Krista Tippett's Ministry of Listening

I enjoy my work, but if there’s one job I envy it’s the one held by radio host Krista Tippett. Each week on her National Public Radio program On Being (formerly known as Speaking of Faith) she interviews someone fascinating. One week it’s the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, another week a specialist in whale songs or a Orthodox theologian from Turkey. These wide-ranging conversations about religion, spirituality, ethics and ideas are almost always thought-provoking and often quite moving.

The current issue of Christianity Today has an article that puts the spotlight directly on Tippett herself: The Public Listener: A Conversation with Radio Host Krista Tippett. The veteran interviewer has the tables turned as she answers questions about her own spirituality, the media coverage of religion, and how to promote civility and dialogue in the public arena. Here’s an interchange I thought especially interesting, one that resonates with my own experiences in writing about other faiths:

You write in your book Speaking of Faith that your own starting point and perspective is Christianity. What is it like as a religion journalist to identify with a particular religious tradition and also to step foot into these other traditions by way of your show?

This would probably be one of those old taboos [about journalism] that needs to be broken down. I don’t know why we would think a business journalist was qualified to do what he does if he didn’t have his own bank account, or a political correspondent who didn’t vote.

I make no apologies for the fact that I have a religious life of my own. I’m speaking as a Christian because I’m speaking as myself.

When I first started this, there was a young Catholic reporter who was excited about the show. I’d just done something with the Dalai Lama, and she said, “Do you feel you get converted by talking to these amazing religious leaders?” The truth is, I don’t.

When profound encounter happens, it has paradoxical effects. At one and the same time, you are able to appreciate and even to learn from this other person and their tradition. But the other thing that always happens—and I’ve honestly never heard of a story that it hasn’t happened in—is that you become more richly planted where you are. You become a better Christian.

I think that some of the most deadly phrases in the English language are ecumenical and interfaith. They’re so boring, but the experiences people have are not boring, and the experiences are transformative, and they’re not relativistic.

We did some audience engagement research a couple years ago, and there was wonderful stuff in there about how people really use On Being. A majority said they’re able to have conversations with people they couldn’t have had conversations with before. The same kind of huge majority said it had deepened their engagement with their own tradition, and that is the way it works. That’s a long answer to say that it works for me, too.

Read the whole interview if you’re a Krista Tippet fan (as I suspect many of you are). And if you’re not familiar with On Being, listen to a show on-line or on the radio or download a podcast (I’d highly recommend her interview The Last Quiet Places with Gordon Hempton in particular).

Let me leave you with my favorite line in the interview: Tippet says she has a “ministry of listening.” Isn’t that wonderful? Would that we had more journalists like her!