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

By: Miroslav Volf Matthew Croasmun Ryan McAnnally-Linz Drew Collins Evan Rosa
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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
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Christianity Philosophy Social Sciences Spirituality
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Episodes
  • The Psychology of Disaster: The Impact of Calamity on Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health / Jamie Aten and Pam King

    The Psychology of Disaster: The Impact of Calamity on Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health / Jamie Aten and Pam King
    Feb 12 2025
    Disaster preparedness is sort of an oxymoron. Disaster is the kind of indiscriminate calamity that only ever finds us ill-equipped to manage. And if you are truly prepared, you’ve probably averted disaster.There’s a big difference between the impact of disaster on physical, material life—and its outsized impact on mental, emotional, and spiritual life.Personal disasters like a terminal illness, natural disasters like the recent fires that razed southern Californian communities, the impact of endless, senseless wars … these all cause a pain and physical damage that can be mitigated or rebuilt. But the worst of these cases threaten to destroy the very meaning of our lives.No wonder disaster takes such a psychological and spiritual toll. There’s an urgent need to find or even make meaning from it. To somehow explain it, justify why God would allow it, and tell a grand story that makes sense from the senseless.These are difficult questions, and my guests today both have personal experience with disaster. Dr. Pam King is the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology, and the Executive Director the Thrive Center. She’s an ordained Presbyterian minister, and she hosts a podcast on psychology and spirituality called With & For. Dr. Jamie Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert, helping others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute Wheaton College, where he holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership. He is author of *A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.*In this conversation, Pam King and Jamie Aten join Evan Rosa to discuss:Each of their personal encounters with disasters—both fire and cancerThe psychological study of disasterThe personal impact of disaster on mental, emotional, and spiritual healthThe difference between resilience and fortitudeAnd the theological and practical considerations for how to live through disastrous events.About Pam KingPam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. She hosts the With & For podcast, and you can follow her @drpamking.About Jamie AtenJamie D. Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert. He helps others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute and Disaster Ministry Conference and holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership at Wheaton College. And he’s the author of *A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.*Show NotesHumanitarian Disaster InstituteSpiritual First AidJamie Aten’s A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and ResilienceThe Thrive Center at Fuller SeminaryPam King’s personal experience fighting fires in the Eaton Fire in January 20255,000 homes destroyed55 schools and houses of worship are gone“Neighborhoods are annihilated …”Jamie Aten offers an overview of the impact of disasters on humanity, and the human response1985: 400% increase in natural disasters globallyJapan 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunamiHaiti 2010 earthquakePhysical, emotional, spiritualInfrastructural impacts that set up disastersUSAID supportJamie Aten’s experience during Hurricane KatrinaPersonal disastersJamie Aten’s experience with prostate cancer“Evacuation Impossible”Impact of disaster on personal sense of thrivingThriving vs survivingUnderstanding traumaCollective traumatic eventsThe historically Black multigenerational community in AltadenaWhat constitutes thriving?Thriving as adaptive growth: with and for othersSelf-care is not just me-care, but we-care.Trauma brain and the cognitive impacts of disasterThe psychological study of disaster: grapefruit vs beachballHumanitarian Disaster InstituteSpiritual First AidA rupture of meaning makingPlace and spirituality and the impact of disaster on sense of placeBethlehem pastor Munther Isaac’s “Christ in the Rubble”Finding meaning in both the restructuring or rebuilding, but also in the rubble itselfHope embodied in serviceEverything is a cognitive loadMiroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God: A Brief Story of EverythingPsychological and trauma-informed care”One of the things that we found was that when people received positive spiritual support, that they reported lower levels of trauma, lower levels of depression and lower levels of anxiety.”Bless CPRBLESS: Biological, Livelihood, Emotional, Social, Spiritual“What’s the most pressing need?”Spiritual healthSpirituality and our ultimate sources of ...
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    58 mins
  • Our One and Only Earth: Environmental Ethics, Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Consumption / Ryan Darr & Ryan McAnnally-Linz

    Our One and Only Earth: Environmental Ethics, Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Consumption / Ryan Darr & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
    Feb 7 2025
    How should we treat our one and only home, Earth? What obligations do we have to other living or non-living things? How should we think about climate change and its denial? How does biodiversity and species extinction impact human beings? And how should we think about environmental justice, the rights of animals, and the ways we consume the natural world?In this episode, Ryan McAnnally-Linz welcomes Ryan Darr (Assistant Professor, Yale Divinity School) to reflect on some of the most pressing issues in environmental ethics and consider them through philosophical, ecological, and theological frameworks.Together they discuss:What and who matters in environmental ethics: Only humans? Only sentient animals? Every life form? The inorganic natural world?The significance and difference between global and individual scale of climate issuesThe ethics of climate change denialEnvironmental justice and moral obligations to the environment—the question of what we owe to animals and the rest of the natural worldThe importance of biodiversity and the impact of species loss and extinctionThe ethics of eating animalsThe problems with human consumption of the natural worldAnd the impact of cultivating a wider moral imagination of our ecological futureAbout Ryan DarrRyan Darr Ryan Darr is Assistant Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Environment at Yale Divinity School. His research interests include environmental ethics, multispecies justice, structural injustice, ethical theory, and the history of religious and philosophical ethics. He is currently writing a book that defends an account of environmental and multispecies justice as a framework for thinking ethically about the crisis of biodiversity loss and mass extinction. He is also developing an ongoing research project exploring the relationship between individual agency and responsibility and structural justice and injustice with a particular focus on environmental and climate issues.His first book, The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023. The book offers a new, robustly theological story of the origin of consequentialism, one of the most influential views in modern moral theory. It uses the new historical account to intervene in contemporary ethical debates about consequentialism and about how ethicists conceive of goods, ends, agency, and causality.Prior to joining the YDS faculty, Ryan held postdoctoral fellowships at the Princeton University Center for Human Values (2019-22) and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music (2022-24).Show NotesGet your copy of Ryan Darr’s The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of ConsequentialismComplex ethical questions about climate changeEnmeshed in environmental systemsA crash course in environmental ethicsWhich entities should we be thinking about ethically?Are human beings the most important morally and ethically speaking?What about animals, plants, or other kinds of life?What about other species of animalsAnthropocentrism: Only humans matter.Sentientism: Only sentient animals matterBiocentrism: Every life form mattersCan we apply justice and rights to animals?The polar bear on melting ice was the poster child for climate change; but this was a mistake because the effects on human beings is massive.“All of us are affected.”“We’re all vulnerable to climate change. …. kidding themselves and need to think more about this.”Global southClimate negotiations: Who needs to lower emissions and how? And how do we adapt?Massive overwhelm at the scope of environmental problems: “Only massive changes can make a difference.” But “I have to change my life.”How should we navigate the scale issue?Don’t let large scale or small scale issues or changes eclipse the other.Political action is crucial“We need people willing to respond in the ways they can, where they are.”Climate change denial“There’s a lot of money flowing here.” Fossil fuel interests and others muddy the waters and create conflicts“If it’s the case that millions of lives are at stake … I don’t see how some doubtReasons why people might deny climate change“It’d be nice if climate change wasn’t real, but …”Environmental justice and injusticeToxicities released into the natural environmentConservation and biodiversity lossApproximately 8 million species on earthIt’s standard to lose a handful per million per yearGenerally, you’re supposed to get more species on earth, short of a mass extinction eventBut extinction rate is something like 100x to 1000x fasterDefaunation—reduction of fauna on earthMeasuring the biomass of various species (Humans make up 30% of the world’s biomass.)Changes linked to colonialism and global capitalismWhy would God have created such a diverse speciesThomas Aquinas on why God created a world full of biodiversity: to reflect God’s extensive perfection“On this view, the world is show lessWhat are the ethics ofExample: ...
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    47 mins
  • Divine Hiddenness / Deborah Casewell

    Divine Hiddenness / Deborah Casewell
    Jan 23 2025
    Are you there God? It’s me…Why is God hidden? Why is God silent? And why does that matter in light of faith, hope, and love?In this episode, philosopher Deborah Casewell joins Evan Rosa for a discussion of divine hiddenness. Together, they reflect on:Simone Weil’s distinction between abdication and abandonmentMartin Luther’s theology of the crossThe differences between the epistemic, moral, and existential problems with the hiddenness of GodThe terror, horror, and fear that emerges from the human experience of divine hiddennessThe realities of seeing through a glass darkly and pursuing faith, hope, and loveAnd finally, what it means to live bravely in the tension or contracdition between the hiddenness of God and the faith in God’s presence.About Deborah CasewellDeborah Casewell is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Chester. She works in the areas of philosophy and culture, philosophy of religion, and theology & religion, in particular on existentialism and religion, questions of ethics and self-formation in relation to asceticism and the German cultural ideal of Bildung. She has given a number of public talks and published on these topics in a range of settings.Her first book. Eberhard Jüngel and Existence, Being Before the Cross, was published in 2021: it explores the theologian Eberhard Jüngel’s philosophical inheritance and how his thought provides a useful paradigm for the relation between philosophy and theology. Her second book, Monotheism and Existentialism, was published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press as a Cambridge Element.She is Co-Director of the AHRC-funded Simone Weil Research Network UK, and previously held a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Bonn. Prior to her appointment in Bonn, she was Lecturer in Philosophy at Liverpool Hope University and a Teaching Fellow at King’s College, London. She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, my MSt from the University of Oxford, and spent time researching and studying at the University of Tübingen and the Institut Catholique de Paris.Show NotesMother Teresa on God’s hiddennessMother Teresa: Come Be My Light, edited by the Rev. Brian KolodiejchukWhat does it mean for God to be hidden?Perceived absenceSimone Weil on God’s abdication of the world for the sake of the worldThe presence of God. This should be understood in two ways. As Creator, God is present in everything which exists as soon as it exists. The presence for which God needs the co-operation of the creature is the presence of God, not as Creator but as Spirit. The first presence is the presence of creation. The second is the presence of decreation. (He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. Saint Augustine.) God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise there would be nothing but himself. — Simone Weil, in Gravity and Grace, “Decreation”Abdication vs. AbandonmentA longing for God, who is hidden, unknown, unperceived, and mysteriousMartin Luther’s theology of the cross“Hidden in the suffering and ignominy of the cross.”“God is powerful but chooses not to be in relation to us.”Human experiences of divine hiddennessThree ways to talk about hiddenness of God epistemic hiddenness:  ”if we were to grasp God with our minds, then we'd be denying the power of God.”Making ourselves an idolThe Cloud of Unknowing and “apophatic” or “negative” theology (only saying what God is not) Moral hiddenness of God: “this is what people find very troubling. … a moral terror to it.” Existential hiddenness of God: “where the hiddenness of God makes you feel terrified”Revelation and the story of human encounter or engagement with God“Luther is the authority on the hiddenness of God in the existential and moral sense.”The power of God revealed in terror.“God never becomes comfortable or accommodated into our measure.””We never make God into an object of our reason and comfort.”Terror, horror, and fear: reverence of GodMarilyn McCord Adams, *Christ & Horrors—*meaning-destroying events“That which is hidden terrifies us.”Martin Luther: “God is terrifying, because God does save some of us, and God does damn some of us.”The “alien work of God”“Is Luther right in saying that God has to remain hidden, and the way in which God has to remain hidden  has to be terrifying? So there has to be this kind  of background of the terrifying God in all of our relations with the God of love that is the God of grace that, that saves us.”Preserving the mystery of GodWe’re unable to commodify or trivialize God.Francis Schaeffer’s He Is There and He Is Not Silent“Luther construes it as a good thing.”Suffering, anxiety, despair, meaninglessnessHumanity’s encounter with nothingness—the void“Interest in the demonic, or terror, as a preliminary step into a  full religious or a proper religious experience of God.”Longing for God in the ...
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    36 mins

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