A French lawyer-turned-theologian who split from Rome — and built his own city of God.

John Calvin fled Catholic France to lead a new Protestant movement in Geneva during the 1500s. His ideas about predestination and the absolute authority of Scripture reshaped Christianity and inspired the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. Yet under his rule, dissenters were exiled, imprisoned, and violently executed. 

Was he a reckless heretic or a visionary thinker centuries ahead of his time — and what does his death say about the danger of new ideas?

GUESTS:

• Randall C. Zachman Professor Emeritus of Reformation Studies, at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, after many decades at University of Notre Dame. 
• Professor Ben Myers at Alphacrucis University College in Brisbane - author of The Apostles’ Creed: A guide to the ancient catechism 
• Dr Constance Lee is Lecturer in Law at Adelaide University, and author of a forthcoming book Natural Law and the Nature of Government: John Calvin’s Constitutional Theology 

This is the fourth episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A Persian poet and scholar who tore off her veil — and announced the dawn of a new religious age. 

In the 1840s, Táhirih became one of the first women to preach in public in Iran. As a leading figure in the Bábí movement — a precursor to the Bahá’í faith — she argued that revelation had not ended and that women should be free to study, speak, and lead. 

Her defiance of clerical and royal authority terrified the establishment. In 1852, she was executed in secret, her body buried in silence. Was Táhirih a prophet of liberation or a heretic undone by her own courage?

GUESTS:

• Professor Negar Mottahedeh — cultural critic and film theorist specialising in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University
• Raya M Hazini — doctoral candidate with her Masters from the Graduate Theological Union
• Dr Zara Moballegh — PhD from Tehran University, she’s now visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Divinity School. 

This is the third episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A former Dominican friar who dared to say the universe had no centre — and paid with his life.

Born in 16th-century Italy, Giordano Bruno broke with Church teachings to imagine an infinite cosmos filled with countless worlds. To him, God was not confined to heaven or hierarchy but alive in every corner of creation. The Inquisition saw it differently. After years of imprisonment and interrogation, Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600. 

Was he a reckless heretic or a visionary thinker centuries ahead of his time — and what does his death say about the danger of new ideas?

GUESTS:

• Ingrid Rowland — Emeritus Professor of History at the US University of Notre Dame. 
• Dilwyn Knox — Emeritus Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College, London 
• Dr Shaun Blanchard — Lecturer in Theology at Notre Dame University Australia.

This is the second episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

A teenage peasant who claimed to hear the voice of God — and changed the course of European history. 

At just seventeen, Joan of Arc convinced the French prince to let her lead an army against the English, turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War. But her victories came at a price: captured, accused of heresy, and burned alive at nineteen. Was she a divinely inspired saviour or a dangerous fanatic? 

Centuries later, her story still provokes questions about faith, gender, and power — and how belief can turn an ordinary girl into a national saint.

GUESTS:

• Dr Charlotte Millar — Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Melbourne.    Author Witchcraft, the Devil & Emotions in Early Modern England
• Dr Stephanie Downes — Lecturer at La Trobe University, an expert on the history of English and French, and of books and writing of the period
• Dr Shaun Blanchard — Lecturer in Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia. His anticipated fifth book – Catholicism and Enlightenment.

This is the first episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels. A six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.

What’s on the other side of the near-death experience?

Only half of all Australians understand Jesus to be a real person who lived at a time and place in history, according to the latest Australian Community Survey.

Two in 10 Australians said Jesus was a mythical or fictional character while three out of 10 didn’t know.

Their doubts stand in contrast to those of ancient historians, classicists and New Testament scholars, who universally accept that Jesus was a real person in time and place in history.

The question here is ontological: what makes “Jesus” Jesus? 

Is it enough that a man called Jesus (or Joshua or Yeshua), who became a charismatic teacher, was born around the turn of the millennium in Palestine? 

GUESTS:

• Dr John Dickson, Anglican cleric, historian and author of Is Jesus History?
• Professor Vrasidis Karalis, Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney
• Rev Dr Karen Pack, lecturer in history at Notre Dame Australia 

Sound Engineer: Antonia Gauci, Music by Russell Stapleton

This program was made on the lands of the Gadigal People

What separates humans from other animals? It’s not our brain hardware. 

It’s our always changing brain software.

For so long, humans believed our brain power separates us from animals: since the earliest human species, our brain size has tripled.

But our brains haven’t grown for 30,000 - probably 300,000 years.

So, why are we the ones who build cities and fly to space?  

Michael Muthukrishna calls it our collective culture.

As every generation passes our operating system gets a free upgrade, and we build on the knowledge of the generation before.

GUEST:

Professor Michael Muthukrishna is at the London School of Economics and, in January 2026, will take up a professorship at New York University 

This program was made on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation

In the Pacific Ocean right now grey, humpback and southern right whale populations are increasing.

This is important for us all ecologically. But for some of us, even more is at stake.

Because around the world, from the equator to the Arctic, from Russia to New Zealand, throughout history and today, humans revere whales, as spiritual ancestors and as harbingers of fortune and protection.

And as we’ll learn, some communities and traditions even worship whales as gods. 

Which makes their near extinction in the 20th century nothing less than deicide.

GUESTS:

• Aike Peter Rots is principal investigator of the Whales of Power project at the University of Oslo.
• Mere Takoko is a leading Maori whale conservationist and founder and CEO of the Pacific Whale Fund.

Two days prior to the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, a group of writers at US-based feminist magazine, Jezebel, published an article stating that they 'Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk’. The magazine has since pulled the article, on the advice of their lawyers, so as not to cause any confusion about their stance on political violence of any kind.  

Is it ever ethical to wish harm on someone, even if that harm is theoretical or supernatural? What code of ethics are witches bound to? And why do witches have such a complex relationship with right-wing politics? 

GUESTS

• Dr Caroline Tully – witchcraft maven, archaeologist, writer, tarot reader, and scholar of modern Pagan religions 
• Dr Kenneth Freeman – Adjunct Professor of social work at North Carolina Central University, author of the research paper Ethical parallels: an exploration of the NASW code of ethics, Wiccan Rede, and the growing influence of Wicca in the United States
• Dr Megan Goodwin – scholar of politics, and American religions, senior editor of Religion Dispatches, and author of Religion is Not Done With You

This episode of God Forbid was made on Gadigal land, in Naarm, and on the land of the Eno, Tuscarora and Occcaneechi peoples.

The art of marking the body, by piercing the flesh and pushing ink into the wound, the tattoo, has had an uneasy relationship with religion.

It's sometimes seen as a desecration of the body, but equally, the tattoo is venerated as a rite of passage and as a form of worship.

Then there are tattoos in the secular context. They are so common in Australia now,  it’s actually hard to find a body under the age of 40 NOT permanently marked by ink.  

It’s a fascinating form of human expression, both in existence for millennia, and changing before our eyes.

GUESTS:

• LARS KRUTAK is an anthropologist and documentary maker who specialises in tattoos and their cultural significance. . His new book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions  (Princeton University Press) explores the role of tattooing cross-culturally. 
• JULIA MAGEAU GRAY is a researcher, documentary maker, and tattoo artist. Julia is credited with revitalising women's tattoo traditions across Melanesia