Trinity Forum Conversations

This is a special episode in memory of Michael Gerson.  Michael J. Gerson was a White House speechwriter and senior policy adviser, a Washington Post columnist and one of America’s most influential and eloquent commentators. Michael was shaped by his deep Christian faith, and his writing drew from the Christian tradition to call America to greater justice. In particular, he’s remembered for linkin...

Does character matter? In the last century, our society shifted away from teaching character in schools in order to focus on different forms of learning. How has that change shaped the world we live in now? Should cultivating character be a focus of education, and can character even be effectively taught in a pluralistic society? Our guest on today’s podcast is Dr. William Inboden, provost of the...

In this episode, we explore the life and mind of whom historian Tom Holland calls “17th century Europe’s supreme polymath": Blaise Pascal.  Our guide is Graham Tomlin, a former bishop in the Church of England.  Drawing from his book, Blaise Pascal, the Man Who Made the Modern World, Graham brings us on a journey through Pascal’s life, his conversion to Christianity, and his famous argument for bel...

What does redemptive leadership mean? As Christians, we have a unique calling: not just to lead, but to serve. What does this look like in today’s culture, and how can we serve as leaders and foster an environment of abundant grace and joy wherever we are? Christianity Today’s Dr. Nicole Massie Martin helps us to understand how we can nail outdated models of leadership to the cross, and what it wi...

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: “Hurry is the enemy of attentiveness. And so love as attent...

Our theme for this episode is “Untangling Our Knotted-Up Lives,” and our guest is the author and speaker Beth Moore.   Drawing from her bestselling memoir, Beth helps us work through a challenge we all may face at various times: maintaining resilience — and faithfulness to our vocations — in the face of hardship: “I’d come to a point where I thought, oh my goodness, I see this. I get what Jesus is...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’re focusing on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Today’s episode concludes our sum...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Guided by theologian and musician Da...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Our guest this episode is the poet C...

In this Trinity Forum Conversation, author Lanta Davis, along with special guest host and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Jessica Hooten Wilson, delve into the power of imagination and its role in our spiritual formation. The discussion centers on Davis's book Becoming by Beholding , which explores Christian imagination through art, literature, and historical practices. These friends and scholars disc...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In this episode, our guides are mode...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In this episode, our focus is Jane A...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Today’s guide is the author and prof...

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters , focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful. How should we live faithfully within...

In this episode we’re joined by theologian and bestselling author Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity School. His latest book is The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others is Making Us Worse .    The question he explores is one that relates to all of us: how can we find a way to strive for excellence, rather than for superiority over those around us?   Finding new insights in familiar...

This conversation is on the practical wisdom the Christian tradition offers for something that affects all of us: matters of life and death. Dr. Lydia Dugdale will be our guide.  Lydia has applied practices from this faith tradition in her daily work with patients and families as a physician, professor and medical ethicist in New York City. She draws deeply from it in her book The Lost Art of Dyin...

In this conversation, author Ross Douthat draws from the tradition to tackle a foundational question: Why believe? Amid evidence that America’s long trend of secularization has leveled off, a perception of the limits of a strictly materialist worldview, and growing dissatisfaction with “do it yourself” approaches to spirituality, what does traditional faith uniquely offer those seeking truth in ou...

We were made for relationship — to be seen, loved, known, and committed to others. And yet we increasingly find ourselves, in the words of sociologist Jonathan Haidt, “disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.” On our podcast Haidt and bestselling author Andy Crouch pair up to explore how the technology era has se...

US foreign aid is unexpectedly in the news in 2025 as never before. What do Christians need to know, to help us be part of the dialogue ? America's history of foreign aid dates back at least to the Marshall Plan that followed World War II. Many Christians have been involved. How have these believers thought about the appropriate roles of government and of faith-based institutions? What has the US...

As we emerge from the Lenten season, freshly renewed by the triumph of the Resurrection, beauty and wonder are particularly present for Christians. In this episode, author and songwriter Andrew Peterson shares his insights about the importance of location and living responsibly and attentively in whatever specific place you inhabit. He discusses how deeper attentiveness to the beauty around us can...

Throughout Lent, we've been releasing weekly episodes focused on spiritual practices. In the final episode of the series, this Holy Week we're considering the discipline of waiting : how we can prepare ourselves to receive good news.  Our guide today is N.T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar. He describes how Jesus invited his hearers into a new way of understanding Israel’s an...

Throughout the season of Lent, we're releasing weekly episodes focused on spiritual practices. If at the center of reality is a God whose love is a generative, creative force, how do humans made in God’s image begin to reflect this beauty and love in a world rent by brokenness and ugliness? As Makoto Fujimura argues on our latest podcast, it’s in the act of making that we are able to experience th...

Throughout the season of Lent, we're releasing weekly episodes focused on spiritual practices. We live in an age of speed and overwhelm, where we often feel we are expected to do more, move faster, work harder, brush past boundaries and limits, and shave margins. When we inevitably fail to meet all demands, we are left feeling not only exhausted, but often diminished. "Part of what you start to se...

Pursuing Humility, with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn Throughout the season of Lent, we're releasing weekly episodes focused on spiritual practices. In an age when self-promotion is often celebrated as a sign of leadership and strength, humility may seem a lost virtue. In his work Learning Humility , theologian Richard Foster argues that humility is actually strength, releasing us from a preoccu...

Throughout the season of Lent, we'll be releasing weekly episodes focused on themes of reflection, prayer, and contemplation. As you listen to this episode, we invite you to take a moment to slow down, quiet your heart, and hear what God may be saying to you. 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 he...