Quick To Listen

There’s not a lot making Americans hopeful these days. More than half of the country told pollsters last year that they were “extremely worried” about the direction of the country. One in 4 said that “nothing made them hopeful.” Their anxieties: politics, the pandemic, and inflation. This year, existing worries have likely been compounded by fears and anger over mass shootings, the war in Ukraine, sex abuse scandal cover-ups by church leaders, a massive drought on the Southwest side of the country, climate change inaction, spiking fentanyl deaths, and an explosion in homelessness.In the midst of this, why should Christians hope? Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. She previously joined the show to nerd out about the Bible in light of Donald Trump getting COVID-19 and controversy over the San Francisco school board seeking to drop the names of well-known Americans from their schools. Imes joined global media manager Morgan Lee to discuss what

100,000 Americans died from April 2020 to April 2021 due to opioids, according to numbers released this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of the deaths have come via fentanyl, which accounted for more than 75 percent of all fatalities. Most of the time fentanyl has been used in combination with drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine. Who were those who lost their lives? According to the New York Times: The vast majority of these deaths, about 70 percent, were among men between the ages of 25 and 54. And while the opioid crisis has been characterized as one primarily impacting white Americans, a growing number of Black Americans have been affected as well. There were regional variations in the death counts, with the largest year-over-year increases — exceeding 50 percent — in California, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky. Vermont’s toll was small, but increased by 85 percent during the reporting period. This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to t

Last Friday, both chambers of Congress passed an infrastructure bill that will commit more than one trillion dollars to America’s deteriorating roads and bridges, making life easier for pedestrians and bikers, improving broadband access, and renovating suffering public transit systems. This bill has been closely tied to Biden’s Build Better Back, legislation that would invest heavily in climate change and social policies. While the bill had passed the Senate in July, Progressive Democrats in the House had wanted to hold out on passing the bill until Build Better Back first passed.But mustering support for that initiative has been challenging for Democrats, including from within their own party. Last week, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin suggested his refusal to support the bill was because it didn’t share enough of the other side’s interests. "While I've worked hard to find a path to compromise, it's obvious: Compromise is not good enough for a lot of my colleagues in Congress. It's all or nothing, and thei

Politicians, business leaders, and activists from around the world are meeting this and next week in Glasgow, Scotland, to make commitments and urge others to do the same to keep the planet from overheating more than it already is. Earth’s global temperature has risen 1.1 C and as the planet has warmed, fires have raged in Australia and California, heatwaves and floods have killed hundreds around the world. So what can be done to keep the temperature from rising .4 or more degrees? Christians have been actively petitioning God for prayer. Believers in Asia, Europe, and North America gathered monthly from spring to fall to offer intercessory prayers ahead of the United Nations climate change conference, in an event organized by Lausanne/World Evangelical Alliance Creation Care Network, A Rocha International, Youth With A Mission England, Christian Missionary Fellowship International, Tearfund, and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. The Young Christian Climate Network organized about 2,000 people to walk be

This week, the revelations from a number of internal Facebook documents came to light, thanks to Frances Haugen, a former employee of the social media giant. The documents reveal that the organization, as The Washington Post summarized, “privately and meticulously tracked real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms, ignored warnings from its employees about the risks of their design decisions and exposed vulnerable communities around the world to a cocktail of dangerous content.” Chris Martin is content marketing editor at Moody Publishers. He studies internet culture and the effects of social media on broader society for fun. He is publishing a book with B&H Publishing in February called Terms of Service that is in the same vein as this newsletter. Martin joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to discuss the revelations that these documents show, what this means for all of us regardless of whether we’re on Facebook or not, and if there’s a “Christian” way to react to this ne

On Saturday, a gang kidnapped 17 North American missionaries in Haiti as the party returned from an orphanage in a suburb of Port-au-Prince. Since then, the group, known as 400 Mawozo, has demanded a ransom of $17 million for the victims, who include five men, seven women, and five children. While many locals have been kidnapped in recent years as security on the country’s roads has been increasingly threatened, this incident has drawn significant international attention. This kidnapping comes roughly two months after US troops withdrew from Afghanistan. America’s departure and the chaos that ensued led many expats, including aid workers and missionaries, to leave the country. Anna Hampton is the author of Facing Danger: A Guide Through Risk, which is based on her doctoral dissertation at Trinity Seminary in Newburg. She’s been in full-time ministry for 28 years, more than 17 of those years in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and other parts of Central Asia and the Middle East. She and her family are now based i

Season 1 and Season 2 spoilers ahead. The second season of Ted Lasso ends with an image of Nate. The once kitman, recently promoted Greyhounds assistant coach is not wearing Richmond attire as we see him lead team exercises on the pitch. Instead, he’s in all black, staring at the camera, as we realize he’s the head coach of Westham United, the team recently purchased by season one nemesis Rupert Mannion. Just minutes before, we’ve watched Nate verbally berate Ted during halftime in a game that could put Richmond back in the Premiere League. Nate’s arc, from neglected staff member to dismissive and arrogant coach, who struggles with self-loathing and insecurity, is just one of the themes we want to discuss. But a show known for the kindness and forgiveness of its characters also had much to say this year about toxic masculinity and father and son relationships. The program has also had much to say about actions and consequences, except that we feel that there were a few oversights here this season. Marybeth Ba

This week, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, announced that he would retire at the end of the year. An evangelical Christian who previously worked as the head of the Human Genome Project, Collins’ 2009 appointment still drew scorn. From a 2010 profile in the New Yorker: Collins read in the Times that many of his colleagues in the scientific community believed that he suffered from “dementia.” Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, questioned the appointment on the ground that Collins was “an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris, complained, “I don’t want American science to be represented by a clown.” Nevertheless, Collins served under three presidential administrations. During the pandemic, Collins has spoken out a number of times in his efforts to dispel misconceptions about the virus and vaccine.  Prior to his term at the NIH, Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He

In this third decade of the 21st century, we’ve seen a lot of religious scandals, with Christian leaders abusing their power and position. Too many. Nevertheless, still to this day when you say the words religious scandal—more often than not folks will think of two television personalities of the 1970s and ’80s: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. The “Jim and Tammy” show was the basis of what became a massive ministry and theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. It was called PTL, an abbreviation that stood both for Praise the Lord and for People That Love. Then came revelations that PTL had been massively and illegally misusing funds, diverting church funds to pay for their extravagant lifestyle and selling more lifetime vacations at the theme park than the theme park could possibly support. At about the same time, The Charlotte Observer also revealed that Jim Bakker had been engaging in extramarital sex and that ministry funds had been used for hush money. The Assemblies of God kicked them out of the denomination.

On August 29, as American troops were accelerating their pullout from Afghanistan, the U.S. military ordered its last drone strike in the 20 year war. The missile destroyed a parked car that military officials said was operated by an Islamic State sympathizer, and contained explosives for a suicide attack on the Kabul airport, where American forces and civilians had gathered for evacuation. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a news conference, “We think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.” Last week, separate investigations from The New York Times and The Washington Post questioned those assertions, reporting that the driver was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime engineer for the California-based aid group Nutrition and Education International. The supposed explosives, said the Times, were canisters of water Ahmadi was bringing home to his family because Taliban’s takeover of the city had cut off his neighborhood’s water. The Times also reported that 10 m

This year marks 20 years since 19 men hijacked four planes, driving two of the aircraft into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania, after several of the passengers fought back. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and left 25,000 people injured and were organized by Osama bin Laden, who used his faith as justification for the attacks. Several days after September 11, 2001, President Bush addressed the country: These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that. The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule. The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They re

In recent weeks, some Americans sick with COVID-19 have been looking for a cure from a very unorthodox source: ivermectin. Here’s how the Food and Drug Administration described the situation in a letter to veterinarians and animal health retailers this week: People are purchasing various highly concentrated animal ivermectin drug formulations such as “pour-on,” injectable, paste, and “drench” that are intended for horses, cattle, and sheep, and taking these drugs has made some people very sick. Even if animal drugs have the same active ingredient as an approved human drug, animal drugs have not been evaluated for safety or effectiveness in humans. Treating human medical conditions with veterinary drugs can be very dangerous. The drug may not work at all, or it could worsen the illness and/or lead to serious, potentially life-threatening health complications. People should not take products approved for veterinary use, “for research only,” or otherwise not for human consumption. Fox News as well as other conse

Here's a special, stand-alone Slow to Speak where guest host Kate Shellnutt joins Morgan Lee to read over listener feedback from Episode 271: Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know. If you have feedback for us about any episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at podcasts@christianitytoday.com. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Kate Shellnutt Music by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This spring and summer, a lot of headlines about the economy sang a similar tune: From CNN: Why American workers don't want to go back to normal The Wall Street Journal: Job Openings Are at Record Highs. Why Aren’t Unemployed Americans Filling Them? The New York Times: Why Aren’t People Going Back to Their Jobs? The Washington Post: It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America. Across the country, hundreds of companies and businesses, many of them in the hospitality and service industry, were searching for employees. And they weren’t finding them. Some state governments began to halt the federal government’s unemployment funds, worried that the cash was disincentivizing unemployed people from working. Companies and businesses began to raise salaries and add benefits. But many people weren’t persuaded; they weren’t going back to their pre-pandemic line of work. One restaurant worker in Austin told The Washington Post: “The staffing issue has actually a lot more to do with the condi

Earlier this year, Joe Biden announced that after close to 20 years, the United States would be withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. Last week, as the military began its exit, the Taliban was ready and within days had seized control of the country. The ascent sparked widespread fear and led to thousands arriving at the airport only to find their flights out of the country had been canceled. Some even grabbed a hold of the aircraft in desperation. Biden defended the decision, arguing that Afghanistan’s leaders "gave up and fled the country." He also said: "The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight. If anything, the developments in the past week reinforced ending that US military involvement Afghanistan now was the right decision.” He did concede: "The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.” As the government fell, it was not clear if the US had done anything to protect those who had worked with the military as translators. Plans to resettle Afghans as refugee

This week, the Christian Post reprinted a blog by Samuel Sey, a Canadian writer, entitled, “Why I am not getting the vaccine.” Sey’s essay didn’t address the scientific concerns he has with the vaccines, though he says he has hired a fitness trainer and is working on maintaining a healthier diet. But the piece is largely in response to several Canadian provinces instituting vaccine passports. When our governments infringe on some of our rights without any significant or collective pressure for them to stop, we tempt them to violate all our rights and freedoms.That is partly why I am not getting the vaccine. The more our governments and culture attempt to force me to get the vaccine, the more unwilling I am to get it. I want our politicians and public health officials to convince me to get the vaccine. I don’t want them to coerce me into getting it.After all, if I violate my conscience concerning the vaccine because of social pressure, that will surely make me vulnerable to violating my conscience on other iss

Due to production issues, we are not running a new podcast today. Instead, we are replaying a unfortunately, once-again-timely episode we recorded last year about California’s devastating forest fires. We’ll see you all next week with a fresh episode. Unless you’ve actually been in an area where you can look out your window and see the view with your own eyes, by now you’ve caught images of an orange sky coming from West Coast. For the past week, hundreds of miles of California, Oregon, Washington, and neighboring states have been covered in smokey air as forest fires rage, driving thousands of people from their homes. More than a dozen people have died in these historically catastrophic fires.As climate change has increasingly worsened fire season, it’s changed how Paige Parry, associate professor of Biology at George Fox University, makes sense of these disasters.“ We know that humans are what’s contributing to the fires,” said Parry. “So in my head, that makes my response and the questions that I ask very

After one vault on Tuesday, Simone Biles took herself out of the US gymnastics women’s team competition. A day later, she withdrew from the all-around, “in order to focus on her mental health,” read a statement on the USA Gymnastics' Twitter account. Simone also blamed the twisties, where, as the Washington Post describes, athletes “lose control of their bodies as they spin through the air. Sometimes they twist when they hadn’t planned to. Other times they stop midway through, as Biles did. And after experiencing the twisties once, it’s very difficult to forget. Instinct gets replaced by thought. Thought quickly leads to worry. Worry is difficult to escape.” While the majority of fans have reacted to Biles’ departure from these marquee competitions with support, it did draw scorn from some, who see her decision not to compete as quitting or a cop out. As with everything else these days, Biles’ decision became part of the culture wars. And no doubt her decision will make its way into countless sermon illustrat

This Tuesday, Amazon founder and the richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, entered space for the first time. This was the virgin flight for Blue Origin, the space travel company that Bezos founded, and lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds. Bezos's trip came just days after billionaire Richard Branson reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane. The company currently has more than 600 reservations, a trip that costs his commercial passengers, $250,000 apiece. The company hopes to launch to the public next year. While the White House called Bezos’s flight a “moment of American exceptionalism,” others have been less than thrilled to see the wealthiest in the country head into the heavens.  “Watching the coverage of the billionaires going to space and the notion that it may pave the way for all of us to go in the future. Can I just ask why they think everyone would want to go to space for 8 minutes? And how is this a good use of millions of $? How bout curing cancer?,” wrote former World Visi

Half a dozen Canadian churches have been set on fire or burned down this summer. This arson has come at a time when multiple mass graves have been found across the nation on the grounds of now-defunct residential schools. Operated by multiple churches, including the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and United, the Canadian schools were part of a 20th-century government program to assimilate its First Nation community. The government forced students to attend, separating them from their families at a young age. Once there, they were forbidden from speaking their native language and punished severely if they ran away. Many died at the school from disease and suffered from hunger and physical abuse. The trauma brought on by these schools has carried on for generations. Much of it was shared during a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where survivors told stories of their time. Jimmy Thunder teaches indigenous ministry at Horizon College and Seminary in Saskatoon and is the founder of Reconciliation Th