Crackers and Grape Juice

"Sing lustily and with good courage." John Wesley wrote those words in the Hymnbook for Methodist in 1761. We at Crackers and Grape Juice take those words seriously! Therefore we decided to bring you some of our current "Quarantunes" - songs that have inspired, enlightened, and even enraged us as of recent. Here's the playlist:1. Thoughts And Prayers - Drive-By Truckers (Jason Micheli)2. Sea of Love - Langhorne Slim & Jill Andrews (Teer Hardy)3. What If I Never Get Over You - Lady A (Johanna Hartelius)4. Cowboy Take Me Away - The Chicks (Tommie Marshell)5. Moon River - Jacob Collier (David King)6. Beautiful Strangers - Kevin Morby (Taylor Mertins)

"The Lost Cause had taught me that faith, particularly faith in Jesus and going to church, was an indispensable part of what it meant to be a good person. But now that very same faith which The Lost Cause had commended was forcing a decision which would impact my past, present, and future. If I kept my faith in The Lost Cause, I would be unable to preach the gospel to the woman sitting next to me. If I wanted to share the gospel with anyone who wasn’t white, I would have to abandon the secular faith of my ancestors. The two were irreconcilable."Rev. Bryan Jarrell joins Jason and Teer to discuss the Lost Cause, statues in Richmond, and the moment his evangelical world was flipped upside down when he met the real-life consequences of the Stars and Bars.https://mbird.com/2020/06/under-robert-e-lees-shadow-growing-up-in-the-lost-cause/Before you listen, do us a solid and help out the podcast.Click over to http://www.crackersandgrapejuice.com. Click on “Support the Show.” Become a patron.For peanuts you can help us out....we appreciate it more than you can imagine.https://crackersandgrapejuice.com https://www.facebook.com/crackersnjuice https://twitter.com/crackersnjuice https://www.instagram.com/crackersandgrapejuicewww.teerhardy.comwww.jasonmicheli.org

Rev. William H. Lamar IV joins Crackers & Grape Juice to talk about his latest piece featured in Faith & Leadership: 'It's not just the coronavirus -- bad theology is killing us."The Rev. William H. Lamar IV is pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. He previously served Turner Memorial AME Church in Maryland and three churches in Florida: Monticello, Orlando and Jacksonville. He is a former managing director at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. Lamar is a graduate of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and Duke Divinity School. He is the co-host of "Can These Bones," the Faith & Leadership podcast, and can be reached on Twitter @WilliamHLamarIVhttps://faithandleadership.com/william-h-lamar-iv-its-not-just-coronavirus-bad-theology-killing-us

Jason and Teer are joined by author Tara Isabella Burton to discuss her latest opinion piece in the New York Times and new book, 'Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World.' From the publisher: "In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways."http://www.taraisabellaburton.com/https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Rites-Religions-Godless-World/dp/1541762533

Drew Hart joins Jason and Teer to discuss his forthcoming book, 'Who Will Be A Witness ' (September 2020), the ghosts of America's racist past, and what the Gospel says to us in a moment of pandemic, protest, and movement. Drew G. I. Hart is a public theologian and professor of theology at Messiah College. He has ten years of pastoral ministry experience and is the recipient of multiple awards for peacemaking. Hart attained his MDiv with an urban concentration from Missio Seminary and his PhD in theology and ethics from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences, campuses, and churches across the United States and Canada. His first book, Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism, utilizes personal and everyday stories, theological ethics, and anti-racism frameworks to transform the church's understanding and witness. https://drewgihart.com/https://twitter.com/DruHartPre-order 'Who Will Be A Witness' - https://www.amazon.com/Who-Will-Be-Witness-Deliverance/dp/1513806580

We could all use the comfort of Fred Rogers right about now. Joining this episode of the podcast is author Shea Tuttle, the author of "Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers." Mister Rogers touched the lives of many, and that is an understating of his impact. A Presbyterian minister, Fred Roger ensured that the Grace of God was shared with everyone he met, whether in person or in The Neighborhood. Yet, while extending Grace Mister Rogers also expected us to grow. Growth is what we need now, to grow out of the hate, bigotry, racism, and nationalism that plagues us today. Shea Tuttle is the author of "Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers" and co-editor of "Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice." Her essays have appeared at Greater Good Magazine, The Toast, The Other Journal, Role Reboot, and Jenny. She holds an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.Shea lives in Virginia with her family.https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7655/exactly-as-you-are.aspxhttps://www.sheatuttle.com/

What does a theologian say to young preachers in the early 1930s, at the dawn of the Third Reich?Karl Barth's lectures on preaching amidst the growing cloud of Nazism in 1932-1933 resulted in the little book, Homiletics. In it, Barth takes his students back to the fundamental questions about what preaching is and what it is for, returning again and again to the affirmation of the Godness of God, the only ground of resistance to ideological captivity.In this latest episode, Jason and Dr. Johanna talk with Bishop Will Willimon, author of Conversations with Barth on Preaching, about Barth's emergency homiletic for pandemic times.

"One major reason Christianity in America has been made into a bad public joke is our failure to rightly understand what Christianity is.”Our guest this week is Lee Camp, Professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville and host of the popular Tokens Show in Nashville. Check out his website: https://www.leeccamp.comHis latest book is Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. Fifteen propositions for changing Christianity in AmericaChristian identity is in moral and political crisis. Lee Camp writes “that one major reason Christianity in America has been made into a bad public joke is our failure to rightly understand what Christianity is.” Scandalous Witness provides a way forward. Although refusing to reduce Christianity to any partisan agenda, he reminds us that the gospel is inherently political and that we are called to be political witnesses. Camp’s provocative diagnosis is that “American hope” is a bastardized form of Christian hope. The United States is not the hope of the world nor is it a Christian nation. Rather, “American Christian values” corrupts Christianity, and partisanship mocks the true scandal of the gospel. Camp reminds us that all empires fall. By conceiving Christianity as a politic instead of a religion, we may begin to take seriously the true scandal of the gospel. We may envision new possibilities by which our gospel practices make a new world possible. Offering a robust vision of a Christian politic that exposes modern parodies of faith, Camp mixes wit, charm, and logic, challenging Christians to rethink who they are and how they participate in the modern world. In it, Camp unpacks 15 propositions:Proposition 1: History Is Not One Damn Thing after AnotherProposition 2: The End of History Has Already BegunProposition 3: American Hope Is A BastardProposition 4: Christianity Is Neither A Prostitute Nor A ChaplainProposition 5: The United States Is Not the Hope of the WorldProposition 6: The United States Was Not, Is Not, and Will Not Be a Christian NationProposition 7: How Christian Values, and the Bible, Corrupt ChristianityProposition 8: Every Empire FallsProposition 9: Christian Partisanship is Like a Fist-Fight on the TitanicProposition 10: Hostile Forces Have a Role in the Unfolding of HistoryProposition 11. Christianity Is Not a Religion; Christianity Is a PoliticProposition 12: Liberal Political Puissance Is Not the GoalProposition 13: Exemplary Political Witness Is the GoalProposition 14: Christianity Is Not Counter-CulturalPropositions 15: Christian Engagement Must Always Be Ad Hoc

Church Historian, Malcom Foley, joins us on the podcast to talk about the murder Ahmad Arbery within the context of the history of lynching in the American Church. Malcolm is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Baylor’s Department of Religion, studying the history of Christianity. His dissertation investigates African-American Christian responses to lynching from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. Malcolm earned a BA in religious studies with a second major in finance and a minor in classics from Washington University in St. Louis. He subsequently completed a Master of Divinity at Yale Divinity School, focusing on the theology of the early and medieval church. During his time there, he served Trinity Baptist Church in New Haven as a pastoral intern. He is currently the Director of Discipleship at Mosaic Waco in Waco, TX.You can find his article here: https://mereorthodoxy.com/ahmaud-arbery/?fbclid=IwAR14W_k9WUxQQfIS6IwiUJ-3YpO1it_WqGTG7bOPTYYzqlcGwiacQc41wmQ

Our guest this week is Katherine Stewart, a journalist at the New York Times. Katherine's investigative work has focused on the Religious Right and Christian Nationalism. She talks with us about the influence they have had on the Trump White House, their hostility to science, and how it has impacted the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Most recently, she is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious NationalismYou can read her article here: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-power-of-christian-nationalists-in-trump’s-america/12194914