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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.In recent weeks, American cities, suburbs, and small towns have seen an explosion of protests reacting to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Even as many have commented on the racial diversity of the demonstrators, many of those organizing the marches are young African Americans activists.But while black pastors have organized several marches in major cities like Chicago and Washington DC, they have not been at the forefront of a movement that arguably began back in Ferguson in 2014. “While you may have had many black pastors and clergy who may have shown up at events, and you may have had a lot of people from black churches who were at these marches and protests, from 2014 to the present, by and large, this has not been a theological movement,” said Watson Jones III, the senior pastor of Compassion Baptist Church in Chicago. “It hasn't been a movement that has started in the basements of churches, in prayer meetings, and altars that flooded out into the streets.”Despite this, Watson believes that some of what is fueling many of the young black activist leaders ties back to this institution. “Much of how they do what they do are examples of things that early clergy and faithful Christians did in the ’50s, ’60s, and even ’70s, but there is an absence of clergy leading this movement,” he said.Watson joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss why the black church’s approach to activism has never been a monolith, how the community’s preaching is speaking to current events, and the extent to which the black church is struggling to keep young people engaged. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenFollow our guest on Twitter: Watson Jones IIIMusic by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.In the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets to protest police brutality. Video of Floyd’s final moments as a police officer used his knee to pin his neck and his three colleagues looked on prompted a strong reaction from around this country.While perhaps more white evangelicals have spoken out against the police officers’ actions than after previous acts of police brutality made national news, some of the ways that they are framing their statements about law enforcement suggests they actually aren’t getting it, says Aaron L. Griffith, assistant professor of history at Sattler College in Boston.“I worry that many white evangelicals are talking about the problem of police brutality in terms of the exceptions, in terms of the bad apples. And then proposing things like more training or pushing more into the colorblind frame or even mobilizing language like ‘racial reconciliation,’ to say that black Americans have an opportunity to forgive and befriend the officers in their midst,” said Griffith, who is also the author of the forthcoming God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America.“That is very concerning to me because we've seen this before.We've seen this in moves toward community policing, which envisions the police as more closely connected, and perhaps even friendly, to the neighborhoods they serve,” he said. “But community policing projects are really much more about just changing perceptions of law enforcement, not the practices of how they operate. And really, making police more directly connected to communities, embedding them more closely in communities, often just exposes residents to more interactions and more risks.”Griffith joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss the origins of the police, how a desire to reach teenagers affected attitudes toward law enforcement, and if white evangelicals views are changing or not.What is Quick to Listen? Read moreRate Quick to Listen on Apple PodcastsFollow the podcast on TwitterFollow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenFollow our guest on Twitter: Aaron L. GriffithMusic by SweepsQuick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt LinderThe transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.California’s Department of Health’s reopening guidelines for houses of worship contain bitter news for those who love corporate worship. “Strongly consider discontinuing singing, group recitation, and other practices and performances where there is increased likelihood for transmission from contaminated exhaled droplets,” the report warns.In another section it notes, “ Activities such as singing and group recitation negate the risk-reduction achieved through six feet of physical distancing.”Absorbing this is tough news for those who feel most connected to God and others through music.“There is something about articulating our emotional state and using music, using song, as a means of expressing ourselves before the Lord. And that's deep in the Christian tradition, from singing and praying the Psalms to the early hymns in the New Testament like in Luke's gospel and peppered through Paul's letters,” said Glenn Packiam, associate senior pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “There was also a reputation that early Christians get. In Pliny’s letter to the emperor, he says, “These strange Christians get together before sunrise and they sing these hymns to Christ as if to a God.”“There's something about song that helps us express more than just what the words of the song are saying,” continued Packiam, who is also the author of the forthcoming book, Worship and the World to Come Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship.Packiam joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss how his church has handled the pandemic from a worship perspective, what makes corporate singing special, and what it means that eschatology is missing from our worship music. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenVisit our guest’s website: Glenn PackiamRead more about Packiam’s church: New Life After the Fall of Ted HaggardMusic by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” That these 17 words were uttered by a woman named Julian of Norwich may be the only thing you know about this 14th-century English saint. Historians don’t necessarily know that much more. We’re not even sure her real name. So why do we remember her?In this episode of Prayer amid Pandemic, Amy Laura Hall, the author of Laughing at the Devil: Seeing the World with Julian of Norwich and a Christian ethics professor at Duke Divinity School, tell us why we know so little about Julian’s identity but why we still read her writings on the vision she received while sick today.Gideon Para-Mallam, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students regional secretary for English and Portuguese-speaking Africa, offers this week’s prayer.Read Christianity Today’s latest coronavirus coverageWhat is Prayer amid Pandemic? Read moreRate Prayer amid Pandemic on Apple PodcastsFollow the podcast on TwitterFollow the host on Twitter: Morgan LeeMusic by Urban Nerd Beats, Prod. Riddiman, and Oliver DúvelPrayer amid Pandemic is produced by Morgan Lee, Mike Cosper, and Erik Petrik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.Plandemic? QAnon? Bill Gates creating the COVID-19? As the novel coronavirus has traveled around the world, so too have conspiracy theories about the origins of the disease and the winners and losers that have emerged as result. In the past month, a video making claims that Gates and Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, used COVID-19 to gain money and political power, went viral. At the same time as Plandemic, The Atlantic launched a new series examining conspiracy theories, including an in-depth look at the QAnon, a movement that makes bold claims about the global elite.The Bible has many things to say about conspiracy theories, specifically with regards for how Christians should determine what is real, says Dru Johnson, the director of the Center for Hebraic Thought and who wrote about conspiracy theories for CT in December.“The biblical diagnosis, the biblical impulse here, is not that you have to be afraid of someone lying to you. It's that somebody will always be interpreting your world for you,” said Johnson. “And you have to lean into the wise practices that God has given us as people to discern what is worth listening to and what's not.”“People say that God sent COVID-19 to bring the Church in America together to teach us the lesson. How could we know such a thing?” said Johnson, who also teaches biblical studies and theology at The King’s College in New York City. “But I certainly do believe that God is using this as a test of us. A test of who we trust and how we think about what's worth trusting and understanding.”Johnson joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to share about how the Bible discusses conspiracy theories, what Paul means when he writes about the mysteries of God, and what differentiates a conspiracy theory from a religion. What is Quick to Listen? Read moreRate Quick to Listen on Apple PodcastsFollow the podcast on TwitterFollow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenFollow our guest on Twitter: Dru JohnsonVisit our guest’s website: Dru JohnsonMusic by SweepsQuick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt LinderThe transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.Last week, a video was leaked of a white man shooting and killing Georgia jogger Ahmaud Arbery in his neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia. While Arbery’s death occurred in February, the alleged shooter and his father were only arrested last week following a massive public uproar following the release of the tape.Many Christians, of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, have condemned the Arbery’s killing. But widespread condemnation from the church for these types of killings was not always the case.For years, for white Christians, “the critique of lynching rarely moved beyond ‘Lynching is anarchy, and we need to kind of reinforce the rule of law,’” said Malcolm Foley, a PhD candidate in Baylor University’s Department of Religion, whose dissertation examines African-American Christian responses to lynching from the late 19th century to the early 20th century,Not surprisingly, the black church took a much more forceful response to these atrocities.“Many black pastors were commenting on this and saying, ‘If you can either stand in a mob of thousands of people and watch a black man be set on fire alive, or if you are one of the people holding the rifles that riddled this body with bullets, you're most likely not a Christian,’” said Foley, who is also the director of discipleship at Mosaic Waco.Foley joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss the colonial history of lynching, how beliefs about white women provided justification for this violence, and how lynchings changed the theology of the black and white church.What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenFollow our guest on Twitter: Malcolm FoleyMusic by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.Last week, Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas announced plans for the city’s reopening. Churches are among the institutions that will be allowed to open this month: with one caveat. Any business or establishment that allows people to stay for more than 10 minutes must allow attendees or customers to sign a sheet with all their contact information, to allow for contact tracers to contact them if there was later a COVID-19 outbreak at the establishment.The conservative Christian law firm Liberty Counsel compared Kansas City’s actions those of Nazi Germany.“The Germans did this very thing to Jews – collecting the names and locations of all known synagogue attendees - in the early days of the Nazi regime,” Founder and Chairman Mat Staver wrote in a fundraising appeal. “Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined Nazi-like measures designed to surveil, track and spy upon what was once a FREE American people. Yet that is exactly what Kansas City’s misguided government officials are now demanding.”Kansas City mishandled this situation, says Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy arm.“I have almost no doubt that this was taking place due to very well-intentioned people, but there's a reason why that raises a sense of alarm in all kinds of people–and not just the conspiracy theory, propagating people who are complaining about having to wear masks in the grocery store,” he said. “...I think governments, even when they're well-intentioned, have to think through what are the implications going to be, how can somebody use this policy I'm putting into place in another time and for another reason, and how am I communicating it?”Moore joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss how COVID-19 may shape religious freedom battles in the future, where churches should look for wisdom and guidance as they reopen, and what he finds surprising about how congregations have responded to social distancing.What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenFollow our guest on Twitter: Russell MooreMusic by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.As governors across the U.S. consider whether to relax stay at home orders, many are pitting the words “politics” and “economics” against the word “science.” California Governor Gavin Newsom, for example, told the Los Angeles Times.“We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science.”And as Governor Brian Kemp opened up Georgia, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms urged people to “Follow the data, look at the science, listen to the health care professionals and use your common sense.”Similar calls to “believe in science” or “listen to science” are all over policy debates and social media fights. But what does it mean to “believe in science”? And does “science” have a unified answer to questions like “who gets a ventilator,” or whether your child should go to summer camp?We should be cautious when suggesting that science can speak in such a unified voice, says Sy Garte, a biochemist who has taught at New York University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Rutgers University.“The idea that ‘science says’—suggesting that it's easy to come up with a consensus, a uniform, finished version of what is true—that's a problem because that's very rarely the case,” said Garte, who is also the editor in chief of God and Nature, a magazine from the American Scientific Affiliation. “One of the things you find out if you're a working scientist is that almost every answer brings up new questions. So we never actually finish learning anything in any field of science. We are continually trying to get deeper and learn more.”Garte joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss the historic distrust between Christians and science, what science can and cannot answer, and how Christians should engage in conversations with neighbors who are suspicious of science.What is Quick to Listen? Read moreRate Quick to Listen on Apple PodcastsFollow the podcast on TwitterFollow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenLearn more about Sy Garte’s Book: The Work of His HandsRead Sy’s testimonyRead CT’s coverage of the BioLogos’ Francis Collins eventMusic by SweepsQuick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt LinderThe transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.In October 2016, an Access Hollywood video clip of Donald Trump making demeaning remarks about women was leaked.In the aftermath of this revelation, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Al Mohler, wrote for The Washington Post. “Trump’s horrifying statements, heard in his own proud voice, revealed an objectification of women and a sexual predation that must make continued support for Trump impossible for any evangelical leader.”But last week, Mohler said that the “partisan divide had become so great” and Democrats had “swerved so far to the left” on issues of abortion, religious liberty, and LGBT issues that he planned to vote Republican for the rest of his life. This, of course, includes voting to reelect Trump this fall.One of the disappointing things about Mohler’s remarks was that they came during a pandemic and a terrible economic downturn, said conservative evangelical writer David French, who has been outspoken about his opposition to Trump since 2016.“While I don't put all that on Trump's feet, he just did some really incompetent things that had a severe cost,” said French. “And then to come in the middle of that, while we're bearing that cost, and to say ‘Four more years,’ seems to be indicating that evangelicals are saying, ‘As long as you're okay on the checklist, no matter your character, no matter what else is happening in the country, we're with you.’ I just found that to be very narrow.”French joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss what white evangelicals can learn about political engagement from black Christians, why white evangelicals by and large have not been disturbed by Trump’s cruelty, and at what points French’s own #NeverTrump convictions have been most-tested.What is Quick to Listen? Read moreRate Quick to Listen on Apple PodcastsFollow the podcast on TwitterFollow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenFind our guest on Twitter: David FrenchSubscribe to The French PressMusic by SweepsQuick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt LinderThe transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has the largest evangelical archeology program. It’s also the only evangelical institution to offer a doctoral degree in the field. But this school year will be its last.“We will no longer offer degrees in archaeology because they are incongruent with our mission to maximize resources in the training of pastors and other ministers of the gospel for the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Southwestern announced in a statement. Southwestern also suggested that its decision was linked to the spread of COVID-19 and the pandemic will curtail some digs this year, says John Monson, associate professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.But ultimately, Monson doesn’t think that the disease is the greatest threat to the discipline.“This is a field that's been around since Napoleon Bonaparte, so about 1799, and it's weathered a lot more than this coronavirus,” said Monson, whose archaeological fieldwork has taken him to Syria, Lebanon, and numerous excavations in Israel. “And there's always been an interest in the Bible and there still is an interest in the Bible in much of the world today….I think the bigger challenge is going to be continued interest on the part of Christians and particularly evangelical institutions.”Monson joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss where Southwestern’s shutdown of their program leaves the state of biblical archeology, how apologetics fits into this discipline, and what happens when what scripture suggests and what is found on the ground doesn’t exactly line up.What is Quick to Listen? Read moreRate Quick to Listen on Apple PodcastsFollow the podcast on TwitterFollow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted OlsenMusic by SweepsQuick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt LinderThe transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices