Episode 9 - Guest Lecture: Social Movements, Reform, & the Church (feat. SueAnn Shiah, MDiv.)

For our season finale, we have the privilege of hearing from recent Princeton Theological School M.Div. grad, SueAnn Shiah, on reformations and crises in the church and what we can learn from those past experiences today. She invites us to reflect on our own relationship with the Church.[00:17] SueAnn Shiah (@sueannshiah www.sueannshiah.com) is a Taiwanese American musician, filmmaker, community organizer, ethnomusicologist, Queer Christian pastor, and public theologian specializing in identity formation, racial justice, gender, and sexuality. She was named one of 12 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2025 by Sojourners Magazine and contributed a chapter in the Our Bible App’s The Deconstructionists Playbook (2021). In 2020, she joined the leadership team and editorial board of Taiwan’s New Bloom Magazine and became a columnist for News Lens International. She released her debut solo album of reclaimed hymns, “A Liturgy for the Perseverance of the Saints” in June 2018. Her first feature length documentary HuanDao follows her journey of discovery, identity, and belonging in a two week bike trip around Taiwan. [10:04] Reflect: Are there ways that you feel like your moment where you are in your personal faith walk or in the community of faith that you're in, where there are similarities or differences from what we've been talking about to what we're dealing with now?[15:06] Reflect: How do you see those kinds of conflicts playing out with you or with your communities?[16:13] See: Calvin, John, Tony Lane, and Hilary Osborne. The Institutes of Christian Religion. Baker Academic, 2007. [23:34] See: Barth, Karl, and Louise Pettibone Smith. “The Desirability and Possibility of a Universal Reformed Creed.” Essay. In Theology and Church: Shorter Writings 1920-1928, 112–35. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2015. [23:49] This was a document that opposed Nazism in the German church during the rise of Hitler.[26:32] See: “The Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 1.” Book of confessions: Study edition revised ; part 1 of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. [28:30] Read the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism here.[29:53] See: Barth, Karl. The humanity of god. Atlanta: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982. [32:12] Reflect: Where are you finding hope these days?