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Jason Michelli: Chris Green is back on the podcast to (once again) talk about Robert Jenson and Stanley Hauerwas but— really— he’s here to talk about a new book he has for your journey this year through the season of light, Lent. That's right. Chris wants to help you understand Lent as an enlightening time. His great book is entitled, Being Transfigured. Chris is…Professor of Public Theology—Southeastern University (Lakeland, FL) Teaching Pastor—Sanctuary Church (Tulsa, OK) Director—St Anthony Institute of Theology & Philosophy.
Tommie Marshell: “I sometimes catch the atheist flu”

Jonathan Tran joins the podcast to talk about his latest book, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism.

About the book:
ny serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. There are two contemporary approaches to antiracist theory and practice. The first emphasizes racial identity to the exclusion of political economy, making racialized life in America illegible. This approach's prevalence, in the academy and beyond, now rises to the level of established doctrine. The second approach views racial identity as the function of a particular political economy--what is called “racial capitalism>--and therefore analytically subordinates racial identity to political economy.

Jonathan Tran develops arguments in favor of this second approach. He does so by means of an extended analysis of two case studies: a Chinese migrant settlement in the Mississippi Delta (1868-1969) and the Redeemer Community Church in the Bayview/Hunters Point section of San Francisco (1969-present). While his analysis is focused on particular groups and persons, he uses it to examine more broadly racial capitalism's processes and commitments at the sites of their structural and systemic unfolding. In pursuing a research agenda that pushes beyond the narrow confines of racial identity, Tran reaches back to trusted modes of analysis that have been obscured by the prevailing antiracist orthodoxy and proposes reframing antiracism in terms of a theologically salient account of political economy.

Jonathan Tran is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baylor University where he holds the George W. Baines Chair of Religion.

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Three friends, students, and colleagues of Jim Nestingen, who recently died, join us for today's episode. Jim was a well-known Reformation scholar at Luther Seminary with the heart of a preacher and pastor. Our (return) guests are Rolf Jacobson, of Luther Seminary, Ken Jones, of Grand View Univerity, and Mockingbird friend, Adam Morton of the University of Nottingham. They share memories of Jim, why folks should look this fellow up today, the value of cross-denominational friendships, and the relationship of the academy to the Church.

The intro story from Jim Nestingen is from 1517's Thinking Fellows Podcast. Check it out: https://www.1517.org/podcast-overview/absolution

Our guest today is Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Professor of New Testament at Campbell University. Her new book is Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims.

About the book:

Scapegoats are innocent victims who have experienced blame and violence at the hands of society. René Girard proposes that the Gospels present Jesus as a scapegoat whose innocent death exposes how humans have always created scapegoats. This revelation should have cured societal scapegoating, yet those who claim to live by the Gospels have missed that message. They continue to scapegoat and remain blind to the suffering of scapegoats in modern life.Christians today tend to read the New Testament as victors, not as victims. The teachings and actions of Jesus thus lose much of their subversive significance. The Gospels become one harmonized story about individual salvation rather than distinct representations of Jesus's revolutionary work on behalf of victims. Scapegoats revisits the Gospel narratives with the understanding that they tell scapegoats' stories, and that through those stories the kingdom of God is revealed. Bashaw goes beyond Girard's arguments to show that Jesus's whole public ministry (not only his death) combats the marginalization of victims. These scapegoat stories work together to illuminate an essential truth of the Gospels--that Jesus modeled a reality in which victims become survivors and the marginalized become central to the kingdom.

Our guest today is Chris E.W. Green, author of The End is Music: A Companion to Robert W. Jenson’s Theology. Christ is Professor of Public Theology at Southeastern University (Lakeland, FL), Teaching Pastor at Sanctuary Church (Tulsa, OK) and Director of the St Anthony Institute of Theology & Philosophy.
Robert Jenson has been praised by Stanley Hauerwas, David Bentley Hart, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and others as one of the most creative and important contemporary theologians. But his work is daunting for many, both because of its conceptual demands and because of Jenson's unusual prose style. This book is an attempt to give Jenson the kind of hearing that puts his creativity and significance on display, and allows newcomers to and old friends of his theology the opportunity to hear it afresh.

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Our guest to close out the season of Advent is friend of the podcast, Matthew Milliner, Professor of Art History at Wheaton College. His new book is Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon. Mother of the Lamb tells the remarkable story of a Byzantine image that emerged from the losing side of the Crusades. Called the Virgin of the Passion in the East and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the West, the icon has expanded beyond its Byzantine origins to become one of the most pervasive images of our time. It boasts multiple major shrines on nearly every continent and is reflected in every epoch of art history since its origin, even making an appearance at the Olympics in 2012. Matthew Milliner first chronicles the story of the icon's creation and emergence in the immediate aftermath of the Third Crusade, whereupon the icon became a surprising emblem of defeat, its own fame expanding in inverse proportion to Christendom's political contraction. Originally born as a Christian response to the Christian violence of the Crusades, it marked the moment when Mary's ministry of suffering love truly began. Having traced the icon's origin and ubiquity, Milliner teases out the painting's theological depth, and continues the story of the icon's evolution and significance from its origins to the present day. As the story of the icon moves well beyond Byzantine art history, both temporally and thematically, it engages religion, politics, contemporary art, and feminist concerns at once. Always, though, the icon exemplifies dignity in suffering, a lesson that--through this image--Byzantium bequeathed to the wider world. Encapsulating eleven centuries of development of the mourning Mary in Byzantium, the Virgin of the Passion emerges as a commendable icon of humility, a perennial watchword signaling the perils of imagined political glory. The Virgin of the Passion, emblemizing political humility, the powerful agency of women, and the value of inter-Christian and extra-Christian concord, is an exemplary Marian image for the fledgling twenty-first century.