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

Increasingly, it seems that a very public and nationalized Christianity is bouncing back as a live, contested question around the world, and there’s a temptation to exist on the extremes of either loyalty to the point of idolatry, or total opposition to the point of suspicion of the human beings we need to get along with every day.

That creates a dilemma for Christian witness, one that can perhaps only be solved by the courage and fortitude to live in the tension this creates, honoring everyone’s dignity, and not falling into a gross idolatry of the state.

Oxford's Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology Luke Bretherton joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to name what's happening as Christianity sees a resurgence in democratic public life, and what faithful witness demands. In this episode, Bretherton reflects on Christianity's re-emergence and the theology it requires. Together they discuss the real-time collapse of secular progressivism, democratic agency, Augustine on glory and shame, how media monetizes suspicion, why community organizing outlasts protest, and how the church might tell a truer—and more costly—story about common life.

Episode Highlights

"The plausibility structure of Christianity is kind of back in play in the post-progressive vibe shift."

"We want to have enemies—it's really hard to organize the world around love of enemies, and it's hard to make money off love of enemies."

"How do you express loyalty to your particular political community—loyalty without idolatry?"

"The giving over of responsibility is itself an act of self-dehumanizing."

"The uncle who drives you crazy at Thanksgiving is also the one who turns up with a bake when your child is ill—that's how idolatry works."

About Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, and a canon of Christ Church. Previously at Duke University and King's College London, his work spans political theology, democracy, and grassroots politics. He hosts the Listen, Organize, Act! podcast. Books include A Primer in Christian Ethics (Cambridge, 2023), Christ and the Common Life, and Christianity and Contemporary Politics.

Learn more at https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/rev-canon-professor-luke-bretherton and @WestLondonMan https://x.com/WestLondonMan

Helpful Links and Resources

A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well (Cambridge, 2023) https://www.amazon.com/Primer-Christian-Ethics-Christ-Struggle/dp/1009329022

Listen, Organize, Act! podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/listen-organize-act-organizing-democratic-politics/id1553824477

Luke Bretherton at Oxford https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/rev-canon-professor-luke-bretherton

Show Notes

“Post-progressive vibe shift”; Christianity newly plausible across UK and Europe

Bible Society "quiet revival" research; young people back in Oxford churches

"The plausibility structure of Christianity is kind of back in play in the post-progressive vibe shift."

Meaning, purpose, character; religion in government policy commissions

Tom Holland; civilizational Christianity; the post-new-atheist turn

Political theology replacing secular ideology: Ukraine, Gaza, India-Pakistan

Two dominant scripts: total shame vs. lost glory

Augustine's third way: grace, ambiguity, open wounds

"How do you express loyalty to your particular political community—loyalty without idolatry?"

Local social trust still holds; national trust collapsed

Social media systems that profit from suspicion: monetized idolatry

"We want to have enemies—it's really hard to organize the world around love of enemies, and it's hard to make money off love of enemies."

Think with the body, from place; neighbors before scripts

"The uncle who drives you crazy at Thanksgiving is also the one who turns up with a bake when your child is ill."

Mass mailing dissolved federated civil society: unions, denominations, guilds

Moses's challenge: atomized crowd to covenantal people

Strongmen and unmediated belonging; technology and concentrated power

Polanyi's two responses: strong man or democratic organizing

"The giving over of responsibility is itself an act of self-dehumanizing."

Mobilizing vs. organizing; the Arab Spring

The Westfield story: a teenager discovers her democratic agency

Thick vs. thin trust: the only metric that matters

#PublicTheology #PoliticalTheology #ChristianWitness #Democracy #CommunityOrganizing #FaithAndPolitics #ChristianEthics #PostProgressivism #ChurchAndState #Secularism

Production Notes

This podcast featured Luke Bretherton

Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz

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

Theologian Bo Karen Lee joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to explore how the multiple layers of trauma—pandemic grief, racialized violence, intergenerational wounding, vicarious suffering—can be met by the resources of Ignatian spirituality and contemplative prayer. Writing and teaching at the intersection of Christian formation and social justice, Lee brings both scholarly precision and uncommon personal candor to one of the most urgent conversations in theology today.

"Trauma tends to isolate and alienate us from our siblings, our human siblings. But ironically, this witnessing of one another's pain is the source of healing. So it has the very opposite effect of what is needed for it to be healed."

In this conversation, Lee reflects on the spiritual journey from what one author calls "alarmed aloneness" toward becoming beloved—seen, held, and gazed upon with love. Together they discuss the overlapping layers of collective, personal, racialized, and intergenerational trauma shaping contemporary life; attachment theory and its parallels with spiritual formation; the Ignatian tradition of imaginative, contemplative prayer; the still face experiment and the theology of the loving gaze; and why the church has something singular to offer the trauma crisis of our time.

Episode Highlights

"We are quite sure we're alone in the world and no one really sees us, no one truly cares and no one can be trusted. You're alone, overwhelmed, and helpless."

"Trauma tends to isolate and alienate us from our siblings, our human siblings. But ironically, this witnessing of one another's pain is the source of healing. So it has the very opposite effect of what is needed for it to be healed."

"I need to be held, but it's this illusory figure that holds me, because I have shut myself off to the very things that could help me, because no one is to be trusted."

"I've seen too much hope, and too much beauty, and too much healing walking through the spiritual exercises that I can no longer despair that trauma has the final word."

"Gazing upon the God who gazes upon me with love. That is contemplative prayer."

About Bo Karen Lee

Bo Karen Lee is Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she teaches contemplative theology, Ignatian spirituality, and the relationship between prayer and social justice. A leading voice in the integration of trauma studies and Christian formation, she brings the Ignatian tradition into conversation with psychology, attachment theory, and the lived experience of racialized communities. Her work draws on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola to offer resources for healing that are both theologically grounded and pastorally immediate. She directs retreatants in the nineteenth annotation of the Spiritual Exercises and works regularly with spiritual directors trained in the Ignatian tradition.

Helpful Links and Resources

Bessel van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society https://www.amazon.com/Traumatic-Stress-Overwhelming-Experience-Society/dp/1572300485

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score

Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands https://www.resmaa.com/resources

Kathy Weingarten, Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day https://www.kathyweingarten.com

David Fleming SJ, Draw Me Into Your Friendship https://www.amazon.com/Draw-Me-Into-Your-Friendship/dp/0912422904

Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/

Edward Tronick, Still Face Experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0

Find a Spiritual Director https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/making-good-decisions/find-a-spiritual-director/

Show Notes

Trauma defined: "terror triggered by an inescapably stressful event that overwhelms existing coping mechanisms" — Bessel van der Kolk

Layers of trauma: collective pandemic grief, personal wounding, racialized violence, intergenerational encoding, vicarious/secondary trauma

Global pandemic as collective trauma — threat of death, forced isolation, planetary-scale overwhelm

Racialized trauma and AAPI hate incidents — one in five AAPI individuals reported a hate incident in the U.S. in a 15-month window (as of late 2021)

My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem — racialized trauma encoded in bodies and communities https://www.resmaa.com/resources

Cumulative microaggressions — daily small injuries can produce PTSD-level effects over time; growing body of clinical literature

Secondary/vicarious trauma — hearing others' suffering reactivates unresolved wounds in caregivers and companions

"Double jeopardy" — Kathy Weingarten's term for caregivers whose own past traumas are reactivated while supporting others

Five professions at highest risk: clergy, health workers, teachers, police, journalists — context for the Great Resignation

"Alarmed aloneness" — the net effect of trauma: certainty that no one sees you, no one cares, no one can be trusted

"Trauma tends to isolate and alienate us from our siblings, our human siblings. But ironically, this witnessing of one another's pain is the source of healing."

The orphan image: a girl in a Middle Eastern orphanage draws a chalk mother around her fetal body — illusory comfort as portrait of traumatic isolation

Intergenerational trauma — encoded in DNA; personal testimony about learning her own mother was nearly killed as an infant, its echo across generations

Kintsugi as healing metaphor — the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold; grief before repair, not a race to be fixed

Robert Stolorow's concept: finding a "relational home" for traumatic suffering — the necessity of being witnessed

Ignatius of Loyola — 16th-century Spanish soldier wounded by cannonball; encountered the living Christ through Ludolph of Saxony's Vita Christi during convalescence

The Spiritual Exercises: a four-week manual for imaginative prayer — beloved and broken, walking with Christ through ministry, suffering, resurrection https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises/

Ignatian contemplative prayer defined: "gazing upon the God who gazes upon me with love" — kataphatic, embodied, not requiring stillness or silence

Still Face Experiment (Edward Tronick) — infant distress when a loving mother goes blank; evidence that the gaze of love is neurologically and psychologically foundational https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0

Attachment theory and spiritual formation — earned secure attachment: what unhealthy early bonding cannot provide, sustained relationship with God can

"I've seen too much hope, and too much beauty, and too much healing walking through the spiritual exercises that I can no longer despair that trauma has the final word."

Personal testimony: AAPI hate crimes, night terrors, contemplative prayer with a spiritual director; a vision of Mary, the wailing women, and the crucified Christ

"Bo, they killed me too" — Christ's words in a contemplative vision; solidarity as the beginning of bearable grief

Sartre's "hell is other people" reframed — parasitic dependence on others' approval vs. the freedom of knowing how God gazes upon you

Resources for beginning: David Fleming's Draw Me Into Your Friendship; finding a spiritual director trained in Ignatian spirituality; Jesuit retreat centers

#TraumaHealing #IgnatianSpirituality #ContemplativePrayer #ChristianFormation #SpiritualTheology #MentalHealthAndFaith #RacializedTrauma #AttachmentTheory #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #YaleDivinity

Production Notes

This podcast featured Bo Karen Lee

Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa

Hosted by Evan Rosa

Production Assistance by Annie Trowbridge and Luke Stringer

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

What happens when we stop treating the Bible as a sacred object and start paying attention to how we actually use it? In this conversation, theologian David Dault reflects on interpretation, responsibility, and the ethics of reading scripture in a fractured world.

In this episode with Evan Rosa, Dault reflects on interpretation, responsibility, and how readers shape the meaning and moral impact of the Bible.

Together they discuss the materiality of scripture, translation and betrayal, moral seriousness, scriptural reasoning across traditions, catastrophic love, and the ethical responsibility readers bear for how sacred texts are used.

Episode Highlights

“To assume that we know what a text is telling us is a matter of hubris.”

“The Bible doesn’t tell you to do anything. You as a reader decide what to do.”

“Violence is always an act of interpretation.”

“We never get to a place where everything is clean and everyone benefits.”

“We have to take responsibility for the violence we involve ourselves in.”

About David Dault

David Dault is a theologian, journalist, and media producer whose work explores religion, culture, ethics, and interpretation. He is Executive Producer and host of Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith, a nationally distributed public radio program. He teaches in the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago. Dault’s scholarship focuses on hermeneutics, religion and media, and the ethical implications of how sacred texts are interpreted and used in public life. His book The Accessorized Bible examines the material forms, cultural framing, and interpretive communities that shape how people encounter scripture. He holds degrees in theology and religious studies and frequently writes and lectures on religion, politics, and culture.

Helpful Links And Resources

The Accessorized Bible, by David Dault https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300153125/the-accessorized-bible/

Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith https://thingsnotseenradio.com

David Dault’s personal website https://www.daviddault.com/

Show Notes

The Accessorized Bible—material culture of scripture, design, marketing niches, and the ways the physical form of the Bible shapes how readers interpret and use it

Bible as object, medium, and cultural artifact; Marshall McLuhan and media theory—the form of a book shaping how ideas move between minds

Books as technologies of imagination and identity formation; reading as a kind of “magical” transfer of ideas from one mind into another

“To assume that we know what a text is telling us is a matter of hubris.” Interpretation requires caution, humility, and the recognition that texts exceed our control

Making the familiar strange again; recovering the power of scripture by refusing to domesticate it or assume we fully understand it

Franz Rosenzweig on preserving the alienness of sacred texts; debate with Martin Buber on translation and clarity

Translation as interpretation—translators inevitably carry values, ideologies, and cultural assumptions into the text

Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence; interpreters “misread” texts in order to wrestle with their influence and generate new meaning

Reading scripture in community; trust, vulnerability, and shared responsibility among interpreters

Scriptural reasoning—Jews, Christians, and Muslims reading shared stories (Noah, Abraham, Moses) together without claiming mastery over the text

Tikkun olam—Jewish ethical tradition of “repairing the world”; the world is wounded and humans participate in its healing

Repentance and Repair—Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on moral accountability, restitution, and the work of restoring relationships

Violence embedded in interpretation; moral action always involves choices about attention, resources, and responsibility

The “flashlight” metaphor—moral attention illuminating one suffering person while another need temporarily falls into shadow

Jairus’s daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage—competing moral urgencies in the Gospels

“We never get to a place where everything is clean and everyone benefits.” Moral action always involves tragic limitation and competing responsibilities

Levinas and infinite responsibility; the ethical demand arising from the face of the person before us

Moral seriousness versus performative irony; resisting discourse driven by trolling, spectacle, and dopamine-driven outrage

A Bible Is A Book—dismantling the assumption that sacred texts themselves command moral action

Steve Martin’s The Jerk and the phone book illustration; a sniper randomly selecting a name and deciding someone should die

“The Bible doesn’t tell you what to do.” Readers decide what moral actions follow from a text

Reader responsibility; refusing the excuse “the Bible told me to,” recognizing moral agency belongs to interpreters

Scripture as “accessory to a crime”—sacred texts used as cover for violence, exclusion, or cruelty

The Bible as platform—modular text shaped by study notes, editorial commentary, illustrations, and devotional framing

Study Bibles, children’s Bibles, niche-market editions; publishing strategies shaping the interpretive experience

Platform logic—similar to Facebook or Twitter; users curate meaning from a shared medium

Proof-texting and selective quotation; constructing entire moral worlds from isolated passages

Hannah Arendt on responsibility; loving the world enough to accept responsibility for it

James Baldwin leaving Paris after the Little Rock crisis; refusing comfort while others bear injustice

“Someone should have been there with her.” Baldwin’s recognition that solidarity requires leaving safety and standing beside the vulnerable

Catastrophic love—risking institutions, traditions, and comfort for the sake of vulnerable bodies

Matthew 25 ethics; encountering Christ among the hungry, imprisoned, and marginalized

Moral seriousness as daily practice; imperfect responsibility, persistent solidarity, doing what one can today and beginning again tomorrow

#Bible

#ChristianBible

#BiblicalInterpretation

#TheologyPodcast

#ChristianEthics

#Hermeneutics

#Scripture

#FaithAndCulture

#DavidDault

Production Notes

This podcast featured David Dault

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

Today we’re bringing you an episode with Esau McCaulley, from the Lenten season of 2023. Esau sees Lent as a practice of collective generational wisdom, passed down through centuries of sacramental rhythms—but as a contemporary reality, Lent is a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture.

He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he’s emphatic about how it’s a guided season of pursuing the grace to find (or perhaps return) to yourself as God has called you to be.

In his classic text, Great Lent, Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann calls this season one of “bright sadness”—an important paradox that represents both Christian realism and hope.

Lent is not about gloom, self-loathing, performative penitence, or despair. Instead it brings us face to face with our human condition, reminding us that we did not bring ourselves into being and someday we will die, sober about the reality and banality of evil, and sorrowful in a way that leads back to joy.

Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

About Esau McCaulley

Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. Learn more at https://esaumccaulley.com/.

Show Notes

Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal — https://esaumccaulley.com/books/lent-book/

Commodifying our rebellion—the agency on offer is a thin, weakened agency.

Repentance, grace, and finding (or returning to) yourself

Examination of conscience

The Great Litany: “For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Except our repentance, Lord.”

The beauty of Christianity

“Liturgical spirituality is not safe. God can jump out and get you at any moment in the service.”

“The great thing about the, the, the season of Blend in the liturgical calendar more broadly is it gives you a thousand different entry points into transformation.”

Lent is bookended by death. Black death, Coronavirus death, War death.

Jesus defeated death as our great enemy.

“Everybody that I know and I care about are gonna die. Everybody.”

“I, as a Christian, believe that because we're going to die. our lives are of infinite value and the decisions that we make and the kinds of people we become are the only testimony that we have and that I have chosen to, to, in light of my impending death, put my faith in the one who overcame death.”

Two realities: We’re going to die and Jesus defeated death.

Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday.

Silent processional in black; Good Friday celebrates no eucharist.

“I'm, like, the one Pauline scholar who doesn't like to argue about justification all of the time.”

Good Friday’s closing prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls.”

“You end Lent with: Something has to come between God’s judgement and our souls. And that thing is Jesus.”

“Lent is God loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourself, but not condemning you for it, but actually saying that you can be better than that.”

Production Notes

This podcast featured Esau McCaulley

Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa

Hosted by Evan Rosa

Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Luke Stringer, and Kaylen Yun.

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

Acknowledgements

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit http://blueprint1543.org/.

Work shapes identity, community, and meaning—but how should faith show up in professional life? Sociologist Elaine Ecklund discusses religion in the workplace, drawing on research conducted with co-author Denise Daniels.
“I think our faith compels us to hope for and enact flourishing for everyone.”
In this episode with Evan Rosa, Ecklund reflects on vocation, gender, authenticity, and principled pluralism in modern workplaces. Together they discuss workplace identity, gender discrimination, calling across occupations, boundaries around work, religion’s public role, and pluralism in professional life.
Episode Highlights
“I think our faith compels us to hope for and enact flourishing for everyone.”
“People use their religion to bring justice to their workplaces.”
“They don’t want to pretend they’re someone different.”
“There are ways in which our faith traditions can put needed boundaries around our work.”
“I am being fully who I am and I am oriented toward the other.”
About Elaine Ecklund
Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociologist of religion and professor at Rice University, where she directs the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance. Her research focuses on religion in public life, science and faith, and workplace culture. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Religion in a Changing Workplace and Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work (with Denise Daniels). Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and featured in major media outlets.
Helpful Links And Resources
Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work https://www.ivpress.com/working-for-better
Religion in a Changing Workplace https://academic.oup.com/book/58194
Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance https://boniuk.rice.edu/
Elaine Ecklund website https://elaineecklund.com
Show Notes
Religion and workplace life
Sociology of belief research background
Studying scientists and religion
Expanding research beyond science workplaces
Collaboration with Denise Daniels
Academic and practical faith-at-work books
Defining work as paid labor
Honoring caregiving and volunteer labor
“People don’t want to pretend they’re someone different.”
Bringing whole selves to work
Calling across occupational sectors
Workplace autonomy and meaning
“People use their religion to bring justice to their workplaces.”
Faith creating boundaries around work
Gender dynamics in workplaces
Story of hiding motherhood in academia
Fragmentation and identity performance
“There are ways in which our faith traditions can put needed boundaries around our work.”
Church gender expectations
Billy Graham rule implications
Work skills serving congregations
Living in pluralistic society
Principled pluralism explained
“I am being fully who I am and I am oriented toward the other.”
Embrace, dignity, and learning from difference
#FaithAndWork #ElaineEcklund #PrincipledPluralism #ReligionAndWorkplace #Vocation #GenderAndWork #HumanFlourishing
Production Notes
This podcast featured Elaine Ecklund
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