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Episode Summary

Art historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) reflects on one of the most powerful and moving Christian icons: “The Virgin of the Passion,” AKA, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which he develops in his book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. First painted as a response to failed Christian Empire and the violence of the Crusades, then mass produced and proliferated as a norm of Christian aesthetic worship, the icon offers a unique filter for contemporary understanding of faith and power; the Christian temptation to nationalism, empire, and violence; the meaning and visual expression of suffering love; and the beauty of engaged, solidarity and prophetic witness. This episode was made possible by a grant from the Tyndale House Foundation.

Episode Notes

Art historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) reflects on one of the most powerful and moving Christian icons: “The Virgin of the Passion,” AKA, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which he develops in his book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. First painted as a response to failed Christian Empire and the violence of the Crusades, then mass produced and proliferated as a norm of Christian aesthetic worship, the icon offers a unique filter for contemporary understanding of faith and power; the Christian temptation to nationalism, empire, and violence; the meaning and visual expression of suffering love; and the beauty of engaged, solidarity and prophetic witness.

This episode was made possible by a grant from the Tyndale House Foundation.

Support the Yale Center for Faith & Culture's $25,000 End of Year Matching Campaign by giving online today: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Show Notes

About Matthew Milliner

Matthew Milliner is Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College. He holds an M.A. & Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University, and an M.Div from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is author is author most recently of The Everlasting People: G.K. Chesterton and the First Nations and Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. His scholarly specialization is Byzantine and medieval art, with a focus on how such images inform contemporary visual culture. He teaches across the range of art history with an eye for the prospects and pitfalls of visual theology. He is a five-time appointee to the Curatorial Advisory Board of the United States Senate, and a winner of Redeemer University’s Emerging Public Intellectual Award. He has written for publications ranging from The New York Times to First Thing_s. He recently delivered the Wade Center’s Hansen lecture series on Native American Art, and was awarded a Commonwealth fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. to complete his forthcoming book, _Mother of the Lamb (Fortress Press). Follow @Millinerd on Twitter

Production Notes

  • This podcast featured art historian Matthew Milliner
  • Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
  • Hosted by Evan Rosa
  • Production assistance by Macie Bridge
  • 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

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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