Just Mercy: Podcorn Theology (Peter Nittler, Miriam Hamilton, and Alli Pooré)

Your Pod and Your Staff

It’s the first edition of Podcorn Theology! On these episodes we’ll invite our audience to watch a movie, and then we will turn on our microphones and try to engage that movie in a theological discussion. This week: we’re talking about Just Mercy. The majority of our conversations will be in discussing the film by trying to listen closely to what the film is saying – what is the story it’s trying to tell? That’s step one. And step two is simply to start dialoguing with how that story relates to the story of our faith. We will be committed to a posture of humility, teachability, and expectation that God can meet us in the process and in the movies we see. May it be so! Enjoy the pod…

“Christians need not claim that non-Christian filmmakers are covert Christians or simply appropriate from their movies what is […] congruent with their understanding of the Christian faith. Rather, if viewers will join in community with a film’s storyteller, letting the movie’s images speak with their full integrity, they might be surprised to discover that they are hearing God as well. If this sounds surprising, it is no more so that Assyria was once God’s spokesperson to Israel” – Robert K. Johnston Reel Spirituality, 100

Books on Film and Theology:

Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue - Robert K. Johnston

How to Talk to a Movie: Movie-Watching as a Spiritual Exercise - Elijah Lynn Davidson