Robert George on how to disagree and remain spiritually grounded

The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.

America Media

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The American legal scholar and public intellectual, Professor Robert George, joins host James Martin, S.J., on “The Spiritual Life” podcast to talk about the practice of dialogue in the church and society, as well as his own rich faith journey. Raised in the heart of Appalachia, West Virginia, by his Syrian Antiochian Orthodox father and Italian Catholic mother, Robert’s childhood was solidly rooted in faith and inspired by the moral heroism of his father. In addition to his extensive professional accomplishments, including as the sixth McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, Professor George has long modeled civil dialogue with his friend and fellow interlocutor, Professor Cornel West. Timecodes: 0:00 Building trust for challenging conversations 5:27 Robert George’s Orthodox and Catholic “mixed” religious upbringing 9:14 The impact of a father’s relationship with God 13:45 Robert’s father’s act of heroism 22:28 What Jane Austen’s characters can teach us about God’s ways 24:30 Praying slowly with attention 35:15 How Robert’s dialogues with Dr. Cornel West began 45:20 You’ll only allow someone you trust to challenge your deeply held beliefs 48:12 Audience Question: How can we better respond to God’s calls for improving the world? Link to Father Jim’s spiritual advice column for this episode: https://www.americamagazine.org/podcasts/2026/06/01/robert-george-james-martin-spiritual-life Some of Robert George’s books: Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division In Defense of Natural Law Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality Do you have a spiritual question for Father Jim? You can write to us at: thespirituallife@americamedia.org Become a subscriber today at Americamagazine.org/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:32.7	And of course, often given what I do and where I work and the general culture in which
0:38.8	I live, I'm interacting with people who profoundly disagree with me about very important
0:43.3	questions. But in a way, that's an advantage because if they see me standing by my principles
0:49.7	and defending my principles and perhaps challenging them on things that they believe, but also allowing
0:56.0	myself to be challenged, they also see me dealing with them in a loving way because I do love them.
1:05.7	Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Father Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God
1:12.0	in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I'm joined by my parapetetic producer Maggie Van Dorn.
1:18.8	Maggie, welcome back from Spain. Yeah, you wouldn't know by watching or listening to the podcast
1:23.9	because I've been here consistently, but I have been in Spain for the past 10 days,
1:29.4	and it has been quite the experience. Yeah, what's, what was your favorite part of being away?
1:36.1	Well, Jim, this has been a spiritual practice that I have been working on, I'd say, at least for a year. And it really came to the fore while
1:47.2	traveling. I don't know if you have this experience when you're traveling, but you kind of
1:51.1	develop this loaded itinerary and you want to see and do everything. And in my normal day-to-day life,
1:59.0	I often feel like I'm just hustling.
2:01.8	And so I've been trying to intentionally do less and enjoy more in order to be more
2:09.3	present to the people that I'm with and the experiences.
2:12.5	And so this was a really great exercise for me being in Spain where, you know, there's so much to see and do
2:20.0	and you just want to like take it all in. But yeah, sometimes there are days that the schedule
	...

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