The Whole Person Revolution

How does Christian humanism express itself on the ground? Join Anne Snyder as she learns from a wide range of leaders who are embodying Comment’s way of thought, translating theory into practice.

Healing the Wounds of Trauma 07/23/2024

Healing the Wounds of Trauma The language of trauma has become a part of our vernacular over the last decade. But how much do we really understand what it means to walk with scars? Dr. Steve West served for 40 years in the U.S. Air Force, eventually becoming a chaplain and being awarded the Bronze Star. Here he speaks with Anne to grant a compassionate picture of the experience of PTSD from the inside. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/32098677

Forming Peacemakers, Stoking Imagination 06/18/2024

Forming Peacemakers, Stoking Imagination What are the pathways of formation required to cultivate the kind of wisdom and forbearance needed for a very real world of constraints and differences? With Anne to reflect on this vital if contested work today are David Katibah and Sarah Sturm, who together serve Telos, an organization that equips civic leaders to help reconcile seemingly intractable conflicts at home and abroad. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/31756437

Institutional Wisdom in a Time of War 06/13/2024

Institutional Wisdom in a Time of War How might an institution cultivate the courage and realism required to accept an imperfect set of choices in this broken world, and to choose wisely and in a timely manner? Today’s conversation with Anne’s Cardus colleagues, Ray Pennings and Brian Dijkema, reflects on the challenges and choices facing institutional leaders seeking to protect the common good in a year of war abroad and strife at home. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/31708982

The Grief-Catcher 03/05/2024

The Grief-Catcher Is it possible for peace to walk in power anymore? This is the question haunting Comment’s work this spring, and launching this new season of The Whole Person Revolution is someone who answers it with a courageous yes. J.S. “Joon” Park is a chaplain at Tampa General Hospital, whose about death, grief, trauma, and loss have garnered a large following. When you read Joon’s words, you encounter someone who is no stranger to the things we naturally dread as human beings: the dark night of losing a loved one, of having to accept a complete lack of control, of having to face the inescapability of our own mortality. Joon carries a wisdom earned from the trenches of what he calls “grief-catching,” the act of standing present as someone is falling through the abyss of loss and pain. He joins Anne today on The Whole Person Revolution to share some of what he’s learned about the strange paradoxes of dying and human wholeness, violence and healing, doubt and faith. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/30220873

Sustaining Male Friendship 10/31/2023

Sustaining Male Friendship Dolph Westlund and Matt Ritsman were given unusual advice their senior year of college: If you want formative friendships to last, start a shared third thing. They took this to heart and, now seventeen years later, steward a fund pooled with twenty other friends from college. Meeting in person on an annual basis, with punctuated points of contact throughout the year, the Shade Partnership Fund is a philanthropic organization, a community, and a structure for accountability all at once. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/28464749

Natality, Mary, and Feminine Wisdom 10/17/2023

Natality, Mary, and Feminine Wisdom We are often told to contemplate our mortality, but how often do we contemplate our natality? In this episode, Jennifer Banks, author of the new book Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, and Margarita Mooney Clayton, author of the essay “The Marian Gift of Dependence,” in our fall issue, talk about the ways that gaining a sense of our natality overcomes our more destructive tendencies of autonomy and control. The Virgin Mary in particular exhibits this kind of receptivity and dependence in a way that speaks to people of all walks of life. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/28311947

Gender in Christianity, Gender in Judaism 10/03/2023

Gender in Christianity, Gender in Judaism Judaism and Christianity are inextricably bound up in one another. Even when their histories split apart, the dynamics they negotiate in modernity often echo the other’s internal dialogue and communal practice. The case of gender is no exception. In this episode, New York Times columnist David Brooks and attorney and Jewish thinker Yishai Schwartz compare and contrast the overlapping inheritances. Cited pieces include David’s “” in the fall issue of Comment, and Yishai’s “,” also in Comment’s fall issue. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/28192112

Men Can Be Awesome, Men Can Be Awful 09/19/2023

Men Can Be Awesome, Men Can Be Awful For all the talk about the “crisis of masculinity,” few are providing a healthy vision for what masculinity in the twenty-first century could look like, and, perhaps more important, how men can get there. If becoming a man is better caught than taught, better modelled than talked about, what is going on that the formation seems increasingly rare in transmission? Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and Christine Emba, columnist at the Washington Post, weigh in. Cited pieces include Richard’s “” in the fall issue of Comment, and Christine’s July feature in the Post, “.” /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/28075509

Transformation without Telos? 07/18/2023

Transformation without Telos? The buzzword of the day in education is “transformation.” But transformation for what, towards what? Philosopher Douglas Yacek reflects. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27494898

An Enduring Revival 07/11/2023

An Enduring Revival The Taylors of Tabernacle have spent a week together seeking spiritual renewal, a practice that started two hundred years ago. Susan Thornton shares about her family tradition with managing editor Beca Bruder, explaining the vision and practical tasks required to sustain a long-enduring spiritual revival. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27428325

Evangelicalism: Movement or Subculture? 07/04/2023

Evangelicalism: Movement or Subculture? When the word “evangelicalism” is mentioned today, few are quiet with their opinions. But just what is its mission and personality, current state and future trajectory? In this episode, Anne talks to Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and finds her frustrations mollified. Join them as they explore the precise shape of hope for a more socially transformative witness, one that doesn’t just protect its cultural bedfellows but also self-purifies to serve as salt in the nation. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27344754

An Idea That Could Save Democracy 06/27/2023

An Idea That Could Save Democracy The American political system today thrives on division and demonization, forcing politicians to prioritize winning electoral votes over and above solving complex issues through cooperation. In the context of such entrenched dysfunction, is it possible to reshape the incentives? Katherine Gehl is an entrepreneur with a big idea: Final Five Voting. This innovative approach employs an instant runoff system and ranked ballots, promoting healthy competition and transforming bipartisan cooperation into an asset rather than a threat. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27275223

A Coalition of Conscience 06/20/2023

A Coalition of Conscience How to form a diverse coalition on a volatile topic like immigration reform? Our guest Ali Noorani was tackling this very question while leading the National Immigration Forum for fourteen years. Now, from his new seat in philanthropy at the Hewlett Foundation, Ali continues to explore the processes behind shifts in attitude, values, and public policy on immigration, keeping in mind proposals that would benefit the whole country. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27182331

We Belong to Each Other 06/13/2023

We Belong to Each Other How are you bringing people into your life, into your space and story? Comment managing editor Beca Bruder welcomes Bri Stensrud, the director of Women of Welcome, to shed light on the shifting attitudes of evangelicals in the United States towards immigrants and refugees. At the heart of their discussion is the transformative power of embracing curiosity about others, inviting them to come a little closer, and displacing fear with generosity. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27124512

The Movement is Here 06/06/2023

The Movement is Here When it comes to stirring a movement that will last, is it better to begin by diagnosing a shared problem, or rather to start with the power of possibility and the gifts already present? A seasoned sower of the common good, Peter Block has an opinion. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/27035946

Life Together 05/30/2023

Life Together At what level do vast social and ecological problems begin? Elizabeth Oldfield is host of The Sacred podcast and the former director of Theos, the leading religion and society think tank in the U.K., where she oversaw a range of ambitious attempts to influence legislation, inform journalists, and leaven the cultural atmosphere in public life. She left Theos two years ago with a hunch that some of the largest societal cancers we face germinate in the broken places of relationship and disconnection—with God, with ourselves, with one another, and with the earth. In response, she and her family have gone all-in on an intentional Christian community in east London, discerning day by day how to live out an alternative way of life in an urban, highly individualistic and consumerist context. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26984232

Bored Out of Our Minds 04/04/2023

Bored Out of Our Minds We have as much access to entertainment as we have ever had in history, yet nothing catches our attention. What is really happening when we are bored, and what does it say about us? Kevin Gary is the author of the book Why Boredom Matters and the essay "." In conversation with our associate editor Jeff Reimer, Gary dives deep into the nuances between situational and existential boredom, and how it affects our perception of life. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26428929

Film and Social Change 03/28/2023

Film and Social Change Most of us have a movie in our memory banks that changed, forever after, the way we understand the nature of reality, of life in this world. Award-winning filmmaker Ben Rekhi has committed his talents to the conviction that movies are uniquely equipped to educate our emotions and shape our beliefs. Ben has directed and produced films as wide-ranging as Waterborne, The Ashram, Watch List, and The Reunited States, and he has more up his sleeve. In this episode, Rekhi reflects with Anne on the relationship between film and social change—what it has been, what it is today, and what it could yet be. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26355381

Empathic Intelligence 03/21/2023

Empathic Intelligence Real and enduring social change can feel impossible when it seems our society has split into a million fragments. How does collective action succeed when our lenses are so individuated? Christy Vines founded the Ideos Institute to solve just this problem, discovering “empathic intelligence” as a strategic way of living and engaging with the created order around us. She talks with Anne about the formation of this intelligence—how exactly it can be learned and taught. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26286540

Personalism, Conversion, and Change 03/10/2023

Personalism, Conversion, and Change “I try to solve inequality by day while contributing to it by night.” Many a professional do-gooder would have to acknowledge this paradox if forced to be honest. But not David and Amber Lapp, who, years ago, went to a working-class town in Ohio as researchers on love and marriage, only to stay as residents and neighbours. In this episode, they reflect on the past decade of living among people whose gifts, resentments, aches, and longings are so often mischaracterized (if not ignored) by the coastal lens. As the Lapps have sought to shine a light on the erosion of trust and covenant-making in the white working class, they’ve discovered their own humanity. A discovery, it turns out, that lies—necessarily—at the inception of any social change that will endure. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26189583

A Friend of Change 03/07/2023

A Friend of Change Transformation happens at the speed of relationships. A familiar adage, maybe, but one we find inconvenient. Perceptive students of movements like Murdock Trust CEO Romanita Hairston live and lead with this truth as baseline. In this episode, Romanita reflects on the wisdom she’s gleaned from those historic patterns of renewal as they’ve typically unfurled: first, with the organic creation of new communities of thought; then with the growth of those communities into public waves of aspiration and protest; then with the leverage of power to address systems—all with visionary leaders anchored in the relationships and ferment of the initial seedbed. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26140980

Spiritual Motherhood 02/28/2023

Spiritual Motherhood Western democracies are sloughing through the twilight of movement-building strategies built primarily from masculine emphases on quantification and scale, visibility and punchlines. Such impulses should not be cancelled. But it is worth opening our eyes to the role that spiritual mothers also play in nurturing the seedbeds of social change—gestations of relationship and wrestling that patiently nurture . Joshua and Chelsea Bombino have on just this, and join Anne today to flesh out its charge. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/26063160

To Pay Attention 02/21/2023

To Pay Attention A stressed and divided people tends to live at the surface, responding to reality’s symptoms, not its nature. It’s understandable: we feel forced to move quickly, to act in the face of felt urgencies, to survive. But what if regenerative social change cannot happen without first attending to the seminal, to the seedbeds of life as we know it? What is required for us to dig deep and pay attention? Mark Labberton, the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus at Fuller Seminary, joins Anne Snyder. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/25989021

Moral Ecologies and Social Change 02/14/2023

Moral Ecologies and Social Change How does one begin to think about regenerative culture change? Is there hope for a fractured society to mend? Anne opens this season with an invitation to eavesdrop on her family dinner table. Her husband and New York Times columnist, David Brooks, has been a witness to and an agent of change on a variety of social metrics. Together they reflect on the work of sowing coherent moral ecologies, one memory - and present wrestle - at a time. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/25917528

All the World’s a Stage 11/29/2022

All the World’s a Stage We don’t often think of the theatre as a democratic cornerstone, but talk to Oskar Eustis, the acclaimed artistic director at the Public Theater in New York City, and the stage shimmers into focus as the essential art form of a free society. Oskar has produced such award-winning shows as Hamilton, Fun Home and Sweat, and he has become convinced that the theatre's capacity to teach each one of us how to be more fully alive is a gift that should not be confined to elite stages. He joins Anne here for the last episode of our Restoration of the Human season to dream about the ways in which the theatre’s ancient logic might seep out into other corners of our fragmented society, granting new life for our practice of democracy, and indeed, for our souls. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/25150914

Monastic Practices for Modern Lives 11/15/2022

Monastic Practices for Modern Lives We’re finite beings with infinite potentialities. Every decision we make adds yet another stroke of paint to the artwork of our lives. So how do we know we’re painting with purpose? Joining Anne is Steven Lawson, the creator of the , who has designed a planner that regularly prompts users to prepare, act, and reflect according to their core principles. What if productivity isn’t about doing more things, but rather doing the most important things well? /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/25006920

You're Only Human 11/08/2022

You're Only Human Why is it that as human beings we so often see our limits as the enemy of the good life, and not as a helpful frame? Whether we’re chafing against 24-hour days, the betrayals of our bodies, our inevitable mortality, or the caps on our relational and psychological energy, it just seems like modern life tempts us to believe that finitude is a weakness to be overcome … perhaps even a sin. But what if that’s entirely wrong? Kelly Kapic is a theologian and the author of You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News. He joins Anne today to gently correct (and even heal!) the disorder of our weary self-flagellation. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/24938310

Roads to Human Solidarity 11/01/2022

Roads to Human Solidarity Comment is hardly alone in the effort to restore the human. Various philosophical streams have long been animated by the same telos. The question is: Do the differences in priors matter when it comes to working together towards re-humanizing every inch of our common life? Joining Anne to explore this question is the founder of Rehumanize International, Aimee Murphy, whose personal journey propelled her to discover the deeper magnitude of personhood. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/24854277

Creative Extremism 10/25/2022

Creative Extremism We live in a time when the truth of the present has little authority while the truth of history is emerging in unprecedented fullness. This presents a quandary for the person of integrity: How does one keep growing without succumbing to the violence of one-way redemption? Michelle Browder is an artist, activist and guide based out of Montgomery, Alabama who is creating a new way to confront the past with an invitational spirit of grace and truth. Here is her story. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/24767238

The Restorative Practice of Lament 10/18/2022

The Restorative Practice of Lament In a uniquely concentrated period of public injustice, from 2020-2021, a community of women found voice in the poetic lines of Psalm 37. Following David’s lead, they reflected on their experiences of heartache and oppression with raw openness and hopeful expectation. is a rich compilation of these stories that will move you to wail with them, and to gain a fuller picture of Christ’s church. Editor Natasha Sistrunk Robinson and contributors Ka Richards and Marlena Graves join Anne to reflect on the surprise gifts of digging deep. /episode/index/show/breakinggroundus/id/24714327

The Whole Person Revolution

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