Matters of Life and Death

The UK is currently gripped by a wave of strikes from public sector employees – nurses, teachers, postal workers, train drivers, paramedics, and soon junior doctors too. But this raises complex ethical questions. Few Christians would deny it is legitimate for private employees to withhold their labour in order to demand better pay or conditions, but it is not the governmental employers who will su...

If surveillance capitalism permeates all of modern society, how on earth can we step back to think critically about what it may be doing to us? In this episode we think through more of the implications of living in a non-private digital village in the 21st century, but is privacy even a Christian virtue in the first place? We also ponder the implications of the more deceptive and destructive aspec...

Every tap, swipe and click we make on our phones, tablets and laptops is being recorded by big tech firms. This is often called surveillance capitalism – a network of products and services we use every day which sucks up large quantities of data about us and then sells it on to advertisers at huge profits. It’s garnering increasing concern from citizens and regulators around the world, but should...

In the second part of our discussion with Chris Goswami, we dive into some of the ethical arguments for and against cryptocurrencies. Are they providing financial liberation for some of the poor and excluded communities in the developing world, or simply luring vulnerable under-educated people into shady scams? What does properly Christian investment look like and could putting our money into cryp...

Recent news headlines have been full of discussion of the current ‘crypto winter’, a season where the value of cryptocurrencies has plummeted causing financial devastation and destroying what looked like thriving crypto institutions. This week we’re joined by Christian tech writer and Baptist minister Chris Goswami to try to unpick how we should feel as believers about cryptocurrencies and their d...

In our second conversation on Canada’s euthanasia regime, we chat with a Canadian doctor about the troubling expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying to those only suffering from mental illness. Can the families of mentally struggling patients be confident their loved ones will be met with compassion and a commitment to long-term treatment from their doctors, or will they simply be shuffled off to...

Since 2016, Canada has offered assisted suicide through its public healthcare system. And the criteria for Medical Assistance in Dying has steadily expanded year on year, and will soon include not just those suffering from terminal conditions, but also those experience mental illness too. This week we speak with a Christian psychiatrist from Canada who has been involved in both the campaigning aga...

In the third and final installment of John’s discussion with Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, they discuss Martin’s views on the future of space travel and astronauts, and whether some robotic future progeny of humankind will eventually replace us in exploring the universe. Would this be any bad thing, or should we resist efforts to gradually supplement and even supplant our biology with no...

Happy New Year! Today’s episode continues the Big Conversation between John and Martin Rees, the astronomer royal. In this part, they respond to robotics experts who welcome the arrival of non-human machines which could take over care work, healthcare, and even become our lovers. Is it healthy to replace jobs done by people with robots, especially when that work involves interacting with vulnerabl...

Today’s episode is a little different from normal as we’re going to begin a short series sharing a recent conversation John had with Lord Martin Rees, the astronomer royal. As well as a highly distinguished cosmologist and astrophysicist, Martin is also an author whose recent books have explored some themes familiar to Matters of Life and Death listeners, including the rise of artificial intellige...

In the second half of our conversation with Tim Farron, we discuss his conviction that Christians should get stuck into politics despite its compromises and challenges. Why did his own term as leader of the Liberal Democrats come unstuck so badly, and does he believe there actually is a ceiling on ambition for Christian politicians who wish to hold onto their integrity? What impact is social media...

This week we’re joined by the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron to discuss social media and politics. Research suggests UK members of parliament like Tim get sent thousands of offensive tweets every single day. Why have social networks become such toxic, hateful places? Is this a technology problem to be solved with better moderation, a policy issue solved by government regulation,...

In the second half of our discussion with Christian psychiatrist Daniel Maughan, we work through some ways in which the church might play in role in supporting those struggling with their mental health back to fullness of life. But is there also a place for the church in gently pushing back on the medicalisation of ordinary emotions and modelling a greater sense of mental resilience? And what kind...

Since the covid pandemic there has been an alarming rise in people presenting with mental health problems. Today we speak with Christian psychiatrist Daniel Maughan to better understand why this might be happening, how our mental healthcare systems are coping (or not), and how his faith intersects with his work diagnosing and treating those with psychosis. Can professional mental healthcare worker...

In the second part of our conversation on ageing and dependence, we think about how secular society has tried to ameliorate the crisis of isolated older people with technological solutions. Can the smart home or robotics really save us from having to care for our elders ourselves? And if this isn’t the whole answer, what does the Church have to bring to the table? How can we as believers plausibly...

We’ve discussed in previous episodes the looming ‘demographic timebomb’ – a growing mass of elderly and increasingly chronically ill people in many developed nations, expected to place huge strain on public resources. The policy debates around this issue often emphasise the importance of not ‘being a burden’ on others, with some even suggesting there could be a ‘duty to die’ by assisted suicide fo...

Resuming our conversation with Rhys Laverty from the Davenant Institute, we look at John’s contribution to the Protestant Social Teaching book – a chapter exploring post-Reformation tradition around death and dying. What might medieval and early modern approaches to the end of life be able to teach us modern Christians about how to die well? How was the hospice movement inspired by this, and how h...

Over 150 years the Catholic Church has built up a body of ethical doctrine commonly known as Catholic Social Teaching, which applies Catholic theology to wider social concerns, covering everything from labour relations to contraception. In this episode we are joined by Rhys Laverty from the Davenant Institute to discuss their new book Protestant Social Teaching, an attempt to scour the history of...

Building on last week’s discussion of AI chatbots, we consider the theology and sociology of why interacting with other human beings is so central to our personhood. But would it matter if we did enter into a counselling or caring relationship with a robot or AI software, if we felt it helped our loneliness or anxiety? How can we be raising young people, who cannot remember a world before smart sp...

Earlier this year, a Google engineer went public with his concerns an artificial intelligence chatbot program he had been testing had become sentient. Although his fears were dismissed by Google’s bosses, parts of his conversations with the software reveal the chatbot can speak in shockingly coherent and nuanced language, and even claims itself to have become conscious. How do these kind of progra...

Twenty-four years ago, John published the book which gave this podcast its name: Matters of Life and Death. His first foray into Christian writing and teaching on ethics, it’s now available as an audiobook for the first time which we’re using as an excuse to do a short retrospective. How does the book stand up to scrutiny today? Would John change anything about it if he was writing it from scratch...

Building on last week’s whistlestop tour through the latest ground-breaking embryo research, in this episode we consider what we should do as Christians about all this. Do we continue to hold onto the position that every embryo is a distinct and precious human life from the moment of conception, or should we rethink our theology of the early unborn child? How on earth can ordinary believers keep u...

There has been a flood of highly significant if poorly reported developments in embryo research in recent years, all of which raise new and confusing questions for Christians and non-Christians alike. Is it acceptable to use stem cells to create embryo-like structures to research on? Should we ban all efforts to perfect gene editing, even if that stops us effectively eradicating some horrible cond...

Our second episode on the evolution debate considers three more bones of contention: where do different species come from? Are we all commonly descended from a single source, or does God intervene? Then we consider homo sapiens, and whether science supports the Genesis account of humankind having an original Adam and Eve couple. Lastly we look at the Fall, and question if this can be seen as a rea...

In this special one-off episode, Tim speaks with Mark Greene from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity about Queen Elizabeth II, her faith and decades of service. We consider her own particularly Biblical vision for how constitutional monarchy should work in post-war and post-Imperial Britain, and we explore how her deeply-held Christian faith shaped a lifetime of service. How did th...