This is a bit of a curious episode, because we’re revisiting material that we recorded and wrote almost eight years ago.
Following on from my recent article on the Council of Nicea, Joe suggested that we come up with our own creeds, forgetting that we’d done it in August 2017. In Mid-faith Crisis episode 22, ‘The schism starts here’ we actually listed our personal statements of faith.
So I thought, eight years on, it would be interesting to return to those, have a look at what we wrote and talk about whether we still agree with it.
It’s one of those episodes this week, where we talk about everything from the ethics of slug control, to the 1700th anniversary the council of Nicea, to Ezekiel’s advice on how to live during times of exile (basically Keep Holy and Carry On).
In one, apparently random bit I talked about how the big story of the Bible is made up of loads of little stories of exactly the same shape.
After my limited input last week, this time it’s my turn to give my – belated – thoughts on Easter.
I’ve been thinking that it’s not so much about the doctrine but about the story. We are invited to inhabit the story of Jesus, to allow his life to give shape to our own. The early church understood that: baptism was a richly symbolic re-enactment of life, death and resurrection. Believers took off their clothes, went down into (and under) the water and rose again.
It’s the Easter Special! Well, half an Easter Special maybe. Because I was sick with the flu, it’s a shortened episode. But never fear, it’s Pastor Joe to the rescue, reflecting on how the Easter story of suffering, bewilderment and joy is a challenge to us to live all of life.
I loved what he said about the disciples on the Emmaus road. Maybe like them things haven’t worked out how we imagined.
In our latest episode, Joe and I talk about what it’s like to celebrate Easter in mid-faith crisis.
We talked a bit about how Easter is crucial to our identities as Christians, but also how, for those who have left church, or are conflicted, it can be difficult to know properly how to celebrate.
We also looked at how the early church celebrated Easter. It began as the Christian version of Passover – a single night’s fast, followed by a shared meal (a ‘liturgical breakfast’ as one source called it).
We’re back this week after a little break and we catch up on how things are going with our themes. There’s a great email about ways to respond to fear. And I talk a little bit more about my year of ‘Less is More’.
I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve started to put more systems in place in order to simplify things. And there are a couple of elements which I talk about in this week’s episode.
With Joe away in Mexico we have an interview with Bekah Legg. She talks about the work of Restored with the victims of domestic abuse, and shares a little of her own story of loss and grief.
The statistics are sobering: in the UK, 1 in 4 women will be subjected to domestic abuse. And, shockingly, that stat is exactly the same within the church. And we need to reflects within the church, on how our theology actually reinforces this behaviour.
This is our annual themes episode, in which we set out themes for the year. Not an original idea, I think I got it from a podcast I used to wisent to, but for the past few years we had set themes which we will seek to explore.
(We used to do this around January, but then changed to March, because as everyone knows, the real new years day is 25 March.
In this week’s episode we talk about how culture shapes art, and especially, how the culture of the time affects the Bible.
This is always a tangled thread, not least because many people like to assume that God dictated the Bible. And, since God is outside all time and therefore culture, the Bible must be free of that. Of course, God didn’t dictate it. At least not in that sense. Paul says that scripture is God-breathed, not God-spoken.
In this episode we discuss some follow up from last episode’s interview with Danielle Strickland which addressed issues of patriarchy within church and society. A lot of our discussion this week was on the difficulty of addressing the deep, ingrained stuff, the stuff we grew up with and which has shaped us. We are all products of, what one correspondent calls our ‘silly teenage dramas’. It’s life-long work dismantling this kind of stuff.