Quick to Listen

In honor of the long weekend, Morgan and Katelyn thought they would take some time to appreciate the good things in life. Joined with podcast producer and host of CT’s other podcast, The Calling, Richard Clark, Morgan and Katelyn discuss the precious moments they look forward to, a few great articles they’ve read in the last week, and suggest some things our listeners can check out to enrich their weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Sunday, Lebron James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to victory over the Golden State Warriors in Game 7 at home in Oakland. At one time, the Warriors had led the series 3-1, before they lost three in a row for the first time since 2013. During the Warriors’ Game 6 loss to the Cavaliers, Steph Curry fouled out for the first time all year before throwing his mouth guard into the stands. He was then suspended after swearing at the referees. Later, his wife Ayesha Curry tweeted that the game was “absolutely rigged for money” before she later deleted it. Not everyone was happy with the reaction of either Curry, a couple known for their Christian faith. (Some called for the NBA to suspend Steph, while Ayesha deleted her tweet following criticism on Twitter.) While Steph is open about his faith, he has largely communicated this through his actions, rather than bold proclamations of faith, says columnist Marcus Thompson, who has covered the Warriors for nearly two decades. “In the absence of words, you should probably look at how people live,” said Thompson. “Steph’s not going to be the one out there touting himself because in moments like Game 6, when he is human, it will get held against them, whereas if anybody did the exact same thing, there would be no discussion about it. Thompson joined Morgan and Katelyn on Quick to Listen this week to talk about the mentality of Christians athletes, why fans should cut Steph a break, and what Lebron teaches us about what redemption looks like in the world of sports. (9:45) What are most media missing about this story? (14:53) How does Steph deal with the tensions of being a Christian superstar? (25:45) What does redemption mean in sports? What can be redeemed on the court and what can’t? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Forty-nine people lost their lives after a gunman opened fire in an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning. In the days since the shooting, mainstream and social media responses have discussed and analyzed hatred and violence against LGBT communities, the merits of gun control, anti-Muslim sentiments, whether prayer is an appropriate response to tragedies, and if Christians who hold to traditional views on marriage are complicit in anti-LGBT violence. Are the array of opinions and facts available on our phones or television screens actually helping us? “We use media when we can’t be present,” says Andy Crouch, CT’s executive editor. While this type of technology makes many things possible--including this very podcast, and the article you are currently reading--it has several major disadvantages, Crouch says. “The one thing that media are really bad at doing is the one thing needed in the immediate wake of any trauma for any person or community: the silence that’s possible when you’re present in the body but impossible to communicate through media,” he says. Crouch joined Morgan and Katelyn on Quick to Listen this week to discuss social media’s specific disruption to reacting to tragedies, whether our cynicism over prayer is merited, and the dangers of responding to horror as an ideologue. (7:23) Andy, you have previously lamented the way media broadcasting runs on constant information and analysis without leaving room for mourning in silence or prayer. Did we see media work in a similar way in covering the Orlando shooting? (18:31) At what point after tragedy do we start offering up analysis or policy recommendations? (27:30) After tragedy, are there ways prayer inhibits us from action? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former Trump University students say their school duped them into paying as much as $35,000 for its real estate seminars. So they sued and the case is currently in court. You probably know what happened next. Last week, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump went after the judge presiding over the civil fraud lawsuits—because of his ethnicity. “He's Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico,” said Trump, who claimed that the Indiana-born US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel faced an “absolute conflict,” in ruling on the billionaire’s case. Trump’s words were the “textbook definition of a racist comment,” said GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Trump has since suggested that his remarks were “misconstrued.” Trump’s words were wrong, but it’s also incorrect to think that someone can do their jobs without their ethnic background coming into play, said Gabriel Salguero, the founder and president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, who joined Quick to Listen this week. “God’s sovereign will places us into the context into which we’re born,” said Salguero. “Does that impact how we see the world? Of course it does! The Christian shouldn’t see diversity as a deficit but as a gift.” One reason why we often see others as threats: fears of limited resources, says Alma Zaragoza-Petty, the daughter of Mexican immigrants. who recently completed her Ph.D in educational policy and social context at UC Irvine and who also came on Quick to Listen. But “God’s love is abundant,” said Zaragoza-Petty. Zaragoza-Petty and Salguero joined Morgan and Katelyn on Quick to Listen this week to talk about whether a person’s ethnicity should affect how their work and who decides who gets to be an America. (6:50) Are there times when our ethnic background actually should or can influence the way we do our jobs? (14:50) How do we determine who is an American, and who gets to decide that? (23:20) How have you seen fears of scarcity of resources in your own community and how have you responded to it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last Saturday, a four-year-old boy climbed the wall of the Cincinnati Zoo’s gorilla exhibit and tumbled into the moat. After Harambe, the zoo’s 17-year-old gorilla, dragged the boy through the water multiple times, a zookeeper shot and killed the animal. Over the weekend, the story provoked national speculation, fury, and sadness over parenting, zoos, and dead animals. While zoo officials were right to kill Harambe to protect the toddler, the Bible is clear that animals have value, says Karen Swallow Prior, an English professor at Liberty University, and a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States. “Let’s go back to Genesis and the Bible. Very clearly there is something that we as human beings share with animals, in terms of having animation, having a moving spirit,” said Prior. “We are made in God’s image, animals are not, but we still have the breath of life in us. God himself indicates in the Genesis account that there is a special relationship between humans and animals because God gives Adam the job of naming animals.” Prior joined Morgan and Katelyn on Quick to Listen this week to talk about the history of zoos, if we should apply human emotions to animals, and whether animals go to heaven. (6:50) What are the objects of the public’s love in this story? (14:50) For many, this story pits animals against humans. Is that a false choice? Why do we prioritize the child’s life over the gorilla’s? (21:20) What do zoos assume about the way the world should be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, 10 states announced that they would sue the Obama administration following its executive order mandating that school districts allow transgender students to use their bathroom of their preferred gender. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed an amendment aimed at preventing the US government from withholding federal funds from North Carolina, after the state passed its controversial “bathroom bill,” requiring people to use the bathroom that matches their birth certificate this March. This comes on the heels of the Justice Department’s decision to sue the state for the law for “state-sponsored discrimination.” Few of these political fights have helped anyone better understand the nuances of transgenderism, says Mark Yarhouse, the author of Understanding Gender Dysphoria and founder of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity. “People experience legislation as an attack on the things that they believe in, and other people think that legislation is symbolic of the things that matter the most to them,” he said. “You could easily have two sides speaking past each other. I think that’s what we have today.” CT believes that God created people with male and female identities and would generally encourage integration and alignment of gender identity with biological sex, based on a creational account of male and female (Gen. 1-2) and the overall goodness of bodies and embodiment. But what does that belief mean for how Christians engage this topic in the world? Yarhouse joined Morgan and Katelyn on Quick to Listen this week to discuss what’s behind the term cis-gender, what the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage may mean about evangelicals’ response, and how one transgender Christian has handled the bathroom conversation in her church. (5:30) What do bathrooms have to do with larger discussions about gender identity and the broader LGBTQ movement? (8:45) Is it accurate to describe transgender people as an immutable class or is it more complicated than that? (14:20) What ways other than politics and reality shows that Americans can learn more about the transgender experience? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably glanced at--and maybe clicked into--the trending headlines on your timeline. Maybe you thought these stories were generated by an algorithm. You’d be wrong. Instead, Facebook employed a team of people who selected these stories, with a bit of influence from management. Higher-ups repeatedly instructed the team to keep “stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users,” reported Gizmodo, which broke the story. “Facebook’s bottom line and their shareholders’ best interests are Facebook’s best interests,” said our guest Adam Graber, who writes about technology and the church. “Facebook wants to keep you on their site and keep you clicking. If they can keep a trending topics bar to help you do that, they’re going do that. Yes, they’re looking to keep their users happy but their users aren’t necessarily the ones driving the value of their site.” Graber joined Morgan and guest co-host Ted Olsen to discuss why we value neutrality, how algorithms can both benefit our lives and warp our realities, and whether there’s overlap in CT’s own practices and those of its trending curators. (3:09) What is an algorithm? (5:25) What makes Facebook’s actions so distressing? (12:27) Given previous decisions, can and should Facebook, as a content distributor and business, actually be neutral? (20:26) How can we consume content and order information in ways that are inherently more or less Christian? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, John Kasich and Ted Cruz suspended their presidential campaigns, making Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee. The news left many evangelicals praying for Nebraska senator and avid Trump critic Ben Sasse to jump into the race as a third party candidate and sharing Russell Moore’s article on voting for “the lesser of two evils.” D.C.-based pastor and writer Thabiti Anyabwile took a different tact. “Let the hate begin,” he tweeted earlier this week. “But if choice is between [Hillary] Clinton and Trump, I'm voting Clinton. I'll go back to not voting when this man is defeated!” But a lot of people aren’t convinced. Just prior to Cruz’s concession, polls showed anywhere between 16 percent to 24 percent of churchgoing evangelical voters faced with a Trump vs. Clinton matchup, would choose to stay home or vote for a third-party candidate. (Here’s a deep dive into the numbers.) Anyabwile, who has emphatically stated that he is no fan of Clinton, has abstained from voting in recent previous presidential elections. “For the last several elections, I’ve been that principled guy saying ‘I just can’t vote for anybody,’” Anyabwile said. “But this particular election has brought me to a place where I’m staring my principles in the face and I have a different type of crisis of conscience. I can’t opt for a personal type of quietism here, where I palliate my own conscience. I actually have to inform my conscience.” Anyabwile joins Katelyn and Morgan on this week’s Quick to Listen to discuss third party options, what it’s historically like to vote as an African American, and what makes the Trump option different. (5:49) In response to Trump's likely Republican win, many Christians are advocating for a third-party option. Thabiti, you have explicitly critiqued that option. Why? (15:42) What does it mean to inform your conscience? How should our consciences play a role in determining how to vote? How can they also mislead us? (17:35) It’s rare that most people have found candidates who represent all their interests—in fact, many times minorities have had candidates representing their parties who have little love or interest in serving their needs. To what extent are those calling for a third party candidate showing their privilege in expecting to have a candidate that primarily agrees with them? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everything’s possible if you work hard enough. At least that’s what shows Biggest Loser (NBC), Extreme Weight Loss (ABC) and Fit to Fat to Fit (A&E) suggest to their audiences. But it’s not necessarily true, as The New York Times reported this week in an in-depth examination about the lives of Biggest Loser contestants—many of whom regained the weight they had lost over the course of the show after they left. As the Times reports, biology—specifically one’s metabolism—plays a significant role in determining a person’s weight and their ability to lose weight. This news may bring relief to the former contestants, but it also ought to challenge society about its own assumptions about individuals and weight. “As Christians we want to be welcoming to everyone and not judge someone based on their size but when it gets down to it, a lot of times we may think What is wrong with this person that they haven’t taken care of their health?” says CT’s online associate editor and reality television show fan Kate Shellnutt. Shellnutt joins Morgan and Katelyn this week in Quick to Listen to discuss the relationship between social media and weight loss, how reality TV shames the wrong people, and how we can honor ourselves. One of the main contestants profiled in the NYT piece is a pastor in North Carolina who gained back a significant amount of weight after going on the show. He says his metabolism is now so slow, “It’s kind of like hearing you have a life sentence." How does this idea challenge common conceptions about people who are overweight or obese, such as, "It's all their fault," "they're lazy," etc.? What's going on in our attraction to reality TV shows? How do they speak to our particular cultural moment or spiritual desires? What's holistic health? Are there specific ways Christian communities can lead on the issue of holistic health? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Saturday, Beyoncé released her 12-song visual album, Lemonade, in which the 20-time Grammy award winning artist known for “Single Ladies,” “Irreplaceable,” and “Crazy in Love,” explored themes of anger, loss, redemption, and resurrection. The album’s lyrics and imagery also included a plethora of Christian references, including mentions of the “Holy Book,” “baptism”, and visuals of the Bible. “Chapters” within the visual album are named “emptiness,” “forgiveness,” “resurrection,” and “redemption.” “[I] went to the basement, confessed my sins, and was baptized in a river,” Beyonce says at the beginning of “Intuition.” “I got on my knees and said 'amen'... and said 'I mean.'” In “Anger,” text reading “God is God and I am not” momentarily appears on the screen, a section that moved Zakiya N. Jackson, who wrote about her initial reaction to the album’s release on Collected Young Minds. “It really is about being frustrated and angry, this sense of this isn’t right, what I have experienced. But even in the midst of this, there’s this acknowledgement that I can’t control all of this,” she said. “I love that because this place of letting go is acknowledging that God is bigger than me and that I can’t make everything the way I want it to be.” Jackson joined Morgan and Katelyn on this week’s Quick to Listen to discuss what Beyonce means to black women, what makes her message stand apart, and whether it’s time to make more lemonade. -What makes Beyonce unique? What about her work moves you? -As Christians, how did you interpret or perceive the religious references in the visual album? -It seems like the significance of Beyonce’s work is tied to her identity as a black woman. Why is that important? Why does that that resonate? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices