Jennifer Garcia Bashaw is back, and her timing is, as always, impeccable. We recorded this conversation about her new book on biblical interpretation right after Al Mohler announced that women cannot, in fact, teach the Bible on podcasts. So we did the only honest thing. We talked about scripture for an hour. Serving Up Scripture is the book Jennifer co-wrote with Aaron Higashi, and it uses a cooking metaphor that does what good metaphors do — gives you somewhere to stand while you realize the kitchen has been on fire the whole time. We walked through the four questions every passage requires (historical, literary, ideological, theological), put the woman saved from stoning on stage one more time, read Cato’s instructions to Roman husbands whose wives commit adultery (a useful reminder that the Pastorals were the moderate position in their cultural context), and ended up where we always do — at the very different things you find in Paul depending on which Paul you are reading. Plus the news Al Mohler should have led the broadcast with: the Bible Divas podcast just launched, and all four are coming to Theology Beer Camp in October.

Here’s the Bible Divas on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

Highlights from the conversation

The cooking metaphor. The book’s central frame — interpreters as cooks, passages as ingredients, hospitality as the goal. Who is at the table? What are you cooking for? Are you celebrating or mourning? Once you start playing with it, the rigid the Bible just says one thing instinct that most of the pew has been trained to accept gets quietly dismantled.
The four questions every passage requires. Historical (What does this mean in light of polytheism? What did Cato tell Roman husbands to do about adulterous wives?), literary (What genre, what staging, what devices?), ideological (Who benefits if I read this prescriptively? Who has been harmed by this reading?), and theological(How does this affirm or challenge my view of God?). Most church readings ask the fourth question only. The other three are where everything interesting lives.
The woman saved from stoning, on stage. John 8, re-read with the four questions in mind. Adultery in the first-century context (a married woman talking to a man not her husband in public could be accused), Jesus’s choreography (kneeling, writing, standing, shifting the attention off her), and the ideological work of asking how is this passage being used to aid the oppressed? Jennifer’s John for Normal People puts the whole scene on the stage. The closing turn: women are still being made into Jesus’s scapegoat for the sexual sins of their society.
Which Paul? Galatians 3:28 vs. the Pastorals. The historical and literary questions applied to the question of women in the church. Galatians (definitely Paul) blows up the household codes. Ephesians (Pauline school) tries to soften the Roman patriarchal structure without dismantling it. The Pastorals (probably written a couple of generations after Paul died) cannot imagine women in the room at all. Jennifer’s diagnostic move when scripture is multivocal: ask what Jesus did. Hard to argue with the resurrection witness list.
The thing is rarely the thing. The fear underneath young men’s anxiety about women in the 2026 classroom is not theological. It is the economic vise of a generation handed a vision of masculinity tied to a one-income family that the economy will no longer underwrite. The complaint is women hate men. The actual ache is that the world they were promised does not exist. Jennifer’s classroom turn: the gift of a well-formed question is more useful than the right answer.
The Bible Divas launch — and they are going apocalyptic at Beer Camp. The four-scholar podcast Jennifer is launching this summer with Anna Sieges, Angela Parker, and Cynthia Shafer-Elliott. Two Old Testament scholars (one of them an archeologist), two New Testament scholars (one of them on Paul and Revelation as revenge fantasy). The pitch: most theology and Bible podcasts are hosted by men. The Bible Divas are putting women in charge of the format, the guests, and the agenda. All four are coming to Theology Beer Camp in Kansas City this October to record a live apocalyptic-themed episode. Revelation as revenge fantasy. Armageddon as archaeology. Apocalyptic as genre. Very possibly on the red carpet.

About our guest

Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw teaches New Testament and Christian Ministry at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and is an ordained American Baptist minister with more than two decades of parish experience. She earned her BA at Baylor, her MDiv at Truett Theological Seminary, and her PhD in New Testament from Fuller Theological Seminary. Her research spans Gospels studies, Girardian interpretation, hermeneutics, and homiletics. Books at the center of this conversation: Serving Up Scripture: How to Interpret the Bible for Yourself and Others (Broadleaf, 2025), co-authored with Aaron Higashi with a foreword by Peter Enns — the cooking metaphor at the heart of the hour; John for Normal People: A Guide through the Drama and Depth of the Fourth Gospel, where the woman saved from stoninggets put on stage; and her earlier Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims. Coming up: a dystopian novel based on the Kingdom of God in the Gospels, and a textbook on Jesus and Christ figures in cinema.

Previous Podcasts with Dr. Bashaw

This summer, Diana Butler Bass and Tripp Fuller are hosting Faith at 250 — an online summit gathering leading religion scholars, church historians, and theologians to reflect on America’s 250th anniversary. With the current administration leveraging the semiquincentennial toward a narrow rendering of the church’s history and witness in America, and a flood of Christian nationalist celebrations on the horizon, we wanted to create something different. Each contributor — including Randall Balmer, Juan Floyd-Thomas, Bill Leonard, Elesha Coffman, Corey Walker, Jennifer Harvey, Reggie Williams, Andrew Root, Adam Clark, Glenn Jonas, Kevin Carnahan, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove — offers a lecture on whatever they are carrying into this moment, whether that’s a deep read on a chapter of our religious past, a close look at a particular tradition or movement, or a forward-looking meditation on the challenges ahead. No one was asked to fit a theme. The result is a chorus, not a single argument.

Every talk is roughly 30 minutes — designed so a group can watch together and still have time for real conversation — and each comes with a companion discussion guide and resource list pointing you to the scholar’s books, articles, and projects. Whether you’re a pastor planning programming for your congregation, a facilitator leading a book club or adult ed class, or an individual learner who wants to think more carefully about faith and the American story, this summit was built for you. Diana and Tripp will also host live conversations with several contributors throughout the summit. Head to www.TheologySummit.com to register and get access to every lecture, livestream replay, and discussion guide.