REVELATION: Texts of Terror in A New Age of Terrorism

Front Row

This podcast series is about perhaps the most challenging and controversial book in the New Testament, The Book Of Revelation. Some Christians love it, and some hate it. Some Christians never talk about it; some never stop talking about it.

Some people are using it as a predictor of current events or as part of their impetus for violence and fervor for hatred and political gain. Others apply Revelation as a sort of war against good and evil to almost any situation one might be involved.

John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus at DePaul University and widely regarded as the foremost historical Jesus scholar of our time, says, "The heartbeat of the Christian Bible is a recurrent cardiac cycle in which the asserted radicality of God’s nonviolent distributive justice is subverted by the normalcy of civilization's violent retributive justice. And, of course, the most profound annulment is that both assertion and subversion are attributed to the same God or the same Christ."

This FRONT ROW podcast features special guests Dr. Charlene Sinclair and Rev. Peter Laarman.

Dr. Charlene Sinclair is an organizer, thinker, and writer whose work centers on the intersection of race, gender, economy, and democracy. Strongly influenced by the pathbreaking thought of the late James Cone, founder of Black Liberation Theology, Dr. Sinclair is committed to fashioning strategies that embrace a liberationist approach to faith and spirituality in the context of popular struggles for racial, economic, and gender justice.

Rev. Peter Laarman is a retired United Church of Christ minister and activist who led Judson Memorial Church in New York and Progressive Christians Uniting in California. He is currently involved with the King & Breaking Silence webinar project of the National Council of Elders and with the development of a new formation called Social Ethics Energizing Democracy.

Listen as Charlene’s and Peter’s different perspectives confront and challenge the ascending violence of “the war in heaven,” where Jesus judges the whole world; all who worship other gods, who commit murder, perform magic, or illicit sexual acts are thrown down to be forever tormented in a lake of fire, while those who claim to be God’s faithful are invited to enter the new city of Jerusalem that descends from heaven and reigns in triumph for 1,000 years.