Is evil structural, spiritual, or a bit of both? Do acts of selfishness or sin have cascading effects that reverberate through history? Can we shine a light on contemporary Western politics by imagining how our politicians would react to a figure like Jesus and the movement he inspired? All these questions and more (mostly about Israel and its war on the people of Palestine) are covered in this discussion between Jonty and Justin Butcher, Author and star of The Devil's Passion, which you can watch in London on Palm Sunday 2024. The Devil's Passion is a one-man play that blends historical ..read more

Do you feel like you belong at your church? Have you found your people? Do you feel at home?   In this episode we explore how much dogma, belief, diversity, relatability and stage of life determine whether we feel 'at home' in church.  Along the way we ask what makes a really good home group (spoiler: it may be Jonty and Malky), we discuss  wehter the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints is right for people who dislike Joseph Smith, and Laura stages a coup d' podcast with the help of her fancy new mic.  Identity, dogma, community and inclusion, all in this episo ..read more

Is the essence of Christianity basically Judaism through a Zen lens? Can we understand some great artists and theologians better if we assume performative masculinity? Is there really a crack in everything? Is it where the light gets in?  In Episode 92 of Beer Christianity we answer these and other important questions (like: Is later Leonard Cohen better than his earlier oeuvre? Is Avalanche the most devastatingly romantic song in history? Do you know what I'm thinking and who does vengeance belong to?) with Matthew Anderson, Pauline scholar, Leonard Cohen aficionado and author of Prophet ..read more

AI is going to save the world. Or kill us all. Or another, secret, third thing. Trying to find a pattern of truth within all the cultural noise about Artificial Intelligence is pretty hard right now, so we turned to someone who has been working on and with AI since the 1980s. Jean-Louis Ecochard has been in on the development of everythting from caller ID and online banking to video conferencing and e-health, and was one of the people behind what became WebMD. He now heads up the Center for the Digital Nonprofit and is Senior Head of Innovation for Nethope, an organisation that acts as a bridg ..read more

Socialism means 'bad', right?  That's what many of our churches assume. Whenever anyone suggests Socialism as an option, many Christians have a set of anti-Socialist questions locked and loaded, ready to fire. We decided to put some of them to an expert. To us, Socialism is really just a system of making sure nobody is left behind, of controlling greed and making sure it doesn't result in needless suffering.  It's not a perfect system/ideology (and there are many variations, versions and expressions), but if you've ever felt like the Capitalist system most of us live under is not wor ..read more

The Democratic Republic of Congo and its citizens should, by rights, be among the richest in the world. Congo is a country with vast and rich natural resources, abundant  potential energy and a strategic place in the heart of Africa. And yet, Congo is currently home to one fo the worst humanitarian crises on earth, and its history is littered with genocides and wars that rival the scale of Europe's World Wars. The vast majority of Congo's people are not rich -- and many face brutality we cannot imagine.  Since 1998, more than six million people have been killed in Congo, and the kill ..read more

  Jolyon Maugham has been called 'Public Enemy No. 1" by terrible right wing newspapers, attacked by Rishi Sunak and belittled with smears by the BBC.  And if that wasn't enough to make you love him, he also heads up an organisation that works for justice in our laws and legal system, challenging powerful elites and holding wealthy corporations and careless governments to account on behalf of ordinary people. Come to think of it, the smears on his name may have something to do with that. Jolyon joined us to talk about the most popular of the slurs he's faced and the story behind it ..read more

That's a nice patriarchy you got there. Be a shame if someone were to smash it... Whether your church is complementarian, soft complementarian, egalitarian or has never thought about the distinction, the odds are good that patriarchy is damaging people in your fellowship, and damaging the witness and ministry of your church. In this episode we examine how this happens, and why - and what we can do about it, taking our lead from author Liz Cooledge Jenkins. Her book, Nice Churchy Patriarchy: Reclaiming Women's Humanity From Evangelicalism, is an excellent starting place (with an excellent furth ..read more

A few weeks ago, Malky and Jonty travelled to London to take part in a large (though it turns out not the largest) march to protest the continued Israeli bombing of civilians in Gaza and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine through Occupation and settlements.     It was peaceful. It wass diverse. It included Jewish groups, Christians, trade unions, trans people, queer people, liberals, socialists and a whole bunch more. It was  pretty damn wholesome.  Laura was there in spirit. Since then, Suella Braverman has called these peaceful demonstrations 'hate-marches' and sai ..read more

Steve Tinning is a Baptist Minister, a Public Issues Enabler for the Baptist Union of Great Britain and one of the team that makes Beer and Hymns happen at Greenbelt festival.  Steve is a lovely chap and talks to us about his secondment to JPIT (the Joint Public Issues Team of the Baptist, URC and Methodist churches), issues of asylum and refugee response, and about different responses to Ukrainian and other groups of refugees. But we also got him on the show to talk about one of our favourite things: Beer and Hymns. Steve tells us a little about the origins and spread of the idea, how he ..read more