Advertise on podcast: Theology on Tap Chattanooga

“The Lessons of Weakness: Cultural Humility in Augustine of Hippo” with Rev. Dr. Joseph Sherrard Humility is an ambiguous virtue. We long for it and resist it at the same time. As soon as we think we've got it, it’s slipped through our fingers. It's deeply desirable, but evidently in short supply. Our politics, our cultural discourse, even our theology--very little of it is humble these days, and everyone suffers the consequences. To move forward, we can be helped by the past. For the early church pastor and theologian Augustine, humility is the cornerstone virtue; it binds together every part of the Christian life. When we look at the Bishop of Hippo, we find a rich description of humility, a sure guide through the subtleties of pride, and a portrait on which we can model our own lives. Joseph H. Sherrard (PhD, University of St. Andrews) has been pastoring for nearly twenty years and currently serves as pastor of discipleship at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church in Signal Mountain, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians and serves as a guest lecturer at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando. He is also the author of The Augustinian Pastor: Deep Wisdom for Modern Ministry and T. F. Torrance as Missional Theologian: The Ascended Christ and the Ministry of the Church.

Suffering & Theology in Kendrick Lamar: Grief & Survival Through Hip-Hop In The Spirituals and the Blues, James Cone connects the hopeful power of black church music to “secular spirituals” called the blues. In Cone’s words, both genres are about black survival. In this Theology on Tap lecture, Alex Sosler develops Cone’s thesis from the blues into a theologically-informed read of modern hip-hop with a focus on Kendrick Lamar. Rather than ignore suffering, the best of the black tradition unearths it. Kendrick inherits the blues tradition by expressing the “why and wherefore” of suffering—and so helps us do the same. Alex Sosler is an Associate Professor of Bible and Ministry at Montreat College and an Assisting Priest at Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville. He is the author of A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation and Learning to Love, as well as co-author of The Artistic Vision and editor of Theology and the Avett Brothers. He’s also got two upcoming books to be released this year: a co-edited volume called Theology and Hip Hop with Claude Atcho and a book on the spirituality of food and beverage with a focus on Southern Appalachia.

At the heart of Christian faith is a shocking claim: God became human and died. It is the story of a man who bore profound humiliation, exposure, and shame, placing God not in sanitized spirituality but in the raw realities of birth, desire, touch, and harm. This evening will explore how Christ's embodied life and death confront our cultural stigmas toward bodily trauma and reveal a salvation that reaches into our most fragile places, resurrecting and blessing scars rather than erasing them. Dr. Hill serves as Assistant Professor of Integrative Theology at Richmont and the Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program. ln 2021 he completed a Ph.D. in Theology at St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, having previously completed an MLitt degree in Analytic and Exegetical Theology from the Logos Institute at St Andrews. He has released his first coauthored book with Scott Harrower and Joshua Cockayne entitled Dawn of Sunday: The Trinity and Trauma-Safe Church (Cascade) and is releasing his first edited volume entitled Christ and Trauma: Theology East of Eden (Pickwick Publications). Dr. Hill is also ordained in the Anglican tradition and is a pre-licensed clinical pastoral therapist.

In today's landscape of digital interactions, many people long for deeper connections. We have a desire to move from being lonely and disconnected in our relationships to be seen, known, and wholly loved. From friendships to romantic relationships, meaningful and genuine personal connections remain our heart's desire. College chaplain Rev. Erin Moniz is deeply attuned to the questions and concerns of today's emerging adults. In Knowing and Being Known, she explores the essential elements of healthy relationships, addresses the complexities of intimacy, and shines a light on the barriers that can impede genuine connection. With her compelling storytelling and expert insights from her research with emerging adults, she emphasizes the significant role of identity and self-worth in fostering meaningful relationships. This comprehensive resource goes beyond the subject of sex, providing a holistic perspective on intimacy that resonates with single emerging adults and married couples alike. Begin to experience healthy relationships and transform your relational world as you ask better questions to get better answers. To know that we are loved by God is to know our identity in Christ. And this knowing provides us the tools and the path to a healthy, sustainable intimacy that allows us to be at home in our fullness in the gospel and with each other. —— Rev. Erin F. Moniz (DMin, Trinity School for Ministry) is a deacon in the Anglican Church in North America and associate chaplain and director for chapel at Baylor University, where she disciples emerging adults and journeys with them toward healthy, gospel-centered relationships. She is a trained conciliator, mediator, and conflict coach. She enjoys content creation, playing music, being outdoors, and narrating the inner monologue of her two cats. She lives in Waco, Texas, with her husband, Michael.

“The Subversive Prophetic Imagination: How the Arts (and Brueggemann) Can Help Us Navigate the Rise of Christian Nationalism” with Dr. Mary McCampbell Doors 6:30pm, Lecture 7:00pm In these painful, divisive times, it is helpful to trace the reality of prophetic truth from the God-spoken messages of the Old Testament prophets to the subversive works of artists resisting the “empire.” Dr. McCampbell will use the framework provided in Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination and examples from the arts to illustrate the power of the age-old fight against cultural Christianity. Artists discussed include Frederick Douglass, Charlotte Brontë, Margaret Atwood, Banksy, Yaa Gyasi, Flannery O’Connor, Sho Baraka, and others. Dr. Mary McCampbell is a literary scholar, cultural critic, professor, and author of Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy (Fortress Press, 2022). She is co-editor of the forthcoming Douglas Coupland’s Literature & Art (Bloomsbury 2026). Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she has taught courses on postmodern theory, popular culture, and the intersection of theology and the arts. Her academic publications include chapters and articles on Jesmyn Ward, Chuck Palahniuk, Sufjan Stevens, Douglas Coupland, C.S. Lewis, and Sho Baraka, among others. Her public-facing writing has appeared in publications such as Image Journal, Christianity Today, The Other Journal, Relevant Magazine, and The Curator. She was the 2014 Writer-in-Residence at the UK branch of L’Abri Fellowship and a 2018 Scholar-in-Residence at Regent Theological College in Vancouver, Canada. She writes weekly at https://marymccampbell.substack.com/.

Single Christians often encounter the church as a place where marriage and family are lifted up as the main ways to follow Christ faithfully. But there are Bible passages and historical moments that suggest otherwise. In this talk, we'll think through several different ways that Christians in the past have lived out singleness, including being "never married," "dating but not committed," and what happens when a person becomes "suddenly single" because of a spouse's death. ---- Jana Bennett serves as the chair of Department of Religious Studies Department at the University of Dayton. She is a moral theologian with a wide range of research interests and well-regarded publications, including a book on marriage and singleness (Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness, Oxford University Press 2008) and a book on technology use and theology (Aquinas on the Web? Doing Theology in an Internet Age, Bloomsbury, 2012). She also gives public lectures on marriage and sexuality, Christian asceticism, technology use, war and peace, and environmental care.

Do you ever feel like you're alone in your struggles to live out the Christian faith? Do you ever read the Bible yet still wonder what it looks like to follow Jesus in the complexity and difficulty of our time? The stories of great men and women throughout the history of the church can help us form a bridge between the teaching of Scripture and our embodied lives. Come and learn about how the saints, from every continent and century of church history, demonstrate the historic church's relevance for Christians today and reveal God's faithfulness in all times and circumstances. Rev. D.J. Marotta is the founding priest of Redeemer Anglican Church in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of “Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord's Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age,” “Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints From Every Era & Place,” and co-host of the Our Church Speaks Podcast. His wife is gracious and his children are clever.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus would drink? Was his family perhaps involved in growing vines and making wine? What would their family celebrations have been like? And what might this tell us about God and how he wants us to live today? Food and wine have become such hot topics in our culture, and yet there is so much confusion and ambivalence around it as well. We are so far removed from the world of the Bible and the agrarian life that it represents. It is hard to envision the farms and fruit orchards, the village wells and sheep herds, the olive groves and vineyards that Jesus would have walked by every day. Drawing on her upbringing in a long-standing family tradition of winemakers and her degrees in biblical studies and spiritual theology, Gisela Kreglinger introduces readers in a light-hearted way to the theme of wine in the Bible, throughout the history of the church, and in the church's feasting and fellowship today. She also addresses how many Christians are fearful or concerned about wine because of the challenges of alcohol abuse, how to nurture a culture of healing from such disorders, and how we are called to celebrate God's gift of wine to grow into a fuller understanding of the gospel as we await the return of the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. In this book, Gisela shows Christians that wine is a gift from God that we are to receive with gratitude and enjoy in wholesome, communal, and redemptive ways. ------ Dr. Gisela Kreglinger grew up on a family-owned winery in Franconia, Germany where her family has been crafting wine for many generations. This unique experience has inspired her to write two books about the spirituality of wine with a third one on the way. She holds a PhD in historical theology from the University of St. Andrews and in this book Gisela has woven together her passions for Christian spirituality and the wonderful and mysterious world of wine. ------ Special thank you to Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church and Imbibe for their partnership on this event.

"Mystic Faith in Mary Oliver's Poetics & Personal Practices" Mary Oliver once wrote, "Maybe the desire to make something beautiful / is the piece of God that is inside each of us." Though never espousing a Christian faith, Mary Oliver presents nature, the spirit, the body, and the divine in her simple but elegant poetry in terms that evoke the Christian mystic tradition. In our personal experiences with beauty and creativity, can we, along with Oliver, enter into a fuller appreciation of what the mystics called union with God? -- Dr. Daniel Gleason grew up in the Philippines living in an environment that fostered his imagination, creativity, and his love for writing. Currently an English professor at Bryan College, Dr. Gleason has previously worked as a cemetery laborer, as a public educator, and as a soccer coach. Dr. Gleason’s scholarly interests include 20th-century American Literature, contemporary poetry, and trauma theory. In the field of creative writing, he writes primarily poetry and has been published in more than a dozen literary journals and magazines across the country. Daniel and his wife, Kathleen, have two young sons, and they live in Dayton, Tennessee.

Our journeys of faith often involve the navigation of doubt. In this lecture, Dr. Luke Irwin explores this dynamic through the Gospel of John. There, Jesus famously says to “Doubting Thomas:” “Have you believed because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). This statement from Jesus may make us question whether the “eyes of faith” should rely on visible evidence. After all, doesn't the Apostle Paul himself say that “faith comes through hearing” (Romans 10:17)? Nevertheless, study of the Jewish scriptural tradition can inform our exploration, suggesting that God makes himself visible in the human flesh of Jesus Christ for a reason. Join us as Dr. Luke Irwin argues that seeing God in Jesus Christ represents the culmination of Johannine belief as well as the eschatological hope of all believers.   Dr. Luke Irwin is the Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Covenant College. He has received his MDiv from Covenant Seminary and his PhD from Durham University.

The evening will feature poetry from Nikki Lake, a lecture from Rev. Dr. Zac Settle, and then a conversation between the two moderated by CALEB Faith Caucus leader Christopher Heintz. 00:01 - Opening Intro & Announcements  07:26 - Poetry by Nikki Lake 08:53 - Lecture from  Rev. Dr. Zac Settle 46:19 - Poetry by Nikki Lake 47:21 - Conversation between Christopher Heintz, Nikki Lake, & Zac Settle Lecture abstract: In this short lecture, Fr. Zac will sketch a theology of economy by drawing on the work for a fifth-century, North-African Bishop: St. Augustine of Hippo. He will talk a little about who Augustine was and then sketch a kind of rubric with which we can think about economics on a theological level. The goal is make use of Augustine's idea of "use" and "enjoyment" in order to facilitate our understanding of faithful economic action. Doing so will help us talk about how we ought to engage with the economic issues of our own time and place as Christians. If we want to follow Augustine's example, faithful action requires that we use our wealth, resources, and selves for the sake of facilitating people's enjoyment of God. Rev. Dr. Zac Settle serves as curate at Grace Episcopal Church in Chattanooga, TN. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2023. Prior to joining Grace he earned an Anglican Studies diploma at Sewanee’s School of Theology and completed an internship at Erlanger Hospital, where he was a chaplain for the cancer and diabetes units. Before that he earned a PhD in theology from Vanderbilt’s Graduate Department of Religion. His first book, "On the Nature, Limits, Meaning, and End of Work", was published in Bloomsbury Academic’s “Reading Augustine” series in 2023.

Through Berry’s fiction, poetry, and essays, we see a vision of how the transcendent beauty of creation is known in particularity. For this venerable Kentucky writer, human flourishing is a loving stewardship of people and place, appreciating the spiritual fruit of our embodied existence. Dr. Thomas Pope joined Lee University's political science faculty in 2010, where he teaches courses in political theory and constitutional law.

"God and Architecture: How the Built Environment Influences Our Formation" Similar to how a fish is unaware of the influence of water, architecture shapes our lives. Through the grandeur of cathedrals and the brutality of concentration camps remind us of the profound power of the built world, most of our lives unfold in less dramatic settings, where built environments subtly but meaningfully influence us. In this lecture, Jon Jon will explore the role of how the influence of physical spaces can be used to make us more like Christ in character and conduct. --- Jon Jon Wesolowski is an armchair urbanist, TEDx speaker, and content creator. He is a devoted advocate for pedestrian rights, passionately connecting diverse groups to drive positive change. All the socials - follow Jon Jon on Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for his new Substack.

Our annual partnership with Richmont Graduate University & the Spiritual First Responders Project on the intersection of theology & psychology. The event was titled "An Evening on Trauma, Faith, & Reconstruction" and featured lectures by Dr. Hillary McBride & Dr. Preston Hill. "The Psychology of Faith Reconstruction After Spiritual Trauma" by Dr. Preston Hill  Many people experiencing faith deconstruction feel spiritually homeless but also continue to search for spiritual meaning in life, though it is unclear how they can flourish as desired. This talk will review a current large scale research project that facilitates mentally-healthy spiritual meaning-making for this population. This talk will discuss the challenges and possibilities for "remixed" spiritual experience among this population by setting faith deconstruction and reconstruction in psychological and theological context and drawing implications for mental health care among this group. Preston Hill (PhD, MLitt, University of St Andrews) is Assistant Professor of Integrative Theology at Richmont Graduate University, where he serves as the Chair of Integration and 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, mental health, and trauma theology. His latest publications include Dawn of Sunday: The Trinity and Trauma-Safe Church (Cascade, 2021), and a forthcoming volume entitled Christ and Trauma: Theology East of Eden (Cascade). Preston is a clinical pastoral therapist under supervision and ordinand in the Anglican tradition.

Our annual partnership with Richmont Graduate University & the Spiritual First Responders Project on the intersection of theology & psychology. The event was titled "An Evening on Trauma, Faith, & Reconstruction" and featured lectures by Dr. Hillary McBride & Dr. Preston Hill. "Growing Ourselves Up: Understanding the Long Term Impact of Spirituality Traumatic Contexts on the Development of Self" by Dr. Hillary McBride  Foundational psychological theories of development and attachment have identified what people need in order to become more of themselves, including the steps necessary for a person to arrive at adulthood with the skills, capacity, and ego strength to face the demands and pleasures of living in a psychically rooted and interconnected way. Models of family systems can be used to understand how the interpersonal context around us supports us to, or inhibits us from, meeting these developmental steps in light of our desire for connectedness and relational safety. Informed by these theories, this talk will explore how extended time in a spiritually abusive and traumatic context (often called a family) can challenge and complicate typical psychosocial development and contribute to distress in adulthood. Ways to support the healthy development of self and organize the disorganized development will be discussed. Dr. Hillary McBride is a registered psychologist, a researcher, author and podcaster, with expertise that includes working with trauma and trauma therapies, embodiment, and the intersection of spirituality and mental health. Her first book, Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are, was published in 2017; she was the senior editor of the textbook Embodiment and Eating Disorders: Theory, Research, Prevention, and Treatment, which was published in 2018. Her most recent bestselling book The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding wholeness, healing and connection through embodied living came out in the fall of 2021. She has been recognized by the American Psychological Association, and the Canadian Psychological Association for her research and clinical work. In addition to being a teaching faculty at the University of British Columbia, she is an ambassador for Sanctuary Mental Health, and the host of CBC's award winning podcast Other People's Problems. Hillary makes her home in the pacific northwest in British Columbia, Canada.