Trinity Forum Conversations is a podcast exploring the big questions in life by looking to the best of the Christian intellectual tradition and elevating the voices, both ancient and modern, who grapple with these questions and direct our hearts to the Author of the answers.
The relentless pull and pressure of partisan antagonisms and tribalism have fractured friendships, families, communities â 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 weâre delighted to share their comments from an evening conversation in 2023 with you:
âBe of great hope. Because the after party is comingâŠIt'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:
City of God, by Augustine of Hippo
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 âbig questionsâ may seem unanswerable and intimidating â 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:
âYou 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 Nietzsche
Related 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 Weil
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
The Kingdom, the Power & The Glory with Tim Alberta
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.
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:
âI 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.âWe 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.â
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 Timâs 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 VĂĄclav 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:
âWe 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.ÂâYou could say our politics today is actually more robustly full of moral assertions than it has been at any other time this century.â
We trust that youâll be encouraged by Michaelâs 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 VĂĄclav 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 Godâs image begin to reflect this beauty and love in a world rent by brokenness and ugliness?
As Mako argues on our latest podcast, itâs in the act of making that we are able to experience the depth of Godâs being and grace, and to realize an integral part of our humanity:
âLove, by definition, is something that goes way outside of utilitarian values and efficiencies and industrial bottom lines. It has toâŠand 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.âArtistry 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 youâre 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 youâre so inclined, weâd 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 PĂ©pin
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 Dinesen
Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot
Pilgrimâs Progress, by John Bunyan
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Godâs 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 Buchanan
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.
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:
âHurry 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 thatâs how Godâs built it. And we canât get that if weâre moving too fast, if weâre in a hurry.âWe hope youâre 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
SĂžren Kierkegaard
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
God Walk, by Mark Buchanan
Simone Weil
The Three Mile an Hour God, by Kosaku Koyama
Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
Knowing God, J.I. Packer
Kai Miller
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Pilgrimâs Progress, by John Bunyan
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
Godâs 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 Wilson
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.
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 thinkersâincluding Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Sayersâapproached 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:
âWhat 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.âWe hope youâre 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 OâConnor
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
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 Quinn
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.
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:
May Fosterâs call to humility, and pastor and writer Brenda Quinnâs 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. Lewis
Timothy Keller
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 WeilÂ
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
Weâre 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:
âJesus 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 âallsâ 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.âWe trust that youâll be inspired by the beauty of Guiteâs poetry, and by the ways in which the poetic imagination brings healing to the false divide between the subjective and the objective.
This 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?Â
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 someoneâŠpurposely trying to love someone, especially those that seem or are viewed or deemed unlovable, isâŠdirectly connected and intrinsically connected to our art making.We hope you enjoy and are encouraged by Floydâs 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
Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
Revelation, by Flannery O'Connor,Â
Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson.
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
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.
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 upâas Samwise Gamgee says in the Lord of the Rings,â In the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.â
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.
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