In this episode, we speak with Dr. Erin Raffety (MDiv '08), PCUSA pastor and researcher, about her work with persons with disabilities in the church, and how she seeks to use her research to inform deeper, richer pastoral care and conversation within congregations. Erin's goal is to take seriously the voices, experiences, and contributions of people with disabilities in order to enable the church to connect with, learn from, and better minister to people with disabilities.

Dr. Erin Raffety (she/her) is a practical theologian who uses ethnographic research methods to study congregations. At the Center of Theological Inquiry, Erin is the Research Fellow in machine intelligence and pastoral care, where she studies how artificial intelligence and video game technology can support spiritual connection for people with disabilities and congregations. She is also the Empirical Research Consultant for the Imagining Church Project and the Associate Research Scholar for the Institute for Youth Ministry, both at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her book, From Inclusion to Justice: Why Christian Congregations Need Disabled Ministry and Leadership, will be published this year with Baylor University Press. Erin is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University, and is a proud parent of a daughter with multiple disabilities. 

In this episode, we speak with Dr. João Chaves, Assistant Director for Programming at the Hispanic Theological Initiative at Princeton Theological Seminary, about his book, Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora. We talk about his work and focus on his case study of a network formed by communities of Brazilian immigrants who formed a unique ethnic association within their host country. Listen as he shares his extensive ethnographic research, done over six years, in eleven congregations across the United States.

João Chaves, assistant director for programming at the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI), received his Ph.D. from the Department of Religion at Baylor University, where he studied the history of Christianity and sociology of religion. João is the author of three books, including Migrational Religion: Context and Creativity in the Latinx Diaspora (Baylor University Press), which investigates how migration shapes the theological forms and functions of transnational religious networks. His forthcoming book, The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South (Mercer University Press, May 2022) traces the history of how missionaries from the Southern US helped shape Latin American evangelicalism according to Southern theocultural and racialized assumptions. João is also finalizing another manuscript—co-authored with Dr. Mikeal Parsons—that focuses on the development of transnational constructions of religious legacies. In addition, João is a member of the Commission on Racial, Gender, and Economic Justice of the Baptist World Alliance; associate editor of Perspectivas—the Journal of the Hispanic Theological Initiative; and editorial board member of Perspectives in Religious Studies. 

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister for Public Theology at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, explores this question with host Sushama-Austin Connor while discussing her books, Fierce Love and The Pentecost Paradigm. In this episode, Dr. Lewis offers timeless lessons about what she calls a “multi-everything” ministry that offers love and inclusion to everyone. 

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis—Author, Activist, and Public Theologian—is the Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church, a multiracial, welcoming, and inclusive congregation in New York City. Middle Church and her activism have been featured in media such as The TODAY Show, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Her new podcast, Love.Period., is produced by the Center for Action and Contemplation. She is the author of Fierce Love, The Power of Stories: A Guide for Leaders in Multi-racial, Multi-cultural Congregations, The Pentecost Paradigm: Ten Strategies for Becoming a Multiracial Congregation, and the children’s book, You Are So Wonderful!. 

This season you can expect deep dives into such topics as radical love, stewardship, and the changing landscape of theological education. We’ll explore ethnic denominationalism in Latinx migrational religion, learn practical ways Christian leaders can reframe their understanding of money and ministry, and discover steps to becoming a multiracial congregation. 

The first episode of Season 6 airs Friday, February 11. We hope you’ll listen!

In this episode, Jerusha Neal, assistant professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School, explores a homiletic theology that reclaims the absence and presence of the fully human Word, offers fresh conceptions on the embodiment of Jesus in the sermon, and compares the Spirit-empowered pregnancy of Mary to the work of preaching.

Jerusha Matsen Neal, assistant professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School, is an ordained American Baptist minister. She has also served as a Global Ministries missionary to the Fiji Islands through the United Methodist Church. Neal has spent her ministry preaching in cross-cultural spaces and bridging denominational communities. God’s work in these in-between locations has convinced her that preaching matters more than ever.

Her new book, The Overshadowed Preacher (Eerdmans, 2020), asks the sticky question of what we mean when we say preaching is “anointed.” It challenges preachers to leave behind false shadows and be overshadowed by the Spirit of God. It received a 2020 Christianity Today Jesus Creed Book Award for the Preaching Life. A former actress and playwright, she has also authored a collection of dramatic monologues, Blessed: Monologues for Mary (Cascade, 2012).

Andrew Root, PhD (Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He is most recently the author of three-volume Ministry in a Secular Age series (The Congregation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, and Faith Formation in a Secular Age), and The End of Youth Ministry.  He has also authored Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross (Fortress, 2014) and Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker (Baker, 2014).  Root puts together theology and storytelling to explore how ministry leads us into encounter with divine action.  His book  The Relational Pastor (IVP, 2013), as well as a four-book series with Zondervan, called A Theological Journey Through Youth Ministry (titles include Taking Theology to Youth Ministry, Taking the Cross to Youth Ministry, Unpacking Scripture in Youth Ministry, and Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry) break new ground in this direction.  In 2012  his book The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry (with Kenda Creasy Dean, IVP, 2011) was Christianity Today Book of Merit.  He has written a number of other books on ministry and theology such as The Children of Divorce: The Loss of Family as the Loss of Being (Baker Academic, 2010), The Promise of Despair (Abingdon, 2010), Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation (IVP, 2007) and Relationships Unfiltered (Zondervan/YS, 2009).  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.

Dayle Rounds (00:00):
How can congregations keep pace with the speed of life today? Andy Root is Carrie Olson, Baalson professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a Princeton seminary alum. In this episode, Andy returns to talk with us about his third book in the series engaging the work of Charles Taylor. In the congregation in a secular age, keeping sacred time against the speed of modern life. Andy offers a new paradigm for understanding the congregation and contemporary ministry, articulates why congregations feel pressured by rapid changes in modern life, and encourages an approach that calls congregations to re-imagine, what change is, how to live into this future, and to help them move from relevance to resonance.
New Speaker (00:48):
[percussive music begins] [water droplet sound]
Dayle Rounds (00:51):
You're listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Dayle Rounds (00:55):
Andy, thank you. It's great to be able to talk to you again about one of your books and particularly this one, which is the third in a series of three, and we've had the opportunity to talk about the first two. This is another one where you engage the work of Charles Taylor, in his, his published work, A Secular Age. Would you give our listeners just a brief sketch of your series and for those who are not familiar with it, the essential claims made by Taylor that are key, for, for the three books. And then particularly for this one that we're talking about today about congregations.
Andy Root (01:31):
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to try to, you know, be in dialogue with this big, this big brick of a book called The Secular Age by Taylor. So it's taken me three books that just kind of, analyze it and be inspired by it and, yeah, then go from there. So yeah, I mean the, the, the series starts with faith formation in a secular age, and I don't know why it starts there to be completely honest. Like it just, it just kinda started there. I'm not a systematic theologian, so I didn't have a grand system in my mind. I think it was more, I don't know, problems kind of facing the church as we, as we thought about decline, as we thought about, how we pass on faith, particularly to younger people, but really across just, the, the church doing its thing.
Andy Root (02:18):
That was in the forefront of my mind and the project it's kind of developed from there. So there's no real, like methodological reason on why faith formation comes first. But I mean, one of the main elements I pick up from Taylor and that is just the way we are so deeply embedded in an age of authenticity. And so what does it mean to kind of pass on faith in a, in an age where in many ways, in some very good ways and some very challenging ways we live in a time where we believe every human being has a right to define for themselves what it means to be human and that - and there's an ethic out of that that says everyone, no one should tell anyone else how they should live their life. Well, that's, there's a lot of good things around where we respect people's experience and things like that.
Andy Root (03:01):
There's also some real challenges on how you take people deeply into a tradition, how you form them in a way to follow someone who isn't them, how, you know, the core of discipleship is actually following someone else and, and giving your life over to Jesus Christ, as opposed to finding the uniqueness within yourself. Those aren't completely mutually exclusive, but they're, it's a, it's a challenge. So we started, I started there in, you know, Taylor, the thing that's so interesting about him. And I think for me, he's, he's impacted the way I, I think, theologically with his larger philosophical system. And I think we'll probably get into that as we talk about book three, but, it's really his description of our moment that is so interesting to me. And, you know, all the way back when Dayle, I first met you when I was, you know, during the last Cicada season, when I was, I was a student at Princeton Seminary, the question that was really always driving me from the moment I stepped on that campus.
Andy Root (03:58):
And even earlier was thinking about how is it that we concretely encounter the living presence of God? And, I wouldn't have had the language then to say that, but how is it that the modern world and particularly late modernity makes that really difficult? And that's really what Taylor is trying to articulate. He's trying to say, yeah, we can talk about secular and we throw it around. And it's confused in, yeah, it's not just that people are less, less religious. That's not really the issue. The issue is that there's an overall kind of movement within our Western societies that makes this a, the sense of transcendence or of a living personal God who speaks to us that becomes harder for people to hold onto. Or even when they do hold onto it, there's, there's currents that kind of, undercut it and can wash that away.
Andy Root (04:46):
And, and they have to deal with kind of doubts or the realization in very pluralistic societies that their neighbor across the streets, you know, never goes to church really has no, religious affiliation at all, but yet feels spiritual. And then when you watch them raise their kids, you think, oh my gosh, they're way better parent than I am. And, yo...

Lisa Bowens, associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, earned a BS (cum laude), MSBE, and MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and an MTS and ThM from Duke Divinity School. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her recently published book, African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation (Eerdmans) is the first book devoted solely to investigating a historical trajectory of how African Americans have understood Paul and utilized his work to resist and protest injustice and racism in their own writings from the 1700s to the mid-twentieth century. Her previous book, An Apostle in Battle: Paul and Spiritual Warfare in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 (Mohr Siebeck), is a revision of her dissertation and examines Paul’s ascent to the third heaven through a cosmic/apocalyptic lens. It traces martial imagery in the letter and explores how this imagery facilitates understanding Paul’s journey as an example of spiritual warfare.  

Dayle Rounds (00:00): 

What is an African-American interpretation of Paul? Dr. Lisa Bowens is associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of the book *African-American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation. In this episode, Sushama Austin-Connor talks with Dr. Bowens about this groundbreaking work in New Testament studies. Dr. Bowens begins with a story of Howard Thurman's grandmother and her discomfort with certain readings of Paul, particularly the preaching of Paul that states that slaves must obey their masters. The story led to Bowen's interest in researching the complex history between Paul's teachings and Christianity's relationship and complicity in racism and slavery. In this conversation Dr. Bowens highlights how, despite this complex history, African Americans have still interpreted Paul's letters to protest and resist oppression. She speaks at length about several of the African American interpreters surveyed in her book, including Harriet Jacobs, the first African American to write her autobiography, and Lemuel Haynes, the first ordained African American in the United States. [percussive music begins] [water droplet sound] You are listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Sushama Austin-Connor (01:18): 

Alright, Dr. Bowens. I'm so excited to be with you this afternoon for our interview, for The Distillery, on your newest book. I wanted to start with just a general idea of this topic. Like, why this topic, what was so important about it for you? 

Lisa Bowens (01:38): 

Yeah, so, a couple of things were happening simultaneously that brought about this project. So when I was working on my dissertation -- my dissertation was on Second Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul's Ascent to the Third Heaven. And when I was working on that, I wanted to include in that project a chapter on how African Americans have interpreted that particular passage in Paul. And so within a conversation with my Doctor Father at the time, and he suggested that I do that as a separate project. And so while we were having those types of conversations, I was also attending different conferences. And at these conferences, people were lifting up the story of Howard Thurman's grandmother as the way African Americans interpreted Paul. And so I kept hearing that over and over, and I thought, is that really true? Is that really the case? So to make a long story short, the conversation I had with my Doctor Father and my attending these conferences and hearing a story of Howard Thurman's grandmother as the way African Americans interpreted all kind of converged for me. And so I said, well, let me not just concentrate on Second Corinthians 12. Let's just do an investigation and just see -- how have African Americans interpreted Paul overall. So those kinds of those two topics just kind of merged. And I just expanded my focus on Paul and African Americans' interpretation of Paul. So that's how this project came about. And it's been an interesting and formative journey for me. 

Sushama Austin-Connor (03:24): 

And I want to get to the journey and I want to get to Howard Thurman's -- the story of Howard Thurman's grandmother and how that relates to how African Americans look at Paul. So you have an idea like this, how do you get to start researching? Where do you start? What are, what are kind of the key milestones to even get started? Where do you know to look? 

Lisa Bowens (03:48): 

Yes. So one of the things that happened, I was in conversations with different scholars about my project at the time when I was just focusing on Second Corinthians 12, and different people started recommending, "Oh, you should read this person. You should look here." And so one of the things that's interesting about research is once you look at a source or two, those sources will lead you to other sources. And so one of the first sources I looked at was *God Struck Me Dead*, a very important volume in which the readers are presented with conversion stories of enslaved Africans. And so reading those stories really got me to thinking about just how powerful these narratives were. These African American people were just talking about these amazing divine encounters with God. And so, you know, reading that volume, looking through those narratives, led me to this anthology of narratives edited by Yuval Taylor. *I Was Born a Slave*. It's a couple of volumes, huge volumes, where the editor has compiled autobiographies of enslaved persons. And so looking and reading through those narratives, which were powerful, but also very difficult to read, they're very candid about what they experienced in slavery, but also very candid about their own divine encounters with God and what was preached to them by white enslavers and how these African Americans interpreted scripture for themselves. So, reading those narratives kind of led me to other sources as well. *This is in the Spirit*, edited by William Andrews, the autobiographies of Jarena Lee and Julia Foote and Zilpha Elaw. So, it's kind of like once you start that path, different other sources come up. And so I was very fortunate to be in conversation with great scholars who recommended readings, but also just once you start reading again, you just, it leads you to other sources as well. 

Sushama Austin-Connor (06:16): 

And for something of this magnitude, are you traveling a lot? Is it, I'm assuming it's a post-, I mean a pre-COVID research. 

Lisa Bowens (06:26): 

Yeah. Yeah. So I've been working on this for quite some time. So I started working on that chapter, like for my dissertation, like back in 2014 and finished the manuscript, I think I finished it in '16, '17 around that time. And then, you know, did some editing afterward, but yeah, so it took me a while to kind of go through the material, read the narratives. And one of the things that was really interesting about this whole process is that once I started, it became clear to me that there was no way I was going to be able to include all of what I wanted to include because originally the project was -- I wanted to focus on how have African Americans interpreted Paul from the 1700s all the way to the present. And that just ...

In this episode, Jim McCloskey, MDiv ’83, a lay minister and founder of Centurion, the first nonprofit dedicated to the vindication of the wrongly convicted, speaks to this question in his book, When Truth Is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted. He shares his minister-turned-prisoner-advocate experience, which inspired author John Grisham’s book, The Guardians. Listen to Jim’s astonishing story of faith, justice, and liberation and how this work provides a beacon of hope for those seeking justice in a flawed judicial system.

Jim McCloskey spent three years as a U.S. Naval Officer, including a year in Vietnam, subsequent to graduating from Bucknell University in 1964. He spent the next 12 years working for two different management consulting companies specializing in Japanese business affairs, the first in Tokyo and the second with the Hay Group in his hometown of Philadelphia. In 1979 Jim felt a call to leave the business world and enter the ministry. In 1983, upon graduating with a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and freeing an innocent man he met as a student chaplain at Trenton State Prison, Jim founded Centurion Ministries. After 35 years, although still a member of Centurion’s Board of Trustees and still managing several cases he has been working on for years, Jim retired from the active management of Centurion’s organizational affairs in May 2015. He is co-author of When Truth Is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted, a book about Centurion’s experiences with our nation’s criminal justice system. 

Dayle Rounds (00:00:00): 

Have you ever been face-to-face with the truth in such a way that you just couldn't ignore it? In this episode, you will hear from Jim McCloskey, a lay minister and founder of Centurion, the first nonprofit dedicated to freeing individuals who are wrongly incarcerated. He talks with Sushama Austin-Connor about how he met a prisoner who insisted on his innocence, and why he decided to take a year off of seminary to work full-time towards this prisoner's freedom. You will not want to miss Jim's astonishing story of faith, justice, and liberation. 

Interlude (00:00:36): 

[percussion music + water droplet sound] 

Dayle Rounds (00:00:36): 

You are listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Sushama Austin-Connor (00:00:40): 

Well, Jim, thanks so much for doing this. Princeton Seminary is obviously, for all the reasons, really excited to have this conversation with you and Continuing Education at Princeton Seminary. And me, of course, personally I'm just thrilled. And just, this is just a joy to be able to speak with you about your book and about Centurion Ministries, which means so much to the seminary and to me and to my family. 

Jim McCloskey (00:01:05): 

Well, thank you very much. So I've been looking forward to this ever since we had it scheduled with the seminary. Well, Princeton Theological Seminary has changed my life, and I might add the life of many others because it provided me with an opportunity. Although I had no idea what was around the corner of meeting the first person in whose innocence I came to believe which kicked off and inspired me to, to rather than going... ordained after I received my MDiv, which I did in 1983, to begin the work of Centurion Ministries to help free people who we believe are innocent, wrongly convicted, sentenced to life or death with pretty much no way of getting out, except for maybe our effort. 

Interlude (00:01:56): 

[water droplet sound] 

Sushama Austin-Connor (00:02:00): 

Amazing. I want to go back a little bit though, and start with life maybe right before you decided to enter seminary and going from business to seminary, what a huge deal that is. What a life changer that is. What were some of the thoughts that made you pivot from business to seminary life? 

Jim McCloskey (00:02:21): 

Well, I was 37 years old, living in the suburbs of Philadelphia and a working... employed by a management consulting firm in Philadelphia called Hay Associates, H-A-Y Associates. And my job was to build its business, its consulting business, with Japanese companies in the United States, and to eventually establish our office in Tokyo, Japan. The reason they hired me to do that was because I had spent the prior five or six years in Tokyo working for a Japanese joint venture consulting firm between American bank and the Japanese bank in aiding American firms, interested in entering the Japanese market. So I had that Japan background, so they brought me aboard. Everything was going well. Now, we're in the 1970s, from '74 to '79. I'm well in my thirties. And during that time the business was going well, I was making a good... you know, it was a nice salary position. I'm bringing in Japanese clients. But when you get underneath that surface, I was not happy with my personal life, with my conduct in my personal life. I had kind of gone off track. I was kind of like the prodigal son. And I was, for the first time in my adult life, I decided, you know, I got to start developing some spiritual element to my life 'cause that was lacking. And it was, there was a total void there. So I attended Paoli Presbyterian Church in Bailey, Pennsylvania, and the minister there, Dick Streeter, who is a Princeton Theological Seminary grad, I found his preaching compelling because this constant theme was to serve others, to wash the feet of others, particularly folks who did not have the advantages that we did in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the economic and social advantages that we did. 

Jim McCloskey (00:04:38): 

And at the same time, you know, I was hungry. The scriptures became my meat and drink rather than -- at the same time, my business aspirations were waning. I was losing interest in the business world. It wasn't real. It wasn't real to me. What became real was the truth of this, of the gospel and the scriptures. That's what was real to me. And over a period of years, slowly but surely, I was -- every Saturday, practically every Saturday night, I was in a scripture study, reading the prophets of the Old Testament and the Gospels and Paul's letters. And I saw -- this is the truth of life as I saw then. So anyway, I consulted with no one, except Dick Streeter. I didn't consult with my mother or father, although I'm very close to my family. I had a ton of friends. Because I was thinking about Dick Streeter as a minister was touching the hearts and souls of people in a transformative way, including my own. 

Jim McCloskey (00:05:51): 

I was touching nobody's heart and soul. I was touching my own pocketbook and the pocketbook of the company, but that was, that proved to be very unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. So I felt a call to follow in Dick Streeter's footsteps, go to the seminary and become an ordained, church, Presbyterian pastor. So that was what was going on within me and externally, internally and externally, that led me to go... Now I was going to go to Eastern Baptist, which would have been easier because it's only about a 20-minute ride from my house. And Dave said, no, Jim, if you're going to do this, you have to go to Princeton. That's where you're going to get the best education. And so I took his advice, sold my house on the Mainline, and came up to Princeton. One thing I did not sell was my 1976 Lincoln Continental Town Car. I just couldn't. I couldn't part with that. So I pulled up, I pulled up to Brown Hall, with my Lincoln Continental. People thought I was on the lam or something, but anyway, that's what brought me to the seminar...

In this episode, Shari Oosting sits down with author James K.A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, who sets out to speak to this question in his book, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, revealing how Augustine’s timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life.

James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University, where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. Trained as a philosopher with a focus on contemporary French thought, Smith has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual and cultural critic. An award-winning author and a widely traveled speaker, he has emerged as a thought leader with a unique gift of translation, building bridges between the academy, society, and the church.

The author of a number of influential books, Smith’s writing has also appeared in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, as well as in magazines such as America, the Christian Century, Christianity Today, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and LitHub. He serves as editor-in-chief of Image, a quarterly journal at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery.

In this episode, Sally Brown, homiletician and Elizabeth M. Engle Professor of Preaching and Worship at Princeton Theological Seminary, talks about these themes and more from her new book, Sunday’s Sermon for Monday’s World: Preaching to Shape Daring Witness, in which she shares ways preachers can help spark their hearer’s sense of divine imagination.

Sally A. Brown, PhD '01, is Princeton Seminary’s Elizabeth M. Engle Professor of Preaching and Worship. She earned an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. An ordained Presbyterian minister with more than 20 years of parish and non-parish pastoral experience prior to beginning her academic career, she continues to teach and preach in local congregations. Her academic interests include the theology and rhetoric of the cross in contemporary preaching, with attention to issues raised by feminist theology and postmodern theories of discourse; exploring the history, theology, and rhetoric of women’s preaching in a range of cultural contexts; identifying trajectories of continuity and change in worship today, with attention to the what and why of Christian worship, theologically, as well as the difference context makes in worship practices; and hermeneutical theory and constructive practical theology. She teaches preaching and worship as well as a PhD seminar in theories of interpretation and constructive practical theology.