Shows
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureAdvent Joy: Resistance Against Despair, Celebrating the Beauty of Black Joy / Stacey Floyd-Thomas & Willie James JenningsHelp the Yale Center for Faith & Culture meet a $10,000 matching challenge for podcast production; click here to donate today.Part 3 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Stacey Floyd-Thomas presents a vision of Black joy—which the world can't give and the world can't take away. Looking into several depictions of female agency in the Gospels, she outlines a picture of joy that celebrates beauty, redemptive self-love, virtuous pride, and critical engagement with the world. Then Willie James Jennings offers a definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces that lead to death. He pr...2023-12-1834 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureFostering the Knowledge and Love of God / Yale Divinity School BicentennialThe mission of Yale Divinity School is "to foster the knowledge and love of God through scholarly engagement with Christian traditions in a global, multifaith context." A variety of Yale Divinity School faculty and alumni have been featured as guests on For the Life of the World, and this episode highlights some of those contributions, including Krista Tippett, Willie Jennings, Keri Day, Kathryn Tanner, and David Kelsey (not to mention Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz). Current Yale Divinity Student Luke Stringer introduces each highlight segment. Special thanks to Harry Attridge and Tom Krattenmaker.Show NotesOur fi...2022-10-1543 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Gravity of Joy / Angela GorrellTheologian Angela Gorrell discusses her book The Gravity of Joy, a theological memoir that lays bare the experience of finding the bright sorrow of joy alongside devastating grief, suffering, and pain. The book recounts her experience of joining the Yale Center for Faith & Culture in 2016 as an Associate Research Scholar for our Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project and to teach our Yale undergraduate course, Life Worth Living. That winter, the reality, the extent, and the dangerous potential of joy would become devastatingly clear. The highly abstract question of what it means to live a life worth...2021-03-1334 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureJoy and the Act of Resistance Against Despair / Willie Jennings and Miroslav Volf"I look at joy as an act of resistance against despair and its forces. ... Joy in that regard is a work, that can become a state, that can become a way of life." Willie Jennings joins Miroslav Volf to discuss the definition of joy as an act of resistance against despair, the counterintuitive nature of cultivating joy in the midst of suffering, the commercialization of joy in Western culture, joy segregated by racism and slavery, how Jesus expands and corrects our understanding of joy.Support For the Life of the World by making a gift to the...2021-02-2824 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureViolence, Shame, Fear, Anger, and Lost Civic Friendship / Willie Jennings, David French, Marilynne Robinson, Robert George, and moreWhat is the state of Christianity and Democracy in America? We mined the past 6 months of episodes for the most timely, relevant, and even strangely prescient reflections on faith and politics in America. Past 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. Here’s the breakdown of our episode today—it’s really a “best of" for faith and politics in America today.Episode Contents / Show Notes3:33 - Theolog...2021-01-0956 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureMy Anger, God's Righteous Indignation / Willie Jennings (Response to the Death of George Floyd)Guest contributor Willie Jennings (Yale) offers a response to the death of George Floyd and the black experience of racism and police brutality. In order to practice the discipline of hope, he suggests that we must take hold of a shared anger, hate what God hates, reshape communities with attention to the violence of segregation, and rethink the formation of police officers and our understanding of criminality.faith.yale.eduShow NotesDr. Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of RaceJenning’s first time being pulled over by a white police of...2020-06-0224 min
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & CultureThe Need to Listen / Miroslav Volf"Before speaking about victims and to victims I need to listen. We all who are not victims need to listen." In a follow-up to his May 30 response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, Miroslav Volf speaks frankly about the necessity of listening to black perspectives about racism, police brutality, and the history and continuous experience of black suffering.faith.yale.eduShow NotesPolice brutality and the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George FloydMiroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of IdentityExclusion’s specific expression in racism in this countryThe bo...2020-06-0108 min