“The Lessons of Weakness: Cultural Humility in Augustine of Hippo” with Rev. Dr. Joseph Sherrard Humility is an ambiguous virtue. We long for it and resist it at the same time. As soon as we think we've got it, it’s slipped through our fingers. It's deeply desirable, but evidently in short supply. Our politics, our cultural discourse, even our theology--very little of it is humble these days, and everyone suffers the consequences. To move forward, we can be helped by the past. For the early church pastor and theologian Augustine, humility is the cornerstone virtue; it binds together every part of the Christian life. When we look at the Bishop of Hippo, we find a rich description of humility, a sure guide through the subtleties of pride, and a portrait on which we can model our own lives.

“Suffering & Theology in Kendrick Lamar: Grief & Survival Through Hip-Hop” with Rev. Dr. Alex Sosler In The Spirituals and the Blues, James Cone connects the hopeful power of black church music to “secular spirituals” called the blues. In Cone’s words, both genres are about black survival. In this Theology on Tap lecture, Alex Sosler develops Cone’s thesis from the blues into a theologically-informed read of modern hip-hop with a focus on Kendrick Lamar. Rather than ignore suffering, the best of the black tradition unearths it. Kendrick inherits the blues tradition by expressing the “why and wherefore” of suffering—and so helps us do the same.

At the heart of Christian faith is a shocking claim: God became human and died. It is the story of a man who bore profound humiliation, exposure, and shame, placing God not in sanitized spirituality but in the raw realities of birth, desire, touch, and harm. This evening will explore how Christ's embodied life and death confront our cultural stigmas toward bodily trauma and reveal a salvation that reaches into our most fragile places, resurrecting and blessing scars rather than erasing them.

Recorded live at Theology on Tap on 10/28/25. In Knowing and Being Known, Rev. Erin Moniz explores the essential elements of healthy relationships, addresses the complexities of intimacy, and shines a light on the barriers that can impede genuine connection.

In these painful, divisive times, it is helpful to trace the reality of prophetic truth from the God-spoken messages of the Old Testament prophets to the subversive works of artists resisting the “empire.” Dr. McCampbell will use the framework provided in Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination and examples from the arts to illustrate the power of the age-old fight against cultural Christianity. Artists discussed include Frederick Douglass, Charlotte Brontë, Margaret Atwood, Banksy, Yaa Gyasi, Flannery O’Connor, Sho Baraka, and others.

Single Christians often encounter the church as a place where marriage and family are lifted up as the main ways to follow Christ faithfully. But there are Bible passages and historical moments that suggest otherwise.

The stories of great men and women throughout the history of the church can help us form a bridge between the teaching of Scripture and our embodied lives.

Drawing on her upbringing in a long-standing family tradition of winemakers and her degrees in biblical studies and spiritual theology, Dr. Gisela Kreglinger introduces readers in a light-hearted way to the theme of wine in the Bible, throughout the history of the church, and in the church's feasting and fellowship today.

Mary Oliver once wrote, "Maybe the desire to make something beautiful / is the piece of God that is inside each of us." Though never espousing a Christian faith, Mary Oliver presents nature, the spirit, the body, and the divine in her simple but elegant poetry in terms that evoke the Christian mystic tradition. In our personal experiences with beauty and creativity, can we, along with Oliver, enter into a fuller appreciation of what the mystics called union with God?

Our journeys of faith often involve the navigation of doubt. In this lecture, Dr. Luke Irwin explores this dynamic through the Gospel of John. Lecture given live at Mission Chattanooga on December 3, 2024.