Most Recent
Patience with Yourself
Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflect on Karl Rahner's admonition to be patient with oneself. The discussion begins by recognizing the gap between who you are now and who you aspire to be, and proceeds with the need to keep the tension alive, working and bearing with your limitations, and exploring the freedom of a serene patience with oneself. Serenity is not acquiescence to vice or bad habits. But it represents a courageous long-term peace with your imperfections—an effort to recognize oneself as rooted in divine love and grace and acceptance, even as you pursue a vision of a better self.
listener reviews
Giving life!
I’ve been helped, encouraged, stimulated. I’ve found it to be consistently interesting and thoughtful. Best podcast for Christian interest.
boilermaker68, 08.29.2020
Timely
So much is happening and our society has rules where we often check our deepest meaning systems at the door. This works until a year like this year when we need to draw on much deeper resources, and we want a way to connect as a community. This group seems committed to softening those isolating norms, and showing us all what that could look like to do so with love and respect.
Donnied48, 10.05.2020
Thank you all!
This has been such a profound source of wisdom and reflection and hope in these dark times. I very much appreciate all the thought and effort you put into these. Thank you so much!
KelWatts0830, 06.26.2020
Episodes
Patience with Yourself
Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz reflect on Karl Rahner's admonition to be patient with oneself. The discussion begins by recognizing the gap between who you are now and who you aspire to be, and proceeds with the need to keep the tension alive, working and bearing with your limitations, and exploring the freedom of a serene patience with oneself. Serenity is not acquiescence to vice or bad habits. But it represents a courageous long-term peace with your imperfections—an effort to recognize oneself as rooted in divine love and grace and acceptance, even as you pursue a vision of a better self.
Miroslav Volf & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Violence, Shame, Fear, Anger, and Lost Civic Friendship
What is the state of Christianity and Democracy in America? This episode features some of the most timely and relevant reflections on faith and politics in America this week from the past six months of this podcast. Our recent guests Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson, Robert George, and Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, and Arlie Hochschild each offer perspectives we need to understand the political moment through the eyes of faith and culture.
Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson & more
Sedition in the Capitol (Audio)
Miroslav Volf and the staff of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture respond to the lies, provocation, sedition, riots, and violence at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
Miroslav Volf
Christian Witness in Turbulent Places
Mike Cosper, host of Cultivated, a podcast about faith and work, interviews Miroslav Volf about his vocation as theologian. They discuss Miroslav's youth in Croatia and his family's influence on his spirituality and theology, as well as the urgent need for faithful witness in our turbulent times.
Miroslav Volf & Mike Cosper
Santa, God, and the Obligation to Rejoice
Santa doesn't just want you to be happy. Santa needs you to be happy. Matt Croasmun explains how the contemporary Christmas myth—the Gospel of Christmas according to St. Nick—sets emotional norms that are vastly different from the Gospel of Christmas according to St. Paul.
Matthew Croasmun
The Reason We Follow the Star
How can the Magi of Matthew 2—the Three Wise Men "bearing gifts" and "traversing afar"—help us understand faith and reason, giving and receiving, the nature of God, and how to be human? Drew Collins offers some new perspective on a familiar Christmas story.
Drew Collins
Ignore These Walls
Evan Mawarire is a Pentecostal minister and democratic activist in Zimbabwe. He is founder of #ThisFlag Citizen's Movement and has been instrumental in standing up to corruption, injustice, and poverty in Zimbabwe. Miroslav Volf interviews Pastor Evan about his story of faith that leads to activism; the transformation he experience while being unjustly arrested, detained, and tortured in maximum security prison; and what it means to live a life worthy of our humanity.
Evan Mawarire & Miroslav Volf
Black Joy and Oppressive Humility
Social ethicist Stacey Floyd-Thomas offers a womanist perspective on how humility can go terribly wrong, when it's hung over the heads of the humiliated, marginalized, and oppressed. This criticism of the traditional Christian virtue helps clarify the role of joy as the ultimate virtue of Black life, the centrality of black folk wisdom, and the beauty of black sisterhood. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.
Stacey Floyd-Thomas
Strangers in Our Own Land
Arlie Hochschild discusses her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, reflecting on how 2020 has made our mutual political alienation worse, and how we can implement deep listening, emotion management, hospitality, and create shelters from shame. Interview by Evan Rosa.
Arlie Hochschild
Joyful Recognition, All Is Gift
Defining gratitude as joyful recognition, the courage to be grateful, comparing gratitude for self-help vs gratitude in prayer, resilience, seeing all as gift and everything as grace. Featuring: Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Sarah Schnitker, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Miroslav Volf.
Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Sarah Schnitker & Jessica Hooten Wilson
Civic Friendship, Courageous Humility, and Seeking Truth Together
Legal scholar Robert P. George comments on the meaning of friendship across disagreement, the need for public virtues of courage and humility, and how to address political polarization and hateful divisions through seeking the truth, thinking critically and openly, and respecting the dignity and freedom of the other. Interview by Evan Rosa.
Robert George & Evan Rosa
Etching Everyday Existence with the Charisma of Holiness
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was a British Jewish Rabbi, philosopher, politician, and author of more than 30 books. In this conversation, Miroslav Volf interviews Rabbi Sacks about Jewish perspectives on human flourishing, joy, sabbath, and the deeply communal and particular nature of Jewish faith as a witness to the common good. Rabbi Sacks died on November 7, 2020. May his memory be a blessing.