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

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

By: Miroslav Volf Matthew Croasmun Ryan McAnnally-Linz Drew Collins Evan Rosa Macie Bridge
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 Seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. Theological insight, cultural analysis, and practical guidance for personal and communal flourishing. Brought to you by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.2020-2028 Yale Center for Faith & Culture Christianity Philosophy Social Sciences Spirituality
Episodes
  • The Accessorized Bible: Interpretation, Responsibility, and the Ethics of Reading / David Dault

    The Accessorized Bible: Interpretation, Responsibility, and the Ethics of Reading / David Dault
    Mar 4 2026
    What happens when we stop treating the Bible as a sacred object and start paying attention to how we actually use it? In this conversation, theologian David Dault reflects on interpretation, responsibility, and the ethics of reading scripture in a fractured world. In this episode with Evan Rosa, Dault reflects on interpretation, responsibility, and how readers shape the meaning and moral impact of the Bible. Together they discuss the materiality of scripture, translation and betrayal, moral seriousness, scriptural reasoning across traditions, catastrophic love, and the ethical responsibility readers bear for how sacred texts are used. Episode Highlights “To assume that we know what a text is telling us is a matter of hubris.” “The Bible doesn’t tell you to do anything. You as a reader decide what to do.” “Violence is always an act of interpretation.” “We never get to a place where everything is clean and everyone benefits.” “We have to take responsibility for the violence we involve ourselves in.” About David Dault David Dault is a theologian, journalist, and media producer whose work explores religion, culture, ethics, and interpretation. He is Executive Producer and host of Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith, a nationally distributed public radio program. He teaches in the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago. Dault’s scholarship focuses on hermeneutics, religion and media, and the ethical implications of how sacred texts are interpreted and used in public life. His book The Accessorized Bible examines the material forms, cultural framing, and interpretive communities that shape how people encounter scripture. He holds degrees in theology and religious studies and frequently writes and lectures on religion, politics, and culture. Helpful Links And Resources The Accessorized Bible, by David Dault https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300153125/the-accessorized-bible/ Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith https://thingsnotseenradio.com David Dault’s personal website https://www.daviddault.com/ Show Notes The Accessorized Bible—material culture of scripture, design, marketing niches, and the ways the physical form of the Bible shapes how readers interpret and use itBible as object, medium, and cultural artifact; Marshall McLuhan and media theory—the form of a book shaping how ideas move between mindsBooks as technologies of imagination and identity formation; reading as a kind of “magical” transfer of ideas from one mind into another“To assume that we know what a text is telling us is a matter of hubris.” Interpretation requires caution, humility, and the recognition that texts exceed our controlMaking the familiar strange again; recovering the power of scripture by refusing to domesticate it or assume we fully understand itFranz Rosenzweig on preserving the alienness of sacred texts; debate with Martin Buber on translation and clarityTranslation as interpretation—translators inevitably carry values, ideologies, and cultural assumptions into the textHarold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence; interpreters “misread” texts in order to wrestle with their influence and generate new meaningReading scripture in community; trust, vulnerability, and shared responsibility among interpretersScriptural reasoning—Jews, Christians, and Muslims reading shared stories (Noah, Abraham, Moses) together without claiming mastery over the textTikkun olam—Jewish ethical tradition of “repairing the world”; the world is wounded and humans participate in its healingRepentance and Repair—Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on moral accountability, restitution, and the work of restoring relationshipsViolence embedded in interpretation; moral action always involves choices about attention, resources, and responsibilityThe “flashlight” metaphor—moral attention illuminating one suffering person while another need temporarily falls into shadowJairus’s daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage—competing moral urgencies in the Gospels“We never get to a place where everything is clean and everyone benefits.” Moral action always involves tragic limitation and competing responsibilitiesLevinas and infinite responsibility; the ethical demand arising from the face of the person before usMoral seriousness versus performative irony; resisting discourse driven by trolling, spectacle, and dopamine-driven outrageA Bible Is A Book—dismantling the assumption that sacred texts themselves command moral actionSteve Martin’s The Jerk and the phone book illustration; a sniper randomly selecting a name and deciding someone should die“The Bible doesn’t tell you what to do.” Readers decide what moral actions follow from a textReader responsibility; refusing the excuse “the Bible told me to,” recognizing moral agency belongs to interpretersScripture as “accessory to a crime”—sacred texts used as cover for violence, exclusion, or ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Season of Rebellion / Esau McCaulley on Lent [From the Archives]

    Season of Rebellion / Esau McCaulley on Lent [From the Archives]
    Feb 25 2026
    Today we’re bringing you an episode with Esau McCaulley, from the Lenten season of 2023. Esau sees Lent as a practice of collective generational wisdom, passed down through centuries of sacramental rhythms—but as a contemporary reality, Lent is a spiritual rebellion against mainstream American culture. He construes Lent as a season of repentance and grace; he points out the justice practices of Lent; he walks through a Christian understanding of death, and the beautiful practice of stripping the altars on Maundy Thursday; and he’s emphatic about how it’s a guided season of pursuing the grace to find (or perhaps return) to yourself as God has called you to be. In his classic text, Great Lent, Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann calls this season one of “bright sadness”—an important paradox that represents both Christian realism and hope. Lent is not about gloom, self-loathing, performative penitence, or despair. Instead it brings us face to face with our human condition, reminding us that we did not bring ourselves into being and someday we will die, sober about the reality and banality of evil, and sorrowful in a way that leads back to joy. Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation. About Esau McCaulley Esau McCaulley is The Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and is author of many books, including children’s books. Notables are Reading While Black, a theology of Lent, and his latest: How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. Learn more at https://esaumccaulley.com/. Show Notes Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal — https://esaumccaulley.com/books/lent-book/Commodifying our rebellion—the agency on offer is a thin, weakened agency.Repentance, grace, and finding (or returning to) yourselfExamination of conscienceThe Great Litany: “For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Except our repentance, Lord.”The beauty of Christianity“Liturgical spirituality is not safe. God can jump out and get you at any moment in the service.”“The great thing about the, the, the season of Blend in the liturgical calendar more broadly is it gives you a thousand different entry points into transformation.”Lent is bookended by death. Black death, Coronavirus death, War death.Jesus defeated death as our great enemy.“Everybody that I know and I care about are gonna die. Everybody.”“I, as a Christian, believe that because we're going to die. our lives are of infinite value and the decisions that we make and the kinds of people we become are the only testimony that we have and that I have chosen to, to, in light of my impending death, put my faith in the one who overcame death.”Two realities: We’re going to die and Jesus defeated death.Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday.Silent processional in black; Good Friday celebrates no eucharist.“I'm, like, the one Pauline scholar who doesn't like to argue about justification all of the time.”Good Friday’s closing prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion cross and death between your judgment and our souls.”“You end Lent with: Something has to come between God’s judgement and our souls. And that thing is Jesus.”“Lent is God loving you enough to tell you the truth about yourself, but not condemning you for it, but actually saying that you can be better than that.” Production Notes This podcast featured Esau McCaulleyEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Luke Stringer, and Kaylen Yun.A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give Acknowledgements This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit http://blueprint1543.org/.
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    49 mins
  • Your Whole Self at Work: The Sociology of Religion in the Workplace / Elaine Ecklund

    Your Whole Self at Work: The Sociology of Religion in the Workplace / Elaine Ecklund
    Feb 18 2026

    Work shapes identity, community, and meaning—but how should faith show up in professional life? Sociologist Elaine Ecklund discusses religion in the workplace, drawing on research conducted with co-author Denise Daniels.

    “I think our faith compels us to hope for and enact flourishing for everyone.”

    In this episode with Evan Rosa, Ecklund reflects on vocation, gender, authenticity, and principled pluralism in modern workplaces. Together they discuss workplace identity, gender discrimination, calling across occupations, boundaries around work, religion’s public role, and pluralism in professional life.

    Episode Highlights

    “I think our faith compels us to hope for and enact flourishing for everyone.”

    “People use their religion to bring justice to their workplaces.”

    “They don’t want to pretend they’re someone different.”

    “There are ways in which our faith traditions can put needed boundaries around our work.”

    “I am being fully who I am and I am oriented toward the other.”

    About Elaine Ecklund

    Elaine Howard Ecklund is a sociologist of religion and professor at Rice University, where she directs the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance. Her research focuses on religion in public life, science and faith, and workplace culture. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Religion in a Changing Workplace and Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work (with Denise Daniels). Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and featured in major media outlets.

    Helpful Links And Resources

    Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work https://www.ivpress.com/working-for-better

    Religion in a Changing Workplace https://academic.oup.com/book/58194

    Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance https://boniuk.rice.edu/

    Elaine Ecklund website https://elaineecklund.com

    Show Notes

    • Religion and workplace life
    • Sociology of belief research background
    • Studying scientists and religion
    • Expanding research beyond science workplaces
    • Collaboration with Denise Daniels
    • Academic and practical faith-at-work books
    • Defining work as paid labor
    • Honoring caregiving and volunteer labor
    • “People don’t want to pretend they’re someone different.”
    • Bringing whole selves to work
    • Calling across occupational sectors
    • Workplace autonomy and meaning
    • “People use their religion to bring justice to their workplaces.”
    • Faith creating boundaries around work
    • Gender dynamics in workplaces
    • Story of hiding motherhood in academia
    • Fragmentation and identity performance
    • “There are ways in which our faith traditions can put needed boundaries around our work.”
    • Church gender expectations
    • Billy Graham rule implications
    • Work skills serving congregations
    • Living in pluralistic society
    • Principled pluralism explained
    • “I am being fully who I am and I am oriented toward the other.”
    • Embrace, dignity, and learning from difference

    #FaithAndWork #ElaineEcklund #PrincipledPluralism #ReligionAndWorkplace #Vocation #GenderAndWork #HumanFlourishing

    Production Notes

    • This podcast featured Elaine Ecklund
    • Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
    • Hosted by Evan Rosa
    • Production Assistance by Noah Senthil
    • A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
    • Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give
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    50 mins
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