“Sometimes I’m not sure even believers understand the power that exists in their sheer humanity. That there really is something that God has placed on the inside of us that when we come to some form of collected agreement—not uniformity, but just some kind of collective unity around something—that really wonderful, great, powerful things can happen.” (Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson)

Growing up in Oakland, California, Jackie Thompson didn’t know that sociologists were referring to her neighbourhood as “The Killing Zone”—a part of the city with the highest concentration of homicides. Now, as senior pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson continues to serve the Oakland community throughout its ups and downs, offering a Jesus-centred vision of justice and hope, present to the pain and suffering of the city.

In this episode Thompson joins Mark Labberton for a discussion of her local pastoral ministry in Oakland, California. Together they discuss Jackie’s life and experience as a one of the first women to be appointed senior pastor in a black Baptist church; her college experience at UC Berkeley; what it means to respond to the call of social justice and biblical faith; the blessings and challenges of pastoring a large black church in Oakland; how to centre local ministry on the pain and suffering of a community; the temptation of power; the political season and candidacy of Kamala Harris; and how to “fight for a vision of the kingdom of God where there is enough for everybody.”

About Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson

Described as a transformational preacher, dynamic leader and ministry trailblazer, Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson is an inspiring example of what God can do with a life committed to the call. She currently serves as the beloved senior pastor of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in her native Oakland, California. Her 2019 election made history nationwide as the first woman called to serve as senior pastor of this historic African American Baptist Church founded in 1919. Before being called in this capacity, Thompson served as the assistant pastor at Allen Temple and as youth minister at Shiloh Baptist Church of Washington, DC, the first woman to serve in both capacities.

Committed to excellence in scholarship, Thompson received her bachelor of arts in political economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master of divinity from Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. While at Howard, she received the Nannie Helen Burroughs Award for Academic Excellence and the Henry G. Maynard Award for Excellence in Preaching and Ministry. Believing in the importance of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, Thompson continued her studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where she was awarded the doctor of ministry degree in African American church leadership.

She is a member of the NAACP and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Her activism and leadership have been recognized by various chapters honouring her with the Community Excellence Award and as Distinguished Woman of the Year. Among other honours, Thompson has been inducted into the distinguished Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers.

Thompson is a gifted preacher, administrator, and published author travelling and ministering extensively nationally and internationally, often in arenas previously unchartered by women. In addition, she has been called on by local and national print and electronic media as an opinion leader to offer perspective and hope amid the pressing issues of the day. She is currently on the teaching staff of the Berkeley School of Theology in the area of public theology and preaching.

Her mission is to see transformation in the lives of others and is humbled by every opportunity to serve.

Show Notes

• Learn more about Allen Temple Baptist Church: https://www.allen-temple.org/
• Growing up in “The Killing Zone” in Oakland, CA
• “There was a really big difference in how we look at something and describe it and how the people who experienced it describe it themselves.”
• “At twelve years old, we started visiting all kinds of churches in Oakland, right? So I've been to every church just about storefront, larger church, every one.”
• The experience of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland
• Matthew 28:18–20
• Dr. J. Alfred Smith—one of the most beloved heralded African American pastors in the United States
• Restlessness
• Youth ministry in Oakland
• Social justice and biblical faith
• The power of a pastor: “I miss your voice in the choir!”
• Choir for young adults
• The ministry of Dr. J. Alfred Smith—”God was absolutely central and primary, and the point of action that held everything together. And then you had this galaxy of every kind of life experience that was being represented, talked about, honoured, celebrated from children to all, all generations and ages, but also women.”
• “Pastoring was never something I wanted to do. … But what happened was life.”
• “She’s a very dignified, prideful black mom. … And she said, ‘I don’t recognize you before.’”
• Trailblazing as the first female assistant pastor of a major black baptist church
• An imaginative tour of Oakland
• Oakland is a tale of two cities—the hills and the flatlands
• Shifting the narrative about Oakland, violence, justice, and power.
• “I believe part of our responsibility, particularly at Allen Temple, but not just Allen Temple, as people of faith, as people who say that we are followers of the way and that we believe in Jesus—that we call power structures to account.”
• “Fight for a vision of the kingdom of God where there is enough for everybody.”
• Walter Brueggemann: “The numbness that can come with royal consciousness”
• Remaining connected to the epicentre of people’s pain
• Joshua crossing the Jordan: twelve stones to build a memorial
• Good Samaritan on the Jericho road
• The history of Oakland’s ups and downs
• Washington, DC, and the power centre of the world
• “There are no permanent friends. There are no permanent enemies. They’re just permanent interests. … What that taught me is that the players around the table will change. As long as the interest in the centre of the table stays the same, it does not matter how the players change.”
• Oakland as microcosm for other urban cities
• “The temptation is always power.”
• “I try and keep the centre of the cross with the vertical and the horizontal meet before the eyes of the people in a way that they can see it, that they can grab hold to it, and they can decide how that, that’s how will they, they centre and position themselves in there for the cause of the kingdom.”
• “What is the burden that you feel like you're primarily carrying?”
• “Sometimes I’m not sure even believers understand the power that exists in their sheer humanity. That there really is something that God has placed on the inside of us that when we come to some form of collected agreement—not uniformity, but just some kind of collective unity around something—that really wonderful, great, powerful things can happen.”
• Comparing Obama’s nomination to Kamala’s nomination
• Focusing on the needs of the people
• Thompson’s preaching as centring the pain on a deeper centre of Jesus Christ

Production Credits

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

When it comes to voting, how should we balance character and policy?

“If I'm voting for a politician,” journalist David French suggests, “I have a test. One is: Do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they’re seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two: Do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies?”

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes journalist David French (opinion columnist for the New York Times; formerly The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and National Review) for a discussion of character, policy, and principles for faithful, virtuous engagement in polarized American politics.

French’s commitment to Christian faith, moral character, and reasoned policy has emerged from his experience as a former commercial lawyer, military lawyer, and former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. A political conservative, French has throughout his career been an advocate for First Amendment rights, pro-life individuals and organizations, and the ideals of democracy. He describes himself as “an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy.”

Together, Mark and David discuss his Christian upbringing; his personal partisan commitments; the importance of character in party politics; the importance of nuanced and reasoned policy; why he’s voting for Kamala Harris in order to save conservative politics; two Bible verses for this election season; how to respond to our culture of fear; and how to secure a more courageous, loving, and humble politics.

About David French

David French is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, and previously wrote for The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and National Review. He is a New York Times bestselling author of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.

He describes himself as “an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy.”

He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and a former lecturer at Cornell Law School. He has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom. David is a former major in the United States Army Reserve. In 2007, he deployed to Iraq, serving in Diyala Province as Squadron Judge Advocate for the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, where he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Show Notes

• Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
• “I was a First Amendment litigator with a writing hobby.”
• Background in the Acapella Churches of Christ: a Restoration Movement from the early-19th century
• “It turned into something kind of separatist, sectarian, and ferociously legalistic.”
• “I grew up with a real grounding. grounding and reading the Bible, which actually, ironically enough, was the seed of me leaving the church of Christ.”
• “I was a Cold War conservative and a conservative Christian. And they were related, but not, but they weren't inextricably tied together. So for me, my, you know, ideology was downstream of my faith, but I didn't think that my ideology was the inevitable result of my faith.”
• Pro-Life Activism
• Representing pro-life individuals
• Existential clash: the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States
• Why David French is voting for Kamala Harris in order to save conservative politics
• “My party loyalty has always been related to two things. One is the ideology of the party and the other one is the character of the party. And the party leaders and the people that I vote for, I've always had a character test and an ideological test.”
• Bad character and bad policy—”why would I be attached to that? There’s no claim on my loyalty there.”
• The importance of character
• “If the conservative perspective that I have wants to have any purchase in American politics, MAGA has to lose. Donald Trump has to lose.”
• Federalism: a practical understanding that smaller government is better.
• Republican Party increasingly embracing a pro-choice platform
• “If you're going to have a healthy two party system, the distinctions should be around good people of high character approaching policy solutions from different perspectives.”
• “One of these parties has sort of left the norms of American. political engagement.”
• “I voted for Mitt Romney more than Mitt Romney's probably voted for Mitt Romney.”
• “If I'm voting for a politician, I have a test. One is: Do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they're seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two: Do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies?”
• “I have very little patience for those people who say I'm somehow not a Christian for voting for a pro-choice candidate. When they're voting for a pro-choice candidate who's been adjudicated a sex abuser, that is difficult for me to discern how that is a more Christian stance.”
• Clear, independent thinker
• Logical reasoning and courageous statements
• A living faith by which we think through ideas
• “There's a fine line between stubbornness and courage.”
• “In these last 10 years, I've really had to ask myself: Who are you really?”
• David French’s parents’ example of faith and virtue
• Learning from World War I and World War II history
• “Some of the worst things that have happened in American history have happened because people didn't want to do hard things.”
• “I think the sanctification process, though, is difficult. It means that you're being exposed to constantly your own sin is being exposed to yourself.”
• Mark asks: “What do you want Christian people, thoughtful, committed, curious, uncertain, tenuous Christian people to, to do between now and the election?”
• 2 Timothy 1:7—“God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of sound mind.”
• Micah 6:8—”What does the Lord require of you, O man? What is good? To act justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before the Lord your God.”
• Ideological diversity: be curious, seek disagreement
• “If you just show affection for people and curiosity towards their views, anger tends to drain out of a room.”
• “College students are full of anxiety about conflict.”
• “Fear not.”
• The A Team—arming up for battle
• “And they find out that a lot of these folks that they were taught were going to be their enemies are actually just super kind, normal folks.”
• “They're equipping them to fight, not to love their neighbor, fight their neighbor, not love their neighbor.”
• Mark asks: “What handles would you give people in living in a fear dominated moment in American history?”
• “In receiving anger and fear, do not try to build up a bulletproof thick skin. … Because you know what that does? It often walls you off from legitimate criticism.”
• Thick skin, soft heart.
• “An enormous amount of fear is rooted in a sense—a feeling—of non-belonging and loneliness. Isolation and loneliness.”
• “People who are more isolated and alone are drawn to these authoritarian movements.”
• “Ease the loneliness, build the connection. … Lean into relationship and presence.”
• “It was just stunning to me that, against all evidence of scripture, Christians were consigning people to eternal damnation over a vote in a presidential election.”
• Miles Law: “Where we stand is based on where we sit.”
• Kindness, humility, not living a fear-based angry life
• “If you're in a community where the fruit of the spirit dominate, you can withstand a lot of disagreement.”

Production Credits

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

“It’s sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.” (Elizabeth Bruenig, from the episode)

Despite sin, there remains an inherent beauty and goodness throughout creation … including humanity.

And even in the most divisive circumstances, when we appeal to the beauty and horror in our shared human condition, we might be able to find common ground for mutual understanding and collaboration. And sometimes, in the best circumstances, we might even find a beautiful and life-giving encounter with the other.

In this episode, celebrated journalist and self-described “avid partisan of humankind” Elizabeth Bruenig (staff writer for The Atlantic, and formerly the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Republic) joins Mark Labberton to talk about journalism, her journey toward Catholicism, the complex moral and emotional lives of human beings, capital punishment and violence, and the prospects for introducing beauty into polarized politics and horrifying evil.

About Elizabeth Bruenig

Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was previously an opinion writer for the New York Times and the Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. She has also been a staff writer at The New Republic and a contributor to the Left, Right & Center radio show. She currently hosts a podcast, The Bruenigs, with her husband, Matt Bruenig. Elizabeth holds a master of philosophy in Christian theology from the University of Cambridge. At The Atlantic, she writes about theology and politics.

Show Notes

• Elizabeth Bruenig shares about her religious and philosophical background
• Bruenig shares about her journey toward Roman Catholicism
• The Eucharist and embodied experience of God
• The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist
• “I don't need to be studying and getting degrees, I need to just be living my life radically as a Christian.”
• Journalism, paying attention, and compassionate
• “I'm very interested in people and people's moral lives. Things like honor and shame, guilt—you know, very complex emotions—interest me a lot, and I think everyone has them all the time. People have these spiritual, ethical, moral struggles going on inside them. And so everybody is a little universe unto themselves.”
• What it means to be a Staff Writer
• Journalism with narrative, story, opinions, and arguments
• “I have found that to be a very successful way of garnering stories. It's just to listen to people.”
• “The first execution I ever witnessed, I witnessed for the New York Times, it was during Trump's spree of federal executions. I think they executed something like 13 people in six months, really unprecedented. I wanted to report on that.”
• Media witnesses as
• The Executions of Alfred Bourgeois, David Neal Cox, James Barber, Kenny Smith, and Alan Miller
• “I have had the opportunity to speak with men who were about to die.”
• “The Man I Saw Them Kill”
• “The idea of execution promises catharsis. The reality of it delivers the opposite, a nauseating sense of shame and regret. Alfred Bourgeois was going to die behind bars one way or another, and the only meaning in hastening it, as far as I could tell, was inflicting the terror and the torment of knowing that the end was coming early. I felt defiled by witnessing that particular bit of pageantry, all of that brutality cloaked in sterile procedure. So much time and effort goes into making executions seem like exercises of justice, not just power. Extreme measures are taken at each juncture to convince the public, and perhaps the executioners themselves, that the process is a fair, dispassionate, rational one. It isn't. There was no sense in it, and I can't make any out of it. Nothing was restored, nothing was gained. There isn't any justice in it, nor satisfaction, nor reason. There was nothing, nothing there.”
• Faith, the void of execution
• “I find that reading great essays summons language in me.”
• On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
• “Beauty inspires reproduction”
• “It's sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.”
• “I had a religious conviction going into the first execution that I was at that executions were wrong and it wasn't really based on anything that I could point to. I just had the, you know, very simple notion that killing people is wrong and that it's wrong in, in all cases, even if the person is a very bad person.”
• Two executions in the New Testament: the one Jesus halts, and the one that kills Jesus
• Execution as a subhuman act
• The logic of criminal justice system and capital punishment
• The difficulty of introducing beauty into polarized politics
• “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8)
• Groaning beauty
• “All of creation groans under the weight of sin.”
• “The holiness of creation, the goodness of it, is so strong that it can't be, I don't think, entirely blotted out by sin. I just don't think that humans have the power to rob of beauty that which was made beautiful.”
• Finding beauty in visual culture, pop culture, museums, essay writing, and art
• On Beauty, Eula Biss— “… her prose, you know, glitters to me. I think it's fantastic. Not too melodramatic, restrained. And elegant.”
• Marilynne Robinson, imagination and beauty
• The political landscape
• Fears
• “I think when what's up for debate is like the rule of law, then I'm going to go with the candidate who whatever other faults is actually in favor of the rule of law. I think that's very important.”
• Assisted Suicide and Physician Assisted Suicide
• “I don't think I can write without bringing in theology, because it's so much a part of what I consider to be true. And so to give readers an honest view into what I'm thinking I have to provide the theological Issues that I'm thinking through.”

Production Credits

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

“We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we’ve departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I’m afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value.” (Marilynne Robinson, from the episode)

Today on the show, Mark Labberton welcomes the celebrated novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson to discuss her most recent book, Reading Genesis. Known for novels such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila, she offers a unique perspective on ancient scripture in her latest work of nonfiction.

In this enriching and expansive conversation, they discuss the theological, historical, and literary value in the Book of Genesis; the meaning of our shared humanity; fear and reverence; how to free people from the view of God as threatening; the complicated and enigmatic nature of human freedom; the amazing love, mercy, and long-suffering of God on display in the unfolding drama of the Genesis narrative; and overall: “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”

About Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Her fictional and non-fictional work includes recurring themes of Christian spirituality and American political life. In a 2008 interview with the Paris Review, Robinson said, "Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I've found fruitful to think about."

Her novels include Housekeeping (1980, Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Gilead (2004, Pulitzer Prize), Home (2008, National Book Award Finalist), Lila (2014, National Book Award Finalist), and most recently, Jack (2020). Robinson's non-fiction works include Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010), When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012), The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), and What Are We Doing Here?: Essays (2018). Her latest book is Reading Genesis (2024).

Marilynne Robinson received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Brown University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977. She has served as a writer-in-residence or visiting professor at a variety of universities, including Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho and now lives in Iowa City.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
• Mark introduces Marilynne Robinson and her most recent foray into biblical interpretation
• Overarching narrative of God’s time vs. Human time
• Theological, biblical, historical, and literary categories
• Why Genesis? Why biblical commentary?
• “Genesis is the foundational text, and God’s self-revelation is the work of Genesis.”
• The expansiveness of the creation narrative from the beginning of everything to two people hoeing in a garden.
• Elohim and the universal God-name
• Monotheism and the enormously cosmic assertion of the nature of God
• From cosmology to granular human existence
• Amazement and the Book of Genesis
• “God saw the intentions of our heart and they were only evil always.”
• Conjuring the idea of a vindictive God—as opposed to a merciful, long-suffering, and loving God
• “It's hard to wiggle people free from the idea that God is primarily threatening.”
• The role of fear in sin, temptation, and evil
• “I think the fall is a sort of realization of a fuller aspect of our nature, which is painful to us and painful to God. But it's our humanity.”
• From the book: “The narrative of scripture has moved with astonishing speed from let there be light to this intimate scene of shared grief and haplessness. There is no incongruity in this. Human beings are at the center of it all. Love and grief are, in this infinite creation, things of the kind we share with God. The fact that they have their being in the deepest reaches of our extensionless and undiscoverable souls only makes them more astonishing. Over and against the roaring cosmos, that they exist at all can only be proof of a tender solicitude.”
• Ancient Near Eastern mythology
• “Meaning cannot leak out of this. It’s absolutely meaningful.”
• Genesis is a “particular series of stories that are stories of the tumbling, bumbling, faithful, faithless, violent, peaceable, loyal, disloyal agency of human beings.”
• Mystery
• Theology as a vision, a revelation
• “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”
• The impact of Genesis in the history of our understanding of humanity, freedom, relationships, and so much more.
• Law as a liberation of one another: it limits your behavior and is emancipating to everyone around you.
• God’s patience with human freedom and the ability to go wrong
• The enigma of freedom
• “From the very beginning, the Bible seems aware that we are our enemy and that we are our apocalyptic beast.”
• “Our freedom is very costly. It’s costly to us. It’s costly to God.”
• Imagination and the dynamics of freedom
• “An enhanced reverence for oneself has to be rooted in a reverence for God.”
• “The idea of the sacredness of God and the sacredness of the self.”
• Fear and reverence
• “You are holding in your imagination … and helping us to see, feel, and hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary human beings, who are both (like Psalm 8), ‘a little lower than the angels,’ and at the same time, ‘we are dust and to dust you will return.’”
• Paying attention
• Marilynne Robinson’s upbringing, access to nature, access to books, and plenty of solitude
• Joseph and the ending of the Genesis narrative: How might the story of Joseph speak to our time?
• “We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we've departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I'm afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value. We are a danger to everything we value. And the fact that we can persist in doing that or tolerating it … there we are, you know? … We've always been strange, we human beings.”
• The perplexity of freedom
• “The way that Joseph understands his history is a comment on the idea of divine time.”
• “Joseph did enslave the Egyptians.”
• “There is no bow to tie around anything. There's simply whatever it yields in terms of meaning and beauty and so on.”
• Matthew 28 and the Great Commission
• “Christianity sliding into empire”
• The value of resolution and the open-ended nature of the Genesis narrative

Production Credits

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

“I’m here because you’re here.”

Berkeley, California is known for being the home to the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. It was and is the site of many protests, drawing vocal minorities to Sproul Plaza and People’s Park for demonstrations, activism, and public assembly. So it’s come to symbolize what it means to speak out and be heard. But what does it mean to minister to an energized public square?

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton thinks back to his time ministering in Berkeley, CA. First Presbyterian Church remains a close neighbor to the University of California, Berkeley campus. He describes an approach to public engagement marked by generous listening, a desire to know the individuals so moved to protest and speak out, and offer faithful presence to a community dedicated to protest and activism.

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

• Berkeley, CA
• People’s Park
• Sproul Plaza (site of famous Free Speech Protests of the 1960s)
• How to intensify their thirst?
• “What I really wanted was a conversation.”
• “Listening to God, which is what the life of Christian worship actually is.”
• “Living a life of listening, which is central to all Christian discipleship.”
• “I’m here because you’re here.”
• “I wish there had been a lineup of protesters outside first press asking, ‘How dare you?’… why are we not gathering protestors?”
• “I was wanting to so authentically speak and preach and live the gospel, that we would be the peculiar people that would cause people to say, ‘Why are you so peculiar?’—not just in that sense of church oddness, but in that deeper sense of why are you the peculiar people of unexplained mercy, unexplained forgiveness, unexplained passion for justice, unexplained sensitivity to individuals, and to societal, social, and systemic needs.”

Production Credits

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

“Wisdom is not just about knowledge. Wisdom adds to knowledge with discernment, with understanding, with a moral sense of what’s right and wrong.”

We live in a time of overflowing and interweaving crises. A global pandemic exacerbates a mental health crisis caused social media technology. The upheaval of American electoral politics caused by an erosion (or breakdown?) of social and relational trust. The rise of nationalism, the proliferation of war, and longing for justice in the realms of gender and race.

Underneath it all appears to be a crisis of knowledge and its convergence around skepticism of science, a culture of suspicion, and confusion about basic factual information, let alone right and wrong.

We need wisdom. Badly. But in times of crisis and chaos, where are we to turn for wisdom?

In this episode Mark Labberton is joined by longtime friend Francis Collins, physician, researcher, and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Known for his leadership in mapping the human genome, his public service at the NIH spanned three presidencies and culminated with overseeing the national response to Covid-19 pandemic.

The author of many books, including his bestselling The Language of God, Collins’s new book is *The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust,* a reflection on the crisis of truth, science, faith, and trust, and how the exhausted middle might chart a path toward a better future.

About Francis Collins

Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, is the former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As the longest serving director of NIH—spanning twelve years and three presidencies—he oversaw the work of the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, from basic to clinical research.

Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, which culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. He served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993 to 2008.

Collins's research laboratory has discovered a number of important genes, including those responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease, a familial endocrine cancer syndrome, and most recently, genes for type 2 diabetes, and the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare condition that causes premature aging.

Collins received a BS in chemistry from the University of Virginia, a PhD in physical chemistry from Yale University, and an MD with honours from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to the NIH in 1993, he spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007 and the National Medal of Science in 2009.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust
• “The crisis behind the crisis. It’s the crisis of culture. It’s the crisis of mind and heart. It’s the crisis of society. It’s the crisis of faith.”
• Collins occupying various roles through this book: professor, advocate, mentor, philosopher, coach, scientist, pathologist, and perhaps most saliently, cultural diagnostician.
• Being on the road to wisdom
• Helping those in the exhausted middle, to offer ways to do something to address cultural crises
• Collins summarizes the arc of the book
• TRUTH: “There is such a thing as objective truth. But it is not necessarily very popular in many circumstances.”
• “Facts—*established facts—*are now sometimes called into question because somebody doesn’t like the fact.”
• Jonathan Rauch on the “Constitution of Knowledge”
• “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. He doesn’t say the counter that lies will imprison you, but you might have to think about that.”
• Science as a pathway to the truth
• Anecdotes vs. empirical science
• “We have to bring faith into this conversation if we’re trying to shape a future that it gives you a chance to tap into all the wisdom that's there.”
• TRUST: “I found in my own experience, some of the information that turned out to be most life-changing came from a source that I never would have considered as part of my reliable circle of buddies, but I needed to hear it.”
• “Wisdom is not just about knowledge. Wisdom adds to knowledge with discernment, with understanding, with a moral sense of what’s right and wrong.”
• “Our society is in trouble.”
• Where will the solution come from? No politicians, not media, but only us.
• Empowering people to be part of the solution
• “Love is your calling. Anger and fear are not your calling.”
• “Listen to understand.”
• Don’t distribute information unless you’re sure it’s true.
• Build bridges with neighbours and within communities.
• Braver Angels Website
• “If you put information in front of people that’s well established, they’ll make rational decisions. And I assume that’s what science is all about.”
• Collins’s experience leading the charge to develop Covid-19 vaccines, and then managing the resistance to vaccines
• “People of faith in many instances were the most likely to fall into the category of not trusting what science had to say.”
• The cultural crisis beneath the medical crisis of Covid vaccine skepticism
• Collins reflects on public health responses to Covid-19 (school closures, mask mandates, etc.)
• Systemic breakdown caused by fear, anxiety, distrust, and suspicion
• Collins comments on Anthony Fauci’s public service throughout Covid-19
• Discrediting and redefining science, subverting faith
• Postmodernism and the erasure of objectivity and reason in science
• “Nothing is true except our perspective.”
• Francis Collins’s perspectives on the Christian church
• Christians’ ungrounded fear that this is a war
• Tim Alberta’s book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
• “Seeing through a glass darkly.” (1 Cor 13)
• A book of hope and whole human experience
• “There are profound reasons for each of us to engage. This is an argument about not standing aside. It’s crucial to see that what we are fighting for is great and glorious, and worth every bit of the effort from each of us. Truth, science, faith, and trust are not just sources of relief from a painful period in our country’s life. They represent the grandest achievements and insights of human civilization. They literally hold down the promise of a better life for every person on this planet in material terms, in spiritual terms, and in social and cultural terms. To take up this challenge is therefore not an act one of exhaustion or desperation. But one arising from the hopeful pursuit of the promise of greater flourishing of our entire humandom.”

Production Credits

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

Is perfection possible? And if so, is it worth the cost to your mental and spiritual health?

The quest for perfection haunts many people: students, athletes, employees, parents—and the children of those parents!

While this quest is often framed as the pursuit of excellence, virtue, and success, perfectionism often results in various maladaptive behaviours—such as procrastination, people-pleasing, relational stress, and mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression disorders.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Dr. Kenneth Wang, Professor of Psychology at Fuller School of Psychology, to talk about the psychological and spiritual dynamics of perfectionism.

Together, they explore the connections between perfectionism and a range of personal and mental health issues, such as depression, achievement, religiosity, racial identity, and self-esteem. They reflect on the cultural obsession with perfection; the severe psychological and social burdens of trying to be perfect; the toxicity of comparison to others; the meaning of being “good enough”; and the spiritual impact of encouraging perfection in education, career, relationships, and personal life.

About Kenneth Wang

Kenneth Wang is Professor of Psychology at Fuller School of Psychology. He’s an experienced therapist, and has conducted extensive research that spans the psychology of religion, to mindful meditation, to coping with trauma, mental health and race, moral character and virtue formation, diversity, and cross-cultural adjustment. His expertise is in the psychological study of perfectionism in familial, educational, religious contexts—looking at the phenomenon across a variety of cultures. Visit Dr. Kenneth Wang’s website to take an online assessment for perfectionism and consider guidance and coaching from Dr. Wang.

Show Notes

• Societal perfectionism and the lure of the perfect through technology
• Comparing perfectionism in Asia vs America
• Comparing ourselves to others
• “Editing for the perfect shot”
• “There’s no time to relax or rest.”
• “One thing that's underlying challenges of perfectionism is that we compare ourselves with others and we feel like we're not good enough.”
• Rank-ordered report cards in Taiwan
• The psychological weight of pressure to perform
• Competition and perfectionism
• The elusive search for contentment
• The difference between performance and perfectionism
• Perfectionism’s two core dimensions: (1) striving to meet very high standards of excellence / (2) discrepancy or evaluative concerns—being truly bothered by any amount of imperfections
• “Extreme perfectionists can’t tolerate any imperfection.”
• Shame, rumination, and anxiety
• Kenneth guides Mark through a live perfectionism evaluation
• “Is your best good enough?”
• “Adaptive perfectionism”
• “I did the best I could” vs “I’m sure I always could have done better.”
• Cross-cultural dimensions of perfectionism: wanting to fit in, the exhaustion of trying to get things right, and language apprehensiveness
• Timidity and fear to make a mistake
• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and perfectionism
• The view of oneself: performance achievement mentality, seeking validation, unstable self-worth
• Perfectionists magnify imperfections
• Inner critic
• Kenneth Wang’s recovery as a perfectionism
• Can perfectionists forgive themselves for displeasing others?
• How to deal with the emotions that come along with perfectionist catastrophizing
• Training mental muscles to become more resilient to negative emotions
• How to “sit with emotions”
• Japanese Kintsugi practices and the visibility of a history of brokenness: gold paint that highlights brokenness and imperfect repair
• Theological reflections on perfection: “Only God is perfect.”
• How does Christianity speak into perfectionism with grace and truth?
• “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
• Shame and giving up on our illusions of perfection
• Coping with inadequacy
• Allowing God to lead us into the broad place instead of the narrow place
• Fuller Theological Seminary’s “Imperfect Culture Lab”

Production Credits

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

The news media offers a steady drip of audacity, nerve, and offence—something for each end of the political spectrum and every corner of the public square.

But when we integrate audacity with a humble confidence, it can lead to powerful acts of love and justice.

The gospel makes an audacious claim about God’s grace. It makes an audacious demand that we love our neighbours in humility. And that combination of audacity and humility keeps us seeking to engage in real conversations about ultimate things—despite our differences, despite resentments, despite all the reasons to give up on building something together.

In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the meaning of audacity, humility, and courage when the church engages in public life.

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

• What is audacity?
• Virtuous audacity, e.g., The Audacity of Hope (like Barack Obama)
• Injurious audacity, e.g., preposterous, foolish, offensive, distorting, railroading, steamrolling, shutting down, closing off
• But an additional form of audacity “has led to the humblest and most sacrificial forms of human service and love and compassion and mercy and justice.”
• Imagine a crowd of Berkeley, CA, protesters lined up before you, demanding: “How dare you?”
• Audacity and courage
• “It actually helped galvanize in my own voice—in my heart, in my lungs, in my mind—a sense of what I hope was humble confidence in proclaiming a gospel that I did and do believe is true.”
• “How do we actually engage in real conversation about ultimate things?”
• Adopting a stance of “we are all in this together”
• “How dare we believe and speak in God’s name?”
• “Indeed how dare I, and then also how dare I not if this is actually true?!”
• Integrating humility, confidence, courage

Production Credits

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

How should we approach disagreements when our deepest convictions and commitments are challenged or questioned? A healthy society is built around the ability to navigate these kinds of disagreements with responsibility and respect, but in our increasingly polarized society, it’s becoming harder and harder to cultivate the habits, skills, and virtues that can keep us united amid our vehement disagreements.

In this episode Mark welcomes legal scholar and law professor John Inazu to discuss how to approach disagreement with wisdom, care, and a commitment to the well-being of the other. John is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He speaks and writes frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, and religious freedom. His latest book is Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect.

Together Mark and John discuss the role of fear management when approaching difficult conversations; how to appreciate the complexity and diversity of perspectives in others; the role of empathy in communication; how to learn to disagree constructively in different life contexts from work to home to politics; how authority, power dynamics, and social roles factor in productive disagreements; the light and dark sides of civility; and how to navigate and negotiate our disagreements with compassion and love.

About John Inazu

John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment courses. He writes and speaks frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, religious freedom, and other issues. John has written three books—including Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024) and Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012)—and has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and CNN. He is also the founder of the Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship and is a senior fellow with Interfaith America.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (https://www.jinazu.com/learning-to-disagree)
• John Inazu’s background as a legal scholar and expert on first amendment rights, including the freedom to assemble peaceably, or “the right to peaceful assembly”
• How to learn from lawyers about how to disagree
• How does fear factor into communicating through disagreement?
• What neuroscience has taught as about fear
• “I can understand why you feel that…”
• Well-practiced habits
• Be prepared to engage differently
• Learning how to practice communication outside of a toxic social media or online context
• Empathy and the complexity of others’ views
• Canadian psychological research on empathy
• Avoiding abstraction in order to cultivate empathy
• David Brooks’s book, How to Know a Person
• How to understand fundamental versus surface-level differences
• Heated political issues and the social roles we inhabit
• Power dynamics, authority, and responsibility
• Power dynamics in the classroom
• How to approach disagreement in political protests on college campuses, e.g., Columbia University
• “Part of that responsibility is recognizing that people are hurting in very deep ways. … We’re not talking about abstractions or debating some historical event, we’re talking about real felt emotions.”
• “I'm aware that the capacity for interpersonal interaction has fallen off and it becomes more and more a school, or an environment, or a culture in which disagreement is not allowed.”
• Civility as a virtue or a vice?
• Purely cognitive rationality vs complex, emotional passions
• Fannie Lou Hamer and playing by a different set of social norms and rules
• Polarization and political tensions in partisan America
• “Totalizing positions” and the shrinking possibility of genuine communications
• Shirley Mullen’s book, Claiming the Courageous Middle
• How to uphold convictions without surrendering any ultimate truth claims
• How John Inazu has been shaped, formed, and influenced
• Curiosity and patience
• Close relationships that do formative work
• The Antidote for our cultural moment: “A lot of very small and very personal efforts where individual lives change postures … and contribute to social change with storytelling and exemplars and costly practices.”
• Small incremental steps: Jesus’s metaphor that the Kingdom of God is like yeast
• What would happen if American Christians started listening to the global church?
• What is the role of the imagination in learning to disagree?

Production Credits

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

“The mystery has great meaning.”

Joy and sorrow don’t have to be dissonant opposites, author Amy Low suggests. There can be harmony in the space between triumph and tragedy. In her recent memoir, *The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room,* she recounts her battle with Stage IV metastatic colon cancer following the end of her marriage.

Her gracious, generous wisdom is beautifully expressed on her book’s back cover: “Through the swirl of prolonged trauma and unbearable grief, a vantage point emerged—a window that showed her the way to relish life and be kinder to herself and others while living through the inevitable loss and heartbreak that crosses everyone’s paths.”

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Amy for a conversation about the lessons she’s learned from living with cancer, including: how to come to terms with our own deaths; dealing with divorce and a traumatic end of a relationship; how to walk the path of forgiveness and humility; the immense complexity and beauty of humanity; how to explore the meaning of mystery without fear; the role of friendship and community in dealing with cancer; and the hope of imagining heaven.

About Amy Low

Amy Low, author of *The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room,* has been a storyteller all her life. She grew up in and continues to live life through parables and metaphors. She sees her life as an invitation to discovering the new every day and even records some of these discoveries in her Substack, Postcards from the Mountain. As the managing director for fellowships and non-profit journalism at the Emerson Collective, she directs efforts to empower individuals and newsrooms to strengthen our shared conversation in the public square. Most important, Amy is mom to Connor and Lucy. Her proudest achievement is raising a son and daughter who are unafraid, grateful, and curious, whether in class, at home, on stage, or especially in the band.

Get your copy of *The Brave In-Between: Notes from the Last Room.*

Follow Amy’s story through her Substack, Postcards from the Mountain.

Being in the last room of one’s life

The profundity and sacredness of discussing one’s “last room”—”the most human place of all”

Bravery, imagination, and generosity

Amy Low’s cancer diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic colon cancer at 48 years old

Discovering metastases

Living in the last room: an unusual place to inhabit in mid-life

There are different ways to live in the last room.

St. Paul’s “last room” as described in the Letter to the Philippians

Lament and levity

Grief and being with people in their last rooms

Being fully alive in the midst of facing one’s death

“I can say with confidence for me that divorce was far harder than cancer. When I had to grapple with the gravity of my disease and the diagnosis and what I was going to face … I had come through a space of the woods that I can say was far more ominous, far harder, far more heartbreaking.”

Divorce

Forgiveness and receiving care from her ex-husband

How to create a new story in the wake of tragedy and trauma

Forgiveness as “releasing people from the negative consequences of their behavior”

“Giving yourself permission to be truly loved, and to be truly released from shame.”

Fear

Amy’s honest, artful, candid expression of her story

“Metaphors are places that hold ambiguity.”

Finding peace with ambiguity and mystery

Joy and purpose

“The worst thing anyone ever said to me was, you know, this whole thing is like so random. … And I thought, ‘No. No. The minute you call this random, the minute this doesn’t have any meaning.”

“The mystery has great meaning.”

Grappling with the tension of purpose and pain

How specific friends stood by Amy in approaching the experience of her cancer diagnosis

“Don’t just do something. Stand there.”

The challenge of receiving without giving much back—and reframing the meaning of “giving back”

The hope of imagining heaven

Heaven on earth as parachuting hot dogs

“The great hope is that we all wake up and we laugh at the good stuff and be brave at the hard stuff.”

Production Credits

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