Matters of Life and Death

This month marks 101 years since the late John Stott was born, and his centenary last year prompted a flurry of events to mark the centenary of this highly influential vicar, Bible teacher and evangelical leader. ‘Uncle John’, as he was affectionately known, also had a huge impact on John's life and career and so we dialled in back then to reflect on not just the legacy of Stott’s many decades of ministry, but also to consider whether his vision for how Christians can engage well in the public square was still relevant and meaningful now, more than 60 years after he began making the case. Has society long since moved on, or are there still things to learn and challenges to heed from Stott? (This episode was first broadcast in April 2021) Other resources on John's website from the John Stott centenary: Talk and discussion: Quick to listen – lessons from John Stott on grace under fire Interview and talk: The John Stott Centenary – Equipping the people of God for ministry Interview: The life and legacy of John Stott

In Britain as in many countries there is a growing campaign to legalise assisted suicide and to make doctors prescribe on request lethal drugs to terminally ill patients. In the second part of our interview with Sarah Foot, a Christian palliative care doctor, Sarah explains why her colleagues are overwhelmingly opposed to this, the ignorance which lies behind many of the arguments for changing the law, and the implications for palliative care should assisted dying be imposed upon it. John's resources page for material on euthanasia and the end of life: https://johnwyatt.com/medical-ethics/euthanasia-end-of-life/  An article he wrote about the Assisted Dying Bill introduced to the UK parliament last year: https://johnwyatt.com/2021/07/08/whats-wrong-with-the-assisted-dying-bill/  Our episode about assisted dying from 2021: https://johnwyatt.com/2021/10/08/assisted-dying-the-meacher-bill-radicals-in-the-lords-canadas-slippery-slope-and-fragile-conscience-protections/ 

Over the past 60 years a new field of medicine has emerged – palliative care. In this episode we interview Sarah Foot, a Christian palliative care doctor, who explains how she treats the physical, mental, social and even spiritual needs of those who are dying, the Christian foundations of the discipline, and what impact her profession has on her.   If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

Following on from our discussion last week on the rise of climate fatalism, we discuss what an authentically Christian response to our environmental crisis would look like. How can we steer a middle path between complacency and despair? Does our different theology of the future change how we act on climate change? And, what can we learn from our evangelical forbears about how to live well in the face of potential climate catastrophe?   Excerpts from CS Lewis's essay Living in an Atomic Age Christian Aid's climate change projects A Rocha's Eco Church scheme The Christian Climate Alliance's principles and values for Christian climate activism 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis' - 1967 essay by Lynn White If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

The latest report from the UN's climate scientists was both incredibly downbeat about climate change and almost entirely ignored by a media fixated on Ukraine. In this episode we consider the communication and changing narratives around climate change, why an unscientific hyper-fatalism has set in with many activists, and what impact this might be having on younger generations terrified humanity itself is going extinct.    'We're heading Straight for a Demi-Apocalypse' - Emma Marris in The Atlantic  Climate anxiety in children - study in The Lancet Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability - IPCC report If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

In this episode we pick up our conversation from last week about transhumanism and how technology might redefine what it means to be human. We consider what place technology has in today's social narrative and whether it makes sense as Christians to automatically resist efforts to use cutting-edge science to reshape ourselves. Is the human body to be regarded as a Lego kit or a flawed masterpiece of art? How do we discern the Creator's original intention for our bodies in a world where they, like everything else, have been broken by the Fall? And how might it change our ethics in this area if we focused our attention on the resurrected Jesus as the firstfruits of a new kind of humanity? If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

Billions of dollars are currently being spent by a suite of private firms, mostly in Silicon Valley, pursuing radical research to enhance human capacities. These companies want to put off, or even defeat, aging, upload our minds to computers and give humans new abilities. Is this simply the next frontier for science and something to be welcomed, or should Christians hesitate to endorse research which appears to target our very created selves? What is the difference between using technology to tackle cancer versus tackling the aging process itself? And what is driving tech billionaires to spend their fortunes in this way? If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

To mark our arrival on the Premier network, we recap how Matters of Life and Death began and what we hope our intergenerational conversations might achieve. We then reflect on how the pandemic and its acceleration of digital technology has shaped so many of the issues we discuss, before briefly exploring three stories we will cover in future episodes (human enhancement, climate change nihilism, and end of life care). If you're new to the show, please do also scroll down the podcast feed to find the last two years of episodes we've already produced to have a listen. If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com US based listeners can support this podcast financially. Head to https://premierinsight.org/mattersoflifeanddeathUK based listeners can support this podcast financially. Head to https://my.premier.org.uk/donate/donate-unbelievable-2021      

The Omicron variant has in a few short weeks almost taken over the pandemic. This highly transmissible version of covid is raising afresh complicated ethical questions about vaccine distribution and international solidarity between nations. How can we ascertain what is the common good during global crises affecting different countries in different ways? Does Christianity lend any intellectual backing to those who demand the state refrain from telling them how to live during a pandemic? And how might the differing legacies of authoritarian regimes in Europe and the dissenting pilgrims who founded America be playing a part in contemporary vaccine politics?   Note: This episode was recorded earlier in December so sadly the wildly explosive growth of Omicron since has meant some of the data and news we mention in passing is now quite out of date!   Also, at the end we have a special announcement about the future of Matters of Life and Death. Thanks for listening, and see you all in 2022.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week we are resuming our conversation about infertility which begun in our previous episode. If you haven’t yet listened to that discussion, which focused on IVF, we’d recommend pausing this and going back to it as we will build on some of the ideas we explored last time. Today, we moved on to consider new ethical issues among other reproductive technologies. This is an area of medicine and science which is developing fast, sometimes faster than ethicists and regulators can keep up. What would it mean if we were able to genetically screen embryos to choose the most desirable traits before pregnancy? Is surrogacy, a growing alternative to IVF, a good option for couples or could it unintentionally become exploitative? And more broadly, should we as Christians be concerned by this rush to find technological solutions to our human frailties? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.