Mormon Evangelism in the Twenty First Century For many years, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Mormons have practiced what they call friendshipping. This coined word describes the attitude that Mormons are told to have in their relationships with less active members or those who have no connection whatsoever to the LDS Church. By going out of their way to do kind gestures, Mormons hope to present a positive image of their church and possibly entice friends and neighbors...
Jan 10, 2019•50 min
Originally a niche medium, anime Japanese animation has experienced a massive explosion in popularity in recent decades. Its cultural influence is widespread, from massive conventions full of truly devoted fans to Hollywoods biggest blockbusters and family films. However, anime can be daunting to explore and understand due to both cultural differences as well as its willingness to feature more mature themes and subject matter than are usually found in American animation including sex and violenc...
Jan 02, 2019•35 min
After Exodus International, the largest and most prominent ministry to address homosexuality, closed its doors in 2013, the public, both Christian and secular, became more skeptical about the possibility of homosexuals going straight. As a result, a different approach developed, one in which someone who was Christian but same sex attracted could still identify himself as gay but also hold the historic, orthodox biblical view on sexuality. This new approach began showing itself through the writin...
Dec 20, 2018•43 min
What Cops Can Teach Christians about the Critical Use of Language Why should Christians avoid Christian jargon when witnessing to non Christians? J. Warner Wallace talks about his evangelistic tips on witnessing to nonbelievers without using Christianese. He answers questions like Why is it important to avoid specifically Christian language when talking with non Christians? What was difficult for you when you were a non Christian talking to Christians? What are some of the benefits of trying to ...
Dec 20, 2018•37 min
Historically, people within the church who experienced homosexual feelings went unaddressed, creating a void. They recognized both the Biblical and cultural prohibitions against yielding to their temptations, but also realized the temptations remained. Afraid to confess and deal with them, many fell into secret homosexual sin, while others eventually came out as openly gay. Still others remained faithful, yet felt isolated and alienated from fellow Christians. Ministry to same-sex attracted peop...
Dec 13, 2018•39 min
Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most forward thinking filmmakers of the 20th century, advancing the art form and anticipating the taste of audiences. Through his most famous films Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo we find a common theme anonymous watching. This theme is exponentially more relevant today than in Hitchcocks own time, living as we do with the power to present our stories and peer into the lives of others. Though Hitchcocks cinema is often morally askew, gleefully implicating the vie...
Dec 06, 2018•33 min
If the Great Commission tells us anything, it tells us that the mission to make disciples doesnt rely on ministry professionals. The very notion of a distinction between secular work and full time ministry would have been incoherent to the original apostles sent out ones, especially Paul, a tentmaker whose greatest recorded evangelistic success began in the Athenian agora, a sprawling marketplace for worldly goods, that he infiltrated with the power of Christian ideas. The truth is that if you c...
Nov 29, 2018•33 min
Recently the World Health Organization added Gaming Disorder to the 11th International Classification of Diseases ICD-11 3 a tool for diagnosing diseases. Combine this with the many parents dismayed by their childrens obsession with the video game Fortnite, and it seems that the game industrys darkest demons are being exposed. More than two billion people play video games worldwide and in America there are 221 million Americans who play video games. This is where God calls believers to be salt a...
Nov 14, 2018•56 min
MY FEELINGS AS A CHRISTIAN POINT ME TO MY LORD AND SAVIOR AS A FIGHTER. ADOLF HITLERIt is not difficult to find collections of quotes like this one, intended to prove that Adolf Hitler was a Christian. In many of his speeches and writings, Hitler referred to God or Jesus or quoted the Bible. Consequently, it is argued, Hitler must have been a believing Christian. The matter, however, is not that simple. A Muslim may refer to God or Jesus, or allude to biblical teachings, but this does not make h...
Nov 08, 2018•18 min
If the battleground over abortion resembles a chess board, the new Netflix documentary Reversing Roe is an offensive bombardment on the pro life movements front lines. The problem is that the film talks around abortion without ever really talking about it at all. Its release is eerily timely its conclusion set the stage for the dramatic showdown over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. And its method is strikingly similar to coverage of the Kavanaugh debacle a postmodern feelings led approach...
Nov 01, 2018•34 min
It is evident from social observation that human beings desire happiness, not as a means to something else but as an end in itself. Many major worldviews seem to agree that one crucial ingredient of happiness is virtuous living. This idea goes back at least as far as ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the works of Aristotle, who argued that virtue is necessary for a healthy soul, and that the soul is the part of humankind that is closest to the divine. Later, the idea was expounded by the gr...
Oct 25, 2018•29 min
In Choosing Down Syndrome Ethics and New Prenatal Testing Technologies, author Chris Kaposy, the associate professor of Bioethics in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University Newfoundland, argues that advancements in less invasive prenatal testing will increase the use of those tests and produce a greater number of occurrences of selective abortion in cases of Down syndrome diagnosis. As the father of a son with Down syndrome, Kaposy encourages people to resist the overwhelmingly preferred ...
Oct 18, 2018•33 min
Stories of ghosts and experiences of the paranormal have been a historical constant for as long as humans have wondered what happens after death. But as the entertainment industry has become increasingly desperate for our always divided attention, these stories have been hybridized with reality TV and promoted on channels not traditionally associated with the category of the paranormal. The Travel, History, and National Geographic channels are the prime examples. In ghost hunting shows, for inst...
Oct 11, 2018•31 min
Flannery OConnor was a Roman Catholic novelist, essayist, and short story writer whose Complete Short Stories won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1972. Her fictional work explores existential questions of grace, morality, freedom, and transcendence in the lives of grotesque characters. Are humans free to determine the nature of reality or does reality both spiritual and material precede the human will and make a legitimate claim upon it? Is truth a construct erected by powerful people to ...
Oct 04, 2018•31 min
Although masturbation solo sex is a nearly universal behavior, it is rarely discussed in the church. However, the increasing support in the media for solo sex as a healthy activity means the church must begin to address it. The moral legitimacy of this behavior has long been debated in Christian circles. To arrive at a biblical conclusion, we need to go beyond prohibitions to consider the positive teaching on sexuality with its profound theological implications. God intends sexuality to teach us...
Sep 27, 2018•48 min
There is little doubt that the New Testament makes several unique claims concerning Jesus. Some of these exclusive comments regard claims that Jesus Christ was deity, or that He is the sole path to salvation, or that He was raised from the dead. The claims and deeds of Jesus become even more distinct when compared with the founders of other religious traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, or Zoroastrianism. Crucially, the claims and actions of other religions founders encompass highly...
Sep 24, 2018•36 min
There is little doubt that the New Testament makes several unique claims concerning Jesus. Some of these exclusive comments regard claims that Jesus Christ was deity, or that He is the sole path to salvation, or that He was raised from the dead. The claims and deeds of Jesus become even more distinct when compared with the founders of other religious traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, or Zoroastrianism. Crucially, the claims and actions of other religions founders encompass highly...
Sep 14, 2018•37 min
Generation Z the 70 million kids born between 1999 and 2015 is another testament to our cultures alarming slide into secularism. This emerging generation is twice as likely as adults to be atheists, theyre twice as likely to identify as LGBT, theyre committed moral relativists, and only one in eleven can be considered an engaged Christian. Couple this with the fact that many sectors of American culture no longer are friendly to Christianity not merely neutral but hostile to Christian ideas and v...
Sep 06, 2018•35 min
HBOs TV series Westworld is a remake and expansion of the 1973 film by writer Michael Crichton about an immersive theme park where guests can interact with artificially intelligent robots programmed to act out cowboy stories from the Old West. The film follows a similar pattern as Crichtons 1990 novel Jurassic Park, but instead of genetically engineered dinosaurs, Westworld features artificially intelligent robots. The robots malfunction and eventually start to attack the parks guests. The HBO v...
Aug 31, 2018•32 min
African American men might be one of the most unreached people groups existing today. In all of the Christian churchs efforts to be obedient to the Great Commission, sharing the gospel with an African American man within our spheres of influence needs to be an important part of our efforts to reach people for Christ. On this episode of the Postmodern Realities podcast, author Eric C. Redmond talks about his Volume 40 5 2017 Effective Evangelism article Reaching African American Men with the Gosp...
Aug 22, 2018•31 min
More than 100 years after his death, Mark Twain remains one of the most colorful and well beloved American authors. Even infrequent readers know of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn who have become iconic characters in the American imagination, and Twains public persona and incisive wit are the stuff of legend. Both prolific and profound, Twain managed to expose social ills and elicit a hearty dose of laughter from his readers, who themselves were often the very targets of his critique. There was ...
Aug 21, 2018•32 min
To follow Jesus faithfully means we need to reorient our values and priorities radically. One radical value Jesus proclaimed was that single men and women had equal standing in His kingdom. Society, which up to that point was centered on marriage and family, was now to include those who were unmarried as valued and equal partners. The apostle Paul and church father John Calvin, counter to the thinking of their time, proclaimed the surprising worth of being single and celibate, echoing Jesus word...
Aug 08, 2018•32 min
What do we do with the Christian spokesperson whose message seems at best tangential to the gospel, and whose megaphone is the national media? How should an everyday, street level apologist handle the backlash the Christian community receives from the very public statements of those who seem to make headlines instead of making a clearly reasoned case for the faith? When it comes to high profile proclamations like these, the gospel doesnt even seem to be in play. It gets lost in a public theater ...
Aug 01, 2018•29 min
A recent trend, which gained traction with a piece released by Planned Parenthood a handful of years ago Moving Beyond ProLife vs. ProChoice Labels, Youre Not in Her Shoes, is attempting to do just that. There is a growing desire that the terms prochoice and prolife be abolished because they do not adequately express feelings about abortion. Most people just dont want to be labeled, proponents claim. They may very well be on to something, but theyre taking things too far. Simply put, labels come...
Jul 25, 2018•37 min
There is a growing wave of Christian leaders who are rejecting Christianity and becoming some of its most ardent critics, often supported by a plethora of new organizations arising to encourage such people to cut ties to their faith. This is a new challenge from a different breed of critics who are using their instant credibility and insiders knowledge of theology, the Bible, church history, even apologetics, to debunk the faith they once believed and promoted. They have taken aim at the foundat...
Jul 18, 2018•34 min
For more than one year, Neil deGrasse Tysons book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, has sat on the bestsellers list. Is it a book Christians should read? This episode gives listeners an overview of Tysons world view, an overview of the book, and explores what Tyson thinks of the Big Bang theory and the multiverse. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Guillermo Gonzalez about his Volume 41, No. 4 book review, Missing the Signposts. To read his review, please ...
Jul 11, 2018•22 min
The cable TV series The Story of God with Morgan Freeman will return for a third season in 2019 on the National Geographic Channel. Hosted by Freeman who famously played God in the 2003 movie Bruce Almighty, the show attempts to be a comparative religion course translated into edutainment. Like many such courses, it espouses the claim that all religions are equally valid in their truth claims. Freeman and his writers emphasize similarities between religions in the attempt to foster mutual unders...
Jul 03, 2018•33 min
We live in a climate dominated by information technology. Before the glow of our screens, we constantly are tempted to divide our attention between this reality and the digital virtual world. Of course, we cannot be both in the real world and in the digital world, so this leaves us feeling torn, conflicted, and distracted. Such a steady psychological struggle leads us to seek ways of escaping the maelstrom of exigencies. On its long journey from its Eastern religious origins in the other side of...
Jun 27, 2018•31 min
This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Dr. Kevin Schut. Kevin is Professor of Media and Communication and Associate Dean of the School of the Arts, Media and Culture at Trinity Western University, a Christian university in Canada. He teaches about media, culture, and technology from a faith based perspective. His research focuses on video games and how they intersect with our culture and faith in a number of different ways. Dr. Schut is also the author of the boo...
Jun 20, 2018•36 min
Christians may find themselves approached on the street being asked to consider religious faith. Sounds like Christian street witnessing, right? Well, it may be youre face to face with an atheist and often a GoPro video recorder being engaged in whats come to be known as street epistemology. What is street epistemology? According to Peter Boghossian atheism advocate and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University, this is an activist approach for engaging the faithful in conve...
Jun 13, 2018•34 min
