What Matters Most

Welcome to Episode 19 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with (and listen to) the Rev. Dr. Rob James. This episode focuses on the Christian understanding of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and what that means theologically for Christianity, but what it means for followers of Jesus to reflect on this reality for our human lives.  This is Rob’s third appearance on What Matters Most. Rob is currently priest in charge at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Vancouver. He has several degrees in Theology, including a PhD from SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. His book The Spiral Gospel: Intratextuality in Luke’s Narrative was published in September 2022 by Cambridge-based publishers James Clarke. Rob has also written and published a book of stories from the Bible designed for storytellers to use with children in children’s homilies or Sunday School or church camps. The first book is on stories from the NT, but there is a second coming on stories from the OT. The illustrator for both is the Reverend Amanda Ruston. The book is called Fifty New Testament Stories for Storytellers. Today's podcast is about Incarnation, which begins with Rob's poem of the same name:  Incarnation, by Rob James Incarnation – He came with a cry that awakened the Universe, not in the thunder of a coronation, but in the hush of a barn, where hands make straw into a cradle, and a name is given the Nameless. The Word, whose syllables shaped galaxies, now shapes hands in infant fists. Here is God in full circumference, the circle of glory that holds stars in their orbit; here too, a mother's sigh, a bed of straw, a lantern guttering against winter's teeth. Majesty has stooped, and in stooping is not lessened but made strange, veiled,                      a blazing sun learning to walk             under the humble skin of                       ordinary things.   Most eyes would not see. There is a carpenter and his wife, and a baby, cause enough for joy. But, they note the birthplace: insignificant, smelling of hay, of travellers’ boots; nothing more than a peculiar                              human birth, if peculiar at all.                                                           But the light that wove the cosmos is            here. Some have worked on their sight.                    Others have been gifted it. The shepherds, startled by angels, are the first of the seeing; then some foreigners come to see and to give outlandish gifts; later, fishermen will fish in the dark, and land a glory                                                            that amazes their nets.   A startling rule of incarnation:                            the fullness of God most easily concealed.                                           For God does not clothe glory in gold so emperors will bow; but chooses a manger, where lice and lullaby mix,                                            where a mother's breath keeps time with the stars the Word cast into space. He must learn the geography of our skin,                    and the dialect of our temptations. God risks being unknown. To teach us how to be human,   God becomes human: not as an image of what we might dream to be, but as the figure who bears our clay,              and our laughter.   Look at his childhood.                                             Physical learning of saw, plane, lathe, hammer, nails, sweat. Carpentry apprentice, he learns the fashioning of wood and of people, as they come and go, family, neighbours, customers. He grows in wisdom                                                  measured in days of doing. If Heaven had taught him by decree, thin would the lesson have been.                     God would not have learned it.                          Instead, the curriculum of human life, breaking bread with hands that would be pierced. Scandal and the consolation: God learns human craft the only way humans can learn it,   by living.   Perfection is not in being less tempted, less wounded. It is in being more human:                    more obedient to mercy than to appetite, more given to the poor than to prestige, more tender to broken things than to the pleasant, safe authorities of the world. Where the first Adam hardened his will into an instrument for taking, the second Adam bends his will into a conduit for living. First Adam learned to hide, to cover his shame. Second Adam walks toward shame               as toward a kind of school, not for humiliation but for education in love.   To be truly human is to be drawn into this life, to let the Word teach in our wounds,   to let divine steadiness be the language we begin speaking, even in our unsteady hearts. And yet we are not invited to become copies                       of something unreachable, but forgiven forms of ourselves, the selves for which we were called into being. Ourselves, repaired, redirected. Incarnation is pedagogy:                        God showing with flesh and face                      what humanness looks like when fear bows to faith,                                         when power is veiled by service, and the loudest voice is mercy.     This peculiar birth lets Easter open.                         If the Word had never taken on the manger, if God remained an untouchable brightness beyond eyes and tongues, there could be no tomb  turned inside out with new light. Resurrection                                   is not rescue from distance; it is the vindication of the Word's risk                                         of being bound in time and blood. Christmas and Easter are but a single movement: chords of one long song. Alleluiah, Alleluiah, Alleluiah, and even at the grave, shall we make our song, Alleluiah! Alleluiah! Alleluiah!    The road from cradle to grave twists beyond imagining.                      Silence waits upon Golgotha, where the Word, who spoke galaxies, is muted by nails. The Logos enwrapped   in the shroud of dust and derision. Pilate's questions, soldiers' jeers, the crowd's litany. The Word is measured not in syllables but in the heavy business of dying. ‘It is finished’. A last syllable. A hush, as the Word is swallowed.    This is the horror and the heart. Speech that created worlds is silenced.   Silent man,                                     silent God, speaking in ways no rhetoric can. The Word who once spoke ‘Let there be’, is absent, yet a seed sleeps; the seed of an answering voice that will not be raised by brute force but by a different gravity, the pull of love that gathers  what violence scatters. When the stone rolls away, it is not an escape, but revolution, and revelation that silence was pregnant with speech.   The Word speaks again, enwrapped in the love that would not let abandonment have the last note.   No idea was raised,                   but a person. The same hands that made infant fists, smoothed rough carpenter's wood, felt the nails, are the hands taking and eating fish, for all to see. Without the night of manger there is no morning. And he is the second Adam, for he reenacts humanity from the bottom up. The second Adam comes not to erase but to recapitulate, to take the story again, to bear the weight of temptation. Fully human, not an actor wearing the mask of flesh, but humanity perfected, deepened, sharpened into the image of God, ‘in the beginning’.   The incarnation: so bright it hurts.  It illumines ourselves, finite and glorious, sinful and beloved. The true human does not deny limits, but lets them be the raw material for grace. Where we break, the second Adam   places his hands and heals. Where we hide, he dares to enter. We are apprenticed to a life that begins at the manger and climbs to heights and depths of Golgotha. And beyond. Every glimpse of him a threshold to the mystery that remakes us, a painful light we must look upon, in a Universe reverberating with his cry. Dare we live such an incarnate life?   This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.  I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It’s the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It’s free! Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.    John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement

Ekaputra Tupamahu, associate professor and author focused on language politics and postcolonial biblical studies. He discusses how colonialism turned the Bible into a tool of power, the politics of translation and language loss, contrasts interpretations of ‘tongues,’ and traces the genealogy of missionary rhetoric tied to empire.

Welcome to Episode 17of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Micah Kiel. This episode focuses on being transformed and what it means to take seriously not only our spiritual lives, but the temporal lives and needs of others, particularly those who are struggling with poverty or have otherwise been marginalized. Micah Kiel holds a Ph.D. (New Testament) Princeton Theological Seminary, a M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary, and a BA (music performance) St. John’s University. He and his family live in St. Joseph, MN. In this episode, we discussed his book Be Transformed: A Biblical Journey Toward a More Just World (Liturgical Press, 2024) which won the 2025 Association of Catholic Publishers First Place Award, Scripture: scholarly works and the 2025 Catholic Media Association Third Place Award, for Catholic Social Teaching.  Today’s podcast will introduce us to Scripture, and its call for us to be transformed at both a personal and social level, and how Catholic Social Teaching (CST) can help us translate Scripture into practical demands for our lives.  CST is traced back to Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum in 1891 and I thought Micah’s definition of Catholic social teaching helping us translate Scripture into practical demands for our lives is insightful. It takes, he said, the core principles of Scripture and makes it into something practical for our world today, dealing with issues like AI and worldwide environmental degradation that Scripture does not speak directly to, but that we must address for healthy and moral living today Micah alluded to or mentioned a number of CST encyclicals, like JP II’s Laborum exercens in 1981, which deals with the value of human work, Laudato Si’ and Laudato Deum, which deal with the environment, Gaudium et Spes, on the fate of humanity today and the common good, and Populorum progressio, on how the economy must serve all people. These are all available on line if you have not read them, and even if you have!  This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.  I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It’s the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It’s free! Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.    John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement

Welcome to Episode 16 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Judith Scholes and Dr. Nick Olkovich.  This episode focuses on decolonizing curriculum and indigenizing curriculum, and what that means particularly at Catholic colleges on Musqueam land at a large public university, UBC.  Today’s podcast introduces us to a Wabash grant that Judith and Nick are directing, Exploring Pedagogies of Social Justice, Decolonization, and Indigenization in a Canadian Catholic Context, that has been active at Corpus Christi College and St. Mark's College since 2024 and will be completed in 2026. This grant is from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. There are three overarching questions the grant seeks to engage: How can religion and theology faculty take a leadership role in articulating the pedagogical implications of the priorities in our Strategic Plan, especially the commitments to dialogue, social justice and civic engagement? How can we create opportunities for diverse voices across disciplines to come together, listen, and learn from one another? How might our unique context in Vancouver, British Columbia and on Coast Salish territory teach us how to listen and learn more openly, more reflexively, and more often? Dr. Judith Scholes and Dr. Nick Olkovich introduce us to the complexity of these questions and why it is essential for all of us to engage these questions.  How do we understand decolonization, indigenization, and reconciliation? “We’re not trying to include the other on our own terms,” as Nick said. We want to move away from, indeed reject, ways of knowledge that in practice consider some people as inferior to others, as Pope Francis discussed in Laudato Si' and Querida Amazonia, and that consider there to be one, true culture in the world. We all need to be listening to and learning from others, especially in our context indigenous peoples.  This is a process that is constantly unfolding, undoing colonial practices and determining what we do in their place. Some of the things we can do is center indigenous voices, and learn from them on their land. And as Judith wisely said, schools are the place where we ought to indigenize, as schools were the primary though not the only place where this process of di-indigenization took place. She also referred to Daniel Heath Justice, professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC, and his questioning as to what comprises knowledge in the academy. I will link to his webpage. I will also link to the article Judith mentioned, which is available for free online, by Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz,  Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian Academy. This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.  I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It’s the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It’s free! Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.    John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement

Dr. Jordan Ryan, a Filipino-Canadian New Testament scholar and archaeologist, reflects on decolonizing biblical theology. He discusses reading Acts through Filipino and Asian diaspora lenses. He explains socially located hermeneutics, how Western anti‑communist and colonial assumptions shape interpretations, and contrasts missions in Acts with colonial missionary practices.

Welcome to Episode 14 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Casey Collins.  This episode focuses on religion in Japan, particularly Buddhism, and, we can break that down even further, a new religious movement known as Shinnyo-En which is related to an esoteric school of Japanese Buddhism known as Shingon founded by the Japanese monk Kukai in the 8th century. This is not an episode in the Christian nationalism project! Casey Collins earned his PhD at the University of British Columbia, defending a dissertation entitled "Walking in the Founders' Footsteps: Hagiography and Devotion in Shinnyo-en, a Japanese New Religion," in April 2023 at the University of British Columbia. His work examines sociological and phenomenological approaches to religious studies, charismatic religious leaders, sacred narratives, new religions, and the material culture of religion. Prior to his doctoral work, Casey earned his BA and MA in Asian Studies from UBC also. He is now Director of Inter-Religious Studies and Professor of Asian Religions at VST. Today’s podcast is a fascinating exploration of new religious movements, focusing, it is true, on a particular movement, Shinnyo-En, but it raises questions as Casey says, about religious practice in general, what is religion itself, especially when we look at it in contexts other than the western world, and what is it that attracts people to religion in general. Casey also gifted to us a new word, contra-modern, and it has set me wondering, how might this term apply to various religious movements across the world.  What do you think about this contra-modern movement Shinnyo-En? As I said in the episode, when I think of charismatic religious leaders, I get a little nervous, it’s an immediate reaction when I think about groups I know of who have been led astray by leaders who have taken advantage of or harmed their followers. There is no evidence of that with this group, however, and Casey does not suggest such abuses do not take place in Japan too, as with the Aum Shinrikyo group who perpetrated a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 that killed at least 13 people and injured thousands more. But not every new religious group behaves this way at all and the reality of new religious groups or NRMs is that people continue to be attracted to them, even in countries such as Japan where we are told the people there are not very religious and they themselves might tell you that too. Some of this has to do with the definition of religion and western conceptions of what a religion is do not map easily onto Asian conceptions of religion. Indeed, I was surprised to learn that Japan is the locus of the study of new religious movements in the academic world because it has the most NRMs in the world. I did not know that. Casey referred us to Rush Hour of the Gods: A Study of New Religious Movements in Japan by H. Neill McFarland, a classic in the field from 1967. And as Casey Collins says, NRMs are worth our attention because they ask us to think, what is it that people want from life? Why are they attracted to NRMs? Why are they attracted to religion? In the context of all the talk about religion fading away, it seems that it continues to attract people: “religion is not going away” as Casey said. This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.  I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It’s the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It’s free! Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.    John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement

Welcome to Episode 13 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Matthew J. Cressler.  This episode is a distinct episode in the project, following that of Steven Tyra, which covers Christian nationalism in the reformed Protestant tradition, and Ruth Braunstein, who discussed Christian nationalism in US evangelicalism; today’s episode is on Christian nationalism in Catholicism, particularly in the USA, as seen throughout the 20th century up until today. Matthew J. Cressler, Ph.D. is a rogue scholar, comics creator, and teacher whose work focuses on religion, race, and justice. He is also chief of staff for the Corporation for Public Interest Technology. He is the author of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations and creator of Bad Catholics, Good Trouble, the educational webcomic series. He’s written for America, The Atlantic, National Catholic Reporter, The Revealer, Slate, U.S. Catholic, and numerous academic journals, including Religion & American Culture for which he wrote "Real, Good, and Sincere Catholics."  He also co-reported the Religion News Service series “Beyond the Most Segregated Hour,” which won a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council. He has two forthcoming books currently under contract: Catholics and the Making of MAGA: How an Immigrant Church Became America’s Law and Order Faith (Harper Collins, 2027), and the co-authored Body & Blood: Catholic Horror in America. Today’s podcast is on Catholicism and Christian nationalism in the USA, although Matthew nuances whether this particular phrase is the best description of what is happening in some factions of the Catholic church. I also introduced the phrase integralism and asked whether this is a better descriptor of a particular form of Catholic Christian nationalism. Matthew again, as you will hear, demurred, as you will hear. Not because he rejected the language outright, but because he wanted to make a broader point about Catholics in general. What Cressler does is put this current MAGA Catholicism in the context of deeper American history and indeed a deeper international history, taking the French Revolution as an important starting point, though without question the whole reality of Christendom in late antiquity and the medieval period gives us a broad and general context. This is why Matthew was reticent to make a simple equivalency with Christian nationalism in evangelical USA or even with Catholic integralism because apart from its elite proponents, it reflects the Catholicism of a lot of ordinary Catholics. Matthew asked the question, why is our tradition a welcome home for right-wing and fascist movements in the past and today? How embedded is racism and intolerance embedded in what it means to be a “good catholic”? Matthew described Tom Homan, the man in charge of Trump’s border policy, as the son and grandson of law enforcement officers, and a Catholic. He’s such a good catholic, this is what he said in response to the US Catholic bishops denouncing of Trump’s treatment of migrants: “The Catholic Church is wrong,” Homan told reporters. “I’m a lifelong Catholic, but I’m saying it not only as a border czar, but I’m also saying this as a Catholic.” Surely, he too feels he is a good Catholic. It’s something to consider: in some cases Christian nationalists hear a message of nationalism from the pulpit, but in this case the Church has said, this is not in keeping with the Gospel, and it goes to the highest levels of the Church, directly from Francis and Leo and the bishops. But instead of the Gospel and teaching authority of the Church, one chooses the nation state and oneself. What does it mean to be a good catholic? I think sometimes you need to make good trouble, and perhaps just listening to the perennial message of the Gospel and following it is troubling today to the powers that be. Two last things: The Flannery O’Connor short story I referenced, poorly, is “A Temple of the Holy Spirit.” If you have not read Flannery O’Connor before, it is worth doing, though she herself reflected some of the racism of Georgia in the mid-twentieth century, she is a terrific writer who offers spiritually powerful insights into the human condition.  Good and bad. And the book that Matthew referenced on Catholicism in the southern USA is The South's Tolerable Aliens: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970, by Andrew S. Moore.  This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.  I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It’s the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It’s free! Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.    John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement

Welcome to the eighth episode of Pop Culture Matters, a conversation with my good friend and a great friend of the podcast, Martin Strong.  We returned to a discussion of Christmas movies for this episode, but not our favorite Christmas movies, which we have already discussed; so please check out that first episode to hear about The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life, Elf, A Christmas Story, and Alistair Sim playing  Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Instead, we are discussing movies that we have not seen before, even though they are considered Christmas classics. The list is smaller this time around, including Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Holiday Inn (1942), White Christmas (1954), and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Martin discussed the AFI Top Holiday Movies and the films we discussed today are quite high on that list, which I found at IMDB which had a top 20 list, with Holiday Inn ranked as number two, behind It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas at number three, Miracle on 34th Street  at number six, and Meet Me in St. Louis at number eight. So, we are discussing four of the top eight films on that list. But lists are meant to be debated and discussed, right?  We also returned to the question of what we think makes for a good Christmas movie, and what ChatGPT thinks makes for a good Christmas movie.  ChatGPT offers six characteristics of what makes for a good Christmas movie. Interestingly, last year we offered six characteristics: transformation of a character; warmth; earnestness; a level of comfort and peace; lovingkindness; and care for each other. Listen and see how closely what we determined made a good Christmas movie is mimicked by Chat GPT. And listen to our discussion of our four films, all older and highly rated, and think about the extent to which they capture the characteristics of a classic Christmas movie. As I said last year, get comfortable and cozy with your loved ones and settle in with a cup of hot cocoa and a Christmas cookie. If this podcast hits some of the right Christmas notes, you’re going to change your selfish ways and be transformed by the warmth of Christmas. Or, given the films we’re discussing, maybe you’re going to put together a song and dance team, write a classic Christmas song, and buy a house in the suburbs. Merry Christmas from all of us at the Centre for Christian Engagement  and St. Mark’s College. Merry Christmas to Martin Strong for joining me in this venture! Merry Christmas to Kevin Eng for editing and engineering this episode and integrating all the wonderful music in the podcast. Merry Christmas to Fang Fang Chandra, the CCE assistant, who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly. Merry Christmas to Kenton McDonald-Lin for the interviews on the UBC campus that spiced up this Christmas episode.  Merry Christmas to all of our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know and give the gift of What Matters Most by also rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform.  Thanks again for listening and remember Merry Christmas.    Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Follow us at our Instagram page, @stmarkscce, newly revived, and drop us a line as to what you want to see or hear. We’ll post there with a question as to what you are most interested in. Or email us with your suggestions to jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca or cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. John W. Martens

Welcome to Episode 11 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Ruth Braunstein, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute. A cultural sociologist interested in the role of religion and morality in American political life, Ruth's award-winning research has been published in the top peer-reviewed journals in her field, and has been covered in major news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Time Magazine. She also writes frequently for public audiences, including at The Guardian, Religion News Service, and The Conversation, and in her weekly Substack Democracy Is Hard. Ruth is also the creator of the podcast series When the Wolves Came, which we will be discussing in this episode and which I recommend highly that you go and listen to after you finish this episode.  Ruth‘s research, writing and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards and fellowships. She received the inaugural Distinguished Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association’s Religion Section, and her former department’s 2021 Faculty Mentor Award.  She is currently President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, and Chair of the Board of Directors of PRRI. I relied on PRRI research in my introduction to the CCE Christian nationalism Project. She earned her doctoral degree in sociology from New York University and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. She is originally from Atlanta, GA. Today’s podcast is on Christian nationalism in the USA and I found it bracing, a wakeup call.  As a scholar of early Christianity, the earliest stages of Christianity, it still shocks me as to how we got from there to here. I’m not arguing that the people who adhere to Christian nationalism are not real Christians, or challenging their devotion, but I will read a passage that Ruth cited from Matthew 7, giving it a bit more context from the chapter in Matthew: 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will know them by their fruits. Keep this in mind as you listen to the episode. Are Christian nationalists bearing the fruit of love of neighbour? Are they bearing the fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul delineates? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Who is? Ask yourself this question as, as I ask myself this question: am I bearing this fruit? For me, this was an important introduction to Christian nationalism. We could not have had a better or more nuanced guide than Ruth Braunstein.  It was my honour to speak with her. This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.  What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.  I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It’s the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It’s free! Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.    John W. Martens Director, Centre for Christian Engagement

Welcome to the first What Matters Most podcast that is also offered in video form on YouTube. This episode introduces our Christian Nationalism project and our plans for the next few years in terms of podcasts, webinars, and lectures, culminating with an international and ecumenical conference in 2028. You will also find links here to the podcast episodes that have already started to examine Christian Nationalism. We hope to offer forthcoming episodes on our YouTube channel also.  What Matters Most is a podcast focused on listening to people and what is on their minds, particularly dealing with the big questions of religion and spirituality. It emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement, a Centre at St. Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC, but our programming is intended for all interested parties, Catholic or not. In the What Matters Most podcast, we talk to people, some well-known, some not so well-known, some Catholic, some Christian, some not affiliated with any religion, some affiliated with other faiths (Muslims, Sikhs) to find out what matters to them. It is a podcast focused on spirituality and faith, but truly focused on listening to others, to learning from those connected to the Church and to those who are not. In this episode I begin to define what I mean by the term “Christian Nationalism”? For me, it reflects the desire by some Christians in Europe, the USA, and in Canada, and perhaps elsewhere, to have the roles of the state and Church connected in some fundamental way so that the desires of the state and the Church are formally acknowledged and pursued by each. One of the ways we can think about the relationship is a return to some form of Christendom or a type of theocracy.  I take Christian nationalism as a particular, specific threat, separate from nationalism, which presents its own threats, and to my mind Christian nationalism needs to be defined on its own terms. A previous guest on the podcast, Bill Cavanaugh, sees nationalism itself as the threat and I cite from a recent article of his Nationalism as Idolatry: Why We Must Choose Between Elevating Religion or Country  as an important consideration. Please do check out the podcast episode he was a guest on cited below.  I also cite data from the Public Religion Research Institute, particularly “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” as important to understanding the nature of Christian Nationalism. This data comes from the USA, though, and there is little Canadian data to consult. One book worth consulting, though, is Lydia Bean’s 2010 book The Politics of Evangelical Identity: Local Churches and Partisan Divides in the United States and Canada, in which she shows similarities in Canadian and American churches with respect to theology, but great differences in terms of their political identities.  Our goal here is to understand the phenomenon and to understand how to stand against it, both from a political point of view and from a religious point of view. It does not offer the authentic face of Christianity, although it is definitely a face of Christianity that cannot be ignored or wished away.  Part of our task too is to understand its attraction: what does it point to? What are the positives that people who desire Christian nationalism want? What does it offer them that they are missing? Why did it emerge now? Also, how does this impact people of other faiths? How is their place in a democracy understood by Christian nationalists? What do Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, indigenous peoples, and those with no particular faith, inclusive of all others, feel about Christian nationalism?  So, where are we at right now in terms of our project? Right now, there are podcasts that introduce a variety of ideas and the history of Christian nationalism in North America on the podcast.  Let me give you a list of episodes that touch on or discuss the topic in depth.  The Rise of Christian Nationalism in the 1930s and Today in the USA: A Conversation with Charles Gallagher, S.J. on October 31, 2023 Listen here (Apple Podcasts) The Uses of Idolatry, or Many Old Gods: A Conversation with Bill Cavanaugh on October 22, 2024 on Christianity and nationalism, particularly the idolatry of nationalism. Listen here (Apple Podcasts) Reconsidering John Calvin: A Conversation with Ruben Rosario Rodriguez, January 16, 2025 examines Calvin’s view of the proper relationship between church and state and the authority due each of them.  Listen here (Apple Podcasts) Becoming a Catholic Peace Church: A Conversation with Gerald Schlabach January 30, 2025 In which Gerald reflects on the anabaptist understanding of the role of the church in the world and how the Catholic church can become a peace church. Listen here (Apple Podcasts) Reading the Bible in the Kingdom of Love: A Conversation with Tom Bolin June 25, 2025 In which Tom reflects on his new book, An Inspired Word in Season: Reading the Bible Responsibly in a Polarized World, which seeks to reduce polarization in a divisive political world by seeking out ways in which the Bible can reduce tension by interpreting responsibly together.  Listen here (Apple Podcasts) “The Way We Exercise Dominion is Through Justice:” A Conversation with Dr. Steven W. Tyra on Christian Nationalism, October 22, 2025 Listen here (Apple Podcasts) Finally, I think Elizabeth Castelli’s fits in the context of our discussion of Charlie Kirk and his murder and how that fits in martyrdom narratives. Who is a Martyr? A Conversation with Dr. Elizabeth A. Castelli, November 19, 2025 Listen here (Apple Podcasts) Coming up is Ruth Braunstein, who will discuss evangelical Christian nationalism. And following that Matthew Cressler who will discuss Catholic integralism, a specifically Catholic form of Christian nationalism. There is more to come including an in person lecture with Pavlo Smytsnyuk on March 17, 2025.  More to come, so stay tuned! And please follow us on your favourite podcasting platform, rate and review the podcast, follow us on Instagram at @stmarkscce, or drop us an email at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca or @cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. Thanks for listening and remember what matters most. John W. Martens