The Magnificast

Ya boys are in a bit of a transition period, so episodes have been a bit slow to produce. We'll have a new one up shortly, but until then, here's some of that good classic content!  This week on the show, we're talking about a really neat book called Revolutionary Forgiveness: Feminist Reflections on Nicaragua by the Amanecida Collective. The book is a reflection on 13 theologians who took a numbe...

This week we welcome Dr. Shannen Dee Williams to the show to talk about her book Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle. Tune in to find out how religious sisters went to Black Panther meetings, how Black sisters and the Civil Rights Movement called out segregation and racism in the Catholic Church, what US sisters were doing with Julius Nyerere in Tan...

Evangelicals are always paranoid about a type of Christianity that follows cultural norms more than "Biblical" norms, but what if evangelicals are doing the same thing without knowing it? In this episode, we're vibing about cultural Christianity, how it works and just goofin. 

Climate change seems bad, right? But won't some genius entrepreneur come along and just invent some kind of more efficient energy source? No probably not. In this episode, we're talking about the idea that you can decouple growth from environmental factors.  Here's Timothee Parrique's study on Decoupling we talked about: https://eeb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Decoupling-Debunked.pdf Here's a l...

You might remember a few weeks back we talked about Angels from the perspective of a weird book by Michel Serres. Well, we decided we couldn't leave the conversation there. We needed an angel expert. So, this week, we're joined by Marika Rose to talk about angels, cyborgs, and her new book, Theology for the End of the World. If you're in the UK, you can preorder Marika's book here:  https://scmpre...

Pat Robertson is dead and we've got some things to tell you about him. You've probably already heard about all of the goofy stuff he's said on the 700 Club. You also probably know about his short-lived political career, but do you know he supported genocidal Guatemalan dictator, General Efrain Rios Montt? Tune in and get straight on some PAT FACTS.  Here are the articles we talked about https://ww...

Ok, folks, don't get too excited--we are talking about angels, just in the weirdest way possible. This week on the podcast, we're indulging our most basest desires to talk about French philosophy. We're reading through Michel Serres' book Angels: A Modern Myth. Throughout the episode, we talk about metaphysics, messages, the angelic, and the problems of defying humans.  

A few weeks back we talked about St Francis and what some Marxists thought of him. But this time, we're bringing you Leonardo Boff's thoughts on St Francis and how Boff thinks Francis relates to liberation theology. Go to Archive.org and read it for yourself! https://archive.org/details/francisofassisim0000boff Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogic...

Exploitation? Yeah, it's bad. But, superexploitation? It's super bad. In this episode, we talk about Ruy Mauro Marini's theory of dependency and superexploitation. As it turns out, the exploitation of workers in the global south is just the way capitalism works.  Read the article about Marini in the Monthly Review here: https://monthlyreview.org/2023/04/01/superexploitation-and-the-imperialist-dri...

This week we're talking about Leonardo Boff's brother, Clodovis Boff, and a letter he wrote parsing out the connections between socialism and democracy and the nod he makes toward Christianity and socialism. In the episode, we talk about the ways Boff thinks socialism and democracy go together and whether or not Christianity is rediscovering its socialist roots.  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong ...

Christians get a lot out of engaging the left, but like we're always saying on this show, it's harder to see what people on the left get out of engaging Christianity as a tradition. But one guy keeps showing up in left literature and weird postmodern philosophy, everyone's favorite silly saint, Francis of Assisi! In this one we chat through how Francis shows up in Karl Kautsky, W. E. B. DuBois, Mi...

This week we're back to talk through another of Tricontinental's dossiers. This time we're talking about fundamentalism and evangelicalism and how those theologies are connected to imperialism in Latin America.  Read the dossier here: https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-59-religious-fundamentalism-and-imperialism-in-latin-america/

Buckle up because we've got a big chat about everyone's favorite finance villain, the International Monetary Fund! Liberation theologians are always talking about the IMF, but a lot of us in the Global North have either neglected to keep up with it or haven't gotten around to understanding it. Thanks to a dossier on the IMF, debt, and Africa from the Tricontinental Institute, we've got some explai...

Degrowth is becoming an important framework for thinking through capitalist production and consumption for the left, but what if Catholic social movements were already ahead of the curve on this one? The moral, economic, and internationalist thinking in the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching has predispositioned Catholic Social Movements toward degrowth as a paradigm.     Intro Music by Amaryah...

On this podcast, we talk a lot about the crucifixion but not much about resurrection. Since it's easter, we're changing that! This week we're discussing João Batista Libânio's essay Hope, Utopia, and Resurrection and how resurrection is a political idea!

In the immortal words of Blink 182, "Work Sucks, I know." This week we're talking about Paul Lafargue's book The Right To Be Lazy and working through the mythology and moralism of labor! The Productivity Pay Gap: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

March 24th was the feast day for Saint Oscar Romero and we're celebrating! This week we're talking about Romero's address, "The Political Dimension of Faith from the Perspective of the Option for the Poor." In the episode, we talk about Oscar Romero in relation to liberation theology, the relationship between faith and politics, and what it means for the Church to throw in with the poor.  Read Rom...

This week we're diving into the discourse around Pope Francis' papacy at 10 years. Some people like him, some people don't like him. but the question that no one is asking is what do we think? Listen in as we talk about the good takes, the bad takes, and most importantly our takes on Pope Francis's papacy at 10 years! Here's the bad Ross Douthat article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/opinion/...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 says that "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." There's a time to talk about Marxism and a time to talk about queer theology. A time to talk about Paul Virilio and a time to talk about communist Saint Francis. But, this week we're entering a new season: getting goofy. This week we're bringing our Patreon only podcast The Lock In out from b...

We've talked about Queer Theology a handful of times on the pod, but in this episode, we go a bit deeper with Shannon Kearns and Brian Murphy, two folks who are building and encouraging others to build queer theology through storytelling and community. Listen in to hear about sacred storytelling, the all-out assault on trans people in this country, and Matt & Dean have their Cishet horizons wi...

You might have caught it on social media, but we're starting a letter-writing campaign for lent that calls on President Biden and Congressional representatives to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and to end the US Blockade on Cuba. In this episode, we talk through the lenten practice we're suggesting and giving you the facts about the blockade, the nuts bolts of the legislatio...

This week, Josiah Daniels has joined us from the frontlines of the culture war, where he's been reporting on the He Gets Us campaign for Sojourners. In this episode, we talk about the "elite capture" of Jesus, dark money, and the conservative Christian PR machine.  Read Josiah's piece here: https://sojo.net/articles/what-he-gets-us-ads-get-wrong-about-jesus Listen to Josiah talk about this on NPR:...

Dealing with your evangelical past means that sometimes you have to work really hard to recover particular spiritual practices, like praying. In this episode, we talk about learning to pray again through the Psalms. In this conversation, we learn from Ernesto Cardenal's appropriations of the Psalms from his book, Psalms.  In this episode, we talked about:  Psalms - Ernesto Cardenal  Our May 2021 e...

Last week we chatted about development and liberation, this week we're introducing another big idea in that conversation: dependency theory. Dependency theory has fallen out of style lately, but it's still a useful idea for thinking about the relationships between so-called "developing" countries and the imperial core. Get into it with us! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong Outro music by theillogic...

Within the orbit of liberation, there's a closely related term that we've never really talked about on the podcast before: development. What does it mean to be a "developing country?" What is that development toward? To get to the bottom of it, we read a chapter from Gustavo Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation to understand why we need liberation, not development. Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong...