The Apologetics Podcast Vocab Malone: Barry versus the Black Hebrew Israelites + "One Vision" (Queen)
Your intrepid cohosts have been watching a lot of films with their families during this season of social distancing, so it’s not surprising that so many movies make appearances in this week’s episode.
The first film that shows up is the 2016 Netflix film Barry, a fictional look at what Barack Obama’s first year at Columbia University might have been like. At one point in this film, a young Barack Obama confronts a band of Black Hebrew Israelites in Harlem. Urban apologist Vocab Malone—author of the book Barack Obama versus the Black Hebrew Israelites—uses this scene as a starting-point to help listeners to understand the rapidly-growing Black Hebrew Israelite movement. Along the way, Vocab Malone reveals his longstanding affection for an early doo-wop group that almost no one else remembers, and he describes how he once danced with the Transformers at Comic-Con.
The second film to make an appearance is the 2018 animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. This film shows up because Timothy’s thirteen-year-old sends Spider-Gwen into battle against a fireball-breathing platypus that's the property of Garrick’s thirteen-year-old in this week's Toybox Hero Tournament. The result is a spider-person and platypus supergroup that will one day rule the world.
The next film is Iron Eagle, which happens to be one of Garrick’s favorite childhood film. This film also represents the low point of intelligent dialogue in the year 1986 (not including that one time in the autumn of 1986 when thirteen-year-old Timothy attempted to express his feelings for a member of the opposite sex, which consisted mostly of indecipherable grunts punctuated by several hundred repetitions of "um, I really, um"). The reason Iron Eagle shows up is because the movie's soundtrack included the song “One Vision” by Queen, which is the focus of the second half of the episode.
In the process of analyzing “One Vision,” Garrick and Timothy trace the religious journey of Queen’s lead vocalist Freddie Mercury from Zoroastrianism to an apparent fascination with certain aspects of Christianity. What Freddie Mercury's journey reveals is humanity’s inescapable yearning for oneness and harmony—a yearning that can't be fulfilled apart from an embrace of the gospel.
It may also reveal that all humanity can unite around fried chicken.
Also, even though Iron Eagle was a terrible movie, it would make an amazing name for a band.
The high point of this week’s episode takes place while Garrick and Timothy are adulating the four-octave wonder of Freddie Mercury’s voice. That’s when Garrick poses the most mind-blowing question ever uttered on this podcast: What if Steve Perry and Freddie Mercury had formed a supergroup and sang together? Besides ripping the space-time continuum, this combination would have—the dynamic duo realizes—produced the world-saving song that Bill and Ted were tasked with writing in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
The new cover art for this season was created by Dani Wallace (daniwallace.myportfolio.com).
This Week’s Guest
Vocab Malone was born and raised on the south side of Columbus, Ohio. He holds a master’s degree from Phoenix Seminary and is a doctoral student at Talbot School of Theology. Vocab’s ministry focus is urban apologetics and cultural worldview analysis. Vocab is a member of First Arabic Baptist Church in Arizona, and he's the author of Barack Obama vs the Black Hebrew Israelites: An Introduction to the History and Beliefs of 1West Hebrew Israelism.
Links to Click
For God So Loved the World: book edited by Dayton Hartman and Walter Strickland
Barack Obama vs the Black Hebrew Israelites: book by Vocab Malone
Black Christians You Should Know: YouTube series by Vocab Malone
I Wonder Why: song by Dion and the Belmonts
What's Up Danger?: song by Blackway and Black Caviar
Fabulous: song by Phineas and Bobby Fabulous
Some Kind of Magic: album by Queen
One Vision: song by Queen
Iron Eagle: movie trailer
Bill and Ted Face the Music: movie trailer
The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: book edited and translated by John T. Scott
Essays on Religion, Science, and Society: book by Herman Bavinck
Jesus: song by Queen
The Show Must Go On: song by Queen
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The Closing Credits
Three Chords and the Truth: The Apologetics Podcast thanks B&H Academic for their sponsorship. Music for the podcast has been licensed through Artlist.io and performed by Trent Thompson. Brief excerpts of music played in each program are included solely for the purposes of comment and critique as allowed under the fair-use provision of U.S. copyright law. “The fair use of a copyrighted work … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, … scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright” (U.S. Code § 107, Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use).