All Matters of Life and Death articles – Page 4
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Gender gap in church: Onward Christian Soldiers, the only man in a room full of women, Bonhoeffer’s ‘cheap grace’ and Christian dating apps
In this episode we look at what evidence there is for the idea of a gender gap in church, and then discuss what may have caused it. Are men and women fundamentally so different they worship God and are discipled in radically different ways?
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: The contradictions which underpin anti-suicide efforts in an era of euthanasia, and are there any honest and unbiased journalists left these days?
Join us as we tackle listener questions on the ethical line crossed with euthanasia legalisation and the contradiction of suicide prevention. Can this worldview stand? We’ll also discuss finding unbiased news amidst conspiracy theories and commercial concerns.
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ShowsMatter of Life & Death: Egg freezing: The ticking biological clock, prosecco and cheese evenings, the culture war over maternal age, and living with wisdom and contentment
Increasing numbers of women are choosing to freeze their eggs in the hope that years down the line they can use these younger, healthier eggs to have children once their relationship, personal, financial or work circumstances are right.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Genetics: Libraries of recipe books, BRCA1, Gattaca, and Big Data Towers of Babel
A final classic episode to see us through the Christmas and New Year break. Today we’re returning to an interview with NHS geneticist Melody Redman.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Pregnancy crisis - A constructive Christian response, heads versus hearts, paternalistic gynaecologists, and ambiguity in the ultrasound clinic
Today we’re returning to a classic episode from our back catalogue, with special guest Sophie Guthrie-Kummer from Choices, a Christian crisis pregnancy centre in London.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Climate anxiety — ’Delay means death’, Extinction Rebellion, throwing pebbles into God’s river, and rediscovering lament
In this episode we consider the communication and changing narratives around climate change, why an unscientific hyper-fatalism has set in with many activists, and what impact this might be having on younger generations terrified humanity itself is going extinct.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Should we welcome the coming wave of anti-obesity drugs, and what’s at stake in the argument over the 14-day limit on embryo research?
Our year-end Q&A episode as we discuss hot topics: Wegovy, the controversial anti-obesity drug and the debate on extending the 14-day limit on human embryo research
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Redemption: Always Plan A, sharing in Christ’s sufferings, a Disney fairy story, and the offensive incarnation
Creation. Fall. Redemption. New Creation. Our series on the theological foundations of Christian ethics and the grand narrative of the Bible has reached the third chapter – redemption.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Palliative care, Dogs and Guinness on the wards, complicated grief, DNAR discussions, and resisting assisted dying
A couple of years ago we interviewed Sarah Foot, a Christian palliative care doctor. She spoke about how she treats the physical, mental, social and even spiritual needs of those who are dying, the Christian foundations of the discipline, and what impact her profession has on her.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Why are we ignoring rising death rates among poorer ethnic minority children, and will the flesh-and-blood girlfriend become a thing of the past?
New official data in England reveals an alarming and much under-reported phenomenon – significant increases in mortality among children from the most deprived communities over the last two years.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Science and religion 1: The myth of conflict, Charles Darwin’s beetle research, epistemic humility, English country churchyard or Californian fridge?
This week’s guest is Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the faith thinktank Theos, and recent author of Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: The ‘myths’ leading women to choose abortion, and is digital slavery underpinning breakthroughs in AI?
This week we dip back into the postbag to look at some more listener questions.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Friendship 3: Ruth and Naomi, ‘chesed’, trips to the theatre with John Stott, and an unorthodox rabbi
We last tackled the idea of friendship when we explored the so-called ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ – that cloud of concern that today hangs over any close relationship between two people.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: The Fall: Bad actor theory, a malevolent voice in the Garden, Total Depravity and Original Sin, and the ‘Christian heresy’ of liberal humanism
Creation. Fall. Redemption. New Creation. This is the grand narrative of scripture and the theological foundation we use to try to probe into the ethical challenges thrown up by advances in science and technology.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Baby loss 2: Rising abortion numbers, pills by post, ‘the pregnancy remains’, and Schrodinger’s fetus
We spoke last week about the hugely welcome shift in how society talks about miscarriage and cares for women (and men) who have experienced it. And yet at the same time in Britain, we desperately avoid using the same language and narrative established in baby loss services when we are in the abortion zone.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Baby loss 1: Elsie’s story, one in five pregnancies, names missing from the family tree, and the power of ultrasound
We have just finished Baby Loss Awareness Week here in the UK. While the event is not hugely well known, it is indicative of an enormous cultural shift in recent decades around how society talks about miscarriage and stillbirth.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Women and Christianity: Purity culture, beyond complementarianism, baggy t-shirts over swimming costumes, and recovering Tamar’s voice
Christianity is sometimes described as ‘bad news for women’. Clearly we would all disagree with this epithet, but why does it have cultural currency right now for a growing number of particularly younger women?
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Origins of covid: Gain of function research, zoonosis, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and truth over tribe
When the pandemic first spread beyond China there was a straightforward message from scientific elites: the virus came from a wild animal accidentally spilling over into humans, and any suggestion it might have instead been manipulated in a lab and then escaped was a quasi-racist conspiracy theory.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Should Christians use homeopathic medicine and why are climate scientists self-censoring in academic journal articles?
A listener has emailed in to ask where we stand on alternative medicine, such as homeopathy or chiropractors. Is it fine for believers to partake in these kinds of complementary treatments and therapies, alongside traditional evidence-based scientific medicine? Why are they so stubbornly popular despite mountains of research suggesting they mostly don’t work?
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Creation: The Brethren’s suspicion of the ‘world’, an explosion of joy, Eric Liddell’s sprinting epiphany, and celebrating beauty
Today we start a new series unpacking the theological foundations of much of what we talk about on Matters of Life and Death.
