The Classical Ideas Podcast

Latest Episodes:

EP 340: Becoming Neighbors w/Amar Peterman Jan 22, 2026

Show notes

Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. His writing and research have been featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Christian Century,The Fetzer Institute, TheBerkley Forum, and The Anxious Bench. He also publishes regularly on his Substack, This Common Life. Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local is his first book.

Read "Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local": https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802884121/becoming-neighbors/

Visit: https://www.amarpeterman.com/amar-site/meet-amar

Subscribe to "This Common Life" on Substack: https://amardpeterman.substack.com

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org

EP 339: Angela of Foligno and the Lepers of Our Time w/Dr. Mac Loftin Jan 14, 2026

Show notes

Mac Loftin is a lecturer on theology at Harvard Divinity School. This essay was adapted from his forthcoming book, "In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance" and was produced in partnership with The Narrative Project, an initiative of The Christian Century.

Read: How immigrants, student protesters and Muslims became the lepers of our time

View: In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance

Visit: Sacred Writes

EP 338: Resting Beside Living Waters W/LJ Williams Jan 05, 2026

Show notes

LJ Williams (they/she) is a queer African and Jewish ritualist and writer, pursuing an MDiv from Starr King School for The Ministry with a certificate in Entheogenic Justice Companioning. They are a longtime Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism community member, and served as a coordinator of a Chicago BLUUHaven. They were a Worship Learning Fellow at the Church of Larger Fellowship (2021-2023) and she received a B.A. from University of Illinois in Global Studies and Environmental Sustainability. She currently serves as board president of Young Adult Revival Network. She is interested in the intersections of land, religion, and revolutionary movements, embodied ritual and queer bodies. She loves arts, science fiction, and her family.

Follow LJ Williams: https://kumibylj.substack.com/?r=1gbn0e&utm_campaign=pub-share-checklist

Follow Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-august

EP 337: Mappila Muslim Matrilineal Houses: Islam, Architecture and the Indian Ocean w/Azna Parveen Dec 11, 2025

Show notes

Azna Parveen is a PhD scholar in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the socio-cultural translations of Islam in the built environment through the perspective of oceanic trade along the Indian Ocean littorals, focussing on Malabar Coast of Kerala, India. Trained in architecture with a specialisation in Urban Design, she has previously worked as an architect and an academician. She was also part of a multidisciplinary team awarded a grant by India Foundation for Art to study the spatial and sensorial landscape of Kayalpattinam. Beyond academia, she is a published illustrator and storyteller, leading heritage walks independently and with organisations (past collaborators include Kochi-Muziris Biennale) to encourage inclusive and interdisciplinary conversations about architectural and urban histories and sustainable futures for heritage.

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-august

EP 336: Deirdre Jonese Austin on Dance and Sacredness Nov 18, 2025

Show notes

Deirdre Jonese Austin (she/her) is a writer, womanist minister, and Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer raised in the South and in the Protestant Church. Her work, ministry, and research develop out of her own experience and explore topics at the intersection of faith, race, gender and sexuality, and justice. Jonese has a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University's Candler School of Theology. She is currently a PhD candidate at Duke University in Cultural Anthropology, pursuing certificates in Feminist and African and African American Studies. Her doctoral project explores how Black women dancers in the U.S. South cultivate the sacred in their relationships with their own bodies and sexualities, the divine, and other dancers, at Black churches and at pole-dance and fitness studios.

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-august

EP 335: Philo and the Therapeuts w/Dr. Jimmy Hoke Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

Jimmy Hoke is a freelance scholar whose uses their research, writing, and teaching to enact genuine change. Their work engages and creates queer, trans, and feminist approaches to the New Testament and Early Christianity. They are the author of Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God?, which reconstructs how queer wo/men engaged with impulses in Paul's letters. They are the Treasurer of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc. and teach courses at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Their current research and writing projects include exploring asexuality in first-century Judaism and Christianity, exploring the intersections of queerness and disability in the gospels, and reexamining the rhetoric of "sluttiness" in Paul's letters.

Visit Dr. Jimmy Hoke online: https://www.jimmyhoke.com/

Visit Sacred Writes online: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer

EP 334: Womanist Theology w/Samantha Carwyn Sep 10, 2025

Show notes

Samantha Carwyn is a graduate of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, where she earned a Master of Divinity with a concentration in Social Transformation and Church Leadership. Her thesis, Finding Sacred Inherent Worth Despite Adultification & Misogynoir, explores the intersections of gender, race, and the societal expectations placed on Black women. She is currently in care for ordination with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. In her community, Samantha engages in transformative resistance through education, storytelling, and artivism. As a public theologian, she is committed to building bridges between the church, academia, and everyday people to cultivate meaningful conversations.

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer

Visit Samantha Carwyn: https://carwyncollaboration.com/home/

EP 333: Salvadoran-Middle Eastern Resistance and Shafiq Handal w/Dr. Amy Fallas Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

Dr. Amy Fallas is a PhD in History at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in History from Yale and her research examines religious difference, charitable networks, and historical memory in the Middle East. Her work has been supported by the American Research Center in Egypt, the American Society for Church History, the Orthodox Christian Studies Center among others. She is the Associate Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and serves on the steering committees of the History of Christianity and Middle Eastern Christianity units of the American Academy of Religion. Her scholarship appears in History Compass and Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations and her essays are published in the Washington Post, Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, the Revealer, Sojourners and more. On this episode, we mostly discuss her article Brothers in the Resistance, research in Lebanon about connections between Latin America and the Middle East, titled Hermanos fi al-Muqawama, She is based in Beirut.

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/carpenter-cohort-2025-jan

Visit Amy Fallas: https://www.amyfallas.com/

EP 332: Nonbinary Biblical Readings of Mordecai and Beyond w/Dr. Esther Brownsmith Aug 21, 2025

Show notes

Esther Brownsmith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Dayton. Her first monograph, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (Routledge, 2024), was awarded the AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. She is also editor-in-chief of Unruly Books: Rethinking Ancient and Academic Imaginations of Religious Texts (Bloomsbury, 2025), and her recent publications examine the book of Esther in the light of fan fiction studies, queer theory, and affect theory. Her research focuses on the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the cultural and literary norms that make them so resonant. Her latest project applies Sara Ahmed's "feminist killjoy" to the women of the Hebrew Bible, using biblical stories of unhappy women as a model for modern unhappy readers.

Follow Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer

Follow Esther Brownsmith on Bluesky @brownsmith.bsky.social You can get your copy of Trans Biblical directly from the publisher right here.

EP 331: Radical Antiquity w/Dr. Christopher Zeichmann Aug 12, 2025

Show notes

Christopher B. Zeichmann (he/they) is a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, who specializes in the study of the New Testament. His research focuses on a variety of questions related to sexuality, the Roman military, and the early Jesus tradition. His books include Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings (Pluto, 2025), Queer Readings of the Centurion at Capernaum: Their History and Politics (SBL Press, 2022), and The Roman Army and the New Testament (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018).

Visit Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/2025-carpenter-cohorts-summer

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