The Ridley Institute Podcast

What would it be like to live in a world where one rash action could lead to a wasteland for all? What if we live in just such a world? What might the old tales tell us about how to live in such a world by the hope of the Gospel? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with priest and poet ​M​alcolm Guite, about the first of his four-volume Arthuriad,  Merlin's Isle , entitled,  Galahad and the Grail. ...

Humans cannot help but understand ourselves and our story through ritual . For Christians, as also for many irreligious people in the west today, this happens nowhere more powerfully than through the liturgy of the Church. Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Cosima Clara Gillhammer of Oxford University's Lady Margaret Hall. Drawing on insights from her new book, Light on Darkness: The Untold St...

We apologize to listeners for our error in the first release of this episode, and have corrected the error in this release. Please enjoy this interview with Stephen Presley! In the West, the term "God" has become virtually a placeholder, a moniker kept pristinely vacant. Even Christians have been known to treat the scriptures as butterflies to pin, probe and prod, comb and codify, until...

For centuries, the lodestone of the West's moral compass pointed to Jesus. Today, it points away from Hitler. That shift from a positive to a negative moral touchstone can be seen in popular culture's panoply of dark lords—Darth Vader, Sauron, Voldemort—each a rather unsubtle echo of Hitler himself. Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with Alec Ryrie, Professor of the History of Christia...

How can Christians stay embedded within our culture while pursuing virtue and rejecting vice, in personal and in public life? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Stephen Presley, author of Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church (Eerdman's, 2024), about what the modern church has to learn from Christians of the second and third centuries. According to Presley ( Cultural Sa...

What has God to do with politics? What has the kingdom to do with the cross? And what does it mean to work for a kingdom whose origin lies beyond creation, but whose destiny lies within it? Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with Mike Bird, deputy principal and lecturer in theology at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, about insights unpacked in Mike's new book with NT Wright, entitled...

What do Christians miss when we extol the cross of Christ (three cheers!), but fail to place emphasize correspondingly the resurrection of Christ, with all its implications for our lives today? How do we turn up the volume on this critical element of the gospel message? Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with Tim Patrick (Principal, Bible College of South Australia). Drawing on two of Tim's...

Sam Fornecker speaks with Paul Miller about his recent book, A Praying Church: Becoming a People of Hope in a Discouraging World (Crossway, 2023). Why does God care if I pray with other Christians? Is a prayer meeting really the best use of my time? What would God do through corporate prayer that He wouldn't do in response to private prayer—or, for that matter, regardless of any prayer at all?...

Sam Fornecker speaks with Rosaria Butterfield, about her most recent book, Five Lies of an Anti-Christian Age (Crossway, 2023). What's the difference between being a Christian in 1992 and 2024? What distinguishes a post-Christian, from an anti-Christian, age? To paraphrase St Paul (Rom. 13:11–14), do we know what time it is? In this conversation, Sam Fornecker speaks with Rosaria Butterfield a...

No affirmation more roundly rebuts the modern presumption that humans are merely "brains-on-sticks" than the core Christian confession that, in Jesus, God assumed human nature. To reckon fully with this fact is to enter into "a complex set of practices oriented toward the transformation of one's being and understanding of the world," the learning of "habits of body and...

Sam Fornecker chats with philosopher R.J. Snell about his latest book, Lost in the Chaos: Immanence, Despair, Hope (Angelico, 2023). What have frenzied activists, scheming rationalists, and men in Gandalf garb got in common? Why is each symptomatic of societal despair? And what hope can the Church offer a world no longer pining for the forgiveness of sins? In this conversation, Sam Fornecker speak...

Sam Fornecker chats with theologian Helen Collins about her recent book, Charismatic Christianity: Introducing Its Theology through the Gifts of the Spirit (Baker Academic, 2023). What is "charismatic Christianity"? What are its signal emphases, its prevailing values, its cardinal foci? How is it to be understood in relation to Pentecostalism, on the one hand, and the wide world of evang...

Sam Fornecker chats with philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek about her book, Doorway to Artistry: Attuning Your Philosophy to Enhance Your Creativity (Wipf & Stock, 2023). The implicit philosophical outlook of the modern world thwarts and damages our humanness, severing us from the "real." Modernity aims to master nature by arrogantly reducing things to bits and uses. Nothing is legitim...

Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with C. Kavin Rowe (George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Vice Dean for Faculty, Duke Divinity School). Drawing on Rowe's recent book, Leading Christian Communities (Eerdman's, 2023), this conversation focuses on how the New Testament enables the communities it shapes to envision a faithful and compelling vision of Christi...

Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with David Gustafson (Chair of Mission and Evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). Drawing on insight's from David's book, Gospel Witness through the Ages (Eerdman's, 2022), this conversation focuses on how Christians can learn to fulfill our charge to "do the work of an evangelist" (2 Tim. 4:5) by learning from the evangelistic stren...

What is gender , how does it relate to sex , and what's love got to do with it? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Fellipe do Vale, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Drawing on do Vale's recent book, Gender as Love: A Theological Account of Human Identity, Embodied Desire, and Our Social Worlds (Baker Academic, 2023), this episo...

Happy Thanksgiving! On this episode, Sam chats with Abigail Hull Whitehouse (a fellow priest in the Diocese of the Carolinas) about the season of Advent that begins this Sunday. Sam and Abigail discuss the meaning of the Advent season, the apocalyptic theology it brings to the fore, and how listeners can "bring Advent home" through spiritual disciplines and practices, both individually and as fami...

In this episode, Sam Fornecker chats with Michael Rhodes (Lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College). Dipping toes into Michael's recent book, Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World (IVP Academic, 2023), this conversation considers a range of questions: What is justice? Does God care about justice—and if so, why? What does God say about justice in the Bible? What is a...

Would the discovery of "alien life" overturn the Christian faith? As we gain a clearer picture of the universe — it is estimated that there exist around 400 billion billion potentially habitable planets — it's important that Christians answer with a ready, "Of course not"! Join Sam Fornecker and Andrew Davison, Starbridge Professor of Theology and Natural Sciences at Cambri...

If God is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16), why does the Bible make Him look like a bully? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Dr. Paul Copan (Pledger Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University) about violence in the Bible: from criminal justice to divine smiting, from cursing psalms to holy war. This conversation draws on Paul's recent book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? (Baker Academic,...

Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Dani Treweek, founding director of the Single Minded ministry and adjunct teacher at Moore Theological College, about the Christian vision of singleness. Dani's recent book on the subject— The Meaning of Singleness: Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church (IVP Academic, 2023)—assesses the Church's frequent failure to walk well alon...

Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with Paul Louis Metzger, professor of Christian theology and theology of culture at Multnomah University and Seminary, about the role of personhood in Christian ethics. This chat focuses on Paul's remarkable book, More than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture (IVP Academic, 2023). The "reader's guide" mentioned in the episode...

Season 3 kicks off with Steve Tong, History Master at Sydney Grammar School in Sydney, Australia. Drawing on Steve's new book, Building the Church of England: The Book of Common Prayer and the Edwardian Reformation (Brill, 2023), this episode looks at how the English Reformers sought to give visible form to the invisible Church, through a gospel-centered ecclesiology and a Bible-based liturgy—...

Join Sam Fornecker, Alice Soulieux-Evans, and Jake Griesel, as the gang draw together many of the key themes and insights that have arisen from the seminal reformation texts studied thus far on the New Parker Society series. The New Parker Society series will return after a hiatus, and The Ridley Institute Podcast will be back, Fall 2023!

Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with Brian Rosner (Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne) about how the gospel addresses the collective identity crisis of modern society. Exploring the real-life implications of what scholars call expressive individualism , this conversation looks at how the gospel addresses arguably the most urgent question of modern people: "Who am I?" Find Brian...