Podcast Ep.5 – God of Violence yesterday, God of Love today?

Learning to Live the Life the podcast is available on many major podcast platforms, if it isn’t on yours yet let us know. It is also available to listen to over the telephone on 0117 456 2304 for those who don’t have access to technology.

As well as weekly sermons, on the first of every month we are releasing discussion episodes looking at various topics to help people in their Christian discipleship. These are also available on our YouTube channel and this episode can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP0kmIRVtv8&t=869s&ab_channel=ChristChurchDownend

In this very special episode of our podcast Anita Dobson and Rev. Aidan Watson meet with Rev. Dr Helen Paynter to discuss what we do with difficult passages we might read in the Old Testament in particular of the bible. Helen is a Baptist minister, an Old Testament scholar, a lecturer at Bristol Baptist College where she is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence and she is also an author.

The title of this episode follows the title of Helen’s book that came out last year – God of Violence yesterday, God of Love today?: Wrestling honestly with the Old Testament. We thoroughly recommend this book and you can get it here: https://www.eden.co.uk/god-of-violenc…

Helen has also just published a profoundly important new book using the bile to understand the violence of today’s world called: The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So: Why you don’t have to submit to domestic abuse and coercive control. This can be bought here: https://www.eden.co.uk/the-bible-does…

Also, Helen, alongside Professor Andrew Feldman, hosts a podcast of her own called Guns and God, which seeks to explore how faith and politics overlap. Conversations focus on a diverse range of topics, such as antisemitism, the myth of redemptive violence, BLM, Islamism, and Donald Trump. It is available on various podcast platforms or can be found here https://gunsandgod.buzzsprout.com/

You can find more from the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence here:-

https://www.facebook.com/CSBVBristolBaptistCollege/

https://www.bristol-baptist.ac.uk/study-centres/csbv/