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Episode Summary

Miroslav Volf and David French discuss the politically and culturally polarized America, religion, forgiveness, and how ideas about the human person affect the divide.

Episode Notes

In this conversation, Miroslav Volf and David French discuss the politically and culturally polarized America; the resurgence of cultural struggle, if not outright culture war; seeing fundamentalist political religion on both the right and the left; forgiveness versus cancellation and how our view of human persons affects that public conversation; personal morality and social justice; and finally how political theology can make a difference now, the rest of this year (and it’s been a year), and the future of American life.

Show Notes

  • David French, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
  • Public faith in America’s current moment
  • “The exhausted majority”
  • Faith provides hope and pain
  • Instrumentalisation of faith
  • Americans are beginning to live “separate” lives
  • Embracing pluralism
  • Warning signs of culture war
  • Fundamentalism tied to the culture struggle
  • A gap in Christian instruction in how to interact with politics
  • Internal virtues have significant political implications
  • Christian faith and nationalism depend on each other
  • Post-religious activism
  • Confession of error as a sign of person growth
  • The fear and anger cycle which alienates the church
  • What kind of life does God have in minds for us?
  • When allegiance is first to Jesus, our care for justice, mercy, and humility fall into alignment

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May 15, 2023

Tolerating Doubt & Ambiguity

Is your faith a house of cards? If you were wrong about one belief would the whole structure just collapse? If even one injury came to you, one instance of broken trust, would the whole castle fall? If one element was seemingly inconsistent or incompatible—would you burn down the house? This depiction of the psychology of faith is quite fragile. It falls over to even the lightest breath. But what would a flexible faith be? Resilient to even the heaviest gusts of life’s hurricanes. It would adapt and grow as a living, responsive faith. Psychologist Elizabeth Hall joins Evan Rosa to discuss the domains of psychology and theology and what it means for each to “stay in their lane”; she introduces a distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge, and identifies the social- and self-imposed pressure to know everything with certainty; we reflect on the recent trends toward deconversion from faith in light of these pressures; and she offers psychologically grounded guidance for approaching doubt and ambiguity in a secure relational context, seeking to make the unspoken or implicit doubts explicit. Rather than remaining perched upon our individualized, certainty-driven house-of-card faith; she lays out a way to inhabit a flexible, resilient, and relationally grounded faith, tolerant of ambiguity and adaptive and secure amidst all our winds of doubt. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

Elizabeth Hall