Hello, and welcome to the first installment of Sabrina’s Weekly Digest, where I share some interesting things I’ve encountered. Essentially, these are things I think you might like to know.

Listening

Podcasts

If you haven’t heard, I was recently on a podcast episode of Sancta Colloquia, where I talked with Rev. Lauren Larkin about Our God Loves Justice. You can find more information here.

Other podcast episodes I’ve enjoyed recently: The Magnificast’s episode Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism 101!, and Theology and Socialism’s episode Socialism and Orthodoxy.

On Twitter this week, someone recently tweeted, “Why are there so many theology podcasts with white dudes based on beer?” to which I replied, “”why are so many theology podcasts just white dudes? they get old really fast.” The original tweeter said he was joking, but I wasn’t.

I wanted to do more than complain, so here is a list of podcasts that are NOT hosted by two white dudes. They are mostly theological/spiritually oriented, although not exclusively so. They are linked to their Twitter account, or website if the podcast doesn’t have a Twitter account. They are in no particular order. If you have any other ones to add, put them in the comments so I can add them the list!

Theosophia
Protagonista
Truth’s Table
Spanglish Seminary
Sancta Colloquia
She is Called
Profane Faith
Two Feminists Annotate the Bible (Two FAB)
Another Round
Bible Bitches
#Millenneagram Podcast
Parenting Forward by Cindy Wang Brandt
The Red Couch Podcast
Persuasion Podcast
Freedom Road Podcast
Betwixt
A Life Less Ordinand
Centering Holy Holy Podcast
Weird Religion
Combing the Roots with Ally Henny
Impolite Pod
Spark My Muse

Some other stuff I’ve been listening to on repeat:

Classical music playlists on Spotify
Binaural Beats playlists on Spotify
Maggie Rogers, Heard It in a Past Life
Rozzi, Bad Together
Hozier, Wasteland, Baby!
Beyonce, Lemonade

Reading

Books:

Here are some books I recently finished, along with some brief thoughts:

Union Made: review here

She Who Would be King: beautifully written, heart-breaking historical novel with magical elements. I actually did not know that Liberia was settled by former slaves until I read this book.

Captain America Vol.1: Winter in America: I enjoyed this take on Captain America by Ta-Nehisi Coates, including the illustrations, but it was fairly predictable.

Captain Marvel, Earth’s Mightiest Hero, Vol. 2: less predictable than Captain America, plus I always enjoy Captain Marvel more than Captain America, but I am not a fan of the illustration style that makes long, thin characters.

Articles and miscellanea:

As requested, here are a few interesting readings from the ecotheology class I audited:

Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation by Ivone Gebara

by James Cone: “Whose Earth Is It, Anyway?” In Earth Habitat: Eco-Injustice and the Church’s Response 23-32.

by Melanie Harris: “Ecowomanism 101: Method and Approaches.” In Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths, 13-59.

______ . “Engaging Transformation: Ecowomanist Spirituality.” In Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths, 79-109

______ . “Honoring Womanist Experience.” In Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths, 1-12.

______ “Ecowomanism: Black Women, Religion, and the Environment.” The Black Scholar 46, no. 3 (2016): 27-39.

I haven’t read this yet, but it looks to be an enlightening read, from the hosts of The Magnificast: “Podcasting Pedagogy, and the Inheritance of Clandestine Broadcasts.”

If you need something to be angry and/or sad about, check out how people are being punished for being good neighbors.

Curiosities

A couple weeks ago, in the adult confirmation class, the rector at the church I’m attending said some things about Jesus I’d never heard before, not even in the classes I took with a professor from Claremont School of Theology (being a good fundie kid, I thought she was off her rocker, but I learned the stuff she taught so I could ace the exams):

• Scholars say Jesus never worked as a craftsman, but only as a Rabbi, for which he was formally educated.
• Joseph, Mary, and Jesus lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
• Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna, both received angelic visitations about Mary’s birth, and Joseph was a much older cousin with children of his own already (the part about his having children I’ve heard speculated before).

Being naturally skeptical, I went to the university library near the gentrified palace where I live, and surveyed over half a dozen works on Christ dealing with his life (Meiers ended up being the most helpful), but nowhere could I substantiate the claim that Jesus never worked a trade and was only a known Rabbi. I did, however, renew my acquaintance with the Apocryphal Gospels, and that’s where you’ll find the accounts of Joachim and Anna, and Mary’s life at the Temple. If you’re curious to read for yourself, here are the names of the two accounts I read most thoroughly: Proto-Gospel of James, Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. A good source for reading those is The Apocryphal Gospels, which is a Greek/English parallel, with some background notes I found helpful.

And that concludes my first weekly digest! Let me know if you'd like to see anything in particular.