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Faith, hops and love. Beer Christianity is a progressive Christian podcast that blends faith, politics and culture with pub chat. Interviews with thinkers, artists and theologians. Honest, authentic discussions of theology and society. Almost no real understanding of beer. Expect all this and a bunch of laughs as we try to deconstruct, reconstruct and unf*ck our Christianity with fear, trembling and a couple of drinks. Pour a pint, put your feet up and listen your way into a different kind o ...
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Episode 96: SHO(R)T - Christians and Palestine: Why it matters and why you should care
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Jonty shares some thoughts on Palestine, US imperialism, the genocide in Gaza, whataboutism, why Palestine matters and why Christians should care. No Laura, Malky or Drabs, just Jonts and a bottle of melktert liqueur. If that's what you're into. He's discussing things like: Why should we care about Palestine when so many other terrible things are h…
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Episode 95: Nakba Day at the Oxford Palestine solidarity encampment
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Welcome to the liberated zone, Oxford edition. To mark Nakba Day 2024, Beer Christianity co-host Laura visits our local protest encampment to hear from the demonstrators at our local Gaza solidarity encampment. If you have been reading about the student protest encampments at Columbia, UCLA and Berkley universities in the USA (or, better, been seei…
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Episode 94: The Devil's Passion with playwright, activist and actor Justin Butcher
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Is evil structural, spiritual, or a bit of both? Do acts of selfishness or sin have cascading effects that reverberate through history? Can we shine a light on contemporary Western politics by imagining how our politicians would react to a figure like Jesus and the movement he inspired? All these questions and more (mostly about Israel and its war …
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Episode 93: Belonging - feeling at home, finding your people
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Do you feel like you belong at your church? Have you found your people? Do you feel at home? In this episode we explore how much dogma, belief, diversity, relatability and stage of life determine whether we feel 'at home' in church. Along the way we ask what makes a really good home group (spoiler: it may be Jonty and Malky), we discuss wehter the …
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Leonard Cohen and Saint Paul - Matthew Anderson, Pauline scholar
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59:37
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Is the essence of Christianity basically Judaism through a Zen lens? Can we understand some great artists and theologians better if we assume performative masculinity? Is there really a crack in everything? Is it where the light gets in? In Episode 92 of Beer Christianity we answer these and other important questions (like: Is later Leonard Cohen b…
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Episode 91: AI, ethics and dangers with JL Ecochard
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AI is going to save the world. Or kill us all. Or another, secret, third thing. Trying to find a pattern of truth within all the cultural noise about Artificial Intelligence is pretty hard right now, so we turned to someone who has been working on and with AI since the 1980s. Jean-Louis Ecochard has been in on the development of everythting from ca…
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Episode 90: Socialism Q&A with Matt McManus
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Socialism means 'bad', right? That's what many of our churches assume. Whenever anyone suggests Socialism as an option, many Christians have a set of anti-Socialist questions locked and loaded, ready to fire. We decided to put some of them to an expert. To us, Socialism is really just a system of making sure nobody is left behind, of controlling gr…
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Episode 89: Congo crisis explained - Maurice Carney, Friends of the Congo
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The Democratic Republic of Congo and its citizens should, by rights, be among the richest in the world. Congo is a country with vast and rich natural resources, abundant potential energy and a strategic place in the heart of Africa. And yet, Congo is currently home to one fo the worst humanitarian crises on earth, and its history is littered with g…
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Episode 88: Jolyon Maugham - Good Law, better world
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Jolyon Maugham has been called 'Public Enemy No. 1" by terrible right wing newspapers, attacked by Rishi Sunak and belittled with smears by the BBC. And if that wasn't enough to make you love him, he also heads up an organisation that works for justice in our laws and legal system, challenging powerful elites and holding wealthy corporations and ca…
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Episode 87: Nice, Churchy Patriarchy - Liz Cooledge Jenkins
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That's a nice patriarchy you got there. Be a shame if someone were to smash it... Whether your church is complementarian, soft complementarian, egalitarian or has never thought about the distinction, the odds are good that patriarchy is damaging people in your fellowship, and damaging the witness and ministry of your church. In this episode we exam…
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Episode 86: Post-march clarity - reflections on a Palestine protest
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A few weeks ago, Malky and Jonty travelled to London to take part in a large (though it turns out not the largest) march to protest the continued Israeli bombing of civilians in Gaza and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine through Occupation and settlements. It was peaceful. It wass diverse. It included Jewish groups, Christians, trade unions…
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Episode 85: Beer, hymns, refugees and Gaza
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Steve Tinning is a Baptist Minister, a Public Issues Enabler for the Baptist Union of Great Britain and one of the team that makes Beer and Hymns happen at Greenbelt festival. Steve is a lovely chap and talks to us about his secondment to JPIT (the Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist, URC and Methodist churches), issues of asylum and refugee re…
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Episode 84: Stand with Gaza - Palestine, Israel and justice with peace
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51:33
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History does not begin when you start paying attention. And if you only start paying attention when white people get hurt, you are going to miss the root causes of the events you are seeing. As we recorded this episode, Gaza was being bombarded, with the threat of more indiscriminate violence being made by Israeli authorities. UK politicians, inclu…
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Episode 83: Greenbelt 2023 Review - beer, hymns, thems and us
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Greenbelt Festival turned 50 this year. It is, quite possibly, the best festival in the world. It used to be the coolest Christian music festival in Britain - which is a nice accolade, but, like being the coolest engineer at the felting workshop, perhaps one with limited meaning outside specific circles. But over the years, Greenbelt has translated…
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Episode 82: Trans and Christian: Alex Clare-Young, Minister in the United Reformed Church
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Alex Clare-Young (pronouns: they/them) is a minister in the United Reformed Church, with a passion for Scripture, inclusion and social justice. They identify as Jesus-follower, trans and non-binary. What does someone with identities so regularly weaponised by culture warriors actually think about Scripture, the Church and faith? Alex joins Laura, M…
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Episode 81: Trans people in sport - Cleo Madeleine of Gendered Intelligence
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Should trans women compete as women at an elite level of sport? The Right's Culture War (TM) has used this question as a wedge issue in its ongoing targeting of trans people as pawns in a larger game. But who is more often hurt as a result of the targeted rhetoric (and the unthinking regurgitation by ordinary Joe Schmoes)? How new is the phenomenon…
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Episode 80: Paul Northup on 50 years and the future of Greenbelt Festival
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"Ramshackle, DIY and deeply Christian" - that's how Paul Northup describes Greenbelt festival in the first few years of it's 50-year life so far. It's also a pretty good description of this podcast. Paul is Director of Greenbelt Festival, a "place to believe in" that seeks to embody a Newbigin-style 'no splits' Christian festival that engages deepl…
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Episode 79: Too Big to Fall (Part II): the Celebrity Christian Halo Principle & the love of kings
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We've been through this before. So many times. Is there anything left to learn, or are we just unwilling to learn it? Perhaps a recent study holds the answers. Mike Pilavachi is the latest 'celebrity Christian' whos eministry has been tainted by scandal. In Part 2 of Beer Christianity's look at our icons with cracked halos, we ask why, with all the…
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Episode 78: Too big to fall (Part I): Mike Pilavachi, Ravi Zacharias and broken icons
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Mike Pilavachi has resigned from Soul Survivor and once again we are having that conversation. Why do beloved Christian leaders fall? And why do the people around themso often protect and enable their failings? In this episode, we don't disect the ongoing Pilavachi investigation or jump to hasty condemnation, nor do we jump to his defence. Instead,…
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Episode 77 - the billionaire submarine disaster - our reactions to it and what they say about us
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Is compassion dependent on class-solidarity? Are some lives worth more than others? Is a nuanced approach to the comedy of catastrophe possible? No, no and possibly yes. The OceanGate Titan submarine disaster (some would say 'tragedy', in the Greek sense) produced strong and wildly divergent responses. Jonty and Laura discuss them, as well as the r…
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Episode 76: Memento Mitford - graveyard hopping with Beer Christianity
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Meet the Mitfords, memento mori monuments and meanders through churchyards and cemeteries over a few years. Jonty and Laura have been 'graveyard hopping' for many years now, often recording their explorations. But what is graveyard hopping? What's the attraction? We answer that question, discuss some of the coolest names and most beautiful epitaphs…
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We're back, baby, with an episode of king-shaming, favourite kings and comments on the coronation. Here's Jonty in a tiara his wife bought him: Ever topical and on-time, we break our hiatus (sorry about that, pneumonia) with an episode about the Coronation of King Charles (the third, not the spaniel) and about kings in general. Why would Christians…
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Episode 74: Brian McLaren - Should I stay Christian?
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If the Church is going through a new Reformation (towards a more progressive, inclusive and liberal existence), then Brian McLaren is its Martin Luther. Or John Calvin. Or that Scottish guy. What we're saying is, for those who are unfamiliar with his work or reputation, he's a big dog in the world of not just progressive Christianity, but Christian…
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It seems wild that it's January 2023, when it was 2019 only three weeks ago. But, if the "Lame Stream Media" are to be believed, the year is, indeed, 2023. Happy New Year! This episode is all about New Year's resolutions: what we think, as Christians, about their value, and what the right mindset for resolutions might be. Lau-Lau, Malky and Jonts t…
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Episode 72: War on Christmas (Happy Xmas / Holidays 2022)
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These days, you get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying Merry Christmas. Or, at least, that's what Christian snowflakes, certain media vicars and most of the right wing media would have us believe. Apparently, atheists, humanists, Muslims and the 'Woke Liberal Elite' are policing our words, forcing us to say 'Happy Holidays' and thus deny C…
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