As is traditional for this podcast, we conclude this season of episodes by reflecting together as a production team on the podcast as a whole, on our extraordinary guests, and on some moments in conversation with these guests that made a particular impression on us.
“I Was in Prison and You Visited Me,” with Andrew Skotnicki, Manhattan College
Andrew Skotnicki is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College. He has been a devoted minister to people in prison for more than a half century, and we discuss some of the lessons that ministry has taught him, problems he perceives with our system of criminal justice, and the blessings he has received from heeding …
Healing in a Time of Division, with Vanessa White, Catholic Theological Union
Vanessa White is Associate Professor of Spirituality and Ministry, and Director of the Certificate in Black Theology and Ministry, at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She holds a dual appointment at Xavier University of Louisiana’s Institute for Black Catholic Studies. She belongs to several academic societies, among them the National Black Storyteller Association, the American …
On Suffering, Heaven, and Experiencing a Life Renewed, with Jeffrey Vogel, Hampden-Sydney College
Jeffrey Vogel is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. An expert thinker and writer on topics like divine silence and apophatic theology—or theology of what lies beyond saying—he is also the author of a beautiful new book, All Manner of Things: Meditations on Suffering, Death, and Eternal Life, which we …
Highlighted Episode: Storytelling as Theology, with guest Christina Bieber Lake, Wheaton College
This week we highlight a past episode of our Faith and Imagination Podcast. Today’s highlighted guest, Christina Bieber Lake, sees the novel as an expressly theological exercise. Dr. Lake, the Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College, is the author of the 2019 book Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of …
The Beauty—the Poetry—of Christian Experience, with Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Baptist University
Benjamin Myers is the Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature and the Director of the Honors Program at Oklahoma Baptist University. A former poet laureate of the state of Oklahoma, Ben is the author of four books of poetry and two books of nonfiction. We discuss two of those books today, a 2020 critical work titled A Poetics …
Metaphor, Memoir, and Christian Longing and Vision—All from a Midwest Farm, with Tiffany Eberle Kriner, Wheaton College
Tiffany Eberle Kriner is associate professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. The author of the scholarly book The Future of the Word: An Eschatology of Reading as well as a number of articles and chapters in academic venues, Kriner is more recently the author of the memoir In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest …
The Apostle Peter’s Mystical Vision and How It Bears on Modern Life, with Robert Flanagan, Virginia Theological Seminary
Robert Flanagan has served as an Episcopal priest since 2003. He is chaplain at General Theological Seminary in New York and serves as dean’s advisor at Virginia Theological Seminary. We speak today about this 2022 book The Letters of an Unexpected Mystic: Encountering the Mystical Theology in First and Second Peter. We attend especially to how …
Poetry as Attention, as Awakening—as Prayer, with Abigail Carroll, poet and pastor
Abigail Carroll serves as pastor of the arts and spiritual formation at Church of the Well in Burlington, Vermont. She holds a PhD in American Studies from Boston University, and she is an accomplished poet whose third collection of poems, Cup My Days Like Water, a set of meditations on the Psalms, was published just last …
John of the Cross’s “Dark Night” and Our Quest for Justice and Transcendence, with Benedict Shoup, University of Notre Dame
Benedict Shoup is a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is currently writing a dissertation on the pneumatology and contemplative methodology—basically, the spiritual theory and practice—of the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross. I met Benedict this past summer at a conference in Adelaide, Australia, where he gave …