The Two Cities

Continuing our series on Art and Culture, we are joined by Makoto Fujimura, who is the founder of the International Arts Movements and the Fujimura Institute and the author of Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (with Yale University Press). Over the course of our conversation we talk about the relationship of art to modernism, beauty and subjectivity, and the notion of abstract art. As we discuss...

To kick off our series on Art & Culture we are joined by Dr. Esther Meek, who is Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College, and the author of a number of important works on epistemology, including Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (with Brazos) and Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (with Cascade). In this episode Dr. Meek addresses the relationshi...

In this episode we process the horrific events that took place in Atlanta earlier this week in which a twenty-one year old white male attacked three Asian-owned business, including spas and massage parlors in the broader metro area. We also address the narrative that has emerged about the motivation for the murders. Was this a racialized hate crime? Or was it a sexualized crime rooted in the shoot...

In this episode we recap and reflect on the gender series that we’ve been doing since mid-November 2020. The series spans eighteen episodes, beginning with “Paul and Masculinity with Grace Emmett” (November 11, 2020) and ending with “The Great Sex Rescue with Sheila Wray Gregoire” (March 10, 2020). As we explain in this conversation, we regard every episode in between these two episodes as being p...

(CW: Mature Content and Abuse) On today’s episode we talk about sex with Sheila Wray Gregoire, a well-known speaker, blogger, podcaster, and author of several books on sex, including the recently published The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended (with Baker). In our conversation we talk about lies that we tell in the evangelical church about sex, part...

In this episode we discuss the concept of “Biblical Womanhood” from a historical perspective. To do so we are joined by Dr. Beth Allison Barr, who is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History at Baylor University (Waco, TX), and the author of the forthcoming book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (with Brazos). In her ne...

On this episode we discuss various topics related to gender and the Trinity, including: the gendered language about the family of God (i.e. “sons”) and the gendered language for the persons of the Trinity (i.e. Father and Son), the representation of God with maternal imagery in the Bible, and the topic of the Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son (EFS), which is a proxy discussion for a comp...

On today’s episode we begin the season of Lent with a discussion on ecological grief with our guest, Hannah Malcolm, who is PhD Candidate in Theology at Durham University studying ecological grief as a form of theological knowledge. She is also the editor of Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church (SCM Press, 2020) containing essays, poems, and anecdotes relate...

In this episode we are joined by Dr. Cynthia Long Westfall, Associate Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College (Hamilton, Ontario) and the author of Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle's Vision for Men and Women in Christ (Baker, 2016). Our the course of our conversation we discuss a number of historical and cultural background issues, including, the Artemis cult at Ephesus, Pau...

In this episode of The Two Cities podcast we are joined by Dr. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, who is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Baylor University (Waco, TX), and the author of When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul (Baker, 2016). Over the course of our conversation we talk about Dr. Gaventa’s current research on Romans for the New Testament Library ser...

In this episode of The Two Cities podcast we talk with Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, professor of history at Calvin University, about her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith and Fractured A Nation (Liveright, 2020). Over the course of the conversation Dr. Du Mez tells us about some of the most shocking findings from her book, how Jesus and John Wayne fits within her lon...

In this episode Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, Grace Sangalang Ng, and Rev. Daniel Parham are joined by Dr. Lisa Bowens, associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the author of African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation , which was published by Eerdmans in 2020. In this episode Dr. Bowens talks to us about her research on t...

As part of our broader series on gender in biblical scholarship, Christian tradition, and the contemporary church, we turn to discuss Women in the Patristic Era. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, and Dr. Chris Porter are joined by Dr. Lynn Cohick, who is Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs, and Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. We begin...

Continuing our conversation on gender dynamics in Scripture and the Church, in this podcast episode we talk about the binary of Complementarianism and Egalitarianism regarding how to conceive of the relationship of men and women in marriage and in the church. Has the entrenchment of the binary led us to miss aspects of the text? For this conversation, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, and Grac...

In this episode we talk about the significance of the women mentioned in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. For this conversation, Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Brandon Hurlbert are joined by Dr. Jeannine Brown, Professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN), member of the NIV Translation Committee, and author of a few commentaries on Matthew. We talk about why genealogies are worth digging...

Carrying on in our conversation on gender, we turn to discuss women in 1 Corinthians with particular attention given to the passage about head coverings in 1 Cor. 11 and women being silent in the church in 1 Cor. 14. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Brandon Hurlbert, and Dr. Logan Williams are joined by Dr. Lucy Peppiatt, who is Principal of Westminster Theological Centre in the UK and aut...

In this episode, Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Grace Emmett are joined by Dr. Valérie Nicolet, Associate Professor of New Testament at the Protestant Institute of Theology in Paris, to continue an earlier podcast conversation on Paul and masculinity. Our conversation begins with Paul's self-presentation, esp. in Galatians, and then extends to address the fuzziness of gender categories i...

In this episode a group of team members from The Two Cities (Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, Grace Sangalang Ng, Rev. Daniel Parham, Dr. Chris Porter, Dr. Logan Williams) are joined by Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu, who is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Portland Seminary, to discuss his recent piece published with the Public Theology Network, entitled, “The Stubborn Invisibility of Whitenes...

Carrying on with our series on gender and the Bible, Amber Bowen and Dr. John Anthony Dunne are joined by Aimee Byrd, who is the author of several books, including Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Zondervan Academic, 2020). In this episode Aimee explains that, despite what one might suspect from her outspoken detractors, her book is ultimately about discipleship. She critiques the m...

Continuing our discussion on gender from last week with Grace Emmett ("Paul & Masculinity"), we turn to look at the relationship between preaching and gender. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, Rev. Daniel Parham, and Dr. Chris Porter reflect on this topic  from the vantage point of our different cultural and ecclesial contexts. Rather than debate particular text...

Kicking off a discussion on gender in the Bible and how this syncs up the Western Church and broader culture, Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Dr. Logan Williams chat with Grace Emmett, a PhD Candidate in New Testament at King's College, London, who recently submitted a thesis entitled, "Becoming A Man: Unmanly/Manly Self-Presentation in the Pauline Epistles." In this episode we discuss ma...

Concluding our series on the intersection of faith and politics we turn to address fake news and the spread of misinformation. In this episode Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Dr. Chris Porter are joined by Rachel Wightman, who is Associate Director for Instruction and Outreach at the library at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Over the course of our conversation we discuss what makes misinf...

As another installment in our series on faith and politics, we discuss abortion and single issue voting in the United States. Joining Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Brandon Hurlbert, Tim McNutt, and Dr. Chris Porter for this discussion is our special guest, Jennie Riley, who recently submitted her PhD thesis in Theology at Durham University (England), focusing on the relationship between Evangelical Chri...

In the run up to Election Day in the United States (Tuesday, November 3rd), here at The Two Cities we've been doing a series of political podcasts. This episode extends that conversation further, but situates it as part of a conversation with a major pop-cultural artifact— Watchmen . Originally a comic series in the mid-1980s, Watchmen is revered as one of the best graphic novels of all time. It w...

Continuing further our recent conversations on politics and political engagement from a Christian perspective (cf. the episodes entitled, "Faith and Politics with Rev. Baroness Maeve Sherlock" and "War & Political Theology with Michael Spalione"), Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Dr. Chris Porter discuss social identity theory and how our social identity shapes our present lack of bi-partisanship in...