Podcast appearances and mentions of christian thought

Dr John Mark Reynolds is the president of the Constantine Schools and College in Texas and the author of numerous books including 'When Athens Met Jerusalem: an Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought'. He is a frequent blogger and lecturer on a wide range of topics including ancient philosophy, classical and home education, politics, faith, and virtue.John Mark was involved in recent research that made global headlines, showing a huge upswing in the numbers of young men entering the Eastern Orthodox Church - precisely the demographic most absent in many churches.Belle Tindall and Justin Brierley ask John Mark: What is it about this ancient church stream that has re-enchanted these young converts?John Mark Reynolds: https://www.saintconstantinecollege.org/about/welcome-from-the-presidentFor Re-Enchanting: https://www.seenandunseen.com/podcastThere's more to life than the world we can see. Re-Enchanting is a podcast from Seen & Unseen recorded at Lambeth Palace Library, the home of the Centre for Cultural Witness. Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall engage faith and spirituality with leading figures in science, history, politics, art and education. Can our culture be re-enchanted by the vision of Christianity? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textThe cultural landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Politically. Socially. Morally. But are Christians properly equipped to meet this cultural moment with the gospel? We had the honor of sitting down with Dan Trippie who is working on a new project that will help believers do just that. Find more of Dan's work at dantrippie.com. The website for the Center for Christian Thought and Ethics launches later this year at thinkchristian.com. WatchSupport the show

Michael O'Neil is the Dean of Strategic Relationships (WA) at Morling College and Lecturer in Christian Thought & History. He has taught Christian Thought and History at Vose Campus in Perth since 2010.

Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.comIn the second installment of our two-part series on Christmas myths about Santa Claus, Faithful Politics hosts Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram welcome Dr. Timothy Larsen, the Caroline and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Christmas. Building on the foundation laid in part one, Dr. Larsen dives deeper into the cultural, theological, and commercial forces that have shaped modern Christmas traditions. From the theology of the Incarnation to the evolution of Santa Claus, this episode uncovers how different cultures and historical periods contributed to the way we celebrate today. Dr. Larsen also addresses the tension between religious and secular celebrations and emphasizes the enduring power of Christmas to unite people across traditions. This fascinating conversation wraps up our series with profound insights into the myths and meanings of Christmas.Guest BioDr. Timothy Larsen is the Caroline and Fred McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and an eminent historian and theologian. With expertise in modern British religious history, the interplay of religion and culture, and intellectual thought, he is the editor of the acclaimed Oxford Handbook of Christmas. A Fellow of the British Academy, Dr. Larsen has authored numerous works, including Crisis of Doubt and The Slain God. His latest book, 12 Classic Christmas Stories, is a curated collection of timeless holiday tales from renowned authors, offering readers a rich literary tradition to explore and enjoy.Link to the Book12 Classic Christmas Stories: https://a.co/d/gNpVsT8 Support the showPlease Help Support the showhttps://donorbox.org/faithful-politics-podcastTo learn more about the show, contact our hosts, or recommend future guests, click on the links below: Website: https://www.faithfulpoliticspodcast.com/ Faithful Host: Josh@faithfulpoliticspodcast.com Political Host: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.com Twitter: @FaithfulPolitik Instagram: faithful_politics Facebook: FaithfulPoliticsPodcast LinkedIn: faithfulpolitics Subscribe to our Substack: https://faithfulpolitics.substack.com/

In this episode I chat once again Timothy Larsen, this time to discuss his wonderful new book, "12 Classic Christmas Stories: A Feast of Yuletide Tales" (Moody Press). Whether you're a lover of classic literature or simply looking to deepen your appreciation of Christmas traditions, and connect them to Christ, this book will do it, and hopefully this conversation as well! Timothy Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College, an Honorary Fellow, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, and an Honorary Research Fellow, School of Theology, Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.  He has been a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, All Souls College, Oxford, and Christ Church, Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He has been elected President of the American Society of Church History for 2025. He is the author or editor of twenty books including Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life and The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (all with Oxford University Press). https://www.ryleyheppner.com https://www.instagram.com/ryleyheppner/ For all collaboration requests (speaking, advertising, etc.) go to: https://www.ryleyheppner.com/collaboration

In this episode, the Daniel and Nathan delve into Plato's creation myth and the concept of dualism, discussing how it has influenced both ancient and modern philosophical and theological thought. They explore the role of the Demiurge in shaping the physical world, contrasting it with Christian theology's understanding of creation. The conversation also touches on the effects of dualism in Neoplatonism and its impact on Christian practices, such as asceticism and views on the physical body. Finally, they talk about how Plato and Neo-Platonism have shaped Christian views of heaven and the afterlife.00:00 Introduction to the Creation Myth00:10 Plato's Demiurge and the Realm of Forms02:09 Christian Theology vs. Neoplatonism03:11 The Physical World: A Mistake or a Gift?04:38 Asceticism and Indulgence: Two Roads Diverged06:25 Sexuality and Spirituality11:27 Resurrection vs. Immortality13:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Episode 147 of the podcast is the first in a two-part special focusing on C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia book series originally published between 1950 and 1956, where Chris and Alex look at a handful of screen adaptations that traverse the fantasy and animation intersection. For this first instalment, they compare the 1979 animated film The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe directed by Bill Melendez with the BBC serial of the same name from 1988, both of which adapted Lewis' first and perhaps best known Narnia novel. Joining them is special guest Terry Lindvall, who is the C.S. Lewis Endowed Chair in Communication and Christian Thought and Professor of Communication at Virginia Wesleyan College. He is a C.S. Lewis scholar and expert in American film and media, seeking to see how theological thought, Christian faith and tradition, and cinema can intersect. His recent book crosses squarely into animation, titled Animated Parables: A Pedagogy of Seven Deadly Sins and a Few Virtues (2022), and examines how short animated films teach us, directly and indirectly, about vice and virtue, connecting together a range of global cartoons to explore the animators' role in displaying the seven deadly sins. Listen as they discuss distinctions between the marvellous and the uncanny, and how fantasy shaped Lewis' life and works; his relationship with J.R.R. Tolkien and the influence of Christianity on his brand of fantasy; traditions of limited animation and the medium's potential status as one of ‘supposal'; shifting representations of the eponymous White Witch as both feared and fearful; and what Narnia has to say about the importance of letting children think. **Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo** **As featured on Feedspot's 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

In this episode of Uncommon Sense with Ginny Robinson, Ginny sits down with Teddy Pierce, a writer, speaker, and political commentator whose educational background in Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic ethics fuels his advocacy for America's founding principles and the Natural Law.Teddy discusses his book, Dethrone Davos: Save America, and the urgent need to confront the dangers of collectivist ideologies, moral relativism, and communism. Ginny and Teddy unpack how these forces threaten America's God-ordained freedoms and what we, as individuals and a nation, can do to stand firm against them.Tune in to discover why standing on the principles of God's truth is more critical than ever.—https://policecoffee.com/—Order Teddy's book, Dethrone Davos: Save America: https://www.amazon.com/Dethrone-Davos-America-Theodore-Pierce-ebook/dp/B0D5NKGGNC—Order my book, Culture: The Dangers of Herd Mentality and Why We're Headed in the Wrong Direction: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/SLYWFXAB6479S

On today's episode, we discuss the ways our faith has changed as we've grown in discipleship and justice work. Our spiritual practices, as well as our relationships with church, God, and the non-Christian world have all transformed over time, sometimes in surprising ways that would have made us uncomfortable in our earlier years as followers of Jesus. It's a personal and instructive conversation on how to grow up with Jesus that we know will be helpful for a lot of people. Plus, after that conversation we get into the war in Sudan and why it's an important topic for us to learn about and engage with.Mentioned in the episode:-            The episode of the Movement Memos podcast about the war in Sudan-            The link to donate to the Sudan Solidarity Collective via PayPalCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Jonathan Walton: I'm trying to live in the reality that God actually loves me and he actually loves other people, and that's just true. And to live in that quote- unquote, belovedness is really, really, really difficult in a extractivist, culturally colonized, post-plantation, capitalistic society.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's really, really hard when every single thing that I was raised to do goes against, just receiving anything.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Sy Hoekstra.Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: This week we have a great conversation. There's no guest this week, it's just Jonathan and I. And we are actually going to be talking about something that we originally were gonna talk to Lisa about in the last episode, but we ran out of time [laughter]. And we thought it would be, actually it was worth taking the time to talk about this in a full episode format. And the topic is basically this, as people grow not just normally in their faith, but also in the kind of work that we're doing, resisting the idols of America and confronting injustice and that sort of thing in their faith, your personal spiritual life tends to change [laughter], to put it mildly. And we wanted to talk about that.It's something that we don't necessarily hear a lot of people talking about as much and I think it's something that people are kind of concerned about. Like it's in the back of people's heads when they start to dive into these justice issues. It's something that I think conservative Christianity has put in the back of your heads [laughs], like your personal walk with Jesus, or your something like that is going to falter if you stray down this road. And so we wanna talk about how things have changed with us, and be as open and honest about that as possible, with our spiritual practices, with our relationship with God, with our relationship with church and kind of the world outside.And then we're gonna get into our segment Which Tab Is Still Open, where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. This week, we will be talking about a really fascinating and informative podcast on the war that is currently happening in Sudan that has been going on for about a year and a half. If you don't know a lot about that war, or if you just want some more insight into what's going on there, please stay tuned for that. It'll be an interesting conversation, for sure. So we're going to get into all of that in a minute. I think this is gonna be a really fruitful and helpful conversation for a lot of people. Before we jump in though, Jonathan,Jonathan Walton: Hey friends, remember to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber to support this show and everything we do at KTF Press. We're creating media that centers personal and informed discussions on faith, politics and culture and help you seek Jesus and confront injustice, that's so desperately needed today. We're resisting the idols of the American church by elevating marginalized voices and taking the entirety of Jesus' gospel more seriously than those who might narrow it to sin and salvation or some other small, little box. Jesus' gospel is bigger than that. The two of us have a lot of experience [laughs] doing this in community and individually.We've been friends for a good long time, and so I hope that you can come to us and trust us for good conversation, dialogue and prayerful, deliberate action. So become a paid subscriber, and get all the bonus episodes to this show, access to our monthly subscriber Zoom chats. You can comment on posts and a lot more. So again, go to KTFPress.com, join us and become a paid subscriber. And if you really wanna double down, become a founding member. Thanks, y'all.Sy Hoekstra: You get a free book if you're a founding member. So that's…Jonathan Walton: You do get a free book.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Because we publish books too. I guess we didn't… we have to tell people that.Jonathan Walton: That's true.Sy Hoekstra: If you're listening, if this is your first episode, you didn't know that. We've published a couple of books.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Alright Jonathan, let's dive in. Let's talk about, as you have grown over the past however many years since you've been doing this kind of work, which for you is what now, 15? No, almost 15.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: More than 15. It's more than 15 years.Jonathan Walton: It's more than 15. It'd probably be like… I was trying to reflect on this. I think I seriously stepped into this stuff in 2005 when I wrote that first poem about child soldiers and sex trafficking victims and was like, “I wanna do this, because Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves all people.” And so yeah, almost 20 years.Sy Hoekstra: Was that “Decisions?” Is that the poem?Jonathan Walton: I think it was actually “Invisible Children.” That poem.Sy Hoekstra: Okay. Literally because of the documentary Invisible Children.Jonathan Walton: Yes. That was the first advocacy poem that I wrote.Sy Hoekstra: So since then, how have your individual spiritual practices changed your scripture reading, that sort of thing? The kind of thing that at one point we might have called our quiet time, or our daily whatever. Where are you at?Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Absolutely. So I do not have daily quiet times. How do I explain this? When the Psalms say, “write the words of God on your hearts that you might not sin against him,” I think with all of us, it's kind of like building a habit. So I read a lot of scripture when I was a kid. I read a lot of scripture when I was a college student. And I think it was because I literally needed flesh and bones on just the air of my faith. And I think literally sitting there and listening to sermons for hours as I go about my day in my room and not study in college, or me and my brother would do [laughs] these weird things because we lived in the South and had nothing to do on this 30-acre farm, is we memorized the entire Charlton Heston film, The Ten Commandments.So me and my brother literally memorized the entire six hour epic that is The Ten Commandments. And so I just had this desire, and I think habit of just like memorizing and learning about God because the context that you're in. And so I think that there was a season in my life where sitting in the word of God was just a regular practice. And now I would say, just to overtake scripture, scripture is for me a process of recall and reflection. Like I have to give a talk next week on racism and racial reconciliation and justice. And if you had said to me, “Jonathan, what passage are you gonna speak from?” Like, because I've studied Genesis 1, because I've studied Isaiah 61, because I've studied Isaiah 58, because I've leaned into John 4, because I'm leaning in to Luke 4, I can grab from any of these places because it's almost like riding a bike in that way. I don't have to ride a bike every day to know how to ride a bike.And so I think if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, “I don't do a daily quiet time,” I don't know that you are negatively impacted. I know that you may be shaped differently, but we don't lose God, just like we don't lose the knowledge of something in that way. So I think Scripture for me has become more of a remembering and reflective process, rather than an active like, “Oh man, I need to know more.” And I think if we do scripture prayer, so let's talk about prayer, liturgy has taken on a more significant part of my life.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Partially because I've stepped out of the, “let's prioritize this as better” box. So when I grew up in the South, I was like, oh, I go to a Black southern Baptist church, not a Southern Baptist Church. Let's be clear about that.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Spontaneous worship was quote- unquote, the best in my mind. Then I come to InterVarsity and more quote- unquote, evangelical spaces, and then it's like, well, popcorn prayer. Every single person goes individually and we all listen and try not to fall asleep.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And then I go to another place and it's like the quote- unquote, warrior prayer. Like this lion's war prayer. Everybody's praying at once. And that was amazing.Sy Hoekstra: Charismatic.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And it was amazing, but overwhelming. And I would go to these places and say, oh, one is better than the other, when in reality, these are just expressions of God's faithfulness to different parts of his body. And so I think the season I'm in now, I've leaned into the prayer without ceasing, where it's like I am in conversation with God. I can be in prayer just going about my every day, similar to scripture with the riding the bike thing. These are things that I've marinated in, and so I'm riding the bike all day. I might get on the bike in the morning, I might not, but God is an active part of my day. And so I think the last thing just about church and preaching. This is hard [laughter].And some people might get upset with this, but church has taken, the institution; going to, sitting in. That's probably the last thing that I'm still processing. My children don't want to go to church some days, and I have a high value for that. And I have to ask myself, why do I have that high of a value? And Maia asked me, because she was crying, she didn't wanna go to church. She said, “Why do you wanna go?” And I told her, I said, “Maia, sometimes I have a really hard week, and I go to hang out with other believers because they encourage me that God is faithful and I can make it through.” And I said, “Some weeks are good for me, and then I go to church, and someone may be having a poor week, and then I'm able to encourage them to make it through and center ourselves on Jesus.”And I said, “In that way…” I didn't say this this way, but we bear one another's burdens with love. We are able to come alongside each other. And she didn't get it, and that's fine, she's eight.Sy Hoekstra: [laughter].Jonathan Walton: But I recognize that that's actually what I'm looking for when I go to church. And so if that's what I'm looking for, how can I have that in other spaces that my family also feels closer to God as well, so that we can grow together in that way? So I've stopped expecting the pastor to serve me a platter of spiritual goodies every week. [laughter] I've stop expecting this community in some way to be the buffet from which I gather my spiritual authority and intimacy with God. And that didn't used to be the case. It was like, “I got to go to church or I'm wrong. I got to be in the building, or something's messed up with my faith. I might be falling away.” And that's just not true, because I don't forget how to ride a bike. Like it's just not a thing.So, yeah, I would say those big three things of prayer, scripture and going to church have changed. And later we could talk about justice stuff, but those things around just our relationship with God have changed for me.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's funny you said the thing that was a big deal to you, the second one was about like the spontaneous worship is the best, or this kind of prayer is the best or whatever. And that it's just so cultural and stuff because I never had any of those.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: I was like it's whatever. Nobody taught me that one… maybe somebody tried to, but it never got really inculcated in me that one kind of prayer or something was better than the other. But the daily scripture reading thing was so… Like you saying, “I don't read scripture every day,” there's still some little part of me that feels like, “Ooh, should he say that?” [laughter]Jonathan Walton: Right. Right, right, right.Sy Hoekstra: And it really just depends on where you grow up. Because a funny thing, like part of the scripture thing for me is, at some point I realized, I was like, “Hey, wait a minute [laughs], for the overwhelming majority of Christians who have ever lived, they A, could not read…”Jonathan Walton: [laughter] Right.Sy Hoekstra: “…and B, did not have access to the printed word.” The only time they were getting scripture was at mass on Sunday. And it's just one of those things where it's an enormous privilege, and we should, I'm not saying take it for granted, but it's something that has not only been not necessary for discipleship, but literally impossible for [laughter] most Christians who have ever lived. It's just an enormous privilege that we treat like a necessity or we treat like an imperative. And the distinction between those two things can be subtle, but it's real. They're not the same thing [laughter].Jonathan Walton: True.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, so for me, I've talked about this in one of the bonus episodes we did, but I'll make a slightly different point about it, which is, I used to, like you sort of alluded to, I used to come at daily scripture reading and prayer and everything from a place of deep anxiety. Constantly trying to stay up on whatever I had decided was the requirement for the day, and then falling behind and becoming anxious about it, and just getting on this treadmill of trying to catch up and then being anxious again. And a funny thing happened when I got into, as we were talking about on our recent subscriber call, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality [laughs] and learned about that anxiety and where it was coming from, and tried to change my relationship to it, and it decreased a lot, I realized when the anxiety went away I started to feel like my love for or even just my care for God, was going away.Jonathan Walton: Huh.Sy Hoekstra: Like if I wasn't anxious that I was reading scripture every day, it's kind of like what I just said, like there's still some part of me that feels like ugh [laughter]. If I wasn't anxious, then I didn't love God, which is kind of dark.Jonathan Walton: It is. Yes.Sy Hoekstra: You know what I mean? It's like putting yourself in a sort of abusive relationship with God and saying, “If you don't keep up with me, then I'm gonna punish you in some way,” or something negative is gonna happen. It was never entirely clear what negative thing was gonna happen to me.Jonathan Walton: Just a threat. Just a threat.Sy Hoekstra: That something was bad. I was gonna backslide in some way. So, yeah, but the amount of time, like on a daily basis, that I spend praying or reading scripture has also decreased, and then anxiety went away. And then I had to get used to the anxiety not being there and being like, “Hey, that's okay. This is actually a reflection of the fact that I now on a much more embodied level, understand that God loves and accepts me.” [laughter] That's a good thing.Jonathan Walton: That is a great thing. Yes, for sure.Sy Hoekstra: Another big thing for me was, this is my change with regard to scripture, is letting the Bible be what the Bible says that it is, as opposed to what the spiritual authorities in my life told me that it was supposed to be. And so that's things like, I had a really interesting experience where I went through this thing called the Academy of Christian Thought. There was this three-year read-through-the-Bible program. It was run by this scholar named Ron Choong, a Malaysian guy who's really incredible. But one of the things he talked about was the idea that every word of the Bible is literally true. And he would go through it and he would say, “Okay, so there are these stories that Jesus tells, that when he tells them, like the parables.Like say, The Good Samaritan or whatever. We understand that Jesus is telling a story here, and whether or not the story itself is true doesn't matter. He's making a point.” It's a sermon illustration, effectively. And Jesus never claims that the stories are true. We're all fine with that. We're not saying if the guy didn't actually get beat up on the road to Jericho, then the Bible's integrity is in question. And he was like, “Okay, so how about the book of Jonah?” He's like, Take the whole thing with the fish and the spending three days in the belly of a fish, which seems scientifically impossible, and then you get… like without dying, whatever. It could be a miracle. But does the Bible ever actually say, does the book of Jonah ever actually say, “The following is a true story?” The answer is, no, it doesn't [laughter].And can you still learn all the same lessons about faith and everything from the book of Jonah if it's not true, like the parable of The Good Samaritan or any other parables Jesus tells? Yes, you can.Jonathan Walton: Right. Right, right.Sy Hoekstra: So does it really matter [laughs] whether the story in the book of Jonah is true? No, it does not. It affects nothing [laughter]. And by acknowledging that, you're just letting the Bible be what it is, which is, it's here's a story. It just told you a story, and whether or not it was true or not is not a point that the Bible makes, and therefore is not a point that matters.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] And so there were a lot of just simple things like that. He was like, The book of Revelation, you do not have to have a perfect understanding of what every twist and turn in that bizarre apocalyptic dream meant. You don't. You don't you don't have to have it. Because the Bible never tells you that you had to have it [laughter]. It just says, “Here's a dream from John,” and then it tells you a bunch of stuff that happened [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. It's true.Sy Hoekstra: And so it's like there was a lot of that that I thought was extremely helpful and allowed me to then use my mind. And then people would come back with the verse in 2 Timothy, “All scripture is God breathed,” and et cetera, et cetera. And [laughs] Ron would just be like, “That was literally written at a time when the New Testament was not canonized, and half of it was not even written yet.” [laughs] So it's like, what scripture is God breathed, you know what I mean? [laughter And also, does God breathed or trustworthy for instruction, does that mean the book of Jonah's literally true? No. [laughter] Like letting the Bible be what the Bible is was important to me, and understanding…We talked in that episode with Mako Nagasawa about how sometimes translations of the Bible differ from each other in significant ways, and we picked which one we followed, and that's just a reality [laughs]. And you can still have a very high view of the authority of Scripture, it can still guide your life, it can still be an authority, it can be all those things, and you can acknowledge realities, and your faith doesn't fall apart. That was a big one for me [laughs]. A lot of that also has to do with letting go of the need to have everything under control in a perfect little box.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is a very… was just a real White way of thinking about it to be frank [laughs]. We must have our systematic theology, and everything must be clear and tied up neatly. So the last thing for me, I think, is just knowing that the way that God speaks to people changes over time. And so like I know there are ways that I could be going back and trying to find the things about my early faith that were really exciting and new and gave me these big spiritual highs, and a lot of those things just don't happen anymore. And I see that as I get older, there are so many people I know like that. And there are so many, there's such a range of reactions to that from people who are like, some people are totally comfortable with the fact that God changes how he talks to people over time.And that even happens in the Bible. People hear from God in different ways, in new ways. And there are some people who are like, can lose their faith over that. They can panic, and it's like, “I'm not hearing God the way that I heard got at one point,” and I guess the possibility of change is not there [laughs]. And so it's like, if I'm not getting that same experience, then something has gone terribly wrong or whatever, and I need to get back there. I would just really encourage people to drop that way of thinking [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: It is okay if your relationship with God changes, the way that you communicate with God changes.Jonathan Walton: There's nothing healthy about a plant that stays the same size over year's time.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, exactly.Jonathan Walton: Man.Sy Hoekstra: Alright, Jonathan, you talked about this one a little bit already, but I wanted to talk about our relationships with churches and the institutions of churches. Did you have more to say on that, or was…?Jonathan Walton: Well, yeah. I think something that is intriguing to me, and I dabble in thread and Facebook debates sometimes just to ask questions.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And just as an example, and friends, I again, in the just modeling the growth and change and willingness to ponder in a way that doesn't shake my salvation, I'm gonna try to model that. And so a question that came up for me yesterday while I was on threads, there's a man named Eugene Kim, who I've just followed for a little while.Sy Hoekstra: He's a pastor, right?Jonathan Walton: He was a pastor, and he is a pastor now, but they just launched this thing called the Wild Fig organization. And so essentially, they're trying to decentralize the church and say, there are lots of people who follow Jesus and wanna organize in ways that are transformative and help for them in their walks with God. And we just need to figure out a different way of credentialing people than getting folks organized around this man who we believe is God named Jesus.” And there's another thing like this out in Seattle called Dinner Church, where a church sold their building, and they have 25 dinner churches where people come to church to have dinner, and they just eat and talk about God, almost like they did in Acts. Whoopitty.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And so that's what they're doing, and they're actually putting pastors in these house churches just to be present at these dinner churches. And so there are people who would say, “No, we cannot do that.” Like, I remember sitting down with a pastor in New York City who was just like, “Jonathan, I don't think that you should do campus ministry, because it should be done in the church.” And I was like, “Oh, well, I think this meeting is over.”Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: “And I hope you pay for this food.” But all that to say it's like, that was one conversation. Another conversation was like, “If you do that, what about the traditions of the church?” All of these things. And I'm like, I hear you on the tradition, but why are we choosing to model some things from Acts and then saying other things we can't do anymore? Seems like the Great Commission commissioned all people to baptize. Seems like the Great Commission commissioned all people to… like 2 Corinthians and the model about how to take communion. I don't see where that says I can't do that at home, because they were done in homes. So all of this. Some people say that's great, some people say you can't do that.But when I was specifically looking at the Wild Fig network yesterday in this threads conversation, someone said, “You're doing a heretical thing, you're breaking off. And if you wanna join anything, just go back to the Catholic Church, because that is where it all began.” And I thought to myself, and this is a genuine question, and I haven't seen his response yet, but I said, “Did Jesus come to build the Catholic Church?” There may be, very well be an argument for that that I'm not aware of because I'm not Catholic. Right?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, there definitely is [laughs].Jonathan Walton: There definitely is [laughter]. And so I am wondering what that means, as someone downstream of colonization, abuse, violence and oppression, coupled with the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, and every other Western faith, political faction that decided to join themselves on the colonialist project, I wonder if Jesus came to build the Catholic Church. And there's 1500 years of arguing about that and making that case to be true. At the same time, I'm like, 1 Corinthians one, when Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, he says, “Some might be for Paul, some might be for Cephas, which is Peter. Some might be for Apollos, but the reality is, we all need to be for Jesus.”So if this person is making an argument against pastor Eugene Kim, I'm like, “Why are you saying he can't go do that? What's the goal?” Because if Eugene goes and baptizes a thousand people, and all these people come to faith and it's an amazing thing, what is the loss for the kingdom? You know what I mean?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Well, so here's the loss. I still don't think this is correct, but the loss from the Catholic perspective is you only can experience the fullness of the revelation of the Spirit of God within the Catholic Church. That is where it happens, and it happens nowhere else, and it cannot happen anywhere else.Jonathan Walton: Now see, okay, this is where I would push back ridiculously hard.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, me too, but yeah [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and using Peter, Peter in Acts chapter 10 has a very specific way that he thinks the Spirit of God is being revealed. And God blows that wide open first with a vision for him. The sheet comes down, look at this three times, three times, three times. Then the same thing for Cornelius. And so if we try to limit the spirit or movement of God, we will fail. So why do that [laughs]? There's so many points in scripture where God is breaking through in ways that we cannot fathom or recognize.Sy Hoekstra: Amen to that.Jonathan Walton: And so, I think the thing about the church, I'm like, it's evolving for me, not in the Darwin way, but just like a development. Because to be like, “Oh, evolution,” because we have these wrong conflations in our brain. But my faith is evolving, but I'm not moving farther away from Jesus, and that includes the church. Because similar to you, I would say I am closer to Jesus than I was when I was 17 years old… 16 when I got thrown across the parking lot on a motorcycle, or 19 years old when Ashley told me to follow… Ashley Byrd, me and Sy's staff worker for InterVarsity, invited me to follow Jesus. I'm still close, I'm closer to Jesus than I was then, and I've been a part of very different churches and all those things.So my relationship with God is predicated on my adoption into the capital “C” Church, not the specific church on my block in my neighborhood, or where I gather with folks. And so I'm grateful that the rapture catches all of us and not just insert your denomination here.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So for me, I am less engaged than I used to be, but that's because what I used to do was let Christian community and Christian programming activity take up the vast majority of my free time, because I thought we had something to prove as a community. You know what I mean? Like, I thought you had to be, it's a little bit vague what I thought I think, or a little bit blurry to me now. But it was something along the lines of, some interpretation of the idea that we're the hands and feet of Jesus, or we are here to testify to him and his goodness as a community. That meant that you had to be super involved in your community. You had to be something to prove the worthiness of God, basically.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is completely the opposite of what I now think, which is that no matter what your community is, the fact that God loves you is the proof of the worthiness of God [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: You don't have to prove nothing. Similar to my quiet times and everything, it took a lot of the pressure off of my need to be involved in religious activity, and therefore it decreased, but not in like a I'm leaving the church way, just in what I think is a healthy way [laughs]. I am now very suspicious if I go to a church and the consistent thing that they are telling people to do in terms of discipleship is just get more involved in that church's programming. As opposed to being something in their neighborhood, or trying to turn outwards in some significant way. That, to me, is a big ol' red flag. I'm constantly now thinking about what is reasonable to expect of a church, versus what I would have want a church to ideally be.I think this happens to everyone as they grow up a little bit, is you start to see the inner workings of a church and how just very ordinary and sometimes petty and gross, it can be.Jonathan Walton: [laughter] Ordinary, petty and gross.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's just another fallen institution [laughs]. And people have all their own little individual problems, and some of those problems are big and some of them are small. And it's just not that different than any other organization. And that is disappointing if you think it's supposed to be this shining beacon on a hill, which is actually a metaphor for the kingdom of God, and not your individual neighborhood's church [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yes, yes, yes.Sy Hoekstra: Scripturally speaking. I think about that balance more, like what can I reasonably expect versus what would I ideally want this institution to be? And from what I've talked to, like Christians who are much older than me, that never changes. That's the mature way to go about [laughter] looking at a church. You just, you have to do it that way, and not just think of the church as this thing that needs to be something that is like this shining example to the entire world of how to do or be something. And this is especially true in a context where we have the idols of empire built in. I have to go to my church in New York City in 2024 and I have to recognize this is a culture that is filled with greed and self-interest.And so odds are, this church is also going to be filled with greed and self-interest. So what can I reasonably expect from this church [laughter]? That's part of it. And again, it's just reality. It's sad. It's a thing that I had to work through emotionally. But it is also a reality that you have to come to terms with.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: I'm much more ready to walk out of a church when I hear nonsense than I used to be [laughter].Jonathan Walton: I'm just willing to go. Thanks.Sy Hoekstra: Which I don't necessarily… that doesn't even mean like leave the community and turn my back on everyone. I just mean if I hear some nonsense from the pastor, I can go home, and that's okay [laughter]. And I've done that a few times. I had this one pastor a while back who just got on a streak. I don't know what happened, man, but it was this one month where at maybe two or three of the sermons he just said some stuff that was super ableist. I don't know what happened. He never even talked about people with disabilities before, and all of a sudden it's like, got to bring disabled people up all the time. You got to say really nonsense, insensitive, ridiculous stuff.And there was one time I just left. I was like, “I'm gonna go to the bathroom.” And then I came out of the bathroom and I was like, “Actually, I'm not going back in there.”Jonathan Walton: [laughter] Right. Yes.Sy Hoekstra: I just remember looking at the door back into the service and the door to leave the building, and the choice could not have been clearer [laughter]. It was like a hundred percent of me wants to go this way, zero percent of me wants to go that way.Jonathan Walton: Brunch with Jesus. I'm gonna leave now. Yeah, that makes sense.Sy Hoekstra: Alright, Jonathan. Last question. How have things changed between you and the rest of the world [laughs]? The people outside of the church? How are you thinking differently? I'm sure there's a lot to say here, but…Jonathan Walton: Lord have mercy. Okay, so I can be friends with non-Christians…Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Not every woman in the world, their primary relationship to me is I shouldn't sleep with them.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I see.Jonathan Walton: So either this woman is my wife or a temptation. Like that…Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I got you.Jonathan Walton: This is a human being made in the image of God that I am incomplete without on this side of heaven [laughs]. Like God desires shalom between me and her or them. It's a group. Also, it's very possible to be generous to people, and if it doesn't go against my taxes, it's still a great thing to give to. Friends, there's so much crap in that, and I wanted to say the other word.Sy Hoekstra: Churches make a big deal out of that your gift here will be tax deductible or whatever [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And institutional giving or whatever, and you're just like, “No, actually, I can tithe to the guy on the corner who needs a sandwich.”Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely. I also think that, along with the every, I can be friends with non-Christians, and this is still actually hard for me, is I can learn from people that don't believe in Jesus the same way I do.Sy Hoekstra: Is it hard for you? Because I think sometimes, like we were talking about Valarie Kaur the other day, the seek prophet who says amazing things and you were…Jonathan Walton: Yes, yes, yes. So here's what I mean by that. And I think my wife is the one who challenges me on this.Sy Hoekstra: Okay.Jonathan Walton: It's very different to learn from someone online and through their books, but she said, “Jonathan, when you have relationships with people, intimate relationships with them,” she said, “It doesn't register for me as you're talking with them, Jonathan, that you want to learn from them.” And I'll also be really honest, my pastor told me this. When I first met him, he invited one of his friends over, and we wanted to have this conversation. And I asked him, I said, “What was that like for you?” And he said, “Well, it seemed like you were not interested in getting to know us. You just wanted to know what we thought about these things.” And that to me, is something that I'm like, oh.I believed, past tense, and I'm still working through that, I think my relationship with God is based upon my utility to people around me, and if I'm not useful, then I'm not valuable. And if I believe it about myself, I'm gonna reflect that outwards.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so, something that bothers me that I'm still working through is, how can I be in relationships with people and learn from them, and not require them to change or grow in some way or become or believe like me, those things would probably be the biggest, but that last one is probably… I mean, all of those I'm still working through, but that last one is the most potent right now as I try to make friends and be in community with people. What about you? Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, the friends with non-Christians thing is funny to me. The specific thing for me is that I'm not trying to, it's similar, I'm not trying to convert and change everybody. There was a while when I was young kind of late teens or early 20s, where I literally thought just every interaction I had with a non-Christian had to be toward the end of making them a Christian at some point.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And I now realize that ensuring the salvation of anyone, including myself, not my job [laughs]. No one ever said that was my job in the Bible, at least. And my job is to talk about the truth, like talk about what has happened in my life, but that's all I got to do. Just talk about it [laughs]. I got to testify to the truth, and that does not mean that I need any individual person ever changes as a result [laughter]. That is not part of my job. I want people to know Jesus, but that's different than thinking that everything I do must be toward some end of like, honestly kind of manipulating people into [laughs] that, which is the constant evangelical tendency, hell being the biggest manipulator. “Do this or you will be tortured forever,” and framing it that way.We're constantly framing things in terms of manipulating people to just be one of us. I don't do that anymore. Thank goodness [laughs]. And stuff like that that makes me, I look back and I'm always like, I don't think that anything I was involved in actually meets the definition of a cult. But there was some cult-y aspects of it, for sure [laughs]. There was some stuff in there that was [laughs]9 weird in terms of how you related to other people. I'm much less suspicious to the rest of the world. I don't think the rest of the world, kind of like you said about women, just anybody in general, isn't trying to tempt me out of something or send me down a wrong road, which then allows me to enjoy, not just learning from people like you said, but also just beauty and joy in places that I couldn't, I wasn't allowed to find it before.A result of all that is people are no longer projects to me. This is all very similar to what you said, actually. So I think those are my main ones. And I said the last thing was the last question, but I actually did have one more question written down here. Do you wanna [laughter] go through that one too, or no?Jonathan Walton: I mean, I think we've talked about this a lot where it's like, your last question being, how has my relationship and view of God changed?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And what I would say is… and you said this way back in the podcast already. I'm trying to live in the reality that God actually loves me and he actually loves other people, and that's just true. And that can be my posture bent orientation to the world at all times. And to live in that quote- unquote, belovedness is really, really, really difficult in a extractivist, culturally colonized, post-plantation, capitalistic society.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's really, really hard when every single thing that I was raised to do goes against just receiving anything.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] I mean, that's why the grace of God is confounding. But all that to say, I think I'm trying to live in that. And I think teaching my children that has taught me that more than anything.Sy Hoekstra: Early on in my faith, one of the seeds that I think God planted really early on was, and I've talked about this before. I had a lot of trouble with the idea of hell when I was considering following Jesus. And the way that that got resolved for me was to stop, I stopped asking questions about the unfairness of the idea of hell, because I came to trust Jesus as a person and say, “Whatever thing is going on there with these problems, with the unfairness of hell that I have, Jesus did something to himself. God did something to himself in the form of the cross that was also extremely unfair [laughs], actively harmed himself in order to get us to trust him.” You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Actively harmed himself, is maybe a weird way to put it. Like, lived in such solidarity with us as humans, and especially as oppressed and vulnerable humans, that he died and had some terrible spiritual fate that people characterize in different ways, depending on what denomination you're from or whatever, happened to him [laughs]. And that then makes me trust him and ask questions about, why would God do this to God's self?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Why would God do this to himself, as opposed to, why would God do this to us? And I decided to follow and trust Jesus before I really had answers, or had passed through all the different theologies of hell or any of that stuff. And so the seed there is talking about truth and talking about faith as trust in a person, and not as belief in specific doctrines or trust in specific doctrines. And I've leaned way into that. That's the thing that has grown over time and has replaced a lot of the anxiety and trust that I was putting in other things that were either of my own effort, or what other people told me I had to believe or whatever, is trust in God the being, like the spiritual entity with which I have actually interacted and I know and I love.And that part of my faith has just grown, I think, exponentially, and has allowed me to be okay with things I don't understand. And I have long term things that I don't understand, that I do not have answers to that make me uncomfortable. And still be okay with that [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, because it's about a relationship, not perfect understanding at all times.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And if you trust God, you don't have to understand all things, just like we trust people, even though we don't understand every single thing about them.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, which is different than trusting God as a replacement for understanding [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So let's get into our segment Which Tab Is Still Open, where we dive a little deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletters. And remember, you can get our newsletter for free just by going to KTFPress.com, and signing up for our mailing list. You'll get recommendations on articles, podcasts and other media from both of us on things that will help you in your political education and discipleship. Plus you'll get reflections to keep you grounded and hopeful as we engage in this challenging work together, news about what's going on with KTF and a lot more. So go get that free subscription, and if you want to, you should become a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com.So this week, Sy, we're gonna be talking about the war in Sudan. Can you summarize the main points for us?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, sure. And I know there are some people who know nothing about this war, so I will give kind of all the basics here. Basically, Sudan has been at war for about a year and a half, since April of 2023. And it's between two state-armed factions, one is the regular military, and the other is kind of a paramilitary force that was set up at one point that were supposed to kind of integrate into each other, and instead they were fighting over power. But what they had done previously together was to suppress the popular uprising that began in 2018 and it was to oust the longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir, and it had started as these organizations called neighborhood resistance committees all over the country.It's a little bit tough to document how many of them there are, but they're these highly localized, very fluid groups that don't have a single leader who are doing all kinds of political organizing at a local level all around the country, coordinating with each other incredibly well, and also providing mutual aid and humanitarian aid as this war goes on. They basically organized these sit ins where they had, I mean, I don't remember the numbers, a ton of people in Khartoum trying to get rid of, Khartoum is the capital, trying to get rid of al-Bashir, and they successfully did it. And then they had a whole plan to transition to an actually civilian-led democratic government, but they were sort of beaten back by military and this other paramilitary group in a coup in 2021.So there was an attempt for a couple of years to really transition Sudan to a democracy government accountable to the people, and it did not work because of this counter revolutionary coup. And so the resource that I had was this podcast from Truthout that's called Movement Memos, and they were talking to two members of the Sudanese diaspora in Canada who, one of the main points they were trying to make was that this is a counter revolutionary war. A lot of the media will portray it as a civil war, and really it is forces fighting over who gets power after basically pushing people down. Racism is a big part of the context of this too, because a lot of the elites, the military and the paramilitary elites, and everybody who's in charge of the country are Arabic. Like ethnically or racially Arabic. And a lot of the people from the South and from the resistance committees who are part of the revolutionary groups are Black.So I think a lot of the reason that we haven't talked about this is the US is not directly involved. There are things that the US does that create some problems, like the sanctions that we still have on Sudan. But the reason everyone needs to care about this is, first of all, about fifteen or sixteen thousand people have died, which is not on the same scale of death as Palestine exactly or whatever, not to minimize those deaths or anything, but they have created the largest displacement crisis anywhere in the world. There are more than eight million people who have been displaced by this war. There's famine and starvation happening. Surrounding countries are refusing refugees. In some cases, Egypt has been doing this for some time.The guests of the podcast are really saying that these neighborhood committees are the people who need outside support the most, because there's, a lot of the NGOs and everybody have fled. So amidst this humanitarian crisis, these people on the ground doing this mutual aid are the only people keeping people alive. And they actually gave a link, which I will provide, to an organization called the Sudan Solidarity Committee I believe. I can't remember the last word. Sudan Solidarity something, where you can just donate money directly to these resistance committees. They're getting it to them via PayPal, and people are just dispersing it as needed. And it's direct giving. It's nothing paternalistic.You're just giving them money, and they're doing with it what they need. And apparently a lot of the Sudanese diaspora is trying to support this group, but they can't do it on their own, and a lot of them are struggling with their own, all the financial issues that come around immigrating to other parts of the world. So yeah, we'll have the link for that in the show notes. Jonathan, that's a lot of information I just gave. I just kind of wanna know what it is that you think about this whole situation, your reaction to it, anything about the podcast that you thought was interesting.Jonathan Walton: So one thing that's really important to me is history. And fortunately, whether we're talking about Gaza, whether we're talking about Haiti, whether we're talking about Hawaii, whether we're talking about any of these places, really anywhere that colonization has touched, there's a history.Sy Hoekstra: Yes. They get into that in the podcast too.Jonathan Walton: They do. They get into it in the podcast, because history, we need to understand how we got here to be able to make something different. And what I thought was normal and revolutionary is what the scholars who are participating and being interviewed and things like that, have done with their education. So the folks they're interviewing got their education here in the West with a mind for liberation of their own people, but not their own people, understanding how this racially assigned group downstream of colonialism called Black is basically undergirding the entire economy in the world for the last 350 years. We have to engage with that as a reality, that Africa as a continent can hold the United States, China, Russia and Europe in it with room to spare. The second largest rainforest in the world is in the Congo.We've got these huge, massive amounts of resources in Africa, not just but also including its people who have been enslaved in various ways by various groups for the last 400 years. So it's helpful just that background that was provided, and then how that trickles down into then conflict in Sudan.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Can I just note one interesting fact that they've mentioned?Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: That I don't think we think about a lot, is when the colonial government left Sudan, they just vacated 800 government administrative positions or something. I can't remember what the exact number was. It was hundreds. They just vacated them. They did nothing to transition them. They didn't find people to fill them. They just left them empty [laughs]. And what do you think is gonna happen when you just create a massive power vacuum like that, with no transitional plan? You get a dictator, shocking. You know what I mean [laughs]? You get a dictator doing the exact same thing that the colonialist government that came before it did, which was effectively be a dictator.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. Because whoever had access to power post the colony is the people that colonizers empowered the majority of the time. Those educated folks, those are the people with power and resources. And so what do they do? We do what's been taught to us because we're hundreds of years removed from our own ways of leadership, our own matrilineal, patrilineal, or communal ways of governing and dividing ourselves and working together. And so all we have is the master's tools, as Audre Lorde would say. And so I think that connection to history, the connection to globalized blackness, and then just the ridiculous amount of coordination that I think, in the United States and in more resource places gets minimized, but in order, and this is where I might, “Oh, Jonathan, you're a Marxist,” and da da da.But let's lean on the reality that something Ta-Nehisi Coates said, and something will come up in the newsletter is, the way that we organize ourselves and the way that we exist together in the world is not inherent. We need to have nations that do X, Y and Z. That's a young system. Sharing is as old as we are, and so could we as followers of Jesus, as people who want to see beauty, love, justice and all these things flow in the world, just connect with our neighbors in ways that are transformative and helpful to say, “You are going through something, let me leverage my creative capacity and imagination to create ways that you can get what you need?” And I shared a video on Instagram today of a young woman named Taylor was sharing from North Carolina.She said, “If we can precision bomb people in a building a world away, we can precision guide food to people who need it.” We can do that. And so what I am empowered by, Munther Isaac said this similarly with what's happening in Gaza, when you are forced to be creative, that is where Jesus is, and that's where we can learn. And I think followers of Jesus like me in Bayside, I'm like, “Oh it's so hard for me to buy nothing and figure out this free thing and do this and do that.” And it's because I could just go to Target. I could just order on Amazon, but we don't have to do that. And I was emboldened and encouraged and empowered by the creativity, because I wonder what would happen if we learned from these people.Instead of creating a new way to do things when there's a crisis, we could actually create new ways to do things before the world is just destitute. And so I'm praying for the folks of Sudan. I wanna share [laughs] the ways to give. I'll probably sign up to give myself and then just would God move in us the way he has moved in them to mutually help and care for one another amid such destitution.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. One of the things that the guests said about the neighborhood resistance committees, that I thought was really interesting was, they were like, these committees are running services. Like they're providing food. In a couple cases, they actually took over abandoned hospitals and reopened them, found doctors and staffed them and get supplies there, whatever. They are running the country in a way that these paramilitary organizations are not. And they are out there actively proving we don't need these people [laughs]. We don't need these people, we can run the garment ourselves[laughs]. We can run the country ourselves. We have the energy to do it. We need the resources to do it. We could do so much more if there wasn't so much violence and displacement and poverty and famine.But yeah, that kind of imagination, that kind of, you're right. That kind of necessity has created in them just an incredible capacity to share and to love each other, frankly. And I also hope that we learn from that. But at the same time, that's why they've seen so much violence and repression, is because they are threatening the power structure. And not only that, but when they were doing the sit ins a few years ago, and they ousted Al-Bashir, there were other countries starting to look to them for similar resistance. There are people in, like they mentioned specifically in the podcast, there're people in Lebanon looking at Hezbollah and going, “Could we do something about this?” [laughs]People in other countries are actually looking to these Sudanese organizations. And so the ruling power structures have to shut that down. And it means that there are other countries involved in helping them shut it down. So it's like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and Egypt and other countries that are not interested in seeing revolutions like this [laughs] are involved, are providing weapons, are doing all kinds of things and just interfering in a regional way, in the way that we as the US are used to doing globally all the time.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: This particular conflict, the US doesn't see as being as closely aligned with its interests as say, defending Israel, or now empowering Israel to go invade other countries.Jonathan Walton: Yes [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Which is what has just started as we are recording this. I'm sure we'll have more to say about that.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: So go listen to this podcast. Go read more about this conflict in the media. The reason we wanted to bring it up is, I didn't wanna become the thing I'm critiquing and not talk about Sudan just because it doesn't affect the US. But man, the media is not talking about Sudan when we should be. So please go listen to this podcast. The link will be in the show notes, please just go learn more. Give if you can. They're asking for 10 Canadian dollars a month, which is like 7.50 US [laughs]. So please, if you have some money to spare, there are people in desperate need of it who are doing very good things with it. Alright, I'm gonna wrap us up there. Thank you so much for listening today. Jonathan, thank you for a great conversation, as always.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. Transcripts by Joyce Ambale. Editing by Multitude Productions. And the producers of this show are the lovely paid subscribers. Again, please consider becoming a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com, get all the bonus episodes of this show, join our monthly Zoom calls, comment on our blog, on our Substack, and more. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you in a couple of weeks for what I think will be the… yeah, will be the last show that we do before the election. So we'll be talking more about some current affairs then, and doing a great interview. So we will see you in two weeks.Jonathan Walton: Stay blessed y'all.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] Jonathan Walton: That was the first advo—like [sound of something repeatedly hitting the mic hard]whoa, hit the mic [laughter]. My first quote- unquote, advocacy poem that I wrote, for sure.Sy Hoekstra: But can you say that again, just without laughing or hitting the mic [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and slapping the mic? Yeah. This is a public episode. 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Today's conversation is with Professor of History and Christian thought, Dr. Timothy Larsen. Dr. Larsen's latest project is the reissue of a powerful devotional from the 19th century Scottish author and minister, George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul, in which Dr. Larsen provides an introduction and explanatory notes throughout the book. We talked lots about George Donald, about his Christian faith, his influence on people like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the uniqueness and ongoing relevance of this devotional Diary of an Old Soul, and what exactly an Old Soul even is. Dr. Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College, an Honorary Fellow, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, and an Honorary Research Fellow, School of Theology, Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.  He has been a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, All Souls College, Oxford, and Christ Church, Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He has been elected President of the American Society of Church History for 2025. He is the author or editor of twenty books including Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life and The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (all with Oxford University Press).

Did Lewis want to rewrite some of his earlier work on suffering in light of his own experience of pain and loss? Did Lewis doubt the existence of God or question his character during these times? What words of encouragement would Lewis give to those in the throes of suffering? Dr Philip Tallon, Associate Professor of Theology and Dean of The School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University, explores A Grief Observed and The Problem of Pain. He also shares how to help younger readers engage with Lewis. For Philip Tallon: https://hc.edu/contact/philip-tallon/  + Subscribe to The CS Lewis podcast: https://pod.link/1560959545 + For more shows, free ebook and newsletter visit our new website + For online learning https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training + For our Premier Unbelievable? Live events + Support the podcast from the USA + Support the podcast from UK and rest of the world

Yes, we finally went there. In the most incorrect of Spiritually Incorrect episodes, we bring on a chaplain from the Global Order of Satan, a branch of Satanism, to talk about what Satanists actually believe and practice and what bits of it are just Hollywood fiction and relics of the Satanic panic from the 1980s. This is definitely an episode you don't want to miss! Exclusive Offer: For our $5 and up Patreon subscribers, you now have access to a free university course taught by Jonathan called "The History of Christian Thought"! And if you're not a subscriber, join in the fun at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=82501095.

How does Lewis perceive the Fall? Is he able to reconcile it with an evolutionary model? Where does the cross feature in The Problem of Pain? What did Lewis think of hell? In what ways does Lewis help us to recognise beauty and aesthetics in our discussions around theodicy? We continue our conversation with Dr Philip Tallon, Associate Professor of Theology and Dean of The School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University. For Rev Dr Michael Lloyd on why evil exists: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unapologetic/unapologetic-107-michael-lloyd-why-does-evil-exist/17736.article For Philip Tallon: https://hc.edu/contact/philip-tallon/ + Subscribe to The CS Lewis podcast: https://pod.link/1560959545 + For more shows, free ebook and newsletter visit our new website + For online learning https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training + For our Premier Unbelievable? Live events + Support the podcast from the USA + Support the podcast from UK and rest of the world

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 49 of the Christian History Series. We are now in the Modern Age. This episode focuses on the history and beliefs of the Ecumenical Movement. I used a variety of texts to bring you this episode:This episode borrows heavily from Tony Lane's "Concise History of Christian Thought."https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2“Turning Points” By Mark Nollhttps://www.amazon.com/Turning-Points-Decisive-Moments-Christianity/dp/0801039967/ref=sr_1_2?crid=382EN61EZQMJR&keywords=mark+noll+turning+points&qid=1584305685&sprefix=Mark+Noll%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-2“Church History in Plain Language” By Bruce Shelleyhttps://www.amazon.com/Church-History-Plain-Language-Fourth/dp/1401676316/ref=sr_1_1?crid=394KLXKL62CKN&dchild=1&keywords=bruce+shelley+church+history+in+plain+language&qid=1601481626&sprefix=Bruce+Shelley%2Caps%2C226&sr=8-1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_God_(Cleveland,_Tennessee)#Origins_(1886%E2%80%931902)

How do we know Jesus was truly resurrected? Well how do we know He died on the cross? What does it mean to not believe and what risks does that pose in our faith? Dr. Mike Licona shares his life work with us Additional Readings: The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution: https://amzn.to/4cAxFtp Mike Licona's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@MikeLiconaOfficial Mike Licona's Website: https://www.risenjesus.com/ HCU School of Christian Thought (online): https://hc.edu/school-of-christian-thought/departments/apologetics/ Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently: https://amzn.to/3W4gZ6b Mike Licona is Professor of New Testament Studies at Houston Christian University and President of Risen Jesus, Inc. He has a Ph.D. in New Testament Studies from the University of Pretoria, which he earned with distinction. Mike is the author of numerous books and was interviewed by Lee Strobel in his book In Defense of Jesus. In 2017, Mike was elected to membership in the prestigious Society for New Testament Studies. He has spoken on more than 100 university campuses and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs. On May 28, Mike's latest book was published: Jesus, Contradicted. In this book, Mike gives us a fresh and better approach toward reading differences in the Gospels. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/biblically-speaking-cb/support

Can pain ever be good for us? What about children with cancer? How do we account for animal suffering? Will our pets be in heaven? Does our theology of heaven impact our thoughts around suffering? Dr Philip Tallon, Associate Professor of Theology and Dean of The School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University, shares his thoughts about Lewis' The Problem of Pain. + Subscribe to The CS Lewis podcast: https://pod.link/1560959545 + For more shows, free ebook and newsletter visit our new website + For online learning https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training + For our Premier Unbelievable? Live events + Support the podcast from the USA + Support the podcast from UK and rest of the world

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 48 of the Christian History Series. We are now in the Modern Age. This episode focuses on the history and beliefs of the fastest growing denomination, the Pentecostals.I used a variety of texts and wikipedia articles to bring you this episode:This episode borrows heavily from Tony Lane's "Concise History of Christian Thought."https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2“Turning Points” By Mark Nollhttps://www.amazon.com/Turning-Points-Decisive-Moments-Christianity/dp/0801039967/ref=sr_1_2?crid=382EN61EZQMJR&keywords=mark+noll+turning+points&qid=1584305685&sprefix=Mark+Noll%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-2“Church History in Plain Language” By Bruce Shelleyhttps://www.amazon.com/Church-History-Plain-Language-Fourth/dp/1401676316/ref=sr_1_1?crid=394KLXKL62CKN&dchild=1&keywords=bruce+shelley+church+history+in+plain+language&qid=1601481626&sprefix=Bruce+Shelley%2Caps%2C226&sr=8-1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_God_(Cleveland,_Tennessee)#Origins_(1886%E2%80%931902)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_God_in_Christ#Holiness_Originshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Pentecostal_Holiness_Churchhttps://www.christianity.com/church/denominations/10-things-christians-should-know-about-pentecostalism.html

Dr Philip Tallon, Associate Professor of Theology and Dean of The School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University, unpacks one of Lewis' earliest work of apologetics The Problem of Pain. What are the critiques of this book and can any of these challenges be overcome? + Subscribe to The CS Lewis podcast: https://pod.link/1560959545 + For more shows, free ebook and newsletter visit our new website + For online learning https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training + For our Premier Unbelievable? Live events + Support the podcast from the USA + Support the podcast from UK and rest of the world

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 52 of the Christian History Series. We are now in the Modern Age. This is the second episode of a two part series featuring the Catholic Thinkers of the last 200 years.This episode borrows heavily from Tony Lane's "Concise History of Christian Thought."https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 46 of the Christian History Series. We are now in the Modern Age. This is the first episode of a two part series featuring the Catholic Thinkers of the last 200 years.This episode borrows heavily from Tony Lane's "Concise History of Christian Thought."https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 43 of the Christian History Series. We are now in the Modern Age. This is the second episode introducing you to the theologians who opposed the liberals in the seminaries. This episode borrows heavily from Tony Lane's "Concise History of Christian Thought."https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 42 of the Christian History Series. We are now in the Modern Age. This episode introduces you to the theologians who opposed the liberals in the seminaries.This episode borrows heavily from Tony Lane's "Concise History of Christian Thought."https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

Is the history of Evangelicalism a little blurry for you? Or are you a history buff who loves to talk about names, dates and changes on the historical scene? Either way, you'll benefit from listening to Mark Dever chat it up with Mark Noll, McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College.For more articles, books, and podcasts, please visit 9marks.org

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 45 of the Christian History Series. This episode is part 2 focusing on the Evangelicals that rose up to oppose the Liberal Theologians of the 19-20th Centuries. Here are the sources I used:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2https://billygraham.org/about/biographies/billy-graham/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gresham_Machen

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode is part 38 of the Christian History Series. This podcast focuses on the teachings of the Liberal Theologians who helped shaped the seminaries of the 20th Century.The sources I used to bring you this episode are:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism

Today, Dr. John Marriott joins Noelle and Janell!   Together they discuss reasons why people leave Christian faith, why John is still a Christian, and how he began studying deconversion & faith deconstruction. They explore the difference between having reasons vs. absolute certainty when it comes to faith. They talk about the theme of happiness and the search for deep satisfaction. John explains the concept of flourishing by aligning oneself with God's design and conforming to the nature of reality. The discussion also touches on the pursuit of pleasure, power, and wealth as inadequate sources of lasting happiness. Noelle shares more about why she's not a Christian and John shares some helpful insight for those who have a loved one who has left the Christian faith.    We hope you enjoy today's episode!    About Dr. John John is a faculty affiliate of The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is the former Research and Program Coordinator for the Biola University Center for Christian Thought and teaches part-time in the Department of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology.  A former pastor, he holds a Ph.D. degree from The Cook School of Intercultural Studies. His dissertation focused on deconversion from Christianity to atheism. He is the author of five books on deconversion, A Recipe For Disaster: How the Church Contributes to the Deconversion Crisis (Wipf & Stock, 2018), The Anatomy of Deconversion: Keys to a Lifelong Faith in a Culture Abandoning Christianity (ACUP, 2021), Going... Going... Gone..! Why Believers Lose Their Faith and What Can be Done to Guard Against it (Renaissance Publishers, 2020), Before You Go: Uncovering Hidden Factors in Faith Loss (Leafwood Publishers, 2022), and Set Adrift: Deconstructing What You Believe Without Sinking Your Faith (Zondervan, 2023). John is also a contributor to an updated edition of the forthcoming book Apologetics for a New Generation (Harvest House 2025). His sixth book, The Good Book? Restoring Your Faith in the Bible by Questioning Everything You Assume About it, (Tyndale) is due for release soon. John is the Director of Cultural Engagement with the Renaissance Forum which focuses on connecting calling to culture for societal wellbeing. He enjoys speaking at churches and conferences on topics related to biblical studies, philosophy of religion, deconversion, and the relationship between the Church and culture. Dr. Marriott is also the International Student Services Coordinator at Whittier Christian High School, in Whittier California.  -- -- -- -- -- We would love to thank our Patrons for all their amazing support! To learn more about supporting Finding Something REAL via Patreon, click here! If you are interested in supporting the Finding Something REAL fundraising campaign, you can head to the webpage and click on the orange donate button. To learn more about Faithful Counseling and if it is a good fit for you, you can click here!If you would like to receive Janell's 7 Deep Faith Questions resource click here! Visit the Finding Something REAL Youtube channel!   Noelle's First episode Noelle & Drew Noelle & Xandra Noelle & Doug Noelle & J, Warner Wallace Dr. John Marriott  Set Adrift - Sean Mcdowell & John Marriott 

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This part 41 of the Christian History Series. This podcast gives us an overview of the final part of Christian History, the Modern Age which extends from the start of the 19th century to the present time.This episode borrow heavily from: "In the Year of our Lord" by Sinclair Fergusonhttps://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+ferguson+AD&qid=1579476273&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyWjJZNlNPT1U2TENBJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTA1NDUyV1RDRUZEVEpaV1VTJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0ODI4NjkyVDJHSUhZMjVXQTZGJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfbXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==and "A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This part 41 of the Christian History Series. This podcast gives us an overview of the final part of Christian History, the Modern Age which extends from the start of the 19th century to the present time.This episode borrow heavily from: "In the Year of our Lord" by Sinclair Fergusonhttps://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+ferguson+AD&qid=1579476273&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyWjJZNlNPT1U2TENBJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTA1NDUyV1RDRUZEVEpaV1VTJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0ODI4NjkyVDJHSUhZMjVXQTZGJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfbXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==and "A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

Flannery O'Connor is known for her short stories in which “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” But it's often those ugly, mean, disgusting, scandalizing, violent, weird, or downright hateful characters in Flannery O'Connor stories that become the vessels of grace delivered.So, how should we read Flannery O'Connor?Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine University) joins Evan Rosa to open up about Flannery O'Connor's life, her unique perspective as a writer, the theological and moral principles operative in her work, all as an immense invitation to read O'Connor and find the beauty of God's grace that emerges amidst the most horrendous evils. Includes a discussion of Flannery O'Connor's short story, “Greenleaf.”Show NotesCheck out Jessica Hooten Wilson's presentation of Flannery O'Connor's final, unfinished novel: Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?Click here for an online copy of “Greenleaf” to follow along with our analysisSpiritual formation through the works of Flannery O'ConnorHow to read for a flourishing life“Greenleaf” by Flannery O'ConnorFlannery O'Connor's reading grounded in tradition of early church mothers and fathers.Paying attention to every individual word.First word: Mrs. Mays looses her agency.Europa & the Bull, Ovid's MetamorphosisMrs. May's blinds as hiding pieces of reality, shutting out GodThe spiritual truth of the story is concealed when not read attentively and intentionallyFlannery's writings defying instant gratification“The wrong kind of horror”The development of American consumerismShowing versus enjoying violenceSacramental readingThe Holy FoolThe Violent Bear It Away as a hymn to the eucharistO'Connor requires spiritual reading.A summary of “Greenleaf”Pierced by the bull, a violent union of Savior and sinnerO'Connor's Christian characters; “A Good Man is Hard to Find”Characters changing and choosing faith before death.The final paragraph of “Greenleaf”Mrs. Greenleaf as the opposite of Ivan Karamazov, in The Brothers KaramazovOpening to the world with the knowledge of GodPentecostalism and zeal in “Greenleaf”Stabbed in the heart, medieval mysticism“Lord, help us dig down under things and find where you are”About Jessica Hooten WilsonJessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University ('23) and previously served as the Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University ('22-'23). She co-hosts a podcast called The Scandal of Reading: Pursuing Holy Wisdom with Christ & Pop Culture, where she discusses with fellow authors, professors, and theologians with Claude Atcho and Austin Carty. She is the author of Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progres*s (Brazos Press, January 23, 2024); Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Brazos Press, 2023);* Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints (Brazos Press, 2022) which received a Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit (Culture & the Arts) and a Midwest Book Review* 2023 Silver Book Award (Nonfiction – Religion/Philosophy); co-author with Dr. Jacob Stratman of Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds that Came Before (Zondervan Academic, 2022); Giving the Devil his Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky* (February 28, 2017), which received a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in the Culture & the Arts; as well as two books on Walker Percy: *The Search for Influence: Walker Percy and Fyodor Dostoevsky* (Ohio State University Press, 2017) and Reading Walker Percy's Novels (Louisiana State University Press, 2018); most recently she co-edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: *The Russian Soul in the West* (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020).She has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the Czech Republic, an NEH grant to study Dante in Florence in 2014, and the Biola Center for Christian Thought sabbatical fellowship. In 2018 she received the Emerging Public Intellectual Award given by a coalition of North American think tanks in collaboration with the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College, and in 2019 she received the Hiett Prize in Humanities from The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.Production NotesThis podcast featured Jessica Hooten WilsonEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim BergelandA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Philip Tallon   Dr. Phil Tallon is Dean of the School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University. He has a PhD in Theology from the University of Saint Andrews. He's the author of The Poetics of Evil (Oxford, 2012) and The Absolute Basics of the Christian Faith (Seedbed, 2016). He, his wife Karen, and their family live in Houston.

This episode is the 33rd Part of the Christian History series. It introduces you the events and thinkers of the 17th CenturyHere is the source I used:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

CW: violence against children, assault, domestic partner violence, adverse religious experiences, suicideRev. Dr. Scott Harrower is Lecturer in Christian Thought at Ridley College and an ordained minister in the Anglican Church.In this episode, Revd Dr. Harrower offers a theological response to trauma through the doctrine of the Trinity–reflected in large part in his book God of All Comfort. We talk about how his background as a nurse informs his work as a theologian and pastor, how a richer understanding of the Trinity can provide secure attachment, and how the Gospel of Matthew offers a horrors and comfort together.Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Dr. Madison Pierce, and Rev. Dr. Christopher A. Porter. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is 7th part of the 16th Century and the 32nd Part of the Christian History series. In this episode we focus on the Anabaptists and the Mennonites.Here are the source I used:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode is 7th part of the 16th Century and the 31st Part of the Christian History series. It introduces Martin Bucer and John Calvin.Here are the sources I used:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2“Classic Christian Thinkers: An Introduction” By Ken Samples.https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Christian-Thinkers-Kenneth-Richard-ebook/dp/B07P83JHZZ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=Classic+Christian+Thinkers&qid=1581803169&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyOUwzS0oxMk5GMzlSJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTgwODYxM0lMWTBGSVNJRzdLUSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMTQ5MDUwODIyNEtSSkZXREU1JndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Have you ever considered the mysteries of divine choice and human destiny? Join us on a profound spiritual journey as we untangle the complex doctrines of election and predestination, delving into God's pre-creation plans and the debate over whether our salvation hinges on divine grace or human will. This episode promises to enlighten you on these deeply rooted Christian beliefs, exploring the scriptural evidence that challenges and reframes common misconceptions surrounding these topics.Venture into the historical battlegrounds of theological thought, where Augustine's rebuttals to Pelagianism and the formation of Calvinist doctrine shape our understanding of God's sovereignty. We examine how these ancient discussions continue to influence evangelicalism in America today, contrasting the global impact of Reformed theology with the resistance found within our own borders. The episode doesn't shy away from the hard questions, addressing the paradox of God's universal love and His selective election, and what this means for our personal faith journeys.Wrapping up, we contemplate the reassurance and responsibility that come with accepting the sovereignty of God in matters of salvation. As we reflect on the transformative nature of grace and the call to evangelize, we're reminded of the central tenet of Christianity—justification by faith in Christ alone. Whether you're wrestling with doubts or seeking deeper theological insight, this exploration offers a fresh perspective that will both challenge and comfort believers. Support the show

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode is 6th part of the 16th Century and the 30th Part of the Christian History series. It will deal with some of the Great Christian Thinkers of this Century. It is part two.Here are the source I used:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode is 5th part of the 16th Century and the 29th Part of the Christian History series. It will deal with some of the Great Christian Thinkers of this Century. It is part one.Here are the source I used:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

What does the Bible (and the Apostle Paul in particular) teach us about the role of women in ministry leadership? To help us find answers to that critical question, I invited my friend Ryan Lytton to offer his expertise. Ryan is a minister, scholar, and theologian, specializing in Biblical Interpretation during the Patristic Period (100-800 AD). He is a professor at Life Pacific University holding a B.A. in Biblical Studies, an M.A. in Christian Thought, and is currently pursuing a PhD.

In the form of Gnosticism primarily. Mon-Christian really. Thank you for listening! Please leave a 5 star review, share and subscribe!

Very early, heretical for the most part. God bless you and thank you for listening! Please leave a 5 star review, share and subscribe!

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This is Part 25 of the Christian History series. This the first part of the 16th Century and will give you an overview for what will happen in this century and in the three centuries to come. I used this book as my primary sources for this episode:"A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This podcast of Part 24 of the Christian History series. It focuses on the Thinkers and Events of the Fifteenth Century. These are the sources I used for this episode along with their amazon urls:"In the Year of our Lord" by SInclair Fergusonhttps://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+ferguson+AD&qid=1579476273&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyWjJZNlNPT1U2TENBJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTA1NDUyV1RDRUZEVEpaV1VTJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0ODI4NjkyVDJHSUhZMjVXQTZGJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfbXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ=="A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

Dr. Timothy Larsen joins LAB the Podcast for a conversation about his book, The Slain God: Anthropologists & the Christian Faith. Dr. Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College, Illinois, and an Honorary Fellow, Edinburgh University. In the episode, Dr. Larsen offers his thoughts on what it means to be a human and where some of the most respected anthropologists in history found signals of transcendence.Find Timothy Larsen's book here: The Slain GodSupport the show

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This podcast of Part 23 of the Christian History series. It focuses on the Great Christian Thinkers of the Fourteenth Century. These are the sources I used for this episode along with their amazon urls:"In the Year of our Lord" by SInclair Fergusonhttps://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+ferguson+AD&qid=1579476273&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyWjJZNlNPT1U2TENBJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTA1NDUyV1RDRUZEVEpaV1VTJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0ODI4NjkyVDJHSUhZMjVXQTZGJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfbXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ=="A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode covers the rest of the outstanding Christian Thinkers of the 13th Century. We will cover the Fourth Lateran Council, Bonaventure, John Duns, Scotus, and Albert MagnusI used the following sources:"In the Year of our Lord" by SInclair Fergusonhttps://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+ferguson+AD&qid=1579476273&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyWjJZNlNPT1U2TENBJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTA1NDUyV1RDRUZEVEpaV1VTJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA0ODI4NjkyVDJHSUhZMjVXQTZGJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfbXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ=="A Concise History of Christian Thought" by Tony Lanehttps://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?keywords=Christian+Thinkers+Tony+Lane&qid=1579476358&sr=8-1-fkmr2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode is part 20 of the Christian History series. This episode focuses on the St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan OrderHere are the books that I used to bring you this episode along with the Amazon urls:A Concise History of Christian Thought by Tony Lane https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ONNTP1I91B2N&keywords=tony+lane&qid=1572742249&sprefix=Tony+Lane%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-1In the Year of our Lord, by Sinclair Ferguson https://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_9_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+Ferguson&Turning Points by Mark Noll https://www.amazon.com/s?k=turning+points+mark+noll&crid=1TONG75I7JQWM&sprefix=Turning+Points+by+Mark+%2Caps%2C221&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23Catholic Encylopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04073a.htm

Delve into the philosophical and theological parallels that shaped the development of early Christian thought. From the influence of Plotinus and his concepts of the One and the emanation of divine beings, to the fusion of Platonic ideas with Christian theology, this video uncovers the intellectual interplay that helped shape the foundations of Western spirituality. Explore how Neoplatonic concepts, such as the nature of the soul, the hierarchy of being, and the pursuit of the divine, found resonance within Christian doctrines.Sources/Suggested Reading: Gerson, Loyd P. (ed.) (2019). "Plotinus: The Enneads". Cambridge University Press.Gerson, Loyd P (2008). "Cambridge Companion to Plotinus". Cambridge University Press. Greer, Rowan A. (1979). "Origen: Selected Writings". Classics of Western Spirituality. Paulist Press. Laird, Martin (2004). "Gregory of Nyssa and the grasp of faith: union, knowledge and divine presence". Oxford University Press. Lossky, Vladimir (1944). "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church". James Clarke & Co. Luibheid, Colm (Translated by) (1987). "Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works". Classics of Western Spirituality. Paulist Press International. McGinn, Bernard (2003). "The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man from Whom God Hid Nothing". Independent Publishers Group. O'Meara, Dominic J. (1981). "Neoplatonism and Christian Thought". State University of New York Press. Pine-Coffin, R.S. (Translated by) (2003). "Confessions". Penguin Classics. Proclus "The Elements of Theology: A Revised Text with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary". Translated by E.R. Dodds. Second Edition. Oxford University Press. O'Meara, Dominic J. (1999). "Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads". Oxford University Press. Wallis, R.T. (1998). "Neoplatonism". Second Edition. Bristol Classical Paperbacks. Hackett Publishing Company. Ware, Timothy (2015). "The Orthodox Church: An introduction to Eastern Christianity". New Edition. Penguin Books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a special encore episode of my popular Christian History series while I take a Sabbatical.This episode is part 19 of the Christian History series. This episode focuses on the end of the Crusades in the 13th century and history of the Knights TemplarHere are the books that I used to bring you this episode along with the Amazon urls:A Concise History of Christian Thought by Tony Lane https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Christian-Thought/dp/0801031591/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ONNTP1I91B2N&keywords=tony+lane&qid=1572742249&sprefix=Tony+Lane%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-1In the Year of our Lord, by Sinclair Ferguson https://www.amazon.com/Year-Our-Lord-Reflections-Centuries-ebook/dp/B07GTDRSX3/ref=sr_1_9_sspa?keywords=Sinclair+Ferguson&Turning Points by Mark Noll https://www.amazon.com/s?k=turning+points+mark+noll&crid=1TONG75I7JQWM&sprefix=Turning+Points+by+Mark+%2Caps%2C221&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23Catholic Encylopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04073a.htm

What does it mean to say that someone is deconstructing their faith? Can that be a good thing, or is it the first step in someone eventually abandoning their faith? How do you help someone to re-examine their faith in a constructive way? Join us as Scott interviews his co-host Sean McDowell and his co-author Dr. John Marriott, of the new book, Set Adrift.Dr. John Marriott serves at Biola University as the Research and Program Coordinator for the Biola University Center for Christian Thought and teaches in the Department of Philosophy. A former pastor, he holds a Ph.D. degree from The Cook School of Intercultural Studies. His dissertation focused on deconversion from Christianity to atheism. He is the author of five books on deconversion, A Recipe For Disaster: How the Church Contributes to the Deconversion Crisis (Wipf & Stock, 2018), The Anatomy of Deconversion: Keys to a Lifelong Faith in a Culture Abandoning Christianity (ACUP, 2021), Going... Going... Gone..! Why Believers Lose Their Faith and What Can be Done to Guard Against it (Renaissance Publishers, 2020), Before You Go: Uncovering Hidden Factors in Faith Loss (Leafwood Publishers, 2022) in addition to his new one, Set Adrift.Read a transcript of this episode at: https://www.biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2023/how-to-deconstruct-your-faith   ==========Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture is a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, which offers degrees both online and on campus in Southern California. Find all episodes of Think Biblically at: https://www.biola.edu/think-biblically. Watch video episodes at: https://bit.ly/think-biblically-video. To submit comments, ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to have on the podcast, email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu.