Jessup Think

Bonhoeffer scholar and Christian ethicist Reggie Williams sits down with Mark to discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer's experience in Harlem in 1930-31 which provided a foundation for Bonhoeffer's resistance of the racism of the Third Reich. Bonhoeffer has much to say to the church today regarding race relations and speaking out against injustice for the sake of others.

TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore. And today on the show, we're delighted to have Dr. Reggie Williams. Dr. Roger Williams is an associate professor of Christian ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Williams was with us on campus recently as the keynote speaker for our annual spring theology lecture. He's a Bonhoeffer scholar, and has researched and written on Bonhoeffer his experience in Harlem in 1930, and 31, as a foundation for his resistance against the racism of the Third Reich, Dr. Williams and I explore issues of Bonhoeffer scholarship, and what the church can learn about race relations in the light of Bonhoeffer his experience, hope you enjoy the show.

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Dr. Williams, it's been just excellent having you on campus for the lecture for our annual spring lecture. And I'm so honored that you agreed to sit down with us on the podcast on Jessup think in, and I think the topic of your lecture and the topic of your book are so important. And such an important conversation for the church right now. In 2014, you published your book, Bonhoeffer is black Jesus, Harlem Renaissance theology and an ethic of resistance, which I just have to say at the beginning. That is a brilliant title. It just jumps off the page. And when you're searching it on Amazon, can you see all these different Bonhoeffer titles? I mean, it just is illuminated. And and I think it's illuminated because it's an area of Bonhoeffer studies that we don't know that much about, or at least within the, I'd say, the white evangelical community, I think, and that's really interesting. Because it's Bonhoeffer is kind of a celebrity within the evangelical community. And and there's been a lot of writing about him a lot of biographies that have come out recently. And and I thought it was interesting, as we've been promoting your lecture and promoting the topic, majority of the students that I talked with, and the majority of others, were really intrigued by they had no idea that Bonhoeffer had an experience in Harlem with the black church that influenced and so kind of maybe a first question, why do you think this has been an overlooked aspect of Bonhoeffer studies?

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First, Thank you, Mark, for having me here. It's been a good time on campus with you all and with the students. I would throw that wider than the white evangelical community, why, why, why evangelical church or community or so forth? This is just an aspect of Bonhoeffer studies. On one hand, it's also an aspect of the Western world. It's the Academy in general, right. So it's known it's been known for, you know, as long as people have been studying Bonhoeffer that he came to United States. But it's not been very clear. As to the impact of that time on him. Some may think that perhaps there isn't anything theological, substantial, that would come from an encounter with the black church. There is a biography actually a movie, a documentary, there's a documentary about haffer. I mean, I like the documentary is very good. When it gets to Harlem. It's a very popular one. And I feel hesitant to name him because he's a friend. Doing that documentary that's this one is a very popular one. When it gets to New York, it talks about the emotional impact of the church. So Abyssinian Baptist becomes a spot where Bonhoeffer kind of comes in touch with his emotions. interest. Yeah, and that's it. Yeah. And it leaves it just that's it. He, I mean, the quote is that Adam Clayton Powell senior taught his parishioners to be emotional in their worship. In Bonhoeffer comes into contact wi

Cynthia Schaefer Elliot, Professor of Hebrew Scriptures & Archaeology, joins Mark and Professor Libby Backfish to discuss how monotheism was understood in ancient Hebrew culture. Within the discussion it becomes apparent that our current English definition of monotheism misrepresents its usage in ancient Hebrew culture. Instead of stressing the existence of one God, ancient Hebrews were called to the worship of one God, a practice they greatly struggled with.

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm delighted to be joined for the first time by Cynthia Schafer-Eliot, Associate Dean of Faculty of theology and Professor of archaeology and Hebrew Scripture. That's what they tell me. That's what yeah, that's on your business cards. Here. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's really great to have you I know you're, you know, kind of a professional podcaster. So I just, you know, it's, it's good to have you on one of our shows. Now, I'm delighted to be here. Hey, that's good. And back on the show, friend of the show, we'll be back. Also a professor of Hebrew Scripture, so welcome back. Thanks for having me again. And when you when you come back a second time, that's when you become friend of the show. Okay, so it's not a friend of the show friend of the show mean to you, you've come back, you answered my email. That time just worked out. Yeah, exactly. fits in your schedule. But I'm excited to have you both on the episode today, cuz I want to talk about what I think is an extremely interesting topic, that of monotheism and ancient Hebrew culture. So maybe some people hear that and that's not as exciting to them. But when I hear that I get excited. And I want to kind of know more, because I feel like this topic has been maybe intriguing scholars of late or I've just been hearing more about it lately. And there seems to be a disconnect between kind of maybe our current definition of monotheism and the experience of the ancient Israelites in terms of monotheism. And so I just think it's maybe really interesting. And I think it actually exposes some some theological issues that I think are really important. And dealing with language. We're going to do a little language today. So So get your Hebrew ready. I did actually take so I was an English and writing undergrad, full disclosure. And as an elective, I took Hebrew because Good for you. I knew what to tell our state. Yeah, exactly. I will, I'll start I'll start preaching that you can take these as electives. But, but I think, see, I couldn't so language wise, it's going to, I think it's going to really open some things up maybe in theology. So when we look at that, and we look at the maybe current definition, mostly it is and probably like, the person on the street, if you ask them to define monotheism, right now. It would be similar to the to the definitions and Webster, not this idea of belief in a single God, or maybe even more strongly a belief that only one God exists. I think you hear that a lot. How does that definition maybe jive with the ancient Israelites experience of monotheism? It's a good question, hey, you know, do you want to go first or Yeah, I

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think, Mark, you were getting at something. There's a disjunction between how we would define it, how they would define it. And also the questions we're asking and the questions they're asking. So we're asking how many gods exist? And I think they were asking, how many gods do we worship? So it's much more that's an issue really good to see. Yeah, much. Just borrow that. Free before you. So I think it's an issue more of praxis for the ancient Israelites, because they were concerned with who do we worship? And whereas now we think of it more theoretically. And I think we can learn a lot from the ancient Israelites, because I think sometimes we think that just thinking about God, theoretically is enough. Right? Really, we need to make good on those thoug

History Professor and Theology award winner Julius Rex Gurney III sits down with Mark to discuss the reason for two different kinds of Protestants today. In North America, Protestants can be broken down into two major groups: Mainline and Evangelical. Mark and Rex discover that this division does not always follow strict denominational lines. Tracing the history of this division provides fascinating insight into today’s religious landscape.

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm delighted to be joined by the esteemed Chair of the history department and award winning theologian. A little known fact about Julius Rex Gurney the third. So Rex excited to have you on the show. And just for our listeners, maybe tell us how long you've been teaching here at Jessup?

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Well, first of all, I have to talk about that award. Yeah, award and $3 wanting to give me a cup of coffee. I don't I don't actually even put that on my resume. Hey, you can claim your award winning payload. That'd be on your book byline. Right. Right. Right. So I've been teaching. I'm here at Jessup for about 14 years. Wow. And so I'm actually came over with the school from San Jose. Oh, Graham, although I still sort of feel like a newbie because I was only teaching one year when we left San Jose. But every graduation I guess I creep further further up to the beginning of the line right now, which is kind of strange and and sort of depressing for

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Yeah, you realize especially Yeah, when they line up you realize, Hey, I'm yeah, I've been around here a long time. Yeah, exactly. I know. When I first started teaching them about eight years ago, here, I used to be able to say to the students, we like kind of a communal we like we think this and and now eight years removed, I can no longer say we say you, your generation. Right? Right. My generation

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clearly distinct at this point, I have to be very, very careful with my cultural references and my history classes because no one else gets them. I'm old. Right? There you go.

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Yeah, that's the marker when you know, movie references. Okay, got it. gotta come up with some nobody's ever heard of any rock groups from the 70s? a, you know, there's a little bit of a revival of that. So we can always hope, you know, that's where Netflix is really helped me because they bring all these old shows back. And so okay, what's your keep anything long enough? It'll come around. Right? Yeah. And it'll be and actually one of my, one of my rules of fashion is, if you wore it when it first came out, you probably shouldn't wear it when it comes back around.

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It's probably right. Yeah. My plaid, blue and yellow bell bottom pants with cuffs on them with my suit probably should have been retired. Right now. never come back.

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Yeah, that comes back that you might be able to wear that again, because that would be amazing. And we have to, we have to see pictures of that will post pictures on Twitter that a long time ago? Well, I'm excited to have you on the show and one for the fact that I love history. And I think history helps us answer how we've arrived at a certain place, and covers the steps that have been taken events that have occurred, that lead us to where we are now. Right. And I love to, to look at that. And we neglect history to our own peril, right. Like if we don't learn from that, I think specifically with the church history is fascinating. I mean, there's concerned, yeah, there's been so many twists and turns, right. And you know, for just a little over 500 years now just celebrated the 500 anniversary. Last year, we've kind of in the West had this standard binary of Catholic and Protestant and, and then for maybe 200 years or so. And we can kind of talk about that kind of date. We've also had kind of another division amongst Protestants. Right. And and kind of a division into two camps, mainline Protestant and ev

In this episode, Mark is joined by New Testament and Biblical Studies Professor Matthew Godshall to further discuss the topic of the New Testament authors use of the Hebrew Scriptures. Matt brings his extensive knowledge to the discussion as they explore the topic from the perspective of New Testament authors. They also note how these authors actually provide a way for us to approach and apply Scripture in our own lives.

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All right, welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm delighted to be joined by friend of the show and fellow member of our faculty of theology, Matt, gotcha. Hey, Mark, hey, it's good to have you back on. And that's why your friend of the show, I like the title. When you're returning guests, you now become friends. We're friends. Now.

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It's so surprising you have me back.

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So it's good. We had Libby, on the show recently talking about the way the New Testament authors use the Hebrew Scriptures. And Libby provided wonderful insight into the original Hebrew context of the passages. So I just thought it'd be great to have you on the show, to kind of look at it maybe from the perspective of the New Testament authors, maybe looking at the gospel writers looking at Paul thinking about how are they maybe specifically using the Hebrew Scripture? And, and, and what we can learn from that, and maybe what we can learn from that for our own, maybe hermeneutical initiatives are and what we're doing and, and in the episode with liberty, we talked a lot about Richard Hayes. And and that's kind of where I come from in it. And I think it's helpful to maybe define some of these terms as we get going. That's, that's one thing that we scholars like to do first, right is define define terms, which is helpful in scholarship, not as helpful in other things in your lives, right, like maybe in a conversation with your spouse, and you want to define terms, not the best time to define terms, then we got too close to home, right? Yeah. I know that home, I live there, my friend, I live there. But so with Hayes, he talks about, you know, the New Testament writers are kind of doing three things. They have direct quotations, and we see that throughout Paul's writings, we see that with the gospel writers where they directly quote, Isaiah, directly, quote, Deuteronomy. But we also have direct illusions, where the biblical writer is making a pretty explicit allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures, whether it's Paul talking about Adam, and Jesus being the new Adam, or john starting out his gospel by saying in the beginning, and he is he's assuming lightbulbs and sirens are going off. And we're making that connection, and then also echoes, and that's kind of, you know, Hayes has really played off of that word, echoes of Scripture. He has, you know, his work that goes with Scripture, and Paul, and then echoes of scripture in the Gospels. And I love his definition of echo. He defines it as different from a quotation or an explicit illusion, in the fact that an echo evokes the wider context of the text to which it alludes. Beyond which is even directly cited, it establishes an intertextual correspondence between two or more texts, allowing illuminating arcs of hermeneutical electricity to travel across the intervening spaces, as just so well,

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so well written so well said something like, hey, it's only Hayes can say, right. And it actually makes sense when you read them. And then you step away, you're like, what is that?

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Yeah, you're like, yeah, you're like an illuminating arc of hermeneutical electricity. Probably not too many people when they approach hermeneutics don't feel like there's any electricity involved in hermeneutics. But yeah, does such a good picture of this intertextual correspondence, and allowing, yeah, those illuminating arcs of hermeneutic electricity to jump from the pages of Genesis to the pages of Paul's writings.

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Yeah. And even

In this episode Mark is joined by the Dean of the School of Theology & Leadership, David Timms. David has taught and written extensively on the topic of leadership and offers a succinct and timely explanation of what a true transformational leader looks like. Much of the material comes from David’s latest book, Shape Your World: Transformational Leadership for Everyday Life.

TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore and we are in the studio today on the beautiful campus of William Jessup University, the sun is shining. And today on the show, we have the one, the only the Dean of our School of Christian Leadership and faculty of theology. David Timms. David, thanks for joining us on the show. Hey, Mark, good to be here. Hey, and I wanted to bring you on David specifically to talk about leadership, and really transformational leadership. A few years ago, the University updated its own mission statement to include that type of verbiage to include transformational leadership. And I know you've been researching and writing about leadership for the past three years or so. And you've recently published a book entitled shape your world transformational leadership for ever everyday life available on Amazon and other fine retailers. Just a little plug for you appreciate, you know, I try. I try. And And so with that, you know, and I think transformational leadership is very kind of particular languages seems to be shaping leadership in a certain way that some people may not be familiar with maybe how we're bringing those words together, and why it was important enough for the university to adjust its own mission statement. And so can you kind of just give us a baseline definition of transformational leadership?

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Sure. Well, and this was really interesting to me, because two or three years ago, our president modified our mission statement, as a university and said that we exist in partnership with the church to educate transformational leaders for the glory of God. And it was like, so what is a transformational leader? Right? Yeah, right. We started talking with people about and we realized that most people just reduced it to Oh, these are leaders who, I don't know, make a difference. Yeah. And transform thing. They that's what they do the transparent stuff. And it was like, oh, okay, well, that's not very deep. All right. All right. So then we began looking at it more closely and realized that transformational leadership, as a theory has been out in the marketplace since the late 70s. Okay, that's 40 years old. Yeah, it's just the Christians don't know it. Right? The business place marketplace knows that well. And so we took some of the research that was done in the late 70s and early 80s, by a couple of guys, burns and bass. And most of their language just too hard for people to get their tongue and their mind around. Right. Okay. So a simple way of doing it. So add definition, transformational leadership, is producing change and building lives. And that's really what the leadership piece is, yeah, true. Authenticity, inspiration, empathy, and innovation. So you got two outcomes, and you got four ways of doing it. And these are what we call here, the six pillars of transformational leadership. And it's starting to shape our curriculum. It's certainly shaped the book I wrote. And we're realizing that that these themes are not things we're coming up with. We're really just capturing what is the latest and best research in the leadership field. And it's like, wow, okay. It's all right there in that definition that we've we've come up with.

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Yeah. And it's interesting to know that it being maybe a new term for some people, or new way to describe leadership has been around since the late 70s, which for me, personally, was a beautiful and two decades, that's when I began so. So I may be as old as transformational leadership. But But with that, you like you're saying that that's been maybe

In this episode Mark is joined by Assistant Professor of Hebrew Scriptures Libby Backfish to explore how we should approach New Testament authors use of the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly prophetic messages. The New Testament authors appear to be reading the Hebrew Scriptures in new and “out-of-context” ways. Libby helps us understand the meaning of fulfillment as well as the near and far nature of prophecy.

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm delighted to be joined by another member of our faculty of theology, Libby Backfish. So happy to be here. Thank you. Good to have you. And Libby wants to take a moment just to tell the listeners what subjects you teach here and what your research focuses. Yeah, so

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I teach Old Testament subjects, I get to teach the freshmen intro courses I teach. Hebrew, I teach classes on certain books of the Bible. I'm teaching Isaiah right now, which is a lot of fun. I'll be teaching judges Joshua Ruth next semester. But my research my dissertation doctoral research was actually on the Psalms. I love Hebrew poetry. Yeah. And I looked specifically at how those Hebrew poems were translated in the Greek translation of the Septuagint. And how certain poetic features such as wordplay were rendered into another language. So I got to play with the Hebrew and the Greek and look at the poetry and then of course, look at all that rich theology of how God presents himself in Psalms.

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That's so good, that's so good. And then it's gonna be so helpful for today for a conversation, because we really want to kind of look at because it's gonna deal with both kind of Greek and Hebrew, right? And we really want to look at how the New Testament authors are using the Old Testament. And that spans really the whole of the Old Testament, right from the Psalms to the Prophet, specifically, the prophets will kind of highlight. But before we get kind of into that, I did have a question for you. Do you prefer the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scripture?

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Well, I think there I use different terms for different contexts. When I'm in an academic context where there are Jewish and agnostic. Scholars, I usually say Hebrew Bible, it's more of a neutral term. But as a Christian, I usually say Old Testament, it's what the church is used to,

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right residents are used to, and I teach New Testament class. And I often tell my students, you know, by calling one Old Testament and New Testament is not meaning one is bad. One is good, right? It's not Oh, that one's old. I want the new one. Now, I have proposed that we change it a little. So I don't know if this will catch on now. So I propose that we keep New Testament. But if we change the old testament to like, the vintage test, Oh, that sounds very hipster. Yeah. readers. I could read the New Testament. But what about the vintage test? I like that. I think Zondervan could run with this. And we could have a vintage testaments do it by Christmas, we can do that. But no, but I agree, I also understand the wanting to broaden that focus of and actually maybe narrow our focus actually, on the original context of the Old Testament, right? reminding ourselves that this is the scriptures of the Hebrew people. Right, like, and I think that's helpful by by noting, Hebrew Bible, or by noting, you know, the scriptures of Israel like this, this helps us remind ourselves that, hey, this isn't just like part one of the Bible that is leather bound.

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And it wasn't written directly to us, one of the mantras I say in my class is that the Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us, the old or the New Testament, which is why we need to get into that context and understand how those original readers and listeners would have

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heard it. Yeah, it's so important. And I stress that to a New Testament. And, and I kind of stress it as this is why we we gently force you to take these classes, ri

In this episode, Mark joins Associate Professor for the School of Theology & Leadership, Daniel Gluck & Associate Professor of Youth Ministry, Fritz Moga. Together they explore the difficult topic of whether Christian parents should force their children to go to church. Many children associate church with boredom, uncomfortable clothes, and weird smells. When they begin to voice a desire to not go, how should Christian parents respond? Could forcing church on them only cause them to run the other direction when they are older? Could not stressing it diminish the important role the church plays in the spiritual life?

TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm joined by Daniel Gluck and Fritz Moga. Daniel, tell the listeners a little bit about what you teach here at Jessup.

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I have the privilege of serving as lead Faculty of our BA in Christian Leadership Program, undergraduate students who are going into ministry and have a heart for leadership.

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Wonderful. And Fritz, what do you teach here?

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I am the lead faculty for the youth ministry department. So work in conjunction with Daniel everything's going on and leadership. And this would be a very specific part that trains young people to go work with young people.

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That's wonderful. It's great to have both of you on the show. And I'm extremely interested in the topic that we're going to discuss today. And the big question that we're going to be tackling today is this. Should Christian parents force their children to go to church? And it's funny, every time I pose that to people, they all have a similar reaction, which is like, ooh, oh, that's a good question. And some, some with younger kids are like, I want to listen to that, because I don't need it yet. And then others who are right in the midst of it, I can feel their pain. I feel their pain. Yeah. When we say I didn't, and to be fully transparent. With this question. I have a lot of skin in the game. So as you know, along with being a Christian parent, myself, father of two middle school boys, so pray for me. Yeah. For me, I pray daily. And a professor here at Jessup. I'm also pastor at a church in the Arden arcade area of Sacramento, right? Yeah. And yeah, just bring them all together. Yeah. And at church, we've been having this discussion lately, we're just talking with parents, mostly parents of middle school and high school students, the fridge, you can kind of connect there to ministry, and just kind of having this conversation of, hey, if my child right now, is, is voicing maybe a boredom with church? A Yeah, you know, I starting to be maybe even a little disgruntle. about going and just trying to tackle that of like, man, how do I approach How do I approach them? How do I, how do we, as a family kind of handle the church question and that Now, before we get into it even deeper, I'd love to hear kind of your backstories and experiences with church. So first, what was your experience kind of growing up with church?

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Yeah, I grew up in a go into church was a little outside the Christian denomination kind of church. However, I'm intrigued. I just don't want to name names. But But we were, we were forced to go. We got up every Sunday, and we went to church. And I was, I was particularly bored with things that were going on. But I I rediscovered God a little later on, like in high school. Yeah. But I've always looked back and thought, you know, those were not wasted years, forced to go to church, write write stories, I could recall things. It wasn't ultimately life changing then. But then later on, when I really accepted Christ into my heart, I could look back and go, you know what, that was not a bad thing for me to be there with those times.

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Right? Yeah, it's so helpful to look back and see that and yeah, you can't in the moment, you're not going to be able to realize No, they're the impact about what you

In this episode, host Mark Moore, Auxiliary Professor of New Testament and Theology, is joined by the director of the Theatre program Derek Martin & Assistant Professor of New Testament and Theology Matthew Godshall. They explore the question, are cultural artifacts (i.e. films, television shows, books, etc.) that mention God in a bad or even sacrilegious way less dangerous than artifacts that do not mention God at all? Some “family-friendly” artifacts may actually cause more harm than good by excluding God all together.

TRANSCRIPT

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Hey, welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm joined by two of my esteemed colleagues. Here. Jessup, Matthew, gotcha. Matthew, won't you speak a little bit about what you teach here?

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Sure. Thanks, Mark. I don't know about a steamed but definitely. That's kind. I teach New Testament and theology courses. I'm actually the lead faculty for theology degree, to teach in historical theology, some comparative theology, but also getting stained in the New Testament with Romans and revelation and survey courses as well.

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Perfect. Perfect. So we got theologian on board today, on board and then also joined by Derrick Martin. Derek, what do you do here?

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You know, I'm the head of the theater program here at Jessup. I teach primarily the theology of the arts and faith in arts courses, as well as things like directing and Shakespeare some other stuff there I kind of vision cast for the program. I'm the functional leader. I don't know if I'd go status, because there's quite a few people that have a big say and how we move forward. But right, yeah, functionally, I think I'm ahead of the theater.

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That's great. And it's been doing so well, the show's been going great. And it's been really good for the university. So and I'm just excited to have you both on the show. So we got two theologians and an actor. That's right. They there are two theologians and actor to Japan, right? Yeah, walk into a bar leading us into something. But really, what I want to kind of talk about today is how cultural artifacts approach God, how they talk about God. And when I say cultural artifacts, I mean, books, movies, music, plays, even plays in cultural artifacts, and how they, how they talk about God, how they view God, how they express gun, and have a particular kind of question. And that question is, are cultural artifacts that mentioned God, even in a profane light, right, even in a light that would make us extremely uncomfortable, maybe even angry, are artifacts that do that, more or less dangerous than cultural artifacts that don't mention God at all, that are silent on God. And I bring this up because I had an English professor in undergrad and full disclosure as an English undergrad, Major. So I moved, I saw the light and I moved to theology in my grad school years. But I was English and writing undergrad and my favorite English professor. I remember one semester, she was kind of receiving a lot of complaints about the books we were reading, you know, these works of mid 20th century American literature, and, and just the topics they were dealing with some unsavory topics, how they were presenting God, and I'll never forget her response to those complaints. She first responded by looking at Mark seven, which Mark seven is a passage that talks about where Jesus talking about what really defiles us, and it's not from what is on the outside, going in food we eat, maybe, conversations we have, but it's actually from within what defiles us so she's trying to maybe help students that, you know, it's already happening within our hearts. And she went from there to make the claim that artifacts that actually that worry her the most are artifacts that don't mention God that are silent on God. What do you what do you think about her argument there? That artifacts that are silent for her artifacts that are silent are more dangerous than artifact