Ep 10: Rachel Ferguson, Part 1

Explicit content warning

01/19/21 • 119 min

This is Part 1 of our conversation with Rachel Ferguson. She's the Director of the Liberty & Ethics Center and the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University. She was also Andy's college Philosophy professor.
Unbeknownst to us before the night we recorded, our parents and Rachel's parents knew each other since the 1970's and were responsible for our dad "getting saved", so that was a very serendipitous connection.
In this part we talk about Rachel's story of growing up in the church, the history of the American Evangelical movement and it's differences from the American Evangelical church of today, Christian support of Trump and what that means for the church going forward, and her book (which will be released later this year... hopefully).
During our talk Rachel referenced a near endless supply of books and other resources that are worth checking out, including...
- Rachel's own YouTube talk, "Jesus' Moral Revolution"
- This article and this article on the topic of hell
- Phil Vischer's video discussing the history of American Evangelicalism
- "Wandering in the Darkness" by Eleonore Stump
- "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard
- "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck
- "God Behaving Badly" by David Lamb
- The Bible Project
- "Love Your Enemies" by Arthur C. Brooks
- "A Time to Build" by Yuval Levin
- "Toxic Charity" b

Previous Episode

Ep 09: Godless Heathens... Unite!

Andy and TJ are joined by Brian Farmer, brother of Andy's high school flame. He's an atheist who's never really had an extended conversation about his atheism with other people, so hopefully it was cathartic and not too traumatizing for him.
Extras...
- Brian talked about "The Thief in the Night", a film series from the 1970's about the Rapture. You can watch it on YouTube here.
- The documentary about the debates between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, called "Collision", can be found on Amazon here.
- Seth Andrews' "The Thinking Atheist" YouTube channel can be found here.
- The atheist woman interviewed on CNN after her home was destroyed by a tornado can be found here.
- Brian talked about the religious beliefs of prisoners incarcerated in the US federal system. An interesting article from FiveThirtyEight (from 2015) about that topic can be found here.
- Brian's speech before the Wentzville Board of Alderman concerning their "In God We Trust" sign can be found here.
- Also, his "secular invocation" can be found here.

Next Episode

Ep 12: Sensus Moralitatis

Andy and TJ are joined by their first repeat guest, Sam Tunnell. They discuss a secular basis for morality, Sam Harris's "The Moral Landscape," and other topics.
Other resources:
Andy's main argument is based around Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape."
You can also watch Sam Harris's TED Talk on The Moral Landscape.
Sam mentioned Rebecca McLaughlin's "Confronting Christianity" as having powerful arguments from the Christian perspective.
Andy mentioned a couple of YouTube channels that he likes, Steven Woodford's "Rationality Rules" and Alex O'Connor's "CosmicSkeptic".
Sam mentioned the podcast "This Cultural Moment" as another good resource for Christians interested in the topic of morality and culture in general.