Crackers and Grape Juice

Our guest this week is Dr. Jeffrey Pugh, Professor of Religion at Elon University. Jeffrey is the author of books such as The Devil’s Ink, The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the End Times, and Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times. It’s his expertise on Bonhoeffer we turn to in this episode, asking him to reflect on the border crisis, how Christians are to discern when they’re in a “biblical moment” that calls for witness and resistance, the need for another Barmen-type confession.

Friend of the podcast, Thomas Lynch, rejoins us to talk about his new book, Whither and When: On Lives and Living. Thomas is an undertaker and poet whose work has garnered numerous awards, including the National Book Award for his collection of essays The Undertaking: Notes on the Dismal Trade.

For this episode, we talked with Joel Goza who is a Duke Divinity School alumni and now works as a church planter and for a non-profit in the 9th Ward. His new book is an important one, especially on Independence Day weekend. It’s titled America’s Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics.

For the fourth year in a row, the podcast posse hosted a live pubcast to kick-off annual conference, this time at Ballast Point Brewery in Roanoke where we had over 200 folks attend. Our guests were Jeff and Steve Mullinix, who shared with us their story of growing up in the closet, attending Bob Jones University, and eventually finding one another and marrying. Jeff is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and Steve is a teacher. As Steve told us in an earlier podcast, “I am incompatible with Christian teaching because of my relationship with another man; his name is Adam.” If you’d like to get your own “Incompatible” glass that we passed out to partcipants that night, go to our website www.crackersandgrapejuice.com to order your own.

Friend of the podcast, the wild and crazy Dr. David Fitch is back to talk about his latest book, “Us vs. Them: “Freedom from a Faith that Feeds on Making Enemies.” Fitch talks with us about how ideological functions to shape our reading of scripture, how we can read scripture locally as community, and how we discern where God is leading us in a way that avoids cultural antagonisms.

Jason and Taylor sat down with Joshua Retterer to talk about the late Robert Farrar Capon and his work. Their conversation touches on a number of subjects including eschatological nerve, an affair with a happy ending, laughing in church, and being overwhelmed with morality.

Fresh on the heels of his Twitter face-off with Jerry Falwell Jr, Jason talked with Winfeld Bevins about his his new book Ever Ancient, Ever New. Actually, no, Jason talked to him months ago, before General Conference even and we’re posting it now to take advantage of the social media scrum. Bevins is an Anglican and a professor of church-planting at Asbury Seminary in the Bluegrass State.

She’s back! Friend of the podcast, Christy Thomas joins us to reflect on where the United Methodist Church is at in its present moment somewhere on the timeline between divorce and reconciliation. Christy is a retired United Methodist pastor from Texas, journalist, and blogger at The Thoughtful Pastor.

Thomas McKenzie is a church-planting Anglican priest at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s also the author of the Anglican Way and a recent Lenten devotional on the Desert Fathers. He also knows, as few seem to know, that Battlestar Galactica is a far superior show to Game of Thrones.

In this episode, Jason talks with Amy Laura Hall of Duke University about her upcoming work on muscular Christianity, her most recent book “Laughing at the Devil,” Julian of Norwich, and their mutual affection for Stan the Man.