TOKENS PODCAST: S2E6
How might white supremacy be, in fact, the American trajectory? And how might Christianity be responsible for such a trajectory? An Interview with Dr. Willie James Jennings.
An interview with Dr. Willie James Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University, on his book The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Jennings argues that the medieval European colonialist Christian vision imagined the entire globe in terms of a racist imagination; and that we continue to reap the consequences to this day; and that the Christian tradition does, in fact, have resources to re-imagine a new sort of world.
LINKS TO LISTEN:
EPISODE LINKS:
Dr. Jennings’ book, The Christian Imagination
Tokens Online Master Course with Miroslav Volf, Lee C. Camp, and John Mark Hicks.
ABOUT GUEST
Dr. Willie James Jennings (Yale 2010) won the American Academy of Religion Award of Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Constructive-Reflective category the year after it appeared and, in 2015, the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the largest prize for a theological work in North America. Englewood Review of Books called the work a “theological masterpiece.” His commentary on the Book of Acts, titled Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate (for the Belief Series, Westminster/John Knox) received the Reference Book of the Year Award from The Academy of Parish Clergy in 2018.
Dr. Jennings has also recently published a book that examines the problems of theological education within western education, entitled After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging.
Jennings is now working on a major monograph provisionally entitled Unfolding the World: Recasting a Christian Doctrine of Creation as well as a finishing a book of poetry entitled The Time of Possession.
Writing in the areas of liberation theologies, cultural identities, and anthropology, Jennings has authored more than 40 scholarly essays and nearly two-dozen reviews, as well as essays on academic administration and blog posts for Religion Dispatches.
Jennings is an ordained Baptist minister and has served as interim pastor for several North Carolina churches. He is in high demand as a speaker and is widely recognized as a major figure in theological education across North America.
A Calvin College graduate, Jennings received his M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University,1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999)
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