Crackers and Grape Juice

Our guest for #339 is Brad Jenson. A former pastor, Brad has a PhD in Theology from Luther Seminary. A former student of Gerhard Forde, Brad has edited a new edition and written a study guide for Forde’s classic book, Where God Meets Man. In this episode, we talk with Brad about his article on Fuerbach, Barth, and Forde, his time in the parish, Luther’s down-to-earth Gospel, and his work now thinking about longevity and retirement.

The whole gang (well, mostly) poured some libations and got together to talk about Christmas, the incarnation, doubt and the miracle of faith.

Back on the podcast is our friend, mentor, and muse, Fleming Rutledge. It’s our Christmas gift to you. Thanks to all our listeners!

Our guest for #336 is Dr. Thomas Millay, author of the new book Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism. Thomas is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and Baylor University and he currently serves a parish in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Nationalism is a globally resurgent phenomenon. From Britain to India to the United States of America, we find nations vociferously reasserting their own sovereignty, ethnic composition, and intrinsic superiority. Thomas J. Millay demonstrates how Kierkegaard’s ascetic voice speaks directly to our present crisis.Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism: A Contemporary Reinterpretation of the Attack upon Christendom analyzes the late writings of Kierkegaard in light of this new relevance, for Kierkegaard’s attack upon Christendom is also an attack upon nationalism. For Kierkegaard, taking on nationalism is not simply a matter of undermining false identity constructions. Attacking nationalism is a matter of renunciation: it requires ascetic discipline, such that the selfish motives at the core of one’s identity construction are uprooted and replaced by a self-giving love marked by the willingness to suffer.

Pastor Brian Zahnd joins the podcast to talk about his newest book, "When Everything's on Fire: Faith Forged from the Ashes."About the book --Is it possible to hold on to faith in an age of unbelief?Intellectual certainty has long been a cornerstone of the Christian faith. But in an age of secularism, skepticism, and cynicism, our worldviews have been shaken. Various solutions exist―some double down on certainty, while others deconstruct their faith until there is nothing left at all. But Brian Zahnd offers a third way: what is needed is not a demolition but instead a renovation of faith.Written with personal and pastoral experience, Zahnd extends an invitation to move beyond the crisis of faith toward the journey of reconstruction. As the world rapidly changes in ways that feel incompatible with Christianity, When Everything's on Fire provides much-needed hope. A stronger, more confident faith is possible when it is grounded in the beauty and truth of Christ. Zahnd permits us to risk the journey of deconstruction so that God can forge something more beautiful in its place.https://brianzahnd.com/https://twitter.com/BrianZahndhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Everythings-Fire-Faith-Forged/dp/1514003333/Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.Head over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com.Click on “Support the Show.”Become a patronSubscribe to CGJ+For peanuts, you can help us out….we appreciate it more than you can imagine.Follow us on the three-majors of social media:https://www.facebook.com/crackersnjuicehttps://www.instagram.com/crackersandgrapejuicehttp://www.twitter.com/crackersnjuice

Back on the podcast is our friend, Father Kenneth Tanner. Ken is the rector of Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan and a writer for Christianity Today, Mockingbird, Clarion, and The Huffington Post. Oxford High School, the site of the latest school shooting in the US, is in Holy Redeemer's parish, and Kenneth joined us on the podcast to talk about his experience of providing pastoral care to the students, families, and teachers in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

While human existence in time is determined by the time of Jesus Christ, by the logic of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension, the predominant accounts of time in the modern West have proceeded from a very different basis. The implications of these approaches are not just a matter of epistemology, or of abstract doctrinal and philosophical claims. Instead, they have had, and continue to have, concrete ramifications for human life together. They have overwhelmingly been death-dealing rather than life-giving, marked by a series of temporal moral errors that this book hopes to address. As a counterexample, this book reads Søren Kierkegaard alongside Karl Barth to highlight the ways that both figures rejected a Hegelian approach to time that was, and is, not coincidentally intertwined with a racialized account of history and the co-opting of Christianity by the modern Western state.Our guest for #333 is Dr. Kara Slade. Kara serves as associate rector at Trinity Church, associate chaplain of the Episcopal Church at Princeton, and Canon Theologian of the Diocese of New Jersey. A native of Pensacola, Florida and lifelong Southerner, she received her PhD in Christian theology and ethics at Duke University in 2018, with research interests that include Karl Barth, Søren Kierkegaard, and the ethics of science, technology, and medicine. She serves on the Committee for the Priesthood of the Diocese of New Jersey and the General Board of Examining Chaplains, and is also the past chair of the Society of Scholar-Priests.

Ben Maddison is a priest at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in New Jersey, and Keith Voets is the rector at The Episcopal Church of St. Alban the Martyr, Queens, N.Y. They joined Jason and the Minion in a conversation about re-centering the Church on the Gospel. Here's the post that got the conversation started:There's some on-going ✨ Discourse ™️✨ in The Episcopal Church about ways to reverse decline. Some ideas are good, some not so good, some the same old nonsense that always comes up in the course of these conversations. So here's my one-step plan to revitalize decline:Proclaim the Good News of the Gospel: the transformative reality that Jesus Christ—in his life, death, and resurrection—fundamentally changes absolutely every aspect of who we are, how we live, how we love, and how we act in the world—a stark transformation that can only be described as a "death" of the old and resurrection of the new. Forgiveness, mercy, grace, love, and justice flow (by the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit) from the incomprehensible reality that "we love because he first loved us." Nothing comes before this. Everything flows from it. This is the center and ground of who we are.If everything we have and are—our structures, bureaucracy, liturgy, teaching, preaching, stewardship, pastoral care, fights for justice—has this at the center, "who can stand against us?"

https://vaumc.org/grateful-for-the-service/Veteran’s Day Weekend usually brings a lot of sales and commercial promotions. But this year, the Virginia United Methodist Church is asking you to join your fellow Methodists and shop for the Afghan Allies who have recently come to our Commonwealth after the fall of Kabul. These are Afghans who stood alongside our soldiers as translators, worked on U.S.bases in country, or served at our embassy alongside our diplomats. In the words of Bishop Sharma Lewis, “many of them have sacrificed and risked more than most of us will ever be asked to do.”Most arrived in Virginia with little more than the clothes on their back. While some of the wishlists were prepared by organizations working to resettle the Afghan Allies, the most immediate needs can be found on the Amazon wishlist for refugees at Fort Pickett. As temperatures drop, winter clothing is needed, especially for women. I hope you will join me in shopping to meet the VAUMC goal of having a completely empty wishlist by November 14!! This can be our way of following the command set out in Matthew 25 by Jesus, himself a refugee. “I needed clothes and you clothed me, Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’Thank you for showing Christ’s love to those who, like He was, are refugees in a new land.https://vaumc.org/grateful-for-the-service/

What does the cross of Christ have to do with the thunderbird? How might the life and work of Christian writer G. K. Chesterton shed light on our understanding of North American Indigenous art and history? This unexpected connection forms the basis of these discerning reflections by art historian Matthew Milliner. In this fifth volume in the Hansen Lectureship Series, Milliner appeals to Chesterton's life and work―including The Everlasting Man, his neglected poetry, his love for his native England, and his own visits to America―in order to understand and appreciate both Indigenous art and the complex, often tragic history of First Nations peoples, especially in the American Midwest. The Hansen Lectureship series offers accessible and insightful reflections by Wheaton College faculty on the transformative work of the Wade Center authors.Friend of the podcast, Dr. Matt Milliner, is back on the program to talk about his new work, The Everlasting People: G. K. Chesterton and the First Nations. Matt is a Professor of Art History at Wheaton College.

Gretchen Purser is the host of the podcast, The Mess is Mine.Gretchen is a recovering evangelical, former political hack and a Republican refugee. She built a 20 year career working for national Republican campaigns, candidates, and committees and their adorable baby brother, the religious right. She’s seen a lot of sh@t. She joins us to talk faith and politics on Election Day 2021.https://themessismine.com/Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.Head over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com.Click on “Support the Show.”Become a patronSubscribe to CGJ+For peanuts, you can help us out….we appreciate it more than you can imagine.Follow us on the three-majors of social media:https://www.facebook.com/crackersnjuicehttps://twitter.com/crackersnjuicehttps://www.instagram.com/crackersandgrapejuice

On growing up in the American South of the 1960s--an all-American white boy--son of a long line of Methodist preachers, in the midst of the civil rights revolution, and discovering the culpability of silence within the church. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for The Birmingham News."My dad was a Methodist preacher and his dad was a Methodist preacher," writes John Archibald. "It goes all the way back on both sides of my family. When I am at my best, I think it comes from that sermon place."Everything Archibald knows and believes about life is "refracted through the stained glass of the Southern church. It had everything to do with people. And fairness. And compassion."In Shaking the Gates of Hell, Archibald asks: Can a good person remain silent in the face of discrimination and horror, and still be a good person?Archibald had seen his father, the Rev. Robert L. Archibald, Jr., the son and grandson of Methodist preachers, as a moral authority, a moderate and a moderating force during the racial turbulence of the '60s, a loving and dependable parent, a forgiving and attentive minister, a man many Alabamians came to see as a saint. But was that enough? Even though Archibald grew up in Alabama in the heart of the civil rights movement, he could recall few words about racial rights or wrongs from his father's pulpit at a time the South seethed, and this began to haunt him.In this moving and powerful book, Archibald writes of his complex search, and of the conspiracy of silence his father faced in the South, in the Methodist Church and in the greater Christian church. Those who spoke too loudly were punished, or banished, or worse. Archibald's father was warned to guard his words on issues of race to protect his family, and he did. He spoke to his flock in the safety of parable, and trusted in the goodness of others, even when they earned none of it, rising through the ranks of the Methodist Church, and teaching his family lessons in kindness and humanity, and devotion to nature and the Earth.Archibald writes of this difficult, at times uncomfortable, reckoning with his past in this unadorned, affecting book of growth and evolution.

In a post-Christian culture, parish clergy can find themselves at a loss, ill-equipped to deal with a reality for which seminary did not prepare them. As a result, the Church and its clergy can seem to flounder from one “program” to the next or get enamored with secular self-help strategies. To learn to lead well in this new context, the Church needs to help clergy refocus on what both works and is true to their tradition and theology. Enter Scott Benhase, whose Done and Left Undone proposes an ascetical theology of leadership based in St. Benedict’s Promise of Stability, Obedience, and Conversion of Life. The Promise helps clergy move forward from their inward identity to their outward askesis (discipline), their inner life experience of resting in the mercy of God’s grace in harmony with their outward role in the church. Benhase believes parish clergy can lead faithfully and well without following a program or leadership style that does not fit them. Leading from ascetical grace does not require parish clergy to be something they are not. It invites them, rather, to a way of being and an askesis that will help them be both faithful and effective in parish leadership.Scott Anson Benhase was the tenth Episcopal bishop of Georgia. He now serves as the vicar of St. Cyprian's in Durham, North Carolina. 

The host of Homebrewed Christianity, Tripp Fuller, shares his answers to a few of the questions Teer is considering for ordination in the United Methodist Church.Tripp is a proud nerd, but not just a Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica type of nerd, he is a theology nerd who is committed to bringing theology to the people. With a PhD in Philosophy, Religion, & Theology, Tripp is a special kind of theology nerd.Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.Head over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com.Click on “Support the Show.”Become a patronSubscribe to CGJ+For peanuts, you can help us out….we appreciate it more than you can imagine.Follow us on the three-majors of social media:https://www.facebook.com/crackersnjuicehttps://twitter.com/crackersnjuicehttps://www.instagram.com/crackersandgrapejuice

Talk the talk and walk the walk.The challenge of the Christian life is learning to talk Christian. Somebody has got to tell us, give us the words that open the door to the faith called Christian. Each of us is due the delight of discovery that in submitting to God’s talk to us.God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of Christian Faith is organized by the words the church teaches us to use to talk about ordinary life apprehended by a God who is Jesus Christ–short, meditative reflections upon key concepts that guide Christians, new or longstanding.Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.Head over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com.Click on “Support the Show.”Become a patronSubscribe to CGJ+For peanuts, you can help us out….we appreciate it more than you can imagine.Follow us on the three-majors of social media:https://www.facebook.com/crackersnjuicehttps://twitter.com/crackersnjuicehttps://www.instagram.com/crackersandgrapejuice