Concluding our series on the intersection of faith and politics we turn to address fake news and the spread of misinformation. In this episode Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Dr. Chris Porter are joined by Rachel Wightman, who is Associate Director for Instruction and Outreach at the library at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Over the course of our conversation we discuss what makes misinformation so problematic, what unique factors in our communication today...
In this episode, Amber Bowen and John Anthony Dunne discuss Critical Theory with special guest Dr. Scott Coley, who is Lecturer in Philosophy and Director of the Global Encounters program at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Over the course of the conversation we address the history and origin of Critical Theory, including its chief aim to upend Modernity’s conviction that empirical science is the ultimate arbiter of truth, splitting apart all statements into...
Our newsfeeds are inundated with memes and videos promoting all sorts of ideological perspectives, and much of that is curated by the networks that we choose to incorporate into the spheres of our respective social media accounts. As a result, it’s easy to create insular and isolated social bubbles that keep us from understanding where others outside those bubbles are coming from, or from knowing what’s truly going on in the world. In this episode,...
My life is a series of ridiculous, over the top, unlikely stories. I’ve confronted a neighbor on meth whose reply to me was, “The shadow people are coming.” As a kid, I was chased down by a teenager in a car who, in his own words, was hell-bent on killing us. The first time I ever got into college happened because several people decided to donate a total of about $12,000. I have an uncanny...
Enough for him whom cherubim, Worship night and day, A breastful of milk, And a mangerful of hay; Enough for him whom angels Fall down before, The ox and ass and camel, Which adore (A Christmas Carol, Christina Rossetti) It’s hard to imagine the King of the universe, the Word of God through which everything has been made, being content with a stomach full of milk, laying in a manger of hay. For the rest of humanity,...
In an engaging collection of brief reflections and vignettes, Dr. Richard Mouw, Professor of Faith and Public Life and former president at Fuller Theological Seminary, provides a rationale for and description of rigorous Christian intellectual inquiry today.
Cigarette smoke drifts over the surface of the desk—the picture of [Pilate’s] wife when she still had her looks, the onyx box from Caesar, the clay plaque with the imprint of his first son’s hand on it, made while he was still a child in nursery school. Pilate squints at the man through the smoke and asks his question. He asks it half because he would give as much as even his life to hear...
There are two ways (in my mind) in which heresy spurs spiritual growth. For the purposes of this post, I will use the word heresy in extremely broad terms. One of the ways merriam-webster.com defines heresy is: An opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards As I move through life, growing in knowledge and experiences, more and more, I’m learning to reap the benefits that come from...
In my various dialogues with Mormon missionaries and local leaders of the LDS church (all whom I respect and consider friends), I inevitably bring up something that my LDS counterparts label anti-Mormon. The term is usually given after I have raised some information about Joseph Smith or LDS church history that my friends find so disturbing, they immediately relegate it to being a half truth or a lie, and they assume I’ve found the information...
“You can’t really believe in the Bible, right? It’s been translated so many times! Not to mention the thousands of errors and the fact that the Council of Nicaea totally suppressed stuff they didn’t like. There’s just no way you can know what it originally said.” If you’re strangely inclined to trust the Bible, you may have heard some arguments like that before. But how to respond? Thanks to the dedicated research of a host...
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