For this special episode, we talked with my friends Brian Stolarz and Dewayne Brown about their new documentary film on Netflix, The Innocence Files. The movie tells the story of Dewayne's wrongful conviction for a cop-killing in Houston, his ten plus years on death row, and Brian's legal struggle to free him. I'm fortunate to have these two as friends, and I hope you will check out their film. If you would like to help Dewayne while he awaits compensation from the State of Texas, HERE is the Go...
Apr 24, 2020•58 min
Our guest this week is Professor Jack Levison, author of numerous books including the recent works The Holy Spirit Before Christianity and Boundless God. Jack was a fun, funny, engaging, and insightful guest-- plus, he did his homework enough to know that our producer, Tommie, isn't a dude. Featured in the Huffington Post and on parade.com, relevant.com, and beliefnet.com, Jack Levison’s writings appeal to a wide popular audience. Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, considers him “the most c...
Apr 17, 2020•38 min
Expertise in the age of COVID-19 has been shaped by any fool's ability to start a blog, podcast, or stand behind a podium. In this episode, Jason and Teer sat down with Mrs. Dr. Johanna Hartelius, host of You're Not Accepted, to discuss the Op-Ed she wrote for the Houston Chronicle. Check out the op-ed here: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Trump-Fauci-tensions-on-coronavirus-show-need-15171822.php "Americans are at a crossroads. With the novel coronavirus prompting a nat...
Apr 03, 2020•40 min
Now that I have no other office but Zoom, I’m inclined to curse the internet and whatever dolt of a father and whore of a mother that begat him. Except, thanks to the webs, a writer I admired has become a friend I hold dear. Thomas Lynch is back on the podcast to talk to us about his latest collection, The Depositions, and about burying the dead in light of COVID-19. Essayist, poet, and funeral director Thomas Lynch was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1948. His critically acclaimed volumes of poetr...
Mar 27, 2020•50 min
John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won multiple awards. The National Academies of Sciences named his 2004 book The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine. His earlier book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best bo...
Mar 20, 2020•38 min
To help your church plan and prepare for the impact of COVID-19, we talked with Kent Annan of Wheaton College’s Humanitarian Disaster Institute about their new manual, Preparing Your Church for Coronavirus (COVID-19): A Step-by-Step, Research-Informed and Faith-Based Planning Manual. This manual offers faith communities a 6-step guide for preparing, planning, and facing a public health threat like coronavirus. With biblical wisdom, research insights, and quick, actionable steps, this manual equi...
Mar 13, 2020•33 min
“People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse. If you want to save America’s soul, consider becoming a minister. If you want to force people to confess their sins and convert, don a white robe and head to the River Jordan. If you are determined to bring the Last Judgment down on the United States of America, become a god. But if you want to win the country back from the right, and bring...
Mar 04, 2020•40 min
Have you ever struggled with "giving God control, finding God’s will, hearing God speak, or letting God work”? Do those phrases sound familiar and even spiritual, but when you try to apply them, they actually cause more anxiety, not less? Phillip Cary is back on the pod to discuss these sorts of phrases’ and how they are actually based in good intentions, but bad theology. When we understand how the gospel differs from what one author calls “the new evangelical theology”, we come to realize that...
Feb 28, 2020•33 min
Jason and Dr. Johanna Hartelius, co-host at C&GJ, have recently co-authored a scholarly journal on Karl Barth, Fleming Rutledge, and the rhetoric of apocalyptic preaching. So what better time to revisit an old podcast from the very beginning of Crackers and Grape Juice? Here’s one from the vault with the Episcopal priest and author of Help My Unbelief and the Crucifixion. Fleming talks about the economy of exchange in Christ’s cross, judgment, justice, forgiveness, and the rectifying power o...
Feb 21, 2020•37 min
Fresh off Donald Trump blaspheming at the National Prayer Breakfast and dismissing Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to nary a complaint from the evangelical pastors in attendance, we’ve got Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove on the podcast to talk about his latest book, A Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good. The religious Right taught America to misread the Bible. Christians have misused Scripture to consolidate power, stoke fears, and defend against enemies. But people who have...
Feb 14, 2020•42 min
What if we reconsidered Calvin and Calvin’s prioritizing of God’s power and sovereignty from the perspective of what Calvin was, a refugee, and from the hermeneutic of what his context makes his work, liberation theology? Our episode today is with a classmate of Jason’s from Princeton, Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt. The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt is the Franklin S. Dyrness Associate Professor in Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College, a Fellow in the Royal Historical Society, and ...
Feb 07, 2020•46 min
Our guest today is Douglas Campbell, Professor of New Testament at Duke. His new book, Pauline Dogmatics, unpacks the eschatological heart of Paul’s gospel in his world and its implications for today Drawing upon thirty years of intense study and reflection on Paul, Douglas Campbell offers a distinctive overview of the apostle’s thinking that builds on Albert Schweitzer’s classic emphasis on the importance for Paul of the resurrection. But Campbell—learning here from Karl Barth—traces through th...
Jan 31, 2020•46 min
“Go ahead. Get your church all cleaned up. Have everyone swear to your cherished ideology. What are you going to do about Jesus? Our Lord refuses to keep reaching out and bringing in the ‘wrong’ people making my church more complicated than I would like it to be. Just wait until the progressive UMC pastor discovers that she’s got folks in her congregation who are just as sexist, racist, and homophobic as the people who walked out? Cure them of their homophobia; next Sunday Jesus will demand that...
Jan 24, 2020•39 min
Back on the podcast at last, the peerless Fleming Rutledge joins Jason to talk about the 20th Anniversary Edition of her book, Help My Unbelief. In addition to her book, Fleming reflects on the conservative/progressive divide in the Church, the LGBTQ debate in the UMC, the Christianity Today editorial advocating for the removal of President Trump, praying for social justice issues and preaching that incorporates current events. Oh, she also prays at the end. Fleming’s our favorite and she should...
Jan 17, 2020•56 min
You're Not Accepted. That is a hard truth to swallow. Today’s episode is a preview for you, a tasting if you will, of our latest project; 'You’re Not Accepted.' The podcast formerly known as Hermeneutics has received a makeover since we finished our examination of the theological alphabet. For our first episode of 'You're Not Accepted,' we talked with Stanley about his essay in Minding the Web entitled “Preaching in the Ruins.” On each episode of 'You're Not Accepted,' we will discuss a differen...
Jan 10, 2020•37 min
What happens when a presidential candidate is refused communion at church? Jason and Taylor got together with Ryan Couch to talk about that very thing with regard to a recent event with Joe Biden. In a world where sacramental practices are practiced without much thought, the church is left to discern what it means to have an open table and what happens if you try to put up fences around God's grace. You can read Ryan's original article about the event here: https://ryancouch.wordpress.com/2019/1...
Jan 03, 2020•37 min
Mark Galli recently set off a Twitter war and a media feeding frenzy for his editorial in Christianity Today, of which Galli is editor-in-chief, arguing for the removal of President Donald Trump. While Trump labled CT a “far-left” magazine, it is in fact the National Review of conservative Protestants. Galli is also the author of a number of books. His most recent, Karl Barth for Evangelicals, is the topic of our conversation.
Dec 27, 2019•44 min
Fr. Robert Hart is the Rector of Saint Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church in Chapel Hill, NC, a contributing editor of Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity, and frequent contributor to The Continuum blog. He’s an incredible music fan, and Robert graciously agreed to share an original Christmas composition as a part of the podcast. The brother of Addison Hart and David Bentley Hart, Robert Hart is a good follow on social media. In this conversation, Robert talks with us about the Christian...
Dec 24, 2019•55 min
I’m thrilled to have made friends with Dr. Amy Laura Hall. Not only is she back on the podcast to talk about Stanley Hauerwas’ influence on her work and theology, she’ll be our special guest in June at our annual live podcast at Annual Conference in Roanoke, Va. Amy Laura Hall was named a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 2004-2005 and has received funding from the Lilly Foundation, the Josiah Trent Memorial Foundation, the American Theological Library Association, the Child in Religion and ...
Dec 20, 2019•55 min
Thomas Lecaque teaches Religious History at Grand View University in Iowa. He recently authored an article in the Washington Post that caught our attention, entitled “The Apocalyptic Myth that Explains Evangelical Support for Trump.” You can find the article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/26/apocalyptic-myth-that-helps-explain-evangelical-support-trump/...
Dec 13, 2019•44 min
Dr. Sutton recently wrote an article in the Washington Post that got our attention for this episode: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/21/explaining-unbreakable-bond-between-donald-trump-white-evangelicals/ Matthew is the Edward R. Meyer distinguished professor of history at Washington State University. The author of award-winning books, including American Apocalypse, and the recent book, Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War, h...
Dec 06, 2019•46 min
In many ways, Advent is a season that pivots not only between two aeons, the old and the new, but between testatments, old and new, and faiths, that of Christianity and Judaism. After all, Advent is largely the time when Christians anticipate the second coming by rehearsing the anticipating of the first coming found in Israel’s prophets. The son of Holocaust survivors, Scott A. Shay has had a successful business career spanning Wall Street, private equity, venture capital, and banking. He co-fou...
Nov 29, 2019•46 min
Our guest this week is United Methodist pastor Parker Haynes who joins us to talk about his essay “Remember Our Story: Is the Future of Methodism, Anglican?” in which he argues that United Methodism has run aground not because of disputes over sexuality but because, in many core ways, the story of Methodism has come to an end. Our reason for being, that is, is no longer a reason to be a distinct set apart from the Church whence we came.
Nov 22, 2019•51 min
In the past half-century, few theologians have shaped the landscape of American belief and practice as much as Stanley Hauerwas. His work in social ethics, political theology, and ecclesiology has had a tremendous influence on the church and society. But have we understood Hauerwas's theology, his influences, and his place among the theologians correctly? Hauerwas is often associated―and rightly so―with the postliberal theological movement and its emphasis on a narrative interpretation of Script...
Nov 15, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Is faith in Jesus enough for salvation? Perhaps, says Matthew Bates, but we're missing pieces of the gospel. The biblical gospel can never change. Yet our understanding of the gospel must change. The church needs an allegiance shift. Popular pastoral resources on the gospel are causing widespread confusion. Bates shows that the biblical gospel is different, fuller, and more beautiful than we have been led to believe. He explains that saving faith doesn't come through trust in Jesus's death on th...
Nov 08, 2019•43 min
Fresh on the heels of evangelical preacher John MacArthur saying that evangelical preacher (*a woman*) should “Go home,” we have our friend Rev. Sarah Condon back on the podcast to reflect on what it’s like to be a clergywoman, her recent essay at Mockingbird Ministries, and how inclusion of women in pastoral ministry requires inclusion of LGBTQ Christians.
Nov 01, 2019•45 min
Dr. Johanna Hartelius, Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Texas: Austin, is working with Jason on an article on apocalyptic preaching and, for it, has recently read Will Willimon’s book Conversations with Barth on Preaching. She demanded, as she does, to talk about it with Jason for the podcast.
Oct 25, 2019•42 min
David Bentley Hart is back on the podcast to talk about his recent review in the NY Times of the new Tarantino film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” as well as the irrefutability of his new book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, guns, and baseball.
Oct 18, 2019•1 hr 6 min
Our guest for episode #229 is my friend David Meyers— along with his fantastic wife, Nicole. David is a fireman in Albequerque, New Mexico. But that’s just his day job. David is a singer/songwriter. He’s been a worship leader and rock band frontman for groups like Old Man Shattered, and he’s the curator of a project you should check out called A More Beautiful Gospel, dedicated to the goodness of the God who looks like Jesus. David has a new album project called Of Light and Shadow that I urge y...
Oct 11, 2019•36 min
What if the generations of Talmudic interpretation demonstrate an inherently gracious nature to the Jewish Law? What if Protestant Christians are wrong and the Law is not a burdensome command meant to induce repentance but a gracious entry into thinking about everything in the world? Chaim Saiman, Professor of Law at Villanova University, is back on the podcast to talk about his most recent book, Halakah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law.
Oct 04, 2019•1 hr 6 min
