Sources, Systems, and Confidence: Election and the Manufacture of Scriptures Everywhere

In this month's episode of Scriptures Everywhere, Arthur F. Carter, Jr. is joined by Jeremy L. Williams (Brite Divinity School) and Jessica Lynn Stewart (Emory University) to ask what functions as scripture in this US electoral season, and what systems and institutions create, mediate, and authorize those texts. Are algorithms scripture, or just an authoritative source? Are polling and political theory reliable conduits for crafting reality? What happens to faith when the authoritative processes and texts people inherit fail to explain the lives they're actually living? Along the way: Derrick Bell's space traders, Saidiya Hartman on the usable past, and whether despair is arrogance or honesty all guide this month's conversation. Guest bios: Jeremy L. Williams, PhD Associate Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School, is the author of Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles: Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2023). A graduate of Vanderbilt, Yale, and Harvard, Williams earned a degree in New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard. His research uses CRT, ancient historiography, Black studies, and rhetorical criticism to explore abolition, criminalization, and race in New Testament interpretation and early Christianity. Williams is the inaugural director of Brite's Center for Theology and Justice and an ordained CME elder. Jessica Lynn Stewart, PhD Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, is the author of the forthcoming Are We There Yet? The Geography of Black Progress (Oxford University Press, 2026). A graduate of Denison University and UCLA, Stewart earned a degree in Political Science at UCLA. Her research explores race, place, and political economy through mixed-methods analysis of census data, public opinion surveys, and interviews. Stewart previously held an Anna Julia Cooper Center postdoctoral fellowship at Wake Forest University.

Arthur Carter, PhD

Assistant Professor of New Testament and Director of Black Church Studies at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a PhD in Religion (New Testament) from Vanderbilt University. A contextual biblical scholar, his work addresses New Testament hermeneutics, historiography, and early Christian identities. With transdisciplinary training in diaspora studies, he brings insights from Black Atlantic cultural and discursive traditions to bear on ancient texts and their historical reconstructions