Conversing with Mark Labberton

What does it take to rehumanize our common life in a moment of cultural fragility, institutional collapse, and crisis of trust?
Recorded at the Washington National Cathedral for Comment magazine's inaugural Understory Festival, this roundtable asks how culture, beauty, and faith might rehumanize a fractured public life. Mark Labberton is joined by Comment editor-in-chief Anne Snyder, The Sacred host Elizabeth Oldfield, Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, and Cardus co-founder Ray Pennings.
"It is actually possible to have deep roots and wide open arms."
In this episode, the panel reflects on building a gathering rooted in hope and Christian humanism rather than argument alone. They discuss why and how politics is downstream from culture, the role of religion in the public square, the limits of purely cerebral ways of knowing, toxic positivity versus honest hope, pluralism with deep roots, the beauty of "groaning," and learning to die well.
Episode Highlights
"It is actually possible to have deep roots and wide open arms."—Anne Snyder
"Naturally as a Muslim, I don't agree with Christianity's truth claims, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the beauty of Christianity."—Shadi Hamid
"The word that's been coming to me this whole festival is and."—Elizabeth Oldfield
"Politics is downstream from culture."—Ray Pennings
"We're all made to worship, it's just a question of what we worship."—Shadi Hamid
About the Guests
Anne Snyder is editor-in-chief of Comment, a magazine published by Cardus, and convener of the Understory Festival. She hosts The Whole Person Revolution podcast and wrote The Fabric of Character. Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred podcast, is a former director of UK think tank Theos, and author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. Shadi Hamid is a Washington Post columnist, senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, co-host of Zealots at the Gate, and author of The Case for American Power. Ray Pennings co-founded Cardus in 2000 and serves as its executive vice president and Comment's publisher.
Helpful Links and Resources
The Understory Festival: https://comment.org/understory/ Comment magazine: https://comment.org Cardus: https://www.cardus.ca The Understory, by Lore Ferguson Wilbert (the book behind the name): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1587435705 Elizabeth Oldfield, Fully Alive: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com The Sacred podcast: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast Zealots at the Gate: https://comment.org/podcasts/zealots-at-the-gate/ Shadi Hamid, The Case for American Power: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/shadi-hamid/
Show Notes
Understory Festival, National Cathedral
Local hope, national despair
Naming the festival: the Lore Ferguson Wilbert book
Festival, not conference—body, mind, heart, soul
Cardus, a faith-based think tank
"Politics is downstream from culture."—Ray Pennings
Ways of knowing as the "secret sauce"
A Muslim observer among his favorite Christians
"I don't agree with Christianity's truth claims, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the beauty of Christianity."—Shadi Hamid
Culture as the path out of despair
Weeping beside someone rolling their eyes
Groaning beauty and Romans 8
Dying well—euthanasia, deathbeds, Ben Sasse
The secular paradigm at a dead end
"We're all made to worship, it's just a question of what we worship."—Shadi Hamid
Madeleine Albright's "theophany" on faith in diplomacy
Moral ambition and the power of "and"
"The word that's been coming to me this whole festival is and."—Elizabeth Oldfield
Christian humanism—rights endowed by a Creator
Luke Bretherton—start with the neighbor's need
Hospitality—a guest, not an enemy
"It is actually possible to have deep roots and wide open arms."—Anne Snyder
Surface versus depth—showing what's underneath
#UnderstoryFestival #Comment #ChristianHumanism #PublicTheology #ShadiHamid #ElizabethOldfield #AnneSnyder #Cardus #Pluralism #Hope
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

When a faith built to bless the nation gets quietly diverted into power, the most dangerous act left to the church may be refusing to whitewash the story and choosing instead to become a communion of genuinely unlike people.
On the eve of a national prayer rally rededicating America to God, Mark Labberton joined The Jim Wallis Podcast to ask whether Christians who invoke the nation's name are following Jesus or drifting from him.
Together with Jim Wallis, Mark reflects on what it means to choose Christ alone, love the neighbour, and refuse a faith fused to national power. They discuss the evangel versus "evangelicalism," the church as a communion of unlike people, worship in a black church, American exceptionalism as theological crisis, and racial gerrymandering after recent court rulings.
Episode Highlights
"I want to be evangel-centric and not be caught up in the icalisms of a history, a pattern, a habit, a sociology that has often been diverted from the evangel into power—political, social, economic, racial power."
"Paul's giving us a vision of the church that's a communion of unlike people. We know a lot about a communion of like people. But a communion of unlike people is meant to be one of the hallmarks of the church."
"I can't be a Christian alone, but I also can't be a Christian that matures if I'm a Christian only with people who are like me."
"Worship of our country, or the exceptionalism of leaders of our country—these are completely foreign to the body of Christ and to the theology of the kingdom."
"It's really like subverting reality by renaming it in a way that's euphemistic, that's literally whitewashing."
Helpful Links and Resources
The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor, by Mark Labberton https://www.ivpress.com/the-dangerous-act-of-loving-your-neighbor
Called, by Mark Labberton https://www.ivpress.com/called
The False White Gospel, by Jim Wallis https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291899/thefalsewhitegospel/
Jim Wallis, Center on Faith and Justice https://faithandjustice.georgetown.edu/about-jim-wallis/
God's Politics with Jim Wallis (Substack): https://jimwallis.substack.com/
Show Notes
Recorded on the eve of the Rededicate 250 prayer rally
Loving your neighbour as a dangerous, costly act
Gratitude for America alongside a "far more complicated story" of suffering
"Christ alone"—Jesus, not any nation, party, or president, is Lord
"The evangel is the good news of Jesus Christ"; nothing can rival it
"A communion of unlike people is meant to be one of the hallmarks of the church."
White allies, Black solidarity, and Supreme Court rulings on Louisiana and Alabama
A friend's anniversary in African garb—living fully "on good days, maybe two-thirds"
Detroit, Black churches, and faith as joyous rediscovery
Worshiping at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland every Sunday
Saying yes to the evangel, no to the "icalism" of evangelicalism
John Stott as mentor; the Lausanne Covenant and Global South
Stott's wartime pacifism; a father who stopped speaking for four years
American exceptionalism as a theological crisis, not just left-versus-right
"America's original sin," erasing history, and "literally whitewashing"
First citizenship in the kingdom; the moral arc bends toward justice
#MarkLabberton #JimWallis #Conversing #ChristianNationalism #ChristAlone #LoveYourNeighbor #PublicTheology #FaithAndPolitics
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Jim Wallis and Paul Woodhull.

Father Greg Boyle has spent nearly four decades alongside gang members in Los Angeles, founding Homeboy Industries from the poorest parish in the city.
"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."
In this episode with Mark Labberton, Boyle reflects on what heals a life inside the world's largest gang-intervention program. Together they discuss tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity, kinship as the true goal (with peace and justice as byproducts), why "the poor evangelize you," why demonizing collapses on both political sides, and the mental-health roots of homelessness and gang life.
Episode Highlights
"The whole incarnation was necessary, not because of sin or salvation even. It's just, for me, it's God's love needed to become tender."
"I think that's the singular agenda item for our God is just to look at you and say, 'Ah, you're here.'"
"No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality. It's how it works."
"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."
"There aren't good guys and bad guys, you know? And God doesn't see it that way, as hard as that is for us to conceive."
About Greg Boyle
Father Gregory Boyle, SJ, is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. A native Angeleno, he served as pastor of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights from 1986 to 1992. In 2024 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with the California Peace Prize and Notre Dame's 2017 Laetare Medal. He is the bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, The Whole Language, and Cherished Belonging. Learn more and follow at homeboyindustries.org and @homeboyindustries on Instagram.
Helpful Links and Resources
Cherished Belonging (2024): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cherished-Belonging/Gregory-Boyle/9781668061855
Tattoos on the Heart: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tattoos-on-the-Heart/Gregory-Boyle/9781439153154
Homeboy Industries: https://homeboyindustries.org
Father Greg's bio: https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeboyindustries
L'Arche International: https://www.larche.org
Show Notes
Native Angeleno; Catholic, family-of-eight upbringing in Mid-Wilshire
Why the Jesuits: hilarity, prophetic witness, anti-Vietnam protest
"There is no difference actually between what God wants for you and what you most deeply want"
Bolivia, 1984: liberation theology and the indigenous Jesuits
"The poor evangelize you"
Assigned to Dolores Mission—poorest parish in LA, highest concentration of gang activity
"A vocation within a vocation within a vocation"
The decade of death, 1988–98, and burying kids
Birth of Homeboy: school, "felony-friendly" jobs, nine businesses
"Nobody thinks anything up. You evolve."
Tattoos on the Heart and the discipline of paying attention
"I had been drowning in the shallow end of my own thoughts… Homeboy taught me to stand up"
Tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity—L'Arche
"God's love needed to become tender"—a different theology of incarnation
"Ah, you're here"—the singular agenda item of God
Kinship as God's dream; peace, justice, equality as byproducts
"No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality."
"There aren't good guys and bad guys… God doesn't see it that way"
Homelessness rooted in despair, trauma, mental illness
"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back"
LA County Jail as the largest mental institution in the world
Friendship as the secret diagnosis—and the primacy of relationship
#HomeboyIndustries #GregBoyle #ConversingPodcast #RadicalKinship #Tenderness #Compassion #FaithAndJustice #GangIntervention #Jesuit
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

We tell conversion stories. We tell deconversion stories. But where are the stories of the long, complicated, and faithful middle? Author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren joins Mark Labberton on her new book What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience—a vision for faith that endures the long, often dry middle of life. Drawing on the Desert Mothers and Fathers, she names a quiet crisis many believers know but rarely speak: spiritual weariness, prayer that goes silent, and the cultural pull to blow up your life rather than stay in it.
"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."
In this episode with Mark Labberton, Warren reflects on her own burnout as a writer, mother, and priest, and what the ancient monks taught her about how to keep going. Together they discuss revivalism's distortions, stability of the heart, the church in exile, patience as resistance to consumerism, communal hope, and what it means to stay in your cell.
Episode Highlights
"What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith."
"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."
"We meet God in the midst of that, not on the other side of that."
"If the moral majority was kind of dressing Jesus up and putting him in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to just, for then, to me, put Jesus in a blue tie."
"Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin."
About Tish Harrison Warren
Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and Anglican priest in Austin, Texas, and the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year), Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year), and her newest, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for the New York Times and was a columnist for Christianity Today. She serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, a senior fellow with The Trinity Forum, and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church.
Helpful Links and Resources
What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/whatgrowsinwearylands
Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/liturgy-of-the-ordinary
Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren https://www.ivpress.com/prayer-in-the-night
The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope by Curt Thompson https://curtthompsonmd.com/books/
Immanuel Anglican Church, Austin https://www.immanuelatx.org
Tish Harrison Warren online
https://tishharrisonwarren.com
https://www.instagram.com/tishharrisonwarren/
Show Notes
Award-winning Anglican priest, author, and former New York Times newsletter writer
Origins of What Grows in Weary Lands—a season of mid-career weariness
Sandwich generation: young kids and a mother with Alzheimer's
"It felt like I told my husband, like the line went dead."
Reading from chapter one—revivalism, deconversion, and the missing middle
"What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith."
Perseverance—the "eat your vegetables" of the spiritual life
"Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be."
Reconversion, not deconstruction
Stabilitas cordis—stability of the heart
The eat-pray-love trap and mid-life self-reinvention
Striving, and treating God like an app or an Uber driver
Desert Mothers and Fathers, third through fifth century
"Stay in your cell"—a holistic call far beyond quiet-time advice
Benedict's vow of stability, drawn from desert wisdom
The American church as a church in exile, not a promised land
"If the moral majority was dressing Jesus up in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to put Jesus in a blue tie."
"Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin."
Charlie—incandescent joy after a long, hard middle
Hilda—fifty-eight years of daily prayer for her father's conversion
"Impatience is what keeps you buying things. Patience doesn't make anybody any money."
Resilience is communal—Curt Thompson on brains that cannot hope alone
The long view: small repair, slow institutional change, hope carried together
#ChristianResilience #TishHarrisonWarren #WhatGrowsInWearyLands #DesertFathers #StabilityOfTheHeart #SpiritualFormation #AnglicanFaith #FaithAndCulture #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Historian and New York Times bestselling author Jemar Tisby joins Mark Labberton to confront the Supreme Court's 6–3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which has eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and reopened the door to racial gerrymandering across the South. Recorded in the immediate aftermath, the conversation traces the long arc from the Three-Fifths Clause and Dred Scott through Selma to this hour.
"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration."
In this episode with Mark Labberton, Tisby reflects on the history of black disenfranchisement, the cynicism of colorblind jurisprudence, and what remains of multiracial democracy in America. Together they discuss how the legal architecture of Jim Crow reemerges under neutral language, John Roberts's decades-long campaign against the Voting Rights Act, Justice Kagan's umbrella analogy, the suspension of Louisiana's primary, the black church's response, and why this midterm may be the country's last political chance.
Episode Highlights
"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration, and that's saying a lot."
"It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land who have been to all these Ivy League schools, have literally decades of experience, can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning."
"Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field."
"These are not good-faith actors, not people wanting a representative democracy, but people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule."
"If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office."
About Jemar Tisby
Jemar Tisby is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, speaker, and professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MDiv from Reformed Theological Seminary, and a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi, where he studied race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century. He is the founder of The Witness, Inc., a black Christian collective, and the author of The Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. His commentary appears on CNN and in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he writes Footnotes, a top-ranked history publication on Substack.
Helpful Links and Resources
Jemar Tisby's website: https://jemartisby.com Footnotes by Jemar Tisby (Substack): https://jemartisby.substack.com The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance (most recent book): https://jemartisby.com/the-spirit-of-justice/ The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism (bestseller): https://www.zondervan.com/9780310113607/the-color-of-compromise/ How to Fight Racism: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-fight-racism-jemar-tisby The Justice Briefing podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/footnotes-with-dr-jemar-tisby/id1460240056 Louisiana v. Callais, opinion of the Court (April 29, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf Elie Mystal, "The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act," The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/ "Sing Out, March On"—Joshuah Campbell's tribute to John Lewis, Harvard 2018 Commencement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=mKNRXQemxWQ NAACP Legal Defense Fund—Louisiana v. Callais case page: https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais/ Brennan Center for Justice—Louisiana v. Callais: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/louisiana-v-callais
Show Notes
Why this conversation now: the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act last week
News breaking through a group text of lawyers, organizers, clergy, nonprofit leaders
"This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration."
John Lewis, SNCC, and the march from Selma to Montgomery
A baton hard enough to crack the skull, the hardest bone in the body
"It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land…can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning."
Allen Temple Baptist in Oakland—watermelons, bubbles, and jelly beans on a Sunday morning
The Three-Fifths Clause and the architecture of representation
Dred Scott v. Sandford—"property can't sue"
Reconstruction Amendments: 13th, 14th, 15th—birthright citizenship newly under threat
Jim Crow's neutral codes: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of the civil rights movement
Edmund Pettus Bridge—Bloody Sunday going viral in its day
LBJ signs the bill with Rosa Parks and MLK in the room
Elie Mystal in The Nation: gerrymandering with plausible deniability—https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/
Shelby County v. Holder, 2013—preclearance gutted
Roberts's tautology—stop discriminating to stop discrimination
"Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field."
Cast and umbrella analogies for premature dismantling of civil rights remedies
Plaintiff Bert Callais's January 6 ties; Louisiana's roughly one-third black population
Governor Jeff Landry's emergency order suspends Louisiana's May primary mid-election
"These are not good faith actors…people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule."
"If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office."
The activism horizon—courts, churches, voter registration, midterm turnout, NAACP, LDF, Brennan Center
The last political chance before competitive authoritarianism
#VotingRightsAct #JemarTisby #LouisianaVCallais #SCOTUS #CivilRights #BlackChurch #FaithAndJustice #SelmaToMontgomery #Democracy #MarkLabberton
Production Credits
Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.