Crackers and Grape Juice

Our friend, Jack Levison, is back on the podcast to talk about his recent book, An Unconventional God, which examines the role of the Holy Spirit in the Gospels. Jack Levison holds the W. J. A. Power Chair of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Raised in a tract house in Levittown, New York, Jack left to attend Wheaton College, followed by an MA at Cambridge University. When he returned from England to pursue doctoral studies at Duke University, Jack fell in love with a divinity student, Priscilla Pope, whose office is now just down the hall from him at SMU. With essays in the Huffington Post, parade.com, relevant.com, and beliefnet.com, Jack's writing and speaking appeal to a wide swath of readers. In the course of his career, he has received the Fitzpatrick Prize for theology at Cambridge University, as well as grants from the National Humanities Center, the Lilly Fellows Program, the Louisville Institute, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Rotary Foundation, the International Catacomb Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jack lives in Lower Greenville, a thriving urban hub of Dallas, with Priscilla--not too far from his adult children, Chloe and Jeremy. Find out more about Jack at jacklevison.com.

"When I started out in seminary, I thought I was going into a helping profession, a community-organizer, a therapist, an advice-giver. And then Gerhard Forde upended all that, showing me how a pastor is one is compelled to preach the forgiveness of sins."Check out his new book! Seriously, go get it. Ken Sundet Jones, Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, loves teaching undergrads. He was born in Heidelberg, which must be why he likes Luther so much. He was shaped by the Sturgis motorcycle rally in his hometown and by summers at his grandparents’ cattle ranch. His doctoral dissertation covered 16th-century German evangelical funeral preaching. And he knows how to do knitting and Scandinavian flat-plane woodcarving.

“In order to understand why these groups support Trump, it’s important to better understand their vision of the world. Evangelical beliefs are often misrepresented in popular media and in political discussions. These misunderstandings make it difficult to assess and respond to the political situation.”André Gagné is Full Professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He was Directeur d'études invité at l'École pratique des hautes études in Paris in 2017.His research focuses on the (Neo)Charismatic Right, Pentecostalism, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, religious violence and the interpretation and reception of the Bible. In his scholarship, Dr. Gagné seeks to explain how biblical texts and theological ideas are sometimes used by ultra conservative groups to incite social, political and religious tensions.Dr. Gagné is also a Full Member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (Concordia), a Research Associate with the Centre de recherche Société, Droit et Religion (Université de Sherbrooke), and a Co-Researcher with the Centre d'expertise de formation sur les intégrismes religieux, les idéologies politiques et la radicalisation (CEFIR).

Many sincere Christians dismiss evangelism due to enduring evangelistic caricatures. This book helps readers move beyond those caricatures to consider thoughtfully and practically how they can engage in evangelism, whether it's through one-on-one conversations, social media, social justice, or the liturgy of worship services.At once biblical, theological, historical, and practical, this book by a seasoned scholar offers an engaging, well-researched, and well-organized presentation and analysis of eight models of evangelism. Covering a breadth of approaches--from personal evangelism to media evangelism and everything in between--Priscilla Pope-Levison encourages readers to take a deeper look at evangelism and discover a model that captures their attention. Each chapter introduces and assesses a model biblically, theologically, historically, and practically, allowing for easy comparison across the board. The book also includes end-of-chapter study questions to further help readers interact with each model.Priscilla Pope-Levison (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is associate dean for external programs and professor of ministerial studies at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of several books, including the award-winning Building the Old Time Religion: Women Evangelists in the Progressive Era, and has received multiple Lilly and Louisville grants to pursue academic scholarship. Pope-Levison has taught evangelism courses for over 20 years and has over 30 years of ministry experience as an ordained minister in the local church, a college chaplain, a frequent speaker at churches and retreats, and a seminary administrator.

"Q: Given demographic shifts, immigration trends, white evangelicals' end-times rhetoric, and Republicans' siege, grievance mentality, was something like Donald Trump inevitable?A: Yes.Q: Is it in the past or is it still the future?A: I don't know."Our guest for episode #292 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 over a billion dollars for the Republican Party, candidates, and causes. She worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Christian Coalition during the 1996 Presidential Campaign, the President’s Dinner, George W Bush’s Inaugural. As an RNC consultant and finance director, Gretchen oversaw the McCain Victory finance team as well as the Bush finance team in the 2008 campaign.Donald Trump’s Republican Party is NOT her party nor is it the Pro Life, Character Counts, Christian Values party for which she worked for two decades, and she’s back on the podcast to share her reactions to Election Day, the Insurrection, the Post-Trump (?) Republican Party, and what it means for Christians in America.

A generation of young Christians are weary of the political legacy they've inherited and hungry for a better approach. They're tired of seeing their faith tied to political battles they didn't start, and they're frustrated by the failures of leaders they thought they could trust. Kaitlyn Schiess grew up in this landscape, and understands it from the inside. Spiritual formation, and particularly a focus on formative practices, are experiencing a renaissance in Christian thinking―but these ideas are not often applied to the political sphere. In The Liturgy of Politics:Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor , Schiess shows that the church's politics are shaped by its habits and practices even when it's unaware of them. Schiess insists that the way out of our political morass is first to recognize the formative power of the political forces all around us, and then to recover historic Christian practices that shape us according to the truth of the gospel.

"We forget...Before Hitler became our absolute fetish of evil, he was in fact just another politician. Before Hitler was Hitler, he was simply Adolf, the bumbling idiot that the German politicians and aristocracy believed they could manage and control if they allowed him to become Chancellor. Likewise, people generations from now will look back upon us and wonder what moral judgments they would've made had they been in our shoes these past four plus years."For our episode this week- a week that saw seditious rioters, seduced by propaganda and a lie,, storm the Capitol building in Washington DC, we're making available the first session of our online class with Dr. Jeffrey Pugh, Bonhoeffer for Troubled Times. An ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, Jeffrey was the Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University. Among other books, he's the author of Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Troubled Times.

Back on the podcast is my friend and former teacher, Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez, to talk about abortion, diversity, and disability in relation to the Atlantic's December cover story on the Last Children of Downs Syndrome.The Rev. Dr. Rubén Rosario Rodríguez is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. His first book, Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a Perspective (2008), won the 2011 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for Theology. He has contributed to two recent collections, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/a Theology (2015) and Immigrant Neighbors among Us: Immigration across Theological Traditions (2015), and is editor of the forthcoming T&T Clark Companion to Political Theology (2018). His most recent monographs include Christian Martyrdom and Political Violence: A Comparative Theology with Judaism and Islam (Cambridge University Press, July 2017), and the forthcoming Dogmatics After babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture (Westminster John Knox Press, March 2018).

This is a special episode from the "Secret Podcast" we release every other Tuesday as part of our newsletter, Crackers and Grape+ We're making this "Secret Podcast" available so you know what you're missing by not subscribing, but also because it's awesome. Jacob Smith is a contributor to Mockingbird Ministries and is the rector of Calvary-St. George's Episcopal Church in New York City.

Our guest is Mandy Smith. Originally from Australia, Mandy Smith is a pastor and author of The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry (IVP). Her next book, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture (Brazos), is available for pre-order and will release in 2021. Mandy and her husband, a New Testament professor, live with their family in a little house where the teapot is always warm. Mandy is the lead pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Here's her links:Personal website: thewayistheway.orgMissio Alliance:http://www.missioalliance.org/author/mandysmith/Christianity Today:https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/contributors/mandy-smith.htmlBooks:http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=4123https://www.amazon.com/Unfettered-Imagining-Childlike-Baggage-Western/dp/1587435055/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=unfettered+smith&qid=1603995828&sr=8-1

Christian preachers dare to talk about God.- Karl BarthOur friend, mentor, and muse, Will Willimon, is back on the podcast to talk with Dr. Johanna (she's got a crush on him), Teer, and Jason about his new book, Preachers Dare: Speaking for God.Mining Karl Barth's maxim from the Gottingen Dogmatics that "Preachers dare," Willimon offers a wily dissent from homiletics understood as a human endeavor. Plus, the book is dedicated to the team at C&GJ!Plus, the attempt at an intro from Dr. J is worth the episode. 

Delvyn Case III is a composer, conductor, scholar, performer, concert producer, and Professor of Music at Wheaton College of Massachusetts. As a professional musician he works as a composer, conductor, and pianist, equally at home in the worlds of classical and popular music. As a church musician he's worked in virtually every context and every genre. He's conducted major works like Handel’s Messiah, led an 80-voice gospel choir, played organ at Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, and UCC churches, and played keyboard on praise teams at many Evangelical churches. As a composer, he's written a symphony, an oratorio, an opera about anti-Semitism, and chamber and vocal pieces which have been performed by Grammy-winning artists Richard Stoltzman and the Chestnut Brass Company, among many others. Much of my concert music explores themes from the Christian tradition. He's also written pieces for educational outreach concerts, which have been heard by over 10,000 children across the world. But his most popular piece is his holiday overture Rocket Sleigh, which been performed by over 80 orchestras in the US, UK, and Europe. In 2019 Delvyn founded Deus Ex Musica, a unique ecumenical organization that promotes the use of sacred music for learning and spiritual growth. Among their projects is the Deus Ex Musica Podcast in which interview Christian musicians working in various genres about how their faith impacts their work.You can find his blog for Patheos: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/alleluiamusicandthechristianlife/ His website: http://delvyn-case.squarespace.comDeus Ex Musica:https://www.deus-ex-musica.com

"In their language of warfare spiritual and secular, Trump’s evangelical allies have been playing with a fire that may continue to burn long after they give up this contest...History is a wasteland of religious justifications for political activism, identity, and violence. On the other hand, Christianity, and American Christianity especially, has arguably possessed more than its fair share of these unions of political thought and religious belief."Our friend Thomas Lecaque is back on the podcast to talk about his latest article at The Bulwark (you really should subscribe to it) entitled, "Spiritual Warriors on Behalf of Donald Trump:Putting the recent rhetoric of some of the president’s evangelical supporters in historical context."Thomas Lecaque is a professor of history at Grand View University. If you've not yet moved to Parler, you can follow him on Twitter: @tlecaque

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 one of the most important, unexamined affirmations of preaching: the presence of the living Christ in the sermon. Jerusha Matsen Neal argues that Mary’s conceiving, bearing, and naming of Jesus in Luke’s nativity account is a potent description of this mystery. Mary’s example calls preachers to leave behind the false shadows haunting Christian pulpits and be “overshadowed” by the Spirit of God. Neal asks gospel proclaimers to own both the limits and the promise of their humanness as God’s Spirit-filled servants rather than disappear behind a “pulpit prince” ideal. It is a preacher’s fully embodied witness, lived out through Spirit-filled acts of hospitality, dependence, and discernment, that bears the marks of a fully embodied Christ. This affirmation honors the particularity of preachers in a globally diverse context—challenging a status quo that has historically privileged masculinity and whiteness. It also offers hope to ordinary souls who find themselves daunted by the impossibility of the preaching task. Nothing, in the angel’s words, is impossible with God.

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.