For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Where does boredom come from? Have humans always experienced boredom, or has it only come on in the entertainment age, having more time than we know what to do with? Kevin Gary (Valparaiso University) is author of Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life. He joins Drew Collins & Evan Rosa to reflect on the discontent and disconnection that boredom constantly thr...

The final installment of our 5-part book club series on Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan, and featuring Claire Danes & Kate Bowler. Special thanks to the Warren Smoot Carter III and Meagan Carter Charitable Fund for making this series possible. Show Notes https://katebowler.com/about/ https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/kate-bowler https://www.ke...

Show Notes https://katebowler.com/about/ https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/kate-bowler https://www.kellycorrigan.com/podcast About Kelly Corrigan Kelly Corrigan has written four New York Times bestselling memoirs in the last decade, earning her the title of “The Poet Laureate of the ordinary” from the Huffington Post and the “voice of a generation” from O Magazine .  She is curious and funny and e...

Today’s episode is part 3 of a 5-part book club series produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan. The PBS host and author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs is taking a deep dive into the latest book from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most , the book is based on a Yale College co...

Today’s episode is part 2 of a 5-part book club series produced and hosted by Kelly Corrigan. The PBS host and author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs is taking a deep dive into the latest book from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most , the book is based on a Yale College co...

"Your life is too important to be guided by anything less than what matters most." Part 1 of a 5-part book club series on Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most . Written by Miroslav Volf, Matt Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, the book is based on a Yale College course that takes up some of the most pressing questions of life, but doesn’t keep the implications, challenges, confusion, pe...

We homo sapiens sapiens are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” but why? What’s so special about being human? What makes us unique? And can we equate our uniqueness in the world with the Imago Dei?  Experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist Justin Barrett joins Evan Rosa to discuss the image of God as a blueprint for each of us as individuals; human uniqueness as a theological and psychologi...

We tend to take these claims for granted: “Human beings are essentially relational.” “No man is an island.” “We’re created for connection.” “We’re made for relationships.” And testing the limits of this can be pretty much diabolical. Evan Rosa traces two stories of parental deprivation: Harry Harlow's "Monkey Love Experiments" and the horror of 1990's discovery of Romanian asylums for orphans, doc...

"Theology is truth-apt and truth-aimed." Too often the faith-science debate ends up a zero-sum game where either science or theology overstep their bounds. But analytic theologian Oliver Crisp (University of St. Andrews, Scotland) describes a tapestry of knowledge that requires the best of both worlds. In this episode he discusses the purpose and future prospects of theology in light of empirical...

Is your faith a house of cards? If you were wrong about one belief would the whole structure just collapse? If even one injury came to you, one instance of broken trust, would the whole castle fall? If one element was seemingly inconsistent or incompatible—would you burn down the house? This depiction of the psychology of faith is quite fragile. It falls over to even the lightest breath. But what...

Sometimes things go wrong. Your British premiere league football club loses a game; maybe your dog eats the birthday party cupcakes; maybe someone cuts you off in traffic. And you get angry—looking for someone to hold responsible. Sometimes things go wrong in even more serious ways. Your kid’s getting bullied or mistreated; the justice system fails you or someone you love; you’re betrayed or deepl...

"Usually people think of a telos as an endpoint, but what if we think of telos as a dynamic process that sustains a thriving trajectory for the individual and the world around them? The imago Dei, which is deeply and inherently relational and social—we image God by being our unique selves in unity. So there is the particularity of personhood and the relatedness with other persons, God, and all of...

Imagine building a cathedral with just a hammer and nails. How might theologians today continue to build the grand cathedral where human knowledge meets divine revelation by implementing the tools of psychological science? Experimental psychologist Justin Barrett joins theologian Miroslav Volf for a conversation on how psychology can contribute to theology. This episode is made possible by Bluepri...

Micheal O'Siadhail reflects on his latest collection of poetry, Testament . A confession of faith through Psalms refracted through his experience, and the Gospel story retold through rhyme, O'Siadhail's vibrant faith manifests as complaint, longing, grief, mourning, and doubt. With mountains and oceans of poetry written over the past 45 years, he writes on love, loss, modernity, music—all an exper...

Imagine war becoming your new normal. Imagine getting used to things like airstrike sirens. Imagine sleeping through the distant bombs. Imagine passing through the rubble on your way to work, or school, or church. Over the past year, war has become the new normal for Ukrainian pastor and theologian Fyodor Raychynets. Most of the expectations for how tthis war might go have fallen through. Worst ca...

It’s not a popular idea, but secular America is pretty damn religious. Pretty damn liturgical. Pumpkin spice lattes and apple cider donuts are the eucharistic elements of autumn. The militaristic pageantry of the 4th of July. Our children love asking about the next big event. Color coordinated myths drive the year along, shaping us into …. well, I’m not quite sure what this secular American liturg...

The primal scene of domination and slavery inevitably produces struggle. It must. Because domination is the idolatrous effort of one to exert control over the will of the other, and we are compelled as free beings to realize and always live that freedom. So the struggle produces dignity, and that dignity, declared and acted and performed and practiced and sung and chanted and screamed and whispere...

A conglomeration of Advent people: Drew Collins on how the Magi were pushed willingly to the edge of their knowledge, open to the giving spirit of God. Frederica Mathewes-Green with an illustration of Mary, living in prayer, which proves just enough to know to say "yes" when met with her call. Jeff Reimer on W.H. Auden's common Joseph, asked only and profoundly to believe. And Matt Croasmun on St....

Art historian Matthew Milliner (Wheaton College) reflects on one of the most powerful and moving Christian icons: “The Virgin of the Passion,” AKA, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help,” which he develops in his book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon . First painted as a response to failed Christian Empire and the violence of the Crusades, then mass produced and proliferated as a norm of Chri...

[Help us reach our $25,000 end of year goal! Give online to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture today.] We often think that telling the truth only applies to words. But American painter Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) told the truth in pencil, water color, and famously, oil paintings. Coming of age in antebellum America, starting his artistic career as the Civil War began, a...

Help Miroslav Volf and the Yale Center for Faith & Culture reach our end-of-year goal $25,000 Matching Challenge for 2022!  How to donate to YCFC and support the For the Life of the World podcast: Click here to give online Mail a check made out to "Yale Center for Faith and Culture" (409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511). Dear Friend, Inspired by faith in Christ in whom God became one of us, at t...

"If the goal of God in creating the world is to make it the home of God and humans together, then it is the intention of God to make this place as beautiful and as humane—as hospitable—to human life as it can possibly be." Miroslav Volf reflects on why he wrote his latest book, The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything .  He also celebrates and eulogizes his friend Phil Love, to whom the book i...

The 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 T...

“We’ve become experts at means but amateurs at ends.” Miroslav Volf and Kelly Corrigan discuss the role of education in seeking a flourishing life; the risks and rewards endemic to asking questions of meaning and existential import in the higher educational context; the meaning of success to college students, and how the specter of success drives our cultural narrative; what it takes to live a lif...

"Somewhere is better than anywhere." (Flannery O'Connor, as quoted by Wendell Berry in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community ) Today, Christian ethicist Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School) sits with Matt Croasmun for a conversation on ethics and theology. Eitel is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Together, he and Matt discuss the demands of teaching and learning theology...