Homebrewed Christianity

Matthew David Segall returns to the podcast after 8 years!

It was a blast to talk with Matt about his new book and a bunch of other process-related goodness. When you get done listening make sure you check out his YouTube channel and the new book.

* How did Matt end up with cosmological questions

* finding Alfred North Whitehead through Terence Mckenna

* “Whitehead is like Psychadelics, you shouldn’t jump into them alone”

* the allure of Whitehead’s vision of mind in nature

* the potential of a process engagement with different sciences

* Tripp talks about how part five of Process & Reality feels like a philosophical revival sermon

* the limits of science and problem of repressed reductive metaphysics

* what does Whitehead mean by a philosophy of organism

* the hot spring hypothesis for the origin of life

* what is in the concept ‘world-soul’

* how does Whitehead help one think of life after physical death

* how Whitehead came to affirm God

* Matt shares the story of his own wrestling with Christianity and his reflection on the future of the faith… ‘a non-denominational non-institutionalized Christian’

* what do we make about the power and problems that come with a religious tradition

Excited to have one of my heroes, practical theologian, army chaplain - Joshua Morris, joining me on the podcast to explore the legacy of 9/11 and the moral injury among returning veterans.

About the book... Joshua Morris privileges the voices of veterans to argue that returning soldiers need families, friends, and religious communities to listen to their stories with compassion to avoid amplifying the effects of moral injury. When society greets returning soldiers in ways that reinforce cultural norms that frame military service as heroic, rather than acknowledging its ambiguities and harmful effects, it exacerbates moral injury and keeps veterans from resolving inner conflicts and coping effectively with civilian life.

Morris, a military chaplain and veteran who served in Afghanistan, knows these difficulties first hand. Using stories from other veterans, Morris helps us see how cultural assumptions about military service can complicate moral injury and a veteran's return home. Drawing from liberation theologies, ideology critique, and Antonio Gramsci's advocacy for the working class, the book suggests useful perspectives and spiritual care resources for military chaplains, religious leaders, caregivers, and concerned civilians. Morris argues that military chaplains are uniquely positioned to help returning soldiers resist the amplification of existing moral injury. Moving from "thank you for your service" to liberative solidarity can galvanize resistance and make change possible.

Here's my endorsement for the book: The church has long debated war in general and the terms for a 'just' war. Recently there has been a growing interest in the moral injury of soldiers and the responsibility of both the Church and the State for them. In Moral Injury Among Returning Veterans, Morris advances the conversation by harnessing the ambiguity of military Chaplaincy for theological profundity and ecclesiological clarity. Weaving together his own experience and the testimonies of those he served in Afghanistan with a liberationist reading of Bonhoeffer, Morris invites and challenges the reader with a vision of a counter-hegemonic community. In this text, Morris reveals himself as a trusted guide to process our own failures as a church, a nation, and an academy. I am deeply grateful for this powerful text.   Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community.  

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In this episode, Brian McLaren joins the pod and we tackle some excellent questions. Here you will get a glimpse of what a QnA session sounds like in our current online learning group Oh God What Now: Christianity 20 years after 9/11. The class itself is 6-weeks and features a weekly session with Diana Butler Bass and Brian, along with occasional QnA sessions like this. 

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It is time for a party - a book release party! Thriving with Stone-Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing is out and the co-authors, Justin Barrett and Pamela King, are joined by two psychological scientist clergy Joanna Collicutt, and Jonathan Jong for some nerdy fun!

Check out our partner: Blueprint 1543 is an organization that develops grant projects at the intersection of faith and the sciences. With cognitive scientist Justin Barrett as one of its founders, BP1543 takes a special interest in how the psychological sciences might be integrated as a tool for a more robust understanding of human flourishing.

To learn more about the Thrive Center head over here. Pam has a chapter on "Vocation as Becoming: Telos, Thriving & Joy" right over here. Additional interdisciplinary work (pubs, videos) on telos can be found here on Thrive's website here.

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Diana Butler Bass and Brian McLaren continue to be two of the most trusted and influential voices in the Church.  Nearing the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the three of us decided to spend 6 weeks together online exploring how Christianity has changed over the last 20 years. Each week we will be focusing on a different theme and last night we kicked things off looking at 20 years of religious decline. Not only did Diana bring the heat in the mini-lecture, but the ensuing conversation was energizing and enlightening. Before the session ended I had members of the class asking if they could share it with friends in an attempt to lure them to join the group. I figured I would go ahead and share with you all too.

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My friend and process philosopher Dr. Andrew Davis is on the podcast! We have a bunch of nerdy fun. In the conversation we discuss...

• What does it mean that humans are a part of nature?
• What is entailed in an event of experience?
• Why do metaphysics?
• How are mind and value related?
• Why Whitehead thought God was necessary for an adequate metaphysics
• On the cosmological piety of Whitehead
• Problematizing the conceept of 'religion' from a process persepctive
• we mention this previous podcast episode with John Haught: the New Cosmic Story

Here's Andrew's YouTube channel

Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. He is Program Director for the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology at Willamette University. A native of northern California, he was born and raised among the towering redwoods of Occidental and the meandering woodlands of Santa Rosa’s Bennett Valley. It was out these natural settings that his passion for the questions of philosophy, theology and religion first emerged. He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology. An educator and advocate of cross-cultural knowledge and religious literacy, his studies have led him to a variety of religious contexts and communities around the world, including India, Israel-Palestine, and Europe. He received the 2013 Award for Excellence in Biblical Studies, the 2017 fellowship with FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) and the 2020 Presidential Award for Academic Excellence. He was recently nominated and elected as a fellow for the International Society of Science and Religion (ISSR). He is a poet, aphorist and author or editor of several books including How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere: An Anthology of Spiritual Memoirs (2018); Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (2019); Depths as Yet Unspoken: Whiteheadian Excursions in Mysticism, Multiplicity, and Divinity (2020); Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (2020); Nature In Process: Organic Proposals in Philosophy, Society and Religion (forthcoming, 2021); and Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy (forthcoming, 2021).

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I loved this conversation. Once I heard that Jason was going to be releasing a book exploring the future of theory, I was interested... after reading it, I was PUMPED. Metamodernism is spectacular. This rather nerdy and cross-disciplinary conversation was so much fun. Hopefully, you will enjoy it and share it.

Jason Ananda Josephson Storm is chair and professor of religion and chair of science and technology studies at Williams College. He is the author of The Invention of Religion in Japan, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences, and his brand new text Metamodernism: the Future of Theory. 

"For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous categories—such as religion, science, and art—has collapsed under the weight of postmodern critiques, calling into question the possibility of progress and even the value of knowledge. Jason Ananda Josephson Storm aims to radicalize and move beyond these deconstructive projects to offer a path forward for the humanities and social sciences using a new model for theory he calls metamodernism.

Metamodernism works through the postmodern critiques and uncovers the mechanisms that produce and maintain concepts and social categories. In so doing, Storm provides a new, radical account of society’s ever-changing nature—what he calls a “Process Social Ontology”—and its materialization in temporary zones of stability or “social kinds.” Storm then formulates a fresh approach to philosophy of language by looking beyond the typical theorizing that focuses solely on human language production, showing us instead how our own sign-making is actually on a continuum with animal and plant communication.

Storm also considers fundamental issues of the relationship between knowledge and value, promoting a turn toward humble, emancipatory knowledge that recognizes the existence of multiple modes of the real. Metamodernism is a revolutionary manifesto for research in the human sciences that offers a new way through postmodern skepticism to envision a more inclusive future of theory in which new forms of both progress and knowledge can be realized."

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Andy and I tackle a bunch of questions from Religion and the Spiritual Crisis class members. It is a bunch of fun:) You can grab the class lectures now before they get locked up in the HBC vault for members only.

Andrew Root is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, USA. He writes and researches in areas of theology, ministry, culture, and younger generations.  His most recent books are The Congregation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2021), The End of Youth Ministry? (Baker, 2020), The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need God (Baker, 2019), Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2017), and Exploding Stars, Dead Dinosaurs, and Zombies: Youth Ministry in the Age of Science (Fortress Press, 2018).  Andy has worked in congregations, parachurch ministries, and social service programs. He lives in St. Paul with his wife Kara, two children, Owen and Maisy, and their dog. When not reading, writing, or teaching, Andy spends far too much time watching TV and movies.

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Rev. Dr. Stephen G. Ray Jr. is the President of Chicago Theological Seminary. In addition, he is the President of the Society for the Study of Black Religion. Having written and lectured broadly in the areas of Systematic Theology, African American religion, human rights and the intersection of religion and politics, President Ray’s current work focuses on reinvigorating the public square as a place for all and reclaiming a vital expression of progressive religion in that project. Read his blog, View From The Corner, here. You should also follow his Facebook page.

* how Dr. Ray understands the constructive theological task

* how Paul Tillich’s theological method can function today

* big-time love for Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited

* thinking through social and structural sin after Trump

* the challenge of making moral judgments about the people we love

* the most necessary act of systemic evil is making it quotidian and everyday

* when we become obsessed with our own guilt we begin to tend to our own actions and not the system we are embedded in

* if our eschatological identity before God is unrelated to our identity as oppressors and oppressed, then one’s location and participation in structural evils like white supremacy are ultimately inconsequential

* the need for historians to look at the evangelical debate over slavery and the legacy of an abolitionist evangelical identity

* what it is like to be a “dye in the wool Calvinist”

* why we can’t soft-pedal what Trump represents for the church and the country

* how the progressive protestant hesitation to embrace a tradition undercuts the power of an authoritative voice for justice

* what can we do with the privilege we have to help save the world?

Check out Dr. Ray’s previous visit to the podcast here.

Helen K. Bond is on the podcast! We talk about her most recent book The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel.  Dr. Bond is the Professor of Christian Origins and Head of the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. She is also the author of Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation, Caiaphas: High Priest and Friend of Rome?, The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed, and Jesus: A Very Brief History. 

In the conversation we discuss…

* how a historian tackles a famous figure’s biography

* why poetry and narrative is more truthful than fact

* the limits of “historical truth” debates and why “nailing down” the truth is deadly to faith

* what does the cross tell us about Jesus’ character?

* how did the historical concept of the ‘good death’ compare and contrast with that of Jesus? The difference is in the telling 🙂

* what was the Gospel of Mark up to? How does reading it as a biography help us listen to the author’s voice?

* why are there no physical details about Jesus in the Gospels?

* what are Helen’s power rankings of Jesus films?

* moving beyond the historical Jesus as a scholar

* what to do with the multiplicity of testimonies to the person of Jesus

* how scholars of Paul can put Helen to sleep 🙂

* the ways in which the tradition and creeds have squelched other Biblical witnesses to the person of Jesus

* what would happen if Helen was executive producer on a Jesus film?