Beer Christianity

Welcome to the liberated zone, Oxford edition. To mark Nakba Day 2024, Beer Christianity co-host Laura visits our local protest encampment to hear from the demonstrators at our local Gaza solidarity encampment. If you have been reading about the student protest encampments at Columbia, UCLA and Berkley universities in the USA (or, better, been seeing videos shot by the people involved), you may ha...

Is evil structural, spiritual, or a bit of both? Do acts of selfishness or sin have cascading effects that reverberate through history? Can we shine a light on contemporary Western politics by imagining how our politicians would react to a figure like Jesus and the movement he inspired? All these questions and more (mostly about Israel and its war on the people of Palestine) are covered in this di...

Do you feel like you belong at your church? Have you found your people? Do you feel at home?   In this episode we explore how much dogma, belief, diversity, relatability and stage of life determine whether we feel 'at home' in church.  Along the way we ask what makes a really good home group (spoiler: it may be Jonty and Malky), we discuss  wehter the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Sain...

Is the essence of Christianity basically Judaism through a Zen lens? Can we understand some great artists and theologians better if we assume performative masculinity? Is there really a crack in everything? Is it where the light gets in?  In Episode 92 of Beer Christianity we answer these and other important questions (like: Is later Leonard Cohen better than his earlier oeuvre? Is Avalanche the m...

AI is going to save the world. Or kill us all. Or another, secret, third thing. Trying to find a pattern of truth within all the cultural noise about Artificial Intelligence is pretty hard right now, so we turned to someone who has been working on and with AI since the 1980s. Jean-Louis Ecochard has been in on the development of everythting from caller ID and online banking to video conferencing a...

Socialism means 'bad', right?  That's what many of our churches assume. Whenever anyone suggests Socialism as an option, many Christians have a set of anti-Socialist questions locked and loaded, ready to fire. We decided to put some of them to an expert. To us, Socialism is really just a system of making sure nobody is left behind, of controlling greed and making sure it doesn't result in needless...

The Democratic Republic of Congo and its citizens should, by rights, be among the richest in the world. Congo is a country with vast and rich natural resources, abundant  potential energy and a strategic place in the heart of Africa. And yet, Congo is currently home to one fo the worst humanitarian crises on earth, and its history is littered with genocides and wars that rival the scale of Europe'...

  Jolyon Maugham has been called 'Public Enemy No. 1" by terrible right wing newspapers, attacked by Rishi Sunak and belittled with smears by the BBC.  And if that wasn't enough to make you love him, he also heads up an organisation that works for justice in our laws and legal system, challenging powerful elites and holding wealthy corporations and careless governments to account on behalf of ordi...

That's a nice patriarchy you got there. Be a shame if someone were to smash it... Whether your church is complementarian, soft complementarian, egalitarian or has never thought about the distinction, the odds are good that patriarchy is damaging people in your fellowship, and damaging the witness and ministry of your church. In this episode we examine how this happens, and why - and what we can do...

A few weeks ago, Malky and Jonty travelled to London to take part in a large (though it turns out not the largest) march to protest the continued Israeli bombing of civilians in Gaza and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine through Occupation and settlements.     It was peaceful. It wass diverse. It included Jewish groups, Christians, trade unions, trans people, queer people, liberals, social...

Steve Tinning is a Baptist Minister, a Public Issues Enabler for the Baptist Union of Great Britain and one of the team that makes Beer and Hymns happen at Greenbelt festival.  Steve is a lovely chap and talks to us about his secondment to JPIT (the Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist, URC and Methodist churches), issues of asylum and refugee response, and about different responses to Ukrainia...

History does not begin when you start paying attention. And if you only start paying attention when white people get hurt, you are going to miss the root causes of the events you are seeing.  As we recorded this episode, Gaza was being bombarded,  with the threat of more indiscriminate violence being made by Israeli authorities. UK politicians, including the so-called Opposition, were unwilling to...

Greenbelt Festival turned 50 this year. It is, quite possibly, the best festival in the world. It used to be the coolest Christian music festival in Britain - which is a nice accolade, but, like being the coolest engineer at the felting workshop, perhaps one with limited meaning outside specific circles. But over the years, Greenbelt has translated the seminal courage that saw it host Christian ro...

Alex Clare-Young (pronouns: they/them) is a minister in the United Reformed Church, with a passion for Scripture, inclusion and social justice. They identify as Jesus-follower, trans and non-binary. What does someone with identities so regularly weaponised by culture warriors actually think about Scripture, the Church and faith?  Alex joins Laura, Malky and Jonty to discuss young people transition...

Should trans women compete as women at an elite level of sport? The Right's Culture War (TM) has used this question as a wedge issue in its ongoing targeting of trans people as pawns in a larger game. But who is more often hurt as a result of the targeted rhetoric (and the unthinking regurgitation by ordinary Joe Schmoes)? How new is the phenomenon of gender-nonconforming people taking centre cour...

"Ramshackle, DIY and deeply Christian" - that's how Paul Northup describes Greenbelt festival in the first few years of it's 50-year life so far. It's also a pretty good description of this podcast. Paul is Director of Greenbelt Festival, a "place to believe in" that seeks to embody a Newbigin-style 'no splits' Christian festival that engages deeply with faith, arts and justice. Paul takes time (a...

We've been through this before. So many times. Is there anything left to learn, or are we just unwilling to learn it? Perhaps a recent study holds the answers. Mike Pilavachi is the latest 'celebrity Christian' whos eministry has been tainted by scandal. In Part 2 of Beer Christianity's look at our icons with cracked halos, we ask why, with all the information we have gained over decades of scanda...

Mike Pilavachi has resigned from Soul Survivor and once again we are having that conversation . Why do beloved Christian leaders fall? And why do the people around themso often protect and enable their failings?      In this episode, we don't disect the ongoing Pilavachi investigation or jump to hasty condemnation, nor do we jump to his defence. Instead, we discuss what the limits of forgiveness m...

Is compassion dependent on class-solidarity? Are some lives worth more than others? Is a nuanced approach to the comedy of catastrophe possible? No, no and possibly yes.     The OceanGate Titan submarine disaster (some would say 'tragedy', in the Greek sense) produced strong and wildly divergent responses. Jonty and Laura discuss them, as well as the reasons for media interest in the submarine sit...

Meet the Mitfords, memento mori monuments and meanders through churchyards and cemeteries over a few years. Jonty and Laura have been 'graveyard hopping' for many years now, often recording their explorations. But what is graveyard hopping? What's the attraction?  We answer that question, discuss some of the coolest names and most beautiful epitaphs, and take you on alittle tour of peaceful places...

We're back, baby, with an episode of king-shaming, favourite kings and comments on the coronation. Here's Jonty in a tiara his wife bought him:  Ever topical and on-time, we break our hiatus (sorry about that, pneumonia) with an episode about the Coronation of King Charles (the third, not the spaniel) and about kings in general.  Why would Christians object to the coronation? What are the reasons...

If the Church is going through a new Reformation (towards a more progressive, inclusive and liberal existence), then Brian McLaren is its Martin Luther. Or John Calvin. Or that Scottish guy.  What we're saying is, for those who are unfamiliar with his work or reputation, he's a big dog in the world of not just progressive Christianity, but Christianity overall, especially over the last few years....

It seems wild that it's January 2023, when it was 2019 only three weeks ago. But, if the "Lame Stream Media" are to be believed, the year is, indeed, 2023. Happy New Year! This episode is all about New Year's resolutions : what we think, as Christians, about their value, and what the right mindset for resolutions might be. Lau-Lau, Malky and Jonts talk about their own resolutions (or non-resolutio...

These days, you get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying Merry Christmas. Or, at least, that's what Christian snowflakes, certain media vicars and most of the right wing media would have us believe.  Apparently, atheists, humanists, Muslims and the 'Woke Liberal Elite' are policing our words, forcing us to say 'Happy Holidays' and thus deny Christ. This and other bullshit comes up in our Ch...

Dr Leroy Logan served in the Metropolitan police for 30 years, eventually becoming a superintendent and helping to found the Black Police Association. Dr Logan talked to Jonty at Greenbelt festival in a lively press tent about his views on policing, defunding the police, slogans like ACAB and his views on justice in the legal system and society. His autobiography, Closing Ranks, My Life as a Cop d...