Life & Faith

Loss forces us into barren places. But even there, something new can be born.
When life takes a turn – when you’re diagnosed with a chronic illness, when things spiral out of our control – we're forced into some uncomfortable places. Liminal places.
The word ‘liminal’ comes from the Latin word meaning ‘threshold’ or ‘doorstep’. When you step over a doorway, you cross the dividing line between the inside and outside of a house. A liminal space, then, is a boundary marker between the end of something, and the beginning of something else.
The experience of suffering is one such liminal state in life. It forces us to shed ideas about ourselves that no longer fit our changed circumstances. In this episode of Life & Faith, we bring you the stories of two people who’ve found themselves living lives they weren’t expecting. We explore how they’ve made sense of what has happened to them, and who they are becoming in the process.
Paul Gallagher is an author and journalist who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2016. He tells us that the term Multiple Sclerosis means ‘many scars’, and how he’s come to claim that ‘my scars are my human ministry as much as my spiritual ministry’.
Adriel Booker is a speaker and author whose latest book is Tethered to Hope: The Quiet Kindness of God in Crisis, Change, and the Spaces In Between.
This is a conversation about the twists and turns life takes, how crisis changes us, and how it introduces us to the people we didn’t know we were.
EXPLORE
Paul Gallagher’s website, featuring his post ‘How to stay happily married, in under three hours a day’ and why he’s ‘not scared of machines taking over’
Adriel Booker’s website,
Adriel’s book Tethered to Hope: The Quiet Kindness of God in Crisis, Change, and the Spaces In Between
Adriel’s book Grace Like Scarlett: Grieving with Hope after Miscarriage and Loss

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

Ralph Jackman left a successful career in sports broadcasting to become a teacher. He didn’t expect that choice to land him behind bars.
Ralph had been a sports reporter for 25 years but felt he needed a change and in his early 50s trained to become a teacher.
That might be tough enough of a transition, but Ralph’s first appointment was to Melbourne’s Parkville Youth Detention Centre teaching literacy and numeracy to boys on remand. He was teaching some of our country’s most damaged and vulnerable boys.
Ralph has written about that experience in his book Detention: A Rookie Teacher. The Toughest Prison School in Australia, where he narrates some amazing experiences he had in that environment. Jackman shows how being extra creative, as well as personally honest and vulnerable was necessary to make a connection with the boys.
He also tells of the reason he came to be a whistle blower against a system he felt was badly failing those in its care.
Explore:
Detention: A Rookie Teacher. The Toughest Prison School in Australia