Crackers and Grape Juice

Jason and Taylor sat down with Joshua Retterer to talk about the late Robert Farrar Capon and his work. Their conversation touches on a number of subjects including eschatological nerve, an affair with a happy ending, laughing in church, and being overwhelmed with morality.

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Fresh on the heels of his Twitter face-off with Jerry Falwell Jr, Jason talked with Winfeld Bevins about his his new book Ever Ancient, Ever New. Actually, no, Jason talked to him months ago, before General Conference even and we’re posting it now to take advantage of the social media scrum. Bevins is an Anglican and a professor of church-planting at Asbury Seminary in the Bluegrass State.

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She’s back!
Friend of the podcast, Christy Thomas joins us to reflect on where the United Methodist Church is at in its present moment somewhere on the timeline between divorce and reconciliation. Christy is a retired United Methodist pastor from Texas, journalist, and blogger at The Thoughtful Pastor.

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Thomas McKenzie is a church-planting Anglican priest at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s also the author of the Anglican Way and a recent Lenten devotional on the Desert Fathers. He also knows, as few seem to know, that Battlestar Galactica is a far superior show to Game of Thrones.

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In this episode, Jason talks with Amy Laura Hall of Duke University about her upcoming work on muscular Christianity, her most recent book “Laughing at the Devil,” Julian of Norwich, and their mutual affection for Stan the Man.

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This week is a real treat! We are sharing Jason's unedited live talk from the Mockingbird Annual Conference in New York! A huge thank you to Mockingbird for having Jason speak and for recording it as well!

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“Orthodoxy is historically defined according to the creeds, and there is nothing at all in the creeds about human sexuality.”

Steve Harper, author of the new book, Holy Love, published today, is our guest for Episode #206. Steve is a former Professor of Historical Theology at Asbury Theological Seminary, which is— mind you— the UMC’s most conservative school. Steve was also a leader in traditionalist movements like Good News and the Confessing Church Movement. In 2015, though, Steve’s understanding of sexuality in light of scripture changed.

His new book is a concise primer for all folks but especially those like his former self. He’s a warm and wise man with whom I felt honored to speak.

Here’s the blurb I had the opportunity to provide for the publisher:

In all our church fighting about what is and is not incompatible with Christian teaching, Christians seem to have forgotten the core of Christian teaching; that is, we’re all incompatible with Christian teaching. Not one of us is found compatible— we are made compatible by God’s grace. In Holy Love, Steve Harper reminds Christians that married love is holy precisely because it’s an arena where life with another exposes the stranger you call you to the unmerited forgiveness of the other who knows your worst self. The experience of such grace makes us holy— different— in a culture premised on merit alone. Marriage, as the wedding rite makes clear, is about sanctification; therefore, to deny committed couples, gay or straignt, marriage deprives them not of a privilege but of a medicine. Holy Love provides pastors and parishioners the biblical and theological resources to have a holy conversation about how that medicine may be administered to same-sex couples too and how their marriages might also serve as parables for how God loves us all.

You can order his book from Cokesbury.

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In a culture of performancism, virtue-signaling, and enoughness-chasing, Nick Lannon's new book tells us the good news that Life is Impossible (and that's the good news). Nick is an Anglican priest in Louisville, a movie buff and sports buff, and a contributing writer to Mockingbird Ministries and Liberate.

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Martin Luther said that God loves to hide himself behind his opposites. Though we prove time and again to think we need to strive and succeed so that we might be found acceptable by God or, in succeeding, find God in God's glory, the God who condescends to us in the suffering Christ never stops so condescending, meeting us not in our triumphs but in our struggles, suffering, and failures. Friend of the podcast Chad Bird, is back to talk about his new book Upside Down Spirituality: The Nine Essential Failures of a Faithful Life.

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Calvin said the human heart is an idol factory. Augustine said our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. DZ of Mockingbird Ministries and the author of the new book, Seculosity, says we’re more religious than ever before we’re church “in church” in different ways (love, politics, parenting, technology, fitness) searching for “enoughness” from gods that, without the promise of grace, cannot bestow it. Check out his work at www.mbird.com and grab a copy of his book over at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

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