Housekeeping #1
Just some updates
Hey friends, three updates from me:
The Daily Theology Podcast has moved to Okeydoxy
I have two essays on David Tracy coming out this fall
Celluloid Christ will be back next week with King of Kings (1961)
Read on below if you want more info.
The Daily Theology Podcast has moved to Okeydoxy
Way back in 2015, when the Daily Theology blog was still going strong, I started hosting a podcast where I interviewed theologians about their life, career, and work. We released episodes on a pretty inconsistent schedule (although it averaged once a month) until the middle of 2019.
I stopped doing the podcast for reasons that were partly personal (we were expecting a baby, and then we weren’t, and then we were matched with Dorothy), partly professional (I was doing more writing, see the next item below this one), and partly because editing the audio was a struggle.
But I missed doing the show. I missed the conversations it enabled - with friends, colleagues, mentors, and people who would later become any or all of the above. And people asked me when, if, I would start up again. I’ve been recording again since the summer, and started putting out new episodes in May, again on a pretty inconsistent schedule.
I’ve moved it from the previous hosting service to Substack because (a) Substack will host the show for free and (b) I thought I could integrate it with the newsletters I’m already doing.
Anyone who is already subscribed to Okeydoxy emails will also get the podcast emails. You can also, in your own settings, change it so you only get one or the other, as you see fit. Additionally, you can still subscribe to the podcast on all your favorite podcast apps (Apple Podcasts seems most popular, followed by Spotify; I still love Overcast best).
I’m going to set it up so paid subscribers get early access to podcast episodes, so if that is a motivator for you, sign up today!
I have two essays on David Tracy coming out this fall
The first one, which is being published today, is “Conversational Reason: Ambiguities and Interruptions in a Digital Age,” is in Beyond the Analogical Imagination: The Theological and Cultural Vision of David Tracy, edited by Barnabas Palfrey and Andreas Telser. The essay uses Tracy’s idea of “interruptions” in Plurality and Ambiguity to consider conversation in the digital age, especially as presented in Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together and Reclaiming Conversation.
The essay grew out of a conference on Tracy’s thought that Barnabas and Andreas organized at the University of Vienna in 2019. I was excited to be asked, and especially excited to travel to Vienna with my wife Paige and with my parents. It was a bit odd, plopping a three day conference into the middle of a ten day international trip, and the weather was not super cooperative. But I did get to see some Beethoven-related sites, a neat exhibit on Rothko, and Rigoletto in the Vienna Opera House (for 4 euros, no less).
The original plan for the book was to both discuss all of Tracy’s major works and to put each of those in conversation with big contemporary ideas and issues. It’s what we did at the conference, although some of those presenters dropped out of the volume and other people were added later . I haven’t had the chance to read the final text yet, but I’m particularly excited for the essays by Alejandro Nava (“From Public to Street Theology: The Mystical-Prophetic Fragments of Hip-Hop”) and Dion Forrester (“Theology in the Public Realm? David Tracy and Contemporary African Religiosity”).
The volume would set you back a cool $110, so maybe less of a stocking stuffer this December and more of a “ask your library to order a copy.”
The other essay I have coming out is “Reconsidering David Tracy’s Public Theology in a Digital Age” in the International Journal of Public Theology. This one is also focused on Tracy and digital communications, but instead looks at his vision of public theology, especially the interplay between the publics of academy, church, and society and the theological subdisciplines of fundamental, systematic, and practical theologies.
The core question is ultimately twofold: how does the “digital sphere” interact with his three publics and how does “digital theology” fit with his subdisciplines? I proposed four different possible reads on these two questions (which in Tracy’s thought are intimately intertwined), and ended up finding that “digital theology as contextual theology” is the most persuasive interpretation.
This paper also grew out of a 2019 conference, the Catholic Theological Society of America’s annual meeting in Pittsburgh. I was on a panel with Dan Rober and Karen Ross on “Millennial and Post-Post-Conciliar theologies” that was really great and engaging.
The essay will be out in Volume 17, Issue 3 of the IJPT this fall. Not sure of the actual release date yet.
Overall, I’m just happy to see these both finally coming out. As many of you know, the road for publishing academic essays can be long and winding, so there’s a certain relief when it comes to its conclusion.
Celluloid Christ will be back next week with King of Kings (1961)
I had hoped to wrap up writing that piece this week, but preparing for my diaconate Christology course this Saturday and working on podcast edits put me back a bit. I’m hoping to have it out on Tuesday next week.
One quick tidbit about it: when it was released in 1961, apparently some critics described it as “I was a teenage Jesus” due to Jeffrey Hunter’s youthful looks. But Hunter was 33 years old when he was cast for the role! The traditional age of Jesus at the crucifixion!
By comparison, R. Henderson Bland was 38 when he portrayed Jesus in From the Manger to the Cross (1912), HB Warner was 50 in King of Kings (1927), and Max von Sydow was 33 when they started filming The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). I haven’t followed up on the later actors I’ll be covering, but I think maybe next year one of the wrap up posts I’ll do will look at this age question.