Contemplating Now

Cassidy Hall

CONTEMPLATING NOW is a podcast exploring the Intersection of Contemplation and Social Justice with host Cassidy Hall. This podcast explores contemplative spirituality's direct relationship with issues of social justice through interviews with scholars, mystics, and activists. read less
Religion & SpiritualityReligion & Spirituality
Breathing Mysticism: A Conversation with Dr. Angela N. Parker
Sep 15 2021
Breathing Mysticism: A Conversation with Dr. Angela N. Parker
In this interview with Dr. Angela N. Parker, we discuss contemplation, mysticism and the movement of collective breath. On the topic of mysticism she said, “I think that’s what mysticism is for me: how do I replenish myself so that I can do what god has called me to do?” In this conversation she also explores the ways in which collective breath can allow us to move together in various forms of protest and collective care, “when I read Jesus in the biblical text I see Jesus gathering groups of people to actually walk against a Roman imperialistic supremacist system." Dr. Angela N. Parker a Biblical scholar currently teaching at McAfee School of Theology. In her research, Dr. Parker merges Womanist thought and postcolonial theory while reading biblical texts. Dr. Parker’s books include If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority. In this book, Dr. Parker draws from her experience as a Womanist New Testament scholar in order deconstruct one of White Christianity’s most pernicious lies: the conflation of biblical authority with the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility. In her second book entitled Bodies, Violence, & Emotions: A Womanist Study of the Gospel of Mark, Dr. Parker thinks through the issue of imperial violence and its effects on the bodies of Jesus, John the Baptizer, and the woman suffering in a flow of blood in Mark 5. This study allows Dr. Parker to engage real lived experiences of violence and emotions in contemporary society. “Allow what you’re fighting for to shine through… Find what you can do and work with that hurt… We are all too valuable to burn out.”