I am thrilled to announce our summer of 2024 ESN Conversations. Dru Johnson will lead off in a special evening interview with ESN science writer Andrew Walsh on What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture. The following week Jemar Tisby and Douglas M. Strong join in conversation about a diary found in a college closet and the insights into racial justice they uncovered, a story told in Awakening to Justice. Timothy Larsen joins us in July to talk about his annotating work on George MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul. We wrap up the summer in August with Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Christian pastor and Bible teacher in Bethlehem, author of The Other Side of the Wall, who will discuss the book and give us his own situation report on Palestinians in Gaza.
Can you see why I’m so excited. Read on for more detailed descriptions and registration links to join the conversation!
ESN Conversation: What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture
Believe it or not, the book of Genesis might have been the most Darwinian text in the ancient world. And throughout the opening books of Scripture, we find ideas that would also become prominent insights of the biologist Charles Darwin interlaced with the Bible’s one-of-a-kind origin story. Biblical scholar Dru Johnson calls us beyond typical creation-versus-evolution debates to explore the conceptual worlds underlying both Scripture and evolutionary science. He points toward remarkable continuities and discontinuities between the Bible’s central concerns and those of Darwin and modern science—ideas so fundamental that they can easily escape our notice.
Dru Johnson (PhD, University of St. Andrews) directs the Center for Hebraic Thought and has been a research fellow at the Herzl Institute (Jerusalem), Logos Institute (St. Andrews), and Henry Center (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Biblical Philosophy, Human Rites, and Knowledge by Ritual. He is ordained as an EPC minister and is cohost of the OnScript podcast.
Date and Time: June 12, 2024 08:00 PM Eastern Time
ESN Conversation: Awakening to Justice
[Jemar Tisby is unable to join us for this Conversation. One of the other contributors to this book, A.G. Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Africana Studies Emeritus, teaching at Oberlin College for 27 years in the Department of Religion, will be joining us instead]
In 2015, the historian Chris Momany helped discover a manuscript that had been forgotten in a storage closet at Adrian College in Michigan. He identified it as the journal of a nineteenth-century Christian abolitionist and missionary, David Ingraham. As Momany and a fellow historian Doug Strong pored over the diary, they realized that studying this document could open new conversations for twenty-first-century Christians to address the reality of racism today. Through considering connections between the revivalist, holiness, and abolitionist movements; the experiences of enslaved and freed people; abolitionists’ spiritual practices; various tactics used by abolitionists; and other themes, the authors offer insight and hope for Christians concerned about racial justice.
Jemar Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. His writing has been featured on CNN, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He is the founder and president ofThe Witness—a Black Christian Collective and the cohost of the Pass the Mic podcast. He is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Mississippi.
Douglas Strong (BA, Houghton College, 1978; MDiv, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981; PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1990) teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the School of Theology. Dr. Strong’s field of study is American religious history, particularly the history of 19th-century revivalism, social reform, and the Wesleyan/Holiness movement in America. Dr. Strong is an ordained clergyman in the United Methodist Church and served for eight years as a pastor in East Brunswick, New Jersey. He is especially interested in reviving the Wesleyan practice of small-group accountable discipleship among today’s Christians.
Date and Time: June 20, 2024 03:00 PM Eastern Time
ESN Conversation: Diary of an Old Soul
In 1880, the prolific author George MacDonald self-published a long poem in book form as a gift for his friends. He called it, in full, A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul. It contained a new seven-line stanza for each day of the calendar year, written as prayers expressing MacDonald’s longings, struggles, and joys in everyday life.
The Diary was originally printed with a blank page facing every page of poetry so that readers could supplement MacDonald’s diary with their own. This feature in particular, along with the spiritual wisdom and literary artistry of the text itself, was beloved by C. S. Lewis, who gave a copy of the book to his future wife, Joy Davidman, as a Christmas gift in 1952.
Wheaton historian Timothy Larsen has written an introduction and annotated a new edition of this work for InterVarsity Press that retains the blank pages. He will introduce us to George MacDonald, the Diary, and this new edition.
Date and Time: July 9, 2024 01:00 PM Eastern Time
ESN Conversation: The Other Side of the Wall
Christians have lived in Palestine since the earliest days of the Jesus movement. The Palestinian church predates Islam. Yet Palestinian Christians find themselves marginalized and ostracized. In the heated tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the voices of Palestinian Christians are often unheard and ignored. Munther Isaac gives the perspective of Palestinian Christians on the other side of the separation wall surrounding most Palestinian cities today. Isaac laments the injustices suffered by the Palestinian people but holds out hope for a just peace and ways to befriend and love his Jewish and Muslim neighbors.
Munther Isaac (PhD, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies) is the academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Palestine and director of the Christ at the Checkpoint conference. He is also pastor of Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. He is the author of From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth: A Christ-Centered Biblical Theology of the Promised Land.
Date and Time: Aug 20, 2024 12:00 PM Eastern Time [Note: Due to an extended US speaking Tour, our interview with Munther Isaac has been re-schedule to August 28 at 2 pm Eastern Time.]
I hope you have signed up for one or more of these Conversations, and that you will join us with iced tea or lemonade in hand for some good conversation this summer.
Bob Trube is Associate Director of Faculty Ministry and Director of the Emerging Scholars Network. He blogs on books regularly at bobonbooks.com. He resides in Columbus, Ohio, with Marilyn and enjoys reading, gardening, choral singing, and plein air painting.
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