This week we’re featuring the third episode of text.soul.culture, a podcast hosted and curated by Dr. J. Derek McNeil, Academic Dean at The Seattle School. Derek is joined by Dr. Angela Parker, Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies, to talk about what has formed her as a Biblical scholar and about her unique role here at The Seattle School.
Dr. Parker shares about her background before coming to The Seattle School, including an experience—having the Bible twisted and used against her—that allows her to relate with students who come into her classroom with resistance or fear about engaging Biblical texts, inviting them to “reimagine what interpretation of this text looks like without us hurting one another?”
“The Spirit allows transformation to occur in the reading and the doing and the engaging of the text.”
This conversation touches on Dr. Parker’s framework for reading and teaching the Bible (“context, text, context”); the work of integration; embodied reading, teaching, and storytelling; the movement of the Spirit; and the pastoral aspects of Dr. Parker’s role at The Seattle School, as she sits with students who are struggling, disagreeing, and asking hard questions about what they are learning in class.
“I don’t have all the answers,” says Dr. Parker, “but I can sit with folks in all of our wonderings about what’s going on in our world, what’s going on in the text, what’s going on in our school.”
Dr. Parker was also recently featured on the Paulcast from Kurt Willems at Theology Curator, sharing more about her background and her engagement of biblical texts, particularly the writing of Paul. Listen to Dr. Parker on “Race, Suffering, and Empire in Paul.”