Quick to Listen

As we close 2020, more than 81 million people total have tested positive for COVID-19. Nearly 1.8 million people have died of it. The virus has had significant economic effects and cost many their livelihoods. Prolonged distance from others, of course, has also triggered an increase in depression and other mental health issues. And the pandemic has revealed increasing divisions over masks, meeting in person, and what constitutes an essential business or service.

Of course, the pandemic was not the only thing that provoked anxiety in many this year. America will get a new president in January, but current president Donald Trump has refused to concede and made false statements about voting fraud for weeks.

In May, a police officer killed Minneapolis’ George Floyd weeks after officers shot Breonna Taylor in her home, actions which sparked demonstrations across the country, protesters fed up with police violence against black Americans. Protests lasted for weeks and were especially heated where protesters, counterprotesters, and outside agitators converged. Many cities suffered looting and some burned buildings. 

In a year with so much trauma, we wanted to spend some time talking about how we should start to process and make sense of the year. What should we remember? How should we remember it? And what should we forget?

Sheila Wise Rowe is a writer, counselor, speaker, and spiritual director, and most recently the author of Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience for which she won a 2021 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award. She joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editor in chief Daniel Harrell to discuss how our bodies experienced the trauma of the year, what parts of it we should remember, and what Christians might choose to set as a 2021 New Year’s resolution. 

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Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

Believe it or not, Christmas is this week. Yup, even in a year that felt like it was always winter and that there could not ever be Christmas. And we need a little Christmas, right this very minute. Candles in the window, Quick to Listen scripts in the spinnet.

This week on the show, we are talking to Tim Larsen, the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Christmas, a 656-page book all about the world’s biggest holiday. The book is divided into eight sections: history, theology, worshipping communities, the nativity scene, traditions, arts, around the world, and state and society. Of course, we won’t get into all of the 45 articles in here today but we are gonna do some nerding out about this holiday. Merry Christmas everyone!

Larsen is a professor of theology at Wheaton College and was recently awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity in historical theology from the University of Edinburgh. He was the only author to win the Books & Culture book of the year twice. Larsen joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss why Christians used to love Santa, how KFC became a Japanese Christmas tradition, and how the holiday went from a day of rowdiness to one spent with friends and family.

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Convince your library to buy The Oxford Handbook of Christmas

Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

Last week the Trump administration carried out its 9th and 10th federal execution of 2020. On Wednesday night, the state executed a 40-year-old man, Brandon Bernard.

According to the AP, “when Bernard was 18 he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley on their way from a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas, during which Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire with their bodies in the back trunk.”

Bernard’s death comes several months after the Justice Department surfaced a proposal to “reintroduce firing squads and electrocutions for federal executions, giving the government more options for administering capital punishment as drugs used in lethal injections become unavailable.”

Last Friday, the government executed Alfred Bourgeois, who has an intellectual disability, whose should have meant he could not have been up for the death penalty. But Bourgeois’s trial lawyers did not present evidence of his intellectual disability to the jury. He was the 17th person executed in the united states this year, and the country’s last scheduled execution for 2020.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss how to wrestle with the death penalty, accountability, justice, and forgiveness from someone who has straddled many sides of this situation. 

Jeanne Bishop, a felony trial attorney in the Office of the Cook County Public Defender in Chicago. She is the author of Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer and Grace From the Rubble: Two Fathers’ Road to Reconciliation After the Oklahoma City Bombing. Bishop joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss how her work and sister’s murder have impacted how she views the death penalty, what accountability and justice look like outside of the death penalty, and how to pray for those in the criminal justice system during the pandemic. 

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Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su

Read Morgan’s interview with Jeanne: Forgiving Her Sister's Murderer, Face to Face

Read Ted’s piece about Pullman, Disney World, and churches

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

Several weeks ago, Netflix dropped the latest season of its highly acclaimed show The Crown. The fourth season tells the story of the British monarchy in the '80s and '90s and depicts the Queen’s relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and features Princess Diana. With so many of the characters depicted still alive and in recent-ish memory for a number of viewers, the show has provoked controversy like never before.

While The Crown always creatively depicted the past, this year, this season has drawn criticism from those who claim the show is misleading viewers about the true history of the monarchy. Netflix even recently put out a statement that said it would not issue a disclaimer reminding viewers that the drama was fictional.

“We have always presented The Crown as a drama—and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events. As a result we have no plans, and see no need, to add a disclaimer.”

This week on Quick to Listen, we thought we would tackle some of the issues stirred up by this season of the Crown by getting a sense of how they’ve been wrestled with by the creator of The Chosen, a series portraying the life of Jesus through the stories of his followers. 

Dallas Jenkins is the showrunner of the series The Chosen, which has broken records as the largest crowdfunded media project ever, and has been watched so far by more than 50 million people in 180 countries, and translated into more than 50 languages.

Jenkins joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss how the show has wrestled with historical accuracy, the challenge of adding and changing characters, and how watching prestige TV affected his approach to making the show.

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Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

This Sunday kicked off the beginning of Advent. While the season is generally seen as a time of preparing to celebrate Christ’s birth on Christmas, the focus historically was a time to focus on Jesus’ Second Coming. 

The doctrine of Jesus’ Second Coming has traditionally been a major focus of Christian theology: it has been a driving force for missions, it was a source of hope for suffering Christians, it helped to frame Christian worship. 

American evangelicals in particular have been shaped by discussion of Jesus’ return—apocalyptic expectation helped to shape the early fundamentalist movement more than 100 years ago. Baby Boomer evangelicalism has been especially focused on the End Times, from Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth of the 70’s to the Left Behind novels of the 90’s.

But it seems increasingly rare to us to hear about the Second Coming these days. This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to talk about why that might be and why a strong understanding of the Second Coming can serve us well as we navigate the pandemic and other crises.

Vince Bacote is associate professor of theology and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College. He has been serving as a theology adviser for Christianity Today over the last year and is a contributor to our Advent devotional, “Living Hope,” which you can find on our website this week. 

Bacote joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss why Christians aren’t talking about the Second Coming as much these days, how these conversations can serve us during the pandemic, and what responsibly talking about the End Times looks like. 

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Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

At the beginning of this month, Hillsong NYC pastor Carl Lentz was fired. A day after the news went public, he posted a picture of his family on Instagram admitting he was unfaithful in his marriage. Both before and after the news, Lentz made headlines across Christian and secular media for his popularity and successful ministry—as well as the “hipster” pastor look he popularized.

When Lentz co-founded Hillsong NYC with Joel Houston in 2010, the church drew lines around the block and caught the eye of A-list celebrities, none more famous than Justin Bieber. Lentz, who became famous for his wire-rimmed glasses, plunging V-necks, and designer sneakers, himself became subject of a number of profiles, including this 2015 GQ feature from Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

“The music! The lights! The crowds!” begins an incredulous woman narrating a CNN segment on Hillsong NYC . “It looks like a rock concert.” The chyron reads “Hipster preacher smashes stereotypes.”

They call Pastor Carl a hipster. Carl says he doesn’t know what that means, and he wears a motorcycle jacket when he says this.Pastor Joel is unwilling to acknowledge that there’s something going on here. Yes, he tells me, sure, he likes clothes. But that’s the end of it. I should ask Pastor Carl about the clothes, he tells me. What Pastor Carl does, he says—that’s intentional, and then he laughs.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss the attention around a new generation of fashion-forward pastors. What does it reveal about ministry? But what does our fascination with this aesthetic reveal more broadly about the American and Western church?

Anthropologist Katherine Ajibade, formerly a researcher with the British think tank Theos, joins CT’s Morgan Lee and Kate Shellnutt.

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Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

We’re right on the cusp of the holiday season. Except this year it doesn’t feel much like it. Each day this month, thousands of American—record numbers—have tested positive for COVID-19. Even as several vaccines are now on the horizon, many public health authorities have asked Americans to not reunite with extended family over Thanksgiving, requests that will no doubt continue during the Christmas season. 

Millions of people have already spent hours more this year inside, apart from their loved ones, houses of worship, and beloved activities. While the summer offered many a respite from their homes, the arrival of cold weather will likely keep people there. This bleakness, of course, comes on the heels of a year of postponed weddings, never organized baby showers, and drive-by birthday parties. And, of course, one of the year’s most agonizing elements has been the disparity with which community and individuals have adopted and practiced social distancing and mask-wearing. These relationship tensions have had both personal and societal polarizing effect. 

This week on Quick to Listen, we discussed the reality between the joyous expectations of the holidays—and the darkness we’re all feeling this year with Chris Hall, the president of Renovare, the spiritual formation organization started by Richard Foster.

Hall is also associate editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and has written a great four volume series of books on what we can learn from the early church, and was one of CT’s theology editors and advisers. He joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to talk about growing in your relationship with God and practicing spiritual disciplines during a pandemic.  

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Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

This week, Maryland megachurch pastor Harry Jackson passed away at age 65. Over the last four years, Jackson was a member of President Trump’s evangelical advisory board. That consulting team was a marked shift in the role that faith communities had played in the executive branch in recent decades. The focus in the Bush and Obama administrations, by contrast, had been on the ways that faith-based and community groups could work with the federal government on social problems, and on hiring officials who would work on international religious freedom.

What role will religious leaders, religious groups, and religion policy play in a Biden administration? And what lessons might Biden take from his presidential predecessors on how church and state can work together, and how they should work separately?

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss the future of faith in the Biden administration.

Stanley Carlson-Thies is the founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance (IRFA), a division of the Center for Public Justice. He served with the White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives from its inception in February 2001 until mid-May 2002, and later served on a task force of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen on Quick to Listen.

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Read the Brookings Institute report: A Time to Heal

Read more about Fairness for All and the Equality Act

Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola

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Hi Quick to Listen listeners. We recorded this episode in 2018 but given the headlines from this week's election, we thought you mind find it constructive and helpful so we decided to drop it in our feed again. As always, send us your thoughts and questions at [email protected] or on Twitter at @CTPodcasts.

Elections often call attention to white evangelicals whose votes and voices play a significant role in national elections. But their attitudes and values don’t necessarily represent those of evangelicals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Case in point: Latino evangelicals. According to data from the Billy Graham Center Institute at Wheaton College and LifeWay Research, 41 percent of Hispanics with evangelical beliefs voted for Trump in 2016. What were the issues that most influenced their vote?According to the same survey, 19 percent said improving the economy, 14 percent said helping those in need, and 14 percent said a candidate’s position on immigration.“

Most Latinos will tend to be socially conservative on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage but will tend to be social liberals on issues like education and immigration, so we’ve tended to be divided on how we spread the vote,” said Juan Martínez, who currently serves as professor of Hispanic studies and pastoral leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. “This isn’t new; it just stands out more because we’re a larger percentage of the voting block. Those of us who have voted have struggled with this for years because the Democrat/Republican way that this is broken out doesn’t fit us well.”

Martínez joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the history of Latino evangelicals and what unifies and divides the community.

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Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss the election with those who have been following this race closely. On this episode, senior news editor Kate Shellnutt, print news editor Daniel Silliman, and researcher Ryan Burge join global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen.

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Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola

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