Welcome to the Conversations That Matter Podcast.

We're going to do something a little fun today.

It's a short episode, but some people have sent me this article

from a guy named Michael Bird in Australia,

and they said, John, you got to review this.

Now I haven't read it, it that's part of the fun

my expectations are low because people have said it's it's terrible but but I'm gonna

read it and hey see what I think so you're gonna get my reactions in real time

so hopefully this will be helpful to you and and you know it's funny as I was I was getting these messages

I thought I've heard that name before and the reason for that is because I'm a

southeastern graduate and Michael Byrd is from Australia but he came to

South Eastern and if some of you remember correctly I know I played this on the podcast probably almost a year ago now, but this is part of what he said when he came.

Some of my female students have pushed me about the number of women I have in the

bibliographies. I remember I taught a course on Romans and yeah my like top 10

Romans commentaries were all you know largely male and so I thought about what some of the

voices I could bring out and I did know of some great works on Romans like

Fleming Rutledge he's got a great series of sermons on Romans and so I have been

a little bit more conscious out of that deliberate prodding

by students to think, well how can I be more inclusive, be more representative in women?

It's just so important to think, you know, is there another way of reading

scripture? What does it like? What does it like to read the book of James through the

eyes of the majority world? What's it like to read something like Galatians in the context of Sri Lanka in a country that is ethnically

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