Possibilities of Peace and Justice

Before Krista Tippett started hosting radio programs about faith, before she went to Yale Divinity School, she was a political aid at the US consulate in West Berlin. This was before the fall of the Soviet Union and East Germany. She discovered there a sense of spiritual desolation, and discovered "that transcendent goals like peace and justice are always made possible, or rendered impossible, by the patterns of the human heart."

What is the human condition?

The human condition is the reality around which political life revolves --and upon which it falters. Even the highest levels of diplomacy and geopolitical strategy are about treating the symptoms of humanity on the loose. This fact is made more complex, not more transparent, in our era where religious passions and identities overtly fuel political conflict -- where , in other words, the human heart is openly, wantonly involved. (p. 47).

She writes that her current involvement as a journalist, "probing for human and spiritual dynamics beneath the present surfaces of rancor" is enabled by what she's learned since leaving Berlin. What she's learned is that when taking religion seriously, she's able to "see its substance and its weight in the world and its meanings in human life, both light and dark."

Krista Tippett is host of Speaking of Faith and author of the book of the same name -- Speaking of Faith (Viking, 2007).