Theology on Tap Chattanooga

Latest Episodes:

The Trinity & Trauma-Safe Churches with Dr. Preston Hill Apr 28, 2023

Show notes

"The Trinity & Trauma-Safe Churches" with Dr. Preston Hill

Whether we realize it or not, our churches are full of those who have experienced and are living with the aftereffects of horror and trauma, whether as survivors, carers, or perpetrators. The central question of this book is simple: How can our churches become open to the Trinity such that they are trauma-safe environments for everyone? How can we join the triune God to become trauma-safe churches? While the reality is bleak, the church can dare to hope for healing because of the reality of God and the body of Christ. Using the metaphor of the dawn of Sunday, the authors propose a double witness to trauma that straddles the boundary between the deadly silence of Holy Saturday and the joy of Easter Sunday. While witnessing loss and lament we can also be open to the possibility of new life through God’s trinitarian works of safety and recovery in the church. This involves adopting some basic principles and practices of trauma safety that every pastor, congregation, and layperson can begin using today. Creating trauma-safe churches is possible through God the Trinity.

Preston Hill (PhD, MLitt, University of St Andrews) is Assistant Professor of Integrative Theology at Richmont Graduate University, where he serves as the Co-Chair of Integration and the Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program. His doctoral research offers the first book-length study of Christ’s descent into hell in the theology of John Calvin. His current research focuses on reformation theology, science, and mental health. His latest publications include Dawn of Sunday: The Trinity and Trauma-Safe Church (Cascade, 2021), and a forthcoming volume entitled Trauma Theology: Perspectives on Christ and the Wounds That Remain (Fortress Academic).

Making Christ Real: The Ascension in Our Everyday with Dr. Sam Youngs Mar 15, 2023

Show notes

The social and political life of the church is in upheaval, as the currents of our polarized culture invade the Christian witness from both within and without. We desperately need a re-centering on the radical work of Jesus, even if this means ceding our securities and curating a holy suspicion of the world's power structures. In this lecture and in his new book, Making Christ Real, Dr. Sam Youngs argues that the ascension of Christ is an untapped resource in this regard, with invigorating implications for both spiritual formation and cultural engagement. Come and hear a new and powerful theological rendering on the meaning of the ascension for our everyday experience in difficult times.

Samuel J. Youngs serves as an associate professor of Christian studies at Bryan College, adjunct professor of theology and church history at Richmont Graduate University, and the Dean of the Mission School of Ministry. He completed his PhD under Paul Janz and Oliver Davies at King’s College London. His first book, The Way of the Kenotic Christ, was a major English monograph on the Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, and he has published on interreligious topics, theology and psychology, the thought of Martin Luther, the Old Saxon Heliand, natural theology, narrative pedagogy, kenosis, and staurology.

Lecture begins at 2:54

Q&A begins at 49:10

"Space, Sound, & the Body in American Evangelicalism" Dr. Tucker Adkins Nov 15, 2022

Show notes

"Space, Sound, & the Body in American Evangelicalism" with Dr. Tucker Adkins

Evangelicals are perhaps the most discussed group in American Christianity, but such conversations often revolve around two distinctions: politics and theology. Evangelicals vote this way, and evangelicals believe these things. In this way, we typically cast evangelicalism as longstanding, identifiable sets of ideological and doctrinal convictions that steer conservative voting blocs and vaguely underpin “born-again” belief. By contrast, this lecture urges us to consider how the physical world—especially space, sound, and the body—have always distinguished so-called “evangelicals” from other Christians in the United States.

Paying particular attention to its early American figures, this presentation asserts that “evangelicalism” first took shape through revivalists’ manipulation of their bodies, voices, and terrain. Black, white, and indigenous people who received the “new birth” made their movement legible on the landscape, by expelling “frightfull Shrieks & groans” during their preachers’ cutting sermons, gathering outside of consecrated church spaces, and succumbing to uncontrollable bodily “exercises.” By foregrounding examples of evangelicals’ physical, lived religious experiences, we find that their controversial choreography of space, sound, and the body—not just what they believed—radically redefined what it meant to be Protestant in America.

Dr. Tucker Adkins teaches religious history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, MI. His focus is on religious experience and lay spirituality in the early modern British Atlantic world.

A Christian Critique of Christian Nationalism with David Ritchie Sep 06, 2022

Show notes

What if we understood nationalism as a religion instead of an ideology? What if nationalism is more spiritual than it is political? Several Christian thinkers have rightly recognized nationalism as a form of idolatry. In this TOT lecture, David A. Ritchie , author of the book Why Do the Nations Rage?, will argue that nationalism is inherently demonic as well. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of scholarship on nationalism and the biblical theology behind Paul’s doctrine of “powers,” Ritchie's lecture will uncover how the impulse behind nationalism is as ancient as the tower of Babel and as demonic as the worship of Baal. Moreover, when compared to Christianity, Ritchie will show that nationalism is best understood as a rival religion that bears its own distinctive (and demonically inspired) false gospel, which seeks to both imitate and distort the Christian gospel.

David A. Ritchie serves as the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Christian Church and an Instructor of Religion at West Texas A&M University. In his scholarly research, Ritchie interrogated how nationalist movements operate less like a political ideology and more like a spiritually-charged religion. This research culminated in the writing of his book Why Do the Nations Rage? The Demonic Origin of Nationalism, published in 2022 by Wipf & Stock Publishers. This fall he will be presenting a paper at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting entitled “Sketching a Christology of Nationalism: How Nationalism Utilizes Messianic Characterizations to Elicit Spiritual Devotion and Religious Affection.” Ritchie is a highly engaged leader in the West Texas community, serving on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations and ministries, including the Refugee Language Project and the Redeemer Network. David is married to Kate, and together they live in Amarillo, Texas, with their three sons, Solomon, Samuel, and Simon Peter.

"Who Will Cast the First Stone? Christianity & the Death Penalty" with Rev. Stacy Rector Jun 17, 2022

Show notes

"Who Will Cast the First Stone: Christianity & the Death Penalty" with Rev. Stacy Rector.

Rev. Rector is the Executive Director of Tennesseans For Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an organization working toward the end of the death penalty in Tennessee. She is the Associate Pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville and has served as a spiritual advisor for men on death row.

In the lecture we watched a video from Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. You can watch that video on their website at tennesseedeathpenalty.org.

"Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy" with Dr. Mary McCampbell May 06, 2022

Show notes

Anyone reading comments in online spaces is frequently confronted with a collective cultural loss of empathy. This profound deficit is directly related to the inability to imagine the life and circumstances of the other. Our malnourished capacity for empathy is connected to an equally malnourished imagination. In order to truly love and welcome others, we need to exercise our imaginations, to see our neighbors more as God sees them than as confined by our own inadequate and ungracious labels. We need stories that can convict us about our own sins of omission or commission, enabling us to see the beautiful, complex world of our neighbors as we look beyond ourselves.

In this lecture, Dr. Mary McCampbell will look at how narrative art–whether literature, film, television, or popular music–expands our imaginations and, in so doing, emboldens our ability to love our neighbors as ourselves.

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Dr. Mary McCampbell is an associate professor of humanities at Lee University where she regularly teaches courses on modern and contemporary fiction, film, and popular culture. A native Tennessean, she completed her doctorate at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK); her research focused on the relationship between contemporary fiction, late capitalist culture, and the religious impulse. Her academic and public-facing publications span the worlds of literature, film, and popular music, and this interdisciplinary focus is also present in her new book, Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy (Fortress Press: April 5, 2022). You can find her writing in various faith and culture publications such as Image Journal, The Other Journal, Relevant Magazine, Christianity Today, Christ and Pop Culture, and The Curator. She has been one of the organizers of Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Music since 2009, and she frequently speaks and teaches on the theological significance of popular music, film, and fiction. Mary was the Summer 2014 Writer-in-Residence at L’Abri Fellowship in Greatham, England and periodically lectures at English L’Abri. She was a Scholar-in-Residence at Regent Theological College, Vancouver, for the 2018 winter term.
You can read Mary’s writing and find out about her new book at marywmccampbell.com.

"In Search of Healing: Trauma In Light of Theology" with Dr. Preston HIll Apr 08, 2022

Show notes

The church today is increasingly traumatized and traumatizing. An endless stream of "scandals" and "moral failing" of major church leaders is leaving many Christians disenchanted, disillusioned, and deconstructing their faith. There are so many survivors in our churches today suffering in silence. They carry wounds hidden in shame among communities that feel overwhelmed and unprepared to offer effective trauma-care. Where do we go from here? How can we create churches that are trauma-safe? This presentation will sketch some basic principles and practices of a trauma-safe church which are made possible by the triune God of the gospel and the blessed incarnation of Jesus Christ who has promised to never leave his people come hell or high water. Our theology is simply too good not to be trauma-safe. By seeing trauma more clearly in the light of basic Christian theology, we can begin immediately to be who we are, namely, Christ's very own body, the trauma-safe church.

Preston Hill (PhD, MLitt, University of St Andrews) is Assistant Professor of Integrative Theology at Richmont Graduate University. His doctoral thesis offers the first monograph-length exposition of the place of Christ’s descent into hell in the theology of John Calvin. Dr. Hill is the co-author of the forthcoming book "Dawn of Sunday: The Tinity and Trauma-Safe Church" that explores the themes of this lecture in depth.

"When Doctrine Hurts: Theology In Light of Trauma" with Dr. Sam Youngs Mar 18, 2022

Show notes

As we increasingly attend to the ongoing mental health crisis, the church must raise its awareness of both psychology and trauma. Certainly, a well-informed church can contribute to meaningful healing in these contexts. But the church has also, historically, been a significant factor in traumatization. Christian teaching itself has contributed to psychological wounding on many fronts, and the church will struggle to become fully trauma-informed until it examines this reality. This presentation will discuss the dynamic interplay that can arise between religious doctrine and traumatizing circumstances, in the hope that such awareness will enable wisdom, compassion, and repentance.

Samuel J. Youngs serves as an associate professor of Christian studies at Bryan College, adjunct professor of theology and church history at Richmont Graduate University, and the Dean of the Mission School of Ministry. He completed his PhD under Paul Janz and Oliver Davies at King’s College London. His first book, The Way of the Kenotic Christ, was a major English monograph on the Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, and he has published on inter-religious topics, theology and psychology, the thought of Martin Luther, the Old Saxon Heliand, natural theology, narrative pedagogy, kenosis, and staurology.

Labor & Liturgy with Dr. Matthew Kaemingk Nov 18, 2021

Show notes

The modern divide between Sunday worship and Monday work has a devastating effect on the health, vibrancy, and effectiveness of Christian worship in the sanctuary and work in the world. Drawing on years of marketplace ministry and biblical research, Rev. Dr. Matthew Kaemingk will lead an evening exploration of the deep biblical connections between worship and work. In this, he will offer practical steps for how Christians in the marketplace can begin to form deeper and more transformative connections between their daily work and worship.

Dr. Matthew Kaemingk is a "pastor for professionals." He has served alongside marketplace leaders in a number of faith and work ministries in New York City, Seattle, and Houston. Dr. Kaemingk is the coauthor of Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy an innovative new book exploring how Christians might form deeper and more meaningful connections between their worship of God in the sanctuary and their daily work in the world. He holds a PhD in Christian ethics and teaches public theology at Fuller Theological Seminary where he was recently appointed to the Richard John Mouw Chair of Faith and Public Life. Dr. Kaemingk serves within the De Pree Center for Christian Leadership as both a scholar in residence and an instructor within Fuller's doctoral program on faith, work, and the marketplace.

Presented in partnership with the Chattanooga Institute for Faith, Work, & Culture.

Production note: Audio levels recorded quite low, Q&A begins at the 49' mark.

"The Saddest Stories Are Best Told Slowly: When White Supremacy Hits Home" with Dr. Justin Phillips Nov 03, 2021

Show notes

When the national protest over police brutality reached its apex in 2020, many white evangelicals struggled to understand or enter into the modern conversations on race, racism, and racial equity. Justin Phillips claims in his new book Know Your Place that their inherited world had not prepared them for that crucial moment. Phillips examines the three communities (white, southern, and evangelical) that shaped his own racial imagination and names how each community creates blind spots, making it difficult to conceive of a world different than the dominant narrative of the white evangelical South. When those narratives are challenged or rejected it can feel like nothing short of the end of the world. Blending together personal experiences with ethics and pastoral sensibilities, Phillips traces for white, southern evangelicals lines that run from the past through the present, to help his beloved communities see how their loyalties have harmed their neighbors. In order to truly love others and reconcile brokenness, you first have to know your place.

Dr. Justin Phillips is the Executive Editor for The Other Journal and teaches theology and ethics in Knoxville, Tennessee. Connect with Justin and his work at justinrphillips.com.

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