Crackers and Grape Juice

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."

"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...

"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....

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...

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 jun...

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...

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...

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,...

"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....

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...

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...

For this special episode, we talked with my friends Brian Stolarz and Dewayne Brown about their new documentary film on Netflix, The Innocence Files. The movie tells the story of Dewayne's wrongful conviction for a cop-killing in Houston, his ten plus years on death row, and Brian's legal struggle to free him. I'm fortunate to have these two as friends, and I hope you will check out their film.  I...

Our guest this week is Professor Jack Levison, author of numerous books including the recent works The Holy Spirit Before Christianity and Boundless God.  Jack was a fun, funny, engaging, and insightful guest-- plus, he did his homework enough to know that our producer, Tommie, isn't a dude. Featured in the Huffington Post and on parade.com, relevant.com, and beliefnet.com, Jack Levison’s writings...

Expertise in the age of COVID-19 has been shaped by any fool's ability to start a blog, podcast, or stand behind a podium. In this episode, Jason and Teer sat down with Mrs. Dr. Johanna Hartelius, host of You're Not Accepted, to discuss the Op-Ed she wrote for the Houston Chronicle. Check out the op-ed here: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Trump-Fauci-tensions-on-coronavir...

Now that I have no other office but Zoom, I’m inclined to curse the internet and whatever dolt of a father and whore of a mother that begat him. Except, thanks to the webs, a writer I admired has become a friend I hold dear.  Thomas Lynch is back on the podcast to talk to us about his latest collection, The Depositions, and about burying the dead in light of COVID-19.  Essayist, poet, and funeral...

John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won multiple awards. The National Academies of Sciences named his 2004 book The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine. His earlier book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed...

To help your church plan and prepare for the impact of COVID-19, we talked with Kent Annan of Wheaton College’s Humanitarian Disaster Institute about their new manual, Preparing Your Church for Coronavirus (COVID-19): A Step-by-Step, Research-Informed and Faith-Based Planning Manual. This manual offers faith communities a 6-step guide for preparing, planning, and facing a public health threat like...

“People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse. If you want to save America’s soul, consider becoming a minister. If you want to force people to confess their sins and convert, don a white robe and head to the River Jordan. If you are determined to bring the Last Judgment down on the Unite...

Have you ever struggled with "giving God control, finding God’s will, hearing God speak, or letting God work”? Do those phrases sound familiar and even spiritual, but when you try to apply them, they actually cause more anxiety, not less? Phillip Cary is back on the pod to discuss these sorts of phrases’ and how they are actually based in good intentions, but bad theology. When we understand how t...

Jason and Dr. Johanna Hartelius, co-host at C&GJ, have recently co-authored a scholarly journal on Karl Barth, Fleming Rutledge, and the rhetoric of apocalyptic preaching. So what better time to revisit an old podcast from the very beginning of Crackers and Grape Juice? Here’s one from the vault with the Episcopal priest and author of Help My Unbelief and the Crucifixion. Fleming talks about the e...

Fresh off Donald Trump blaspheming at the National Prayer Breakfast and dismissing Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to nary a complaint from the evangelical pastors in attendance, we’ve got Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove on the podcast to talk about his latest book, A Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good. The religious Right taught America to misread the Bible. Christians have...

What if we reconsidered Calvin and Calvin’s prioritizing of God’s power and sovereignty from the perspective of what Calvin was, a refugee, and from the hermeneutic of what his context makes his work, liberation theology? Our episode today is with a classmate of Jason’s from Princeton, Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt. The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt is the Franklin S. Dyrness Associate Professor in...

Our guest today is Douglas Campbell, Professor of New Testament at Duke. His new book, Pauline Dogmatics, unpacks the eschatological heart of Paul’s gospel in his world and its implications for today Drawing upon thirty years of intense study and reflection on Paul, Douglas Campbell offers a distinctive overview of the apostle’s thinking that builds on Albert Schweitzer’s classic emphasis on the i...

“Go ahead. Get your church all cleaned up. Have everyone swear to your cherished ideology. What are you going to do about Jesus? Our Lord refuses to keep reaching out and bringing in the ‘wrong’ people making my church more complicated than I would like it to be. Just wait until the progressive UMC pastor discovers that she’s got folks in her congregation who are just as sexist, racist, and homoph...

Back on the podcast at last, the peerless Fleming Rutledge joins Jason to talk about the 20th Anniversary Edition of her book, Help My Unbelief. In addition to her book, Fleming reflects on the conservative/progressive divide in the Church, the LGBTQ debate in the UMC, the Christianity Today editorial advocating for the removal of President Trump, praying for social justice issues and preaching th...