Crackers and Grape Juice

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...

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 li...

Christian preachers dare to talk about God. - Karl Barth Our 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 endea...

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 Messi...

"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 thes...

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...

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 .

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 c...

"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 heart...

"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 t...

“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 gues...

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.

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 Theolo...

"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 auth...

"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 w...

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 pa...

""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...

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 Dor...

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...

“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 Theolo...

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.

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. Confe...