100 episodes

The Centre for Public Christianity aims to promote the public understanding of the Christian faith. The Centre offers free comment, interviews, and other web based material. For more information go to publicchristianity.org.

Life & Faith Centre for Public Christianity

    • Religion & Spirituality
    • 4.8 • 257 Ratings

The Centre for Public Christianity aims to promote the public understanding of the Christian faith. The Centre offers free comment, interviews, and other web based material. For more information go to publicchristianity.org.

    The Return of Religious Belief

    The Return of Religious Belief

    For decades now in the West, religion has been on the retreat. In places where, 50 years ago, going to church on a Sunday was just what you did, we’ve had generations now for whom that would be a very foreign concept.  
    Justin Brierley is an author and very popular podcaster. For 17 years he hosted a podcast called Unbelievable where he would bring together atheist and Christian thinkers for civil and robust discussion. He presided over conversations with some of the world’s great minds for these dialogues and modelled a brilliant way to disagree civilly.  
    Justin has just published a book called The Surprising Re-birth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again. He detects a shift in the air and the possibility that the thoroughly secular vision of the world might not be cutting it for people today. Is that his imagination or might there be something to this? 
    ---
    Explore: 
    Justin’s latest book: https://justinbrierley.com/the-surprising-rebirth-of-belief-in-god/ 
    And the podcast at: 
    The Surprising Rebirth podcast: https://justinbrierley.com/surprisingrebirth/ 

    • 35 min
    Rebroadcast: To Change the World

    Rebroadcast: To Change the World

    Sarah Williams explains how the mother of modern feminism fell off the pages of history.
    ---
    After her death in 1906, Josephine Butler was described as one of the “few great people who have moulded the course of things”. (For the record, she was also described by peers as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.)
    Yet how many of us have heard of her? A bit too feminist for later Christians, a bit too Christian for later feminists, this pioneer of the movement against sex trafficking is only now being remembered.
    Sarah Williams is an historian at Regent College and a research associate at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford. And over the last few years, she has gotten to know Josephine Butler well – she would even go so far as to call her a friend.
    When Natasha Moore asked what she finds so remarkable about Butler, Sarah speaks first about her persistence – the sixteen years she spent working to overturn one law that unjustly discriminated against women.
    “I don’t think that we lack vision in our culture, but we definitely lack stamina … I think she did it by recognising that she couldn’t do it. Does that sound strange?”
    For International Women’s Day this year, meet the woman who’s been called the mother of modern feminism – and join an ongoing conversation our culture is having about power, justice, gender, and what it means to “change the world”.
    “We might imagine that the real centres of power are where powerful people change culture through influencing spheres of culture – media, politics, the law, and so on … And yet what’s extraordinary about somebody like Josephine Butler or Mahatma Gandhi or any other of the great social reformers that we can think of in history, is that they somehow manage to see that really the margins matter a lot. And that what goes on at the centre, if it fails to understand what’s going on at the margins, does so at its peril.”

    Pre-order Sarah Williams' biography of Josephine Butler, When Courage Calls.

    • 25 min
    Birth Days

    Birth Days

    Reflections on a human experience that’s at once routine and exceptional; both very costly and very good. 
    --- 
    Life & Faith has covered many stories relating to birth over the years – incredible stories of courage and heartbreak, difficult decisions, life and death – but we’ve never done an episode on birth itself: what’s amazing about this process, what’s so hard about it, what makes it so meaningful for so many people.  
    This year Simon Smart is celebrating a once-every-four-years occasion (yes, he was born on 29 February!) and Natasha Moore is due to head off on maternity leave soon, so Justine Toh joins them for a conversation about birthdays – that is, birth ... days. And midwife Jodie McIver, author of Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth, offers some insights on the journey to becoming a parent, including how surprisingly frequently pregnancy and birth – in story and as metaphor – feature in the Bible. 
    “I think the fact that God chooses birth to help us understand deep spiritual realities about his character and work in the world really gives honour to women’s bodies, and to these human experiences as well, as we kind of share in the cost of bringing forth life in our own little way.” 
    --- 
    EXPLORE 
    Jodie McIver, Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth 
    A few other Life & Faith episodes related to birth, touching on disability, loss, infertility, and fostering: 
    Speak Up, Show Up 
    Intensive Care 
    When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan 
    Home Extension 

    • 37 min
    Lent for Dummies

    Lent for Dummies

    …of which CPX’s Justine Toh is first and foremost. 
    ---
    In the lead up to Easter, Justine is giving up not only sugar, but her ignorance about all things Lent. She speaks to Catholic theologian Matt Tan, who goes by Awkward Asian Theologian on socials, about Lent and its three-fold focus: giving up, alms-giving, and prayer. They discuss the difficulty of self-sacrifice and the way that, strangely enough, it often proves the easier option over alms-giving, which needn’t only include giving to charity, but also intentional, active investment in the lives of others. 
    Matt also alludes to the way church seasons induct the believer into an entirely different order of time. He cites the work of Neil Postman, who said the clock was originally invented to help monks keep to their daily prayer schedule. In time, however, the clock, went beyond the monastery and conquered the rest of the world. Time is now subdivided into increasingly minute moments that all need to be filled. So, what does it mean to live according to the rhythms of sacred time? 
    ---
    Explore 
    Simon Smart’s Ash Wednesday article  
    Life & Faith episode with Matt Tan on the metaphysics of pornography 
    Follow Awkward Asian Theologian on Instagram 

    • 28 min
    The Social Media Age

    The Social Media Age

    20 years on from the founding of Facebook, what role do these platforms play in our lives? 
    --- 
    February 4 marked 20 years since Mark Zuckerburg launched the site that was initially known as The Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, so this seems like a good time to take stock of what social media now looks like, and what our lives look like as a result. 
    Whether you’re an avid user of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and more, or a social media sceptic, join Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore for a frank chat about the better and worse of these platforms in 2024. With cameos from Andy Crouch, CPX brand manager (and socials pro) Clare Potts, and recent social media quitter Jess Forsyth, the discussion ranges from whether group chats count as social media to whether the internet is “made of demons” - as well as the advantages (and disciplines) of being an iceberg vs an ocean liner.  
    --- 
    EXPLORE: 
    New York Times article How Group Chats Rule the World  
    Philippa Moore’s article about quitting social media  
    Paul Kingsnorth’s Substack essays The Universal and The Neon God 
    Alan Jacobs’ New Atlantis piece 
    Andy Crouch’s Spiritual Practices for Public Leadership 

    • 37 min
    Christmas in a place of war

    Christmas in a place of war

    Anglican Priest David Pileggi talks about what Christmas means in his town of Jerusalem in the midst of war.   
    ---
    Anglican priest David Pileggi has lived in Jerusalem for over 40 years. In that time he has seen a lot, but recent events in Israel and Gaza have been as shocking and disturbing as any he has encountered. He talks to Life & Faith about his life in the “Holy City” - what he loves about it and the things he weeps over.
    Despite all that has transpired in recent days David Pileggi refuses to despair. As he prepares his Christmas 2023 message for the gathered locals and pilgrims, he remains convinced the story of the baby born down the road in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, remains the best hope for not only that troubled part of the world, but for all of us.  
    ---
    Christ church Jerusalem is the oldest protestant church in the Middle East 

    • 33 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
257 Ratings

257 Ratings

AndrewM123abc ,

Inspiring and informative

Have very much appreciated the show over the last couple of years, with many inspiring and informative discussions. This week I appreciated the insights from Sam Gregory and Andrew Sloane. Keep up the good work!

ChristinaBaehr ,

Intelligent and honest

This is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and honest podcasts I’ve listened to. There’s a great breadth of subjects, intelligent guests, and interviewers who give them the space they need.

megan.bells ,

My favourite podcast

My favourite podcast. I’m Australian. I’m Christian. I’m feeling like an outsider in both mainstream culture and churches. My simple question is ‘How do I live as a Christian?’ And do so intelligently? And sensitively? And without compromise? Why has it all got so complicated? I love the simplicity and intelligence of this podcast.

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