This is On Being's Unheard Cuts.

I'm Christa Tippett.

You're listening to my unedited conversation with Lawrence Krause.

He's a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University.

I spoke with him on July 13, 2012,

at the Hall of Philosophy at the Chautauqua Institution in New York.

Download the MP3 of the Produced Show with Lawrence Krause at onbeing.org.

So for the last four days we have explored

depths of religious engagement and passion in four very different lives,

especially in the sphere of social action and social service.

Public theology has a long history at Chautauqua,

and in earlier generations that meant a voice like Reinhold Nieber,

an authoritative Christian voice in an overwhelmingly Christian culture.

In my mind, the individuals we heard from these last few days

are the shape of public theology in our time,

and that is diverse and dispersed.

It's men and it's women, people who are passionately at work,

in particular spheres of life that are often hidden from the news headlines.

And they are Christian and they're not.

The physician Abdullah Dar and the Buddhist anthropologist Joan Halifax,

father Greg Boyle's work with gangs in Los Angeles,

and Rami Nasha Shibis' work in the inner city of Chicago.

...