Trinity Forum Conversations

By The Trinity ForumSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Christianity

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Trinity Forum Conversations episodes

September 23, 2025Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan
What does it mean to walk with God? The spiritual life is so often described as a walk, journey, or pilgrimage that it can be easy to dismiss the practice of walking as a mere metaphor.
But in God Walk, author, pastor, and professor Mark Buchanan explores the way that the act of walking has profound implications for followers of the Way:

“Hurry is the enemy of attentiveness. And so love as attentiveness is listening and caring and noticing, cherishing, savoring, being awestruck, these things that we feel in a relationship. I am deeply loved by this person because they notice me. I think that that’s how God’s built it. And we can’t get that if we’re moving too fast, if we’re in a hurry.”

This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2023. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing new growth in it, in our time.

If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member, at ttf.org.
As we ponder the spirituality of walking, our fall Trinity Forum Reading features naturalist Henry David Thoreau’s ruminations on the art of walking, with an introduction by Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder. Stay tuned for pre-ordering later this week, and join our membership to receive a copy mailed directly to you.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Aristotle
Søren Kierkegaard
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
God Walk, by Mark Buchanan
Simone Weil
The Three Mile an Hour God, by Kosaku Koyama
Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
Knowing God, J.I. Packer
Kai Miller

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Pursuing Humility with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn
Reading as a Spiritual Practice with Jessica Hooten Wilson
Get tickets for The Rabbit Room's Housemoot.
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcasts/ and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
37 min
September 09, 2025Beth Moore: Untangling Our Knotted-Up Lives
Our theme for this episode is “Untangling Our Knotted-Up Lives,” and our guest is the author and speaker Beth Moore.
Drawing from her bestselling memoir, Beth helps us work through a challenge we all may face at various times: maintaining resilience — and faithfulness to our vocations — in the face of hardship:
“I’d come to a point where I thought, oh my goodness, I see this. I get what Jesus is doing here, whatever it might be. I had this compelling to share it, and I have throughout my whole adult life.”

This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2025. It’ll give you a sense of what the Trinity Forum is about: a community of people renewing our culture by applying wisdom from the Christian tradition, and nurturing new growth in it, in our time.

If that resonates with you, please join the Trinity Forum as a member, at ttf.org.
Go deeper into the topics discussed in this conversation with these Trinity Forum Readings:
Pilgrim's Progress; John Bunyan
The Long Loneliness; Dorothy Day
A Spiritual Pilgrimage; Malcolm Muggeridge
Confessions; St. Augustine
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness; Reinhold Niebuhr
59 min
August 26, 2025Story, Culture, & the Common Good with Marilynne Robinson
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’re focusing on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Today’s episode concludes our summer series. Our guide today is the acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson, author of the Gilead series, and much else.

In this episode, originally an Online Conversation recorded in 2020, Marilynne reflects on the art of writing as a means of exploring truth and engaging questions around learning to live well, to love others, and to create a home and community, in our fractious world:

“The unique brilliance of a human being … is something that we tend utterly to disparage, demean, utterly fail to notice … every person lives out a [life] beautiful, complicated, inaccessible to other consciousnesses. And it is sacred.”

And if this conversation resonates with you, consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too.
Marilynne Robinson's Novels | Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila, Jack, Reading Genesis
Article in Breaking Ground from our event.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Marcel Proust
Ralph Waldo Emmerson
Paul Harding
Walt Witman
William Faulkner
John Calvin
Jonathan Edwards
Moby Dick, by Herman Mellville
Piers Plowman, by William Langland

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Sacred and Profane Love | A Trinity Forum Reading by John Donne

Bulletins from Immortality | A Trinity Forum Reading by Emily Dickinson

Confessions | A Trinity Forum Reading by Saint Augustine

Brave New World | A Trinity Forum Reading by Aldous Huxley

Marilynne Robinson is a novelist, essayist, and teacher, one of the most renowned and revered of living writers. Her novels Housekeeping, Gilead, Lila, and Home have been variously honored with the Pulitzer Prize, National Books Critics Circle Award (twice), a Hemingway Foundation Award, an Orange Prize, The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the Ambassador Book Award. She's also the author of many essays and non-fiction works, including her work, “Mother Country”, and her essay collections, “Death of Adam,” “Absence of Mind,” “When I was a Child I Read Books,” “The Givenness of Things,” and “What Are We Doing Here?”. She's the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to her writing has spent over 20 years teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop, as well as several universities.
38 min
August 19, 2025 Creativity, Reconciliation, and Flourishing
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Guided by theologian and musician David Bailey and concert pianist and chamber musician Mia Chung, this episode explores the concept that music involves mutual support, balance, and give and take among musicians to create a cohesive experience.

And we reflect on how Christian communities can apply these principles of collaboration and harmony to create faith communities that are transformative:
To the extent that the arts can actually cultivate that practice of incorporating the right hemisphere and in communication with the left, it's always together, you know, they're, complimentary. I think we can benefit each other in terms of community formation, but even benefit our own intellectual lives and the amount of joy we experience living in this world. - Mia Chung
If this work resonates with you, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a society member.

This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation recorded in June, 2024. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.
Learn more about Mia Chung and David Bailey.
Episode Outline
00:00 Introduction to Trinity Forum Conversations
00:34 Exploring Music and Christian Community
01:36 Cherie Harder on Cultural Challenges
02:55 Welcoming David Bailey and Mia Chung
04:41 David Bailey's Musical Journey
06:56 Mia Chung's Musical Formation
10:44 The Role of Arts in Reconciliation
13:19 The Power of Music in Community Building
23:17 Reintegration and Reconciliation at MIT
28:52 Challenges and Practices for Reconciliation
30:10 Digital Discipleship and Secular Influence
30:44 The Importance of Fasting and Listening
32:33 Engaging Differently as Followers of Jesus
33:28 The Role of Technology in Information Consumption
34:18 Post-COVID Convening and Empathetic Listening
37:25 The Power of Music and Emotional Expression
40:04 Silence and Contemplative Practices
44:43 Artistic Collaboration and Reconciliation
51:19 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Arrabon: Learning Reconciliation Through Community & Worship Music, by David Bailey

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Hannah and Nathan, by Wendell Berry
Painting as a Pastime, by Winston Churchill
The Four Quartets, by TS Eliot
Letters from Vincent Van Gogh
Spirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Why Work?, by Dorothy Sayers
The Loss of the University, featuring the works of Wendell Berry and Jacques Maritain
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
54 min
August 12, 2025 Words Against Despair with Christian Wiman
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Our guest this episode is the poet Christian Wiman, a master of the written – and spoken – word. After long wandering, he returned to the Christian faith in which he’d been raised, in part because of a terminal cancer diagnosis – one he has now long outlived. Both before and after his diagnosis, and his return to faith, his experience of despair has fueled his powerful poetry. In grappling with it, Christian uses words in ways that are a tonic against despair.

“I deal with despair because…I don’t know how not to, and it would be an evasion not to. And I think if you don’t feel it, then you’re not paying attention.”

This podcast is drawn from an online conversation from 2024. We hope this conversation will resonate with you as you explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own corner of creation.

If it does, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too. And while you’re here, please subscribe to this podcast on your chosen platform.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, by Christian Wiman
Marilynne Robinson
Danielle Chapman
William Bronk
William Wordsworth
Every Riven Thing, by Christian Wiman
My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer, by Christian Wiman
Prayer, by Carol Ann Duffy
The Bible and Poetry, by Michael Edwards
Augustine of Hippo
Bittersweet, by George Herbert
Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis
Richard Wilbur
Jürgen Moltmann
When the Time’s Toxins, by Christian Wiman

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Augustine’s Confessions
Devotions by John Donne, paraphrased by Philip Yancey
God’s Grandeur: the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson
Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

Related Conversations:
Connecting Spiritual Formation & Public Life with Michael Wear
The Kingdom, the Power & The Glory with Tim Alberta
A Life Worth Living with Miroslav Volf
Towards a Better Christian Politics
Christian Pluralism: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference
What Really Matters with Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth
Scripture and the Public Square
How to be a Patriotic Christian
Life, Death, Poetry & Peace with Philip Yancey
The Fall, the Founding, and the Future of American Democracy
Fear and Conspiracy with David French

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.
33 min
August 05, 2025 Spiritual Formation Through our Imaginations
In this Trinity Forum Conversation, author Lanta Davis, along with special guest host and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Jessica Hooten Wilson, delve into the power of imagination and its role in our spiritual formation. The discussion centers on Davis's book Becoming by Beholding, which explores Christian imagination through art, literature, and historical practices.
These friends and scholars discuss the transformative potential of engaging with sacred art, the virtues, and traditional practices like Lectio Divina:
"In Jesus's parables ... He's constantly showing us that there's more hidden behind the surface than we think. The mustard seed is not just a mustard seed. Yeast is not just yeast ... Jesus shows us heavenly meanings ... This is what the incarnation helps us understand, that the divine is not just up above. It's all around us. It's here and now. That when God became matter, all the material world changed because of it."

We hope this conversation will resonate with you as you explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own corner of creation.

This podcast is an edited version of our Online Conversation recorded in March 2025. You can access the full conversation with transcript here.

Learn more about Lanta Davis and Jessica Hooten Wilson.
Episode Outline
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
04:47 Exploring the Power of Imagination
05:37 The Concept of Becoming by Beholding
07:46 Living in an Enchanted World
10:53 Tradition and the Logic of Eternity
13:49 Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy, and Orthopathy
17:22 The Role of Icons and Medieval Bestiaries
23:25 Lectio Divina and Imaginative Prayer
27:20 Virtues and Vices: A Deeper Look
30:38 Understanding Virtue and Its Historical Context
31:37 The Practicality of Virtue Personifications
32:32 Teaching Virtues in Everyday Life
33:50 Exploring Courage Through Art
36:30 Incorporating Virtue in Contemporary Art
38:15 Imagination and Its Role in Understanding Reality
45:28 Scripture, Culture, and the Fruits of the Spirit
49:49 Global Christian Art and Imagination
51:34 Resources for Teaching and Engaging with Art
54:46 Travel and Exploration of Christian Art
56:33 Desire, Trust, and Identity in Modern Culture
59:39 The Last Word with Lanta Davis

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Becoming by Beholding, by Lanta Davis
Jessica Hooten Wilson
Ralph C. Wood
In the Beauty of Holiness, by David Lyle Jeffrey
Luke Ferriter
“Hurrahing in Harvest”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot
Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton
Flannery O’Connor
Grace Hammond
On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books, by Karen Swallow Prior
Alan Noble
A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor
Dorothy Sayers
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
James K.A. Smith
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
John Donne
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
Spirit and Imagination: Reflections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Strangest Story in the World, by G.K. Chesterton
54 min
July 29, 2025 Beauty, Music, and Spiritual Formation with Keith and Kristyn Getty
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

In this episode, our guides are modern hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty. Back in 2019, we hosted a live Evening Conversation in which they explored the ways in which music can speak to our spiritual hunger and shape our sense of beauty, truth, and purpose:

"Our singing doesn't just affect each one of us. We are a witness to the world around us. When we sing, we are always a witness."

We hope this conversation will resonate with you as you explore the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own corner of creation.

If it does, please consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. You can find the full video of this conversation there too. And while you’re here, please subscribe to this podcast on your chosen platform.

Learn more about the Gettys.

Watch our Evening Conversation.

Authors, artists, and books mentioned in the conversation:
Peter Kreeft
The Republic, by Plato
Damon of Athens
Sing: How Worship Transforms your Life, Family, and Church, by Keith and Kristyn Getty
Unwearied Praises: Exploring Christian Faith Through Classic Hymns, by Dr. Jeff Greenman
The Pedagogy of Praise, by Dr. Jeff Greenman
John Lennox
Lucy Shaw
Eugene Peters
J.I. Packer
Martin Luther
Leonard Bernstein
Amy Carmichael
Cecil Frances Alexander
Os Guinness
Charles Spurgeon
Lloyd Jones
D.L. Moody

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Handel’s Messiah

Related Conversations:
Waiting on the Word with Malcolm Guite
Poetry & Beauty in Solitude with Dana Gioia
45 min
July 22, 2025Reading Jane Austen: A Novel Approach to Virtue
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

In this episode, our focus is Jane Austen, and our guide is Karen Swallow Prior, one of our Trinity Forum Senior Fellows.

Karen explores the faith-informed perspective on virtue that Austen’s novels reflect:

"Underneath the surface [Austen] is inviting us to look at our own interactions with one another, our own misperceptions, and misreadings, and I think that’s really why her work has remained so endearing to us today; because she reveals the truths of our human condition that never change, and that we’re always wrestling with."

Jane Austen’s world and concerns seem distant from ours. Yet across the centuries, she illuminates the importance of the seemingly mundane, and the path towards repaired and rightly ordered relationships.

If this work resonates with you, consider joining the Trinity Forum community as a member, at ttf.org. This episode is drawn from an online conversation held in 2021. You can find the full video of this conversation here. And while you’re here, please subscribe to this podcast.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman
Praying with Jane, by Rachel Dodge
Alasdair MacIntyre
William Shakespeare
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Pride and Prejudice, a Trinity Forum Reading by Jane Austen
Bulletins from Immortality, a Trinity Forum Reading by Emily Dickinson
Revelation, a Trinity Forum Reading by Flannery O’Connor
God's Grandeur , a Trinity Forum Reading by Gerard Manley Hopkins
42 min
July 15, 2025 The Inklings, Creativity, and Community with Diana Glyer
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Today’s guide is the author and professor Diana Glyer. She’ll be talking about the lives and work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their beloved community known as the Inklings.

In this episode drawn from an online conversation held in February of 2021, Diana focuses on how creativity thrives within small clusters of like-hearted people. We hope you enjoy reflecting on the potential of your own friendships and communities to be culture-shaping.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, by Diana Glyer
Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings, by Diana Glyer
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Charles Williams
C.S. Lewis
Shakespeare
Owen Barfield
Hugo Dyson
Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
Jerry Root
The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
On Friendship, by Cicero
The Golden Key, by George MacDonald
The Oracle of the Dog, by G.K. Chesterton
The Lost Tools of Learning, by Dorothy Sayers

Related Conversations:
Suffering, Friendship, and Courage: What Lewis & Tolkien Teach Us About Resilience & Imagination, an Online Conversation with Joe Loconte
50 min
July 08, 2025 Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd
Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

How should we live faithfully within a world created to be good and beautiful, and yet everywhere marred by ugliness and injustice?
Jazz vocalist and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd will guide us in bringing together music, creativity, and justice, and help us think about our roles in repairing, re-envisioning, and creating new places of beauty and flourishing:
We know that art shapes and reshapes us and that it’s there in the cross of Jesus, I believe, where beauty and violence collided and beauty won. And so that act of loving someone…purposely trying to love someone, especially those that seem or are viewed or deemed unlovable, is…directly connected and intrinsically connected to our art making.
We hope you are encouraged by Ruth’s artistic journey, as she helps us to find beauty in the midst of suffering, and to express love through creativity.
This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2021. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Ruth Naomi Floyd.
Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
The Frederick Douglass Jazz Works
It Was Good, Making Music to the Glory of God, by Ruth Naomi Floyd
The Problem of Good, by Ruth Naomi Floyd
Dr. John Nunez
Toni Morrison
Martin Luther King Jr.
Vincent van Gogh
Hans Christian Andersen
Miles Davis
Francis Schaeffer
Joshua Stamper
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Letters from Vincent van Gogh
Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
Revelation, by Flannery O’Connor
Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson
Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite
To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society
31 min

About Trinity Forum Conversations

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Trinity Forum Conversations is a podcast exploring the big questions in life by looking to the best of the Christian intellectual tradition and elevating the voices, both ancient and modern, who…