A listener in the United States has written in pondering the, ahem, sensitive issue of circumcision. In America it’s been commonplace as a medical procedure for newborn boys for generations, while in the rest of the world it’s almost exclusively a Jewish or Muslim religious rite of initiation. Does circumcision actually offer any real medical benefits? Following the growing pressure to stamp out female genital mutilation, once known as female circumcision and largely tolerated across North Africa and the Middle East, some are now looking at male circumcision with fresh eyes. Should we be much more sceptical about religious minorities performing this ritualised and irreversible procedure on non-consenting babies by non-medically trained community leaders? Or is defending the rights of Jews and Muslims on circumcision one plank in a broader effort to protect our religious liberty to continue with practices and teachings wider society now reviles?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Perhaps the most contentious political, medical and social issue of the day is how to treat and care for young people who are questioning or experiencing distress around their sex and gender. We are both away for half-term this week, so we’re bringing you an episode from 2023 when we spoke with Christian community paediatrician Julie Maxwell about the rise in children reporting gender dysphoria, the evidence base behind controversial treatments such as puberty-blockers, and how we as followers of Jesus can speak compassionately and faithfully into the maelstrom of invective and opinion on this important topic.

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

In the first part of this episode we talk through a startling new scientific breakthrough: researchers claim they can insert genetic material from an ordinary skin cell into a human egg cell, and then use that to fertilise and grow an embryo. This means an infertile couple or a same-sex couple could theoretically have a child who was genetically related to both parents for the first time. But just because we can, should we be doing this?

Then we respond to a listener’s question on our recent episode about miraculous faith healing. What did Jesus mean when he told his disciples they would do even greater things than his amazing works? Does this not mean we should expect to surpass Christ’s own miraculous healing ministry?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Of all orthodox Christian doctrines, the trinity is perhaps the one which most languishes understudied and underappreciated. Many of us see it as a baffling paradox, a riddle without an answer. Only of interest to egg-headed nerds and without any practical application to day-to-day Christian life. But have we been getting this wrong all along? Could reflecting on what it means to say we believe in one God in three persons actually unlock a whole raft of insight and appreciation for not just who our God – Father, Son and Spirit – but also lots of other elements of Christian belief and practice?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

It has been hard to miss the ways that right-wing political movements have become marked by Christian rhetoric and language in recent years. Clearly, something about the unstable and fractious era we live in has seen people yearning to turn Western nations back to an imagined Christian past. But is this a mirage, or even an idolatrous worship of the nation state? How should Christians engage in politics in democracies? Is it helpful to think about trying to make a country ‘more Christian’? And what might the gospel have to say beyond our shores to a world where the liberal international rules-based order is collapsing and might makes right once more? This week we discuss all this and more with John Heathershaw, a Christian professor of international relations and former aid worker.

Find more of John’s writing and his latest book Security After Christendom on his Substack blog: https://johnheathershaw.substack.com

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have caused untold misery, suffering and death over the centuries. Some, like the infamous Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755, have even been held up as prompting turns away from belief in God entirely. How can believers account for the apparent brokenness and destructiveness of the earth, and yet continue to believe it was made by a good God who declared his creation to be good? Are these deep geological forces actually as bad as many have thought? What about cancer, or other genetic diseases which cause deep suffering and have no human cause? Are they still, mysteriously, somehow caused by human sinfulness? Is it right to think of anything in creation as inherently ‘evil’ at all? Helping us think through these big questions this week is Prof Bob White, a world-renowned geo-physicist who has spent his career trying to better understand place tectonics which cause volcanoes and earthquakes. He’s also emeritus director of the Faraday Institute, a Cambridge-based think tank aiming to bolster the interface between science and Christian faith.

Find out more about the Faraday Institute, including their long list of resources - https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Christians often find themselves disagreeing about what posture to adopt in our increasingly secular and faith-hostile culture. Should we stand apart from society, keeping ourselves unsullied by its godlessness, so we can prophetically call out evil and witness to Christ? Or should we seek to engage deeply in our context, seeing our calling as to shape creation in a kingdom direction, acting incarnationally and incrementally for good? Are we most faithful to the way of Jesus by remaining prophetic outsiders or incarnational insiders? In this episode we discuss this tension and what we might learn from an often overlooked Old Testament passage where two of Yahweh’s followers – each espousing a very different mode of witness – bump into each other unexpectedly in the Judaean desert.

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• kSubscribe 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

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere these days, and the hospital, surgery and clinic are no different. It’s getting into wearable tech, it’s assisting in making diagnoses, and much more. There’s a lot of promise, but is there also some peril? What compromises around human connection and compassionate care might we make in our rush to integrate AI into healthcare? How can Christian doctors, nurses and others continue to embody Christlike presence in a world which, more and more, is being shaped by machines, software and computers?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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 influential Canadian doctors’ association has proposed expanding the country’s euthanasia laws so newborn babies suffering from serious disabilities could be given lethal drugs for the first time. In light of this, we discuss the often conflicting philosophies that lie behind our medical thinking on the unborn child versus newborn babies. What was so shocking and distinctive about how the early church treated babies so casually discarded by pagan Greco-Roman society? Are we losing this legacy of Christendom as both abortion and euthanasia are pushed ever further forwards? What will it look like in the coming decades for Christians to bear witness to their counter-cultural convictions about the full humanity and dignity of babies?

Our previous episode on Canada’s euthanasia programme, Medical Assistance in Dying: https://www.johnwyatt.com/how-can-christian-doctors-approach-medically-assisted-dying/

John’s essay on better options for caring for newborn babies with life-limiting or even lethal abnormalities: https://www.johnwyatt.com/essay-palliative-care-for-babies-following-a-diagnosis-of-lethal-fetal-abnormality/

An article exploring further the radical approach early Christians took to newborn children compared to classical culture: https://www.johnwyatt.com/article-neonatal-ethics/

• You can send in your own questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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

We weren’t able to record an episode this week so please enjoy one from the MOLAD archive: This week’s guest is Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the faith thinktank Theos, and recent author of Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion. Nick joins us to discuss the complicated backstory to how we all came to believe science and faith were inevitably at odds with each other. Where did this myth come from, and what is a more nuanced and truthful account of how religion reacted to the emergence of contemporary science in the last 300 years? Should Christians actually welcome a bright dividing line between our world of faith and spirituality, and the hard-nosed world of science, focused solely on a measurable reality of atoms and molecules? And what might we learn from the surprisingly interesting personal religious lives of some of history’s greatest scientists?

Find out more about Nick’s book and how to order it here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Magisteria/Nicholas-Spencer/9780861544615

• You can send in your own questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• 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