This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Anne Kennedy about her online-exclusive article, “Take Joy: Santa, St. Nicholas, and Jesus”. https://www.equip.org/articles/take-joy-santa-st-nicholas-and-jesus/ Locked articles are online exclusive content that are only available to subscribers. There are three subscription options to access our online exclusive content. 1. Subscribe ($33.50) to the print edition of the Christian Research Journal which includes all online e...
Nov 30, 2022•49 min
Netflix’s Ozark while dealing with the very dark themes of drug trafficking and murder, is a show that can help the Christian apologist intersect with its depiction of culture and family and use those themes as a springboard to contrast it with the truth of Christianity. ***Warning Ozark Season One and Two (SE E2) contain nudity, sexual situations, graphic violence, and language. All seasons (1-4) contain graphic violence and language.*** This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with ...
Nov 22, 2022•1 hr 12 min
In November of 2017, Amazon secured the rights for The Lord of the Rings from the Tolkien estate, promising to resurrect the dormant series and adhere even more faithfully to Tolkien’s source material, even bringing in Tolkien’s grandson, Simon, during the development process. The culmination of Amazon’s acquisition of the prestigious property arrived in September 2022 as the first episodes of a proposed five season television series titled The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a prequel to...
Nov 15, 2022•1 hr
Wesley Hill in his book, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian, poses the following question, “Perhaps celibate gay and lesbian Christians, precisely in and out of their celibacy, are called to express, rather than simply renounce and deny, same-sex love. And perhaps this is where, for all the potential trials and temptations that come with this way of thinking, same-sex friendship represents one way for gay Christians who wish to be celibate to say: “I am ...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Millennials and Gen Z increasingly reject biblical sexuality, and they aren’t shy about saying why. For American evangelical millennials (ages 26 to 41), specifically, the shift happened at least in part with ‘90s purity culture, which shouldn’t be a shock. Many were blindsided by tyrannical youth pastors wielding half-eaten lollipops, chewed gum, flowers without petals — symbolic, they said, of budding sexuality gone awry. These metaphors devaluing the human body while seemingly idolizing virgi...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Understanding how tarot works can help us see why it might be attractive to some for divination and self-awareness. To see the cards is to see yourself. Tarot decks are made up of seventy-eight cards divided into two sections, the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. Arcana is Latin for “secrets” or “mysteries.” Think of the tarot as unlocking the mysteries of life. The Major Arcana is comprised of twenty-two cards that represent life’s biggest events. For instance, the Fool card indicates a begin...
Oct 26, 2022•51 min
In some parts of the world, demonology has been overemphasized; however, the Western world seems to be dealing with the opposite end of the spectrum. Naturalistic materialism has brought with it the notion that passages in Scripture describing demonic activity —especially in the Gospels— ought to be understood as a primitive society reacting to cases of mental illness, unknown to them at the time. However, Scripture teaches that demons are spiritual in nature, like angels, having special powers ...
Oct 19, 2022•56 min
One of the best-reviewed shows currently streaming features a seminary student who takes hallucinogens to receive visions from God (I must have missed that class during my own seminary stint) and a succubus demon that wears a retainer. This kind of absurd, off-beat humor has come to define Robert and Michelle King’s CBS supernatural procedural Evil, which only recently concluded its third season on Paramount Plus. With its creepy content, scares, and quirky humor, the show has managed to carve o...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Marriage has been around almost as long as the romantic kind, but it was recently rediscovered as a “radical,” even courageous choice in the post-Obergefell v. Hodges era when same-sex couples received the legal right to marry. Like other trending topics, it has its own hashtag leading to tweets like: “can we normalize platonic marriage pls i would love to spend the rest of my life with people that i just don’t feel any romantic attraction to.” (Officialtheo23 (@officialtheo23), Twitter, May 13,...
Oct 05, 2022•48 min
The science fiction television series Raised by Wolves (HBO Max) draws on this ancient story, while moving the myth into uncanny, alien territory. This time the “Mother of all the Living” (Gen. 3:20) isn’t an innocent woman in communion with God at humanity’s beginning: she is an android programmed with a naive atheism, living at a time when humanity has almost reached its end. Created by Aaron Guzikowski (and partially directed by Ridley Scott), Raised by Wolves (RBW) nests these iconic element...
Sep 28, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Christians weary of the tumultuous debates over human sexuality sometimes wonder whether such a divisive conflict is necessary. After all, many of those promoting arguments in favor of affirming sexual relationships outside of traditional marriage also affirm the Trinity, the full deity and humanity of Christ, and confess Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. Why shouldn’t they be recognized as brothers and sisters despite their disagreements with the classical position? Christian orthodoxy r...
Sep 21, 2022•54 min
Catchy beats, wild camera angles, and hipsters talking about Tarot cards, crystals, and astrology. Just your average day on TikTok’s #witchtok. The hashtag has more than twenty-seven billion views. If you were to scroll through TikTok for a few hours, you’d maybe start to believe that witchcraft is cool. Witchcraft is alive and well, even among Christians. There are astrology apps where you can access your charts online for free — you no longer need to call the Psychic Friends Network. There are...
Sep 14, 2022•55 min
Transhumanists desire to create a utopia of their own design through science and technology. Though clothed in technical language, a strong religious undercurrent buoys this deceptive philosophical movement. As societies around the world become increasingly secular, transhumanism represents an eschatological source of hope, purpose, and destiny — an alluring competitor to the gospel. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Fazale “Fuz” Rana about his article, “Can...
Sep 07, 2022•59 min
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the best thing to happen to Star Trek in a long time, standing as a testament to what a little inspired casting and the power of social media can do. When Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn stepped into the respective roles of Christopher Pike, Spock, and the enigmatic Number One during the second season of Star Trek: Discovery back in 2019, the notion of another series set aboard the Enterprise of yore seemed like a fever dream. But when fans took to so...
Aug 31, 2022•51 min
How could a popular podcaster and author produce a feature film and write a book with the title “What is a Woman?” Does not everyone know the answer to that? After all, humanity is a dimorphic species, consisting of males and females, each with its own distinctive DNA (XY or XX) and gametes (sperm or egg). .... When Walsh asks Dr. Michelle Focier, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and an Assistant Dean of Admissions at the Brown University Alpert Medical School, what a women is “in reality, trut...
Aug 24, 2022•56 min
In the medieval Christian tradition, one form of travel—pilgrimage—functioned as a spiritual discipline in which the act of walking prefigured the soul’s movement from spiritual death to life with God. Indeed, at the roots of Christian story is the pilgrimage of Abraham, who leaves his country to wander in search of another. Today, pilgrimage functions primarily as a metaphor, reminding us that we are incomplete, that our homes and our selves are, in their fullest form, still to be found. As St....
Aug 17, 2022•59 min
Shaun of the Dead, and most zombie movies, bring home the truth that such stories often tell. They often portray civilized life as damning and even deadening. (It’s notable that Night of the Living Dead begins in a graveyard. It’s notable that the zombies in both versions of Dawn of the Dead shamble to the shopping mall.) The civilization zombies destroy is already infected. The stories we tell about them offer a dark fantasy of escape, a return to a simpler, if more brutal, existence. One of th...
Aug 11, 2022•44 min
Daily affirmations arose out of what is called “The Law of Attraction,” popularized by author Rhonda Byrne in The Secret. This book was featured by Oprah in her book club in the early 2000s, and fleshed out by one of her favorite spiritual gurus, Eckhart Tolle. When The Secret first came out it was viewed skeptically by Christians and secularists alike. The idea of the practitioner bringing some desired object or circumstance into being by aligning her thoughts with vibrational frequencies of th...
Aug 03, 2022•38 min
Apple TV+’s new six-part limited series, The Essex Serpent, based on Sarah Perry’s bestselling and award-winning 2016 novel of the same name,1 is a bit more nuanced than the standard prestige television fare, being less a series of intersecting parallel plots and more about combustible characters with nebulous motivations who collide at key points. Emmy Award-winning Homeland (2011–2020) alumna Claire Danes leads the cast as the fiercely headstrong emotional train wreck that is Cora Seaborne, su...
Jul 27, 2022•1 hr 8 min
This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Joshua R. Farris about his online-exclusive, “Why are we down here still working in the dark? (A Web TV Series Review of Severance)”. https://www.equip.org/article/why-are-we-down-here-still-working-in-the-dark-a-web-tv-series-review-of-severance/ Locked articles are online exclusive content that are only available to subscribers. There are three subscription options to access our online exclusive content. 1. Subscribe ($33....
Jul 20, 2022•54 min
Now that Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, what’s next for the pro-life movement? This episode of the Postmodern Realities Podcast is a very deep dive into issues now being raised in a post-Roe climate with Journal author Jay Watts. More will also be discussed in an article in the future 45:02/03 edition of the Christian Research Journal to be released later this year. To subscribe and make sure you get this issue when released, please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/crj-subscri...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 28 min
The record-breaking Obi-Wan Kenobi is an overhyped snooze fest that barrels ahead when it should linger and lingers when it should barrel ahead. There are strokes of brilliance contained within what was clearly, at one point, the core storyline, even if some of those scenes we have already witnessed played out in other Star Wars media. Christians who happen to be Star Wars fans might find in the core emotional story beats a worthwhile meditation on the nature of guilt and forgiveness. This Postm...
Jul 07, 2022•51 min
For the past decade, proponents of theistic evolution have convinced many evangelicals that modern-day human genetic diversity has refuted a historical Adam and Eve. But recent analyses have shown these arguments to be wrong. An important lesson is that one should never rush to abandon important biblical doctrines based upon unclear evidence. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Casey Luskin about his article, “Lessons Learned (and Not Learned) from the Evangel...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr
Does the phenomenon of intersex justify “gender fluidity,” the rejection of fixed and God-given categories of gender identity and the decoupling of gender from biological sex? Supposedly, sex is “assigned” at birth based on sexual organs and chromosomes but need not define one’s gender identity. Why are people abandoning the biblical basis and norms of gender and sexuality? This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Doug Groothuis about his article, “Sexual Identity ...
Jun 22, 2022•48 min
In a culture consumed by consumerism in the age of globalization, the Christian who seeks to make a case for his or her dependency on an old rugged cross and an empty tomb must compensate for the lack of “common ground” between the believer and the unbeliever. Because of the secularization of the culture and the dwindling of the Christian mind, there are now few epistemological topics on which the believer and the unbeliever can converse without talking past each other simply because their categ...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr
Sharing the gospel with those who are adopted—there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach because adoptions come in all shapes and sizes. There are domestic and international adoptions. There are adoptions through exclusive private agencies that sometimes can look like purchasing a designer baby, and there are adoptions where the children are highly challenging, requiring a lifetime of service and commitment from the parent. This conversation also includes practical suggestions on how to share the ...
Jun 08, 2022•51 min
The inventive and memorable tales in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories explain how the elephant got his trunk, the leopard his spots, and the camel his hump. Evolutionary naturalists tell their own "Just So" stories to explain why humans think and desire, behave and interact the way they do. But with one major difference. Evolutionists, who ground their cause/effect explanations in a Darwinian worldview, believe their tales are true. This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journ...
Jun 01, 2022•42 min
How often do those of us who are Christians stop to think about the place of imagination in reading the Bible? Among big ideas like exegesis and hermeneutics, where does imagination fit in? With most books, it’s unremarkable to say that we need imagination to read them well. But Christians sometimes get nervous about imagination and the Bible. Doesn’t using our imaginations mean we’re going to be making up a lot of stuff in our heads that isn’t actually there in the text? Isn’t imagination the p...
May 25, 2022•36 min
On May 2, 2022, the website Poltico posted a story attributed to Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward sharing a leaked first draft of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) majority opinion on Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization addressing the constitutionality of a Mississippi law restricting abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy. The majority opinion draft, authored by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, overturned Roe v Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v Casey (1992), releasin...
May 18, 2022•1 hr 14 min
In 2019, two million people on Facebook said they were going to raid Area 51, a military base in Nevada, with the hopes of proving theories that extraterrestrials (ETs) and their spaceships were being stored there. In the end, only about 150 people showed up, and the “Storm Area 51” raid was a failure. But perhaps the most exciting recent occurrence regarding ETs and unidentified flying objects (UFOs) happened in early 2021 when the U.S. government released video footage of UFOs that they could ...
May 11, 2022•48 min
