The Apostle Paul writes that Christians must battle against “powers and principalities”.
But what are they?
What does the Bible say about political power?
Meet our guests
Tom Wright – known to most as N.T. Wright – is an acclaimed New Testament scholar and theologian, who served as archbishop of Durham between 2003 – 2010. He now works at Oxford as a senior research fellow with Wycliffe Hall and spends most of his spare time writing acclaimed works of theology (with currently over 80 works published).
Links
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Check out more of N.T. Wright’s work – including his writing, and Bible studies – here.
A transcript of this episode is available here. Please note, that due to software not all exchanges between guests will be completely accurate.
Extras
Check out these helpful links below for more info on what was discussed in this episode.
To Read
- The Jewish revolt against Rome was a disastrous moment for the Jews of the first century. Here’s an explainer that details it all
- … and if you’re interested in first-century historian Josephus’ account of it all, here it is
- The Economist dubbed the British Post Office Scandal one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history. Here is the excellent article that the quote is from
- Here’s Former President Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, immortalising the notion of the “separation of Church and State”
- Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla caused a huge stir when she likened regular Christian beliefs to Christian nationalism. Here’s her apology – which also features some pretty interesting thoughts on how to cover this tricky topic!
To Watch
- The Capitol Hill riot was a dreadful – but historic – day. Here’s some amazing footage of it going down, filmed by VICE News
- The rioters also broke into the Senate – here’s some footage captured by an undercover New Yorker reporter
- Here is a clip by Sky News covering the British Post Office Scandal
- Christian Nationalism has become a hot topic in recent years. Here’s a great piece by PBS featuring an interview with a former Christian Nationalist
To Listen
- Check out the podcast Ask N.T. Wright anything – and get in touch to ask him … anything!
- Undeceptions episode 21 ‘Post Christian’ with journalist Greg Sheridan touches upon some of the themes of this episode – check it out!
- Here’s Tom and friend of the show Tom Holland chatting about the Apostle Paul, mediated by other friend of the show Justin Brierly (look out for him in the feed soon!
… and finally
- Australian journalist John Saffran made headlines when, in the final episode of his John Safran vs. God series, he had an actual exorcism live on camera. Here’s part one of the episode (the entire thing is on YouTube) – it’s confronting – but shows the gravity of some of the “powers”
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