Christ & Hospitality

For our season finale, we have the privilege of hearing from recent Princeton Theological School M.Div. grad, SueAnn Shiah, on reformations and crises in the church and what we can learn from those past experiences today. She invites us to reflect on our own relationship with the Church. [00:17] SueAnn Shiah (@sueannshiah www.sueannshiah.com ) is a Taiwanese American musician, filmmaker, community...

In this penultimate episode, Dr. Sawyer shares her experience at FaithTrust Institute in parallel with the changing views of sexual harassment in the Church and American culture. [07:37] See the chapter, “Sexual Harassment at Century's End," in R. Marie Griffith’s book, Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics . [08:45] This is the EEOC’s current d...

In this episode, Dr. Sawyer complicates the narrative that Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, has never been hospitable to queer folks. Beginning with the 19th century medicalization of sex, she narrates the shift from categorizing sex acts to naming identities , through the 1946 Revised Standard Version, into mid-century mainline ministry and the early roots of queer theology—and...

This week we narrow in on the early 20th century, what’s called the Progressive Era in the U.S., to the thinking of Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and white pastor and activist Walter Rauschenbusch. For this episode, Dr. Sawyer shares an interview with her colleague Rev. Dr. Julian Cook whose doctoral research spanned these thinkers, in light of what’s called the Social Gospel. [02:03] Read Julian’s...

Through a rebroadcast of a lecture podcast from another course, this episode introduces major shifts in theology and philosophy (ultimately, epistemology) in the 16th and 17th centuries. [00:10] Here is an infographic of a very broad overview of modernity in terms of theology and philosophy. [01:09] I’m referring to James C. Livingston and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza's Modern Christian Thought,...

This episode begins with a discussion of early Christian-Muslim interactions, especially in the “Oriental Church,” or what is the present-day Middle East. Then, Dr. Sawyer continues her conversation with Dr. Friesen on Schisms: first the Great Schism of 1054 which separated the Greek East from the Latin West, then the Reformation, which birthed the Protestant Church from the Roman Catholic Church...

In this week's episode, students will hear a conversation between Dr. Sawyer and Dr. Dwight Friesen about the role of the Church enacting Jesus’ commandment to love your enemies, through “holding the line” and acting as “islands of sanity,” in the midst of the institution’s many failures. The episode ends with a broad overview of the First Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon (“a tal...

In this episode of Christ & Hospitality, Dr. Sawyer walks through the history of the Second Temple Period, the context for Jesus' life and the early church. She ends the episode talking about Jewish-Christian relations in light of hospitality. [01:21] This quote comes from Catherine Keller, God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys (Fortress Press, 2005), 115. [02:56] Here is a timeline of t...

In this season premiere of Christ & Hospitality, Dr. Sawyer shares a bit of her relationship with the Church, to the term hospitality , and her struggle in the creation of this course. Consider it a welcome and foundation for our work ahead. Music is from Epidemic Sound. Cover art is from the iconographer Kelly Latimore. [01:04] That book being The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinar...