Making Theologians

Abstract

The night I interviewed Miriam and Gary, a married couple in their midthirties who enrolled in both classes, we met at their house for dinner. Gary, a documentary filmmaker, is out interviewing someone for his most recent project, so Miriam and I start without him. We are cooking dinner together—a common shared activity given that Miriam and Gary are two of my husband, Tyler’s, and my closest friends in Nashville. Miriam and I laugh at the addition of my recording device to a familiar routine. Both she and Gary are comfortable with such equipment, though, as they both used ethnographic methods in their own PhD dissertation projects in social science areas. Miriam is now a tenure-track professor at a local university. They teach the Sunday School class that Tyler and I attend, and we all engage conversations about our faith—conversations I would call “theological”—frequently.