The Magnificast

We've already talked about degrowth a bit on the podcast, but why not talk about it some more. In this episode we talk about the book The Future is Degrowth, discuss what growth is and why it's bad, what degrowth is, and how you can bring some of these ideas to church.  You can find the Future is Degrowth here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3989-the-future-is-degrowth You can read Matt's articl...

In this episode, we get back into the conversation about African Liberation Theology by reading Jean-Marc Ela's book African Cry. We meant to talk about an essay he wrote about the Eucharist and the Exodus story, but we got kind of stuck on the Eucharist. We'll be back with more from Ela in the coming weeks!  Read along with us here: https://archive.org/details/africancry0000elaj/page/n3/mode/2up...

Recently everyone's been talking about Christian nationalism. This week we're offering a definitive take that the US is a Christian nation and that's really bad! Christianity isn't our best hopes we have for it, but instead, what it does and produces! Here's the article by Diana Butler Bass we mention.  https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/christian-nationalism-everywhere?r=45vbf&s=w&utm...

You know us; we love learning things about liberation theology. We've talked a lot about liberation theology in the context of Latin America, but we're completely clueless about liberation theology in Africa. In this episode, we read a bit of Emmanuel Martey's African theology: inculturation and liberation to learn something about what liberation theology looks like in South Africa.  You can read...

We love to talk about imperialism on this show and what better time to rehash imperialism in light of John Bolton's admission to planning Coups on TV! This week we talk about John Bolton, coups, imperialism, and the farce of rules-based international order.  Here's the essay from the Monthly Review we mention in the ep - https://monthlyreview.org/2021/07/01/the-new-cold-war-on-china/ Intro Music b...

This week we talk about the EPA decision passed down by SCOTUS and the larger context of ecological guidance in the IPCC report. It all seems pretty hopeless, but Leonardo Boff once again tells us what to do! Tune in and find out! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by Paul Robeson https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magnific...

Ryan Cagle is back on the show to give us an update about Jubilee House, organizing, spiritual direction, and RPGs! Put on your robe and wizard hat and get ready for this banger of an episode.  Check out Ryan's project at jubileehouse.co  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by Paul Robeson https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The...

After an extremely long break, we've got a guest! This week, we're talking with Hector Acero Ferrer to talk about the recent election of Gustavo Petro & Francia Marquez in Colombia, liberation theology, democracy, and hope!  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magni...

Well, folks, we're just getting back to it after a long vacation, so we're taking it easy on ourselves and doing a prolonged lock-in episode full of reddit goofs and news updates. We'll be back next week with a more substantive episode!  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support...

We're still out here doing this Bible study, and this time we're doing a classic, the parable of the talents! You might think God wants you to invest the gifts he's given you so you can grow his kingdom, but guess what, if you knew a ton of extremely niche information about the first century you'd find out you're wrong! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://the...

Hey Gang, this week we've got a special episode where we chat with our friend Chase from Faith & Capital about a neat book called A Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church by the Christians for National Liberation. It's a neat conversation where we just walk through some of the interesting beats within in the book. Check it out!  You can find Chase's podcast here and...

Last week we got into William Herzog's Parables as Subversive Speech to talk about parables and historical readings. This week, we're talking about Matthew 18 and the unmerciful servant. Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magnificast on Patreon*  http://patreon.com/the...

We've spent more time than usual reading the Bible lately, but, as you might know, reading the Bible can be complicated. To get into how difficult it is, we read William Herzog's Parables as Subversive Speech and talk about the big history behind the context of the parables.  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-...

After a kind of long series of goofs, this episode gets into some brief ideas about organizing your faith community.  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magnificast on Patreon*  http://patreon.com/themagnificast  *Get Magnificast Merch*  https://www.redbubble.com

Are you still in the May Day mood? Then take a trip back in time with us to last year when we talked about the Haymarket Riot and Dwight L. Moody!  -------- In past eps, we've talked about a lot of the cool leftist Christians involved in the Haymarket riot and the gilded age labor movement, but what about the shitty Christians? This week, we're bringing you a wild story about how Dwight L Moody ma...

There's so much scary and bad news about climate change and its effects. It sucks big time. Though, so as not to just curse the darkness, in this episode we talk about a recent piece in the Monthly Review about points of unity between degrowth activists and ecosocialism.  Read the article here: https://monthlyreview.org/2022/04/01/for-an-ecosocialist-degrowth/ Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Out...

Listen folks, we've been hitting the bible and theology pretty hard over the last few weeks. But, now that Lent is over we're taking a breather and talking about some a little less biblical. Dean and Matt have been reading Kerala: Another World is Possible by T.M. Thomas Isaac and they're pretty excited to talk about it. So, in this episode, you'll hear all about Kerala, India, Participatory democ...

We've been making our way through lent and talking about all of the themes along the way. This week we're talking about the last supper and the betrayal of Jesus.  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magnificast on Patreon*  http://patreon.com/themagnificast  *Get Magni...

We're getting close to the end of Lent and heading into Holy Week, so we're going to talk about Palm Sunday! A lot of Christians on the left have made a lot out of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem as a countercultural event. In this episode, we talk about it from the perspective of street theatre and social movements.   In the ep, we talked about the Documentary "What would Jesus Buy" you should wat...

We're still chugging on through this big lenten situation. We've been talking through all of the big lenten themes and this week we're reaching harder than ever by talking about penance and reconciliation! Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magnificast on Patreon*  htt...

In this episode, we're talking about the shortcomings of substitutionary atonement and Ignacio Ellacuria's The Crucified People.  Substitutionary Atonement is a weird idea that gets Christians into all kinds of problems, but what if there's actually an interesting and helpful way to think about soteriology that isn't just making God an angry computer.  Get the essay here: https://drive.google.com/...

Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about the big themes of lent. So far, we've talked about fasting & temptation. This time, however, we're talking about almsgiving and charity. You're going to love it.  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.com/track/hoods-up-the-low-down-technified-blues *Support The Magnificast on Pa...

We're into week 2 of our Lent theme and this time we're talking about temptation! We're reading Luke 4:1-13 and talking through the three temptations the devil brings to Jesus in the desert. To back us up, we bring in some ideas around political power and temptation from liberation theology.  Intro Music by Amaryah Armstrong  Outro music by theillogicalspoon https://theillalogicalspoon.bandcamp.co...

Lent is a time of fasting that gets co-opted by capitalism in all kinds of very gross ways and that sucks. But, what might fasting look like as a political idea? We might work this out by thinking about fasting in terms of degrowth in the face of climate change!  Here are some of the books we talked about in this episode Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World - Jason Hickel Inventing the f...

This week, we have no choice, but to weigh in on what's happening with Russia and Ukraine. A lot of people have particularly hot takes about this chapter in geopolitics, and so do we: war is bad, actually and we have the moral imperative to build a peace movement.  Here are the statements we talked about on the show Pax Christi - https://paxchristiusa.org/2022/02/24/pax-christi-usas-statement-on-r...