Quick To Listen

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. This fall, violence broke out again between Armenia and Azerbaijan over a contested region in Azerbaijan known as Nagorno-Karabakh. Home of 170,000 people, the majority of its inhabitants are ethnic Armenian and the area itself has been governed by ethnic Armenians since 1994. The countries’ close allegiances with other countries had worried many that the fighting and civilian deaths might spiral into a regional conflict. Armenia, for instance, has close ties to Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran. Azerbaijan has the strong support of Turkey and some have reported that Syrian militants are also fighting alongside the Azeri. Another complicating level is religion. More than 95 percent of Azerbaijan’s 10 million people identify as Muslim, mostly Shiite. More than 90 percent of Armenia’s three million people identify as Christian, specifically Armenian Apostolic. Armenia also boasts the oldest state church, all the way back to the beginni

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. This week, the Senate is holding confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. After Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died last month, with less than two months before Election Day, Trump nominated Coney Barrett to replace her on the bench.The proceedings have been contentious. After Antonin Scalia died in 2015, Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote or hold confirmation hearings after President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the seat more than a year before the election. Their decision to move forward with this nomination has provoked charges of hypocrisy. In addition, Coney Barrett’s relationship with her Catholic-Charismatic community, People of Praise, has drawn scrutiny as critics have asked what type of authority this group might have over her judicial decisions. Given Coney Barrett’s rise, this week on Quick to Listen, we wanted t

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Last week, President Trump announced that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, a number of those in his administration and his campaign have also tested positive. In the wake of this diagnoses, the US media has fixated on the political ramifications of these diagnoses. But how might the stories of biblical rulers who suffer disease and sickness speak to the moment? Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament and program coordinator of Bible and theology at Prairie College in Three Hills, Alberta and the of author of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters and its forthcoming sequel, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters.  Imes joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss if scripture treats the illnesses of leaders differently than general illnesses, the difference in the Old Testament between simple illness and illness as judgment, and whethe

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. This week, Christianity Today published an in-depth report on allegations of sexual misconduct by popular apologist Ravi Zacharias:  "Three women who worked at the businesses, located in a strip mall in the Atlanta suburbs, told Christianity Today that Ravi Zacharias touched them inappropriately, exposed himself, and masturbated during regular treatments over a period of about five years. His business partner said he regrets not stopping Zacharias and sent an apology text to one of the victims this month. "RZIM denies the claims, saying in a statement to CT that the charges of sexual misconduct “do not in any way comport with the man we knew for decades.” The organization has hired a law firm “with experience investigating such matters” to look into the allegations, which date back at least 10 years. RZIM declined to answer any further questions about the inquiry." This week on Quick to Listen, we discuss this story with Daniel Silliman

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. He describes himself in his Instagram bio as a Jesus Follower, Missionary, Artist, Author, Humanitarian, Activist. But right now, Sean Feucht may be best known as a volunteer Bethel worship leader who has spent his summer leading around two dozen outdoor worship concerts. Feucht’s events are “a mix of Christian concert, healing service, guerrilla street theater and spectator mosh pit,” Religion News Service recently reported. They can also turn political. After the city of Seattle recently refused to give Feucht and his worship team permission to host a concert in one of his parks, likely because concerns of masking and social distancing, they held their show on a nearby street. As the concert began, he informed the audience. “Politicians can write press releases, they can make up threats, they can shut down parks, they can put up fences. But they can’t stop the church of Christ from worshipping the one true God. We are here as citizens

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Unless you’ve actually been in an area where you can look out your window and see the view with your own eyes, by now you’ve caught images of an orange sky coming from West Coast. For the past week, hundreds of miles of California, Oregon, Washington, and neighboring states have been covered in smokey air as forest fires rage, driving thousands of people from their homes. More than a dozen people have died in these historically catastrophic fires. As climate change has increasingly worsened fire season, it’s changed how Paige Parry, associate professor of Biology at George Fox University, makes sense of these disasters.  “We know that humans are what’s contributing to the fires,” said Parry. “So in my head, that makes my response and the questions that I ask very different than maybe a disaster that's truly natural and not influenced at all by human action.” Parry, a quantitative forest ecologist, has spent most of her life and research

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. A conspiracy theory that holds that many in the elite are part of a sex trafficking cabal, QAnon’s supporters has increasingly moved into the mainstream. Many also attend evangelical churches. It’s appeal in our community is World magazine’s cover story for this week and also was the subject of recent longform article for MIT Technology Review.  But the phenomena is not limited to the United States, as Mark Sayers, the senior leader of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia, witnessed when he recently saw followers in shirts with symbols tied to the movement in his city.  “It's really interesting, cause as I looked at it, I began to see it less as a conspiracy—I mean, there are elements of conspiracy theory—but it's really a new religious movement,”said Sayers, who is also the author of Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of Our Post-Christian Culture. “And I wonder if it's the first great internet religion. It’s not the on

In the past week, a video has circulated on social media that appears to show Christian author Eric Metaxas punching a protester in the face following President Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on the White House lawn.  This week, Metaxas addressed the incident to World Magazine.   “For context, just so you know, the guy came at me with his bike and was very menacing for a long time,” he said.  Commentary over Metaxas’ action took off during a week in which a 17-year-old vigilante shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha and a counter-protester was shot and killed in a Portland demonstration. This uptick in civilian violence, which has occurred at protests organized in the aftermath of police brutality, inspired writer Bonnie Kristian’s recent column for The Week, “You Know What Violence Is.”  “The basic, standard definition of violence, that you'll find across the board, has pretty consistent elements,” said Kristian, who is also a columnist for Christianity Today. “One is tha

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned as president of Liberty University on Monday. The news came after Reuters reported that a friend and business partner of the couple had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr. watched. Falwell Jr. himself submitted his resignation only to reverse course twice. Falwell Jr. was already on an indefinite leave of absence after he posted a picture on Instagram of him posing with his arm around a woman at a party with their zippers down and midsections exposed. With one notable exception, Liberty’s board has staged largely silent in the wake of Falwell Jr.’s increasingly controversial public statements and financial dealings. For ministry boards which have run into moral or ethic issues with their CEOs, one common mistake is allowing the CEO to recommend too many board members, says Bob Andringa, the managing partner of the Andringa Group who specializes in governance and the relationship between boards and c

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko has been in office for 26 years. After last week’s elections, he says he’s won yet another term. But Belarusians are saying enough is enough, with thousands of them taking to the streets in protest and demanding new elections. Lukashenko has shot down this request thus far. The majority of Belarusians identify as Christian. Of the country’s roughly 10 million, 73 percent are Orthodox and 12 percent Catholic, according to Pew Research Center data. Though the Protestant community is tiny, it has not been silent. Last week, the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists in Belarus, the United Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith in Belarus, and the Religious Association of Full Gospel Communities in Belarus released a joint statement asking for prayer.  Protests in 2010 played a key role in changing Protestants’ minds on Lukashenko and the government, says Geraldine Fagan, the editor of the East-We

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Last week, a Houston Chronicle reporter tweeted an image from Jerry Falwell Jr.’s instagram. The image showed the Liberty University president posing with his arm around a woman at a party with their zippers down and midsections exposed. By Friday, Falwell Jr. agreed to take an immediate and indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University, which he has led since 2007 as president and chancellor. As CT’s reporting noted: During his tenure—succeeding his father and the school’s founder, Jerry Falwell Sr.—the younger Falwell has expanded Liberty into one of the biggest Christian colleges in the world, now reporting an enrollment of over 120,000 students. But his leadership has also drawn controversy, including around his politics—such as his friendship with President Donald Trump—and personal life—like photos of him and his family at a Miami nightclub.In June, Falwell apologized for a tweet that included an image of the yearbook photo

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. 2020 has been a year unlike any other for Christian summer camps. Here’s how CT captured the situation in a recent report: Like most businesses and ministries across the country, Christian camps felt the economic halt right away. Church retreats and events were called off in March, April, and May due to bans on mass gatherings across the states. Before long, camps were forced to grapple with the unimaginable: no summer camp.By May’s end, more than 100 Christian camps had announced cancellations. Most of the rest made dramatic changes to summer programming. Summer camp can represent half of a camp’s annual revenue or more, so skipping it for a year comes as a massive financial blow. Many Christian camps did cancel their summers. Some canceled and then reversed course. Some held programming all summer.  This has been a very difficult summer. We've got camps that have been open continuously, even through WWI and WWII, closed down for the f

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Last week, John MacArthur announced that his megachurch would hold in-person, indoor services, despite California’s recent COVID-19 restrictions banning in-person meetings. In a statement explaining the rationale for the church’s actions in the midst of a pandemic, the pastor wrote:  Christ is Lord of all. He is the one true head of the church He is also King of kings—sovereign over every earthly authority. Grace Community Church has always stood immovably on those biblical principles. As His people, we are subject to His will and commands as revealed in Scripture. Therefore we cannot and will not acquiesce to a government-imposed moratorium on our weekly congregational worship or other regular corporate gatherings. Compliance would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear commands. What exactly should Christians make of MacArthur’s decision? One way to evaluate it is understanding whether it constitutes conscientious objection, civil disobe

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Despite the fact that the widely esteemed theologian J. I. Packer never lived in the United States, the theologian greatly influenced American evangelicals. One key way this transpired occurred through Packer’s longstanding relationship with Christianity Today. Packer’s first piece—a lengthy article on the opportunity and challenges for evangelicalism—was published in 1958. After the publication of his best-known work, Knowing God, he became contributing editor at Christianity Today in 1983 and then senior editor in 1985. He continued to serve the magazine in similar roles for the next three decades. In 1992, he wrote about how he envisaged his relationship with the publication: One role of CT, which is a features-news-and-thought journal anchored in the historic faith, is to keep you posted, one way and another, on the theological front. I suppose I should see myself as a kind of point man for this purpose. But most of all, I want to b

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. As Quick to Listen listeners are probably well aware, Christians rarely agree on everything. Take an issue like communion. On the one hand, it would be hard to find a Christian who doesn’t believe participating in Communion is a key part of what it means to practice one’s faith. But for some Christians, this is the focal point of weekly gatherings. Others can go months without partaking. For some, using whatever food and drink is around the house counts as the body and blood of Christ. Others need their priests to have blessed the physical products. And of course, COVID-19’s interruption of church services has introduced other questions about digital v. physical options.  So how can Christians better connect with each other and work each other across real theological diversity? One recent look at how the church might do this better is outlined in Gavin Ortlund’s new book Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage

Each Wednesday, Christianity Today's Quick to Listen drops a new episode that adds context and complexity to some of the hottest current events in the Christian world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Take Quick to Listen’s survey! The protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in May started with a focus on police brutality. But six weeks later, a dominant theme is the removal of monuments, and memorials. Protesters have torn down or vandalized dozens of statues connected to the Confederacy and to other controversial historical figures like Christopher Columbus. But this isn’t the first time that statues have been torn down en mass amid widespread protests. After Constantine allowed Christianity in the Roman Empire, Christians tore down so many statues that in Athens they reportedly became known as “the people who move that which should not be moved.” Early church battled each other over religious iconography. Reformation Christians inspired another round of eager statue smashing and removal. “What's funny is when I was first getting acclimated to art as a Protestant, and learning that art history mattered, we were embarrass

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Take Quick to Listen’s survey! In 2014, Louisiana enacted a law requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court struck down the law. Legislators said the requirement would improve the level of care that clinics provide for women. Abortion regulations in Louisiana and other conservative states have resulted in clinic closures and corresponded with falling abortion rates nationwide. Beyond the Supreme Court’s power, the federal government plays a key role in terms of shaping public opinion around abortion, says Alexandra DeSanctis, a staff writer for National Review and the host of the For Life podcast. “But I think in terms of what comes before courts, and what actually goes into effect, what actually matters for the everyday American in terms of how they think about abortion, is policy at the state level,” said DeSanctis. “And I think that even among pro-lifer

Take Quick to Listen’s listener survey! Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. The Navajo Nation continues to be hit hard by COVID-19. The community has reported nearly 7,000 cases and more than 330 deaths. Leaders have ordered businesses closed on weekends in a community that is spread across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The Navajo Nation’s preexisting conditions like poverty, limited running water, and close living situations make it extra vulnerable to coronavirus. The lockdowns have made it challenging for people to access the resources they need, says Donnie Begay, who along with his wife, Renee, directs the Nations Movement, a campus ministry that’s part of Cru. “On the Navajo Nation, there are only about a dozen food grocery stories that cover 27,000 square miles that is the Navajo reservation,” said Begay, who lives in Albuquerque. Many on the reservation live at least an hour away from the border of the reservations and these lockdowns cut them off from the busine

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Last month, the Chinese government approved a plan that would give Mainland China the ability to crush any acts in Hong Kong that it deems a national security risk. Despite international outcry, the legislation will go into effect in September. In one of many responses by Hong Kongers, hundreds of theologians, pastors, and church leaders signed a statement accusing the draft decision of “further depriving Hong Kong of freedom and human rights.”The Christian leaders accused the Chinese government of destroying its promises and undercutting the city as an international financial center. At a time where, quote, “darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, we fearlessly and solemnly declare the following confession and promise to our society, including our full embrace of the Gospel of the Kingdom, our sincere repentance towards the Church’s shortcomings, our absolute refusal to authoritarian government, and our determ