Candler School of Theology

Coming up on today's program, I'll speak with Craig Ford.

He's a professor at Emory University's Candler School of Theology.

He's offering a fresh perspective on the intersection of faith, LGBTQ+, identity, and ethics.

And we're going to learn more about Professor Ford's course, Queer Theology and Queer Ethics.

This is a college course, so I'm curious, how do you measure, because they have to get a grade, so how do you measure, what are you giving them, what are you tasking them with? Do they have to...

Oh, well, so I get to work with graduate students.

So I teach at Candler School of Theology.

And so many of my students are training to become future ministers or other future theologians.

It was just like, "Oh yeah, of course." Like, of course it would function in this way.

Um, in the, in the, in the book I quote a guy named Caleb Mascal, and he, uh, he was at an event I was at at Candler School of Theology, and he said, "What does it mean to industrialize a formative moment?" He said, "When you introduce, uh, songs into the context of Sunday morning worship and there's money to be made by songs being sung together on Sunday morning, you have an entire industry that just shifts its focus toward that bucket of money." And, and you see that at the Christian concert situation.

You know, there's people that are going there, you know, the individual evangelicals, they're going to have a worship experience.

Uh, but the, the band, you know, they've got other interests.

I have, uh, shared this illustration a number of times here, I'm sure, uh, because it, I just think it's so good and I, I read it thinking about it for my own life often.

It comes from Fred Craddock, the great, um, uh, professor of homiletics at Emory at Candler School of Theology, uh, and a great preacher.

He, he says this, "To give my life for Christ appears glorious.

To pour myself out for others, to pay the ultimate price of martyrdom, I'll do it.

Other prominent evangelical signers include Mile Green, president of World Relief, an evangelical Christian humanitarian group, the Reverend Gabriel Salguero, head of National Latino Evangelical Coalition, Rick Warren, co-founder of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, Russell Moore, theologian at Christianity Today, Amy Grant, a well-known contemporary Christian musician, and Charlie Lowell, a member of the Christian band Jars of Clay.

More liberal-leaning evangelicals such as Shane Claiborne, an activist and co-founder of Red Letter Christians, prominent black pastors such as Pastor Walter August Jr., who leads both the church at Bethel's family in Houston and an affiliated humanitarian group, and mainline Protestant leaders like the Reverend Letitia M. Campbell, a Presbyterian Church USA minister and professor at Emory's Candler School of Theology, are also among the signatories.

The funding involves about $320 million dedicated to initiatives for maternal and child health, $250 million for malaria response, and $135 million for feeding malnourished people.

The letter points to Matthew chapter 25, where Christ teaches us to attend to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.

It is a phenomenal conversation.

Dr. Dubé is the William Ragsdale Cannon Distinguished Professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Prior to joining Candler's faculty, Dr. Dubé served as Professor of New Testament at the University of Botswana.

And as Angela already mentioned, but she's particularly known for her work as a post-colonial feminist theologian.

And I had a

counseling professor at Candler School of Theology.

And he was teaching counseling, seminary, teaching counseling.

And I asked him a question.