Matters of Life & Death

Baby loss 2: Rising abortion numbers, pills by post, ‘the pregnancy remains’, and Schrodinger’s fetus

25 Oct 2023
00:49:13

We spoke last week about the hugely welcome shift in how society talks about miscarriage and cares for women (and men) who have experienced it. And yet at the same time in Britain, we desperately avoid using the same language and narrative establishe...

Baby loss 1: Elsie’s story, one in five pregnancies, names missing from the family tree, and the power of ultrasound

18 Oct 2023
00:37:01

We have just finished Baby Loss Awareness Week here in the UK. While the event is not hugely well known, it is indicative of an enormous cultural shift in recent decades around how society talks about miscarriage and stillbirth. Today, the messaging...

Women and Christianity: Purity culture, beyond complementarianism, baggy t-shirts over swimming costumes, and recovering Tamar’s voice

11 Oct 2023
00:57:05

Christianity is sometimes described as ‘bad news for women’. Clearly we would all disagree with this epithet, but why does it have cultural currency right now for a growing number of particularly younger women? In this episode we’re joined by Ellidh...

Origins of covid: Gain of function research, zoonosis, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and truth over tribe

4 Oct 2023
00:56:36

When the pandemic first spread beyond China there was a straightforward message from scientific elites: the virus came from a wild animal accidentally spilling over into humans, and any suggestion it might have instead been manipulated in a lab and t...

Q&A: Should Christians use homeopathic medicine and why are climate scientists self-censoring in academic journal articles?

27 Sep 2023
00:37:45

A listener has emailed in to ask where we stand on alternative medicine, such as homeopathy or chiropractors. Is it fine for believers to partake in these kinds of complementary treatments and therapies, alongside traditional evidence-based scientifi...

Creation: The Brethren’s suspicion of the ‘world’, an explosion of joy, Eric Liddell’s sprinting epiphany, and celebrating beauty

20 Sep 2023
00:51:30

Today we start a new series unpacking the theological foundations of much of what we talk about on Matters of Life and Death. Many Christians, going back to church fathers, have understood the grand narrative of scripture through a four-part journey:...

Q&A: The science of the billions-of-years-old Earth, has God deceived us, and are philosophers so useless after all?

13 Sep 2023
00:26:03

Our latest episode tackling questions from the listeners starts by considering whether we can harmonise a belief in modern science and a literalistic reading of the Genesis account of creation. Did God really create the universe in six days only 6,00...

Lucy Letby: Murder on the neonatal ward, Munchausen’s by proxy, doctors versus nurses, and the banality of evil

6 Sep 2023
00:49:40

Britain has been gripped by horror by the recent conviction of a neonatal nurse called Lucy Letby, who murdered seven premature babies and attempted to kill six others at the hospital where she worked. In this episode we discuss this horrifying and t...

Q&A: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, psychosomatic disorders, AI acing exams, and the limitations of true creativity

30 Aug 2023
00:43:30

We have another episode of listener questions today. First, we respond to feedback from a listener with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as ME) who queried how we spoke about the condition in our previous episode touching on Long Covid. What exac...

Space: The James Webb Telescope, hobbits of the universe, astrobiology, and 16 billion billion Earth-like planets

23 Aug 2023
01:10:42

This week we have another classic episode of Matters of Life and Death from the archive. We invited theologian Andrew Davison to join us to talk through the spiritual ramifications of cosmology and what light thinking about the wider universe sheds o...

Evolution: The cosmic watchmaker, a 6,000-year-old Earth, the immorality of mutation, and intelligent uncertainty

16 Aug 2023
01:03:15

Evolution versus creationism is the internal Christian argument which doesn’t go away. We recorded an episode last year exploring this knotty problem and how believers might go about trying to debate it respectfully even if they disagree. We look at...

Abusive leadership: Mike Pilavachi and Soul Survivor, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Sigmund Freud's chaise longue, and Paul-Timothy relationships

9 Aug 2023
01:02:45

It’s been almost two years since we recorded an episode about abusive church leadership inspired by the downfall of Mark Driscoll and the Mars Hill church. Today we re-examine that conversation in the light of the latest scandal rocking the British e...

Suffering: Mystery and presence, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, rediscovering lament and the Gethsemane prayer

2 Aug 2023
01:05:18

We’re bringing you a classic episode of Matters of Life and Death from the archive today, all about suffering. The problem of suffering has been one of the most intractable and painful theological debates for centuries. But is it perhaps not a proble...

Q&A: Karl Barth’s complicated home life, and single Christians considering adoption

26 Jul 2023
00:39:24

In our latest episode tackling some questions from listeners, we begin by thinking about whether it should matter if influential theologians and Christian writers had personal moral failings, and whether we can separate out someone’s theological work...

Covid reconsidered 2: Empty Nightingale hospitals, difficult triage decisions, a failure of Christian leadership, and reconsidering lockdown

19 Jul 2023
00:50:08

Our second ‘lessons learned’ episode looking back at the covid pandemic tackles how our healthcare systems coped, or failed to cope, with the unprecedented crisis of coronavirus. Did we see doctors forced to make impossible choices over who gets a ve...