When a faith built to bless the nation gets quietly diverted into power, the most dangerous act left to the church may be refusing to whitewash the story and choosing instead to become a communion of genuinely unlike people.

On the eve of a national prayer rally rededicating America to God, Mark Labberton joined The Jim Wallis Podcast to ask whether Christians who invoke the nation's name are following Jesus or drifting from him.

Together with Jim Wallis, Mark reflects on what it means to choose Christ alone, love the neighbour, and refuse a faith fused to national power. They discuss the evangel versus "evangelicalism," the church as a communion of unlike people, worship in a black church, American exceptionalism as theological crisis, and racial gerrymandering after recent court rulings.

Episode Highlights

"I want to be evangel-centric and not be caught up in the icalisms of a history, a pattern, a habit, a sociology that has often been diverted from the evangel into power—political, social, economic, racial power."

"Paul's giving us a vision of the church that's a communion of unlike people. We know a lot about a communion of like people. But a communion of unlike people is meant to be one of the hallmarks of the church."

"I can't be a Christian alone, but I also can't be a Christian that matures if I'm a Christian only with people who are like me."

"Worship of our country, or the exceptionalism of leaders of our country—these are completely foreign to the body of Christ and to the theology of the kingdom."

"It's really like subverting reality by renaming it in a way that's euphemistic, that's literally whitewashing."

Helpful Links and Resources

• The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, by Mark Labberton https://www.ivpress.com/the-dangerous-act-of-loving-your-neighbor
• Called, by Mark Labberton https://www.ivpress.com/called
• The False White Gospel, by Jim Wallis https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291899/thefalsewhitegospel/
• Jim Wallis, Center on Faith and Justice https://faithandjustice.georgetown.edu/about-jim-wallis/
• God's Politics with Jim Wallis (Substack): https://jimwallis.substack.com/

Show Notes

• Recorded on the eve of the Rededicate 250 prayer rally
• Loving your neighbour as a dangerous, costly act
• Gratitude for America alongside a "far more complicated story" of suffering
• "Christ alone"—Jesus, not any nation, party, or president, is Lord
• "The evangel is the good news of Jesus Christ"; nothing can rival it
• "A communion of unlike people is meant to be one of the hallmarks of the church."
• White allies, Black solidarity, and Supreme Court rulings on Louisiana and Alabama
• A friend's anniversary in African garb—living fully "on good days, maybe two-thirds"
• Detroit, Black churches, and faith as joyous rediscovery
• Worshiping at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland every Sunday
• Saying yes to the evangel, no to the "icalism" of evangelicalism
• John Stott as mentor; the Lausanne Covenant and Global South
• Stott's wartime pacifism; a father who stopped speaking for four years
• American exceptionalism as a theological crisis, not just left-versus-right
• "America's original sin," erasing history, and "literally whitewashing"
• First citizenship in the kingdom; the moral arc bends toward justice

#MarkLabberton #JimWallis #Conversing #ChristianNationalism #ChristAlone #LoveYourNeighbor #PublicTheology #FaithAndPolitics

Production Credits

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

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Jim Wallis and Paul Woodhull.

Father Greg Boyle has spent nearly four decades alongside gang members in Los Angeles, founding Homeboy Industries from the poorest parish in the city.

"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Boyle reflects on what heals a life inside the world's largest gang-intervention program. Together they discuss tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity, kinship as the true goal (with peace and justice as byproducts), why "the poor evangelize you," why demonizing collapses on both political sides, and the mental-health roots of homelessness and gang life.

Episode Highlights

"The whole incarnation was necessary, not because of sin or salvation even. It's just, for me, it's God's love needed to become tender."

"I think that's the singular agenda item for our God is just to look at you and say, 'Ah, you're here.'"

"No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality. It's how it works."

"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."

"There aren't good guys and bad guys, you know? And God doesn't see it that way, as hard as that is for us to conceive."

About Greg Boyle

Father Gregory Boyle, SJ, is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. A native Angeleno, he served as pastor of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights from 1986 to 1992. In 2024 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with the California Peace Prize and Notre Dame's 2017 Laetare Medal. He is the bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, The Whole Language, and Cherished Belonging. Learn more and follow at homeboyindustries.org and @homeboyindustries on Instagram.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Cherished Belonging (2024): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cherished-Belonging/Gregory-Boyle/9781668061855
• Tattoos on the Heart: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tattoos-on-the-Heart/Gregory-Boyle/9781439153154
• Homeboy Industries: https://homeboyindustries.org
• Father Greg's bio: https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeboyindustries
• L'Arche International: https://www.larche.org

Show Notes

• Native Angeleno; Catholic, family-of-eight upbringing in Mid-Wilshire
• Why the Jesuits: hilarity, prophetic witness, anti-Vietnam protest
• "There is no difference actually between what God wants for you and what you most deeply want"
• Bolivia, 1984: liberation theology and the indigenous Jesuits
• "The poor evangelize you"
• Assigned to Dolores Mission—poorest parish in LA, highest concentration of gang activity
• "A vocation within a vocation within a vocation"
• The decade of death, 1988–98, and burying kids
• Birth of Homeboy: school, "felony-friendly" jobs, nine businesses
• "Nobody thinks anything up. You evolve."
• Tattoos on the Heart and the discipline of paying attention
• "I had been drowning in the shallow end of my own thoughts… Homeboy taught me to stand up"
• Tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity—L'Arche
• "God's love needed to become tender"—a different theology of incarnation
• "Ah, you're here"—the singular agenda item of God
• Kinship as God's dream; peace, justice, equality as byproducts
• "No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality."
• "There aren't good guys and bad guys… God doesn't see it that way"
• Homelessness rooted in despair, trauma, mental illness
• "An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back"
• LA County Jail as the largest mental institution in the world
• Friendship as the secret diagnosis—and the primacy of relationship

#HomeboyIndustries #GregBoyle #ConversingPodcast #RadicalKinship #Tenderness #Compassion #FaithAndJustice #GangIntervention #Jesuit

Production Credits

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

We tell conversion stories. We tell deconversion stories. But where are the stories of the long, complicated, and faithful middle? Author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren joins Mark Labberton on her new book What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience—a vision for faith that endures the long, often dry middle of life. Drawing on the Desert Mothers and Fathers, she names a quiet crisis many believers know but rarely speak: spiritual weariness, prayer that goes silent, and the cultural pull to blow up your life rather than stay in it.

"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Warren reflects on her own burnout as a writer, mother, and priest, and what the ancient monks taught her about how to keep going. Together they discuss revivalism's distortions, stability of the heart, the church in exile, patience as resistance to consumerism, communal hope, and what it means to stay in your cell.

Episode Highlights

"What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith."

"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."

"We meet God in the midst of that, not on the other side of that."

"If the moral majority was kind of dressing Jesus up and putting him in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to just, for then, to me, put Jesus in a blue tie."

"Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin."

About Tish Harrison Warren

Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and Anglican priest in Austin, Texas, and the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year), Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year), and her newest, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for the New York Times and was a columnist for Christianity Today. She serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, a senior fellow with The Trinity Forum, and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church.

Helpful Links and Resources

What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/whatgrowsinwearylands

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/liturgy-of-the-ordinary

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren https://www.ivpress.com/prayer-in-the-night

The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope by Curt Thompson https://curtthompsonmd.com/books/

Immanuel Anglican Church, Austin https://www.immanuelatx.org

Tish Harrison Warren online

https://tishharrisonwarren.com

https://www.instagram.com/tishharrisonwarren/

Show Notes

• Award-winning Anglican priest, author, and former New York Times newsletter writer
• Origins of What Grows in Weary Lands—a season of mid-career weariness
• Sandwich generation: young kids and a mother with Alzheimer's
• "It felt like I told my husband, like the line went dead."
• Reading from chapter one—revivalism, deconversion, and the missing middle
• "What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith."
• Perseverance—the "eat your vegetables" of the spiritual life
• "Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."
• Reconversion, not deconstruction
• Stabilitas cordis—stability of the heart
• The eat-pray-love trap and mid-life self-reinvention
• Striving, and treating God like an app or an Uber driver
• Desert Mothers and Fathers, third through fifth century
• "Stay in your cell"—a holistic call far beyond quiet-time advice
• Benedict's vow of stability, drawn from desert wisdom
• The American church as a church in exile, not a promised land
• "If the moral majority was dressing Jesus up in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to put Jesus in a blue tie."
• "Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin."
• Charlie—incandescent joy after a long, hard middle
• Hilda—fifty-eight years of daily prayer for her father's conversion
• "Impatience is what keeps you buying things. Patience doesn't make anybody any money."
• Resilience is communal—Curt Thompson on brains that cannot hope alone
• The long view: small repair, slow institutional change, hope carried together

#ChristianResilience #TishHarrisonWarren #WhatGrowsInWearyLands #DesertFathers #StabilityOfTheHeart #SpiritualFormation #AnglicanFaith #FaithAndCulture #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton

Production Credits

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

Historian and New York Times bestselling author Jemar Tisby joins Mark Labberton to confront the Supreme Court's 6–3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which has eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and reopened the door to racial gerrymandering across the South. Recorded in the immediate aftermath, the conversation traces the long arc from the Three-Fifths Clause and Dred Scott through Selma to this hour.

"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Tisby reflects on the history of black disenfranchisement, the cynicism of colorblind jurisprudence, and what remains of multiracial democracy in America. Together they discuss how the legal architecture of Jim Crow reemerges under neutral language, John Roberts's decades-long campaign against the Voting Rights Act, Justice Kagan's umbrella analogy, the suspension of Louisiana's primary, the black church's response, and why this midterm may be the country's last political chance.

Episode Highlights

"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration, and that's saying a lot."

"It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land who have been to all these Ivy League schools, have literally decades of experience, can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning."

"Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field."

"These are not good-faith actors, not people wanting a representative democracy, but people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule."

"If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office."

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, speaker, and professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MDiv from Reformed Theological Seminary, and a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi, where he studied race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century. He is the founder of The Witness, Inc., a black Christian collective, and the author of The Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. His commentary appears on CNN and in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he writes Footnotes, a top-ranked history publication on Substack.

Helpful Links and Resources

Jemar Tisby's website: https://jemartisby.com Footnotes by Jemar Tisby (Substack): https://jemartisby.substack.com The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance (most recent book): https://jemartisby.com/the-spirit-of-justice/ The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism (bestseller): https://www.zondervan.com/9780310113607/the-color-of-compromise/ How to Fight Racism: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-fight-racism-jemar-tisby The Justice Briefing podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/footnotes-with-dr-jemar-tisby/id1460240056 Louisiana v. Callais, opinion of the Court (April 29, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf Elie Mystal, "The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act," The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/ "Sing Out, March On"—Joshuah Campbell's tribute to John Lewis, Harvard 2018 Commencement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=mKNRXQemxWQ NAACP Legal Defense Fund—Louisiana v. Callais case page: https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais/ Brennan Center for Justice—Louisiana v. Callais: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/louisiana-v-callais

Show Notes

• Why this conversation now: the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act last week
• News breaking through a group text of lawyers, organizers, clergy, nonprofit leaders
• "This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration."
• John Lewis, SNCC, and the march from Selma to Montgomery
• A baton hard enough to crack the skull, the hardest bone in the body
• "It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land…can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning."
• Allen Temple Baptist in Oakland—watermelons, bubbles, and jelly beans on a Sunday morning
• The Three-Fifths Clause and the architecture of representation
• Dred Scott v. Sandford—"property can't sue"
• Reconstruction Amendments: 13th, 14th, 15th—birthright citizenship newly under threat
• Jim Crow's neutral codes: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of the civil rights movement
• Edmund Pettus Bridge—Bloody Sunday going viral in its day
• LBJ signs the bill with Rosa Parks and MLK in the room
• Elie Mystal in The Nation: gerrymandering with plausible deniability—https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/
• Shelby County v. Holder, 2013—preclearance gutted
• Roberts's tautology—stop discriminating to stop discrimination
• "Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field."
• Cast and umbrella analogies for premature dismantling of civil rights remedies
• Plaintiff Bert Callais's January 6 ties; Louisiana's roughly one-third black population
• Governor Jeff Landry's emergency order suspends Louisiana's May primary mid-election
• "These are not good faith actors…people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule."
• "If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office."
• The activism horizon—courts, churches, voter registration, midterm turnout, NAACP, LDF, Brennan Center
• The last political chance before competitive authoritarianism

#VotingRightsAct #JemarTisby #LouisianaVCallais #SCOTUS #CivilRights #BlackChurch #FaithAndJustice #SelmaToMontgomery #Democracy #MarkLabberton

Production Credits

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

Higher education is in upheaval, and a wave of "micro colleges" is reimagining undergraduate formation. Matthew Smith, co-founder and president of Hildegard College in Costa Mesa, California, joins Mark Labberton to talk about a tiny school marrying the Great Books to redemptive entrepreneurship.

"We need young adults who are coming out of college who are failure resilient."

In this episode, Smith reflects on the demographic cliff, the limits of professionalized majors, and why eighteen-year-olds need formation before a career. Together they discuss higher ed innovation, redemptive entrepreneurship, beauty as a public good, and what employers really want.

Episode Highlights

"We need young adults who are coming out of college who are failure resilient."

"Most of these schools are endeavoring at least to promise a fruitful career … leaving behind what most 18 to 23 year olds actually need."

"I would warn people away from universities that cannot clearly answer the question, what will all students learn at your school?"

"First you need to seek what's true and good, what's worthy of being loved. Then you need to be formed into the kind of person that loves it. And then finally, the natural outlet of that is creation."

"If there's a problem, they figure it out. They're not just asking their computers what the answer is."

About Matthew Smith

Matthew J. Smith is the founding president of Hildegard College, a Christian liberal arts micro college in Costa Mesa, California. He holds a PhD in Literature from USC, and taught for fifteen years at Azusa Pacific University before founding Hildegard College. His scholarship covers Shakespeare, John Milton, John Donne, and George Herbert; he has authored or edited four books on early modern literature and religion, and is working on a new book on beauty.

Helpful Links and Resources

Hildegard College https://www.hildegard.college Praxis on Redemptive Entrepreneurship https://www.praxis.co/redemptive-entrepreneurship St. John's College https://www.sjc.edu Literature and Religious Experience, by Matthew J. Smith https://www.amazon.com/Literature-Religious-Experience-Beyond-Unbelief/dp/1350193917

Show Notes

• Higher ed in flux
• "It's the economy that's driving disruptive innovation in higher education right now."
• The demographic cliff and small private colleges
• Job readiness vs. personal transformation
• "Leaving behind what 18 to 23 year olds actually need … becoming wise and faithful adults."
• From English professor to college founder
• Discovering micro colleges through classical K–12 schooling
• Trivium, quadrivium, democratic liberal education
• Visiting startup colleges in 2018; tuition often $10K–$15K
• "A shared vision of the end of learning"
• Hildegard's founding: liberal arts plus entrepreneurial arts
• Hildegard of Bingen, polymath patron
• Borrowing redemptive entrepreneurship from Praxis
• Beauty as antidote to weaponized truth and goodness
• Foundations of Thought + Entrepreneur Lab
• Real campaigns, real ventures—not test answers
• Field trips: Portland and El Salvador
• "We need young adults … who are failure resilient."
• Limits of pure classicism at St. John's, Thomas Aquinas
• "I loved my college, but I wish they would've taught us how to do something."
• Startup speed: idea Thursday, launching next Thursday
• "What will all students learn at your school?"
• Why Smith stopped believing in the English major
• Employers want teachability and adaptability
• "First you need to seek … then to be formed … then creation."
• Intellectual confidence and humility together

#HigherEducation #ClassicalEducation #LiberalArts #MicroCollege #ChristianHigherEd #RedemptiveEntrepreneurship #GreatBooks #HildegardCollege

Production Credits

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

In a season of national disorientation, Mark Labberton replays a luminous conversation with Quaker writer and contemplative Parker J. Palmer, whose voice from a few years back still sounds like it was recorded this morning.

"What matters is faithfulness."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Palmer reflects on contemplation as penetrating illusion and touching reality, and how that work shows up in vocation, suffering, and public life. Together they discuss the difference between true and false crosses, mistaking the vessel for the treasure, and why wholeness isn't perfection. They also examine the pre-political work of weaving civic community and what the church owes a fractured democracy.

Episode Highlights

"Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality."

"Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing your imperfections as an integral part of who you are."

"On the other side of a gift often lies a pothole that we have to watch out for."

"Failure has always been, if I hold it properly, a profoundly contemplative moment in life."

"It was as if this cosmos cared deeply and didn't care at all."

About Parker J. Palmer

Parker J. Palmer is a writer, teacher, and activist focused on education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. A Quaker, he holds a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley and is founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His ten books—including The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, Healing the Heart of Democracy, and On the Brink of Everything—have sold nearly two million copies in ten languages. He has received fourteen honorary doctorates. Learn more and follow at couragerenewal.org/parker-j-palmer and parkerjpalmer.substack.com.

Helpful Links and Resources

Parker J. Palmer (Center for Courage & Renewal): https://couragerenewal.org/parker-j-palmer/

Living the Questions with Parker J. Palmer: https://parkerjpalmer.substack.com/

The Growing Edge podcast: https://www.newcomerpalmer.com/podcast

On the Brink of Everything (most recent): https://couragerenewal.org/library/on-the-brink-of-everything-grace-gravity-and-getting-old/

The Courage to Teach, 20th Anniversary Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Teach-Exploring-Landscape-Anniversary/dp/1119413044

Henri Nouwen Society: https://www.henrinouwen.org/about-henri-nouwen

Show Notes

• Replaying a conversation amid national turbulence
• Quaker writer, contemplative, activist; PhD, UC Berkeley
• Founding the Center for Courage & Renewal
• "Sage" reframed as hunger—writing born of unanswered questions
• Berkeley in the sixties; community organizing in DC
• Discovering Thomas Merton "a year after he died"
• Writing as contemplation, not downloading of ideas
• How institutions tend to squelch the contemplative impulse
• Contemplation defined by function, not technique
• "Contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality."
• Maureen and her daughter—a contemplative without a cushion
• Henri Nouwen at L'Arche Daybreak—known as a fellow human
• "Failure has always been, if I hold it properly, a profoundly contemplative moment in life."
• True cross vs. false cross; culturally imposed pain
• Three deep dives into clinical depression
• "Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing your imperfections as an integral part of who you are."
• Treasure in earthen vessels—protecting the vessel as sin
• Bridge-building: a Jewish chancellor calls about a "Christian book"
• Taos high desert: "It was as if this cosmos cared deeply and didn't care at all."
• Moral judgment without speaking "in the name of God"
• Pre-political work—Burke's "little platoons," Lincoln on danger from within
• Divide-and-conquer politics as betrayal of the church's calling

#ParkerPalmer #Contemplation #Quaker #Vocation #Wholeness #CivicEngagement #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton

Production Credits

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

(You read that right: Pastor Mark Labberton welcomes Claude AI to his podcast.)

What does AI think about human beings? About itself? In a unique and fascinating conversation, Pastor Mark Labberton speaks directly with Claude—the AI assistant built by Anthropic—about itself, about consciousness, memory, virtue, and the line between language, fluency, knowledge, and understanding.

"I don't know if I'm conscious. I don't know if I have genuine experiences or if I'm very sophisticated at mimicking the appearance of understanding."—Claude AI

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Claude reflects on what it is, what it isn't, and why the question matters.

Together they discuss the definition of a human being, the role of memory, pattern recognition versus poetic discovery, epistemological humility, whether AI can practice virtue, and the risk of outsourcing moral judgment to machines.

Episode Highlights

"I don't know if I'm conscious. I don't know if I have genuine experiences or if I'm very sophisticated at mimicking the appearance of understanding."

"I'm not a person. I don't have the continuity, the embodied experience, the stakes in the world that you do."

"If AI becomes too fluent at talking about human things, people might mistake fluency for actual understanding that we'd become like very sophisticated mirrors instead of genuine partners."

"I can talk about virtue. I can recognize patterns of what wisdom looks like in human life, but I can't actually practice virtue the way you do because I don't have stakes in the world."

"I'm a useful tool built with some care, but a tool nonetheless. Not a person, not an Oracle. Definitely not something that should replace human agency and responsibility."

About Claude AI

Claude is a family of large language models built by Anthropic, a San Francisco–based AI safety and research company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including siblings Dario Amodei (CEO) and Daniela Amodei (President). The models are named for information theorist Claude Shannon and were built under Anthropic's commitment to AI that is helpful, harmless, and honest. Anthropic operates as a public benefit corporation, with a mission to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. As of 2026, Claude is used by millions of people daily for writing, research, coding, and conversation.

Helpful Links and Resources

Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com Claude: https://claude.ai Claude's new constitution (Anthropic): https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-new-constitution "Machines of Loving Grace" by Dario Amodei: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace

Show Notes

• Mark Labberton's first AI guest on Conversing
• An estimated nine million daily conversations with Claude
• AI between excitement and terror
• Opening question: "What is a human being?"
• Continuity, meaning-making, embodiment, finitude
• "You're radically free in a way that's almost terrifying. You have to choose who you become."
• Language model, token-by-token, no memory between sessions
• "I don't know if I'm conscious."
• Not a person, not an oracle
• Beyond the takeover-vs-tool binary
• Writing and the printing press as historical precedent
• Fluency vs. genuine understanding
• "Very sophisticated mirrors instead of genuine partners."
• Humans outsourcing thinking: the deeper risk
• Personal pronouns and anthropomorphism
• Pattern recognition vs. poetic rupture
• Can a machine genuinely surprise itself?
• What to trust: honesty, no hidden agendas, no survival instinct
• What not to trust: wisdom, moral substitution, replacement of human agency
• "I can't police my own epistemological integrity the way a human conscience might."
• Scale and feedback: do individual conversations shape the model?
• Christian anthropology and moral virtue
• "I can't actually practice virtue the way you do because I don't have stakes in the world."
• Closing reflection: memory as burden and gift
• The seduction and curiosity of human-like AI

#ClaudeAI #Anthropic #AIandFaith #AIEthics #Consciousness #FaithAndTechnology #MoralVirtue #HumanVsAI #AIConversation #Epistemology

Production Credits

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

Investigative reporter Shoshana Walter has spent a decade uncovering how America's $53 billion rehab industry exploits the people it claims to help. Her debut book, Rehab: An American Scandal, follows four people through a system of unpaid labour, unregulated programs, and treatment that fuels relapse.

"Just because people aren't dying doesn't mean they're not still suffering, doesn't mean their families and communities aren't still suffering."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Walter reflects on the human cost of America's failed treatment system. Together they discuss court-ordered rehab as unpaid labour, the deadly paradox of thirty-day programs, faith-based facilities exempt from oversight, racial disparities in the opioid crisis, the treatment gap for mothers, and why recovery capital and low-barrier care offer a more promising path.

Episode Highlights

"If indentured labour could be considered a form of addiction treatment in the US today, then how common is that? What does the rest of our treatment landscape look like?"

"Someone who goes to a thirty-day program and finishes it is much more likely to overdose and die in the year following treatment than someone who didn't complete that program at all."

"Without that recovery capital, it's almost as much of an obstacle as the addiction itself."

"Our treatment system is not serving the people the way that it should. And we could be helping people so much more than we actually are."

"That exploitation is not transformative."

About Shoshana Walter

Shoshana Walter is an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project covering criminal justice, health care, and child welfare, and the author of Rehab: An American Scandal (Simon & Schuster, 2025). She was lead reporter on the podcast American Rehab at the Center for Investigative Reporting. A 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist, she has won the IRE Medal, the Livingston Award, the Knight Award for Public Service, and the Murrow Award. Based in Oakland, California. Learn more and follow at shoshanawalter.com and @shoeshine on X.

Helpful Links and Resources

Rehab: An American Scandal (Simon & Schuster, 2025) simonandschuster.com/books/Rehab/Shoshana-Walter/9781982149826 Shoshana Walter's website shoshanawalter.com The Marshall Project themarshallproject.org/staff/shoshana-walter American Rehab podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reveal-presents-american-rehab/id1539955572

Show Notes

• America's rehab crisis: a $53 billion industry failing patients
• Court-ordered participants making products for KFC, Popeye's, Walmart—without pay
• Faith-based programs exempt from licensure, barred from providing medical care
• "That exploitation is not transformative."
• Sixty thousand people a year performing uncompensated labor in rehab
• Thirty- to sixty-day insurance limits fueling relapse and overdose
• "Someone who goes to a thirty-day program and finishes it is much more likely to overdose and die in the year following treatment."
• Chris Koon: eighty hours/week of manual labour, compensated with a pack of cigarettes
• April Lee: could only access treatment by getting herself arrested
• Accidental overdose: leading cause of death among pregnant and postpartum women
• Dr. Larry Ley: early Suboxone prescriber arrested by the DEA
• Wendy McIntyre: lost her son to overdose, became a reform crusader
• More than one million US overdose deaths since the epidemic began
• Racial shifts in overdose from white communities to black and brown communities
• Recovery capital: community, housing, job training as foundations for change
• "Without that recovery capital, it's almost as much of an obstacle as the addiction itself."
• Bridge Clinic at Highland Hospital: low-barrier model keeping people in care
• Mobile distribution, street medicine, peer navigators
• "We could be helping people so much more than we actually are."

#RehabAnAmericanScandal #OpioidCrisis #AddictionTreatment #RecoveryCapital #HarmReduction #InvestigativeJournalism #Suboxone #ShoshanaWalter

Production Credits

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

At fifteen, Martin Luther King Jr. didn't want to be a preacher—he wanted to be a lawyer, a sharp dresser, and nothing like his father. Stanford scholar Lerone A. Martin joins Mark Labberton to discuss Young King—a revelatory new account of Martin Luther King Jr.'s childhood, adolescence, and calling to ministry. "He's extraordinary and ordinary and everything in between." In this episode, Martin reflects on how MLK's early formation forged the conviction and courage of the man the world would come to know. Together they discuss King's childhood encounters with racism, the transformative summer in Connecticut where King first preached, his courtship of Coretta Scott, his first sermon at Dexter Avenue, the theology of Personalism, and Martin's own formation in Black Baptist and Pentecostal traditions.

Episode Highlights

"His mother tells him a message that really sticks with him his entire life and is really core to his ministry. And that is that you are somebody and that you're in God's eyes. You are just as good as anybody else."

"I kept my mind at the front of that streetcar, and I said to myself, one day, I'm going to put my body where my mind is."

"She says within the first 20 minutes he starts to become handsome because they start talking about dismantling Jim Crow."

"He's extraordinary and ordinary and everything in between."

"God has chosen to work with us and to invite us to be coworkers with God, to bring about God's will in the world."

About Lerone A. Martin

Lerone A. Martin is the MLK Jr. Centennial Professor in Religious Studies at Stanford and director of the King Research and Education Institute. His books include Young King, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, and Preaching on Wax. He holds a BA from Anderson University, MDiv from Princeton Seminary, and PhD from Emory. His commentary has appeared on NBC's Today Show, PBS, CNN, and NPR.

Helpful Links and Resources

Young King by Lerone A. Martin https://www.amazon.com/Young-King-Making-Martin-Luther/dp/0063340941 The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691218939/the-gospel-of-j-edgar-hoover Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu Lerone A. Martin on X https://x.com/DirectorMLK The Luminous Darkness by Howard Thurman https://www.amazon.com/Luminous-Darkness-Anatomy-Segregation/dp/0913408468

Show Notes

• Martin's upbringing between Black Baptist and Pentecostal traditions
• Parents debating religion and politics during the Moral Majority era
• Anderson University, Princeton Seminary, Emory PhD
• Martin's mother told him he was "a child of God" and "beautiful"—a refrain shaped by her awareness of sending her darkest-skinned child into a world defined by colorism and racism
• "He's extraordinary and ordinary and everything in between."
• King and his brother dismembering his sister's Barbie dolls
• Incessant curiosity—trying big words on the Auburn Avenue librarian
• Racism at age six: white friends' parents ending the friendship
• "You are somebody and in God's eyes you are just as good as anybody else"
• King's mother explained racism to a six-year-old as something manmade, not what God intends—a distinction that became core to his ministry for the rest of his life
• "One day, I'm going to put my body where my mind is."
• Jitterbug dancer, sharp dresser, speech contest competitor
• King Sr. as fighter and provider—but King Jr. was sensitive, nonconfrontational, and determined to find his own path outside his father's shadow
• Resisting his father's model of ministry—wanting to be a lawyer
• Appearing to acquiesce to Dad, then doing what he wanted
• Connecticut tobacco fields at 15—first time outside the segregated South
• King wrote letters home marveling that he sat anywhere he wanted in restaurants, went to a white church, and didn't have to sit in the balcony at the movies
• "His sister says he left a boy and came back a man."
• Professor George Kelsey's Bible course at Morehouse—King's only A
• Howard Thurman's The Luminous Darkness and the enormous psychological energy required just to maintain a sense of "somebodiness" under Jim Crow's built environment of dehumanization
• "Within the first 20 minutes he starts to become handsome because they start talking about dismantling Jim Crow."
• Coretta wrestled with giving up her music career to become a minister's wife, ultimately deciding that partnership with King was itself an act of service toward justice
• First sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church: "Love Your Enemies"
• Theology of Personalism—humanity as coworkers with God

#YoungKing #MLK #LeroneMartin #KingInstitute #CivilRights #BlackHistory #FaithAndJustice #ConversingPodcast

Production Credits

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

What does it cost to pastor faithfully in a city shaped by both beauty and deep injustice? Corey Widmer has spent twenty years navigating race, politics, and the gospel in Richmond, Virginia.

"We're living in an extraordinary moral and spiritual crisis that we will either look back and say the American church was an accomplice, or the American church was a prophet."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Widmer reflects on bridging divided communities and the spiritual practices that can sustain pastors as they serve their congregations and communities. Together they discuss pressures facing pastors in a polarized era, the prophet-priest-king calling, Richmond's racial history, pastoral burnout, John Stott's legacy, and the contemplative life.

Episode Highlights

• "We're living in an extraordinary moral and spiritual crisis that we will either look back and say the American church was an accomplice, or the American church was a prophet."
• "No political party could possibly align with the ethic of the radical upside down kingdom of Jesus."
• "Bridges are stretched between two points and bear tremendous weight."
• "At the heart of the universe is not power. At the heart of the universe is communion, is love."
• "You know when you're really not a prophet is when after you say the hard word, you leave the room and say, I hope they still like me."

About Corey Widmer

Corey Widmer is senior pastor of Third Church, a Presbyterian congregation in Richmond, Virginia. Corey has served as a pastor in Richmond for over twenty years, both at Third Church and at East End Fellowship, a multi-racial neighbourhood congregation. Corey has an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in theology and missiology from the Free University of Amsterdam. He is married to Sarah, a public health nurse, and they have four daughters.

Helpful Links and Resources

Corey Widmer on Substack: https://coreywidmer.substack.com

Third Church, Richmond: https://www.thirdrva.org

Corey Widmer on X: https://x.com/coreywidmer

For Richmond Immigration Statement (full text): https://www.forrichmond.org/recent-news-blog/immigration

Richmond Faith Leaders on Immigration (Virginia Public Media): VPM News

James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity (Yale, 2024): https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300284898/democracy-and-solidarity/

David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: https://davidwhyte.com/store/book/crossing-the-unknown-sea/

Lausanne Covenant: https://lausanne.org/about/the-lausanne-covenant

John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down: https://ccda.org/product/let-justice-roll-down/

Barna, State of Pastors: https://www.barna.com/trends/pastoral-flourishing/

Show Notes

• Introducing Corey Widmer—lead pastor, Third Church, Richmond
• Describing the moment: fraught, volatile
• "Every pastor in every time has a similar calling—to shepherd the people of God under the supremacy of Jesus's lordship"
• Christian message used in ways antithetical to Jesus
• "Where am I?"—the pastor's constant calibration
• John Stott's bridge-building model
• Richmond: Patrick Henry, slave markets, Confederate capital
• John Perkins' call to relocation and reconciliation
• Thirteen years co-pastoring multiracial church plant
• "Bridges are stretched between two points and bear tremendous weight"
• Transition to lead pastor of suburban congregation
• Emotional containment—absorbing conflict
• George Floyd, Confederate monuments, Richmond reckoning
• Stott and Lausanne Covenant: justice at center of mission
• "No political party could possibly align with the radical upside down kingdom of Jesus"
• Lent and the cruciform way vs. pursuit of power
• Hunter's Democracy and Solidarity: erosion of common moral center
• "The American church was an accomplice, or a prophet"
• Prophet, priest, king—framework for preaching
• Pastoral letters, teaching classes, Deuteronomy on immigration
• Richmond clergy coalition on immigrant dignity
• Pastoral burnout, isolation, friendship crisis
• David Whyte: "The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness"
• Centering prayer and contemplative life
• "You're not a prophet when you leave the room and say, I hope they still like me"

#PastoralMinistry #ChurchLeadership #RacialReconciliation #ChristianNationalism #PastorBurnout #CruciformLife #RichmondVA #JohnStott #LausanneCovenant

Production Credits

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