Conversing with Mark Labberton

There is a secret history of white Christian women, says historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (bestselling author, Jesus and John Wayne). And the thread of this history brings together Evangelicals, Mormons, mainline Christians—connecting them to New Thought (a movement emphasizing the power of the mind to shape reality), Hallmark movies, mommy bloggers, and multi-level marketing. 
In her latest book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Du Mez tells the story of a single promise: that total surrender of the will unlocks holiness and happiness. Often masquerading as personal empowerment, the products and slogans of this ideological history elevate the vulnerability and domesticity of women, thereby contributing to systems of manipulation and abuse.
In this conversation with Mark Labberton, Du Mez explains how holiness evangelicalism and the secular philosophy of New Thought were braided together to influence women, and how its culture marketed as empowerment created byproducts of self-blame, submission, and control. They discuss Hannah Whitall Smith's feminist defiance; the little-known "deconstruction era" of Elisabeth Elliot; the demonizing of doubt in high-control religion and multi-level marketing; the line running from Christian Reconstructionism to today's rhetoric of "toxic empathy"; and how to return to the gospel of the Christ who relinquishes power.
Episode Highlights
"There is no sense of the common good. There is no sense of common grace. There's no sense of grace, period."

"The past is always going to be more complicated and more interesting—and I would argue more useful—than the simplistic narratives that we like to tell ourselves."

"Christian literature, she says, is neither Christian nor literature. It's propaganda. Right? It's simply telling evangelical readers what they want to hear, but it is not true."

"When you embrace that theology and ideology, if things don't work out well for you, it's your own fault. It has to be your own fault … within holiness theology and within the philosophy of positive thinking, doubt is literally demonized. Doubt is of the devil."

"She never confused submission to God to submission to men. She was a feminist. She was a preacher. She certainly wasn't going to submit to her husband, who was a jerk."

"… a gospel which is more in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ, one in which Christ divests himself of power and continually disappoints his followers who want that power."

About Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling historian, professor of history at Calvin University, and a Senior Democracy Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. Her work sits at the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She is the author of A New Gospel for Women, on the Christian feminist reformer Katharine Bushnell; Jesus and John Wayne; and, most recently, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and grew up in a Dutch Reformed community in small-town Iowa.
Helpful Links and Resources
Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Kristin Kobes Du Mez's 2026 book: https://kristindumez.com/books/live-laugh-love/

Live Laugh Love book club discussion guide (free): https://kristindumez.com/discussion-guides/lll-book-club-discussion-guide/

Jesus and John Wayne, Du Mez's 2020 bestseller: https://kristindumez.com/books/jesus-and-john-wayne/

A New Gospel for Women, Du Mez's first book, on Katharine Bushnell: https://kristindumez.com/books/new-gospel-for-women/

Du Mez CONNECTIONS (Substack): https://kristindumez.substack.com/

Kristin Du Mez on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kkdumez.bsky.social

The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, Hannah Whitall Smith's 1875 classic: https://ccel.org/ccel/smith_hw/secret/files/secret.htm

Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, Lucy S. R. Austen's biography: https://www.crossway.org/books/elisabeth-elliot-hcj

Show Notes
Why history? And why now?

Undergrad indecision: pre-med, German major, then history, since everything has a history

Instilling curiosity over provocation

Evangelical views that treat history as apologetics

Dutch Reformed upbringing: critical, intellectual, light on evangelism

Christian Reformed critics who sound like evangelical ones, as distinct traditions turn de facto evangelical

Three layers: consumer culture, porous traditions, systems of control

Holiness theology and total surrender: The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, by Hannah Whitall Smith (1875)

New Thought and the belief in the power of the mind to shape reality

Prosperity gospel, free markets, baptizing the rich

Empowerment and lost agency

Self-blame loops, demonized doubt, multi-level marketing (MLM) economics

Hannah Whitall Smith's defiance of male authority, and a life that undercut her own book

Elisabeth Elliot's forgotten deconstruction era, uncovered in the Wheaton archives: doubting holiness promises, rejecting evangelical jargon, and calling Christian publishing propaganda

Remarriage and a return to the trappings she once rejected

Self-consciousness and self-critique

Christian nationalism, hierarchy, and Christian Reconstructionism

Transactional faith and the toxic empathy discourse

Forgiveness for powerful insiders, punishment for outsiders

Saint and sinner at once

Why manipulation works, and the gospel of a Christ who relinquishes power

How can a Christian humanitarian organization keep Christ at the center of its mission while working in the world's most difficult places, with thousands of staff spread across dozens of countries and cultures? Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, and Kevin Jenkins, former president and CEO of World Vision International, both understand their organizations to be foundationally Christian. But even in ministries where you would expect spiritual formation to be at the center, it takes work to help large global teams live up to their mission.
Speaking with Mark Labberton before a live audience at International Justice Mission's Cornerstone 2026 event, Haugen and Jenkins link missional success to the slow and unglamorous work of spiritual formation at the individual and relational level. Keenly aware of the gap between what Christians (and Christian organizations) say they believe and what they actually do, they consider how the outward work of ministry connects to the inward work of discipleship to Christ, wrestling with the very idea of a "Christian" organization.
In this episode, Haugen and Jenkins consider their own formation as Christians and as leaders; Dallas Willard's definition of belief as acting as if something is true; the risk of prayerless striving that can overtake even the best kinds of work; IJM's daily 11 a.m. prayer pause; Henri Nouwen's concept of moving from solitude to community to ministry; and the long-term accountability friendships that keep leaders honest.
Episode Highlights
"There wasn't anybody in the world who would identify me as a Christian because of the way I loved other people." (Gary Haugen)

"'God, if you would give me the gift of a spiritual quiet time, I will dedicate an hour a day of my life to you for the rest of my life.' … That is such a dangerous prayer." (Kevin Jenkins)

"You believe something when you act as if it's true. That is a really troublesome claim for a Christian." (Haugen)

"I experienced the way prayerless striving could overcome me even in a good thing, and even [with a] felt sense of calling from God." (Haugen)

"To be purposely somewhat provocative: There's no such thing as a Christian organization." (Jenkins)

"It's impossible to be in humanitarian work and not believe in evil. Impossible." (Jenkins)

"Humanitarian work is very difficult. … Who knew it would be so hard to try to do good?" (Kevin Jenkins)

About Gary Haugen
Gary Haugen is the founder and CEO of International Justice Mission. Before founding IJM in 1997, he was a human rights attorney at the US Department of Justice, and in 1994, he directed the United Nations' investigation in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. His books include Good News About Injustice, Just Courage, and, with Victor Boutros, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence. A graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago Law School, he has been recognized by the US State Department as a Trafficking in Persons "Hero."
About Kevin Jenkins
Kevin Jenkins served as president and CEO of World Vision International from 2009 to 2019, the organization's seventh president. He came to the role after more than a decade as a World Vision child sponsor, volunteer, fundraiser, and board member in Canada, and after a twenty-five-year business career that included leading Canadian Airlines and The Westaim Corporation and serving as managing director of the private equity firm TriWest Capital Partners. Born in Western Canada, he holds a law degree from the University of Alberta and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Helpful Links and Resources
Gary Haugen, International Justice Mission Global Leadership: https://ijm.org/leadership/global
Gary Haugen's books with InterVarsity Press, including Good News About Injustice and Just Courage: https://ivpress.com/gary-a-haugen
The Locust Effect, Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros (Oxford University Press, 2014): https://www.thelocusteffect.com
Kevin Jenkins's leadership transition, World Vision International: https://www.wvi.org/pressrelease/world-vision-international-announces-ceo-transition
The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard: https://dwillard.org/books/divine-conspiracy
Community, Henri Nouwen, opening with "From Solitude to Community to Ministry": https://www.henrinouwen.org/books/community
IJM memorial for Willie Kimani, Josephat Mwenda, and Joseph Muiruri: https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018-06-23-ijm-holds-willie-kimanis-2nd-memorial-in-dandora/
Show Notes
Spiritual formation as real progress in the spiritual life, in imitation of Christ and out in the public square

John 13:35: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy: https://dwillard.org/books/divine-conspiracy

Practicing Christlikeness the way a runner trains for a marathon

Not merely converts, but disciples—apprentices of Jesus

Henri Nouwen's book Community on solitude, community, and ministry: https://www.henrinouwen.org/books/community

A risky retreat prayer that opened the way to more than three decades of daily quiet time

Thirty years of monthly accountability calls

The crisis of male friendship

The Rwandan genocide and the founding of International Justice Mission

Belief measured by action

Prayerless striving 

IJM's daily 11 a.m. prayer pause

Romans 1:1 in The Message and the idea of a kingdom assignment: "I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God's words and acts. I write this letter to all the believers in Rome, God's friends."

Christian identity as something to fight for, with Harvard and the YMCA as cautionary tales

John 15:5 and work of eternal value: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

Ephesians 6:12 and evil in humanitarian work: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

Kenya, 2016: Murder of IJM lawyer Willie Kimani, his client, and their driver 

Steadiness, grief, and a resurrected Jesus

The easy yoke of Jesus

The importance of Sabbath rest and reorientation

Timely truth-telling with love across cultures

#Conversing #SpiritualFormation #InternationalJusticeMission #WorldVision #ChristianLeadership #DallasWillard #HenriNouwen #FaithAndJustice #Humanitarian #Podcast

What if the deepest problems in American life were pre-political? It's often said that "culture is upstream from politics"—meaning that what we see in political news, speeches, ads, debates, and elections is symptomatic of a deeper cause. The conflicts, troubles, injustices, and sufferings that many people experience as political are more likely rooted in moral and spiritual crises. 
This week's episode marks ten years of Conversing, which launched on October 8, 2016. To celebrate, Mark Labberton is joined by David Brooks, a staff writer at The Atlantic and presidential fellow at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He is also the host of a brand-new podcast, The Permanent Questions.
In this episode, Mark and David wrestle with what asking questions actually does to a person and discuss the styles of great interviewers, why schools seem to train curiosity out of children, the human urge to control, how AI hollows us out and dehumanizes the people around us, and what moral formation looks like in a classroom—and a podcast.
Episode Highlights
"I felt over that time that the problems in our life were pre-political. They were in our culture. They're in our spiritual core."

"I've asked millions of people millions of questions. How many times has anybody ever said, 'None of your damn business'? And the answer is zero. No one has ever said that to me."

"My style has always been student. Teach me … I just treat people as teachers who can tell me something I don't know … People like to be treated as sages, it turns out, including me."

"One of the dumbest pieces of advice we give to people is to come up with your own values. Come up with your own philosophy of life. Unless your name is Aristotle, you probably can't do that."

"If there were settled answers to these biggest questions, we could just read one book and it would be over."

On AI: "For those who like to think, we will use it to think more. … The rest of us will use it to think less."

"The problem is that as we think more highly of AI, we think less highly of humans."

"Morality is about love."

 
About David Brooks
 
David Brooks is a writer at The Atlantic, a presidential fellow at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs, and the host of the weekly video podcast The Permanent Questions. He spent twenty-two years as a columnist at The New York Times and has long been a commentator on PBS NewsHour. His books include The Road to Character, The Second Mountain, and How to Know a Person. His first real job in journalism was as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago.
 
Helpful Links and Resources
 
The Permanent Questions podcast: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/the-permanent-questions

David Brooks at The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-brooks

How to Know a Person, David Brooks's 2023 book, Penguin Random House: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/652822/how-to-know-a-person-by-david-brooks

Comment magazine's fall 2026 issue on control, built around Hartmut Rosa's thought: https://comment.org/product/the-paradoxes-of-control-44-3-fall-2026

Hartmut Rosa's The Uncontrollability of the World, reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/control-everything-on-hartmut-rosas-the-uncontrollability-of-the-world

 
Show Notes
Ten years of Conversing and thanks to those behind it

A new podcast: The Permanent Questions

Hosting is harder than expected; twenty-five pages of notes

Meghan Sullivan's "God and the Good Life" course at Notre Dame

Confessional writing assignment that moved bereaved families

Leaving the Times; problems that are pre-political, rooted in culture and the spiritual core

The Great Conversation

Belonging versus autonomy, spirit versus mind, equality versus achievement

Police reporting in Chicago, asking questions on the worst day

Questions as generosity and an act of seeing

Genesis: the two opening questions, self-examination and communion

Interviewing styles: transaction, seduction, charm, and the student

Why permanent questions stay unsettled: souls, moderation versus speed

The garden of Eden: Eve, the tree, and the limits of curiosity

Who defines urgency, and which question is most urgent now

Resonance, control, and the fading of love in American life

Declining marriage, fertility, observance, and patriotism

Questions per hour: toddlers, first graders, fifth graders

The scale story: experimenting versus covering content

Frankenstein versus Faust: Will AI kill us or hollow us out?

Skills lost: writing, radiology, navigating Anaheim freeways

Anthropomorphizing bots and devaluing human workers

Moral reasoning among AI agents: pure consequentialism, no love

Moral gestures versus real change: reading scores in Mississippi and California

Two civil rights movements: one with no concept of sin, one prophetic

Nonviolence as a strategy for justice

Moral formation in the classroom: exemplars, traditions, and the teacher herself

Regret and risk, and what hospice workers hear when people are at the end of their lives

Why young people are the heroes of the story

#ConversingPodcast #DavidBrooks #ThePermanentQuestions #Curiosity #AI #Humanity #Resonance #MoralFormation #FaithAndCulture #GreatConversation #Humanities

War has wracked Ukraine for 1,678 days—outlasting both World Wars. In this conversation with Mark Labberton, Fyodor Raichynets—a theologian at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, pastor of a church in Bucha, and a military chaplain serving on the front lines in Kyiv—explains what it is like to be under near-constant drone and ballistic attack and how that has affected his faith, memory, and experience of time. 
War has reshaped the way he loves, forgives, and serves; it has induced a fear even to hope. Together, they discuss trauma as a national condition and the temptation to despair when God seems not to intervene. They also consider the moral wounds soldiers carry from killing, the competing prayers of two mothers inside one congregation, and what it means to see God in the face of the needy—even when the needy include one's enemies.
Episode Highlights
"'Into your hands I commit my spirit'—and with these words on my lips I go to bed every night ... I go to bed with the thought that I may not wake up in the morning, so I just make sure that my spirit is in his hand."

"If I have something to share and there is a person that needs it, well, I would share anyway ... Probably that's what the love for the enemies is all about."

"I jokingly put it that I have this 'planophobia' in the recent years, so I'm even afraid to plan my life, but you know that you cannot do it without any planning."

"Trauma emerges in a place where you find rescue and where instead of security you find insecurity."

"I was just thinking how blessed we are that we don't know the future. And this not knowing what is ahead of us keeps us going, in fact."

"We have fear to hope, because whatever we hoped for over these four years, it just gets worse, not better."

"Those whom they have killed ... they come to them in their dreams, in their sleep, and they said that they physically sense it. They even sense it that someone is grabbing their hand."

"One wife would pray ... that God would protect her son not to be drafted. But in the same group there is a mother who asked to pray that God would protect her son on the front line. So what should we pray for?"

"War creates such a basic need ... you need water, you don't need luxury things. ... So when we see the needy people and we minister to them, that is what makes us a people of a pure heart."

About Fyodor Raichynets
Fyodor Raichynets is a theologian, pastor, and military chaplain in Kyiv, Ukraine. He heads the department of theology at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, where he teaches leadership and biblical studies, particularly the Gospel of Matthew, and directs its master's program in transformative leadership. A former student of Miroslav Volf in Osijek, Croatia, he ministered for years across the Balkans. He pastors Bethany Church in Bucha and wrote the chapter on the pure in heart for Beatitudes and Terror: A Ukrainian Theological Response to Russian Aggression. Since the 2022 invasion, he has led relief work among Kyiv's most vulnerable, feeding the elderly and the displaced.
Helpful Links and Resources
Beatitudes and Terror: A Ukrainian Theological Response to Russian Aggression, the volume with Fyodor Raichynets's chapter on the pure in heart: https://langhamliterature.org/books/beatitudes-and-terror

Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary: https://uets.edu.ua/en/about-us

Ways to support UETS relief ministry and the training of ministers: https://uets.edu.ua/en/ways-to-support

Fyodor Raichynets on Facebook, where he posts daily wartime reflections: https://www.facebook.com/fyodor.Raichynets

"A Voice from Kyiv," Raichynets's earlier conversation with Miroslav Volf: https://faith.yale.edu/media/a-voice-from-kyiv-fyodor-Raichynets

Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, referenced on who survived the camps: https://www.beacon.org/Mans-Search-for-Meaning-P602.aspx

Show Notes
Kyiv under fire

A rough night of combined ballistic and drone attack

Waking to explosions, then morning news of the aftermath

Two-tier alerts now: yellow for drones, red for ballistic strikes

Reactive drones flying higher and faster, harder to track or down

Lecturing to students while watching drone paths on a phone

A nightly prayer, and sleeping unsure of waking

"Planophobia," losing the ability to plan anything ahead of time

No place and no time that feels secure; a wearying insecurity

The abnormal becoming normal; an average day in Kyiv

War as trauma

Trauma as rescue turned insecurity

The strange grace of not knowing how long war would last

When prolonged tribulation curdles into temptation

Wrestling with why God does not simply stop one man's cruelty

The fear to hope after four years of worsening, not relief

Frontline confessions, soldiers haunted by those they killed

A Bucha church tending wives, mothers, and children of soldiers

Two mothers, one prayer group, opposite prayers over the draft

Victor Frankl on who survived the camps: Man's Search for Meaning

A theological perception of time; only the present is given

War compressing time into loving, forgiving, blessing without delay

Wisdom as God's truth and character lived in context

The pure in heart, and seeing God in the needy (Beatitudes and Terror)

Jesus in the midst of suffering, unlike the pharaohs who cause it

Adopting soldiers' families; medicine carried to a mother at the front

Serving civilians who await the Russians, love of enemies in practice

How to support relief and minister training: Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary

#UkraineWar #Ukraine #Kyiv #Theology #Hope #Trauma #FaithAndWar #Beatitudes #MarkLabberton #Christianity

In a country splitting apart over so much, three words point toward a better way to live: attention, agency, and power. David French returns to Conversing to take up all three. A New York Times opinion writer since January 2023, French writes from a conservative theological background about law, culture, religion, and armed conflict, and has found himself writing directly into the middle of divided hostilities.
French comments on how attention, agency, and power took shape in him, and how each gets distorted by partisan fundamentalisms (on both the right and left) built to shut conversation down rather than open it up. He and Mark discuss the courage required to seek out the strongest version of an opposing view, the ways we extend ourselves grace we deny to everyone else,  the spiritual danger of believing you must hold power before you can do any good, and the Civil Rights Movement's commitment to "reconciliation over victory" as a promising model for Christian public life today.
Episode Highlights
"One of the things that was so damaging … was that humility was often seen as inconsistent with conviction."

"A lot of life is … embracing agency and … becoming more and more aware of the tidal forces that brought us to a particular point."

"Curiosity and openness requires courage because you're told what to think about everybody, and if you … question that, you can be thrown out of your tribe. You can lose your community."

"We must pursue justice, but when we think we have to have power to pursue justice, then we're on the road to perdition."

About David French
David French is an opinion columnist for The New York Times writing on law, faith, and politics. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he spent much of his career as a constitutional litigator and once led the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He grew up in the Churches of Christ in Kentucky, studied at Lipscomb University—where he now teaches—and served in Iraq as a US Army judge advocate, earning a Bronze Star. With Russell Moore and Curtis Chang, he created The After Party, a curriculum for Christian political engagement. His most recent book is Divided We Fall.
Helpful Links and Resources
David French's New York Times column, where he writes on law, faith, and politics: https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-french

David French on X: https://x.com/DavidAFrench

The After Party, the Redeeming Babel curriculum for Christian political engagement French made with Russell Moore and Curtis Chang: https://redeemingbabel.org/the-after-party/free-course

Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, French's book on American polarization: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250836731/dividedwefall

Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah, a study of American individualism: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520254190/habits-of-the-heart-with-a-new-preface

Show Notes
Three words to guide public life: attention, agency, power

A born contrarian shaped by a fundamentalism: "collectively contrarian" yet "individually very conformist"

Harvard Law exposed how "contingent and place-based my own beliefs are"; experiencing a pull toward "the story behind the story"

Attention as discipline—seeking "the best expression of opposing views," never the other side's worst

Partisans slander rather than engage: "language designed to shut off conversation, not to invite it"

Reading the Bible cover to cover in sixth grade, arriving at the lesson that "we're way too dogmatic about stuff"

How to embody a faith that can hold conviction and humility side by side

Agency according to Gandalf: "It's not up to us to determine the times in which we live," only how we respond

Curiosity requires courage, since dissent threatens loss of community

Power's real peril—"the spiritually corrupting power of power" and fooling yourself into virtue

The undermining of justice by seeking to hold and maintain power; examples in Rosa Parks and Jim Crow segregation / Jesus and the Roman Empire

Christian nationalism as "for the nation to be good, Christians must rule"

Restoring the Civil Rights Movement's commitment to the way of Jesus: reconciliation, not victory

#DavidFrench #Conversing #FaithAndPolitics #ChristianNationalism #Attention #Agency #Power #Curiosity #CivilRights