Life & Faith

Great Moral Teacher

If Jesus offers wisdom for how to live, how necessary is the “Son of God” stuff?
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“I do think Jesus is a much more challenging figure than he is often presented to be. And a lot of the challenges he presents I think Christians find it quite hard to really look square in the eye.”
Julian Baggini is a philosopher, an atheist, and the author most recently of The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus A Great Moral Teacher? It’s the latest contribution to a centuries-long effort to discover what’s left of Jesus of Nazareth if you subtract the miracles and “God talk”. 
Jonathan Pennington is a New Testament scholar at Southern Seminary in Kentucky, and his book Jesus the Great Philosopher also places Jesus within a tradition of offering wisdom for life. However, he thinks that ultimately, you can’t separate the moral teaching of Jesus from the Easter story of his crucifixion and resurrection. His argument is that Jesus is more than a philosopher - but not less than one. 
“When you study philosophy, you recognise the best philosophers are really asking very important questions - some big ideas, and some really practical questions about what it means to be human. … My suggestion to you all is that when you go to the Bible and when you go to Jesus with that same set of questions, you are going to find remarkably thoughtful, remarkably practical, remarkably beautiful answers.”
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Links:
Julian Baggini, The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus A Great Moral Teacher?
Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life
Listen to our previous interview with Julian Baggini on Life & Faith, on the topic of free will: Freedom Regained

Rebroadcast: Life on Mars

An aerospace engineer and an astrogeologist discuss the whether and why of space exploration.
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"For all these wonderful technologies, for all these incredible achievements that you see – rockets that can be reused, drones that can fly long missions, every discovery by the Hubble or the Kepler – there’s this realisation that when all the really, really good stuff comes along, I’m going to be dead."
When James Garth was a young, budding aerospace engineer, he came across an ad in his copy of Aviation Week that read: "In 200 years, space flight will be routine. You, however, will be dead." It was an existential-angst-inducing moment. But it hasn’t kept him from being constantly excited about the work he gets to do now.
"My main job is to make sure the wings don’t fall off – if the wings fall off, it’s a bad day, and if the wing stays on, it’s a good day," James says. He’s not being flippant – the wings of an aircraft, he explains, are designed to not fall off, of course, but only just.
"Aerospace is a really demanding profession because you’re pushing yourself up against the extremes of what is actually possible," he says. "You’ve got to shave out weight at every opportunity, you’ve got to constantly innovate and use new materials and new technologies … and that’s actually why I love doing aerospace engineering."
In this episode, we’re celebrating National Science Week in Australia with two conversations on space travel, the wonder of the cosmos, the possibility of life on other planets, and – of course – the best science fiction on offer.
Hear from two Australians with very cool jobs: James Garth, an aeronautical engineer, and a man who has travelled to Mars. Twice. Well, sort of.
"In the Canadian Arctic the ground is frozen, there’s permafrost, and we know there’s permafrost on Mars," Jonathan Clarke says about the location of his first Mars simulation experience. "In Utah you’ve got a red, dry desert with rocks that are full of clay, full of sulphates, just like we see on Mars," he says of the second.
An astrogeologist, Jon would love to go to Mars for real one day.
"I love beautiful places. Mars has grandeur. It’s got volcanos with cliffs eight kilometres high and canyons 12 kilometres deep, it’s got blue sunsets and pink skies, and great dust storms - it’s an extraordinarily beautiful landscape and I’d just love to be able to explore that in person."
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These interviews were conducted at ISCAST’s Conference on Science and Christianity. Find out more about ISCAST here: www.iscast.org

Faith, Flags and Storming the Capitol

In light of the chaos surrounding the U.S. presidential election we ask John Stackhouse and Nathan Campbell to reflect on the place of Religion in Public Life
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The story of the politicising of faith in the U.S. has a long backstory. Some would say the storming the Capitol building in Washington was the culmination of a complex narrative that has roots in the backlash against 1960s libertarianism and the subsequent alliance between conservative religion and conservative politics. That is a fascinating story in itself. But what is the place of faith in politics and public life? Do national flags and Christian faith go well together? What legitimacy do Christian believers have when engaging in politics? Theologian John Stackhouse Jnr sheds some light on the North American context and CPX Associate and Australian Pastor and blogger, Nathan Campbell, offers his perspective on this complex and fraught discussion.       

Seen & Heard

The CPX team debrief on their latest reads, TV binges, and podcast discoveries.
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It may not surprise you to know that the nerds at CPX spend a lot of time inhaling the books, movies, podcasts, and binge-worthy TV series that shape and reflect our particular cultural moment - and debriefing on them around the proverbial office water cooler. 
This week on Life & Faith, Simon, Natasha, and Justine hit record on that conversation. 
Covered in this episode: 
Priestdaddy: the 2017 memoir by Patricia Lockwood, “poet laureate of Twitter”, whose father - a Catholic priest, via a loophole in the usual rules about celibacy - is a larger-than-life figure … like everyone else in her family, it seems. Hilarious and also disturbing, on growing up religious and continuing to love complicated people whose faith you no longer share.
The Stand: a new 9-episode miniseries based on the 1978 Stephen King novel, available to watch on Amazon Prime, this dark fantasy/post-apocalyptic tale rejects the greys in favour of good ol’ black-and-white moral absolutes. Mother Abagail vs The Dark Man represents a traditional battle of good and evil, but sits oddly in the current atmosphere.
Renegades: Born in the USA: the new podcast on Spotify brings together two American icons, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, to talk about life parallels, race, and the ongoing promise and peril of the “American dream”.

Salem, 1692

The most famous witch hunt in history – and how it speaks to our moment.
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“There were always personal issues at stake in Salem and, I think, in all witchcraft trials. We can talk about larger-scale issues like economic change or political conflicts, but witchcraft accusations always started out of conflicts between individuals.”
Donald Trump may declare his impeachment(s) “the greatest witch hunt in American history”, but that dubious honour has long been accorded to the panic that took hold of the New England community of Salem, Massachusetts, back in 1692.
Catherine Brekus, who is Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard Divinity School, takes us back to that iconic episode to help us understand the perfect storm of historical factors that caused it. She talks about what leads a close-knit community to turn against each other - and draws some uncomfortable parallels with our own moment, from conspiracy theories to the demonisation of opponents, especially women.
"I really can’t think of any woman in modern history who has been more demonised than Clinton. If you do a search on the internet, you will see all kinds of horrible pictures, you can buy T-shirts of her riding a broom. And this might seem funny - but if you recall, back in 2016 there were rumours that Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking sex ring from a pizza parlour in Washington DC, and there was a man who literally showed up there with an assault rifle to rescue these children."
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Most of this material from Catherine Brekus is drawn from an interview for CPX's For the Love of God documentary. 
It is available (with much, much more) for free in a series of short videos, for easy use in the classroom or sharing on social media, at www.publicchristianity.org/interviews/  

Eternity in their Hearts

British writer Francis Spufford talks about heartbreak and loss, hope and eternity, in his latest novel, Light Perpetual.
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In November 1944, a German V2 missile obliterated a Woolworths store in South London, killing 168 people. Fifteen of that number were children under 11 years old. For 13 years Francis Spufford has, on his way to work each day, walked past a plaque commemorating the event. He says he has been increasingly haunted by the lives those children didn’t get to live.  
In Light Perpetual Spufford summons five lives out of the dust and ruin of that 1944 calamity and breathes life into them, giving Jo and Valerie and Alec and Ben and Vernon a future they didn’t get to live. This is a story of paths chosen or not taken, the joys and wounds that time gifts and inflicts. The story is a complex weaving of divergent time periods and characters who live unspectacular but always intriguing lives. There is murder and mental illness, heartbreak and loss of various kinds, as well as a meditation and honouring of the mundane aspects of our lives that Spufford clearly sees as essential and, perhaps, sacred.  
All the way along, he leaves open the tantalising possibility of eternity.  

A most reluctant convert

Acclaimed author Susannah McFarlane on meeting her birth mother and then, to her great dismay, God. 
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The EJ12 Girl Hero series, the EJ Spy School Series, D-Bot Squad, Boy vs Beast, Go Girl!, and Zac Power. For decades, Susannah McFarlane has been the author, publisher, and driving force behind some of Australia’s most popular children’s books.
In her 50s, Susannah met her birth mother for the first time but discovered - to her shock - that she was a Pentecostal Christian. A staunch atheist, Susannah tried to argue her mother out of belief, but in researching the historical claims of Christianity, found herself converted - reluctantly - to the faith instead.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we hear about Susannah’s reunion with her mother, the fallout - and also the joys - of coming to faith, and how this spinner of remarkable tales makes sense of the way her own story fits into the Christian story.
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EXPLORE
Heartlines: The year I met my other mother, co-authored with Robin Leuba
The story of your life, an episode of Life & Faith that also deals with the way people’s lives are story-shaped

Do I have a soul?

Do you have a soul? What is soul/a soul/the soul? We talk as though it’s a real thing: you can sell your soul, search your soul, keep body and soul together, not tell a soul, be the life and soul of the party, find something good for the soul or else soul-destroying. But do people still believe in the soul? And why?
In this episode of Life & Faith, Simon Smart, Natasha Moore, and Justine Toh debrief about the new Pixar movie Soul. A school chaplain describes what happened when she asked her students if they believe in the soul, God, miracles, ghosts, or angels. And J. Richard Middleton, Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary, argues that the Bible doesn’t say what most people (including Christians) think it says about what it means to have - or be - a soul.

The Alphabet of 2020

Dom Knight's 2020 Dictionary provides a light-hearted (and at points serious) look back at the most extraordinary of years.

The World Turned Upside Down

As we come to the end of the year that seemed like it might never end, the CPX team gets together for one last episode. We talk about the year that was - including Megxit, impeachment, Netflix, and zombie minks - as well as the “one story” that Christians keep coming back to, and why we think it’s the right story for this year (and every year!)
Simon Smart, Justine Toh, Natasha Moore, Mark Stephens, and Tim Costello each pick a line from a beloved carol, and join the dots to life in 2020. We reflect on cynicism and division, light and life, hopes and fears, and what joy there might be for a weary world.