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
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.
“A certain degree of faith in Providence and a certain degree of confidence in America … May that combination not be overwhelmed by some disaster.” (New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, offering a blessing for election season)
Contemporary political debate and commentary operates from deeply moral sources. People tend to vote their conscience. Our values and ideals, our sense of right and wrong, and our beliefs about what contributes or detracts from the common good often inform our politics.
And across the political spectrum, Americans of all stripes exercise their citizenship and public engagement through a religious faith that grounds it all. So, what better space to explore this conjunction of faith, morality, and political life than The New York Times Opinion section?
Today on the show, Ross Douthat joins Mark Labberton to discuss how his faith and theological commitments ground his moral and political perspectives. Douthat joined The New York Times as an Opinion columnist in 2009, and regularly appears on the weekly Opinion podcast, “Matter of Opinion.” He’s also a film critic for National Review and was previously senior editor at The Atlantic.
In this episode, they discuss the spiritual and political background of Douthat’s youth and how Roman Catholic Christianity grounded his religious and political views; the challenges for how the Catholic Church and its moral teachings can adapt to contemporary culture; how faith and morality can speak to our dynamic political moment during the 2024 election season; and finally Ross’s hope and faith in divine providence met with confidence in America’s resilience and capacity for good.
About Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Opinion columnist in 2009, and regularly appears on the weekly Opinion podcast, “Matter of Opinion.” He’s also a film critic for National Review. Previously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of several books, including The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery (2021), The Decadent Society (2020), To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism (2018), Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (2012); Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (2005), and, with Reihan Salam, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008). His newest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, will be published in early 2025.
Show Notes
Ross Douthat’s spiritual background as Episcopalian, Pentecostal-Evangelical, and eventually Roman Catholic
Our “spiritually haunted environment”
How Catholicism has changed from Pope John Paul II to Pope Francis
Adapting moral teachings to contemporary challenges
“Many, many of the problems in our culture and the reasons for people's unhappiness are related to issues of sex and relationships.”
“Jesus says incredibly stringent and strenuous things in the Gospels about sex.”
“I think if the church stops having some sort of countercultural message on those issues, then it won't actually be speaking to the big challenges and derangements of our time.”
“All of the developed world is heading over this demographic cliff…”
People aren’t getting married anymore. They aren’t forming relationships anymore.”
Pope Francis, pastoral sensitivity, and making moral concessions to contemporary culture
Pope Francis squelching the Latin mass
Commenting on the dynamics and craziness of our political moment
“Over the course of my career, I have tried to spend a lot of time with the idea that Catholicism in particular, and I think Christianity in general, should stand a little bit outside of partisan categories.”
How the Republican Party can address the needs of the working class
Ross Douthat’s views during the Trump Era
Providence and appealing to God’s control
"Man proposes, and God disposes.”
“The world has grown weirder in general, in the last decade, than it was when I was in my twenties.”
Providence and freedom
Ross’s thesis in The Decadent Society: “The Western world and really the whole planet was sort of stuck stagnant. We'd achieved this incredible level of wealth and technological power, we'd filled the earth and subdued it to some degree, but we were suffering from uncertainty, malaise, and ennui because we didn't know what to do next.”
Space travel and Elon Musk
Looking for help from some other power: God, Aliens, or A.I.
The unique perspective Ross Douthat brings to The New York Times
“As the world has grown weirder, I've felt a little more comfortable being weird myself, and that so far hasn't gotten me fired.”
“You know, not to brag, but yeah, I'm probably the weirdest columnist at a major American newspaper.”
Offering a blessing for the nation’s experience between now and election day
“Life in the United States is an underrated good. Americans have become very pessimistic, very unhappy with each other, sometimes unhappy with themselves … And I think actually, beneath that difficult surface, America has a lot of real strengths and real resilience and American culture is better positioned, I think, than a lot of cultures around the world to navigate the next 50 to 100 years of human history. So I think that should give people some confidence.”
“A certain degree of faith in Providence and a certain degree of confidence in America.”
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.
Sacred spaces are not secret spaces. The church enacts a gospel reality that is inherently universal and transparent in the world. And what better metaphor than building a church sanctuary made of glass to communicate the invitation of the gospel to the world?
In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the implications of this architectural decision. He also considers the opportunities for community conversation; the invitation to communion, dialogue, and unity; and a fearless, gospel-centered transparency between the church and the world.
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
Preaching in a glass-walled sanctuary at First Presbyterian Berkeley, CA
“It’s one cross, in the world and for the church… but it’s for everyone.”
The “live theater” of preaching in a glass-walled sanctuary
We live in a church and world of both stillness and movement—which is embodied in Jesus’s ministry
“I wanted to feel like what I was doing in the sanctuary would land as much with realistic speech and tone and assumption in the streets of Berkeley as it would land inside the sanctuary.”
“It was a good way to hold my feet to the fire. Would I say this if I was standing exposed as it were on the street outside? Or would I only say this inside the closed walls of, yes, a clear glass wall church? So it became a metaphor—a reality—a vivid visual play that was part of every Sunday.”
Utter transparency of glass over stone walls
In a sacred space there is a transparency.
“The same kind of tyranny against faith exists inside us, but also around us. And now we're together going to share in the celebration of the Lord's table. ‘Come all you who are hungry. Eat and drink of this body and this bread.’ We're doing that in public view.
How do we live the claims of the gospel in a way that’s humble—not arrogant, not presumptuous, not full of pride, not insider-outsider, not us-versus-them… we are the us.”
“The gospel is for all of us.”
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.