Conversing with Mark Labberton

Jan 28 2025 195 ep. 46 mins 40
Conversing with Mark Labberton Podcast artwork

Conversing with Mark Labberton invites listeners into transformative encounters with leaders and creators shaping our world at the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life.

  Religion & Spirituality  Society & Culture
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Losing Your Home in a Fire, with Megan Katerjian

Jan 28 2025 46 mins  
“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 ac

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Jan 20 2025 47 mins  
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 (col

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Jan 14 2025 56 mins  
“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 po

Enter the Room Listening, with Mark Labberton

Jan 07 2025 10 mins  
“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 m

Watch Night: A New Year’s Eve Tradition, with Jemar Tisby

Dec 31 2024 9 mins  
”And then finally, word comes over the telegraph that the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect. Jubilation!“ (Jemar Tisby, from the episode) The African-American Christian tradition often celebrates an all-night Watch Night service on New Year’s Eve. But where does this beautiful liturgical practice come from? It dates all the way back to December 31, 1862, on the eve of th

Why I Read King Lear in Advent, with Mark Labberton

Dec 24 2024 8 mins  
“Each Advent, I do something unusual; I reread King Lear. Revisiting Shakespeare’s dark exploration of the dissolution of family, friendship, personality, and nation has become part of my annual rhythm. That might seem odd, particularly during this most difficult of years: With short winter days, and so much national, international, and personal pain all around us, who needs mo

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Dec 17 2024 48 mins  
“I think my hope is that by this time next year, we would have survived this. … The hope is to survive. … It’s really hard to think beyond that.” “We need to repent from apathy. We need to fight this normalization of a genocide.” —Rev. Dr. Munther Issac, from the episode In the long history of conflict in the Middle East, both Jews and Palestinians have felt and con

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Dec 10 2024 44 mins  
“We learn the most from those who came before us, not by gazing up at them uncritically or down on them condescendingly, but by looking them in the eye. And taking their true measure as human beings, not as gods.” (Daniel Gidick, quoting historian John Meacham) “When does the revolution end? … It doesn’t.” (Daniel Gidick on Thomas Jefferson) “This great Nation will en

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How a Thanksgiving Dinner Saved My Life, with Mark Labberton

Nov 26 2024 9 mins  
“Things had radically changed. … They had not only changed my mindset, but they had saved my life.” In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton opens up about a period of darkness and despair, when as a younger man he considered ending his life. But when he was invited to share Thanksgiving dinner with a local couple, his eyes were opened to a concrete hope, friendship, and joy�