I sat down with Jione Havea to discuss his new book, Losing Ground. We discuss the book of Ruth, reading it amidst climate catastrophe, how Jione built this book through talanoa and bible studies with Pasifika people across Australia, Aotearoa, and the Pacific, opening up academic biblical studies, and how this book "seeks to make any notions of white supremacy absurd."
Read MoreI spoke to Ali Robinson about teaching the New Testament, that little book of Jude, harsh language, conflict, and struggling to stick to a topic of research.
Read MoreI spoke with Gillian Townsley about queer reading across 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. We talk about attending to the ideology of reception and how reading across helps us move beyond the 'tired old debates'. I ask about how the work of Monique Wittig shapes her project (specifically about bringing men/masculinity back into focus). We also discuss her analysis of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Christians for Biblical Equality and how supposedly oppositional movements are bound by heteronormativity. We end by discussing the unique form/formatting of chapter 6 which involves two distinct thinkers battling for page space.
Read MoreI sat down with Eve Rebecca Parker to discuss an Indecent Dalit Theology. We talk about her book where she theologises with the Dalit women who from childhood have been dedicated to village goddesses and used as ‘sacred’ sex workers. We talk about how she came to this project, and what theology and the reading of Scripture gains through engagement with the lived religiosity and daily struggles of these dedicated women, known as devadāsīs. Parker shows that it is through this engagement that an Indecent Dalit Liberation Theology that challenges systems of oppression and cultures of impunity, including casteism, sexism, classism and a history of socio-political and religious marginalisation can emerge. We end by discussing how it this engagement shapes her ongoing work - especially on trust in theological education.
Read MoreI sat down with Matthew Thiessen to discuss the Gospels’ portrayal of ritual impurity within First-Century Judaism. We discuss how purity concerns map out the reality of the gospel writer's worlds, and clarify the differences between categories of holy, profane, pure, impure. Matthew then demonstrates Jesus' acceptance of the reality of these categories and his desire to rid people of the conditions that create ritual impurity. All of this shapes how we read Jesus' interactions with the haemorrhaging woman, those with leprosy, and corpses, as well as his teachings on sabbath, exorcisms, and food. We end with a discussion on how attention to ritual impurity can help us not fall into anti-semitism in our reading and preaching.
Read MoreI'm joined by a wonderful group of friends to ring in episode 100 with a 64 team single-elimination tournament pitting books of the Bible against each other in one-on-one competition until just one remains and we declare the best book in the canon.
It was a lot of fun to record and generated a lot of fascinating and passionate conversation about a host of different books and their importance, beauty, challenge, and place in our lives and scripture.
Enjoy, and thanks for joining us for 100 episodes of Love Rinse Repeat!
Read MoreI sat down with Brian Brock to talk about his new book, Disability: Living into the Diversity of Christ's Body (Baker, 2021). We discuss common misconceptions and assumptions that lead to unwelcome and awkwardness in churches (beginning with the common falsity that there are "no disabled people in our church"). Brian offers examples of how in noticing the diversity of the bodily experiences of the people around us, we begin to glimpse aspects of Scripture that we had previously missed. I also ask him about the issues that come from concepts like normality and inclusion, and how the confession that Christian's are - fundamentally - a people who receive can assist the task of disability theology. Finally we enter into a discussion about healing and how we've allowed a rather specific modern view of healing to shape how we read the healing narratives in the gospels.
Read More"Paul is probably the least interesting thing about Paul’s letters." I sat down with Joseph Marchal to talk the way his book reaches past questions of what Paul 'thought' (or how his texts can be read in 'inclusive' ways) toward far more fascinating queer figures before and after his letters: "androgynes, eunuchs, slaves, and barbarians—each depicted as perversely gendered and strangely embodied figures in their own distinctive, though interrelated ways”. We discuss his intentionally anachronistic style of juxtaposition, and how this leads his work on 1 Corinthians 11 and Paul's concerns about the women prophesying, to considerations of ancient figures of androgyny and contemporary work on female masculinity. And much, much more!
Read MoreI sat down with Anna Carter Florence to talk about her passion for preaching. We discuss lessons she's learnt from teaching preaching for two decades, overlap between acting and preaching, how to make Scripture more dynamic and accessible, and her book Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God's Word in Community.
Read MoreI sat down with Josh Jipp to talk about the messianic identity of Jesus as the presupposition for and primary content of New Testament theology. We discuss balancing unity and plurality within the New Testament, the benefits and risks of centring the messianic identity in light of the history of Christian supersessionism, the kind of kingdom this messiah brings, and (just in time for Easter) how the Passion narratives establish Jesus' messianic identity - hint, it has much more to do with the Psalmist's Davidic King than Isaiah's suffering servant.
Read MoreI sat down with David and Sarah to talk about their international jail and prison ministry: Abolition Apostles. We talk about their calling into this work, their letter-writing, advocacy, and why abolition can function as a tent-pole issue for Christians concerned with the impact of racialised capitalism.
David Brazil and Sarah Pritchard are the founding co-pastors of Apostles Fellowship, a nondenominational Christian church, as well as Abolition Apostles (abolitionapostles.org), an international jail and prison ministry based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Find them on Twitter: @AbolitionChurch
Read MoreIn a special live episode of Love Rinse Repeat, Liam sat down with Monica Melanchthon, Lyndal Sherwin, and Renee Evans to talk about how we might read the Psalms and Prophets in the midst of a pandemic.
Despite often being framed as a great equaliser, the impact of COVID is disproportionately metered out against the world's vulnerable people. The time of the pandemic has been accompanied, in Australia and elsewhere, by an intensified push to confront and overcome racial injustice, renewed emphasis on the need for urgent environmental activism, and revealed just how many people are willing to sacrifice their neighbours for the economy.
The Prophets and the Psalms, texts often written and compiled in the wake of deep disruption, traumatic cataclysm, and the end of meaning, are unwavering in their demands for truth, lament, repentance justice, and hope. For this reason they are a potent place to turn amidst the crises of our day. Join us for a wide-ranging and relevant discussion on what the church can learn through the disruption and comfort that comes from reading these old texts in a new pandemic.
Read MoreI sat down with Susannah Cornwall, Associate Professor in Constructive Theologies at the University of Exeter, to talk about her edited volume Intersex, Theology, and the Bible: Troubling Bodies in Church, Text, and Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). We discuss gender reveal parties, the limits of gender binaries, the ethics of performing ‘surgical corrections’ on infants, why theology often overlooks intersex people, and intersex's capacity to positively trouble unquestioned norms and dubious assumptions in religion and beyond.
Read MoreHow does one pick up a Bible and start to read it?
It’s a deceptively complex question. And in the time of COVID19 when many people are reaching for their Bibles outside of their familiar contexts of a worshipping community, shared liturgy and the proclamation of the word, it’s a question well worth considering.
To help us consider it I sat down with two wonderful pastors, authors, and friends of the podcast, Melissa Florer-Bixler and Emmy Kegler. We talk about the questions we bring to scripture and the questions scripture asks of us. I ask about resisting the urge of reading scripture to “come to something” and we discuss how to approach texts that have been used to wound. We cover how the pandemic is re-shaping their ministries and how it feels to have their books turn one.
Read MoreIs it possible for the exploited and their allies to reclaim the Bible from the dominant powers?
I sat down with Steve Heinrichs, Director of Indigenous-Settler Relations for the Mennonite Church Canada, to talk about Unsettling the World: Biblical Experiments in Decolonisation, a volume he edited, out now through Orbis Books.
In Unsettling the Word over 60 Indigenous and Settler authors come together to wrestle with Scripture, reimagining ancient texts for reparative futures. With poem, essay, art, proverb, and provocation this is an excellent and essential work.
In this episode we discuss Steve's own journey with Scripture and decolonisation, how this work came together, what surprised him in its compilation, how churches in settler-colonial contexts might start hard, but necessary conversations, what his job entails, and much much more.
Read More“The divine wind rustles, hovers, and swoops ‘over the face of the waters’, touches the created orders and catches the world up in the divine witness”
I sat down with Amos Yong to discuss his new book , Mission after Pentecost: The Witness of the Spirit from Genesis to Revelation. We talk about what underpins his prolific and widespread writings, what is gained from approaching theology from a pneumatology in the foreground, his approach to mission as an opening up to others, his commentary on the Gerasene demoniac and what it means for the church to participation in the mission of the Spirit – when that mission is one of deliverance both cosmic and socio-political, and much more.
Read MoreI sat down with David Congdon and John Flett to talk about their new edited volume, Converting Witness: the Future of Christian Mission in the New Millennium. We talk about why David and John keep writing about mission, the present state of the field of missiology, how the Bible is/should be read for mission, the issues with the “Theological Interpretation of Scripture” movement, the problematic way the term “Christendom” is employed, and John offers the hottest of takes on a certain trinitarian ontologies conference.
The essays in Converting Witness are a celebration of the life and work of Darrell L Guder, and if you don’t know who that is, we begin by talking about his impact and importance.
Read More“From the outset it has followed a fluctuating path of negotiation and transformation”
I sat down with Meredith Lake to talk about the Bible in Australia. We bust myths about the history of the Bible in this country, talk about where one goes looking to find the cultural history of a book so contested, the way the Bible shows up in almost every major national conversation and debate (often on both sides), the role of the Bible in colonisation, its use by immigrants, and the way Indigenous Christians – from early on through today – have reappropriated the Bible, turning it back on the worst of White Australia. Listen in Apple Podcasts
Read MoreYou are the God who sees, Hagar said, and the same God who saw Hagar sees us.
I sat down with Karen Gonzalez to talk about The God Who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong. We talk about the process of writing the book and what its like to include so much of one’s own story, We discuss how basing her story on the sacraments deepened her thinking on the practices, the complicated stories of migrants in the Bible, speaking to churches about immigration, taking action, and which Biblical story of migration needs its own Hamilton inspired rap musical! Listen in iTunes//Watch on YouTube
Read More“I did not have a plan for how I would accomplish falling in love with scripture. I simply decided that I had to and went from there.”
I sat down with Rev Emmy Kegler to talk about her new book One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins. We discuss her personal journey with Scripture and how it led to this book, what its like to write a book on God and the Bible while showing up each week to minister, the vitality and significance of Jacob wrestling and being wounded by a mysterious man, what it means to be blessed, what it means to carry wounds and scars even after finding wholeness. We also cover Emmy’s artistic style of sermon prep, needing God (or a particular version of God to shut up), and the Queer Grace Community. This episode also contains the debut of an exciting new segment – pairings – which I think went very well. Listen in iTunes // Watch on YouTube
Read MoreA (hopefully) fun, provocative, and encouraging site where I sharing thoughts (blog, talk, video) on faith, world, and self. My name's Liam Miller, I have studied Theology, Social Sciences, and Acting. I enjoy reading radical theology (actually all kinds of theology) and telling stories - the two tend to intertwine on this site.
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