What Matters Most

Today's guest on What Matters Most, Imam Dr. Abubakar Mohammed Marzuq, is from Ghana. Imam Marzuq introduces us in this episode to the country of Ghana generally and to the interfaith situation in the West African country specifically.  Imam Marzuq is the assistant to the Chief Imam of Ghana, Shaikh Dr. Osman Nuhu Sharubutu who is 104 years old. Marzuq belongs to the Tijaniyyah tariqa, or order, a branch of Sufi Islam. Islam is not the majority religion in Ghana, that is Christianity, at around 71% of all Ghanaians, but Islam has been a significant presence in Ghana for a long time alongside a smaller contingent of people who belong to indigenous religious traditions. Imam Marzuq discusses how Ghana has been successful in countering the religious violence of Boko Haram, ISIS, and Al Qaeda in their country, unlike some of their neighbours such as Burkina Faso and Nigeria. Marzuq also sees national security as an interfaith matter, in which religions work with the government to forestall the potential rise of religious violence.  He spoke particularly of the Ghana Christian Council and the Office of the Chief Imam working together to create peace.  Imam Marzuq is a is a bit of a renaissance man, as a lecturer, journalist, and researcher on issues in language, education, and religion.  He is a multilinguist in Arabic, English, and French. If you want to read his writing, he writes the column Literary Discourse on myjoyonline.com and Language Agenda on modernghana.com.  Apart from being an Imam, he holds a PhD in English as a Second Language (ESL), an MA in Adult Education (ESL Specialty), and a BFA in TV Production. Schools he attended include National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI), University of Ghana, Legon, and Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. Currently, Imam Marzuq lectures in Functional English and  and Academic Writing at the University of Applied Management, Ghana. He is also a member of the Governing Board of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) and a member of the Governing Board of Ghana Library Authority (GhLA).  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seeks to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens

Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the second (new) episode of our second season, is Dr. Massimo Faggioli, a full professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia).  Massimo is one of the most prominent Catholic theologians working today in North America and Europe.  Massimo is a friend and was a colleague of mine at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota between 2009 to 2016, where we both worked together in the Department of Theology. Massimo Faggioli is a married lay Roman Catholic. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and their two children. He was born, raised, and educated in Italy, as he will discuss in the podcast. He studied in Ferrara, Bologna, Tübingen, and Turin, where he got his PhD in 2002. He taught at the University of Bologna, at the Free University of Bolzano and at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia. He worked at the John XXIII Foundation for Religious studies in Bologna between 1996 and 2008 under the mentorship of the founder of the Bologna School Giuseppe Alberigo. Massimo was the founding co-chair of the study-group “Vatican II Studies” for the American Academy of Religion between 2012 and 2017. He has a column in La Croix International and is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine and the Italian magazine Il Regno. He is co-editor with Bryan Froehle of the new series “Studies in Global Catholicism” for Brill Publishers (first volume scheduled 2023). His books and articles have been published in more than ten languages. His latest books are Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Liturgical Press 2017), and The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis. Moving Toward Global Catholicity (Orbis Books, 2020), and Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (Bayard 2021).  He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II (Oxford University Press, 2023) with Catherine Clifford, who has also been a guest on this podcast.  Massimo has written 15 books, and I have linked to all of them through his Amazon page above, but he suggested in the podcast that the two book he thought might be a good introduction to his thought were his two books on the new Catholic movements and I will link to them specifically here: The Rising Laity. Ecclesial Movements since Vatican II (Paulist Press, 2016). Sorting Out Catholicism. A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements (Liturgical Press, 2014). I should also mention that Massimo gave one of our keynote addresses at our Pope Francis conference in May 2023 and that lecture will soon be appearing on our St. Mark’s YouTube channel. I mentioned a number of other books and documents, which I will link to here also, including Laudato Si’, a new part two of which is due soon, Fratelli Tutti, the International Theological Commission document on the upcoming synod, and Micah Kiel, Reading the Bible in the Age of Francis. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!  John W. Martens  

Our first guest on the second season of What Matters Most is Rev. Dr. Robert James, Associate Professor, Anglican Formation and Studies at VST.   Rob James is an Anglican priest who was ordained in the Church of England and worked as a parish priest in Gloucestershire and then as Canon Chancellor of Wells Cathedral, Somerset, before coming to Canada. Before he was a parish priest, he worked in intelligence for GCHQ, the agency formerly known as Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing worked and where the Enigma code of the Nazis was broken. Rob and his wife Jean came to Canada in 2022 when he took up his post at the Vancouver School of Theology, on the campus of the University of British Colombia. He also is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. He holds six degrees from five universities, including a PhD from SOAS, London. Most of his research in recent years has been in Biblical studies, including a book on the Gospel of Luke called The Spiral Gospel. He has a number of academic articles published, with a forthcoming one in the Journal of Theological Studies on Luke and the Syriac Gospel tradition, a subject of ongoing research for him. In this episode we are talking Christian theology – incarnation, soteriology, exclusivity  inclusivity, pluralism, particularism, universalism, Nostra Aetate, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Nestorius, Origen, Karl Rahner, John Robinson,  purgatory. This is a deep dive, so get your notepad and questions ready! Feel free to send them to me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Perhaps you'll also come up with ideas for other topics and guests.  For those of you who are regular listeners, you already know that What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC.  Welcome to the second season of the podcast. I'm glad you have joined us. If you enjoy what you hear today, please recommend it to your friends, even your enemies if you want!  Dr. John W. Martens Professor of Theology Director of the Centre for Christian Engagement St. Mark's College at UBC  

As What Matters Most prepares to begin its second season in September 2023, I thought we should return to the first episode with Fr. Jim Martin, released on October 7, 2022. Many of you were not listening to the podcast when this episode was released, so to prepare you for the upcoming season, this is a taste of what's on offer. I will say that a number of tweaks have taken place since Fr. Martin's episode was released, especially with the Intros and the Outros, and beginning with a bit of the conversation at the beginning of each pod. Still, this gives you a real sense of what we do here at  What Matters Most. As I wrote at the time, "In this episode, I discuss with Fr. Jim Martin, a Roman Catholic priest based in New York City, his outreach to the LGBTQ community and his associated book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of  Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.  We also talk about his pilgrimage to Israel and Jesus, which lead to his book, Jesus: A Pilgrimage.  The conversation ranges widely, though, discussing his early life and how he became a priest.  Fr. Martin is the editor-at-large at America Magazine and the author of many other books, including My Life with the Saints and Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone. Please enjoy this encore epsiode with a priest who has a huge social media following and is clearly a major Catholic public figure, but who in person is as warm, kind, and pastoral as his public image. He receives a lot of vitriol and anger online, but my own experience has always been of a good man and a good priest. John W. Martens Professor of Theology Director of the Centre for Christian Engagment St. Mark's College at the University of British Columbia  

Welcome to What Matters Most.  On this episode I speak with the Interfaith Amigos, who are Imam Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don MacKenzie, and Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan. Rabbi Laura replaced the recently retired Rabbi Ted Falcon as a part of this interfaith trio. When you listen to the episode you will notice that I did not start with saying, "A Rabbi, an Imam, and a Minister walk into a bar..." This is either a missed opportunity or a sign of great restraint on my part. They did however come into a terrific Zoom session and a wonderful podcast resulted.  The podcast was recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People. We are thankful for their welcome to us so that we can live, learn, and pray on their land. It has been a while since I have released an episode due to our Pope Francis conference in early May, which was a smashing success, and the death of my father John Martens on May 18 at the age of 92, a couple of weeks prior to his 93rd birthday on June 5. Death and funerals certainly turn one’s mind and heart to What Matters Most. This is our final episode for the year, though I will re-release episodes during July and August. I also hope to be taping episodes in July and August to be released in September. Now let me turn to our podcast. I think many people will find this episode challenging, as it asks serious questions about the nature of religious traditions, beliefs, practices, and scriptures. What’s at the heart of a religious tradition? What are core teachings? What’s the purpose of a religion? Must a religion be exclusive? How inclusive should or can a religion be before it is not one’s own tradition? Who are the (original) Interfaith Amigos? Imam Jamal Rahman, Pastor Don Mackenzie, and Rabbi Ted Falcon taught together starting in 2001 until Ted's recent retirement, speaking and leading workshops in the United States and Israel-Palestine. Jamal's personal experience as a Muslim after 9/11 moved him to share more of the substance of Islam. Ted stepped more visibly into the larger community, teaching how a healing spirituality emerges within Judaism. Don concluded his position as minister of University Congregational UCC to devote more time focusing on the ways a true spirituality supports us in bringing healing to our world. Together they have explored an inclusive spirituality to promote healing that expresses as concrete environmental, social, and political action. They brought and bring a message of deep hope and profound possibilities for healing on both a personal level and a planetary level. Their work comprises a dialogue of the mind, the heart, and the hands, encouraging greater understanding, compassion, and social action in the world. For more on the group, please see this old New York Times article about the group.  Their book, Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-opening, Hope-filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi, and a an Imam, was released in July 2009 by Skylight Paths. Additional books include, Religion Gone Astray: What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith and Finding Peace Through Spiritual Practice - The Interfaith Amigos Guide to Personal, Social, and Environmental Healing. All three books received Spirituality & Practice Book Award as one of the Best Spiritual Books in the year of publication 2009, 2011, 2016.  The Amigos (and one Amiga): Don MacKenzie: Rev. Dr. Donald Mackenzie, a minister of the United Church of Christ, is a graduate of Macalester College, Princeton Theological Seminary and New York University. He taught at Princeton Seminary, and was a minister at Nassau Presbyterian Church, Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, and University Congregational Church in Seattle. Since 2001, he has been part of the Interfaith Amigos, with whom he has co-authored three books. Don is also an accomplished country musician. He currently lives in Minneapolis. Jamal Rahman: Jamal Rahman is a popular speaker on Islam, Sufi spirituality, and interfaith relations. Along with his Interfaith Amigos, he has been featured in the New York Times, CBS News, BBC, and various NPR programs. Jamal is co-founder and Muslim Sufi minister at Interfaith Community Sanctuary and adjunct faculty at Seattle University. He is a former co-host of Interfaith Talk Radio and travels nationally and internationally, presenting at retreats and workshops. In addition to the books he has co-authored with the Interfaith Amigos, he is also author of three books on Sufi spirituality, most recently Sacred Laughter of the Sufis. Laura Duhan-Kaplan: Laura Duhan-Kaplan is Director of Inter-Religious Studies and Professor of Jewish Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, and Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue. She has won many awards for her teaching of religion and philosophy, including the Carnegie Foundation’s prestigious U.S. Professor of the Year. Rabbi Laura is the author of Mouth of the Donkey: Re-Imagining Biblical Animals and Shechinah, Bring Me Home: Kabbalah and the Omer in Real Life. She has also collaboratively authored four books on interfaith topics including friendship, reconciliation, othering, and hope. She states that she is delighted to be part of the Interfaith Amigos, after admiring their work for many years. If you want to hear more from Laura, please check out episodes one and two with her on What Matters Most. During our conversation, I asked my guests for recommendations for reading and spiritual practice. Jamal recommended Rumi, the great Sufi mystic.  I have linked to one translation of his poems, but there are many others to explore. Don recommended Marcus Borg, and I have linked to one of his books, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, but there are many others. Laura noted her doctoral supervisor Rabbi Marcia Prager, the Path of Blessing, a book I am excited to read. There was so many things mentioned, and I might forget something, but I wanted to link to a book Jamal mentioned, American Grace. Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! This episode I think makes it clear why this name of this podcast is What Matters Most, as what matters to us leads to behaviors and practices that seek out the good of the planet and its people or that lead to destruction and anger. Keep in mind what Rabbi Laura said about gratefulness: what can you be grateful for today? What gives you hope? What can you do today that helps preserve the planet or that helps you get along better with your neighbour? Thanks so much for listening. Peace, John W. Martens

Today’s guest on What Matters Most is Sam Rocha, associate professor of philosophy of education at University of British Columbia. This was a wide-ranging conversation and as I say at in the intro to the podcast, I am still processing all of it because we covered so much territory.  Sam is the author of a number of books, including A Primer for Philosophy and Education with Cascade Books, Folk Phenomenology: Education, Study, and the Human Person,  and The Syllabus as Curriculum: A Reconceptualist Approach. His website contains more information on his writing, music, and other interests.  ​I should mention, though, that Sam is an author who has been published widely in popular Catholic media including First Things, Commonweal, America, Our Sunday Visitor, The Catholic Herald, and Church Life Journal. Previously he wrote online for Vox Nova and Patheos on the Catholic channel. Sam also has a pugnacious presence on Twitter, engaging especially with the Catholic Twittersphere and calling out racism in the Church and hypocrisies of various sorts. He’s a terrific follow. He also has his own podcast, Folk Phenomenology that I encourage you to check out also.  In this conversation we spent a lot of time talking about his upbringing in Texas and Mexico as the son of lay Catholic missionaries in the charismatic renewal and the precarity of that life.  He mentioned a number of groups such as Sword of the Spirit, Bread of Life Community, Cursillo, and Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Latin America. Sam also mentioned a great number of people, including authors and their works, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ivan Illich, John Stuart Mill, Gloria Purvis, George Weigel, Fr. Michael Scanlan, and Alasdair McIntyre. I also mentioned Nicky Cruz, Run, Baby Run, and David Wilkerson, Cross and the Switchblade. I also mentioned an article of mine on Jesus' teaching on marriage in Journal of Moral Theology with a long title “But from the beginning it was not so”: The Jewish Apocalyptic Context of Jesus’ Teaching on Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage. We also spoke a lot about Pope Benedict and Pope Francis. Sam is giving a paper at the Pope Francis conference coming up this week at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. Join us and the 45 other speakers coming to Vancouver in early May 2023.  You can register at the website. The document I mentioned that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote about the German professor who was not able to teach New Testament any longer ( Friedrich Wilhelm Maier) was Relationship Between Magisterium and Exegetes.  Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think. I also want to ask you to help this podcast by letting people know about What Matters Most. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring conversations and I would like people to have a chance to listen in! John W. Martens            

On this episode I speak with Sister Damien Savino, F.S.E., Ph.D., Dean of Science and Sustainability at Aquinas College in Michigan. Sister Damien Marie has a Ph.D in Civil (Environmental) Engineering from The Catholic University of America (CUA),  a M.A. in Theology  from CUA, a M.S. in Soil Science from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, and a B.S.  Biogeography (High Honors) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Sister Damien Marie has scientific, ecological, and theological chops, which made this a fascinating discussion.           For me it was a moving and powerful conversation as Sister Damien Marie spoke of her own revelatory experience witnessing the Northern Lights in northern Norway as a young woman and her recognition of the tight connection she found between place and people as a student among the Sámi people of northern Finland. We also spoke about Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', the sixth extinction, the difference between nature and creation, and whether Christianity is the cause of the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves.  On the origin of our current ecological crisis, Sister Damien Marie referred to an influential article written in 1967 by Lynn White called "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" in  Science 155: 1203-1207 which held Christianity, but not Francis of Assissi, responsible for our current ecological woes. She offered some alternative views on the cause of the crisis and how we might imagine or reimagine humanity's role in responding to the crisis. Sister Damien Marie will be offering a paper at the upcoming Pope Francis Conference in Vancouver called "The Franciscan Roots of Integral Ecology: Ecological Conversion and the Culture of Encounter." In this paper she will "address the Franciscan roots of integral ecology in light of contemporary challenges to ecological conversion and the culture of encounter, two concepts at the core of Pope Francis’ encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti." The paper is on Saturday May 6, so please come and join us if you are in the Vancouver area.   If you would like to know more about her approach to Laudato Si', as well as to Franciscan spirituality in relation to creation and the role of humans, please watch her recent lecture on the encyclical  or read her article on how to live an ecology of daily life. Or, check out the "Educating for Laudato Si'" website (praisebetoyou.org).  Please enjoy this episode and if you do, would you please rate, review, and pass on the news about this podcast to your friends? I would appreciate that very much!   John W. Martens

The guest on this episode is Nicholas Olkovich, my colleague at St. Mark’s College in Vancouver. Nick was just promoted to Associate Professor at St. Mark’s and is the Marie Anne Blondin Chair of Catholic Theology at St. Mark’s. Nick has a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of St. Michael’s College (2009-2016), an S.T.L., Regis College (2009-2013), an M.Div., University of St. Michael’s College/University of Toronto (2005-2009), and a B.A., Honours, History and Philosophy, University of Toronto (2001 – 2005) As his online bio states, "Nick teaches in the areas of foundational, systematic and pastoral theology. His ongoing research focuses primarily on the relationship between ethics, politics and religion in democratic contexts and on a variety of issues in theological anthropology, fundamental ecclesiology, and foundational theology. His teaching and research is strongly influenced by the work of Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan." Nick and I discussed the upcoming Pope Francis conference in Vancouver  (May 4-6, 2023) sponsored by The Centre for Christian Engagement , the Cullen family, the Marie Anne Blondin Chair, and the RCAV. We are co-organizers of this conference and we could have shared how we have bonded over logistical details, but no one wants to hear about that on a podcast, so we discussed why a conference on Pope Francis, his writing and his teaching, is so important after 10 years and some of the topics that will be covered (Laudato Si', polarization in the Church, reaching out to the margins, etc.). Please enjoy this conversation with my colleague and friend Nick Olkovich.  John 

My guest on this episode of  What Matters Most is the Canadian biblical scholar Dr. Matthew Thiessen, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University and formerly an Assistant Professor  at St. Louis University. It was a fascinating conversation for me as Matt works in the same field, biblical studies and studies of Paul in particular, as do I. I was trained by a different generaton of Pauline scholars, though, including E. P. Sanders, who is mentioned in the episode and became associated with the New Perspective on Paul, and Stephen Westerholm, whose work reflects a more traditional view of Paul. Matt's work develops earlier research on Paul and focuses on Paul as a faithful Jew, who is not opposed to Jews following the Torah, but to his Gentile converts doing so, including men being circumcised. In some ways Dr. Thiessen might be included in the "Paul within Judaism" school, but he eschews labels for himself as you will hear and as he discusses in his forthcoming book  A Jewish Paul: The Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles. I think he's also not sure if such labels reagrding the study of Paul are helpful in general. We spent much of our time talking about his fourth book, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023), forthcoming in August, and I encourage you to buy it and enter into your own conversation with the book. In the podcast, we will discuss why he does not want to translate certain terms, such as pneuma, apostolos, and ekklêsia, and why  Christian and Christ might not be the best terms to use with respect to members of Paul's assemblies or as a translation of Christos. Matt also came to the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark's in September 2022. You can hear and see Matt’s lecture and a panel discussion with Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan on the St. Mark’s YouTube channel. Check it out because there Matt offers a lecture based on his book Jesus and the Forces of Death and with Rabbi Laura speaks about combatting antisemitism in Christian biblical interpretation. Also, check out some of his previous books, including the aforementioned Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), Paul and the Gentile Problem (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), and Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). All of these books have been instrumental in championing a change in how we read early Christianity with respect to Judaism. Contesting Conversion also won  the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2014. In terms of our conversation, I wondered aloud whether 3 Corinthians appears in the Ethiopic Bible. It does not. Indeed, as Matt says 3 Corinthians had some status in the Syriac and  Armenian churches, but does not appear as a canonical text in any Christian New Testament.  Matt also mentioned the work of Ben Blackwell (Christosis: Engaging Paul's Soteriology with His Patristic Interpreters) and of Kathyryn Tanner (Christ the Key). Please follow the links to check out these books.  I also referenced an article on a recent study regarding ongoing anti-Judaism among Catholics. Please follow the links to read Catholic Biblical Literalists More Likely to be Anti-Jewish. With respect to the Vatican II document that Matt mentioned, Nostra Aetate, if you have not read it, I encourage you to do so. It remains important for Catholics and for all Christians. Other Vatican documents that speak out against anti-Judaism include The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible and The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable.  These are also worth reading.  Please enjoy this episode, rate, review, and let your friends know about the podcast! John W. Martens    

Welcome to our episode with Dr. David Penchansky, professor emeritus in the Department of Theology at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota.  This was a fascinating conversation. We learn about David growing up in Brooklyn in a family that were atheists and his own religious conversion on a "hippie commune," his words, in Washington State fifty years ago. He became an Assembly of God minister before entering the Catholic Church and working as a Professor.  He was trained as a Hebrew Bible scholar at Vanderbilt University and he has written numerous books, including  Understanding Wisdom Literature : Conflict and Dissonance in the Hebrew Text, Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible, and What Rough Beast?: Images of God in the Hebrew Bible. His most recent book Solomon and the Ant: The Qur’an in Conversation with the Bible, published by Cascade books, was the focus of much of our conversation. We talk about how David became interested in the Quran and started to learn Arabic. Much of his interest began with his wife Hend Al-Mansour, a medical doctor from Saudi Arabia, who left medicine behind while studying at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to work full time as an artist. You can check out her art, much of it focused on Arabian and Islamic themes at her website. I would love to have Hend on the podcast some day to discuss her art.  Then we did a deep dive into the three sections of Solomon and the Ant: The Qur’an in Conversation with the Bible, considering the themes of theodicy, polytheism, and prophetic revelation and the nine Suras he examines to explore these themes in the Quran and in conversation with the Bible.  David also mentioned a recommended English translation of the Quran, though we discuss in the podcast some of the issues with translating the Quran into any language other than Arabic. David recommended  the A.J. Droge translation and John Kaltner’s  general introduction to the Quran.   Please enjoy this episode and do not forget to rate and review and spread the news about the podcast to your friends!