Our guest for episode #284 is Dr. Jerusha Matsen Neal, Professor of Homiletics at Duke. I had looked forward to talking with her. I left our conversation feeling grateful and delighted. I hope you enjoy it. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Neal shares connections and affinities with a number of friends from the podcast, including Beverly Gaventa, James Kay, and Karl Barth. Her new book is The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation. It breaks open ...
Nov 06, 2020•57 min
Our dear friend of the podcast and overall muse, Fleming Rutledge called in to offer a prayer for Election Day. As are all her prayers, this one is special. Fleming is the author of many books including "The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ." You can find her at www.generousorthodoxy.org .
Nov 03, 2020•10 min
Jason, Teer, and Taylor had a conversation with Gretchen Purser about the changes to the Republican Party throughout her career. “’Trump says all the things we’ve always wanted to say.’ Really? Then what does it say about us as Americans if Trump’s outer monologue is our inner monologue?” Our guest for episode #282 is former Republican campaign operative and fundraiser, Gretchen Purser. Raised a conservative Baptist in Oklahoma, Gretchen retired in 2009 from a 20 year career in politics, raising...
Oct 30, 2020•56 min
"Rather than resorting to Luther's Law-Gospel binary to excuse the Presidents mendacity and self-justify support for him, Protestants should turn to Luther's theology of cross which tells us that we should call a thing what it is...and the thing is only God knows the details and depths of Donald Trump's spiritual life, but Jesus says what comes out of our mouths is the fruit of what's in our hearts, and what Trump routinely says publicly disavows every core teaching Jesus set forth in the Sermon...
Oct 23, 2020•53 min
"You are mortal. You are not indispensable to the world. Your life will come to an end. We're not heroes of the world and we can't do much. To what and to whom do we give ourselves in this short life? Lacking a journalistic account of the future leaves us with many unanswered questions: What will 'do' in heaven? What exactly will it feel like and look like? My most basic answer to questions like these is "I don't know." Our hope rests not in a speculative vision of the future but in God and his ...
Oct 16, 2020•52 min
“Both sides are thinking that some how or another getting this or that party elected is good for Christians. I think my point of view is neither side is good for Christians. Because effectively they have become idolatrous powers that christians are looking to for salvation” What is Post-Liberalism? What does "apocalyptic" mean? How is justice central to Paul's understanding of the Gospel? Our guest today is Dr. Douglas Harink, a theologian whose work has been important to me for a while now and ...
Oct 09, 2020•51 min
Friend of the podcast and commentator at The Dispatch, David French, has a new book out that couldn't be more timely and bracing. It's called Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. As a preview, here's a conversation Teer and Jason had with David when Divided We Fall was being written.
Oct 02, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Our guest today is David Gushee, whose new book is "After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity." Dr. David P. Gushee (BA, College of William & Mary; Master of Divinity, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy, Union Theological Seminary in New York) is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, where he has served for eleven years. Widely regarded a...
Sep 25, 2020•47 min
"Saints and sinners, all jumbled up together." That's the genius of Johnny Cash, and that's what the gospel is ultimately all about. Johnny Cash sang about and for people on the margins. He famously played concerts in prisons, where he sang both murder ballads and gospel tunes in the same set. It's this juxtaposition between light and dark, writes Richard Beck, that makes Cash one of the most authentic theologians in memory. In Trains, Jesus, and Murder, Beck explores the theology of Johnny Cash...
Sep 18, 2020•53 min
"In many cases, particularly in the case Wesley, teaching on sanctification leads to versions of piety that border on individual narcissism...renditions of sanctification as a process or journey of the believer moving towards ever ascending degrees of holiness, of the Christian life as defined by growth or transformation, cannot be supported by the biblical texts, all of which testify that God's work in Jesus is finished and perfect, that on account of it we are already justified AND sanctified,...
Sep 11, 2020•1 hr 1 min
More than half of American adults, including 30% of evangelicals, say Jesus isn’t God but most agree He was a great teacher, according to results from the 2020 State of Theology survey. So, back on the podcast is our friend, Ken Jones, to talk about the importance of catechesis in the Church! Along the way, Ken talks about how to equip Christians for civic engagement without the Church becoming partisan and why otherwise conservative African American Christians still vote overwhelmingly for Demo...
Sep 04, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Sep 01, 2020•1 hr 10 min
""God is love," Who's he kidding?" Fritz Bauerschmidt is a Catholic deacon and a professor of Theology at Loyola University in Baltimore. His newest book, in the tradition of Lewis and Chesterton, is a treasure. “God is love is the radical claim of Christianity,” writes Frederick Bauerschmidt at the beginning of this little meditation on the essentials of Christian faith. Throughout The Love That Is God, Bauerschmidt goes to work breathing life back into that claim, drawing from Scripture, great...
Aug 28, 2020•51 min
In between weeks when the DNC and the RNC will showcase two divergent portraits of Christianity in America, our guest is filmmaker Martin Doblmeier. The founder and CEO of Journey Films, Martin's latest documentary is Revolution of the Heart: The Dorothy Day Story. We talk to Martin about Day, the blues, Cornell West, and what its like making a film with President Jed Bartlett. How to describe Dorothy Day? Grandmother, anarchist, prophet, journalist, pacifist, saint? The FBI once considered her ...
Aug 21, 2020•59 min
Jamie Howison struck up an unlikely friendship with the irascible Robert Farrar Capon just before Capon's death, and he's on the podcast to talk about it, ministry, Cornel West, and John Coltrane. https://mbird.com/2018/04/the-man-who-ate-with-capon/ Jamie Howison is a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada and the founding pastoral leader of saint benedict's table in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His most recent book is I Will Not Be Shaken: a songwriter’s journey through the Psalms (Signpost, 2015), co...
Aug 14, 2020•44 min
“It is true that theological doctrines and religious practices do shape and form religious experience, but it is no less true that experience tends to resist such shaping and forming. Attention to the complex interaction of these two insights is a key dimension of the account of “grace as experience” that follows below.” Our guest this week is a Simeon Zahl, University Lecturer in Christian Theology at the University of Cambridge. Simeon’s new book, which ranges from Martin Luther to Karl Barth,...
Aug 07, 2020•47 min
For our latest episode, we're bringing you a conversation Jason had with the inestimable Fleming Rutledge, at the beginning of the COVID quarantine, about God's way of rejecting and electing throughout scripture.
Jul 31, 2020•59 min
Our guest today is Dr. Ryan Newson, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Campbell University, about his new book, "Cut in Stone": Confederate Monuments and Theological Disruption." Confederate monuments figure prominently as epicenters of social conflict. These stone and metal constructs resonate with the tensions of modern America, giving concrete definition to the ideologies that divide us. Confederate monuments alone did not generate these feelings of aggravation, but they are far from innocen...
Jul 24, 2020•49 min
Jul 17, 2020•32 min
The one, the only David Bentley Hart joins Jason and Dr. Johanna Hartelius to talk about his latest book, Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest. In particular, we talk about an essay included in the Digest that's timely for our current cultural moment of historical re-examination, "The Story of the Nameless: The Use and Abuse of History for Theology."
Jul 10, 2020•30 min
"Sing lustily and with good courage." John Wesley wrote those words in the Hymnbook for Methodist in 1761. We at Crackers and Grape Juice take those words seriously! Therefore we decided to bring you some of our current "Quarantunes" - songs that have inspired, enlightened, and even enraged us as of recent. Here's the playlist: 1. Thoughts And Prayers - Drive-By Truckers (Jason Micheli) 2. Sea of Love - Langhorne Slim & Jill Andrews (Teer Hardy) 3. What If I Never Get Over You - Lady A (Joha...
Jul 08, 2020•36 min
"The Lost Cause had taught me that faith, particularly faith in Jesus and going to church, was an indispensable part of what it meant to be a good person. But now that very same faith which The Lost Cause had commended was forcing a decision which would impact my past, present, and future. If I kept my faith in The Lost Cause, I would be unable to preach the gospel to the woman sitting next to me. If I wanted to share the gospel with anyone who wasn’t white, I would have to abandon the secular f...
Jul 03, 2020•50 min
Rev. William H. Lamar IV joins Crackers & Grape Juice to talk about his latest piece featured in Faith & Leadership: 'It's not just the coronavirus -- bad theology is killing us." The Rev. William H. Lamar IV is pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. He previously served Turner Memorial AME Church in Maryland and three churches in Florida: Monticello, Orlando and Jacksonville. He is a former managing director at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity...
Jun 26, 2020•1 hr
Jason and Teer are joined by author Tara Isabella Burton to discuss her latest opinion piece in the New York Times and new book, 'Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World.' From the publisher: "In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandon...
Jun 19, 2020•50 min
Drew Hart joins Jason and Teer to discuss his forthcoming book, 'Who Will Be A Witness ' (September 2020), the ghosts of America's racist past, and what the Gospel says to us in a moment of pandemic, protest, and movement. Drew G. I. Hart is a public theologian and professor of theology at Messiah College. He has ten years of pastoral ministry experience and is the recipient of multiple awards for peacemaking. Hart attained his MDiv with an urban concentration from Missio Seminary and his PhD in...
Jun 12, 2020•56 min
We could all use the comfort of Fred Rogers right about now. Joining this episode of the podcast is author Shea Tuttle, the author of "Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers." Mister Rogers touched the lives of many, and that is an understating of his impact. A Presbyterian minister, Fred Roger ensured that the Grace of God was shared with everyone he met, whether in person or in The Neighborhood. Yet, while extending Grace Mister Rogers also expected us to grow. Growth is what ...
Jun 05, 2020•50 min
What does a theologian say to young preachers in the early 1930s, at the dawn of the Third Reich? Karl Barth's lectures on preaching amidst the growing cloud of Nazism in 1932-1933 resulted in the little book, Homiletics. In it, Barth takes his students back to the fundamental questions about what preaching is and what it is for, returning again and again to the affirmation of the Godness of God, the only ground of resistance to ideological captivity. In this latest episode, Jason and Dr. Johann...
May 29, 2020•43 min
"One major reason Christianity in America has been made into a bad public joke is our failure to rightly understand what Christianity is.” Our guest this week is Lee Camp, Professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville and host of the popular Tokens Show in Nashville. Check out his website: https://www.leeccamp.com His latest book is Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. Fifteen propositions for changing Christianity in America Christian identity is in moral and politic...
May 22, 2020•49 min
Church Historian, Malcom Foley, joins us on the podcast to talk about the murder Ahmad Arbery within the context of the history of lynching in the American Church. Malcolm is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Baylor’s Department of Religion, studying the history of Christianity. His dissertation investigates African-American Christian responses to lynching from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. Malcolm earned a BA in religious studies with a second major in finance and a minor in clas...
May 15, 2020•1 hr
Our guest this week is Katherine Stewart, a journalist at the New York Times. Katherine's investigative work has focused on the Religious Right and Christian Nationalism. She talks with us about the influence they have had on the Trump White House, their hostility to science, and how it has impacted the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Most recently, she is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism You can read her article here: https://www.abc....
May 08, 2020•39 min
