Miroslav Volf is one of our best known contemporary theologians. He is Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity school. He grew up amidst ethnic tensions in Communist Yugoslavia, and lived through the civil war which pit historically Catholic Croats, Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims against each other. Much of his work as a scholar and activist has been trying to make sense of these experiences, including his books ‘Exclusion and embrace’, ‘About reconciliation’, and ‘Allah: A Christian response.’

In this episode he talks about his sacred values of non-violence and freedom to self-determine, what it really takes to love people we perceive as enemies, and what civil war and contemporary British public debates might have in common.