Crackers and Grape Juice

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 The Neighborhood. Yet, while extending Grace Mister Rogers also expected us to grow. Growth is what we need now, to grow out of the hate, bigotry, racism, and nationalism that plagues us today.

Shea Tuttle is the author of "Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers" and co-editor of "Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice." Her essays have appeared at Greater Good Magazine, The Toast, The Other Journal, Role Reboot, and Jenny. She holds an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Shea lives in Virginia with her family.

https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7655/exactly-as-you-are.aspx
https://www.sheatuttle.com/

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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, the only ground of resistance to ideological captivity.

In this latest episode, Jason and Dr. Johanna talk with Bishop Will Willimon, author of Conversations with Barth on Preaching, about Barth's emergency homiletic for pandemic times.

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"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.

Fifteen propositions for changing Christianity in America

Christian identity is in moral and political crisis. Lee Camp writes “that one major reason Christianity in America has been made into a bad public joke is our failure to rightly understand what Christianity is.” Scandalous Witness provides a way forward. Although refusing to reduce Christianity to any partisan agenda, he reminds us that the gospel is inherently political and that we are called to be political witnesses.

Camp’s provocative diagnosis is that “American hope” is a bastardized form of Christian hope. The United States is not the hope of the world nor is it a Christian nation. Rather, “American Christian values” corrupts Christianity, and partisanship mocks the true scandal of the gospel. Camp reminds us that all empires fall.

By conceiving Christianity as a politic instead of a religion, we may begin to take seriously the true scandal of the gospel. We may envision new possibilities by which our gospel practices make a new world possible. Offering a robust vision of a Christian politic that exposes modern parodies of faith, Camp mixes wit, charm, and logic, challenging Christians to rethink who they are and how they participate in the modern world. In it, Camp unpacks 15 propositions:

Proposition 1: History Is Not One Damn Thing after Another

Proposition 2: The End of History Has Already Begun

Proposition 3: American Hope Is A B*****d

Proposition 4: Christianity Is Neither A Prostitute Nor A Chaplain

Proposition 5: The United States Is Not the Hope of the World

Proposition 6: The United States Was Not, Is Not, and Will Not Be a Christian Nation

Proposition 7: How Christian Values, and the Bible, Corrupt Christianity

Proposition 8: Every Empire Falls

Proposition 9: Christian Partisanship is Like a Fist-Fight on the Titanic

Proposition 10: Hostile Forces Have a Role in the Unfolding of History

Proposition 11. Christianity Is Not a Religion; Christianity Is a Politic

Proposition 12: Liberal Political Puissance Is Not the Goal

Proposition 13: Exemplary Political Witness Is the Goal

Proposition 14: Christianity Is Not Counter-Cultural

Propositions 15: Christian Engagement Must Always Be Ad Hoc

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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 century. Malcolm earned a BA in religious studies with a second major in finance and a minor in classics from Washington University in St. Louis. He subsequently completed a Master of Divinity at Yale Divinity School, focusing on the theology of the early and medieval church. During his time there, he served Trinity Baptist Church in New Haven as a pastoral intern. He is currently the Director of Discipleship at Mosaic Waco in Waco, TX.

You can find his article here: https://mereorthodoxy.com/ahmaud-arbery/?fbclid=IwAR14W_k9WUxQQfIS6IwiUJ-3YpO1it_WqGTG7bOPTYYzqlcGwiacQc41wmQ

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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: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism

You can read her article here: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-power-of-christian-nationalists-in-trump’s-america/12194914

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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. 

If you would like to help Dewayne while he awaits compensation from the State of Texas, HERE is the Go Fund Me to do so.

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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 appeal to a wide popular audience. Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, considers him “the most competent scholar and clearest writer on the Holy Spirit that I have known.” Jack is also an internationally acclaimed scholar. With a BA from Wheaton College, an MA from Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Christ’s College and winner of the Fitzpatrick Prize for Theology, and a PhD from Duke University, Jack now holds the W. J. A. Power Chair of Old Testament Interpretation and Biblical Hebrew at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. The author of more than a dozen books, both popular and scholarly, he has received grants from the National Humanities Center, the Lilly Fellows Program, the Louisville Institute, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Rotary Foundation, the International Catacomb Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jack lives in Dallas, with an office down the hall from his wife, Priscilla Pope-Levison, who is an associate dean at Perkins School of Theology.

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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-coronavirus-show-need-15171822.php




"Americans are at a crossroads. With the novel coronavirus prompting a nationwide lockdown and hospitals warning of an impending shortage of life-saving ventilators, we, the public must decide: What type of “expert” are we willing to listen to?"

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Now that I have no other office but Zoom, I’m inclined to curse the internet and whatever dolt of a father and w***e 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 director Thomas Lynch was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1948. His critically acclaimed volumes of poetry include The Sin-Eater: A Breviary (2011), Walking Papers (2010), Still Life in Milford (1998), Grimalkin and Other Poems (1994), and Skating with Heather Grace (1986). Lynch is also the author of essay collections such as The Depositions: New and Selected Essays on Being and Ceasing to Be (2019), The Good Funeral: Death, Grief, and the Community of Care (2013), and The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (1997). He has received numerous awards and grants from the National Book Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michigan Council for the Arts, and the Irish Arts Council. A frequent guest lecturer at universities across North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, Lynch is an adjunct professor in creative writing at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

By using his own daily routine as poetic fodder, Lynch has transformed the mundane task of preparing the dead into a life-affirming event. His lyrical, elegiac poems describe the dead citizens of Milford, Michigan, his own family relationships, and scenes and myths from his Irish Catholic upbringing. Sometimes described as a cross between Garrison Keillor and W.B. Yeats, Lynch’s work dissects the vicissitudes of the human experience with grace and wit. His first collection of poems, Skating with Heather Grace, is set in Michigan, Ireland, and Italy. Library Journal reviewer Rosaly DeMaios Roffman found that the poems “unpretentiously rehearse the dreams of the dying as they celebrate the everchanging relationships of the living.” Lynch, according to Roffman, crafts poems that weave symbolism and mythology into the human experience. His subsequent volumes of poetry likewise contain elements of his professional and personal life, mixed with ruminations about Irish culture and history.

Lynch is a well-known contributor to publications like the New York Times, The Times, Newsweek, and Harper’s. His essays offer a fascinating peak into a profession few of us have ever imagined. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (1997) reflects the author’s “eloquent, meditative observations on the place of death in small-town life,” according to a critic in Kirkus Reviews.Lynch’s poetic vision is indelibly colored by his undertaking business, and what he sees often contrasts with what lies on the surface. Dispelling the myths about people in his trade, Lynch wrote, “I am no more attracted to the dead than the dentist is to your bad gums, the doctor to your rotten innards, or the accountant to your sloppy expense records.” His profession has provided him not only with a living, but with a unique vantage point from which to observe the entire cycle of life. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Tradewon the Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction and the American Book Award, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Lynch’s prose book Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality(2000) explores his Roman Catholic childhood and family, being a father, and the relationship between “mortuary and literary arts.” In 2005 Lynch published Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans, a memoir-travelogue and cultural exploration of the ties that bind two countries with inextricably linked histories. His foray into short fiction, Apparition and Late Fictions (2010), addresses themes found in his poetry and essays, offering sensitive portraits of ordinary people coping with grief.

Lynch divides his time between his home in Milford, Michigan and his ancestral home in Moveen, County Clare, Ireland.

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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 America, won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history and in 2005 the New York Public Library named it one of the 50 best books in the preceding 50 years, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His books have also been embraced by experts in applicable fields: in 2006 he became the only non-scientist ever to give the National Academies Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture, a lecture which honors contributions to water-related science, and he was the only non-scientist on a federal government Infectious Disease Board of Experts. He has served on numerous boards, including ones at M.I.T's Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Society of American Historians. His latest book is Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the New England Society Book Award.

His books have involved him in two areas of public policy. In 2004, he began working with the National Academies and several federal government entities on influenza preparedness and response, and he was a member of the original team which developed plans for mitigating a pandemic by using "non-pharmaceutical interventions"-- i.e., public health measures to take before a vaccine becomes available. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have sought his advice on influenza preparedness and response, and he continues his activity in this area.

He has been equally active in water issues. After Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana congressional delegation asked him to chair a bipartisan working group on flood protection, and he served on the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East, overseeing levee districts in metropolitan New Orleans, from its founding in 2007 until October 2013, as well as on the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which is responsible for the statewide hurricane protection. Barry has worked with state, federal, United Nations, and World Health Organization officials on influenza, water-related disasters, and risk communication.

His writing has received not only formal awards but less formal recognition as well. In 2004 GQ named Rising Tide one of nine pieces of writing essential to understanding America; that list also included Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” His first book, The Ambition and the Power: A true story of Washington, was cited by The New York Times as one of the eleven best books ever written about Washington and the Congress. His second book The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, coauthored with Dr. Steven Rosenberg, was published in twelve languages. And a story about football he wrote was selected for inclusion in an anthology of the best football writing of all time published in 2006 by Sports Illustrated.

A keynote speaker at such varied events as a White House Conference on the Mississippi Delta and an International Congress on Respiratory Viruses, he has also given talks in such venues as the National War College, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Harvard Business School. He is co-originator of what is now called the Bywater Institute, a Tulane University center dedicated to comprehensive river research.

His articles have appeared in such scientific journals as Nature and Journal of Infectious Disease as well as in lay publications ranging from Sports Illustrated to Politico, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and Esquire. A frequent guest on every broadcast network in the US, he has appeared on such shows as NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's World News, and NPR's All Things Considered, and on such foreign media as the BBC and Al Jazeera. He has also served as a consultant for Sony Pictures and contributed to award-winning television documentaries.

Before becoming a writer, Barry coached football at the high school, small college, and major college levels. Currently Distinguished Scholar at Tulane's Bywater Institute and adjunct faculty at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, he lives in New Orleans.

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