“They’re fighting their way through this crazy immigration system that is ineffective, illogical, and inhumane. … There’s a wideness in God’s mercy. Since when has anybody said mercy for some and not for all? … Fixing immigration is really different than blowing it up. … This is not an impossible crisis to solve. … We need to not be divided by our political affiliations. As Christians, we stand with Christ, who critiques all human institutions.” (Alexia Salvatierra, from the episode)
The immigration crisis on US borders reveals a deeper crisis of humanity—another example of democracy at a turning point. What should be the Christian response to the current immigration crisis? How can the individuals and small communities take effective action? And who are the real people most affected by immigration policy in the United States?
In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes theologian, pastor, and activist Alexia Salvatierra. She shares stories from the front lines of immigration justice.
Alexia Salvatierra is an ordained Lutheran pastor and a leading voice in faith-based social justice movements. She serves as assistant professor of integral mission and global transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a key organizer in immigrant advocacy for over four decades. She co-authored Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World and works extensively with grassroots organizations to address the intersection of faith, justice, and policy.
Together they discuss:
Helpful Links and Resources
Show Notes
Immigration Today: Stories and Case Studies
The Global Immigration and Refugee Crisis
American Immigration During the Trump Administration
Policy and Legal Discussion
Call to Action
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“If I'm actually seeing you and then I'm hearing you, then it doubles the thickness of that communication moment.”
In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the full-bodied, empathetic nature of listening and the communication process. He reflects on good listening, the empathy it requires, and what it means to truly recognize and successfully understand each other.
Listening and perceiving are bound up together in a fundamental way, offering us an opportunity to enter into another’s experience, truly seeing and recognizing them and receiving who they are.
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
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ … That is the core of our Christian belief.”
“I hope that people who are both patriotic and Christian are not being painted with a broad brush.”
(Condoleezza Rice, from this episode)
In this episode, Condoleezza Rice joins Mark Labberton to discuss the state of US foreign and domestic policy in light of Christian moral convictions. Secretary Rice served as the 66th US Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, has been on the faculty of Stanford University since 1981, and is currently the director of the Hoover Institution.
Together they discuss:
The state of US foreign policy and international relations
How to think about American involvement in global politics
The importance of US foreign assistance
American patriotism and Christian devotion
And Condoleezza Rice’s prayers for American leaders right now: discernment, judgment, compassion, and policy that reflects the dignity of all human beings.
About Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.
Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As professor of political science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors.
From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as director, then senior director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
For more information, visit her profile at the Hoover Institution.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“ When I watch people who are what I think of as expert communicators, they are people who have this quality that they hear well, they listen deeply, and they know what kind of communication to give in return that actually seals that that was fully received.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)
Why is it so hard to communicate? To accomplish the simple task of delivering and receiving information?
In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton suggests that real and successful communication is a miracle, and an infrequent one at that. Our failure to communicate regularly demonstrates just how far we are from adequately listening to one another. Ultimately, if we want to seek the miracle of communication, we need to take the responsibility to “close the loop” and do the work of hearing, listening, and acknowledging receipt.
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
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.
This is a turbulent time for American democracy. Years, perhaps decades, of social change is manifesting in the form of distrust, violence, chaos, fear, loneliness, and despair.
But Conversing, along with Comment magazine, is about hope, healing, and hospitality.
For this special 200th episode of Conversing, Mark Labberton invites Anne Snyder (Editor-in-Chief, Comment magazine) for a close reading and discussion of the 2025 Comment Manifesto, a hopeful new document offering a vision of Christian Humanism for this era.
Together they discuss:
The meaning and intent behind a new Comment magazine Manifesto for Christian humanism
The Incarnation of Christ for what it means to be human
Hospitality in an era of exclusion
Healthy institutions and the importance of communal agency
Individualism vs communitarianism
Learning to perceive the world in fresh, surprising ways
About the Comment Manifesto
To read the Manifesto in its entirety, visit comment.org/manifesto/, or scroll below.
To watch a reading of selections from the Comment Manifesto, click here.
About Anne Snyder
Anne Snyder is the Editor-in-Chief of Comment magazine, which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit https://comment.org/ for more information.
For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.
Anne also oversees our Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.
The 6 Primary Sections of the 2025 Comment Manifesto
To read the Manifesto in its entirety, visit comment.org/manifesto/.
We are Christian humanists, those who believe that Jesus Christ—God become man—is the ultimate measure of what it means to be human. We believe that every human being is created in the image of God, whole persons who are at once fallen yet gloriously endowed, finite and dependent, yet deserving of infinite dignity. We seek to stay true both to the wonder and to the woundedness of life this side of the veil, even as our eschatology floods us with hope: Jesus has walked with us, died, risen, and ascended, and he will come again to make all things new.
We believe it’s a time to build, that the creative imagination and the Christian imagination are mysteriously linked. We want to begin with the Yes in Christ, not our own noes. While there is an important role for criticism baptized in a study of what is true, good, and beautiful, it is a means to an end—the basis for wise repair and imagination, not the justification for destruction or erasure. We are committed to keeping orthodoxy and orthopraxy married, taking seriously our job to translate between them.
We believe in institutions: government, guilds, families, schools, universities, the church. We recognize that in our age of individualism, institutions are often painted as the enemy. We try to change that, seeking to shape the character of today’s most formative institutions while exploring what kind of reimagined social architecture might compel the next generation’s trust.
We believe in the transformative power of encounter—encountering reality, encountering those unlike us. Loving enemies is bedrock for Comment, hospitality core. We are champions of the difficult room. We believe in the deeper truths that can be discovered when different life experiences and distinct sources of wisdom are gathered around one table. We intentionally publish arguments with which we disagree, including those who don’t hail Christ as Lord, not for the sake of pluralism without conviction, but because Christians have always better understood the contours and depths of their faith when crystallized through exchanges with strangers turned friends.
We believe Christianity is perpetually on the move. There is no sacred capital. While the audience we serve is navigating a North American context, we serve this audience from an understanding that Christianity is an intercultural, polyglot religion. At a time of rising religious ethno-nationalism, we insist that no culture can claim to represent the true form of Christianity, and we actively seek for our authors and partners to reflect the global reality of the church.
We believe there are different ways of knowing—that the thinker and the practitioner have equally valuable wisdoms worth airing, that relationship and context matter for the ways in which we perceive reality, that the child with Down syndrome perceives truths that a Nobel Prize winner cannot, and that there is a need for those who inhabit these myriad ways to share space and learn how to pursue understanding—perhaps even revelation—together.
...
Our theory of change takes its cues from the garden, less the machine. We are personalists, not ideologues. We follow the logic of Jesus’s mustard seed, of yeast transforming a whole pile of dough, of the principle of contagiousness and change happening over generations. We believe in the value of slow thought. We are skeptical of the language of scale in growing spiritual goods. While we wish to be savvy in unmasking the either/or reactivity of our age and will always call out dehumanizing trendlines, we are fundamentally animated by the creative impulse, by a philosophy of natality expressed through hospitality. This feels especially important in this time between eras when no one knows what’s next, and we need one another to recalibrate, to reflect, and to shape a hopeful future.
”I grew up thinking that Christianity was basically cruel and hypocritical.”
“The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.”
“That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.”
—Jonathan Rauch, from the episode
We’re at a crossroads, where Christianity and secularism in America are both operating at cross-purposes, and both need a critical reassessment of their role in democratic public life.
In his new book, Jonathan Rauch “reckons candidly with both the shortcomings of secularism and the corrosion of Christianity.” He “addresses secular Americans who think Christianity can be abandoned, and Christian Americans who blame secular culture for their grievances.”
Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode), Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch.
He is also a celebrated essayist, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
In this episode Mark Labberton and Jonathan Rauch discuss:
About Jonathan Rauch
Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode), Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“Is Trump interested in being Constitutionally faithful?” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)
“What we're watching here is the operation of the will of an individual on the system, and the system is really meant to answer to the negotiated will of a plural body.” (Yuval Levin, from this episode)
“ I think character is destiny, especially in the American presidency, because the presidency really is one person.” (Yuval Levin, from this episode)
The transition of power from one presidential administration to another always has the potential for turbulence—often a surreal, perplexing, or disorienting process. But is there anything peculiar or problematic about the opening days of Donald Trump’s second term in office? Is there anything unconstitutional?
In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes back Yuval Levin for a conversation about the political and social impact of Donald Trump’s first month in office in light of Constitutional law and the Separation of Powers.
Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Currie Chair in Public Policy. His latest book is American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. He’s founder of National Affairs, senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor of National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.
Together they discuss:
About Yuval Levin
Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.
At AEI, Levin and scholars in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies research division study the foundations of self-government and the future of law, regulation, and constitutionalism. They also explore the state of American social, political, and civic life, focusing on the preconditions necessary for family, community, and country to flourish.
Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.
In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024).
He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“The gift of listening is the laying down of presumption. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you would say about this or that or the other thing. I don’t understand how you have experienced life. I don’t share in that emotional moment. I don’t have that same vocabulary. I don’t have that same life experience.” (Mark Labberton, from this episode)
In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton reflects on the reality and meaning of the fact that “I am not you.”
He considers the importance of differentiation between speaker and listener, and the best posture of the listener not only to gain information, but to contribute back to the speaker and the conversation itself, opening up a deeper and more imaginative exchange.
Learning to appreciate and pursue knowledge of “differentiated others,” listening in this context becomes an antidote to presumption. The less presumptuous we are about others, the more knowledge and perspective we’re likely to gain.
Listening is also more than immediate reflection. Better than restatement would be to probe the speaker’s interest and awaken their imagination, thereby creating new possibilities for everyone involved.
About Conversing Shorts
“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate, 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
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“I’m one of the thousands and thousands of people in Altadena who have lost our homes to the fire and are trying to pick up the pieces and find out what to do next.” (Megan Katerjian, from the episode)
What is it like to lose your house in a fire?
The Eaton Fire in Los Angeles County started on January 7, 2025, and within twenty-four hours had burned over fourteen thousand acres of Altadena, California, and surrounding areas. Thousands of people have lost their homes (some without any guarantee of home insurance or FEMA aid), thousands of schools have closed, and life in this beautiful city has been completely transformed.
Today’s guest, Megan Katerjian, went from helping local homeless families find housing to experiencing homelessness herself, when her family’s northwest Altadena home burned down in the Eaton Fire. She is CEO of Door of Hope and has a twenty-year career in fundraising, policy advocacy, program development, volunteer engagement, and pastoral ministry.
In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes Megan to discuss her experience and perspective. Megan courageously and vulnerably opens up about the pain of losing a meaningful space of care and comfort, and shares about the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual realities of what this traumatic experience has been like.
Together they discuss:
If you are unhoused for any reason, including having lost your home in the Los Angeles fires, visit DoorofHope.us for reliable information and practical resources. For additional information, visit Fuller Seminary’s Wind and Fire Resources page.
Additional links:
City of Pasadena Eaton Fire Updates
About Megan Katerjian
Rev. Megan Katerjian is CEO of Door of Hope, and has a twenty-year career in fundraising, policy advocacy, program development, volunteer engagement, and pastoral ministry, working for non-profits in Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Africa, as well as churches in California.
Megan holds two master’s degrees from Fuller Seminary, a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, and a certificate in non-profit management.
Megan lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fires in east Los Angeles County in January 2025.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
A special episode for the inauguration of Donald Trump’s second term, as the forty-seventh president of the United States. Whether you’re filled with hope and joy, or anxiety and fearfulness, how can we pursue a common citizenship that is grounded in faith and moral sensitivity, focused on justice and love, and rightfully patriotic?
Today, Mark welcomes friends Pete Wehner (columnist, The Atlantic, and Fellow, Trinity Forum), Anne Snyder (editor-in-chief, Comment magazine), and David Goatley (president, Fuller Seminary).
Together they discuss:
The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term in office;
The meaning of patriotism in an unfolding, rambunctious democratic experiment;
Repentance, repair, and understanding;
How to keep a moral-ethical grounding in political life;
Balancing open curiosity and genuine concern;
What rejuvenates and renews us during anxious political times (exploring beauty in nature and art);
Learning disagreement in a post-civility era;
Peacemaking instead of polarization;
Developing civic antibodies and the need for regeneration and renewal;
And how to pray for Donald Trump as he enters his next term in office.
About Peter Wehner
Peter Wehner, an American essayist, is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and senior fellow at the Trinity Forum. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports, and friendships.
Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives.
Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump, which the New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia.
About Anne Snyder
Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine, **which is a core publication of Cardus, a think tank devoted to renewing North American social architecture, rooted in two thousand years of Christian social thought. Visit comment.org for more information.
For years, Anne has been engaged in concerns for the social architecture of the world. That is, the way that our practices of social engagement, life, conversation, discussion, debate, and difference can all be held in the right kind of ways for the sake of the thriving of people, individuals, communities, and our nation at large.
Anne also oversees Comment’s partner project, Breaking Ground, and is the host of The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-editor of Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022).
About David Goatley
David Emmanuel Goatley is president of Fuller Seminary. Prior to his appointment in January 2023, he served as the associate dean for academic and vocational formation, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Jr. Research Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry, and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA, he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Campbellsville, Kentucky, for nine years (1986–1995).
In addition to his articles, essays, and book chapters, Goatley is the author of Were You There? Godforsakenness in Slave Religion and A Divine Assignment: The Missiology of Wendell Clay Somerville, as well as the editor of Black Religion, Black Theology: Collected Essays of J. Deotis Roberts. His current research focuses on flourishing in ministry and thriving congregations, most recently working on projects funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Duke Endowment.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“The Good News is still good news.”
“I'm very pro-democracy, and yet democracy has never been the necessary prerequisite for the good news of Jesus Christ to flourish. … The good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t win and doesn’t lose based on a political party winning or losing.”
(Walter Kim, from this episode)
How does evangelicalism relate to the dominant political powers of our world?
In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes Walter Kim to Conversing. As the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and host of the Difficult Conversations podcast, Walter holds on to deep Christian orthodoxy alongside the most vigorous and necessary intellectual, personal, ethical, and theological reflections, offering a vision of leadership and spiritual-moral imagination to bolster the future of evangelicalism.
Together they discuss:
Christianity, pluralism, and polarization
The fraught meaning of “evangelicalism” in America and what it means to be a “good news person” in this political moment
The human impulse to wield power and the temptation of evangelicals to join with empire
The Christian underpinnings of the American nation’s founding and the necessary ingredients for the rise of Christian nationalism
How evangelicals are retelling and recasting the story of the gospel in today’s political climate
About Walter Kim
Walter Kim serves as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a role he’s held since January of 2020. Previously, he was the pastor of Boston's historic Park Street Church, and has served other churches in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He received a BA from Northwestern University, an MDiv from Regent College, and a PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. He hosts the Difficult Conversations podcast.
Show Notes
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
“An attentive, earnest ear.”
“We begin as listeners, that we begin as learners, that we begin as, as genuine, interested, empathetic people who are called to know and see and hear one another.”
“Entering the room listening gave me an opportunity to realize that I could just behold someone. Behold them visually, behold them audially, to sit in the wonder, the awe, the mystery, the difference of their life from mine and just absorb it in a way that was such a delight. It was also humbling. It also reminded me frequently of how much I had yet to learn, how much I really often didn't understand. … It stretched my heart, it stretched my mind, it gave me an anticipation of growing into greater knowledge of people who were like (and also very unlike) me. And that felt like an invitation to adventure.”
(Mark Labberton, from this episode)
In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton offers a principle he learned from his parents: enter the room listening. He reflects on the purpose and usefulness of listening as a starting point; the character of Christian listening and what it means to be a “listening disciple” rather than a “speaking disciple”; what listening does for the speaker; some of the barriers to listening in our current cultural moment; and the observational, cognitive, and emotional benefits of this advice.
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
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.