Life and Books and Everything

By Kevin DeYoung

Arts Religion & Spirituality Christianity

What's Life and Books and Everything about?

Life and Books and Everything is a podcast hosted by Kevin DeYoung where discussions center on, well, life and books and everything. As a church pastor and theology professor, Kevin loves to talk about faith, theology, history, current events, and the occasional hot topic. The format for LBE includes interviews with leading authors and thinkers, recurring conversations with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen, and the occasional solo musing from Kevin. Listen in and we hope you will learn something, laugh a little, and get some good book recommendations along the way.

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A Fuller Measure of Withers...

01.30.2023

A Princeton University president, teacher, preacher, politician, Declaration of Independence signatory, and a slave owner. As an early American patriot, John Witherspoon has been the center of some recent controversy as a statue of him may be removed from historic ...

Life and Books and Everything episodes:

01.30.2023 A Fuller Measure of Witherspoon on Slavery A Princeton University president, teacher, preacher, politician, Declaration of Independence signatory, and a slave owner. As an early American patriot, John Witherspoon has been the center of some recent controversy as a statue of him may be removed from historic ...
01.18.2023 Is the Church Failing at Being a Church? Before we denounce most leaders as Pharisees and large swaths of the church as complicit in the evil deeds of darkness, let’s make sure we are not trafficking in well-meaning, but unhelpful, myths. This article, written for WORLD Opinions, urges ...
01.17.2023 Football, the Future, and Personal Piety with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen If you want a longer-than-usual discussion about football, you’ve come to the right episode. After ruminating on why Americans like football so much, the three amigos turn their attention to more familiar themes, prognosticating on which Christians around today will ...
01.10.2023 The Economics of Abortion in One Lesson In this Episode from an written for Christ Over All, Kevin discusses the moral and economic affects that abortion has on mothers, families, and women.
01.04.2023 A New Goal for the New Year There are many worthwhile battles to fight in life. The most important, most necessary, and most dangerous is the war we must wage against sin, flesh, and the devil. A new year means new opportunities to grow as Christians. This ...
12.29.2022 John Witherspoon: President and Patriot A Princeton University president, teacher, preacher, politician, Declaration of Independence signatory, and a slave owner. As an early American patriot, John Witherspoon has been the center some recent controversy as a statue of him may be removed from historic Princeton ...
12.23.2022 The Promise of Christmas In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from his recent article in WORLD opinions about the curse in the garden, the hope and promise of Christ's coming, and our restoration to communion with God.
12.14.2022 Pastor, Don't Get Cute this Christmas Kevin reads from his article in The Gospel Coalition to encourage pastors to forego the cliche and cute and stick to preaching "the old, old story" this Christmas.
12.13.2022 Christmas, Best Books, and Renewing Evangelicalism with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen The gang is back for one last episode in 2022. There is the usual sports banter (very brief), and some good natured ribbing toward Justin, who seems to know nothing about pop culture but still has dreams about Elvis. The ...
12.09.2022 A Dust-up among the Historians For as much as the CFH talks about inclusion and the free exchange of ideas, it is clear that the present leadership of the historical guild assumes conclusions on the left. In this response to a recent article published by ...
12.07.2022 What is Conservatism? with Daniel McCarthy Several months ago, Daniel McCarthy—editor of Modern Age and Editor-at-Large of The American Conservative—published an essay in First Things entitled “The Right Right.” McCarthy’s essay was a review of Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery and Matthew Continetti’s The Right: The ...
12.06.2022 Who Was St. Nicholas? With what little we know about St. Nicholas, it is safe to say he would not be pleased to know he had eclipsed Christ in the hearts of many as the central figure of Christmas. In this episode, Kevin reads ...
12.02.2022 What Should Christians Think About Same-Sex Marriage? In this article written for Crossway, Kevin discusses the meaning of the term "marriage" and how Christians should view same-sex unions.
12.01.2022 The Darkness Does Not Win With so many sad things in our world, it can be difficult to see any bright spots. This article reminds Christians of the hope of Christmas.
11.30.2022 A Plea to Pastors: Don’t Cancel Church on Christmas In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads his article from The Gospel Coalition and pleads with pastors not to cancel Christmas services this year.
11.24.2022 A People of Public Thanksgiving Happy Thanksgiving from Life and Books and Everything! In this episode, Kevin reads from his recent article in WORLD Opinions about the history of an American holiday and the opportunity it presents to Christians to display their thankfulness.
11.23.2022 The Process of Church Disestablishment in America with Jonathan Den Hartog If you love long words like antidisestablishmentarianism and are looking for a deep dive into history, then this episode is for you. Jonathan is a professor at Samford University who specializes in the founding era of American history. He joins ...
11.18.2022 Life and Ministry with Mark Dever In this fun, punchy, and (hopefully) edifying conversation, Kevin interviews his good friend, Mark Dever, about his conversion, his ministry on Capitol Hill, whether you have to be an extrovert to evangelize, and why Kevin likes G.K. Chesterton and Mark ...
11.11.2022 Liberty, Pandora, and the Serpent Was America founded on purely Christian principles and ideals? Or, were the founding fathers simply trying to prevent corruption and preserve the sanctity of consciousness? In this article for WORLD opinions, Kevin discusses three observable pillars that make up the ...
11.08.2022 Positive World, Negative World, and Christian Nationalism with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen The three amigos enter into a meandering conversation about Christian Nationalism and try to discern the level of the world’s hostility to the church in this cultural moment. They also make some political predictions and (most importantly) encourage Christian leaders ...
11.02.2022 A World Awash in Sheer Monkery Reformation Day may be behind us, but a huge responsibility lies before us. The faith of the Reformation must be kept alive because the ideas Luther combatted are just as much present in our own day. In this episode of ...
10.28.2022 Does Christianity Transcend All Our Political Disagreements? Christians don’t just disagree on political principles or on a number of political conclusions. Christians disagree on how Christianity and politics relate to each other in the first place. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads ...
10.25.2022 Life and Ministry with Sinclair Ferguson Have you ever wanted to sit down with an older godly pastor and just ask him about life for an hour? Well, that’s what Kevin tries to do with Sinclair in this wide-ranging conversation that talks about Scotland, America, books, ...
10.20.2022 The Case for Kids Too often Christian leaders lay impossible burdens on their people, insisting that they solve a host of social ills and become experts in a thousand different areas, forgetting to assure them that to get married, raise children in the church, ...
10.12.2022 Evangelicalism, Elites, and Excellence with Aaron Renn Coming out of a consulting background, Aaron Renn is now a regular contributor to many important conversations among Christians and conservatives. In this interview, Kevin asks Aaron about the three worlds of evangelicalism and how we should think about elites. ...
09.28.2022 A Lifetime of Books and Ministry with D.A. Carson With more than 50 books and hundreds of articles, not to mention scores of edited works, Don Carson has written a lot. In this retrospective on life and books and everything, Kevin asks Dr. Carson about his father, how he ...
09.26.2022 From Silence, to Complexification, to Capitulation Evangelicals who set down the path toward LGBTQ acceptance rarely turn around and head back in the other direction. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from the article he wrote for WORLD Opinions about why ...
09.12.2022 Apologetics and Critical Race Theory with Neil Shenvi Although Neil has a PhD in theoretical chemistry, he’s made a name for himself as an expert on Critical Race Theory (and Critical Theory more generally). Is CRT just a legal theory? Can anyone know what it really is? Is ...
09.09.2022 Judge Not The injunction not to judge is a necessary warning for us all, not least the religious person who can easily be tempted to look down on those who seem less religious. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, ...
08.30.2022 Keep a Close Watch on Your Life with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen After a summer break, the triumvirate is back together to talk about books and biography. Kevin and Justin highlight some of their favorite books from the past few months, and Collin talks about the Tim Keller biography (of sorts) he ...
08.26.2022 A Lesson from Liz Cheney’s Loss People know when their leaders no longer like them In this episode, Kevin reads from an article he wrote for WORLD reflecting on one lesson from Liz Cheney’s 37-point defeat in Wyoming’s Republican primary.
08.11.2022 Just War and Our Cultural Conflict We’re in a battle whether we like it or not, but how we fight matters. In this episode, Kevin reads from the third of a series of articles for WORLD Opinions on how to think about Christianity and politics.
08.03.2022 Death to the Patriarchy? To ignore, minimize, or repudiate the differences between men and women is to reject our creational design. In this episode, Kevin reads from an article written for Desiring God, reasoning why we should be careful not to banish patriarchy to ...
07.20.2022 The Pitfalls and Possibilities of Being “Political” There is no category called “politics” that can be safely quarantined from the category we call “religion.” In this episode, Kevin reads from the second of a series of articles for WORLD Opinions on how to think about Christianity and ...
07.06.2022 When Roe Was Overturned Maybe the movie ends with the good guys smiling with grateful satisfaction, knowing that whatever failures lay in the past, and whatever dangers lie ahead, this was a day for celebration. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, ...
06.30.2022 The Spirit and Flesh of Thomas Jefferson with Thomas Kidd Kevin welcomes Tommy Kidd to LBE to talk about Tommy’s new biography on Thomas Jefferson. How should we understand Jefferson’s many inconsistencies and contradictions? How do we make sense of his significant moral failings? Was he a Christian? Is his ...
06.25.2022 "Let the Little Children Come To Me" As much as abortion has been indefensible on constitutional grounds, the real monstrosity of Roe was not legal but moral. For 50 years the two sides of the debate have been called “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” and those are accurate labels. ...
06.21.2022 How to Think about Christianity and Politics No doubt, we need a lot of smart people reflecting on the intellectual principles and the practical priorities of our moral philosophy. That’s a crucial conversation. But that’s not the conversation most ordinary people are having online, in church, and ...
06.08.2022 Reclaiming the Lost Vision of Family Life with Erika Bachiochi In this episode of LBE, Kevin visits with Erika Bachiochi—a pro-life legal scholar, an author, a wife, and a mother of seven children. After discussing the Dobbs case which, we hope will overturn Roe, Kevin and Erika turn their attention ...
06.07.2022 The Indelible Conscience and a Month of “Pride” Pride Month turns a moral argument—about which the Bible has clear and unequivocal answers—into a quest for personal self-acceptance, which is why many soft-hearted and muddle-headed Christians line up for the parade just like everyone else. In this episode of ...
06.01.2022 The Power of the Two-Parent Home After the gospel, there is no bigger gift you can give to the world than your children and no better gift you can give your children than to be raised by a mom and dad who love them and love ...
05.27.2022 Harry Emerson Fosdick and the Spirit of American Liberalism On May 21, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick took to the pulpit of Old First—the historic First Presbyterian Church (est. 1716) located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan—to deliver what would be his most famous sermon. In this episode of Life and ...
05.19.2022 The Good News of Limited Atonement The doctrine of particular redemption is worth defining and defending because it gets to the heart of the gospel. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from the article he wrote for byFaith on the good ...
05.17.2022 The Heart of the Cross with Phil Ryken Kevin welcomes Phil Ryken, President at Wheaton College, to the podcast to talk about “The Heart of the Cross,” a newly reissued book comprised of sermons from Dr. Ryken and James Montgomery Boice. But before they get to the book, ...
05.13.2022 Seven Principles for Cultivating a Christian Posture toward the World Important lessons to learn as we deal with negativity and hostility In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from the article he wrote for WORLD Opinions on seven principles for cultivating a Christian posture toward the ...
05.10.2022 Hoping for the Fall of Roe with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen After the unprecedented leak of the possible Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Kevin talks to Justin and Collin about the pro-life movement in America, how the church ministers well, and why political polarization is not always a bad ...
05.04.2022 Lessons From Mainline Decline Relevant Christianity doesn’t stay relevant for long. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from the article he wrote for WORLD Opinions on the decline of the mainline church.
04.26.2022 Daily Worship, Creation Days, and Feisty Presbyterians with Jonathan Gibson In this freewheeling conversation, Kevin talks to Jonny Gibson about his life, his books, and some of everything. Gibson, an Old Testament professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, opens up about the loss of his daughter in 2016, why he believes ...
04.18.2022 John Witherspoon on Justification and Regeneration with Peter Lillback In this bonus episode, Kevin talks with historian and WTS president, Peter Lillback, about the life and ministry of John Witherspoon. In particular, they discuss Witherspoon’s treatises on justification and regeneration, a new (old) book being published by Westminster Seminary ...
04.15.2022 The Story of Us All The fundamental story of the world is not the story of good guys and bad guys, or of oppressors and the oppressed, but of sinners and a Savior. In this episode of Life and Books and Everything, Kevin reads from ...

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