Crackers and Grape Juice

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 coronavirus.

With biblical wisdom, research insights, and quick, actionable steps, this manual equips all traditions and denominations with practical ways to address the coronavirus threats and potential emergency.

You can get it here: https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/humanitarian-disaster-institute/covid-19/

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“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 United States of America, become a god. But if you want to win the country back from the right, and bring about lasting change for the people you care about, it’s time to descend from the pulpit. We’re all Americans and we owe that to each other. That’s what liberalism means. For the first time in living memory, we liberals have no ideological adversary worthy of the name. So it is crucial that we look beyond Trump.”

In this episode, taped back in summer of 2018, I talk with Dr. Mark Lilla about his book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics.

Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a prizewinning essayist for the New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics; The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction; The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West; and The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. VISIT MARKLILLA.COM.

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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 the gospel differs from what one author calls “the new evangelical theology”, we come to realize that many techniques we try to apply to our Christian life are often oppressive, unbiblical, and manipulative.

Phillip Cary (PhD, Yale University) is scholar-in-residence at the Templeton Honors College and professor of philosophy at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He serves as editor-in-chief of Pro Ecclesia and is the author of Good News for Anxious Christians, Jonah in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series, and three critically acclaimed books on the life and thought of Augustine.

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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 economy of exchange in Christ’s cross, judgment, justice, forgiveness, and the rectifying power of God’s Gospel.

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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 misused Scripture to consolidate power, stoke fears, and defend against enemies. But people who have been hurt by the attacks of Christian nationalism can help us rediscover God's vision for faith in public life. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove explores how religious culture wars have misrepresented Christianity at the expense of the poor, and how listening to marginalized communities can help us hear God's call to love and justice in the world. He highlights people on the frontlines of issues ranging from immigration policy and voting rights to women's rights and environmental stewardship. Through these narratives, we encounter a recovery of values that upholds the dignity of all people. Rediscover hope for faithful public witness that serves the common good. Join the revolution.

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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 Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College, a Fellow in the Royal Historical Society, and a Parish Associate at First Presbyterian Church of Glen Ellyn. Dr. McNutt received her Ph.D. in History from the University of St. Andrews (Reformation Studies Institute, 2008), M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary (2003), and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Westmont College (2000).

She is the recipient of several academic awards including the Overseas Research Student Award (Universities, U.K.) for her doctoral research and the Sidney E. Mead Prize (American Society of Church History) for her first published article. Her first monograph, Calvin Meets Voltaire: The Clergy of Geneva in the Age of Enlightenment, 1685-1798 (Ashgate, 2014), was awarded the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize by the American Society of Church History. In 2013-2014, Dr. McNutt was awarded Wheaton’s Leland Ryken Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities (2013) for exemplifying excellence in the classroom, a deep commitment to inspiring students to realize the ideals of careful scholarship in their own work, and the integration of the Christian faith and learning in the Humanities. In 2017, Westmont College honored Dr. McNutt with an 80th Anniversary Alumni Award for her work as a professor at Wheaton in cultivating “thoughtful scholars, grateful servants and faithful leaders for global engagement with the academy, church and the world.” In 2017, she was one of the Reformation experts interviewed for "A Call to Freedom" documentary that was produced to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. In 2018, that documentary was awarded three regional Emmys including Outstanding Historical Documentary.

Dr. McNutt’s research specializes in the history of the church and Christian Theology from the Reformation through the Enlightenment with particular expertise in John Calvin and his clerical legacy, the Reformed tradition, the relationship between Christianity and science, and the history of the Bible and its interpretation. Current contracted projects include co-editing The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and the Reformation (OUP) with Prof. Herman Selderhuis and editing the 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude volume for the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series (InterVarsity Press Academic). She recently published the co-edited volume, The People’s Book: The Reformation and the Bible (IVP, 2017), for the Wheaton Theology Conference series. She is currently researching and writing two monographs: the history of the French Bible from the early-modern period through the Enlightenment and a social history of John Calvin’s thought. Her research has received international grants including the Andrew Mellon Research Fellowship (2015-2016) at the Huntington Library and the Huntington Trinity Hall Exchange Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2015-2016). Her publications include academic journal articles and book chapters as well as popular ecclesiastical pieces for Christianity Today and Christian History Magazine. In 2017, Dr. McNutt was awarded first place in Christianity Today’s essay contest for her article on how clergy during the Enlightenment contributed to the advancement of modern science.

Dr. McNutt is also an ordained Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and is co-president of McNuttshell Ministries, Inc. with her husband, Rev. Dr. David McNutt. She enjoys preaching at churches and on college campuses, writing for popular outlets, and conducting podcast and video interviews.

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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 importance for Paul of the resurrection. But Campbell—learning here from Karl Barth—traces through the implications of Christ for Paul’s thinking about every other theological topic, from revelation and the resurrection through the nature of the church and mission. As he does so, the conversation broadens to include Stanley Hauerwas in relation to Christian formation, and thinkers like Willie Jennings to engage post-colonial concerns.

But the result of this extensive conversation is a work that, in addition to providing a description of Paul’s theology, also equips readers with what amounts to a Pauline manual for church planting. Good Pauline theology is good practical theology, ecclesiology, and missiology, which is to say, Paul’s theology belongs to the church and, properly understood, causes the church to flourish. In these conversations, Campbell pushes through interdisciplinary boundaries to explicate different aspects of the Pauline community with notions like network theory and restorative justice.

The book concludes by moving to applications of Paul in the modern period to painful questions concerning gender, sexual activity, and Jewish inclusion, offering Pauline navigations that are orthodox, inclusive, and highly constructive.

Beginning with the God revealed in Jesus, and in a sense with ourselves, Campbell progresses through Pauline ethics and eschatology, concluding that the challenge for the church is not only to learn about Paul but to follow Jesus as he did.

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“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 homophobic as the people who walked out? Cure them of their homophobia; next Sunday Jesus will demand that you work on their greed.
If I know anything about Jesus, he’ll show up at the inaugural Sunday of the doctrinally-sound, Bible-believing. WCA-approved congregation with the nicest same-sex couple and their two children. Then what? “

Friend of the podcast and mentor in mayhem, Bishop Will Willimon joins Jason and Teer to talk about the most recent divorce proposal in the UMC, the Protocol for Reconciliation through Grace— a proposal that manages both to sound like a creepy measure in a dystopian science fiction novel (“protocol”) and like a sad euphemism for a break-up.

To read more about the protocol: https://www.umnews.org/en/news/diverse-leaders-group-offers-separation-plan

Willimon’s piece, “Separation Sadness,” will be available soon at Ministry Matters.

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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 that incorporates current events. Oh, she also prays at the end. Fleming’s our favorite and she should be yours too.

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You're Not Accepted.

That is a hard truth to swallow.

Today’s episode is a preview for you, a tasting if you will, of our latest project; 'You’re Not Accepted.' The podcast formerly known as Hermeneutics has received a makeover since we finished our examination of the theological alphabet. For our first episode of 'You're Not Accepted,' we talked with Stanley about his essay in Minding the Web entitled “Preaching in the Ruins.”

On each episode of 'You're Not Accepted,' we will discuss a different essay from the one and only Stanley Hauerwas. That’s right, the Hauerwas Mafia is going full Hauerwas! Stan the man will join us periodically and we will do our best to contain Jason the fanboy.

So, that is what you need to know about today’s episode. Enjoy.

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