Episodes

  • Dementia: Listening to bodies and the sacramental ministry of touch

    Dementia: Listening to bodies and the sacramental ministry of touch
    Apr 23 2025
    ‘Granny’s body remains, but she is gone’. The public narrative around dementia often presumes that as our ability to talk, move and think gradually withers away, so does our personhood and sense of self. But if we believe as Christians that our humanity and identity is inextricably bound up in our physical flesh and bones, how should we approach the heart-breaking challenge of caring for someone declining into dementia? In this episode from the podcast vault (we are away over Easter) we speak with vicar and theologian Jess Wyatt (yes, also Tim’s wife and John’s daughter-in-law, it’s a real family affair) about her research into embodiment, personhood and dementia, and think through different ways to care for and attend to those suffering from this increasingly prevalent disease. • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    45 mins
  • Cultural witness and the purpose of theology, with Graham Tomlin

    Cultural witness and the purpose of theology, with Graham Tomlin
    Apr 16 2025
    Graham Tomlin has been a vicar, a theologian, a college principal, a bishop and now spearheads a project dedicated to trying to re-enchant the UK with Christian faith. In this episode we reflect with him about his ministry, the current state and status of theology in the church, the struggles of the Church of England where he served as a bishop until recently, and why he’s now focusing on helping non-churchgoers begin to see the world through ‘Christian spectacles’. • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    57 mins
  • Antinatalism: Should we all stop having children?

    Antinatalism: Should we all stop having children?
    Apr 9 2025
    One fringe explanation for the fall in birthrates we discussed in last week’s episode is the growing popularity of the antinatalist movement. Antinatalists argue not just that people should be free to not have children if they want to, but that having children is in itself a bad idea. Antinatalists can be motived by many things: concerns over climate change, the ecological crisis, fears about overpopulation and lack of resources on our finite Earth, or even more philosophical notions around the inevitability of suffering or the problem of bringing children into the world without first seeking their consent. It’s easy to dismiss antinatalism as foolish or bizarre, but is there any logic or merit to this perspective? Is Christianity fundamentally a pro-natalist religion, or can believers be justified in choosing not to have children? And what about the honoured tradition of celibacy and voluntary childlessness in church history – is that a form of Christian antinatalism we should be getting behind once more? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    53 mins
  • Is this the end? Plummeting birth rates, the future of humanity and the meaning of children

    Is this the end? Plummeting birth rates, the future of humanity and the meaning of children
    Apr 2 2025
    With unerring regularity, birth rates are dropping in almost every country on Earth. What was once assumed to be a rich world problem is now a reality in places as diverse as Chile, Russia, Thailand and the Caribbean. Almost everywhere people are having fewer and fewer children. Many nations, including the UK and the US, are now well below the magic number of 2.1 children per woman, the ‘replacement rate’ needed to maintain a stable population. In this episode we talk through the various theories proposed to explain why this is happening (is it about expensive childcare, birth control or cultural shifts in gender roles?) and also what the implications will be for our societies. And we end by discussing whether Christians should be joining those sounding the alarm about declining birth rates, and what our faith might have to say about the enduring value of having children. Several years ago we recorded a couple of episodes exploring the parallel phenomenon of rising numbers of older people https://www.johnwyatt.com/old-people-1/ Some helpful data on global birth rates in decline https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Spiritual, but not religious: What do people actually believe these days?

    Spiritual, but not religious: What do people actually believe these days?
    Mar 26 2025
    The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this classic episode from the MOLAD archive we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen Scrivener to discuss the different spiritualities we encounter, especially among younger generations. Are all non-believers Richard Dawkins style naturalistic atheists, or is there a more complex and contradictory set of belief systems out there for those who don’t call themselves Christians? How should the church’s outreach shift to reflect the contemporary mores of Gen-Z and the pick-and-mix spiritualities they often espouse? And are modern social movements, whether ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ functioning like religions without creeds? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    51 mins
  • Arrested for praying in your head? Abortion clinic buffer zones and 21st century thoughtcrime

    Arrested for praying in your head? Abortion clinic buffer zones and 21st century thoughtcrime
    Mar 19 2025
    Somewhat unnoticed by many in the British church, in the last few years the UK has imposed draconian new laws which can in some circumstances curtail fundamental religious liberties. In the name of protecting people from intimidating pro-life protests, 150-metre buffer zones now exist around every clinic and hospital which performs abortions in the UK. Inside these zones you can be arrested for doing anything which is deemed to influence women accessing abortion services – but these vague laws have seen a number of Christian pro-lifers arrested simply for standing in silence praying in their heads, or preaching generic gospel messages unrelated to abortion. How did we get to a place where the freedom to express your religion in public is under threat? Are buffer zones a reasonable provision to clamp down on harmful and aggressive fundamentalists? Or are we sleepwalking into a place where basic religious freedoms are accidentally being eroded, and few in the church seem to notice or care? Tim’s newsletter The Critical Friend has covered this story a number of times: https://tswyatt.substack.com/p/silent-prayers-inside-the-buffer?utm_source=publication-search and https://tswyatt.substack.com/p/normal-for-norfolk The Bournemouth case cited by JD Vance in his infamous speech h https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    49 mins
  • What is the Trump government doing to medical research and international aid, and why should we care?

    What is the Trump government doing to medical research and international aid, and why should we care?
    Mar 12 2025
    An under-reported story of the tumultuous first months of the second Donald Trump administration is how his team are brutally cutting back long-established federal institutions. The National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development have seen huge swathes of staff fired, grants paused, funding slashed and projects reliant on government aid abruptly shuttered. This is already having massive consequences downstream, both in research into devastating diseases and in humanitarian work with some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. Why should Christians care about these federal bureaucracies and what Trump is doing to them? Isn’t this just about trimming away woke excesses and focusing on excellence? And what might be lost, including for the church, if the US government gives up on medical research and international development for good? The Washington Post has a good article exploring the destruction and chaos at the NIH: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/03/05/nih-trump-turmoil-grants/ And this New York Times article explains the devastation wrought by the almost total shut-down by USAID https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/usaid-clinical-trials-funding-trump.html?searchResultPosition=2 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    49 mins
  • What are chatbots doing to us? Personhood in an age of AI

    What are chatbots doing to us? Personhood in an age of AI
    Mar 5 2025
    AI-driven chatbots are becoming a major industry, with hundreds of millions of people spending hours every day talking to non-human personas. They can be friends, therapists, lovers, work colleagues or fantastical invented characters. Or even an uncanny replica of an actual loved who has died. But should we be worried about the rise of AI chatbots? What does it tell us about human intelligence and personality that it is becoming possible for computers to so accurately mimic us? What might be lost by getting enmeshed in relationships of various kinds with a non-human artificial personality, rather than other embodied, image-bearing human beings? John gave the 2024 John Stott London Lecture on this topic, and goes in more detail into some of the ideas we discuss in this episode here: https://www.johnwyatt.com/lecture-authentic-relationships-in-an-artificial-world/ • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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    1 hr and 8 mins
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