John Inazu joins Life & Faith to help us think about how we might live peacefully and productively alongside people with whom deep disagreement is inevitable.

In increasingly, polarised times, the art of disagreeing well is one more of us are going to have to learn. And that is a skill that is not easy to master.

Law Professor John Inazu is an experienced guide in helping people live well in complex, pluralist environments where we mix with those we sometimes profoundly disagree with. How do we navigate contested spaces without descending into conflict and violence? Can we separate a bad idea from the person who holds it? And might we even learn from that person?

His emphasis on the relational aspects of our civic life is especially pertinent.

As a Japanese American whose grandparents were sent to internment camps in World War II, John has a perspective worth hearing on identity, patriotism and the things that can bind a community or a country together.

Explore:

Learning to Disagree: the Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect.

Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference

A butcher, a wife, and a harpist walk into a Life & Faith episode.

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Distant from us in time, place, and culture, is there any way for a 21st-century person to truly access the world of ancient texts?

Leviticus, Psalms, and Song of Songs are among the oldest books we have as humans. They’re important to Jews and Christians as part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament; they’re important to scholars of the ancient world, and they’ve been important to our culture. But they’re also quite hard work, right?

Enter Phil Bray, Sophia Wisdom, and Kamina Wüst: modern readers of weird old books, whose personal experiences as 21st-century people have given them surprising ways "in" to these words from thousands of years ago.

Phil trained as a butcher, and his practical expertise has made the arcane world of priests, altars, and animal sacrifice in the book of Leviticus come alive for him. Sophia longed to play the harp as a little girl; now, that’s what she does for a living, and her music opens up an often hidden dimension to the Bible (especially the Psalms). And Kamina’s life – and marriage – have been changed by what she calls the “weird, sexy book” of Song of Songs. She even has a verse from it tattooed on her.

You might not want to take up butchery, learn to play the harp, or get married specifically as a way of unlocking these old books. But we hope that the enthusiasm and insightfulness of these three readers will encourage you to take a fresh – or first – look at some ancient, weird, cool texts with plenty still to say to us today.

EXPLORE

Wisdom Harps

Kamina Wüst’s books on Song of Songs

Phil Bray’s book Leviticus on the Butcher’s Block

Read Psalms

Read Song of Songs

Read Leviticus

As Americans celebrate 250 years since the birth of the USA, we ask what the American project has delivered and what its future might be?

Life & Faith examines the 250th anniversary of the USA. What were the founding ideals? How much have those ideals been realised? What might the future of the union be?

And what about the contribution and implications of the religious layer to this story. Is, or was the United States ever, a “Christian country?” Well, it’s ... complicated. It takes some untangling.

To sort through the complexity we are joined by historian Mark Noll, Bible Scholar and Cultural Commentator Darrell Bock and expert in American politics and foreign policy David Smith.

Explore:

Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

Mark Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilisation 1794 - 1911

David Smith, Religious Persecution and Political Order in the United States