This is the twenty-first episode of the second season of What Matters Most, featuring Dr. Jaime L. Waters of Boston College, an Associate Professor of Old Testament and Program Director of Courage to Preach. I met Jaime in person last summer in Omaha, Nebraska at the Catholic Biblical Association meetings and we bonded over biblical studies, a shared run as authors of the Word, the scripture column at America Magazine, and a shared anxiety about getting to the airport in time. Basically, it’s never too early. Dr. Waters is a native Philadelphian and alumna of Boston College (BA, Theology and Philosophy), with graduate degrees from Yale Divinity School (MA, Religion) and Johns Hopkins University (MA, PhD, Near Eastern Studies). Before joining the Boston College faculty, Dr. Waters taught for nine years in the department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University. She also spoke of her love of Jeremiah and some of the imagery of animal suffering, which evoked her own interest in ecological hermeneutics, the environment and the non -human characters in the biblical texts. But also, her discussion of the relevance of Jeremiah for African American women, especially the passages that talk about the suffering of childbirth, the pain and anguish associated with it, and how many African American women in the US suffer from inadequate medical care, which is not about not having resources or access to care, but whose experience is not being listened to. As she said, her keynote paper at the CBA was a way of developing her own feminist and womanist kinds of ways of reading the Bible. We will certainly hear more on this as Dr. Waters is currently working on a commentary on the book of Jeremiah for the Wisdom Commentary Series (Liturgical Press), as well as a book on methods of biblical interpretation (Baker Academic). She also wrote “The Word” column in America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture, 2019-2022, which we discussed in the episode, and you can find her work online at America magazine on the link above. If you want to dig into more of Dr. Waters work, click on the link to her Boston College webpage here and you will find some of the writings listed below: “A Biblical Model of Love.” Pages 73-80 in Fratelli Tutti: A Global Commentary. Studies in World Catholicism 13. Edited by William T. Cavanaugh, Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez, OP, Ikenna Ugochukwu Okafor, and Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, CM. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2024. “Prophetic Tenacity.” Pages 62-74 in Do Black Lives Matter?: How the Christian Scriptures Speak to Black Empowerment. Edited by Lisa M. Bowens and Dennis R. Edwards. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2023. “Pain and Provocation: A Social-Scientific Reading of Jeremiah 15.” Pages 127-135 in A Sage in New Haven: Essays on the Prophets, the Writings, and the Ancient World in Honor of Robert R. Wilson. Edited by Alison Acker Gruseke and Carolyn J. Sharp. Ägypten und Altes Testament, Band 117. Münster: Zaphon, 2023. What Does the Bible Say About Animals? Hyde Park: New City Press, 2022. Threshing Floors in Ancient Israel: Their Ritual and Symbolic Significance. Emerging Scholars Series. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. Before moving on, I mentioned my old colleague Arthur Kennedy, a bishop in Boston – imagine that a Kennedy in Boston - and in 2006 Cardinal O’Malley asked him to return to Boston and appointed him as Rector of St. John’s Seminary where he remained until 2012. On June 30, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston. He was ordained to the episcopal office on September 14, 2010 at Holy Cross Cathedral. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. This is a podcast about big questions, about big issues, about what matters most to people, what’s important to you, what gets you up out of bed in the morning or keeps you up late at night wondering. We are looking at these big questions and big issues through the lens of individual stories and individual lives. Religious traditions and institutions might be systems, ancient and modern, but people are people and religion lives in and through people. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes: Dr. Sara Parks of St. Francis Xavier University, where I hope to discuss many things, but definitely her excellent book Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus, Women in Q. if you have an ...
