You can also subscribe to the Calvary podcast on your favorite podcast app.
You can also subscribe to the Calvary podcast on your favorite podcast app.
The Rev. Sam Teitel is a minister, poet, and storyteller with an irreverent wit and a deep, abiding love of scripture, especially the weird parts of scripture that people don’t usually like to talk about. His sermons are candid, accessible, and often funnier than he means them to be. A lifelong Unitarian Universalist, he won the 2018 Preachers Fight Club storytelling event grand prize. Teitel has served as the minister of The Church Of The River in Memphis since 2017. Before he became a minister, he toured and performed as a slam poet. He is beyond thrilled to be returning to Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series!
The Rev. Sarah Condon is an Episcopal priest in Nashville. She makes a home there with her husband Josh (also a priest) and their two children. Condon is the co-host of the Mockingcast and a speaker/writer for Mockingbird Ministries. She also writes an advice column called “Dear Gracie” for Mockingbird magazine. Condon lost her parents in December 2020 in a car accident. It changed everything about her. Her ambitious nature fell apart, and she found something gentler in its place. Frequently she is thinking and writing about forgiveness and the unexpectedness of God’s grace in a world that demands brutality.
The Rev. Sarah Condon is an Episcopal priest in Nashville. She makes a home there with her husband Josh (also a priest) and their two children. Condon is the co-host of the Mockingcast and a speaker/writer for Mockingbird Ministries. She also writes an advice column called “Dear Gracie” for Mockingbird magazine. Condon lost her parents in December 2020 in a car accident. It changed everything about her. Her ambitious nature fell apart, and she found something gentler in its place. Frequently she is thinking and writing about forgiveness and the unexpectedness of God’s grace in a world that demands brutality.
The Rev. George Robertson began serving as senior pastor at Second Presbyterian Church in September 2017. He served as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia, senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, and as lecturer/adjunct professor at Covenant Theological Seminary. Currently, Robertson is a professor and academic dean of Memphis City Seminary, part of the executive team for the Memphis Christian Pastor’s Network, and a board member for The Gospel Coalition. He has authored Soul Anatomy, What is Evangelism, Am I Called? (Basics of the Faith Series), and several bible studies. Robertson is passionate about preaching the gospel of grace found in God’s word and working with others to promote the peace and welfare of the Memphis community.
Tom Shadyac is one of Hollywood’s all-time leading writer/directors with his films, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar, Liar, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty, and Evan Almighty, grossing nearly 2 billion dollars at the box office. Tom also produced the documentary Happy, and wrote and directed the documentary, I AM, which explores two fundamental questions – What’s wrong with our world, and what can we do about it? I AM has won numerous national and international awards and was one of the highest grossing documentaries of 2011. Tom is also a New York Time’s best-selling author, with the 2012 publication of his first book, Life’s Operating Manual. Of Lebanese descent, Tom comes from a unique and diverse background; he’s been an actor, screenwriter, and standup comic, while studying in depth the monastic traditions, ancient philosophy, mystic poetry, myth, and storytelling. What sets Tom apart is his rare ability to blend humor and heart. In 2013, after teaching at Pepperdine for 8 years, Tom became filmmaker in residence at the University of Memphis and taught at LeMoyne-Owen college where his students introduced him to the pulsing promise of the Soulsville neighborhood. Soon after he purchased two bankrupt buildings that became the Memphis Rox Campus, housing the world’s largest non-profit climbing gym, as well as numerous multi-faceted programs that serve the local community.
Elizabeth L. Jemison is a professor, writer, and teacher who loves questions of how we encounter the past and why it matters for our present. She teaches American religious history as an associate professor of religion at Clemson University. Beyond academic settings, Jemison regularly speaks to congregations and community groups about how religion and history shape our worlds and why studying them can deepen our faith. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press) and has published in Religion News Service and Religion & Politics, among other venues. Jemison is a proud native Memphian, who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with her spouse and young children, who daily invite her to deepen her sense of wonder.
Elizabeth L. Jemison is a professor, writer, and teacher who loves questions of how we encounter the past and why it matters for our present. She teaches American religious history as an associate professor of religion at Clemson University. Beyond academic settings, Jemison regularly speaks to congregations and community groups about how religion and history shape our worlds and why studying them can deepen our faith. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press) and has published in Religion News Service and Religion & Politics, among other venues. Jemison is a proud native Memphian, who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with her spouse and young children, who daily invite her to deepen her sense of wonder.
Anwar Arafat is an Imam for the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis. In Memphis since 2014, he moved here from Salt Lake City, UT, where he was born and raised, and served as an imam for several years. Arafat has traveled and lived overseas, completing his religious education locally and abroad, earning a bachelor’s degree in Islamic Studies, and most recently finishing a master’s degree in Islamic Leadership at the Islamic Seminary of America (TISA) in Dallas, Texas. He’s the U.S. Outreach Specialist for iERA, an international Dawah organization.
The Rev. Dr. Peggy Jean Craig is a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, community development nerd, wannabe poet, and personal photographer for her two-year-old identical twin girls. Growing up in rural Alabama as the only Asian kid other than her brother shaped her curiosity about marginalized places, community, and belonging. She’s most at home in borderland spaces, whether that be leading an arts and literacy youth organization in North Philadelphia, participating in university civic engagement in Camden, New Jersey, or pastoring a Germantown church dedicated to serving their immigrant and Latinx neighbors. With the help of her church, she’s practicing deep loving with folks in the midst of violence, homelessness, and hunger.
Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet. She is the author of the NYT bestseller This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, a project that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body. Her spirituality in this season is comprised of more questions than answers and grounded in myth, storytelling, interior examen, and embodiment. She is currently interested in questions concerning collective and inherited memory and has been formed by thinkers such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Thomas Merton, Octavia Butler, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.