Myers Park Baptist Church: Theology Upstream Podcasts

Many of us are learning the stories of Gutierrez, the Boff brothers, Segundo, Sobrino, Ellacuria, and others for the first time.  This week, while we were reading their stories, I had the opportunity to sit down with Rev. Dr. Peter Wherry of Mayfield Memorial Missionary Baptist Church to listen to his first encounters with Jon Sobrino, sitting in the very room where Ellacuria and four others were murdered (story we read about in Ch. 4).  The words Peter uses to describe how he felt, “their blood cried out from the ground.”  These words echo the Genesis text in which God says that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground, after he’d been murdered by his brother, Cain.  These words haunted the Deep South Pilgrims as we traveled through rural Alabama on the Deep South Pilgrimage, knowing that the very trees we saw could have been the execution site for African Americans who were lynched in the Jim Crow era.  Dr. Wherry’s application of this Genesis text to both the lynching era and the beginnings of Latin American liberation thought is a powerful connection that makes me wonder, when will we ever learn?  When will we bring an end to the senseless violence, oppression, and death that results from greed and insecurity?During our conversation, Peter also engages Miguel’s theology of sin and pushes back a little to the notion that liberation theology always has an orthopraxy to orthodoxy structure.  AND… continuing the conversation about where liberation theology actually begins, Peter goes WAY back and finds the origins in North Carolina!  Tune in to learn more!

Many of us are learning the stories of Gutierrez, the Boff brothers, Segundo, Sobrino, Ellacuria, and others for the first time.  This week, while we were reading their stories, I had the opportunity to sit down with Rev. Dr. Peter Wherry of Mayfield Memorial Missionary Baptist Church to listen to his first encounters with Jon Sobrino, sitting in the very room where Ellacuria and four others were murdered (story we read about in Ch. 4).  The words Peter uses to describe how he felt, “their blood cried out from the ground.”  These words echo the Genesis text in which God says that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground, after he’d been murdered by his brother, Cain.  These words haunted the Deep South Pilgrims as we traveled through rural Alabama on the Deep South Pilgrimage, knowing that the very trees we saw could have been the execution site for African Americans who were lynched in the Jim Crow era.  Dr. Wherry’s application of this Genesis text to both the lynching era and the beginnings of Latin American liberation thought is a powerful connection that makes me wonder, when will we ever learn?  When will we bring an end to the senseless violence, oppression, and death that results from greed and insecurity?During our conversation, Peter also engages Miguel’s theology of sin and pushes back a little to the notion that liberation theology always has an orthopraxy to orthodoxy structure.  AND… continuing the conversation about where liberation theology actually begins, Peter goes WAY back and finds the origins in North Carolina!  Tune in to learn more!

We promise, this time we will actually talk about chapter 2!  From the School of the Americas to Vatican 2 and the Christian Base Communities, we’ve got a lot of content in this chapter.  Yale theologian Miroslav Volf says that Americans have a “pervasive sense of innocence” and “optimism,” that we see ourselves as “good people” and therefore tend to see others as “bad people”  (http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/america). While many of us do see ourselves as generally good people, I suspect we would struggle to unanimously claim that in seeing ourselves as good means that we see others as automatically bad people.  However, this chapter lifts up for us how the assumption that Americans and American policy leans toward good and leans toward justice, might be blinding us a little when it comes to the real picture of what our involvement in the global economy is doing to people in other countries.  What do you think?  Do you agree that Americans have a pervasive sense of innocence?  Also in this chapter, we begin to see similarities between the ways that Christian Base Communities in Latin America and African American Churches in the U.S. are beginning to organize in ways that would forever change theology, the Church, and the world.  Seeing the power of faith communities to move the arc of justice makes us wonder, where and for what is the church organizing today?

We promise, this time we will actually talk about chapter 2!  From the School of the Americas to Vatican 2 and the Christian Base Communities, we’ve got a lot of content in this chapter.  Yale theologian Miroslav Volf says that Americans have a “pervasive sense of innocence” and “optimism,” that we see ourselves as “good people” and therefore tend to see others as “bad people”  (http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/america). While many of us do see ourselves as generally good people, I suspect we would struggle to unanimously claim that in seeing ourselves as good means that we see others as automatically bad people.  However, this chapter lifts up for us how the assumption that Americans and American policy leans toward good and leans toward justice, might be blinding us a little when it comes to the real picture of what our involvement in the global economy is doing to people in other countries.  What do you think?  Do you agree that Americans have a pervasive sense of innocence?  Also in this chapter, we begin to see similarities between the ways that Christian Base Communities in Latin America and African American Churches in the U.S. are beginning to organize in ways that would forever change theology, the Church, and the world.  Seeing the power of faith communities to move the arc of justice makes us wonder, where and for what is the church organizing today?

Alright, we couldn’t wait any longer to share some thoughts about Capitalism (and Democracy).  Don’t worry we don’t spend the whole time there…we also break down the theology of Manifest Destiny.  That’s right, we’re calling it a theology!  Now, we know It may seem like a little excursus from the book (hence the name of this post) but we feel like it is critical to go ahead and identify some of the philosophical strands that have created this knotted-up-ball-of-yarn situation we’re discovering as we begin to learn about the origins of liberation theology.  Hopefully this episode will be uncomfortable at times, hopefully it will lead you to more questions, hopefully it will stir up some healthy group conversation as we wonder together: Can capitalism and democracy co-exist?  ​Listen in and tell us what you think!

Alright, we couldn’t wait any longer to share some thoughts about Capitalism (and Democracy).  Don’t worry we don’t spend the whole time there…we also break down the theology of Manifest Destiny.  That’s right, we’re calling it a theology!  Now, we know It may seem like a little excursus from the book (hence the name of this post) but we feel like it is critical to go ahead and identify some of the philosophical strands that have created this knotted-up-ball-of-yarn situation we’re discovering as we begin to learn about the origins of liberation theology.  Hopefully this episode will be uncomfortable at times, hopefully it will lead you to more questions, hopefully it will stir up some healthy group conversation as we wonder together: Can capitalism and democracy co-exist?  ​Listen in and tell us what you think!

From Communism to Capitalism to Colonialism . . . to BANANAS, this chapter would have been forbidden fodder for table conversation even if religion was never mentioned! But Miguel does not let up with hard hitting information about the politics of our past, he layers in the role of Christianity and the Church in the development of the New World. In so doing, he establishes the historical context within which liberation theology emerged in the 1960s. This chapter sure is hard to fully comprehend, so (lucky for us) Ben likens some of what we’re reading to Disney movies we may be a little more familiar with. But even Disney’s interpretation(s) illumine some of the problems with how the stories of colonization are told and retold. Even still, we can’t escape the philosophical and practical problems that our capitalist & colonial mindsets impose upon our theological conclusions and ethics. Listen in as we attempt to walk through the chapter and raise some of the complexities that have emerged for us along the way . . .

From Communism to Capitalism to Colonialism . . . to BANANAS, this chapter would have been forbidden fodder for table conversation even if religion was never mentioned! But Miguel does not let up with hard hitting information about the politics of our past, he layers in the role of Christianity and the Church in the development of the New World. In so doing, he establishes the historical context within which liberation theology emerged in the 1960s. This chapter sure is hard to fully comprehend, so (lucky for us) Ben likens some of what we’re reading to Disney movies we may be a little more familiar with. But even Disney’s interpretation(s) illumine some of the problems with how the stories of colonization are told and retold. Even still, we can’t escape the philosophical and practical problems that our capitalist & colonial mindsets impose upon our theological conclusions and ethics. Listen in as we attempt to walk through the chapter and raise some of the complexities that have emerged for us along the way . . .

What do Beyonce, Miguel De La Torre, Chrissy and Ben all have in common? We all love FREEDOM!This week we took a stroll down memory lane, telling the stories of the first time we came face to face (or face to book) with liberation theology. From Aristotle to Aquinas, Barth to Bonhoeffer, and finally Cone to De La Torre… at times the conversation might feel a little like a graduate level lesson in the history of theological thought. Hopefully those moments are short and slightly interesting? In any case, let’s begin with first encounters. Listen in as we talk about ours, then tell us about your own experiences. Is this book your first encounter with liberation theology? If so, how are you feeling about jumping in? Have you read liberation theology before? If so, who’d you read? What’d you think?

What do Beyonce, Miguel De La Torre, Chrissy and Ben all have in common? We all love FREEDOM!This week we took a stroll down memory lane, telling the stories of the first time we came face to face (or face to book) with liberation theology. From Aristotle to Aquinas, Barth to Bonhoeffer, and finally Cone to De La Torre… at times the conversation might feel a little like a graduate level lesson in the history of theological thought. Hopefully those moments are short and slightly interesting? In any case, let’s begin with first encounters. Listen in as we talk about ours, then tell us about your own experiences. Is this book your first encounter with liberation theology? If so, how are you feeling about jumping in? Have you read liberation theology before? If so, who’d you read? What’d you think?