Theology Live

Our guest this episode is writer, teacher, and Episcopal priest, the Rev. Katherine Bush. Katherine is a lifelong Memphian, as well as a graduate of Rhodes College and Virginia Theological Seminary. She has served parishes in the Diocese of West Tennessee, and currently works as the Chaplain at St. Mary's Episcopal School. This evening we will reflect on the role of poetry as it relates to our current political, social, and theological moment. In particular we will discuss poems related to the themes highlighted by Wendell Berry's Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, and his plea to practice resurrection.

This episode was recorded on April 12, 2018 which marked Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day. We welcomed guest Micah Greenstein, Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel in Memphis. Micah has served Temple Israel for 26 years, 16 of those years as its Senior Rabbi. We reflect on the importance of Yom HaShoa, particularly as it relates to our current political and social climate, as well as the presence of rising antisemitism in Europe and America.

Our Guest this episode is the Rev. Becca Stevens. Becca is the founder and president of Thistle Farms, the largest social enterprise in the United States run by survivors of human trafficking and the commercial sex trade. She is also the author of 13 books and works as an Episcopal priest and chaplain at St. Augustine's Chapel in Nashville.

Our guest this episode is the Rev. Winnie Varghese. Winnie currently serves as the Priest for Justice and Reconciliation at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City. Winnie is the author of Church Meets World, Editor of What We Shall Become, a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, and is a leading voice in The Episcopal Church, particularly around issues of social justice.

[update: on December 20, 2017 the Confederate statues discussed in this episode were removed from two parks in Memphis.] Join us as we talk to Tami Sawyer about Take 'em Down 901, the movement for the removal of two Confederate statues from public parks in Memphis. Tami is a writer, speaker, activist, and the Director of Diversity and Cultural Competence with Teach For America Memphis. She is currently running for Shelby County Commissioner in District 7.

Our guest for this episode is the Rev. Virzola Law, Senior Pastor of Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. In this, Rev. Law's second appearance on the podcast, Meredith interviews her on the legacy of beloved community, a concept espoused by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which amplifies the work of non-violence and reconciliation during the Civil Rights era, with a vision toward a more peaceable future.

Our guest for this episode is the Rev. Dr. Andre Johnson, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Memphis, Lecturer at Memphis Theological Seminary, Senior Pastor of Gifts of Life Ministries, and the founder and managing editor of the Rhetoric, Race, and Religion Blog. Join us as we discuss the intersection of theology and race, focusing on the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and the work he and others are doing here in Memphis with Take Em Down 901.

On this special episode of Theology Live, incoming host Meredith Day takes an opportunity to turn interviewer into interviewee. Listen as the Rev. Broderick Greer speaks to us about his religious upbringing, his movement towards the priesthood, and the stories that shape and sustain his spiritual quest.

In this first episode of Theology Live's third season, Father Broderick is joined by Mike McHargue, author and host of The Liturgists Podcast and Ask Science Mike. Mike helps us probe the complex dimensions of Mystery, Science, and Christian faith.

Listen in as Dr. Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University Oxford, discusses the Trinity in the context of the cosmos, closing out season two of Theology Live.

Tied to Memphis forever is the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 39 year old black Baptist minister and civil rights activist on April 4, 1968. Less present in many of our memories, though, is the Dr. King of April 4, 1967, the MLK who preached against the triplet realities of racism, militarism, and impoverishment at New York City’s Riverside Church. Terri Lee Freeman, president of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, joins us to help unpack the "1967 King".

Called the "Queen of All Feasts" by theologians and liturgists alike, the Great Vigil of Easter gathers the whole sweep of the Church Year into one liturgy, highlighting the long record of God's saving deeds throughout history.

Good Friday is singular in its ability to gather humanity's desperations and hopes into one day. Listen in as we explore both on history's darkest day.

On this special edition of Theology Live, Father Broderick invites listeners to enter the mystery and glory of the Triduum, beginning with Maundy Thursday. In that liturgy, worshipers wash each others' feet and recall Jesus' final meal with his friends. In it, he models for the world how God's countercultural reign draws us toward self-donation, not domination. Join us tomorrow for a reflection on Good Friday and Saturday for a meditation on the Great Vigil of Easter.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was martyred in Memphis on April 4, 1968, while in town to support the contentious sanitation workers' strike. Throughout the strike, Clayborn Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church served as a nerve center for demonstrators and other activists. On February 8, 2017, Theology Live was held at Clayborn Temple. That evening, Mrs. Ephie Johnson graced the gathering with her rendition of "May the Work I've Done", a standard song of the Black Church. The TL saw fit to share Ephie's rendition with our listening audience as a tribute to Dr. King's legacy on the 49th anniversary of his martyrdom and as a reminder that our work toward inhabiting God's just future begins now.

This month's guest is the Rev. Faye London, Interfaith Outreach Coordinator for SisterReach, a Memphis-based grassroots Reproductive Justice Organization. As an advocate for Black women, Faye seeks to foster an understanding of Black women’s bodies as fully participating in God’s sacred, beloved and good creation and of women’s God-granted competence and wisdom to exercise full authority over them. Open your Bible to Exodus 1 where she begins her illuminating reproductive justice Bible study.

In this episode, the Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, Ph. D., discusses the black body as a "theological problem", the future of the Black Church, and her current womanist theological scholarship. The only womanist theological ethicist on the Yale University Divinity School faculty, Dr. Turman authored Toward a Womanist Ethic of Incarnation: Black Bodies, the Black Church and the Council of Chalcedon, the first book-length womanist treatment of the conciliar tradition.

“This world is pregnant with God,” said Blessed Angela of Foligno. This quote comes to us in rich and new ways as we journey through Advent, the days leading up to the Feast of the Nativity - Christmas. Days in which we hear prophets warn, coax, and encourage. Days in which - at least in the northern hemisphere - hours of darkness outweigh hours of light. And yet, we gather on nights like this one because somewhere deep in our bones we’ve been convinced that new possibilities lurk just beneath the surface. Join Dr. Emily Holmes, theologian and professor at Christian Brothers University, as she walks us through what these possibilities meant for medieval Christian women.

Every four years, the United States of America holds a presidential election, putting a number of ideas, ideals, personalities, and historical trajectories on a given ballot. On November 8, 2016, that tradition continued with the election of Donald John Trump, Sr. of New York. Listen in as ethnographer and professor Dr. Zandria Robinson describes what she heard - culturally, racially, socially - in the election season and results.

After pondering about the relative silence of White Christians in the latest spate of high-profile police killings of black Americans, the Rev. Dr. André Johnson took to Twitter and began #whitechurchquiet. In the weeks and months to follow, a conversation about racism and white theology was sparked. Listen in as Dr. Johnson offers a detailed account of this powerful hashtag.

In this first installment of "Listener Mail", Father Broderick addresses two questions posed by a Theology Live listener; one about sexual ethics and another about the role of racism in theology. Margaret Farley's "Just Love" is cited in the sexual ethics response: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Love-Framework-Christian-Sexual/dp/0826429246/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1475595417&sr=8-6&keywords=just+love and James Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" is cited in the second: https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Lynching-Tree-James-Cone/dp/1626980055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475595481&sr=8-1&keywords=the+cross+and+the+lynching+tree. Please pose your questions at the hashtag #TheologyLive or send them to Father Broderick at broderick@gracestlukes.org.

"[W]hen Anglicanism is at its best, its liturgy, its poetry, its music and its life can create a world of wonder in which it is very easy to fall in love with God,” wrote Episcopal priest and theologian Urban T. Holmes III. This quote took Theology Live to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art where its executive director, Dr. Emily Ballew Neff, discusses the intersection of art and theology, specifically how Yinka Shonibare MBE’s four sculptures, "Rage of the Ballet Gods," touches on pagan mythology, globalization, dance, migration, violence and climate change. Please find a visual from the evening here: https://www.901theology.com/blog/episode9visual.

"What makes us Protestant should also make us anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-heteronormative," says the Rev. Dr. Courtney Pace, a statement that stands over and against many of the ways Christians use racism, sexism, and heterosexism to oppress others. In this final episode of Season 1 of Theology Live, listen in as Dr. Pace links the ways in which revivalism, race, and gender have played out in the Church's histories and how the impacts Christians today.

On this special episode of Theology Live, we share the Question and Answer segment from the Rev. Janae Pitts-Murdock's conversation on black women and/in the Bible.

“African-American women are not newcomers to biblical interpretation,” says Dr. Nyasha Junior in her book An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation. For centuries, black women have read, improvised, preached, and riffed off of biblical texts; texts which have often been used to silence, erase, and oppress them. Listen in as the Rev. Janae Pitts-Murdock discusses black women in/and the Bible.

Religious extremism doesn't happen over night. Almost no one notices it's happening when it's happening. Join Rabbi Katie Bauman as she discusses how people of faith and conscience might resist the lure of extremism.

A holy Lent is not necessarily a burdensome Lent. For those who observe the forty day ritual fast leading up to the Great Vigil of Easter, it is a time of self-examination, penitence, and grace. Join Father Auggie DeArmond as he explores the potential this holy season holds to bear fruit in the lives of the baptized.

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it,” says scholar and storyteller, Dr. Brene Brown. “Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable.” Listen in as the Rev. Virzola Law, senior pastor of Lindenwood Christian Church, discusses a theology of human vulnerability and divine strength.

"We need all the stories we can get," says the Reverend Katherine Bush in this episode of Theology Live. Listen in as she explores how the intersection of literature and theology reveals the ways in which we are loved, cherished, and are in need of broader, deeper connection with one another.

On July 13, 2013, in the wake of George Zimmerman's acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrise Cullors proclaimed, "Black lives matter," launching a movement. Listen as the Rev. Dr. Andre Johnson discusses how that phrase has transformed how he theologizes in the public square.

With cultural challenges like climate change, gentrification, militarization of law enforcement, and multiple foreign conflicts, why should Christian people be concerned with eschatology? Join Pastor Jonathan McIntosh as he discusses what he sees as a trajectory of generative urbanism throughout Bible narratives.