The Methinks Podcast: Recent Episodes
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Two Christian PhD students, Joel and Maggie, team up to have conversation about justice, history, faith, sexuality, and ethics.
Online dating can really suck. Ghosting, creepy responses and weird gender dynamics abound. In this two-part series, we reflect on dating apps. What's good? What's bad? How do Christian dating norms influence our perceptions of dating apps? Why do some of us experience shame around the use of dating apps? What are the ethics and wisdom Christians should keep in mind when using dating apps? How do men and women's experience differ here? We also get a bit vulnerable (!) and talk about our own personal (and sometimes embarrassing!) experiences in the world of online dating.
We're still processing the 2020 presidential election. In this episode, we continue our conversation about the Grudem-Piper debate on Christian voting ethics and Trump. Our hot take: we think both Grudem and Piper missed some important things. Note: we recorded this episode the day before the Capitol riots. If only we had known...
Wayne Grudem and John Piper are prominent voices within evangelical theology. Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, they had a friendly debate about whether evangelicals should vote for Trump. In this two-part episode, Maggie, Joel and Tyler look back on this debate and evaluate the arguments. Did Trump's character disqualify him from the evangelical vote? What about the importance of policy? Why worry about presidential character anyway? Is Biden any better? Were Grudem and Piper sufficiently sensitive to race issues in their discussion? (and, gosh, if we had only waited one more day to record we could have incorporated the Capitol riots into the discussion! smh).
Jemar Tisby (author of The Color of Compromise) is quickly becoming a leading Christian influencer and advocate for racial justice. We reflect on his recent Veritas Forum talk, "Where is God in Our Racial Divide?" Among other topics, we discuss his advice about disrupting racism, his views on Christian nationalism, and the response of evangelicals to BLM.
Whatever the outcome of the election, some people will be hurting, disappointed, and frustrated. As followers of the way of Jesus, how ought we respond to the results of the election, whether we like those results or not? We reflect on the posture and vocation that Christians ought to have post election. Note: we recorded this episode pre-election. Nothing was tailored to a particular result. We didn't know the result. And that was the point.
1619 or 1776? Maggie (the resident historian for the Methinks Podcast) talks about the politicization of history. From canceling Thomas Jefferson to footnoting Harriet Tubman, from racism to exceptionalism, people try to shape the way history is taught and viewed. As apprentices to Jesus and his kingdom, how should Christians treat American history? What should we look for in historical education?
Is preaching the Gospel more vital to the life and health of the church than social justice? John MacArthur and others think so. We explore the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, a collection of theological statements about race, justice, gender, and the church. As it turns out, one's view of the Gospel, eschatology, and the vocation of the church sorta matters here.
Is moral relativism a problem for society? A recent study in moral psychology suggests that the answer is "no"..or does it? Maggie and Joel explore this question by thinking about concerns with moral relativism in American history as well as by looking at the empirical research on moral relativism. This much is absolutely true: Paul Ryan overstates the impact of relativism on economic poverty.
Ever had a dream about divorce? J.M. Humphrey (a black pastor-theologian from the early 20th century) did and it led him to think that re-marriage was against God's will. Maggie pulls this case out of her dissertation in order to explain 20th century debates about divorce and to show where racism showed up. She and Joel talk about the way that white churches fail to normalize black theological authority and, at times, whitewash black thinkers in order to justify learning from them.
Everyone's talking about "privilege" nowadays. In this episode, Joel and Maggie give a primer on the concept of privilege. You'll hear about the influence of 2nd and 3rd wave feminism, the need to have language for something beyond paradigmatic cases of oppression (oppressors + oppressed), and a handful of potential examples of privilege.
Often, white churches have a tendency to set the agenda on race issues, to talk about race issues from a distance, to push race conversations off to “diversity Sunday." But real growth in the area of racial reconciliation requires that white churches learn from black churches, that white people come under black influence and leadership. We finish our chat with pastor Tyler Nylen on these issues (+ he shares a sick poetic essay on white supremacy).
What would it look like to almost (and unintentionally) give a "white slave owner's sermon"? And have you ever been guilty over-intellectualizing a justice conversation? In part 2 of our conversation with Tyler Nylen about justice conversations (gone wrong), we discuss some of these issues.
Ever been in a conversation about racial justice and realized that it's not going well? And it is probably your fault? Yeah, us too. We sat down with with Tyler Nylen, pastoral staff member at Fountain of Life Covenant Church (Madison, WI) and Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, to talk about justice conversations. Topics: "self-righteous buttheads" and "white colonialists" in multicultural ministry.
Implicit bias, discrimination in the hiring process, re-framing Confederate history, racist statues, and more. In this episode, Maggie and Joel continue their conversation about some of the resources that were helpful in their journey waking up to the reality of racial injustice.
Slowly, we have been waking up to the reality of racial injustice. The passing of George Floyd and the resultant social unrest around the world is pushing us to listen and learn even more. In this episode, Joel and Maggie talk about some of the resources that have helped them in their journey waking up to racial injustice. Joel recommends Richard Rothstein's book, The Color of Law,and Maggie recommends Jamar Tisby's book, The Color of Compromise.
Christians haven't always thought well about animal ethics. In this episode, we explore a few fallacies that often come up in conversations about animal welfare. What should Christians think about factory farms? Do animals have rights? If Christians are morally permitted to eat meat, does that justify eating meat from factory farms? At various points, Joel gives the low down on some of the philosophical debates about animal welfare.