution to our common life?
Drawing on the life and work of the late philosopher Dallas Willard, Michael Wear helps us explore what true spiritual formation could mean for the reformation of our polarized political life:
“We need to retrieve a sense that we live in a moral universe in which moral decisions are not optional. We make moral decisions all of the time, and our politics is actually not absent of moral assertion.“You could say our politics today is actually more robustly full of moral assertions than it has been at any other time this century.”
We trust that you’ll be encouraged by Michael’s call to gentleness in our politics and his practical suggestions of Christian practices that help orient our hearts in the midst of cultural confusion and political fractiousness.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in early 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Michael Wear.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard
Reclaiming Hope, by Michael Wear
The Spirit of our Politics, by Michael Wear
Christian Smith
American Grace, by David Campbell and Robert Putnam
The Allure of Gentleness, by Dallas Willard
Eitan Hersh
The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard
Related Trinity Forum Readings:Abraham Lincoln: The Spiritual Growth of a Public Man
Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
City of God, by Augustine
Politics, Morality and Civility, by Václav Havel
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan
Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura
If at the center of reality is a God whose love is a generative, creative force, how do humans made in God’s image begin to reflect this beauty and love in a world rent by brokenness and ugliness?
As Mako argues on our latest podcast, it’s in the act of making that we are able to experience the depth of God’s being and grace, and to realize an integral part of our humanity:
“Love, by definition, is something that goes way outside of utilitarian values and efficiencies and industrial bottom lines. It has to…and when we love, I think we make. That's just the way we are made, and we respond to that making. So we make, and then when we receive that making, we make again.”Artistry and creativity are not just formative, but even liturgical in that they shape our understanding of, orientation towards, and love for, both the great creator and his creation.
We hope you’re encouraged in your making this Lenten season that the God who created you in his image delights in your delight.
If this podcast inspires you, and you’re so inclined, we’d love to see what you create, be that a painting, a meal, a poem, or some other loving, artistic expression. Feel free to share it with us by tagging us on your favorite social platform.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2021. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Makoto Fujimura.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, by Makoto Fujimura
William Blake
Vincent VanGogh
N. T. Wright
Esther Meek
Jaques Pépin
Bruce Herman
Martin Luther King Jr.
The Gift, byLewis Hyde
Amanda Goldman
T. S. Eliot
Calvin Silve
David Brooks
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Babette's Feast, by Isak DinesenFour Quartets, by T.S. Eliot
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark BuchananTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
What does it mean to walk with God? The spiritual life is so often described as a walk, journey, or pilgrimage that it can be easy to dismiss the practice of walking as a mere metaphor.
But in God Walk, author, pastor, and professor Mark Buchanan explores the way that the act of walking has profound implications for followers of the Way.
Buchanan reflects on the ways in which walking can be both a spiritual practice and a means by which we can deepen our connection to the earth beneath us, our fellow travelers, and the God we worship:
“Hurry is the enemy of attentiveness. And so love as attentiveness is listening and caring and noticing, cherishing, savoring, being awestruck, these things that we feel in a relationship. I am deeply loved by this person because they notice me. I think that that’s how God’s built it. And we can’t get that if we’re moving too fast, if we’re in a hurry.”We hope you’re encouraged this Lenten season as you learn to walk at godspeed, seeing this embodied act as a profoundly spiritual practice.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Mark Buchanan.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Aristotle
Søren Kierkegaard
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
God Walk, by Mark Buchanan
Simone Weil
The Three Mile an Hour God, by Kosaku KoyamaWanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
Knowing God, J.I. Packer
Kai Miller
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John BunyanPilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten WilsonTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.
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What if we viewed reading as not just a personal hobby or a pleasurable indulgence but as a spiritual practice that deepens our faith?
In her book, Reading for the Love of God, award-winning author and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Jessica Hooten Wilson explores how Christian thinkers—including Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Sayers—approached the act of reading.
She argues that reading deeply and well can not only open a portal to a broader imagination, but is akin to acquiring travel supplies for the good life:
“What I'm hoping to see more of is that the church becomes again those people of the book that really try to make others belong and strive for a deeper connection, versus the party atmosphere that our world always is tempting us to do.”We hope you’re encouraged this Lenten season as you learn to read as a spiritual practice, finding grace and wisdom for living well along the way.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Jessica Hooten Wilson.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds That Came Before, by Jessica Hooten Wilson
Giving the Devil His Due, by Jessica Hooten Wilson
The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints, by Jessica Hooten Wilson
Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice,, by Jessica Hooten Wilson
Walker Percy
The Life you Save May Be Your Own, by Flannery O'Connor
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Boethius
Augustine
Mystery and Manners, by Flannery O’Connor
St. Basil
Origen
People of the Book, by David L. Jeffrey
A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel
Jerome
Andy Crouch
Dana Gioia
Dorothy Sayers
Ross Douthat
Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Julian of Norwich
Dante Alighieri
Eugene Peterson
Related Trinity Forum Readings:Revelation, Flannery O'Connor
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Augustine's Confessions
The Grand Inquisitor, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Moses Man of the Mountain, by Zora Neale Hurston
God's Grandeur: the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda QuinnTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Pursuing Humility, with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
In an age when self-promotion is often celebrated as a sign of leadership and strength, humility may seem a lost virtue. Or alternatively, a form of moral condolence for the less successful.
In his recent work, Learning Humility, theologian Richard Foster argues that humility is actually strength, and that learning humility is more needed than ever. As Foster explains, humility releases us from a preoccupation with self, and allows us to live a life of freedom:
“One of the dangers among religious folks is that they can become stuffy boars. And it is hilarity that frees us from that. We don't take ourselves so seriously. We can laugh at our own foibles. If you look carefully… it's not hard to identify humble people. You'll find the freedom that they have to just enjoy life and enjoy other people, enjoy the successes of another person rather than being envious of it. Things like that. And so that's why humility, the most basic of the virtues, opens us up to a life of freedom.”May Foster’s call to humility, and pastor and writer Brenda Quinn’s practical insights on living it out in leadership and community, inspire you this Lenten season to contemplate the humility of Jesus and the way of the cross.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn.Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Learning Humility, by Richard Foster
Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster
Streams of Living Water, by Richard Foster
Sanctuary of the Soul, by Richard Foster
The Life With God Bible, contributed to by Richard Foster
C.S. LewisTimothy Keller
The Frenzy of Renown
Related Trinity Forum Readings:The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Who stands Fast, featuring Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Babette's Feast, by Isak Dinesen
Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Word Beneath the Words with Malcolm Guite
We’re joined on our podcast by poet, priest and songwriter, Malcolm Guite. With grace and insight, Malcolm has written of the mystery, beauty and imaginative force of language and the ways in which our imaginations apprehend truth that our reason cannot fully comprehend:
“Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your mind. And somewhere in all those ‘alls’ is all your imagination. And in fact, when we look at the teaching of Jesus, it's mostly an appeal to the imagination as a way of perceiving truth in a fresh way. He tells stories and parables.”We trust that you’ll be inspired by the beauty of Guite’s poetry, and by the ways in which the poetic imagination brings healing to the false divide between the subjective and the objective.
04:44 The Connection Between the Priestly and Poetic Vocations12:02 The Role of Imagination in Apprehending Truth17:48 The Responsibility of Language and the Power of Words23:24 The Idea of Being Spoken into Being32:25 The Destructive Power of Words36:23 The Importance of Intellectual HospitalityThis podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Malcolm Guite.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
John Donne
Love, Remember, by Malcolm Guite
Parable and Paradox, by Malcolm Guite
Theology and the Poetic Imagination, by Malcolm Guite
The Singing Bowl, by Malcolm Guite
Waiting on the Word, by Malcolm Guite
Lifting the Veil, by Malcolm Guite
Sounding the Seasons, by Malcolm Guite
The Word Within the Words, by Malcolm Guite
Gerard Manley Hopkins
George Herbert
R.S. Thomas
Seamus Heaney
John Keats
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Wiliiam Wordsworth
William Shakespeare
C. S. Lewis
Sir Andrews
Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
John Milton
Edmund Spenser
Thomas Clarkson
Pilgrim's Progress
Diana Glyer
David's Crown, by Malcolm Guite
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Spirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge with an introduction by Malcolm Guite
Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson
God's Grandeur: The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sacred and Profane Love, featuring the poetry of John Donne
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
How should we think about work within, and live faithfully within a world that was called and created to be good and beautiful, and yet everywhere is marred by ugliness and injustice?
Jazz vocalist and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd joins our podcast to discuss the intersection of music, creativity, and justice, and to help us think deeply about our role in repairing, re-envisioning, and creating new places of beauty, justice, and flourishing:
We know that art shapes and reshapes us and that it's there in the cross of Jesus, I believe, where beauty and violence collided and beauty won. And so that act of loving someone…purposely trying to love someone, especially those that seem or are viewed or deemed unlovable, is…directly connected and intrinsically connected to our art making.We hope you enjoy and are encouraged by Floyd’s artistic journey, how she finds beauty in the midst of suffering, and her vision for the role of love in creativity.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2021. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Ruth Naomi Floyd.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Frederick Douglass Jazz Works
It Was Good, Making Music to the Glory of God, by Ruth Naomi Floyd
The Problem of Good, by Ruth Naomi Floyd
Dr. John Nunez
Toni Morrison
Martin Luther King Jr.
Vincent van Gogh
Hans Christian Andersen
Miles Davis
Francis Schaeffer
Joshua Stamper
Related Trinity Forum Readings:A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Letters from Vincent van Gogh
Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
Revelation, by Flannery O'Connor,
Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson.
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm GuiteTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.
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Learning in Wartime with Lewis and Tolkien and Joe Laconte
Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Joe Loconte joins our podcast to discuss the friendship and legacy of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He highlights how their wartime experiences, and their subsequent refusal to become disillusioned and disenchanted in the aftermath of World War I allowed for some of the greatest works of literature in modern history.
In the moral and cultural tumult of the inter-war years, their example of resilience and imagination is inspiring. As Joe Loconte shared, they were using their art to actively resist the totalizing and dehumanizing ideologies that were ascendent in their day:
And it's just no coincidence. They are deliberately pushing back, I think, in a way that, that some biographers have not maybe fully appreciated. They are pushing back in their writings against the totalitarian impulse and trying to defend the role of the individual, the choices that individuals have to make.Joe Loconte reminds us of the surprising return of hope for those who look up—as Samwise Gamgee says in the Lord of the Rings,” In the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2020. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Joe Loconte here.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
C.S. Lewis
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt, by Joe Loconte
The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler's Gathering Storm, by Joe Loconte
God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, by Joe Loconte
A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and A Great War, by Joe Loconte
Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
John Locke
Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Erich Maria Remarque
The Wasteland, by T. S. Eliot
The Inner Ring, by C.S. Lewis
Owen Barfield
Hugo Dyson
Phantastes, by George MacDonald
The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis
Related Trinity Forum Readings:A Time to Stand, by Helmuth James von Moltke
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Children of Light and Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr
The Golden Key, by George MacDonald
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
Advent: the Season of Hope with Tish Harrison Warren
Caroling Christmas and Christian Formation with Keith Getty
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
We are in an anxious age. By some estimates, a third of all Americans will struggle with anxiety in their lives, and nearly 20% currently suffer from an anxiety disorder. For those suffering the mental distortions of anxiety, life can be difficult, and hope elusive. And for many Christians who have tried and failed to stop their slide into fear and worry by simply “laying down their burdens,” they may feel an added sense of spiritual failure as well.
We’re joined on our podcast by psychiatrist Curt Thopmson and theologian Curtis Chang who help us explore a counterintuitive approach to understanding our anxiety:
I believe the Bible and Jesus's own life invites us to treat [anxiety] not as a problem to make go away, but precisely as a signal. A signal, an invitation, what I call an opportunity, an invitation to walk through anxiety, to actually experience it in the way that actually we were designed to by God for spiritual growth in Jesus, where we actually meet Jesus more deeply, precisely in our anxiety.It's not that we have to make anxiety go away, and then finally, then we're like qualified to somehow be with Jesus. It's that actually in our experience of anxiety, that's where we encounter Jesus most deeply and encounter the truths about ourselves most deeply.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Curt Thopmson and Curtis Chang.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Anxiety Opportunity: How Worry is the Doorway to Your Best Self, by Curtis Chang
The Age of Anxiety, by W.H. Auden
The Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Shame, The Soul of Desire, by Curt Thompson
Jonathan Haidt
Richard Schwartz
Related Trinity Forum Readings:Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil
Augustine's Confessions
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan HaidtHow to Know a Person with David Brooks
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt ThompsonTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
During Advent and Christmastide–and at all times–how can we understand and fully experience the formative power of music? And amid distraction and anxiety, how can we keep Christ at the center of our hearts as we sing?
As Keith Getty explains, Christmas carols are not only about festivity, but also formation. For all of the delight they bring, they stand as musical masterpieces that teach deep truths, embed them within our memory and consciousness, unite a disparate people in praise, and cultivate and orient our sense of joy:
“We're fearfully and wonderfully made. We remember tunes and we forget sermons, not because we're bad people, but it's because of how God made us. The carols are special because repetition is a form of liturgy. And each Christmas, the liturgy of singing provides such an opportunity for us.” - Keith GettyThis podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded earlier this month. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Keith Getty here.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church, by Keith and Kristen Getty
John Lennox
Winston ChurchillCharles Wesley
Felix Mendelssohn
Jeremy Begbie
Alistair Begg
Isaac Watts
John Calvin
Keith Getty is an extraordinary hymn writer, musician, and catalyst for the modern hymn movement. He joined us for a special Trinity Forum Online Conversation to explore music, formation, and beauty which we're pleased to bring you now as a special podcast during this season of Advent.This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded earlier this month. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Keith Getty here.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Sing! How Worship Transforms Your Life, Family, and Church, by Keith and Kristen Getty
Related Trinity Forum Readings:Bright Evening Star, by Madeleine L'Engle
Why God Became Man, by Anselm of Canterbury
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
The Strangest Story in the World, by G.K. Chesterton
Handel's Messiah
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
Advent: the Season of Hope with Tish Harrison WarrenTo listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.
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The season of Advent calls us to remember the incarnation of Christ into our world while anticipating his future return. Yet what does Advent have to tell us about our present “now and not yet” moment?
In her new book Advent: The Season of Hope, priest, author, and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Tish Harrison Warren draws our attention towards the ways the church reflects and represents the incarnation of Christ, and how our waiting can be transformed from drudgery to joy by the object of our hope:
The only way that waiting can be transformed to this thing that is full of joy, that has anticipation, that is hopeful and not just drudgery or sorrow is if the character of the one we are waiting for, or who is asking us to wait in this case, is trustworthy, and if what we're waiting for is worth the wait. - Tish Harrison WarrenThis podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in December of 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Tish Harrison Warren.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Liturgy of the Ordinary, by Tish Harrison Warren
Prayer In the Night, by Tish Harrison Warren
Advent: The Season of Hope, by Tish Harrison Warren
Receiving the Day, by Dorothy Bass
Related Trinity Forum Readings:Bright Evening Star, by Madeleine L'Engle
Why God Became Man, by Anselm of Canterbury
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
The Strangest Story in the World, by G.K. Chesterton
Handel's Messiah
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
In a society where so many feel unseen and unknown, how do we become the kind of people who deeply see and know those around us? The conflict and division in our society demonstrate the need for people committed to pursuing human connection, even across lines of difference. What can we do – as individuals and in community – that will help us really understand the people in our lives?
David Brooks, author of How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, joined us to explore what it means to know others and to be known by them:
When I ask people, tell me about a time you've been seen, they tell me with bright eyes and joy in their face, they tell me about time somebody totally got them. Because seeing someone, if I see potential in you, you'll see potential in yourself. If I beam my attention on you, you'll blossom. And so it's just super powerful to feel seen. But it's also powerful and fantastic to feel like you're the seer.This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about David Brooks.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Bobos in Paradise, On Paradise Drive, The Social Animal, The Road to Character, The Second Mountain, and How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, by David Brooks
Frederick Buechner
Iris Murdoch
Dan McAdams
Mónica Guzmán
E. M. Foster
Jennie Jerome
William Gladstone
Benjamin Disraeli
Harry Nyquist
Andy Crouch
Michael Gerson
Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
Thornton Wilder
Oprah Winfrey
Kate Murphey
Related Trinity Forum Readings:Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
We were made for relationship — to be seen, loved, known, and committed to others. And yet we increasingly find ourselves, in the words of sociologist Jonathan Haidt, “disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
On our podcast Haidt and bestselling author Andy Crouch pair up to explore how the technology era has seduced us with a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back, and restore true community:
“A person is a heart, soul, mind, strength, complex designed for love. And one of the really damaging things about our technology is very little of our technology develops all four of those qualities.” - Andy CrouchWe hope you enjoy this conversation about the seismic effects technology has had on our personal relationships, civic institutions, and even democratic foundations — and how we might approach rethinking our technologies and reclaiming human connection.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt
The Coddling of the American Mind, by Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt
Culture Making, by Andy Crouch
Playing God, by Andy Crouch
Strong and Weak, by Andy Crouch
The TechWise Family, by Andy Crouch
My TechWise Life, by Amy and Andy Crouch
The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, by Andy Crouch
Ernest Hemingway
Francis Bacon
Howard Hotson
Greg Lukianoff
Wolfram Schultz
The Sacred Canopy, by Peter L. Berger
Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley
Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell
The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt
City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo
Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr
On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks ... -
The question “How do I know what’s true?” comes up with increasing frequency and urgency in our time of angry polarization, deliberately-stoked outrage, and earned distrust. There is money to be made and a growing market for the kind of misinformation that reinforces our views and confirms our preconceptions — as well as a large price to be paid:
“We like to tell ourselves that we're consuming this political media because we're going to be good citizens and we're going to be well informed and have, you know, very rational opinions and all sorts of flattering things like that. But in practice, what our behavior suggests is that that's not actually why we're consuming this media.“We're consuming it because of how it affects us emotionally and how it makes us feel better about ourselves than other people. How it excites us, how it sort of inflames us.”
Drawing on her experience as a journalist, Bonnie Kristian joined us in October 2022 to explore the sources that contribute to widespread confusion and conspiracy thinking. She offers insight into ways to combat misinformation and pursue truth in our own lives, families, and church communities, and we hope you’ll find this conversation encouraging, and practical.
This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Bonnie Kristian.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What it Means to Follow Jesus Today, by Bonnie Kristian
Untrustworthy: the Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community, by Bonnie Kristian
Hannah Arendt
N.T. Wright
Thomas Aquinas
Related Trinity Forum Readings:The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt
City of God, by St. Augustine of Hippo
Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
In his book, Love Your Enemies best-selling author, thought leader, and professor Arthur Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research and ancient wisdom to offer a better way to bridge divides and mend relationships.
In March of 2022, The Trinity Forum hosted an Evening Conversation with Brooks to help us explore just how to love those we disagree with and be agents of redemption and reconciliation amidst a divisive time. Arthur unpacked several of the strategies necessary to overcome such cleavages and restore harmony, and the moral courage required:
“We often hear today, in our culture of activism and anger, that real courage is standing up to the people with whom you disagree, sticking it to the people with whom you disagree publicly. That's moral courage.That's wrong. That is maybe a perfectly fine thing to do. You should stand up and say the things that you believe. But that's not moral courage.
You know what moral courage is? My father taught me this as a kid. Moral courage is standing up for the people with whom you disagree. Standing up to the people with whom you agree on behalf of those with whom you disagree. That's moral courage”.- Arthur Brooks
We hope this conversation kindles in you a deeper affection for your neighbors, and a greater desire to see the divisions in our communities and our nation be healed.
This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here. Learn more about Arthur Brooks.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Love your Enemies, by Arthur Brooks
Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, by Arthur Brooks
Arthur Schopenhauer
John and Julie Gottman
Dalai Lama
Related Trinity Forum Readings:City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo
Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. -
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
A recent Gallup poll found that over 70% of Americans are both worried about and deeply dissatisfied with the racial tensions and divisions in the country. And yet when those numbers are broken down, you’ll find that around a third of white Americans consider a race to be a significant problem in the country, compared to around three quarters of African Americans and nearly 60% of Latinos.
Given these differences both in perception as well as the many differences of opinion that are embedded in it, how do we understand and live out the biblical mandate to love our neighbor? How do we learn to know and love our neighbor across difference?
Dr. Mac Pier and Bishop Claude Alexander join our podcast to help us think deeply about our various spheres and stations and how through intention and vulnerability, we can begin to heal divides, overcome injustice, and create new places of mercy and flourishing:
“It's really important for those of us that have had opportunities to really think about what is our role in making things right…and in God's commitment to that. And just as God met our need for justice on the cross, he invites us to meet the need for justice in community with one another.” - Mac PierWe hope this conversation inspires you to deepen your commitment to being an agent of reconciliation right where you are. Because as Dr. Pier shares, it’s a “radically powerful thing when we become enveloped relationally and affectionately by people that are different from ourselves.”
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in November of 2021. Get a full transcript and watch a video of the conversation here. Learn more about Bishop Alexander and Dr. Pier.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility to Overcome Racial Division, by Bishop Claude Alexander and Dr. Mac Pier
Necessary Christianity: What Jesus Shows We Must Be and Do, by Claude Alexander
A Disruptive Gospel: Stories and Strategies for Transforming Your City, by Mac Pier
A Disruptive Generosity: Stories of Transforming Cities through Strategic Giving, by Mac Pier
A Disruptive God: Encounter Psalm 23 and Discover God's Purpose For You, by Mac Pier
Related Trinity Forum Readings:A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo
Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum SocietySpecial thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.
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What is ideology? What are the consequences of an era when seemingly every human issue is viewed through an ideological lens?
In October of 2021, the Trinity Forum and Comment magazine partnered for an evening conversation to explore precisely these questions. Cherie Harder and Anne Snyder moderated a conversation with philosopher Peter Kreeft and Rev. Eugene Rivers to unpack the nature and implications of ideology’s reign in our present culture — both what it’s doing to our intellectual vitality as a society, but perhaps more urgently, what it’s doing to our civic and organizational life across sectors and geography:
“So from a Christian point of view, what's the most important and first thing we must do in order to save Western culture or Western civilization?...Well, I think the first answer is stop idolizing it. Stop making the salvation of Western civilization your summum bonum, your final end, and religion a means to it. Religion is not a means to politics.” - Peter KreeftThis wide ranging conversation takes on the spiritual dimensions of our ideological age, and centers our hope not in politics, but squarely in the love of God in Christ. Dr. Kreeft and Rev. Rivers call us back to the first things, asking us to look afresh at our political commitments, and to see the image of God in the face of our neighbor.
This podcast is an edited version of an evening conversation recorded in 2021. Get a full transcript and watch a video of the conversation here. Learn more about Dr. Peter Kreeft and Rev. Eugene Rivers.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Christianity for Modern Pagans, by Peter Kreeft
Three Philosophies of Life, by Peter Kreeft
Suma of the Suma, by Peter Kreeft
If Einstein Had Been a Surfer, by Peter Kreeft
The Philosophy of Jesus, by Peter Kreeft
Doors in the Walls of the World, by Peter Kreeft
Socrates
Elizabeth Anscombe
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
Donald Williams
The Dust of Death, by OS Guinness
Frantz Fanon
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Abraham Heschel
The End of Ideology, by Daniel Bell
Exodus and Revolution, by Michael Walzer
Francis Schaeffer
Carl F. Henry
James Boyce
John J. DiIulio
Achieving our Country, by Richard Rorty
St. Augustine
Billy Graham
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Related Trinity Forum Readings:A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo
Children of Light and Children of Darkness by Reinhold Niebuhr
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley
Related Conversations:
Rebuilding our Common Life with Yuval Levin
The Challenge of Christian Nationalism with Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote
The Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Science, Faith, Trust and Truth with Francis Collins
Beyond Ideology with Peter Kreeft and Eugene Rivers
Justice, Mercy, and Overcoming Racial Division with Claude Alexander and Mac Pier
Healing a Divided Culture with Arthur Brooks
After Babel with Andy Crouch and Johnathan Haidt
Trust, Truth, and The Knowledge Crisis with Bonnie Kristian
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang & Curt Thompson
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork. - Visa fler
