Queen of the Sciences

Sarah's talk at the 2023 Mockingbird conference in New York, brought to you via the Talkingbird podcast. Check out the Mockingcast too!

It's easy, too easy, to blame the past for not knowing what we know now. Much more useful is to examine how the past arrived at its conclusions, and see if we can discern what led in fruitful directions and what led to disaster. In this episode, Dad and I review the contents of his book, also called Before Auschwitz, examining what led Christian theologians to support, denounce, or try to avoid ta...

Never pass by a nice round anniversary! On this 100th full and regular episode of the podcast, Dad and I reminisce about the origins of Queen of the Sciences, reveal the secrets of how we prep and record, share statistics and fan reviews, tell which are our favorite episodes (and yours!), and look onward to many more episodes to come. Notes: 1. Ten most downloaded QotS episodes, from #10 down to #...

Dad talks to Chad Kim of the History of Christian Theology podcast about his book, Divine Complexity .

Continuing our quest for the quest for the historical Jesus, in this episode we take a look at the Jesus Seminar, and in particular representative scholar Marcus Borg. Dad as usual is the very picture of responsible scholarship. I manage to be not quite as snarky as in the last episode, but given the choice between Borg's milquetoast mystic and Schweitzer's apocalyptic nut, I'm with the latter. Fo...

Modern techniques and approaches to the discipline of history were inevitably turned on Jesus. But you may be surprised to learn that, at the origin, the desire was not to deconstruct but to shore up belief in Jesus, if not all the subsequent doctrinal accretions around him. In this episode, Dad walks us through the early history of the quest for the historical Jesus, its findings, what it gave an...

John Drury of the Fresh Text podcast and I (i.e. Sarah) discuss John 11 at great and enthusiastic length! If you enjoyed this episode, by all means subscribe to Fresh Text ! John discusses a lectionary passage each week with a great array of scholars and preachers. Highly recommended!

Martin Luther King is revered. But is he revered for the right reasons? In this episode we counter the domestication of King as only an advocate of civil rights, and instead encounter him as the prophet and preacher who called America to be born again in costly love toward the racially other. We also survey his range of theological convictions and insights, connecting him with his famous namesake,...

Martin Luther King is the famous preacher of the civil rights movement (and indeed, we'll be getting to him in the next episode). But behind King, and crucial to him, is pastor and theologian Howard Thurman. In this episode, Dad and I immerse ourselves in Thurman's great work of spiritual theology, Jesus and the Disinherited, its portrait of Christ, and the challenge to all believers to take up th...

On the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dad and I turn to the insightful critical comments of Orthodox theologians around the world, and share our own takes on the situation. Notes: 1. A Declaration on the "Russian World" (Ruskii Mir) Teaching 2. Hovorun, Is the "Russian World" Condemnable? 3. Bintsarovskyi, On Some Misconceptions about Russia's War against Ukraine

After the broad overview last time, in this episode we dive into some Matthew-specific detail, from the genealogy to parables to the zombie apocalypse, I mean resurrection of the saints of Jerusalem. What do you think five years of top-quality theology podcasting is worth? Register your vote by joining our highly select band of Patrons . Get some cool swag and support your favorite podcast in rema...

Save the best for last? In this episode, Dad and I finally get around to the First Gospel, as it is sometimes called. We talk over our previous prejudices against Matthew and how on this read we came to a new and fresh appreciate of just what this evangelist is up to. Notes: 1. Related episodes: Mark 1 , Mark 2 , Luke 1 , Luke 2 , John 1 , John 2 , Sermon on the Mount , Sarah's Sermon on the Mount...

Get the audiobook of my first novel,  A-Tumblin' Down, direct from Thornbush Press , or from Audible , or pretty much any audiobook retailer of your choice! Not quite convinced yet? Then listen to these excerpts introducing you to the Abney family: Kitty , Donald , Carmichael , Saul and Asher . Prefer to read rather than listen to your novels? No problem! Jump here to find links to the book in pap...

Welcome to season 5 of the Queen of the Sciences podcast! Vocation is a topic near and dear to me and Dad, both as a central theological focus of the Lutheran Reformation and also because we just plain take a lot of pleasure in our work. But David Graeber's astonishing book Bullshit Jobs came as a serious wake-up call to us both. In this episode, we review Graeber's case for the precipitous shift...

Dad's second talk for the NALC Atlantic Mission Region's theological conference, "Stand Fast and Be of Good Courage: The Lord Will Fight for You." Hey, have you ever noticed how awesome it is that we don't advertise? I mean, for anything other than ourselves. A major reason that's possible is our equally awesome, highly select band of Patrons . That kind of elitism is really OK, we promise. Join t...

Dad's first talk at the NALC Atlantic Mission Region's Theological Conference, "Stand Fast and Be of Good Courage: The Lord Will Fight for You." Hey, have you ever noticed how awesome it is that we don't advertise? I mean, for anything other than ourselves. A major reason that's possible is our equally awesome, highly select band of Patrons . That kind of elitism is really OK, we promise. Join the...

Sarah's lecture at Johannelund Theological School in Uppsala, Sweden, at a daylong conference on Sanctification in Lutheran Perspective. Hey, have you ever noticed how awesome it is that we don't advertise? I mean, for anything other than ourselves. A major reason that's possible is our equally awesome, highly select band of Patrons . That kind of elitism is really OK, we promise. Join their ranks...

Dad's talk at Roanoke College reflecting on his 22 years of service there as a professor of theology. Hey, have you ever noticed how awesome it is that we don't advertise? I mean, for anything other than ourselves. A major reason that's possible is our equally awesome, highly select band of Patrons . That kind of elitism is really OK, we promise. Join their ranks and support your favorite podcast...

What's beyond the land, the earth, and outer space? Heaven and hell. Unless, that is, we don't exit the created cosmos to get to them, but they come to us (preferably the former and not the latter). In this episode, guided by a book from N. T. Wright, Dad and I explore the unexplored and unexplorable territory of the life to come, speculating mildly, not wildly. And that's a wrap for Season 4 of Q...

From the land, to the earth, to infinity and beyond! In this episode Dad and I contemplate the vastness of the universe and the itty-bittiness of subatomic particles, the astonishing rareness of life in any form and the likelihood of meeting aliens, what this cosmos-view does to our God-view, and what it means to be an Earthling, i.e., an "Adam," assisted along the way by science fiction novels, s...

The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof! We start off this episode with some appreciative words for the agrarian background of the Bible, though also some cautionary words against modern industrial people cheaply romanticizing the agrarian past. But most of this episode is Farmer Paul's personal testimony to his own hands-on care for a neglected and degraded patch of earth, now flourishi...

The meek shall inherit the earth... or maybe the land. And if the land, which land—the land of Israel, to be exact? In this episode Dad and I admit to lacking anything like a robust theology of the land of Israel for today, despite being rather more theologically robust on this topic when it comes to the biblical writings, as well as having some political convictions about the current state of sec...

This episode started out as an experimental bonus: I asked Dad to think through with me what it can mean to bear witness in these days when a) everything sounds like propaganda, b) public and private are endlessly confused but I'm unwilling to expose to public scrutiny matters that are relevant to public discourse yet intrinisically private, and c) rebuttal and critique automatically vault the reb...

If everything's postmodern, then nothing's postmodern. In fact, according to Dad, postmodernism is actually just modernism continued by other means. Perplexed yet? No worries, that's part of the plan. If you can't conquer the body, then conquer the soul, and the rest will follow. In this episode we sort out postmodernism and its doppelgänger, then explore ways to keep sane and whole amidst the ins...

Miracles seem like straightforward things to define, if rare to experience, until you start to think about the topic more deeply. In this episode, Dad and I discuss C. S. Lewis's book Miracles, the danger of accepting the definition of miracle as "violation of natural processes," what the Creator has to do with the Redeemer, how prayer affects providence, and biblical ambivalence about miracles. N...