Resources

About a year ago I was teaching a Greek class where we were translating Paul’s short letter to Philemon. I mentioned the idea that States could use the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in order to curtail the rights of women to travel across state lines to secure an abortion. In case you are not aware, friends, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 criminalized any provision of aid or sanctuary to escaped enslaved individuals. And I was not just making it up. There are articles both in newspapers and legal journals to document my reference.[i]Unbeknownst to me, a student took issue with my statement and decided to correct me. However, they did not correct me during the class period and they did not correct me by scheduling a time to meet with me. Neither did the student decide to send me an e-mail. The student decided to send an e-mail to all of the White students in the classroom. The student did not send the e-mail to any of the Black students in the classroom. As you can probably discern from the title of this blog, the e-mail began with “I love Dr. Parker but. . . .” Of course, one of my students sent the e-mail to me and we had to process it during the next class period which, of course, was not part of my lesson plan nor a part of my syllabus.In the e-mail, the student indicated that it is ridiculous to imagine that states’ rights could supersede the rights of unrestricted travel for US citizens, regardless of whether one leaves the state for an abortion or vacation. The e-mail then went on to state that “Statistics show that for every one white abortion there are five to six black abortions. Black persons should view abortion as a white man’s way of trying to limit the population of blacks in the United States.” The tone was almost as if Black people should be grateful that White Republicans (this person identified as Republican in the e-mail) loved them so much that they were trying to stop abortions.There are two predominant ways to think about love paternalism and both come through Pauline literature. The first is the idea of a love that gives up rights. This stems from Paul’s use of the terms the weak and the strong. The idea is that the strong give up their right to do something if that thing, in fact, causes the weak to stumble. The classic example is in the case of meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10. A contemporary example can be found in the idea of men telling woman to cover up themselves in case they arouse a man’s sexual interest and suffer a rape. This is an instance of victim-blaming and leaves the onus on a woman instead of arguing that a man should actually have self-control.[ii]Another aspect of love paternalism involves limiting someone’s autonomy and freedom for their own good. I see this idea particularly in the student’s statement that Black persons should view abortion as a white man’s way of trying to limit the population of blacks in the United States. Throughout history White people do whatever they can to justify their understanding of why they mistreat Black people. For example, during the transatlantic slave trade, slaveowners and traders justified trafficking enslaved persons by saying that they were introducing them to the gospel.What should the African American female professor’s response be when love paternalism smacks her in the face in the midst of a semester when she is teaching Greek? Of course, she must confront it head-on and be able to maneuver and be nimble right in the middle of the semester. Pedagogically, I table any theological discussion during Greek translation because the focus during that particular time is on morphology and syntax within the text. However, in this instance I did allow a moment to discuss the e-mail and then connect it to the manipulative ways in which Paul’s rhetoric shows up in the letter to Philemon. We tackled the e-mail through power dynamics. We also had to have a frank discussion on why the student only sent the e-mail to White students.Bottom line: Openness, frank discussions, and nimbleness are required when love paternalism unexpectedly affronts a professor. I do not know if my White colleagues experience such moments in the classroom. However, you never know what your minoritized colleagues are going through when we are teaching our classes, so please be kind. Notes & Bibliography[i] See Angela N. Parker. “You Can’t Pay Back What You Never Owned: A Conversation on Reparations and Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” in Reparations and the Theological Disciplines: Prophetic Voices for Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair, ed. M. Barram, D.G.I. Hart, G. Kettering, and M.J. Rhodes, (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2023), 91-104. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/abortion-missouri/; https://www.law.georgetown.edu/gender-journal/online/volume-xxiii-online/legal-vigilantism-a-discussion-of-the-new-wave-of-abortion-restrictions-and-the-fugitive-slave-acts/.[ii] See Roger E. Olson, Whatever Happened to the Christian Principle of “Love Paternalism?” (Newstex, 2019).

* Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White, and Lazaro Gamio, “These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration,” The New York Times, March 7, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html.

The following is adapted from a talk given by Dr. Jennings during the 2024 Wabash Center’s BIPOC Faculty Luncheon at  the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). You sound   What do you sound like in the rain, Standing between claps of thunder and lighting strikes, untamed and terrifying?   Silence, though wise, is not an option given your task of directing toward shelter, while rain drops clean your face including your teeth, as if it were their right and duty.   Storm time covers your time, threatening to last as long as your will to communicate, your willing locked into battle against blowing wind, promising many episodes, several seasons.   But what do you sound like? Does your sound collapse under the weight of the elements, reduced to a shouting whisper, only inches from your inner voice?   Or   Have you found a bullhorn with fresh batteries that give your sound that familiar grabbled sound indistinguishable from anyone else seeking quick victory?   Choices must be made in the storm, since you are yet directing and eyes blurred with much wet are still watching, straining to hear.   But maybe the question to dis-cover the sound of your voice is what do you hear in it?   One of the most challenging tasks of life in the academy, especially for people of color, is cultivating one’s own voice—and within that cultivation, to know one’s own sound. Voice and sound here, as I am using them, are thick metaphors that bring together the one and the many, the self and the institution. Voice in this regard is your self-witness, the testimonies you give, big and small; the pieces, the fragments of yourself you present; your showing and telling, depending on what you need or want to communicate in this world—in this academic world. Your sound is your way with your voice. At one level, your sound is your style inside your drama to speak and to tell. It is your bend with your pen as you write your own story page after page. But at another level, your sound is how you hear others hearing you. Your sound is your awareness of other voices and the way you weave in and out of other sounds. My friends, in the academy being heard (having voice) and being able to hear (knowing your sound) is still frontier work for us. I named two things here, voice and sound—being heard and being able to hear. Being heard and finding our voice in the academy is a challenge in the best of times. As I have written about this, it is the struggle against white self-sufficient masculinist form—that suffocating form of self-presentation and self-articulation around which flows the evaluative ecology and reward systems of the academy. We struggle against the pull to mimic the voice of that man, the finished man, who shows he has mastery, control, and possession of his knowledge. That struggle comes at us from outside of us and from inside. Outside, from the forms of formal and informal evaluation layered across our bodies. Inside, from the often-severe voices that we have internalized; those voice which place on us a quest for unattainable excellence. Inside and outside, forces bound to our will to survive—for our own sake and for the sake of our peoples. We know, however, its possible to resist that voice and find your own voice. We stand in the legacy of people who have, and are, doing just that. There is a poem in my book, After Whiteness, that tells the true story of how one sister helped another sister begin her journey toward her voice in the academy. It begins with the elder sister’s recognition of the struggle: My voice trembles always at the sound of your voice, which began for me so long ago, gently guiding me to what was good, great, weak, strong, straight into the vise, tightening ever so slowly that I mistake the hurting for stability, constrictions for conscientiousness I learn labored breathing, tighter thinking until I make the sound for help with every sound I make. But I think, this will not be forever. I will break free even if I must tear skin from my flesh to loose your stability. Sara saved her, took Joan from the other voice and placed her inside. She knew how, having lost enough skin to form a womb outside her body – the mindbodywomb - where bathing light would cover Joan’s thinking, protecting her from glaring light – light against light – knitting truth into her inward being before it could be snatched away by the other voice, until she emerged from Sara’s wombbodymind intact, and hearing none, the i passed unharmed into Joan’s voice flowing like refreshing waters ready to heal torn skin and cracked voices.[i]   Finding voice is a constant work of abolition, of freeing your voice from his voice. But I have come to realize that the work of finding voice carries within it the task of learning to hear your sound. Over the years, I have met too many scholars, especially BIPOC folk, who do not know their sound. What do I mean by not knowing their sound? On the one hand, they have very little idea of what they sound like, they do not hear others hearing them. And on the other hand, they do not know how to move in sound and let the sounds of others flow through them. Let me tell you a story: There was this scholar who always spoke truth to power. He had made it up the rough side of the mountain. He knew what needed to be said in every setting, to every individual, every administrator, every colleague, and every student. Right, bright, brilliant, and insightful, he claimed his voice in white spaces, announced his present freedom to speak and his commitment to the struggle. His voice was and is urgent, vital, and necessary, but his colleagues have longed for his absence. They can’t stand him. Without knowing more details, you might say that he was simply being prophetic, marking the journey of so many BIPOC folks struggling against white hegemony. But in this case, the desire for his absence is unanimous among everyone, including BIPOC folk. He cannot hear himself which means he cannot hear others hearing him. He closed himself off from the sounds of others, and turned his own voice, aimed toward freedom, into his own prison. He is alone, bitter, and convinced he is too controversial and radical for the academy. He may be too controversial and radical for the academy. But, he is also bound to the voice of the white self-sufficient man even as he articulates freedom. What is missing from this scholar’s voice is the working with sound.   Allow me to return to the first poem and add a few words:   Choices must be made in the storm, since you are yet directing and eyes blurred with much wet are still watching, straining to hear.   So maybe the question to dis-cover the sound of your voice is what do you hear in it?   Do you hear others dreaming out here exposed to the elements, sharing in feeling fragile flesh, turning their bodies this way and that to negotiate with the wind?   Do you hear the thunder calling you to join its rhythms, the lighting awakening you to surprise, pulling toward oneness with flashing light, accepting the risk of free air? Do you sense the rain as your support, your pips to your Gladys Knight, moving when you move even at midnight.   The key here, my friends, is delight, delighting in the sounds, allowing the sounds to move through us, never seeking to possess them but to give witness to a hearing that is without end. Every musician knows, the character of your voice and the power of your sound depends on your ability to hear and keep hearing. What is critical in cultivating your voice is your ability to hear in ways that free you from being pulled toward mimicking the white self-sufficient masculinist voice even as you assert your freedom.   How do we sound freedom even amid despair? This is the urgent question we face as we navigate Trump 2.0. The temptation at this moment is to give into the despair and allow that despair to hollow out our voices. However, we will need to speak prophetically. We must speak powerfully and urgently, speak truth to power. Our speaking must show our hearing, or our voices will reveal that we have closed ourselves off to the sounds around us. For the sake of our students, our communities, and for the sake of our scholarly work, we need to attend to our sound and show both our delight and our freedom for others in, and through, our voices. The sounds of many need to flow through us, merging and weaving in slices and pieces inside our own speaking, thinking, and writing, inside our own self-testimony. If not, we run the great danger of our having our own voices turned against us, weaponized and made dismally predictable in how they do not show a lively hearing. Allow me to close with just another stanza from this poem:   If you hear, they will hear in your sound, glimpses of their sounds, then and there you will know your sound, directing toward shelter, announcing a free place.   Notes & Bibliography [i] After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 119.

American media has only just begun to speculate about the political leanings of Pope Leo XIV as they comb through his social media posts. Just as they tried to fit Pope Francis into the binary categories of conservative/liberal and traditional/progressive, so too will they with Leo. Such analysis so often fails because it rarely takes seriously what animates their lives: proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. Gospel means good news, and the four Gospels are these men’s principal source of guidance. To understand Francis’s words and deeds, we have to take seriously that he prayed with these Gospels for his entire adult life. We can say the same about Leo XIV. Neither prioritizes whether their positions align with liberal or conservative positions; rather both worry whether they are being Jesus’s faithful disciples. Here are just a few examples of what challenges them when they pray with the Gospels. In Luke, Jesus announces his ministry quoting from the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit has sent him to proclaim the following: good news to the poor, the release of prisoners, the blind seeing, and the oppressed being liberated (Luke 4: 14-22). Francis’s relentless insistence that we remember and care for the poor comes from his obedience to gospel passages like these. Before his election, Robert Prevost lived out this ministry of Jesus among the Peruvian people whom he greeted in his first address as Pope Leo XIV. In the current political landscape, liberals and conservatives fall short when measured by the Gospel’s standard. Francis and Leo have meditated on and preached from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount many times since their ordination. The Sermon opens with the Beatitudes where Jesus identifies those blessed in his kingdom. He names the poor, the mourner, the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemaker, the one hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and the one persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  In his exhortation on holiness, Rejoice and Be Glad, Pope Francis describes the Beatitudes as ”the Christian’s identity card” (63), even as “the world pushes us towards another way of living” (65). He encourages Christians to be open to the Holy Spirit and to “allow [Jesus’s] words to unsettle us, to challenge us and to demand a real change in the way we live” (66).[i] In light of the Beatitudes, the liberal-conservative binary dissolves and the traditional melds with the so-called “progressive.” The American media notes every time that Pope Francis and Pope Leo speak on behalf of migrants and refugees. This defense should come as no surprise when one turns to Matthew 25 and reads Jesus’s parable about the final judgment. A king, aka Jesus, welcomes into his kingdom those who, unbeknownst to them, tended to him when they tended to the hungry and thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, cared for the ill, visited prisoners. Those who failed to show mercy end up in the kingdom where demonic suffering reigns eternally. Reflecting on this passage in 2016 during the extraordinary jubilee year of mercy, Pope Francis warned: “The lesson of Jesus that we have heard does not allow escape routes.”[ii] And Leo XIV, in his first message told the world, “we want to be a Church of the Synod, a Church that walks, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close, especially to those who suffer.”[iii] Like Francis, Leo recognizes there is no escape route from tending to the suffering. Jesus demands even more from his disciples than these works of mercy. In the Sermon on the Mount, he calls them to be light and salt for the world and challenges them in all manner of living from turning the other cheek and  loving their enemies to avoiding even lustful thoughts. These demands culminate in the Torah’s commandment: love God with one’s entire being, to which Jesus joins love the neighbor as the self. In his parables, Jesus identifies the neighbor as the one who shows compassion exemplified in the Good Samaritan and the father to his prodigal son as well as his resentful elder son. Like the first disciples, most Christians in every age fall short of these demands.  Pope Francis meant it when he declared himself a sinner in need of God’s mercy. Clearly, contemporary Christians face challenges that require creative fidelity from attending to the climate crisis to understanding the complexities of sexual and gender identity. An often cited example of Francis’s “liberal agenda” is “who am I to judge?”  Rarely is Francis’s entire comment quoted. He said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” In this response, Francis gives witness to  two dimensions of the Church’s life. The first is to embrace every person because no one is excluded from seeking and receiving the love and mercy of God. Echoing Francis, Leo XIV calls for “a Church that builds bridges, dialogue, always open to receive like this square with its open arms, all, all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”[iv] Yet, implicit in Francis’s response is the challenge to live in the demanding way of discipleship: loving God with one’s whole being and loving the neighbor as one’s self. To borrow from Paul, in Christ, there is neither conservative nor liberal, traditional nor progressive. Or as Leo XIV declares in the motto of his papacy: In illo uno unum”: “In the one Christ, we are one”.     Notes & Bibliography [i] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20180319_gaudete-et-exsultate.html [ii] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160630_udienza-giubilare.html [iii] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5392318/transcript-pope-leo-xiv-speech [iv] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5392318/transcript-pope-leo-xiv-speech

In October 2024, the Wabash Center hosted a “Curiosity Roundtable,” which I was honored to attend. The goal was to offer us experiences to help us; to encourage us to think outside the boxes that trap us as scholars, institutional citizens, and pedagogues. It was an amazing time, with voices that I am still thinking about, but, oddly, the experience that resounds, again and again, in my thoughts is the Porsche Experience.The group toured the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta, GA. Those of us who did not get motion sickness—not me, dang it!—experienced driving the Porsche of our choice in the Simulator Lab. It was the tour, however, that had the impact on me. As the informed and enthusiastic guide showed us around, we were able to see, for example, the elements of making a Porsche. We saw a wall with the multiple tones of paint one could use on a Porsche body—some so subtly different that the guide said all buyers were urged to use a specialist in car design. We handled the key fobs and touched leathers used for interiors—just a few items among drawers of exquisite features. Then, we saw beautiful cars, on loan from collectors. What struck me was the flawlessness of these machines, but also, that they had very little mileage. These were cars that barely had been driven, mostly under 200 miles—they were tested, I thought, loaded for delivery, and put in a garage to gaze upon. Beautifully wrought, but, to me, kind of useless, except as possessions—though sort of like the excess of books in my library, I had to admit.It was the race cars, however, that made me see why the Wabash Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Lynne Westfield, brought us there. These cars tied the remarkable beauty of the collectable cars to function. One Porsche slogan is “Passion in Every Detail.” The Porsche desire includes “detailed craftsmanship, cutting edge innovation, and sheer passion.” That, I think, is what, we as devoted and innovative teacher-scholars practice and is what I saw in in the race cars. Those cars, like the Rothmans Porsche 962 on exhibit, were banged up, used over and over, and were examples of design reworked. These were the workhorses—like us professors—driven in 24 Hours of Le Mans, an endurance sports car race. I learned there why my daddy always bought Goodyear Tires. The Goodyears were so sturdy in the Le Mans that they had to be changed only once. These tires marked an adjustment, and what fascinated me were the adjustments: the redesigns. In the Rothmans we saw, the engine, first, was under the seat—not a great placement.As the guide talked about that, I said, “Someone died,” and he nodded.So, without losing speed or power, that one had to be adjusted.Beauty and function brought about through knowledge and innovation and carried out with passion—that is what kept running through my mind as we walked around. Every teacher in that group has been recognized, I know, as passionate about his or her subject matter and skilled: we are beauty in action. Beauty and function, carried out with passion, are the goals of great teaching. As teachers, I think we aim for the good, the true, and the beautiful. The classical Platonic understandings of those may not be same as they were for Plato, perhaps, but we seek to craft the vehicle that is so beautiful that it is utterly compelling—beauty draws and improves us, Plato argues--to our students that they will take the ride with us and risk encountering what we consider to be good and true. As Elaine Scarry reminds us in On Beauty and Being Just, a liberal arts education is the perpetuation of beauty. As human beings, we seek to copy the beautiful, and as we do so, we revise our own locations and beings. The beautiful, Scarry argues, helps “incite the will toward continual creation” (8). And, fairness, in terms of beauty, can lead to fairness, equality, in terms of justice: to being fair, to seeking “‘a symmetry of everyone’s relations to one another’” (95).The design of intellectual experience, as Patricia O’Connell Killen calls it, is the same as the design of those Porsche cars in another space. We go from finding and observing beauty to creating it ourselves in our syllabi and classrooms, to, as we teach, helping our students to see and create beauty themselves. Every piece in the collectable cars was a masterpiece of beauty—from the door handles to the key fobs. As a craftswoman teacher, I want my classes to be that way, beautifully constructed. The beauty embedded in the experience of reading, writing, and, yes, testing, which, as we saw in the Rothmans, is a dangerous but necessary process. Porsche made me see that our work is a wrought beauty: one made from years of doing and redesigning. I really want my teaching to be like those race cars, able to be adapted so that it can hug the ground—as Charles Long used to say, face the nitty gritty of human experience, and round the track.Those battered race cars stay in my imagination. The other day, I looked at my teaching notes for my Theory and Methods course, which I have taught, now, for over thirty years. The notes carry a lot of my late professors, Charles Long, Ruel Tyson, and Nathan Scott, and of others who taught me, but they show my growth in understanding and my adjustments, as my voice emerged and changed. Marginal notes, updates from my reading, and new thoughts that my students had as we rounded the track add more pages and sticky notes every year. These beautiful pieces gather. My teaching, if it were a Porsche, would look, I hope, like those race cars: a beautiful thing, the pinnacle of human ingenuity and engineering, yet banged up in use and adjustment. What I teach is remade different every time I encounter a new group of students from a new generation or read something that challenges and changes me. I must move the engine or change the shape of the seat or stop and figure out how to find my own, nearly indestructible Goodyear tires.The guide told us that they do not open the doors on those race cars because we would smell the odor of the drivers, embedded in the cars, even after all these years—drivers who had done twenty-four hours of duty in a car. That fact stuck with me hard. That smell is a mark, a reminder or memory that the beautiful and functional thing needs a driver, and that the driver bears the pain—marks and is marked. I thought of the odor of sanctity that comes, particularly, from the wounds of saints.We teachers are the like these drivers, these cars, but most of us do not get what we either need or deserve for the work we do. As my Peer Mentoring Cluster and I found during COVID and as one of my dear colleagues, one long out of this business, reminded me recently, institutions spend a lot of time thinking about students and about the institutions themselves. Most are not as committed to beauty as Porsche, and they do not spend much thinking about those driving the car—us teachers. But I think we prevail. Plato argued that the children of dreams outlive the children of the flesh. In the beauty we make, we are and put the first instrument of our dreams in children’s hands.*My drawing teacher said: Look, think, make a mark.Look, I told myself.And waited to be marked… She said: Respond to the heaviest partof the figure first. Density is form. That I keep hearing destiny is not a mark of character. Like pilgrimageonce morphed to mirage in a noisy room, someone so earnest at my ear. Then marriage slid.Mir-aage, Mir-aage, I heard the famous poet let loose awry into her microphone, triumphant. The figure to be drawn —not even half my age. She’s completely emptied her face for this job of standing still an hour. Look. Okay. But the little dream in there, inside the thinkthat comes next. A pencil in my hand, its secret life is charcoal, the wood already burnt,a sacrifice.[1] Notes & Bibliography[1] Marianne Boruch, “Pencil,”https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55555/pencil.

It doesn’t sound nearly as poetic when I try to recount Louis Armstrong’s famous line about authentic self-expression after I return home from the week-long Creative Writing Roundtable hosted by the Wabash Center for a group of fourteen professors, preachers, and researchers. We spent the time deeply immersed in ourselves and each other—learning, chatting, eating, writing, and revising at a utopian biophilic retreat house in the Chattahoochee Hills of Georgia. Donald Quist, one of the writing mentors, had played us a recording of Louis Armstrong in a morning session on Style and Voice, sharing this line—“You Blows Who You Is”—while encouraging us to lean into narrating our visions of how the world works. The intimacy of being coached on the genre of creative nonfiction is inescapable; you are trying to hone skills in writing, “true stories well told,” and this means narrating the moments of your own life that have made the biggest impressions on you.[i]“You blows who you is” becomes “blow yourself” in my partial recall of the feeling the phrase evoked in me. I can’t remember the AAVE grammar structure of Armstrong’s words, and my translation sounds crude, sexually suggestive, maybe even like an insult. I laugh as the words come out of my mouth, tired from the plane ride back home after an intensive week. My spouse’s eyes widen with a smile as they turn their head. Their eyes say, “Oh, really!?”My foible transgresses a structure of dialect and a politics of sexual respectability; in this way, it is sort of like jazz, playing with form and exploring beyond the confines of racialized purity culture. This is not to say that my rendering conveys anything close to Armstrong’s original wisdom. But it does demonstrate a real-time example of how the same universal idea can pass through the fleshly vectors of another tongue, showing more ways of being while resonating with something much larger than a single speaker. This mistake made me reflect on some of the most powerful takeaways from a week of mentorship that helped a room full of academics recover their voices from the confines of academic writing in vulnerable, poignant, messy, and creative ways. I can only imagine how these skills may bleed into our classrooms, encouraging our students to find their own air flow and creative voice as we model more fully finding our own.Louis Armstrong’s sentence helped me clarify my own struggles trying to complete my PhD a couple years back. My own style of swirling storytelling that wanted to draw connections between anything and everything crashed against the dialect of linear, argumentative, academic writing. I frequently felt an intensifying squeeze in my throat being in conversation with Roman Catholicism, especially as someone who started identifying as queer and non-binary during my degree program. Writing against can sometimes reinforce the walls you’re trying to break down: women, be silent + same-sex attraction is a sin + the trans and non-binary people you are attracted to don’t exist + you don’t exist became an equation that loudly sent the message: be silent, sinner, you don’t exist. Adopting an academic voice to gain legitimacy was tempting, but something that I seemed unable to measure up to. I felt like I was shooting arrows in the dark, trying to hit an undefined target that others in my field seemed to perceive without the same struggles. During this week, I wrote about my partner’s gender transition, the magic of writing words that spark through the body, as well as witnessing a conflict with counter-protestors at a pride parade in San Salvador. The writing workshop helped restore my trust in my own voice, and gave me confidence to speak, even when such words might challenge the very norms of legitimacy we must navigate in the church, academy, and society.One of the great joys of this workshop was getting an intimate window into the air streams of other participants, seeing their creative writing voices emerge through vulnerable storytelling, hilarious observation, and heart wrenching reflection on themes that touched universal experience through the particular. Birth, death, grief, loss, illness, family feuds, leaving home, returning to a life that was once familiar, now different were themes that resonated deeply with me. One of the first things I wrote down from the workshop was Sophfronia Scott’s invitation to play with words through this creative writing genre. My colleagues shared their life wisdom through playful experiments of the written and spoken word, all the while encouraging each other to grow in our own unique forms of self-expression. On the final night when Lynne Westfield, Stephen Ray, and Rachel Mills joined us to hear people’s work in a final performance set up, we got to see each other blow who we are.I think of one time a few months ago when my bandmates were laughing about a scene from the movie I Heart Huckabees. One of the main characters repeats over and over, “How can I NOT be myself?” in an existential breakdown—or breakthrough. In academic writing, in the classroom, in our creative writing, it is important to remember that even if we are trying to sound different than our souls, or maneuver our air through instruments not designed for us, there’s a way that we actually have no choice but to blow ourselves, so to speak, if we are to attempt to show up and create in this world at all. This goes for our students as well: though we may give them formats, resources, or frameworks, when the deadline hits, we receive the resounding echoes of someone searching for themselves through the avenues we have made available. After a week with the Wabash Center, I am encouraged to open those avenues wide, for myself and my students, to make space to hear who we really are amidst the music of life’s swells and silences.Notes & Bibliography [i] Lee Gutkind, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up (Boston, MA: Da Capo/Lifelong Books, 2012), pp. 60.

An Author’s Note: October 7th represents one year since the Hamas attack on Israel and resulting Israeli military response in Gaza. This year, October 7th also falls during the Days of Awe, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during which Jews are called to engage in cheshbon hanefesh or “Accounting of the Soul,” during which we examine our actions and thoughts during the previous year and aim to do better in the coming year. In that spirit, my mind is drawn to a holiday earlier this year, Passover, my recollections of which I present here.   Passover 2024: We are not all Jewish, as many family members, including myself, have married non-Jews. Thirteen of us squished in together as the maximum capacity for my parents’ dining room table, the window propped slightly open to let out the heat from the kitchen despite the fears of letting the street noise in. The patterned white-on-white tablecloth has been brought out for the holiday, our China pattern at each setting, white with a red rim at the edges. The festive foods smell wonderful: the Matzah Ball soup, Pot Roast, and various other dishes my mom has slaved over for days in a tiny New York City kitchen. At the center of the table, the colorful Seder plate with spots for each item: the roasted bone, the roasted egg, the celery and parsley, the Haroset made to look like brick mortar, the horseradish, and the saltwater. A cup of wine for Elijah. A cup of water for Miriam. An orange, a modern addition representing feminism for some but more accurately stemming from queer Jewish concerns. My father—the consummate seder leader, who looks forward to it every year, scanning the internet each year for supplemental readings—calls us together, noting that this year, we will do something different. He hands out some excerpts from the supplemental readings he has found and has us read them aloud, going one by one around the table, seder style. The readings note that just as on Passover we ask, “Why is this night different than other nights?”, so this year we must ask why this year is different from all other years. They remind us that it is a mitzvah to expound on the Passover story during the seder. They call us to work for a better world. They remark on the irony of celebrating freedom as our hearts break for the pain of Israel and the suffering of Palestinians. They suggest new rituals, such as while breaking the middle matzah in two, crumbling one half to recognize that the world is crumbling and leaving the other half whole to represent the hope of a world rebuilt. They offer prayers to recall that all humans are created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of the Force that impels us towards goodness. They encourage us to engage in honest dialogue, to listen deeply to one another, and to share our thoughts on the war and on the campus protests. Drawing on the words of Interfaith America’s bridgebuilding curriculum, they implore us enter conversation in the spirit of curiosity, noting that we can disagree yet still respect one another’s views, noting that due to our love for one another, what matters to any of us matters to all of us. After these preliminary readings, my father announces, “Before we begin, let’s have an honest discussion about Israel and Gaza, with each of us expressing our own thoughts, uninterrupted.” So, we went around the table again…[i] I don’t know what to hope for anymore. I am convinced that the Zionist project is doomed. What started as a good idea, and did some good things, creating a modern society, has been done on the backs of others, and the voices that do not care about that are winning out.  That is why I left Israel and why I can’t support it. But I can’t say I hate Israel. In fact, I still love Israel; I do. I grew up there, and I appreciate all it has given me. It’s complicated. It had high ideals for a modern democratic Jewish state. But it was also about power. It was also a land grab. And it is untenable. Since October 7th, it is only more so. On social media, when I express my views, I am met with vitriol by other Israelis. They say horrible hateful things to anyone with a critical view, and we are shouted down, called traitors. I can barely speak to my family members. I understand that they are traumatized by October 7th. But they are so caught up in their own trauma that they cannot see what is happening to the Palestinians. And even those who used to care no longer care. I don’t see any possible good end to this.  So much of Judaism to me is about social justice, the prophetic call to help the oppressed, Tikkun Olam. I want to join in shaping that better world. But I don’t know how. Everything I do angers someone. If I stand in support of Israel in this time of trauma as a Zionist, I am viewed as a racist and colonialist. If I stand against it in protest, I am viewed as a self-hating Jew and antisemite. If I go to sign a petition for a ceasefire, it calls the situation a genocide, which I do not believe it is. And even liking a Ceasefire Now meme on social media gets friends angry with me who believe Israel must continue until the hostages are home. But liking a post about bringing the hostages home has other friends accusing me of spreading Zionist propaganda. I just want peace. I want everyone to live with human rights, opportunity, and a sense of security. In this situation, I don’t know where to begin. All I can do is hope for a ceasefire. This killing has gone on for too long. Over 30,000 innocent Palestinian lives have been lost. This is not the way. This has to stop.  But I don’t trust either the Israeli government or Hamas to secure a ceasefire. Neither has anything to gain. Netanyahu’s interests are served by prolonging the war, and as for Hamas, a ceasefire will make them irrelevant. Let’s say it plainly. This is all Hamas’s fault. They are evil. We need the hostages returned. We need the media to acknowledge the atrocities Hamas committed. The rapes, the murder of babies. I am sad that Palestinian civilians are being killed, but that is also Hamas’s fault. They are the ones using Palestinian citizens as human shields. Every time the media covers this as if Israel has no reason for what they are doing, are not being forced into these attacks by Hamas, I want to scream. Every time they gloss over the atrocities on October 7th to jump to the Israeli military attacks on Gaza with no context, without explanation, I want to pull my hair out. I am afraid of how I will feel reading the Passover story this year. This will be the first time that I will identify more with the Egyptian taskmasters than the Israelite slaves.  I am not sure I am prepared for that. I know many of you do not agree with me, but Israel is perpetrating a genocide on the Palestinian people. I can point you to scholars of genocide who have written on this and have come to that conclusion. Israel matters to me. I can’t abide being told that Zionism is racism. I listened to a podcast where the person being interviewed made that statement, and defined Zionism as wanting all of the Biblical land and wanting to remove all Palestinians from the land, and the statement went unchecked by the interviewer. Zionism is not colonialism. It is a belief in a Jewish homeland. It is our ancient place. It was a place of refuge for those fleeing Europe during and after the Holocaust. And we know what that means: my parents survived the Holocaust, but some of our other relatives didn’t. And some of our relatives survived by getting to Palestine. Israel continues to be a place we can go, no questions asked, if and when genocidal antisemitism rears its ugly head again, and antisemitism is on the rise.  What happened on October 7th was the largest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. What is the government supposed to do? Hamas has to be stopped. I hear people saying it shouldn’t be done this way, but is there another way to eliminate Hamas? If so, why isn’t anyone naming another way? I don’t know that I have it in me anymore to care about the Palestinians. They elected Hamas. They support Hamas, and that makes them a community of terrorists. I am done trying to help people who just want to kill us. They rejected every deal along the way.  The Israeli military is doing everything they can to avoid unnecessary deaths, to evacuate people. I support the IDF and donate to the groups treating soldiers. I have half a mind to go over there and volunteer with the Israeli army myself.  I can love all of you and disagree. I have expressed my opinions to many of you already in other conversations. We agree on many things and disagree on others. I too care about Israel. I think it is in Israel’s best interest not to use these military tactics. Beyond the obvious humanitarian issues, it alienates Israel from the rest of the world and makes it harder for anyone to support Israel. Do I have a plan for what they should have done instead? No. I am not a political or military strategist. But even on October 8th, when the Israeli military hadn’t struck yet, everyone knew what was coming, when that could have been a time for grieving. Maybe martyrdom would have done more for Israel than revenge, retaliation, self-defense, or whatever we are calling this. Maybe it could have brought the world to its side to generate a coordinated response against Hamas. This did not begin on October 7th. This was not an unprovoked attack. This began long ago, not only with the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, but with the forcible taking of Palestinian land in 1948 after a vote in the UN that no Arab member nation agreed with. Of course what happened on October 7th was atrocious, and a source of trauma that we all need to grieve. But people want to avoid the context, want to act as if there was no reason for Hamas to be as frustrated as they are with the open-air prison that is Gaza. They have no other recourse, and they had lost the attention of the world. Look at the situation in the West Bank. Palestinians are being terrorized there by angry settlers, and the government, police, and military are doing nothing about it. While everyone is focused on Gaza, there is yet another land grab going on in the West Bank. Right now my concern for the hostages takes priority. But the best way to see them returned is unclear. Is it through military actions, from which we have seen some of them rescued? Is it through temporary or longer ceasefires, which have also led to the return of hostages? We don’t know how many are alive or how they will ever be able to resume a normal life, but we can’t lose our sight of them. I am moved by symbolism of the hostages. The posters with their faces. The empty chairs at the table. When those on the far left deem those symbols as “Zionist propaganda”, I have to wonder whether they have completely lost the ability to empathize. I think the message we get from the Torah, and the message we get from events today, is that we can be simultaneously both the oppressed and the oppressors. We can be oppressed as slaves in Egypt and then oppress the Canaanites when conquering the promised land. We can oppress the Palestinians even as we are oppressed by Hamas attacks and by Antisemitism worldwide. Every group can be both oppressed and oppressors, even in the same moment. What bothers me about the protestors is that they have no understanding of the situation. They couldn’t even find Israel on a map. They don’t know the history, the context. They just want to be activists. And they are only targeting Israel, which is clearly antisemitic. You don’t see them protesting about human rights abuses in Sudan or Myanmar, only Israel. Why is Israel always held to a special standard? But those congressmen who called in the University Presidents out of so-called concern for antisemitism on campuses do not make me feel better. They have their own Christian Zionist agenda, and while they back Israel, they do not really care about Jews. These were the same people saying there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville as those protestors chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Nowhere feels safe right now as a Jew, not the right, nor the left. I do have hope. Maybe this will finally be what will bring the parties back to the table to figure out a peaceful way forward. Other Arab states are beginning to recognize Israel and its right to exist. This is part of why Hamas did what they did, knowing that as the world comes to recognize Israel, they will lose power. I hate the idea that the events of October 7th can finally lead to the two-state or one-state solution that we need for peace to take place. But after Israel militarized and securitized for so long, thinking they could push the Palestinian issue out of sight, they now realize they are still vulnerable. We need a political solution. This may finally restore those prospects.    My father thanks everyone for participating. We are all grateful to have been able to express ourselves and listen to others without having shouted one another down or coming to blows.  We begin our Seder.       Notes: [i] Here are the perspectives from the table. The dialogue may not be exact, but the sentiments are represented to the best of my ability. Some are recombined or incorporate views based on other conversations with friends and family around that time.

During the week of my fiftieth birthday, I was surprised to receive a letter and membership card from AARP—American Association of Retired Persons. Upon inspecting the envelope and its contents, my mind traveled back to a brief, yet profound conversation I had with my grandmother, who I call Queen Bee, when I was twelve years old. We were having lunch at our favorite fast-food restaurant. We placed our order and the cashier announced the total along with the senior discount Queen Bee received. Excitedly, I exclaimed, “I can’t wait until I am old enough to get a senior discount!” “That’s ridiculous,” Queen Bee vehemently responded, “You don’t look forward to being a senior to pay less.” This was not the message I was trying to express. I simply thought it was “cool” that seniors received discounts, when young people did not. In my twelve-year-old mind, elders earned the discount for having lived a long life. To me, elders were worthy of respect, and I was happy to see McDonald’s acknowledge that.Recently, I revisited these thoughts about senior status when I participated in Auburn Theological Seminary’s Center for Storytelling and Narrative Change’s Healing the Future Gathering. Thirty-five storytellers gathered from around the United States to share their letters to the future. Surveying the storytelling circle, I realized I was one of the older persons present in a group of mostly Millennials and Gen Zers. I remembered my twelve-year-old perspective about respecting elders. I touched my silver sideburns and asked myself, am I becoming an elder? Throughout the gathering, I was respectfully and kindly approached, cared for, and questioned politely. Continuing to contemplate, I pondered retirement, being elderly, and identifying with what it means to be a senior citizen.I am fifty-five years old, and eligible for a senior discount; however, I am not elderly. Nevertheless, my perspective on how I view myself and younger generations has changed. Teaching in higher education for seventeen years places me beyond early-career status and somewhere between mid- and late-career teaching faculty. As a seasoned teacher-scholar, I see myself adding value to conversations and collective engagement, more so than I have in the past. I am not elderly, but I now join the company of elders.Reflecting on the company of elders, I recall the impact another mid-career teacher-scholar had on my younger self. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, whose mission was to equip, encourage, and empower emerging scholars in discovering “the work their souls must have,” was my teacher, mentor, and dissertation advisor. Dr. Cannon was a faithful elder and is now a good ancestor. As a teacher-scholar moving toward retirement within the next twelve to fifteen years, Lord willing, Dr. Cannon’s elder legacy still has me asking, “What is the work my soul must have?” To become a faithful elder and a good ancestor.As a child, I was taught to respect my elders, meaning older adults. But age does not necessarily garner respect. So I ask, “Who is an elder deserving of respect?” Based on my knowledge, engagement, exposure, observation, and conversations, I would describe a faithful elder in this way. Faithful elders are usually older, but they are not defined by age. They are recognized because they have earned the respect of their community. Their words are congruent with their actions and teachings. They are containers filled with essential wisdom. They assess situations, carrying collective and communal prophetic and generative knowledge, and offer constructive feedback. Faithful elders practice their culture, impart their culture, and help others find their culture. They are keepers of tradition, rituals, and values. Faithful elders love God, others, and themselves fiercely. Faithful elders tell stories that shape the future with hope.Reflecting on the roles and actions of faithful elders in our families, schools, churches, communities, and society is important work of the soul. While continuing to move forward in one’s career and calling, becoming a faithful elder is vital to fulfilling one of life’s purposes, not only for oneself but for future generations.The exercise at Auburn Seminary of listening to and absorbing hope-filled letters to the future written by younger generations focused my attention on the collective wisdom, vision, and determination presented by the storytellers. I became embarrassed that in recent years I had given so little thought to the future. Called and convicted, I thought about those who made sacrifices so I could have a future with hope. Those “good” ancestors made decisions prioritizing the quality of life for those coming after. What does it mean for me to follow in their footsteps and become a good ancestor?As a faithful elder, I must build on the hope that has come before me. I must preserve and communicate an African-centered value system. As a faithful elder and storyteller, I must discern what to pass on and what not to pass on to the future. As a faithful elder, I must seek and offer forgiveness in the face of inhumane and unjust systems. As a faithful elder, I must tell the stories that help others to shift from a dejected mindset to one of expectancy, showing the way to a future of assurance.Reflecting on Queen Bee, Dr. Cannon, and a future imagined by young storytellers, I recognize that I have stepped into the company of elders. And it is now my soul’s work to take up the charge of becoming a faithful elder telling stories of hope and moving toward being a good ancestor.

I finally went to my primary care doctor the other day and proceeded to unload about three years’ worth of pent-up ailments upon her. I'm losing my hearing! Do I have early-onset dementia? My right knee hurts! Can you test my thyroid? I think I have diabetes! What is this weird bump? My pinky is numb! Is my heart rate normal? Am I a hypochondriac?! This poor woman.I’m pretty sure she diagnosed me with a very serious condition called… “aging.”I’m turning forty this year and suddenly, it seems, I find myself routinely waking up at four a.m., taking a handful of vitamins with breakfast, and grumbling about “kids these days.” The skin on the back of my hands has turned to crepe paper. The other weekend I didn’t go watch a friend’s band play because the show started WAY too late. Readers, it started at nine p.m. I fear it can no longer be denied: I’m getting older.It’s not that I don’t spend time thinking about bodies, including my own. I’ve read books such as Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning (Hrach, 2021). I teach courses on disability and race—two classes in which the body comes up a lot. I emphasize to students that religion isn’t just about beliefs; it’s enacted and embodied amidst a material world too. I know I need a snack in the middle of my Mon/Wed 9:35-10:50 a.m. class or my stomach will let out a series of plaintive whale songs. I’ve dealt with decades-long injuries. I’ve suffered from long COVID. People I love have died. But, oddly, I haven’t thought all that much about aging, or its relationship to my work, until more recently.Part of this odd oversight may be that aging is pretty embarrassing sometimes. Kids can literally fall out of a tree, get up, and walk away just fine; I can pull my back, and need to take it easy for a week, because I reached too far trying to plug in a lamp. This isn’t exactly the kind of story I want to broadcast at the monthly department meeting. Part of it may be that it’s hard to admit, perhaps even to fathom, just how much our lives are affected by this “meat suit” (as my yoga teacher calls it) that is only ours temporarily. Part of it may be that professors tend to work late into life—and so aging doesn’t seem all that relevant to my professional world. Part of it may also be that, because faculty are constantly encountering a turnstile of younger people in our classes, it may be easy to forget we ourselves aren’t forever young. I still feel only a few years older than my students (especially whenever I can sense the presence of free pizza nearby). Part of it too may be that we fancy ourselves living “the life of the mind”—even if it’s a big lie or hell, for a lot of us—and the mind can seem ageless (though the other day I stood in front of my bathroom sink and couldn’t remember which handle was for hot, so….). Part of it is denial, I’m sure.Aging brings up a bunch of considerations—and not just about the indignities and rebellions of a body I can no longer (could not ever?) control. How do I continue to do this work well when my mind is no longer as sharp as it once was? (And what does “well” even mean? Perhaps such notions change over time….) What do I have to offer to my colleagues and students, now that I am no longer fresh out of school? How do I make my own meaning, when the milestones and achievements of the earlier years (e.g., get a degree, get a job) have passed? How can I stay relevant in a rapidly changing world, around those same youths I mentioned above? How can I remember where I put my glasses?!? What are my new goals, what am I aiming toward, where is the forward momentum coming from now? How do I tap into the wisdom of mentors and others who have been through this time and these transitions before me? How do I learn to live with the losses, both personal and professional, that accumulate? How do I stay excited about doing the same thing, for semesters on end? Are there really ways to beat or stave off mid-career malaise or the midlife blues? How do I do *gestures around* all of this for another several decades? These are tough questions to contemplate and I don’t have the answers yet. I’m not sure I ever will.Some of you are probably chuckling to yourselves. What I wouldn’t give to be 40 again, you might be thinking. Yet difficult wonderings can come for us at any age or stage in our career. I’m remembering a quotation my mom, who has since passed away, sent to me once: “Sometimes when you’re in a dark place, you think you have been buried. But you’ve actually been planted.” Now, maybe, is a time to grow.

I remember dial-up modems and the exhilaration of logging onto AOL.com as a teenager. A few years later, I experienced the novelty of Facebook. Duke Divinity School (DDS) advised all of its masters’ students in the 2008 incoming cohort to create Facebook accounts so we could stay connected and support one another through the first year of our graduate program. DDS recognized that this would be a time where students begin to deconstruct presupposed understandings of religion, Bible, and the theologies that we had received from our families of origin and church contexts. Reflecting back on that time, I feel as if the beginning of my deconstruction was wed to the rising age of social media. Now as a professor of the New Testament in the age of social media, what should some of my best practices entail? While difficult to define, the term “social media” identifies the various internet applications that allow users to construct their profiles while also creating content that connects and networks various groups of people. While social media is supposed to be about “connection,” I imagine that we all have experienced “internet trolls,” folks who try to bait and upset readers with disturbing comments. As professors of religion and theology, I would argue that we are the prime targets for internet trolls just by virtue of the nature of our work at a time where there seems to be rising White Christian nationalism in the United States. So, I often ask myself questions about the role of the professor in the age of social media. For example, in my context, our Director of Outreach and Alumni Relations requests that faculty increase their social media presence as a way to connect with alumni who are out working in the world. Can I carefully curate my social media presence to let those alumni know that I support them from afar? As a professor, what content can I create that allows alumni to be refreshed as they do the difficult work of leading congregations and parachurch ministries? Moreover, can social media serve as a way for faculty to connect with prospective students as we all experience the feelings of scarcity in theological education? Is this another area of “service” that faculty can add to their tenure portfolios (assuming one has a job with tenure!)? While I am not sure of the proper answers to the above questions, I certainly try to be cognizant of what the next generations of theological students may look like. Gen Z, for example, born between 1997 to 2012, is the first generation to have grown up with ALL THE TECHNOLOGY. Further, they will buy products from social media sites more than any other generation. Is there a way for Millennial, Gen X, and Boomer faculty to capitalize on connecting with Gen Z through social media? I think that is a conversation that must be had in our various theological faculties. I started @BoozyBibleScholar on TikTok and Instagram, providing segments called “One Minute Womanism” and “Scripture Through Womanist Eyes” as a way to show my growing community that there are other voices besides the conservative right-leaning interpreters of scripture. Now, I will definitely not be keeping up with the latest TikTok dance trends, but I will add my own particular voice to the ever-growing vacuum of social media to provide a brave space for the folks who may be feeling left behind and kicked out of Christianity. Just as in the opening of this reflection I recognized my own deconstruction during the rise of the social media age, I imagine that Gen Z experiences similar deconstruction(s). As I peruse social media, it seems to me that the loudest voices in Christianity today tend to be destructive voices. If you have pondered a desire to help silence those destructive voices, I implore you to act now. Find ways to make your scholarship available to the public. I wholeheartedly believe that one of the professor’s jobs in the age of social media is to be a transformative voice in contrast to those who will try to tear people down. Instead of letting John Piper, John MacArthur, or Voddie Bauchaum be the loudest voices in public religious discourse, professors of religion and theology owe the American public counter voices in the age of social media. My hope is that my social media presence will at least point some to believe that there are other ways to be “Christian” in a world that has vastly devalued such an identity. TikTok: @BoozyBibleScholar and Instagram: @BoozyBibleScholar