Matters of Life and Death

In the first part of today’s episode we look at some exciting new research into treatments for the degenerative brain condition Parkinsons’s disease. We’ve known since the 1980s that transplants of brain tissue can slow the disease, but the only source was from the brains of embryos created during IVF. Now, scientists have shown they can create stem cells in the lab which can be coached to grow into the right brain tissue by itself before transplant. Could this be an ethical breakthrough, allowing a radical new Parkinson’s treatment without destroying embryos in the process? In the second half, we think about a question sent in by a listener – why do so many doctors seem committed to futile overtreatment of the elderly in their final years and months? How did the medical profession get stuck into a ‘if in doubt, treat, and always follow the protocol’ culture, and what can Christians who want to avoid needless overtreatment as they die do to prevent this? Read more on the Parkinson’s research - https://singularityhub.com/2025/04/17/parkinsons-patients-say-their-symptoms-eased-after-receiving-millions-of-new-brain-cells • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

This discussion tackles the often-overlooked aspect of shame in the gospel, comparing guilt-forgiveness and honor-shame cultures. It dives into how these cultural frameworks shape identity and behavior, especially in today's social media landscape where public shaming thrives. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on biblical stories of unconditional love, such as the prodigal son, emphasizing acceptance over shame within church communities. The conversation highlights the transformative power of acceptance and the boldness it can inspire in faith.

Two major Supreme Court rulings here in the UK have given us plenty to chew over in this episode. In the first half we explore a judgement about doctors caught up in controversial and tragic life support legal disputes with the parents of deeply ill children. The judges ruled that there should not be automatic anonymity given to these doctors and that they can be named by parents angry that the hospital staff looking after their kids decided it was not in their interests to keep them on life support. Is this a victory for the conservative Christian campaigners who believe the NHS system is too quick to give up on terminally ill children? The same day the Supreme Court also handed down a judgement about the definition of a woman, ruling that sex in the pivotal anti-discrimination law the 2010 Equality Act meant solely biological sex. Therefore, trans women, even those who have been legally recognised by the state as having transitioned gender, do not need to given access to single-sex female spaces such as prisons, changing rooms and women’s refuges. In the second half, we discuss the implications of this ruling – is it a welcome return to embracing the bodies our Creator gave us? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Jess Wyatt, a Vicar in the Church of England and PhD student at Oxford, dives into the intersection of dementia and faith. She discusses how our physical identity relates to personhood, even as cognitive functions decline. The conversation emphasizes the importance of compassionate care and the role of touch in connecting with loved ones affected by dementia. Jess also challenges traditional views on identity, advocating for a holistic understanding rooted in Christian belief. Ultimately, she calls for inclusivity in faith communities to embrace and support those living with dementia.

Graham Tomlin, a vicar and former Bishop of Kensington, leads the Centre for Cultural Witness, aiming to integrate faith into modern life. He recounts his journey from childhood faith to atheism and back, stressing the accessibility of theology. Tomlin discusses the Church of England's struggles with human sexuality debates and its relevance to contemporary identity issues. He emphasizes the importance of making Christianity appealing in a secular world and argues for the resilience of faith amidst skepticism.

One fringe explanation for the fall in birthrates we discussed in last week’s episode is the growing popularity of the antinatalist movement. Antinatalists argue not just that people should be free to not have children if they want to, but that having children is in itself a bad idea. Antinatalists can be motived by many things: concerns over climate change, the ecological crisis, fears about overpopulation and lack of resources on our finite Earth, or even more philosophical notions around the inevitability of suffering or the problem of bringing children into the world without first seeking their consent. It’s easy to dismiss antinatalism as foolish or bizarre, but is there any logic or merit to this perspective? Is Christianity fundamentally a pro-natalist religion, or can believers be justified in choosing not to have children? And what about the honoured tradition of celibacy and voluntary childlessness in church history – is that a form of Christian antinatalism we should be getting behind once more? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

With unerring regularity, birth rates are dropping in almost every country on Earth. What was once assumed to be a rich world problem is now a reality in places as diverse as Chile, Russia, Thailand and the Caribbean. Almost everywhere people are having fewer and fewer children. Many nations, including the UK and the US, are now well below the magic number of 2.1 children per woman, the ‘replacement rate’ needed to maintain a stable population. In this episode we talk through the various theories proposed to explain why this is happening (is it about expensive childcare, birth control or cultural shifts in gender roles?) and also what the implications will be for our societies. And we end by discussing whether Christians should be joining those sounding the alarm about declining birth rates, and what our faith might have to say about the enduring value of having children. Several years ago we recorded a couple of episodes exploring the parallel phenomenon of rising numbers of older people https://www.johnwyatt.com/old-people-1/ Some helpful data on global birth rates in decline https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this classic episode from the MOLAD archive we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen Scrivener to discuss the different spiritualities we encounter, especially among younger generations. Are all non-believers Richard Dawkins style naturalistic atheists, or is there a more complex and contradictory set of belief systems out there for those who don’t call themselves Christians? How should the church’s outreach shift to reflect the contemporary mores of Gen-Z and the pick-and-mix spiritualities they often espouse? And are modern social movements, whether ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ functioning like religions without creeds? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Somewhat unnoticed by many in the British church, in the last few years the UK has imposed draconian new laws which can in some circumstances curtail fundamental religious liberties. In the name of protecting people from intimidating pro-life protests, 150-metre buffer zones now exist around every clinic and hospital which performs abortions in the UK. Inside these zones you can be arrested for doing anything which is deemed to influence women accessing abortion services – but these vague laws have seen a number of Christian pro-lifers arrested simply for standing in silence praying in their heads, or preaching generic gospel messages unrelated to abortion. How did we get to a place where the freedom to express your religion in public is under threat? Are buffer zones a reasonable provision to clamp down on harmful and aggressive fundamentalists? Or are we sleepwalking into a place where basic religious freedoms are accidentally being eroded, and few in the church seem to notice or care? Tim’s newsletter The Critical Friend has covered this story a number of times: https://tswyatt.substack.com/p/silent-prayers-inside-the-buffer?utm_source=publication-search and https://tswyatt.substack.com/p/normal-for-norfolk The Bournemouth case cited by JD Vance in his infamous speech h https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

An under-reported story of the tumultuous first months of the second Donald Trump administration is how his team are brutally cutting back long-established federal institutions. The National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development have seen huge swathes of staff fired, grants paused, funding slashed and projects reliant on government aid abruptly shuttered. This is already having massive consequences downstream, both in research into devastating diseases and in humanitarian work with some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. Why should Christians care about these federal bureaucracies and what Trump is doing to them? Isn’t this just about trimming away woke excesses and focusing on excellence? And what might be lost, including for the church, if the US government gives up on medical research and international development for good? The Washington Post has a good article exploring the destruction and chaos at the NIH: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/03/05/nih-trump-turmoil-grants/ And this New York Times article explains the devastation wrought by the almost total shut-down by USAID https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/usaid-clinical-trials-funding-trump.html?searchResultPosition=2 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com