This summer, the UpWords Podcast is featuring leaders making a tangible difference in the Madison community. Host Rebecca Cooks sits down with Rev. Dr. Alexander Gee — pastor, author, and founder and CEO of the Center for Black Excellence and Culture — for a wide-ranging, honest conversation recorded not long after the Center's grand opening drew more than 1,500 people through its doors.

They talk about what the Center actually is — part museum, part business incubator, part performing arts venue, part neuroscience research lab — and how it grew out of listening sessions with more than 700 Black Madisonians. From there, the conversation turns to belonging: why Rev. Dr. Gee insists belonging is not the same as proximity, and why he believes American integration, as it actually unfolded, cost Black communities more than it gave — including the story of the 36,000 Black teachers who lost their jobs when schools integrated. They also discuss the Harlem Renaissance and W.E.B. Du Bois, what has kept Rev. Dr. Gee rooted in Madison across four decades, his advice for minorities discerning whether to stay in the city and for white residents who want to be genuine allies, and why he believes the Black church — not the American government — has shaped the moral conscience of the nation. The conversation closes with reflections on the art and music that heal.

GUEST BIO
Rev. Dr. Alexander Gee is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Black Excellence and Culture in Madison, Wisconsin, and the founding lead pastor of Fountain of Life Covenant Church. He also founded the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development and its "Justified Anger" initiative, and he serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Over more than 40 years of ministry and community leadership, he has raised more than $70 million for Madison-area organizations addressing racial disparities, including the $33 million Center for Black Excellence and Culture, which opened debt-free with a grand-opening celebration on May 6, 2026, drawing over 1,500 visitors.

LINKS

• https://www.theblackcenter.org/
• https://africanamericanstudies.wisc.edu/
• https://africanamericanstudies.wisc.edu/2024/05/13/reverend-dr-alex-gee-receives-honorary-doctorate/
• https://nehemiah.org/
• https://nehemiah.org/jacourses/

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

How do you read the Bible? Most of us assume we already know: we read to learn what happened, to understand what a passage means, or to find a principle to apply. In this episode, host Dan Hummel is joined by guest Jeff Dryden, professor of biblical studies and department chair at Covenant College, to ask whether Scripture is inviting us to something deeper.

Dryden is the author of A Hermeneutic of Wisdom: Recovering the Formative Agency of Scripture (Baker Academic), which argues that the whole Bible — not just its "wisdom" books — is written to shape our deepest loves and convictions, not merely to hand us information or timeless principles. Dan and Jeff talk through why biblical scholars are trained to tell us what a text meant rather than what it means, how that division of labor between biblical studies and theology leaves a formation-shaped gap, and what philosophers like Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michael Polanyi have to offer pastors and everyday readers trying to close it.

Along the way: why Paul is a far less systematic thinker than popular imagination suggests, what Mark's Gospel is doing to our idols of Jesus, and why "the Bible wasn't written to us, but it was written for us" is true — and doesn't go far enough.

In this episode:

• Why biblical scholars are trained to ask what a text meant, not what it means — and what gets lost in that division of labor
• Why the Bible is always "applied theology" — never abstract, formal theology — and what that means for how a sermon should be built
• Reading Mark's Gospel as an exercise in dismantling our idols of who Jesus is
• Hans-Georg Gadamer's idea of Wirkungsgeschichte ("history of effects") and why we can never step outside the tradition we read from
• Augustine's test for biblical understanding: if you haven't grown in love of God and neighbor, you haven't understood a word
• Why the historical-critical and grammatical-historical methods — liberal and conservative alike — share the same modern DNA
• What's next for Dryden: a forthcoming book on evangelical moralism and legalism as counterfeit versions of the gospel

About the guest:
Jeff Dryden (PhD, Cambridge University) is professor of biblical studies and chair of the department at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he has taught for nearly two decades. He is the author of Theology and Ethics in 1 Peter and A Hermeneutic of Wisdom: Recovering the Formative Agency of Scripture (Baker Academic).

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jeff Dryden, A Hermeneutic of Wisdom: Recovering the Formative Agency of Scripture
• BibleProject and Tim Mackie
• John Walton, Old Testament scholar, Wheaton College Graduate School
• Scot McKnight and Hans Boersma, Five Things Biblical Scholars Wish Theologians Knew / Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew
• Hans-Georg Gadamer, philosopher (Wirkungsgeschichte, hermeneutics)
• Anthony Thiselton, The Two Horizons / New Horizons in Hermeneutics
• Sandra Schneiders and Michael Polanyi ("personal knowledge")
• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana)
• Johann Philipp Gabler and Wilhelm Dilthey, on the historical roots of modern biblical studies

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Phil Haslanger has spent decades straddling two worlds that don't always trust each other: journalism and the church. In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host John Terrill sits down with the longtime Capital Times editor turned ordained pastor for an in-person conversation recorded at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, as part of a summer series spotlighting local leaders whose faith shapes their public work.

Over a 35-year career at The Capital Times, Phil worked as a reporter, city editor, editorial page editor, and managing editor before entering ordained ministry with the United Church of Christ in 2007. He talks about growing up in an almost entirely white Marinette, Wisconsin, how his image of God has shifted from "someone at a control panel" to what he calls "the force of love in the universe," and what a career built on journalistic skepticism taught him about pastoral care.

The conversation also covers Phil’s work building an interfaith network of Fitchburg-area churches, his award-winning advocacy against domestic violence, the line between prophetic public witness and partisan politics, and where he sees both progress and failure in how the American press covers religion — including a candid take on AI's growing and risky role in newsrooms.

Phil Haslanger has spent his career — and his second career — straddling two worlds: journalism and ministry. A UW–Madison graduate (BA in sociology, 1971; MA in journalism, 1973), he spent 35 years at The Capital Times in Madison as a reporter, city editor, editorial page editor, and managing editor, and for years wrote a column on the intersection of faith and politics.

Phil grew up Catholic in Marinette, Wisconsin, and briefly considered the priesthood before coming to UW–Madison to study sociology. In 2000, he and his wife left the Catholic Church for the United Church of Christ; he entered the UCC's lay pastor program, was ordained in 2007, and served for a decade as pastor of Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg before retiring in 2017. He later served as a parish associate at Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, retiring again in 2024.

He was inducted into the Wisconsin Newspaper Association's Hall of Fame in 2021, named a distinguished alumnus of the UW–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2022, and received the Governor's Council on Domestic Abuse's annual justice award in 2015 for mobilizing local faith communities to support victims of domestic violence. He is married to Ellen Reuter, and they have four adult children and seven grandchildren.

• UW–Madison Center for Journalism Ethics: https://ethics.sjmc.wisc.edu/
• Religion News Service: https://religionnews.com/
• The Capital Times: https://captimes.com/

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

This summer, The UpWords Podcast is spotlighting local leaders shaping faith and community life in Madison. Host Dan Johnson sits down with Jon Anderson, founder and executive director of Collaboration Project, to talk about what happens when churches stop working in silos and start loving their neighborhoods together. Jon traces the winding path from twenty years of local pastoral ministry to launching a nonprofit he once swore he'd never start, shares how COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd became unexpected catalysts for church collaboration, and unpacks why Collaboration Project now organizes its work around neighborhoods rather than issues or denominations. Along the way, Jon tells the story of a chance lunch conversation that turned into 1,200 free prom dresses for high schoolers, reflects on 25 years of Madison Missions and a decade of the Kingdom Justice Summit, and offers a biblical definition of justice rooted in shalom. He closes with a hope for what Dane County's church could look like ten years from now.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Jon Anderson — Founder & Executive Director, Collaboration Project

Jon served as a pastor in the Madison area for twenty years before launching the Collaboration Project in 2019. He has a passion for serving the local church and encouraging it as it serves the most vulnerable. Jon has a history of starting programs centered on engaging the church in local service. He helped begin Madison Missions, a local youth service camp that engages hundreds of students every summer. He also co-founded the Kingdom Justice Summit, which annually brings together hundreds of people from dozens of churches around Christianity and justice in our city.

RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED

• Collaboration Project — connecting Dane County churches to love their neighborhoods together
• Kingdom Justice Summit — annual local gathering exploring biblical justice, hosted at Upper House
• Madison Missions — Collaboration Project's local youth service camp, celebrating its 25th summer
• BibleProject's "Justice" video — referenced by Jon as a helpful primer on biblical justice

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Thank you for listening to The UpWords Podcast. We wanted to send you a quick message to let you know that we will be moving to every-other-week podcast releases in July and August this summer, and returning to weekly podcast releases in September. Have a blessed summer!

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What do evangelicals mean when they talk about “supporting Israel” — and how did Jewish–Christian dialogue evolve from centuries of suspicion into the conversations happening today?

In the third installment of our series built around the Last Questions of Faith community lecture, host Jean Geran welcomes historian and author Dan Hummel for a wide-ranging conversation on Christian Zionism, evangelical theology, and the hard, patient work of talking across big religious differences. Dan traces the roots of Christian support for Israel — from post-Holocaust theology and the Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate to Billy Graham’s 1969 meeting with the American Jewish Committee — and explains how dispensationalism shapes the way many evangelicals read Israel into biblical prophecy.

Along the way: why Christian Zionists are an organized minority rather than the evangelical majority, how the U.S.–Israel relationship has been deliberately cultivated over decades, and what a more generous, substantive interfaith dialogue — one that includes the more conservative voices in each tradition — might actually look like.

GUEST BIO

Dan Hummel is a historian of U.S. religion and the author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation (Eerdmans, 2023) and Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations. He is the Director of the Lumen Center at the SL Brown Foundation, and is a co-host of American Evangelicals: A History Podcast. His research and writing focus on Christian Zionism, evangelical theology, and the history of U.S.–Israel relations.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Book — The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism (Eerdmans, 2023), foreword by Mark Noll
• Book — Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations
• Mentioned: Amy-Jill Levine (A.J. Levine), New Testament & Jewish studies scholar; earlier in this series
• Mentioned: Nostra Aetate (Second Vatican Council, 1965); E.P. Sanders; N.T. Wright; Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

What if many of us have been taught to read the Bible in a way it was never meant to be read? In this special live event recorded by Upper House, BibleProject co-founder Tim Mackie returns to Madison — the city where he earned his PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at UW–Madison and pastored at Blackhawk Church — to share the story behind one of the most widely used Bible-teaching resources in the world.

Tim traces the origins of BibleProject to a coffee-shop conversation with his old college friend Jon Collins, a successful maker of animated explainer videos who had quietly become a “post-Bible Christian.” Their shared question — how do you engage Scripture well? — became the heartbeat of the project. Tim contrasts the “reference book” Bible many of us inherited (turn to the right verse, find the answer) with a richer vision of Scripture as ancient Jewish literary art designed to form wise, mature human beings over a lifetime.

Along the way, he unpacks seven core convictions that have guided BibleProject from the beginning — three about where the Bible comes from, and four about what it is for — closing with the practice of meditation (the Hebrew hagah) and an invitation to try again with Scripture, whatever your history with it.

Whether you’ve loved the Bible, struggled with it, or aren’t sure what to make of it, this conversation offers a fresh invitation to see Scripture as a unified, beautiful, and transformative story that leads to Jesus.

Where the Bible is from:

• Collaborative literature — human authors and God’s Spirit meeting, not passive dictation.
• Unified literature — one interconnected story leading to Jesus.
• Ancient literature — written for us, but not to us; context matters.

What the Bible is for:

• Messianic literature — every theme sets up and finds fulfillment in Jesus.
• Communal literature — designed to be read aloud together over a lifetime.
• Wisdom literature — forming us to discern good from bad, not just memorize answers.
• Meditation literature — hagah: slow, repeated reading that rewards a lifetime of return.

Tim Mackie is co-founder and lead scholar of BibleProject. He holds a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a degree in theology from Western Seminary in Portland. His research focused on the manuscript history of the Bible and the formation of the biblical canon — including his dissertation on the book of Ezekiel, with particular attention to the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls. After years of ministry as a local-church pastor (including at Madison’s Blackhawk Church and later Door of Hope in Portland) and as a professor at Western Seminary, Tim now serves as lead scholar and creative director at BibleProject. He lives in Portland with his wife, Jessica, and their two sons.

https://bibleproject.com/

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Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Too many Christians, Jerry Sittser says, sit at a banquet table and eat only one food. In this episode, host Tressa Spingler talks with theologian, historian, and author Dr. Jerry Sittser — professor emeritus of theology at Whitworth University — about the newly revised edition of his book Water from a Deep Well and the spiritual inheritance many believers overlook.

Drawing on the monks’ rhythm of life, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the mystics, and the great tradition of historic orthodoxy, Sittser invites listeners to rediscover something ancient rather than chase something new. He reflects on inhabiting time rather than spending it, beginning the week with rest, the practice of silence (“get up to slow down”), and what the early church can still teach a hurried, distracted age.

The conversation turns honest and personal as Sittser — who lost his wife and a daughter in an automobile accident — describes suffering not as something to overcome or avoid but as something to step into and find God within. It’s an invitation to live in the tension of beauty and sorrow, and to take the small first steps toward a deeper, well-rooted faith.

YOU WILL LEARN

• Why so many Christians “eat only one food” — and what the full diet of historic Christianity offers
• How a January course at a snowed-in mountain camp became the seed of Water from a Deep Well
• The monks’ gift of rhythm: inhabiting time instead of consuming it, and beginning the week with rest
• The Desert Fathers and Mothers — stranger, funnier, and wiser than they first appear
• Union of relationship vs. union of absorption: a healthier way to read the mystics
• Suffering as an inevitable part of discipleship — and the soul’s capacity to hold beauty and sorrow at once
• Where to begin when you feel spiritually dry: small, meaningful, deep first steps

GUEST BIO

Dr. Jerry Sittser is professor emeritus of theology and a senior fellow at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, specializing in the history of Christianity, Christian spirituality, and religion in American public life. The author of nine books — including A Grace Disguised, The Will of God as a Way of Life, Resilient Faith, and Water from a Deep Well — he has spent decades helping Christians recover the wisdom and deep roots of the historic church for everyday life.

RESOURCES & LINKS

• Jerry Sittser’s website: https://www.jerrysittser.com/
• Water from a Deep Well (revised edition): https://www.jerrysittser.com/books
• Practicing the Way podcast series with John Mark Comer: https://www.practicingtheway.org/podcasts/practicing-the-way
• More episodes & SLBF Studio at Upper House: https://slbf.org/studio

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CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour