Willie Jennings / The Christian Imagination: Theological Complexity, Communication, Cultivation, and Community

For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Willie James Jennings (Yale Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun for a conversation about the future of theology, addressing the Christian inability to hold complexity, public communication, and deep formation together in a way that shows how theology is for our very lives.

Seven years ago the Yale Center for Faith and Culture interviewed a diverse array of theologians about the present woes and future potential of theology. Some five years and a pandemic later, the landscape of theological education seems like it's at a crossroads. The driving purpose of Christian higher education is in question as colleges, universities, and seminaries across denominations and around the world consider how they'll move forward in the wake of stark realities this pandemic laid bare. So it's worth revisiting the conversation to see what has changed, what holds true, and what hopes we're still holding on to. For today’s episode, we're featuring a conversation between Matt Croasmun and Dr. Willie James Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School, an ordained Baptist minister, and author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race, and more recently After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Willie reminds us to be looking for the opportunities in the middle of crises of theological education; he worries about the inability to hold complexity, public communication, and deep formation together in a way that shows how theology is for our very lives; he speaks to the recent aversion to pastoral ministry, which is theology for the sake of the people; he touches on the role of Christian theology in a pluralistic world, asking how theologians might learn from comedians; and he encourages all Christians to take up the theological call to courage, the call to see, listen, and and alleviate suffering, and the call to a theology of life.

Show notes

• How to make theology attractive
• Who do we want to teach?
• Secular religious studies versus confessional environments
• “Never let a good crisis go to waste”
• educational ecology: learning environments
• Doctoral students, do you want to be a teacher?
• The pastor versus the professor: the call to teach
• Theology and plurality
• Theology and violence: naming the pressure points of suffering
• The Christian frame versus the real matter at hand
• “We want to be asking human questions, they’re not just Christian questions”
• The alleviation of pain and suffering comes before questions of the good life
• The real goal is the healthy neighborhood
• Reverence and theology

About Willie Jennings

Willie Jennings is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Africana Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University; he is an ordained Baptist minister and is author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,Acts: A Commentary, The Revolution of the Intimate, and most recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging.

Other Episodes Featuring Willie Jennings

• Joy and the Act of Resistance Against Despair (with Miroslav Volf)
• My Anger, God's Righteous Indignation (A Response to the Murder of George Floyd)
• The Crowd Needs Faith: Control, Care, Economy, and Race (with Miroslav Volf)

Production Notes

• This podcast featured theologian Willie James Jennings and biblical scholar Matthew Croasmun
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Martin Chan
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give