Speaking of Faith (Religion)
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- Host: Krista Tippett
- Host Krist Tippett on topics of faith and ethics in America; Drawing participants from the breadth of religious experience, this series asks how traditions of faith might illuminate themes of American life in substantive and surprising ways. Growing list of national awards.
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- Genres: Religion
- Location: Lincoln, NE
- Language: English
Last updated 203 days ago
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Stress and the Balance Within (September 4, 2008)
Thu, Sep 4
The American experience of stress has spawned a multi-billion dollar self-help industry. Wary of this, Esther Sternberg says that, until recently, modern science did not have the tools or the inclination to take emotional stress seriously. She shares fascinating new scientific insight into the molecular level of the mind-body connection.
Fishing with Mystery (August 28, 2008)
Thu, Aug 28
James Prosek is a 33-year-old artist, writer, and fly-fisher who has always, as he puts it, found God "through the theater of nature." From a young age he has been fascinated by trout, and now eel -- which he sees as "mystical creatures" -- and he's captured them physically and artistically, by way of both angling and paint. We explore the sense of meaning and ritual James Prosek developed along the way, including his concern with how we humans limit our sense of other creatures by the names...
Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback (August 21, 2008)
Thu, Aug 21
Evangelical leader Rick Warren is in the news for bringing John McCain and Barack Obama together at his Saddleback Church in California. This two-hour event, broadcast live on CNN, is just one sign of the cross-cultural authority Warren and his wife Kay have achieved in a handful of years. We revisit Krista's conversation with them at Saddleback last year -- exploring who they are and what motivates them.
The Power of Eckhart Tolle's Now (August 14, 2007)
Wed, Aug 13
Host Krista Tippett creates a certain kind of space in her interviews, and this conversation is no exception. Tolle shares his youthful experience of depression and despair -- suffering that led him to his own spiritual breakthrough, and ultimately, freedom and peace of mind. He also explicates his view of what he calls "the pain body" -- the accumulated emotional pain that may influence us and our relationships in negative ways. And Tolle talks about spirit and God, and what those concepts...
Living Vodou (August 7, 2007)
Thu, Aug 7
Vodou is the African-based spiritual world of the people of Haiti, a living religion wherever Haitians are found. It involves dramatic rituals and drumming, trances and dreaming, and belief in a spiritual realm that mirrors the physical world and interacts with it. But contrary to popular notions, it has nothing to do with sticking pins into dolls. With Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a scholar who is also a Vodou priest, we explore its practices and metaphysics.
The Business of Doing Good (July 31, 2008)
Thu, Jul 31
The news has been marked in recent years, at regular intervals, by the moral and practical downfall of prominent businesses. Jonathan Greenblatt is among a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to lead a fundamental shift in corporate culture as well as philanthropy -- a merger between making a profit and doing good. We explore his way of seeing the world and his economics of "ethical brand architecture" and "fiercely pragmatic idealism."
Play, Spirit, and Character (July 24, 2008)
Thu, Jul 24
Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play, says that pleasurable, purposeless activity prevents violence and promotes trust, empathy, and adaptability to life's complication. He promotes cutting-edge science on human play, and draws on a rich universe of study of intelligent social animals.
Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African-American Spiritual (July 10, 2008)
Thu, Jul 10
The spiritual is celebrated in American culture and beyond. It is the source from which gospel, jazz, blues and hip-hop evolved. It was born in the American South, created by slaves, bards whose names history never recorded. The organizing concept of this music is not the melody of Europe, but the rhythm of Africa. And the theology conveyed in these songs is a potent mix of African spirituality, Hebrew narrative, Christian doctrine, and an extreme experience of human suffering.
The Ethics of Eating (July 3, 2008)
Thu, Jul 3
Author Barbara Kingsolver describes an adventure her family undertook to spend one year eating primarily what they could grow or raise themselves. As a citizen and mother more than an expert, she turned her life towards questions many of us are asking. Food, she says, is a "rare moral arena" in which the ethical choice is often the pleasurable choice.
Presence in the Wild (June 26, 2008)
Thu, Jun 26
Kate Braestrup is a writer, mother and a chaplain to game wardens on search-and-rescue missions in Maine. She is called in when children disappear in the woods and when snowmobilers disappear under the ice. There, she says, the rubber meets the road theologically. And her sense of life, death, and God is formed by what happens between and among people.
Sustaining Language, Sustaining Meaning - an Ojibwe Story (June 19, 2008)
Fri, Jun 20
Novelist and translator David Treuer is helping to compile the first practical grammar of the Ojibwe tongue of his tribe -- one of the 90 percent of human languages that could be endangered in this century. Treuer describes an unfolding awareness of aspects of his personality, of a sense of what brings him joy, an understanding of what makes him human -- that the Ojibwe language distinctly conveys.
Pagans Ancient and Modern (June 12, 2008)
Thu, Jun 12
An environmentalist who pursued the ecological impulse of Paganism, from its ancient roots to its modern revival in Europe and North America, discusses his observations about the spirit of Paganism and its influence on everyday Western culture -- and even on old-time religion.
The Spiritual Audacity of Abraham Joshua Heschel (June 5, 2008)
Thu, Jun 5
Heschel was a mystic who wrote transcendent, poetic words about God. At the very same time, he marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and organized religious leadership against the war in Vietnam, embodying the extreme social activism of the biblical prophets he studied. We explore his teachings and his legacy for people in our day.
Quarks and Creation (May 29, 2008)
Thu, May 29
Science and religion are often pitted against one another; but how do they complement, rather than contradict, one another? We learn how one man applies the deepest insights of modern physics to think about how the world fundamentally works, and how the universe might make space for prayer.
Approaching Prayer (May 22, 2008)
Thu, May 22
Americans are religious and non-religious, devout and irreverent. But in astonishing numbers, across that spectrum, most of us say that we pray. We open up the subject of prayer and explore how it sounds and what it means in three different traditions and lives.
The Spirituality of Addiction and Recovery (May 15, 2008)
Fri, May 16
Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson once said that the program he helped create is, "utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery." We explore the spiritual foundations of addiction and recovery with authors Kevin Griffin and Susan Cheever. Griffin reflects on the consonance of Buddhist teachings and the 12 Steps; Cheever tells her personal story and that of her father, the late fiction writer John Cheever.
The Freelance Monotheism of Karen Armstrong (May 8, 2008)
Thu, May 8
Karen Armstrong speaks about her progression from a disillusioned and damaged young nun into, in her words, a "freelance monotheist." She's a formidable thinker and scholar, but as a theologian she calls herself an amateur -- noting that the Latin root of the word "amateur" means a love of one's subject. Seven years in a strict religious order nearly snuffed out her ability to think about faith at all. Here, we hear the story behind Armstrong's developing ideas about God.
Being Catholic, The Beauty and Challenge of - Hearing the Faithful (May 3,
Sat, May 3
We depart from our usual format and listen to a spectrum of lay Catholic voices on the force of this vast and ancient tradition on their lives, the way they struggle with it, the sources of their love for it. Even to be a "lapsed Catholic," we hear, is a complex state of being.
Planting the Future with Wangari Maathai (April 24, 2008)
Thu, Apr 24
In honor of Earth Day, a riveting Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai. She knows what many in the West have forgotten -- that ecological crises are often the hidden root causes of war. Maathai speaks about the global balance of human and natural resources, and she shares her thoughts on where God resides.
Evangelical Politics: Three Generations (April 17, 2008)
Fri, Apr 18
A passionate discussion is unfolding among Evangelical leaders and communities. Should Christians be involved in politics and if so, how? What has gone wrong, and what has been learned from the Moral Majority to today? Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne are three generations of Evangelicals who discuss and debate these answers.
Brother Thay: A Radio Pilgrimmage with Thich Nhat Hanh (April 10, 2008)
Thu, Apr 10
Forcibly exiled from his native country, Zen master and poet Thich Nhat Hanh recently visited Vietnam for the first time in nearly 40 years. In 2003, Speaking of Faith took a radio pilgrimage with the Buddhist monk at a Christian conference center in a lakeside setting of rural Wisconsin. Thich Nhat Hanh offers stark, gentle wisdom for living in a world of anger and violence. Here, he discusses the concepts of "engaged Buddhism," "being peace," and "mindfulness."
The Spirituality of Parenting (April 3, 2007)
Thu, Apr 3
More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of parenting tends to raise spiritual questions anew. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. The spiritual life, our guest says, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete...
Exploring a New Humanism (March 3, 2008)
Thu, Mar 27
In a recent Pew poll, 16 percent of Americans identified themselves as "unaffiliated" - atheist, agnostic, or most prominently "nothing in particular." Greg Epstein, a Humanist chaplain at Harvard, described himself that way until he discovered the tradition of humanism. He is passionate about articulating an atheist identity that is not driven by a stance against religion but by positive ethical beliefs and actions.
The Need for Creeds (March 20, 2008)
Thu, Mar 20
For many modern Americans, the very idea of reciting an unchanging creed, composed centuries ago, is troublesome. But, Jaroslav Pelikan, who died on May 13, 2006, was a scholar who devoted his life to exploring the vitality of ancient theology and creeds. He insisted that even modern pluralists need strong statements of belief. Here, we revisit Krista's 2003 conversation with him, who, then, in his 80th year, had released a historic collection of Christian faith from biblical times to the...
Liberating the Founders (March 13, 2008)
Wed, Mar 12
Warning: this conversation may not mirror what you learned in school. The culture wars of recent years, journalist Steven Waldman says, hijacked Americans' understanding of the country's founders and of the meaning of religious liberty. This hinders people from grasping what is really at stake in the current debates about the relationship between government and religion. It may even distort the wisdom we might bring to young democracies around the world.
A New Voice for Islam (March 6, 2008)
Thu, Mar 6
Ingrid Mattson, the first woman and first convert to lead the Islamic Society of North America, describes her experience of Islamic spirituality, which she discovered in her twenties after a Catholic upbringing. We probe her unusual perspective on a tumultuous age for Islam in the West and around the world.
The Inner Landscape of Beauty (February 28, 2008)
Sat, Mar 1
John O'Donohue was an Irish poet and philosopher beloved for his book "Anam Cara" — Gaelic for "soul friend" — and for his insistence on beauty as a human calling and a defining aspect of God. Before his untimely death this year, he spoke with Krista in our studios. And so this hour has become a remembrance of him. But John O'Donohue had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with what he called "the invisible world." And he would also surely see this also as a serendipitous continuation of his...
SOF EXTRA (audio) | [1 of 10] Poem: "A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival
Sat, Feb 23
Interviewed shortly before his death, the Irish poet John O'Donohue recited several of his poems during his conversation with Krista. "A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness" is the first of eight poems that provide a preview of their conversation in The Inner Landscape of Beauty.
SOF EXTRA (audio) | [2 of 10] Poem: "A Blessing for One Who Holds Power"
Sat, Feb 23
Interviewed shortly before his death, the Irish poet John O'Donohue recited several of his poems during his conversation with Krista. "A Blessing for One Who Holds Power" is the second of eight poems that provide a preview of their conversation in The Inner Landscape of Beauty.
SOF EXTRA (audio) | [3 of 10] Poem: "Beannacht"
Sat, Feb 23
Interviewed shortly before his death, the Irish poet John O'Donohue recited several of his poems during his conversation with Krista. "Beannacht" is the third of eight poems that provide a preview of their conversation in The Inner Landscape of Beauty.
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