Trinity Forum Conversations

We live in an unforgiving age. Even as we know that Jesus commanded forgiveness, extending it can seem impossible, impractical, self-harming, even unjust. 

In these times of outrage and fear, what can help us become forgiving people?

Author Amy Orr-Ewing joined us for a recent online conversation, where we explored these questions for a live audience:
"The church needs to recapture the vision of forgiveness as an actuality. This is something real rooted in the sacrifice of Jesus at the cross. And it's that that has actually been the animating force of the Christian faith throughout history."This episode is drawn from an Online Conversation in 2026. You can view the transcript and other resources here.
Recommended Trinity Forum Readings: 
Confessions; Augustine
Wrestling With God; Simone Weil
Purchase of a Soul; Victor Hugo
Revelations of Divine Love; Julian of Norwich

We are a culture well acquainted with anxiety. Recent years have shown it rising dramatically, particularly among Generation Z and Millennials, but affecting all of us. In the Sermon on the Mount, however, Jesus urges us not to be anxious. We wonder: is that actually possible today?

Author Alan Fadling joined us for a recent online conversation, where we explored these questions for a live audience:
"Maybe Peace, and its friends like Hope and Joy, maybe that's a better engine, maybe that's a better source of energy and motivation than my anxiety ever has been. And if my anxiety is fuel, then it's fuel that burns dirty."This episode is from a conversation from February 2026. You can view the transcript and other resources here.
Recommended Trinity Forum Readings: 
Confessions; Augustine
Brave New World; Aldous Huxley
The Long Loneliness; Dorothy Day
Wrestling With God; Simone Weil

In a culture shaped by speed, outrage, and constant distraction, many find it difficult to cultivate a resilient Christian faith. Is slowing down a key to renewing our love of God and neighbor, and sustaining a more durable, authentic faith in a restless age? And how, in practical terms, can we tune out the noise and hear the “still, small voice”?

Drawing on the themes of his book Slow Theology, its co-author, theologian Nijay Gupta, joined us for an online conversation in 2026, where we explored these questions for a live audience: 
"There's a journey that we have to take of striving after God, not because God is a cosmic killjoy, but because we have growth that needs to take place. And that happens slowly."This episode is from a conversation from March 2026. You can view the transcript and other resources here.
We hope you’ll consider becoming a member of our community, the Trinity Forum Society. Join us in exploring timeless Christian wisdom together, so you gain clarity and courage for your own life, and help cultivate a renewed culture of hope.
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Confessions; Augustine
Wrestling With God; Simone Weil
Man's Search for Meaning; Viktor Frankl
Who Stands Fast? Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Why God Became Man; Anselm of Canterbury

What makes a good life? In the fragmented and harried age we inhabit, what habits of attention, reflection, and action orient us toward what is good, true, and beautiful? 

The season of Lent is a good time for us to tackle such “big questions.” Drawing on his popular course at Yale, theologian and author Miroslav Volf joined us for an online conversation in 2024, where we explored these questions for a live audience.
"What is the treasure for which you would be willing to sell everything that you have? And if you know what the treasure is, are you willing ... to risk everything to have that treasure?"
Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture in New Haven, Connecticut. He has written or edited more than two dozen books, including the New York Times bestseller Life Worth Living, A Public Faith, Public Faith in Action, and Exclusion and Embrace (winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and selected as among the 100 best religious books of the twentieth century by Christianity Today). Educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, Volf regularly lectures around the world.
Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Man's Search for Meaning; Viktor Frankl
On Happiness; Thomas Aquinas
Brave New World; Aldous Huxley
How Much Land Does a Man Need? Leo Tolstoy
Wrestling with God; Simone Weil

As we continue our journey through the season of Lent, we’re offering a series to help each of us prepare the way of the Lord. As we go deeper in our spiritual practices during these days, our guide today is the author and psychiatrist Dr. Curt Thompson. 

In this conversation, Curt talks about the virtue, and discipline, of pursuing hope, even amid the darkness of a broken world:
"While I am working to move toward Jesus, while I'm moving to be further in the dance of the Trinity, I continue to suffer because evil is not about to go quietly into the night ... [we must] posture ourselves with our suffering in the same way that the Holy Trinity does when it comes to the suffering that Jesus experienced, such that we can join him in that."
This episode is drawn from an online conversation recorded in 2023. View the transcript and other resources there.
Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Confessions; St Augustine
God's Grandeur; Gerard Manley Hopkins
Bulletins from Immortality; Emily Dickinson
On Friendship; Cicero
On Happiness; Aquinas
Man's Search for Meaning; Viktor Frankl