A special episode for the inauguration of Donald Trump’s second term, as the forty-seventh president of the United States. Whether you’re filled with hope and joy, or anxiety and fearfulness, how can we pursue a common citizenship that is grounded in faith and moral sensitivity, focused on justice and love, and rightfully patriotic?

Today, Mark welcomes friends Pete Wehner (columnist, The Atlantic, and Fellow, Trinity Forum), Anne Snyder (editor-in-chief, Comment magazine), and David Goatley (president, Fuller Seminary).

Together they discuss:

The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term in office;

The meaning of patriotism in an unfolding, rambunctious democratic experiment;

Repentance, repair, and understanding;

How to keep a moral-ethical grounding in political life;

Balancing open curiosity and genuine concern;

What rejuvenates and renews us during anxious political times (exploring beauty in nature and art);

Learning disagreement in a post-civility era;

Peacemaking instead of polarization;

Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal;

And how to pray for Donald Trump as he enters his next term in office.

About Peter Wehner

Peter Wehner, an American essayist, is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports, and friendships.

Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which the New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.

About Anne Snyder

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, **which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit comment.org for more information.

For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Anne also oversees Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).

About David Goatley

David Emmanuel Goatley is president of Fuller Seminary. Prior to his appointment in January 2023, he served as the associate dean for academic and vocational formation, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Research Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry, and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Campbellsville, Kentucky, for nine years (1986–1995).

In addition to his articles, essays, and book chapters, Goatley is the author of Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion and A Divine Assignment: The Missiology of Wendell Clay Somerville, as well as the editor of Black Religion, Black Theology: Collected Essays of J. Deotis Roberts. His current research focuses on flourishing in ministry and thriving congregations, most recently working on projects funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Duke Endowment.

Show Notes

• What each guest values and honours about America, expressing commitment and affection as citizens
• “Any presidential inauguration is weight bearing.”
• Pete Wehner: a first-generation American
• From ideals to reality about the history of America
• “ I’m the kind of patriot who is committed to the country being the best that it can be.”
• “Rambunctious unfolding-still … democratic experiment.”
• The scene for Inauguration Day 2021
• Strength and vitality of American life
• What are your commitments and hopes for the next four years?
• “Some of my siblings for whom their angst is new, and I’m happy to say, welcome to my world.”
• The posture of believers and people of good will to “keep a moral ethical grounding”
• “Justice, especially for the dispossessed, the aliens, the powerless”
• Pulled in different directions
• Eugene Peterson formulation: “There’s the Jesus truth, and the Jesus way.”
• Called to be different things at different moments
• Name reality as best we can
• “Is it possible to be both prophetic and the force of unity at the same time?”
• Will there be a World War III in the next decade?
• Creative ways to develop resilience
• “A great chastening”
• “I feel both curious and really concerned.”
• When patience runs out
• “ I'm socially and humanly curious—and strangely a little hopeful for new frames of how we are with one another—but I am steeling myself for turbulence and violence at a time when it feels like we can't afford those things.”
• The shifting global stage
• The need for deep compassion and energy that doesn’t stop listening or caring
• What rejuvenates and renews you in this moment?
• Being outside, natural beauty, artistic beauty, and staying actively in community with people who will stay reflective.
• Turning off the news
• National Gallery of Art’s Impressionist exhibit (link)
• “For most of us, our day-to-day lives, even in the political realm, are not really driven primarily by what's happening with the presidency.”
• Jon Batiste
• “Healthy, substantive arguments that are not ad hominem”
• Are we living in the post-civility era?
• Peacemaking instead of polarization
• Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal
• “Something has gone deeply wrong in the white evangelical world”
• “ I'm completely fine with deconstruction as long as there’s reconstruction.”
• “There’s a great line that the ancient Greeks used, Bobby Kennedy used that in a speech of his in the late ‘60s, where he said that the task was to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
• Prayers for Donald Trump
• That the Spirit of God would overshadow Donald Trump and political leaders
• That “Not our will but Thy will be done.”
• For moral sensitivity
• ”I'll just be candid here. I have a sense that he's a, he is a person with a lot of brokenness in his life.”
• “We’re part of a story, and there’s an author. … But those chapters aren’t the whole story.”
• A notorious chapter in American history
•  

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“The Good News is still good news.”

“I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. …  The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”

(Walter Kim, from this episode)

How does evangelicalism relate to the dominant political powers of our world?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes Walter Kim to Conversing. As the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and host of the Difficult Conversations podcast, Walter holds on to deep Christian orthodoxy alongside the most vigorous and necessary intellectual, personal, ethical, and theological reflections, offering a vision of leadership and spiritual-moral imagination to bolster the future of evangelicalism.

Together they discuss:

Christianity, pluralism, and polarization

The fraught meaning of “evangelicalism” in America and what it means to be a “good news person” in this political moment

The human impulse to wield power and the temptation of evangelicals to join with empire

The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding and the necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism

How evangelicals are retelling and recasting the story of the gospel in today’s political climate

About Walter Kim

Walter Kim serves as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a role he’s held since January of 2020. Previously, he was the pastor of Boston's historic Park Street Church, and has served other churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He received a BA from Northwestern University, an MDiv from Regent College, and a PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. He hosts the Difficult Conversations podcast.

Show Notes

• Long-term faithfulness to the gospel in the maelstrom of challenges and difficulties
• ”My experience has been one of extremes. … There is the lived reality of polarization, at which I find often myself right in the centre.”
• ”Sober self-assessment … one should always, as a Christian, be self-suspicious: Am I compromising? … Am I responding in faith or out of fear?”
• “Purveyor of the good news in action.”
• “Our labour in Christ is not in vain … ultimately Christ remains Lord and Savior of all.”
• The word “evangelical” and the state of US evangelicalism
• What does it mean to be a “good news person”?
• World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly
• Laussane and a gathering of five thousand evangelicals from around the world
• “It’s not a branding issue. It’s a substance issue.”
• “Global church with a polycentric distribution of leadership and resources”
• “Whatever our maelstrom and vortex may be in America, it pales in comparison to what brothers and sisters are experiencing throughout the world.”
• “I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. …  The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”
• Religious community vs “the other”
• How does the church relate to dominant powers?
• Image of God is not just an abstract idea
• “The democratization of the image of God to all people—not just to the rulers—was a profoundly prophetic statement.”
• Tower of Babel: A story not just about hubris, but about hoarding power and the ways political imperialism can use religion for its own purposes.
• “This is not a uniquely American problem. … This is a problem of humanity.”
• Evangelicals who have given themselves to empire
• Marring God’s image and remaking God in our own image
• Pluralism and Christianity
• The capacity for self-reflection
• The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding, and the rise of Christian nationalism
• “What’s different now is the pluralism.”
• The necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism
• Ingredient 1: The belief that America was founded as a Christian nation
• Ingredient 2: A sense or feeling of loss
• Ingredient 3: The answer to regaining what you lost is political
• Descriptive versus prescriptive: Was America founded as a Christian nation?
• Hope in the loving and just reign of God
• No national church: “living under their own vine and fig tree.”
• The reason we don’t privilege Christianity in the Constitution
• Lilly Endowment project
• “The Good News is still good news.”
• “Retelling and recasting the story … as a message of hope.”
• “ This initiative is an opportunity for us to tell the beautiful story of Jesus, while not neglecting the ways that story has been marred.”
• Luke 4: Jesus’s first public speech. “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoner, sight for the blind, release for the oppressed. And to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“An attentive, earnest ear.”

“We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”

“Entering the room listening gave me an  opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. …  It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”

(Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton offers a principle he learned from his parents: enter the room listening. He reflects on the purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point; the character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”; what listening does for the speaker; some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment; and the observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of this advice.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• How Mark’s parents taught him from an early age to “enter the room listening.”
• Start by paying attention to others.
• The gift of listening and hospitality
• What listening does for the speaker
• “It gave the speaker permission to go on.”
• “We’re in a crisis of conversation in our culture.”
• “An attentive, earnest ear.”
• The purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point
• The character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”
• “ When I became a Christian, I was stunned by the fact that Jesus had so much to say and that I had so little clue about what it was that He was describing.”
• “ I was called to be a listening disciple, not a speaking disciple.”
• “We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”
• “What I'm bringing into the room only occasionally should be the thing of first importance. Instead, I think what I realized was that the thing of first importance was what was already happening in the room and that I was getting to join and find a place in it.”
• Some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment
• The observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of entering the room listening
• Emotional attunement and “reading the room”
• Enhanced experience of the speaker and their words
• “And  I was just aware that I was at a feast. And that I would want to share in all that the room had to offer.”
• “I learned a lot about my parents by watching how my parents would listen to their guests and how they would treat their guests.”
• “Entering the room listening gave me an  opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. …  It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

”And then finally, word comes over the telegraph that the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect. Jubilation!“

(Jemar Tisby, from the episode)

The African-American Christian tradition often celebrates an all-night Watch Night service on New Year’s Eve. But where does this beautiful liturgical practice come from? It dates all the way back to December 31, 1862, on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation going into effect the following day.

In this episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton welcomes historian Jemar Tisby to reflect on the history of the New Year's Eve Watch Night service.

Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is professor of history at Simmons College, a historically black college in Kentucky.

Recent Books by Jemar Tisby

The Spirit of Justice *Available now

I Am the Spirit of Justice *Picture book releasing January 7, 2025

*Stories of the Spirit of Justice Middle-grade children’s book releasing January 7, 2025

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby (PhD, University of Mississippi) is the author of the new book The Spirit of Justice, the New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise, and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. He is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century and serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college. Jemar is the founding co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast, and his writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and the New York Times, among others. He is also a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN, speaking nationwide on the topics of racial justice, US history, and Christianity. You can follow his work through his Substack newsletter, Footnotes, and on social media at @JemarTisby.

Show Notes

• The Color of Compromise (available here)—the larger narrative of (Christian) America’s racist history
• Watch Night Services—spending all night at church on New Year’s Eve
• Black Christian tradition dating back to Emancipation Proclamation on December 31, 1862
• ”The time between when Lincoln announced the proclamation, and when it went into effect on January 1st, 1863, was a time of tense anticipation and uncertainty.”
• “ What people were concerned about was, would the Confederates come back and make a deal with Lincoln?”
• “What I like to encourage people to do is put yourself back in that moment as best you can. You have been part of a group of people that have been enslaved since your feet first hit the shores of North America, that generations of your family members, friends, church members have been enslaved, have been enslaved, prayed for freedom, have tried to escape to freedom, have been punished for trying to escape or organize for freedom. And finally, in this massive conflagration called the Civil War, you get the president of the United States saying that you will be free at this certain time. And all of those hopes, all of those prayers, all of those dreams, all of those longings are concentrated in the moments before midnight.”
• ”And then finally, word comes over the telegraph that the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect. Jubilation!“
• “It was in the context of a Christian religion. And so they were understanding this in the context of the Exodus and the Hebrews being freed from Pharaoh through God's intervention. And they're being freed from the pharaohs of the plantation to the promised land of freedom. And they sang spiritual songs and hymns. And ever since then, there's been a tradition of Black Christians gathering on New Year's Eve to have Watch Night service, to celebrate freedom, to anticipate the coming year and to ask for God's blessing.”
• “ May the joy of remembering the power of the Emancipation Proclamation help motivate us as we think about our work and our life in this coming year.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“Each Advent, I do something unusual; I reread King Lear. Revisiting Shakespeare’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family, friendship, personality, and nation has become part of my annual rhythm. That might seem odd, particularly during this most difficult of years: With short winter days, and so much national, international, and personal pain all around us, who needs more darkness? As a Christian, I do.”

(Mark Labberton, from this episode)

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton shares about his annual ritual of re-reading William Shakespeare’s King Lear, a practice to see darkness as well as see light. Mark reads from his December 23, 2020 essay in The Atlantic, and comments on King Lear’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family and friendship, personality, and nation.

Here Mark reflects on Advent as a season of waiting in the dark, before the light of Incarnation is known and beheld; the vulnerability and struggle of the human condition we all share—and King Lear’s ability to reveal it; the value of staring directly into the darkness; and importance of finding a way to look into the darkness without being overwhelmed by it.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• “Why I Read King Lear Each Advent,” by Mark Labberton, The Atlantic, December 23, 2020
• “Each Advent, I do something unusual; I reread King Lear. Revisiting Shakespeare’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family, friendship, personality, and nation has become part of my annual rhythm. That might seem odd, particularly during this most difficult of years: With short winter days, and so much national, international, and personal pain all around us, who needs more darkness? As a Christian, I do.”
• “ Paying attention provokes and distills our humanity. But our distractibility is relentless, especially today, and it may be exceeded only by our capacity for denial.”
• The vulnerable pulse and impulse of being human
• “ My soul trembles as King Lear names and exposes human greediness for love, combustibly combined with the treacherousness of our own self interest. It all hits rather too closely to home, speaking not just to Shakespeare's time but to ours as well, speaking not just to Lear's struggles but to our own.”
• The shocking immediacy of King Lear, still felt 400 years later
• Hearkening back to the darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic
• “Resilient, sacrificing beauties of being human”
• Collective groaning, lament, and grief
• Seeing our troubles acutely, undistracted by hope
• ”The waiting and the darkness begin to give way to hope. And then Christmas is here.”
• “ We need to find a way to look into the darkness without being overwhelmed by it. To be able to stare in safety. Which brings me back to Lear. Being absorbed in the darkness of that story has taught me to breathe in the presence of darkness in our story. In other words, Lear helps me see, feel, and measure life differently.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“I think my hope is that by this time next year, we would have survived this. … The hope is to survive. … It’s really hard to think beyond that.”

“We need to repent from apathy. We need to fight this normalization of a genocide.”

—Rev. Dr. Munther Issac, from the episode

In the long history of conflict in the Middle East, both Jews and Palestinians have felt and continue to feel the existential threat of genocide. There remains so much to be spoken and heard about the experience of each side of this conflict.

Today we’re exploring a Palestinian perspective.

Ministering in present-day Bethlehem, pastor, theologian, author, and advocate Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac joins Mark Labberton to reflect on the state of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, now a year following Isaac’s bracing and sobering Christmas sermon, which was graphically represented in a sculptural manger scene of “Christ in the Rubble”—a crèche depicting the newborn Jesus amid the debris of Palestinian concrete, wood, and rebar.

Together they discuss the experience, emotions, and response of Palestinians after fourteen months of war; the Christian responsibility to speak against injustice of all kinds as an act of faith; the contours of loving God, loving neighbours, and loving enemies in the Sermon on the Mount; what theology can bring comfort in the midst of suffering; just war theory versus the justice of God; the hope for survival; and the Advent hope that emerges from darkness.

A Message from Mark Labberton

Since October 7 of 2023, the world has been gripped by the affairs that have been unfolding in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. And the world is eager, anxious, fearful, angry, and divided over these affairs. All of this is extremely complicated. And yet, as a friend said to me once about apartheid (I’m paraphrasing): It’s not just that it’s complicated (which it is), it’s actually also very simple: that we refuse to live as Christian people.

By that, he was not trying to form any sort of reductionism. He was simply trying to say, Are we willing to live our faith? Are we willing to live out the identity of the people of God in the context of places of great division and violence and evil? The Middle East is fraught historically with these debates, and certainly since the of the nation-state of Israel in 1947, there has been this ongoing anguish and understandable existential crisis that Jews have experienced both inside Israel and around the world because of the ongoing anti-Semitic hatred that seems to exist in so many places and over such a long, long period of time.

Today we have the privilege of hearing from one of the most outstanding Christian voices, a Palestinian Christian pastor, Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, who is the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He is also academic dean of the Bethlehem Bible College and a director of the highly acclaimed and influential conference called Christ at the Checkpoint.

Munther in this last year has been the voice of Christian pleading. Pleading for an end to the war, pleading for the end to violence, pleading for the end to all of the militarism that has decimated parts of Israel, but also, and even more profoundly, the decimation that has leveled approximately 70 percent of all Palestinian homes in Gaza.

This kind of devastation, the loss of forty-five thousand lives and more in Palestine, has riveted the world’s attention. And Munther has been a person who has consistently spoken out in places all around the United States and in various parts of the world, trying to call for an end to the war and for a practice of Christian identity that would seek to love our neighbours, as Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount, including sometimes also loving our enemies.

The reason for the interview with Munther today is because of the one-year anniversary of Something that occurred in their church in Bethlehem, a crèche with a small baby lying in the Palestinian rubble. Seeing and understanding and looking at Christmas through the lens of that great collision between the bringer of peace, Jesus Christ, and the reality of war.

In the meantime, we have a great chance to welcome a brother in Christ ministering with many suffering people in the Middle East, Jew and Gentile, and certainly Palestinian Christians.

About Munther Isaac

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian. He now pastors the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour. He is also the academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College, and is the director of the highly acclaimed and influential Christ at the Checkpoint conferences. Munther is passionate about issues related to Palestinian theology.

He speaks locally and internationally and has published numerous articles on issues related to the theology of the land, Palestinian Christians and Palestinian theology, holistic mission, and reconciliation.

His latest book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza (get your copy via Amazon or Eerdmans), will appear in March 2025.

He is also the author of The Other Side of the Wall, From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth, An Introduction to Palestinian Theology (in Arabic), a commentary on the book of Daniel (in Arabic), and more recently he has published a book on women’s ordination in the church, also in Arabic. He is involved in many reconciliation and interfaith forums. He is also a Kairos Palestine board member.

Munther originally studied civil engineering in Birzeit University in Palestine. He then obtained a master in biblical studies from Westminster Theological Seminary and then a PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

Munther is married to Rudaina, an architect, and together they have two boys: Karam and Zaid.

Follow him on X @muntherisaac.

Show Notes

• The complexity of conflict in Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East
• “It’s very simple: We refuse to live as Christian people.”
• Get your copy of Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza via Amazon or Eerdmans
• “Christ in the Rubble”—the one-year anniversary
• Munther Isaac’s Christmas sermon, “Christ Under the Rubble” Video
• A Letter from all churches in Bethlehem: “No war”
• “ I can't believe how used we got to the idea of children being killed.”
• “We need to repent from apathy. We need to fight this normalization of a genocide that’s taking place in front of the whole world to see.”
• Fourteen months of non-stop bombing
• “We’re still feeling the anger.”
• ”We’re still feeling the pain. We’re still feeling the anger. And in a strange way, even more fearful of what is to come, given that it seems that to the world, Palestinians are less human.”
• “We couldn’t go to church as normal.”
• “ It’s our calling to continue as people of faith. To call for a change, and to call for things to be different in our world, even to call for accountability. And of course, I feel that my message should be first to the church, because I’m a Christian minister.  I don’t like to lecture other religions about how they should respond. And I feel that the church could have done more.”
• Freedom to speak out: “You can’t say these things in public.”
• Anti-Semitism and hatred toward Jews
• “ This kind of hatred and prejudice toward the Jews, which led to the horrors of the Holocaust, to me, it stems from the idea of ‘we’re superior, we’re better, we’re entitled,’ and blaming someone else. It comes from a position of righteousness and lack of humility. And certainly Jews have always been the victim of such hatred and blame.”
• “ At the same time, we as Palestinians cannot but wonder why is it us that we’re paying the price for what happened on someone else’s land? We’re paying the price.”
• Loving God, loving neighbours, and loving enemies
• Jesus’s politically charged environment
• Violence, just wWar theory, and “the justice of God”
• Using children as human shields for militants
• “ We cannot again bypass what Jesus was challenging us to do, even if it's not easy at all. It was Jesus who confirmed that loving God and loving neighbour summarizes everything. It wasn’t like I came up with this novel thing, but I think we somehow found other ways to define what it means to be a Christian.”
• “What theology would bring comfort?”
• Matthew 25, judgment, and ministering to Jesus through “the least of these”
• “ ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.’ So he’s clearly talking about victims of unjust structures, those who are thirsty for justice, those who are hungry.”
• Hopes for peace
• “I’m going to be very real, Mark. I think my hope is that by this time next year, we would have survived this.”
• “They estimate that 70 percent of the homes of two million people are destroyed.”
• Violence and destruction connected to a biblical argument about the legitimacy of Palestinian genocide
• The vulnerability of Israel and the vulnerability of Palestine
• “ And it’s important to say these things. Because if we don’t say them, then we … leave the task of imagination to those who are radical—to the extremists and exclusivists.”
• Munther Isaac’s thoughts on the Zionist movement
• Advent reflections on the darkness at the centre, from which hope and life might emerge

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“We learn the most from those who came before us, not by gazing up at them uncritically or down on them condescendingly, but by looking them in the eye. And taking their true measure as human beings, not as gods.” (Daniel Gidick, quoting historian John Meacham)

“When does the revolution end? … It doesn’t.” (Daniel Gidick on Thomas Jefferson)

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” (Daniel Gidick, quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Teaching high school history in our current social and political moment represents a formative transmission of the past to the present. Not to mention that a high school level US history course is often one of the final steps toward citizenship and public participation for young adults entering American society.

In this episode, Mark welcomes high school history teacher Daniel Gidick for a discussion of how the teaching of history and the education of young people influence human society.

Together they discuss the connection between history and contemporary society; the stories of conflict and human interest; the joy and challenge of secondary education; the politicalization of high school history; how students adopt a connection to the past; the importance of fact-based history teaching; how history affects American democratic citizenship; and the personal connection Daniel has with the study of United States history.

About Daniel Giddick

Daniel Gidick teaches US history and government at Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Show Notes

• US history and the constant turmoil of the social landscape
• History as “stories of human conflict and human interest”
• Inspirational historical figures
• The depth and impact of high school teachers on young people
• “Battlefield breakfast”
• “The last teacher they’ll have before they take on the greatest title that you can have (other than parent), which is citizen.”
• “A parodied speech of Eisenhower’s D-Day speech” to motivate test takers
• Historical documents
• The politicization of high school history
• Jon Meacham: “We learn the most from those who came before us, not by gazing up at them uncritically or down on them condescendingly, but by looking them in the eye. And taking their true measure as human beings, not as gods.”
• American Civil War
• State versus national power
• “When in doubt, the answer of the division of history is: slavery.”
• The New Deal: “The pivot point of the twentieth century.”
• Immigration
• How do students feel about America?
• “Lincoln has to be dead by Christmas.”
• “When does the revolution end? … It doesn’t.”
• A connection to the past, finding relevance
• What is your theory of history?
• Fact-based historical teaching
• How history affects American democratic citizenship
• An inflection point in American history
• “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” (FDR)
• “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” (FDR)
• “One of the points of reflecting on the past is to prepare us for action in the present.” (Jon Meacham)

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“In October 1975, I was shot six times. And while I was on the hospital gurney, doctor told me I was going to die. I heard a very clear voice that spoke to me and said, you're not going to die. You're going to be a chaplain at San Quentin prison.” (Chaplain Earl Smith)

Chaplain Earl Smith believes that ministry to the incarcerated is about so much more than rehabilitation. It’s about regeneration. Using the power of his own story of transformation from gang member to pastor, Chaplain Smith has maintained a faithful presence and witness for many decades of pastoral service to the incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, and now to professional athletes (including the Golden State Warriors, San Francisco 49ers, and the San Francisco Giants).

Today on the show Mark Labberton and Chaplain Earl Smith discuss the moral and spiritual factors of prison chaplaincy and ministry for those on death row; the meaning of freedom and education; how he ministered to the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood; the difference that positive mentoring and coaching makes in young people’s lives; and the transformative power of the gospel to go beyond rehabilitation to regeneration.

About Earl Smith

Born and reared in Stockton, California, the cycle of events in Earl’s life came to a head in 1975 when he was shot 6 times while living the life of a minor gangster. Although expected to die, Earl’s father’s faith, prayers, and love seemed to bring him through. The words of his father have motivated him, since that event, “you are a rebel, but you are God’s rebel, and God is going to use you to His glory.”

In 1983, at the age of 27, Earl became the youngest person ever hired as a Protestant Chaplain by the California Department of Corrections.

He is author of Death Row Chaplain: Unbelievable True Stories from America's Most Notorious Prison.

Chaplain Smith currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Franklin Home, a Transition Living/Reentry Home for men and is the Team Pastor for the San Francisco 49ers’ and the Golden State Warriors. From 1998 to 2006 Chaplain Smith was the Chapel Leader for the San Francisco Giants. Chaplain Smith has ministered to teams playing in NFL Super Bowls, MLB World Series and NBA Championships. In 2000, Chaplain Smith was recognized as the National Correctional Chaplain of the Year.

Chaplain Smith has appeared on numerous broadcasts, including HBO, CNN, The 700 Club, Trinity Broadcasting Network and The History Channel. Earl has been featured in Christianity Today, Ebony, Guidepost, Ministry Today, Newsweek, People’s Weekly, The African Americans and Time.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Death Row Chaplain: Unbelievable True Stories from America's Most Notorious Prison
• How Mark and Chaplain Smith met
• The value of education
• “I had to stop my education because of the execution schedule at San Quentin.”
• How Earl Smith got into prison chaplaincy
• “In October 1975, I was shot six times. And while I was on the hospital gurney, doctor told me I was going to die. I heard a very clear voice that spoke to me and said, you're not going to die. You're going to be a chaplain at San Quentin prison.”
• What San Quentin prison is like
• “We used to call San Quentin the Bastille by the Bay. The thing that really stood out for me was the fact that for 13 of the first 16 months I was there, the prison was locked down. The day I interviewed, two people were killed, so they stopped my interview twice. So I understood where I was. I understood the context of confinement. What I also went in there understanding was. It was not about rehabilitation. It was about regeneration.”
• “I believe that that's part of chaplaincy is not to allow the confines of the wall to dictate who you are.”
• A sense of liberty
• Fear and reality
• Earl Smith’s ministry to the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood
• How faith shaped a capacity to be free from fear for the sake of love
• Mass incarceration and the new Jim Crow
• The drug epidemic and its impact on mass incarceration
• “How can you help us prepare these guys to come home?”
• “Whether you're on condemned role, if you have a life without the possibility of parole, or life sentence, or whatever it is, my job is still to share the same gospel message.”
• “Present your body as a living sacrifice.”
• Pastoral care in the prison system
• Calling prisoners by their first names instead of their numbers
• “When you've done it onto the least of these, you've done it to me, so there's a value in your presence.”
• Chaplaincy to professional athletes
• “The states that have the largest prison systems are also the states that send the most professional athletes in the pro sports.”
• Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers
• The difference that positive mentoring and coaching makes in young people’s lives
• “Every man wants someone to acknowledge there's something positive in what you're doing.”
• “They May Know Your Number, But God Knows Your Name” (Clifton Jansky, country western singer)
• God’s way of paying attention to us; “how vested God is in our pursuit of being fully human” (reference to Marilynne Robinson)
• Performance and identity (reference to Ben Houltberg)
• Jerry Rice, #80 and “who wore the number before you?”
• Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action
• “God is a relational God. … Sports is relational.”
• When did chaplaincy in sports become a thing?
• Pat Ritchie’s chaplaincy
• Understanding the value and difference chaplaincy makes
• Documentary and Film Adaptation: Death Row Chaplain
• “A story not of rehabilitation but regeneration”
• “That's really what the story is about. Some of my yesterday, some of my today. And what I believe to be my tomorrow.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“Things had radically changed. … They had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life.”

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton opens up about a period of darkness and despair, when as a younger man he considered ending his life. But when he was invited to share Thanksgiving dinner with a local couple, his eyes were opened to a concrete hope, friendship, and joy—all embodied in the simple feast of a community potluck.

Every year since, Mark calls these friends on Thanksgiving Day, in gratitude for and celebration of the hospitality, generosity, beauty, friendship, and hope he encountered that day.

Here Mark reflects on the emotional and psychological difficulties he was going through, the meaning and beauty of friendship, how every dish of a Thanksgiving dinner is an act of hope and community, and how hospitality and generosity can uplift every member of a community.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with depression or considering suicide, there is help available now. Simply call or text 988 to speak with someone right away, share what you’re going through, and get the support you need.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• A story about Thanksgiving Day many years ago, during Mark Labberton’s master of divinity degree at Fuller Seminary
• “… not just overwhelmed, but really undone”
• “ … the possibility of ending my life …”
• Every Thanksgiving dish as an act of hope and community
• Beauty of friendship
• A magnificent extravaganza
• Sharing not just food but hope
• “Things had radically changed. And that in fact they had, they had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life.”
• “For me, Thanksgiving Day holds this deep and pensive awareness that Thanksgiving doesn't always come easy, that often it's a difficult act, that it involves things that are sometimes impossible for certain people to carry. And at the same time, it's possible for other people to carry them in our place, which is what these friends did for me that day.”
• If you’re feeling despair, seek professional help. Call or text 988 for an immediate response with a counsellor.
• Seek community.
• “Whether you're in darkness or in light, whether your heart feels full of gratitude or whether it may not, I just hope that you'll be aware that God is with you, that you are not alone, that there are people that want to support you and help you, and that there are people that know you who would welcome you into a circle of celebration and gratitude today.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“We’ve just created a hereditary aristocracy in this society, and it has created a populist backlash.” (David Brooks, from the episode)

There’s a growing chasm that divides the affluent and non-affluent in American society, and it’s perhaps most pronounced in higher education. The elite meritocracy suggests that we should reward individual ability, ambition, and accomplishment. But what is “merit” anyway? What is “ability”? And how do they factor in our idea of “a successful life”?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes David Brooks (columnist, New York Times) for a conversation about elite meritocracy in higher education.

Together they discuss the meaning of merit, ability, success, and their roles in a good human life; hereditary aristocracy and the populist backlash; power and overemphasis on intelligence; the importance of curiosity for growing and becoming a better person; the value of cognitive ability over character and other skills; the centrality of desire in human life; moral formation and the gospel according to Ted Lasso; ambition versus aspiration; and the impact of meritocracy on the political life and policy.

About David Brooks

David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. He is also the author of The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, and founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project.

Show Notes

• “How the Ivy League Broke America” (via The Atlantic)
• “The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new.”
• Money and the elite meritocracy
• “Every nation has a social ideal. And for the first half of the twentieth century, and the last half of the nineteenth century, our social ideal was the well-bred man.” (e.g., Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush)
• “Rich people rigged the system.”
• “Now, if you come from a family in the top 1 percent, your odds of going to an Ivy League school are seventy-seven times higher than if you come from a poor family. And a lot of schools around the country have more students in the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent.”
• “We now have this chasm between the children of the affluent and the children of the non-affluent.”
• Shocking stats: “By eighth grade, children of the affluent are four grade levels higher than children of the non-affluent. People who grew up in college-educated homes live eight years longer than people in high-school-educated homes, they’re five times less likely to die of opioid addiction, they’re twenty-two times less likely to have children out of wedlock, they’re two and a half times less likely to say they have no close friends.”
• “We’ve just created a hereditary aristocracy in this society, and it has created a populist backlash.”
• Too much power
• What is “merit”? How do you define “merit”? Who has “ability”?
• IQ is not a good indicator of merit.
• “Our meritocracy measures people by how well they do in school. The definition of intelligence is academic ability.”
• “What’s the correlation between getting good grades in school and doing well in life? The correlation is basically zero.”
• “We measure people by how they do in one setting, which is the classroom. And then we use that to declare how prepared they are for another setting, which is the workplace.”
• “Augustine said, we're primarily not thinking creatures, we're primarily desiring creatures.”
• Leon Kass (University of Chicago): “What defines a person is the ruling passion of their soul.”
• “We become what we love.”
• Predominant emotion of fear
• Curiosity, the love of learning, and getting better every day
• “You’re plenty smart. You’re just not curious.”
• Tina Turner’s memoir, discovering her voice and self-respect.
• “What matters is being a grower, the ability to keep growing.”
• “Getting old takes guts.” (David Brooks’s eighty-nine-year-old father)
• A sense of purpose
• The drive for the future, to be bold
• Henry Delacroix and the genius of America to drive for boldness, hard work, growth, and energy
• Moral materialism
• Vincent van Gogh said, “I’m in it with all my heart.”
• Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola, L’Oeuvre
• Yo-Yo Ma, cello, elite performance, and passionate humanity: “I’m a people person.”
• “Look at these creatures. They’re amazing!”
• Ordinary people in ordinary circumstances
• “Social intelligence” is not really intelligence—it’s an emotional capacity.
• Individuals and teams
• “What makes a good team? It’s not the IQ of the individuals. It’s the ability to take turns while talking. It's the ability to volley ideas and to feed into a common funnel of thought.”
• Project Based Learning
• Most Likely to Succeed (documentary, High Tech High)
• The Hour Between Dog and Wolf John Coates
• Self-awareness and adeptness reading your own body
• Emotional agility
• “The mind is built for motion. That what we do in life, we don’t solve problems, we navigate complex terrains.”
• “We’re all pilgrims. And we’re all searching for the journey that will transform us. And so it’s, the mind is not this computer designed to solve problems. The mind has helped us navigate through a space. And if we do it well, then we become transformed.”
• Applying meritocracy to the 2024 election
• “If you segregate your society on IQ, You're inherently segregating on elitist grounds.”
• “The rebellion that is Donald Trump.”
• Jesus’s form of selection—“When Jesus was selecting his twelve, he didn’t give them all a bunch of standardized tests. … He saw that each person was made in the image of God.”
• “And to me, what (frankly) the Christian world offers us is a re centring of the human person.”
• Controlling the passions of your heart
• Christian humanism
• Ecce Homo
• Rene Girard and mimetic desire
• Ambition vs. Aspiration
• The gospel of Ted Lasso and David Brooks’s favorite definition of moral formation: “My goal is to make these fellas better versions of themselves on and off the field.”
• *Still Evangelical* (essay by Mark Labberton)
• “Am I yet evangelical?”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Our increasingly reactionary political environment doesn’t lend itself to nuanced, patient understanding of events like the 2024 re-election of Donald Trump. What historical and philosophical resources can help us gain insight and wisdom? How can we successfully know and encounter each other in such a divided society?

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes David Brooks (columnist, New York Times) for reflections about the 2024 General Election, the state of American politics, and how we got here.

Together they discuss the multi-generational class divide; sources of alienation and distrust; how loss of faith and meaning influences political life; intellectual virtues of courage, firmness, humility, and flexibility; what it means to be a Republican in exile; the capacity for self-awareness and self-critique; and much more.

About David Brooks

David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. His latest book is How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (Random House, 2023). He is also the author of The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, and founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project.

Show Notes

• A spiritual or emotional crisis we’re working out in American politics
• Should we blame inflation and economic factors? (Biden’s Covid-19 overstimulation)
• Class divide is a generational thing
• High-school-educated voters are increasingly alienated from the Democratic Party
• Alienation and distrust is a multi-decade process
• Loss of Faith, Loss of Meaning, and the “Death of God”
• An exiled Republican
• “Confessions of a Republican Exile” (via The Atlantic): ”A longtime conservative, alienated by Trumpism, tries to come to terms with life on the moderate edge of the Democratic Party.”
• “I’m a Whig.” (”Abraham Lincoln was a Whig.”)
• Edmund Burke and epistemological modesty—”don’t revolutionize something you don’t understand.”
• You should operate on society in the way you operate on your father, with care.
• Alexander Hamilton
• Whig tradition is unrepresented in contemporary American politics
• How David Brooks waffles between Democrat and Republican
• Isaiah Berlin: “At the rightward edge of the leftward tendency.”
• “The capacity for self-critique
• Matt Yglesias
• Humble, introspective, and “how did we get so out of touch?”
• Racism and sexism are not what’s driving Trump voters
• “In my opinion, Donald Trump is wrong answer to the right question.”
• Mark Noll and America’s use of the Bible: un-self-aware and un-self-critical
• Why is there more capacity for self-critique on the Democratic
• Jonathan Rauch and “Epistemic Regime”: includes media, universities, scientific research, review process, etc.
• “There’s still a core of people who believe ‘if the evidence says x, you should say y.’”
• “The greatest victory in the history of the world.”
• Intellectual Virtues: Courage, Firmness, Flexibility
• “Reality is constantly going to surprise you.”
• 1980s Republicanism was more intellectually sophisticated
• Conservative book publishing
• *Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change* by Jonah Goldberg
• How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
• “The Stacking Stereotype”
• “A redistribution of respect” (away from large swaths of America and to elites)
• “The flow of status and respect in this country has gone to people with elite credentials.”
• “… almost no Trump supporters.”
• “If you tell 51% of the country ‘Your voices don’t matter,’ people are going to get upset.”
• America changing beneath us
• High level of spiritual and moral authority and low level of intellectual confidence
• The moral teaching of the New Testament
• “People are unitary wholes.”
• “I became a Christian around 2013.”
• “Jesus was more a badass revolutionary than an Oxford don.”
• C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Christianity
• “What it’s like to be in the claustrophobic mind of a narcissist.”
• Aggression: a joyless way to see the faith
• What is needed?
• “I was a 50-year-old atheist.”
• Chris Wiman (My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer): materialistic categories couldn’t explain the world
• “If they made me pope of the evangelicals, which is a job that makes me shudder…”
• “Be not afraid.”
• “The world just loves a human being that’s trying to act like Jesus.”
• David Brooks’s teaching at Yale
• The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist by Dorothy Day

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.