Episodios

  • Abortion decriminalised, part 1

    Abortion decriminalised, part 1
    Jun 25 2025
    Without basically any public debate or meaningful legislative scrutiny, MPs in parliament passed a major reform to Britain’s abortion laws last week. Decriminalisation now means mothers cannot be prosecuted for aborting their unborn children all the way up to birth. This radical change has caught many onlookers on the hop – where has this come from? What will it change in practice? Why is it happening? Wasn’t abortion already legal in England? This week we’re joined by Dawn McAvoy from the campaign group Both Lives to try and track the history of abortion policy in the UK and how we got to a point whereby the de facto legalisation of abortion on demand all the way up to 40 weeks could be rammed through parliament in less than an hour. We look at the changing scope of abortion law, the shifting justifications used whenever the law is changed, and how decriminalisation was effectively piloted in Northern Ireland over the heads of its own lawmakers to pave the way for last week’s reforms in England. Come back next week for the second half of our conversation, covering the critical if unforeseen role of the covid pandemic and the pills by post scheme, as well as a closing discussion of how Christians and the church could respond to these developments. Find out more about Both Lives - https://www.eauk.org/what-we-do/initiatives/both-lives/about • 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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    50 m
  • Elizabeth Oldfield: Intriguing non-believers and life in intentional community

    Elizabeth Oldfield: Intriguing non-believers and life in intentional community
    Jun 18 2025
    This week we’re joined by the writer and podcaster Elizabeth Oldfield. Her new book Fully Alive is a series of essays trying to introduce riches of the Christian tradition and its wisdom on everything from feminism to loneliness to non-believers who may have never considered Christianity before. We discuss trying to tap into what many see as a crisis of meaning and associated new openness to faith in culture. Is there really, beyond the tiny intellectual elite debating these ideas, a genuine curiosity and yearning for spiritual answers to life’s biggest questions among ordinary people? Elizabeth also lives in a 21st-century monastic-style community house in South London, and we drill into how sharing your home, money and life with another family can possibly work – and the costs and benefits of radical early church-style hospitality. Find out more about Elizabeth and her book, podcast and newsletter at www.elizabetholdfield.com • 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 m
  • WhatsApp, social media and smart devices: Persecution of Christians goes digital

    WhatsApp, social media and smart devices: Persecution of Christians goes digital
    Jun 11 2025
    Tim is on holiday, so today we’re bringing you a classic episode from the MOLAD archive. The persecuted church today lives as it always has under the threat of arrest, imprisonment, physical attack, verbal threats and harassment, and even death. But today these traditional methods are supplemented by the technological revolution. Increasingly persecution comes via the internet, on social media platforms, and sometimes even via the smart devices Christians use themselves. How do oppressive regimes and anti-Christian extremists use modern tech to persecute believers? What impact does this new form of pervasive digital surveillance have on underground churches? And how can those of us worshipping in safety and freedom try to resist a future of global coercion and repression for vulnerable Christians facilitated by multinational tech companies? • 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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    46 m
  • Is Christianity bad news for women?

    Is Christianity bad news for women?
    Jun 4 2025
    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? In this episode we’re joined by Ellidh Cook, a student worker in central London whose theological studies focused on violence against women in the Old Testament, to discuss how she goes about showing women our faith is actually lifegiving for both sexes. Where might the church have gone wrong in its efforts to put Biblical teaching into practice? Should believers be feminists? What does that word even mean today? And what hope can the authentic gospel of Jesus Christ offer the stressed, anxious, confused and exploited young women of our 21st century societies? - 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 m
  • Apocalypse: Why do so many feel like the world is coming to an end?

    Apocalypse: Why do so many feel like the world is coming to an end?
    May 21 2025
    It’s hard to escape the fact that we live in gloomy, despairing times. Whether it is economic stagnation, pandemics, democracy under attack, unending wars or the climate crisis, more and more people feel like things are falling apart. That maybe even the world is coming to a depressing end. How did things get this hopeless, given the relatively recent optimism and energy of the past? Must Christians by default oppose this kind of despair, and what does the Bible have to say about watching the signs of the times? And given apocalypse literally means a time of uncovering and revealing, what should we have our eyes open to in this season of revelation? • 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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    55 m
  • Sex, dinosaurs, bodies and climate change: Parenting children in our confusing and confused world

    Sex, dinosaurs, bodies and climate change: Parenting children in our confusing and confused world
    May 21 2025
    Today we’re sharing an episode of the Faith in Parenting podcast, run by the Faith in Kids team, which we took part in some months ago. We were kindly asked on to chat about being Christians and being parents, and in particular how we handle sometimes tricky questions and issues that come up from the natural world and in science. And Tim got to share the good and the bad bits of being raised by John, and how science and sex and bodies and dinosaurs and everything else got handled in the home. You can find out more about Faith in Kids and subscribe to their podcast here - https://www.faithinkids.org/podcasts/ • 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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    46 m
  • Can we treat Parkinson’s disease without destroying embryos?

    Can we treat Parkinson’s disease without destroying embryos?
    May 14 2025
    In the first part of today’s episode we look at some exciting new research into treatments for the degenerative brain condition Parkinsons’s disease. We’ve known since the 1980s that transplants of brain tissue can slow the disease, but the only source was from the brains of embryos created during IVF. Now, scientists have shown they can create stem cells in the lab which can be coached to grow into the right brain tissue by itself before transplant. Could this be an ethical breakthrough, allowing a radical new Parkinson’s treatment without destroying embryos in the process? In the second half, we think about a question sent in by a listener – why do so many doctors seem committed to futile overtreatment of the elderly in their final years and months? How did the medical profession get stuck into a ‘if in doubt, treat, and always follow the protocol’ culture, and what can Christians who want to avoid needless overtreatment as they die do to prevent this? Read more on the Parkinson’s research - https://singularityhub.com/2025/04/17/parkinsons-patients-say-their-symptoms-eased-after-receiving-millions-of-new-brain-cells • 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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    56 m
  • Shame, honour & the gospel: Recovering what we’ve missed

    Shame, honour & the gospel: Recovering what we’ve missed
    May 7 2025
    Is there an element of the gospel which we’ve forgotten about? That Jesus came not to just to deal with the guilt of our sin and forgive that, but to deal with the shame of being sinners and to cover that too. In this episode we dig into the differences between shame-honour cultures and guilt-forgiveness cultures. So-called honour killings, when family members murder their own kin to end their supposed shaming of the family, baffle and repulse us in the West, and yet Jesus came to a context in first century Judaea which was profoundly honour-based. How can we re-examine the gospel message he brought in this light to see what our profoundly individualistic culture in the West might have missed? And, are things starting to shift in both secular society and the church in recent times, as we drift towards a new form of shame-honour culture driven by cancellation and public shaming via social media? • 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 m