Ep98. The Shape of Sex, Leah DeVun

Ep98. The Shape of Sex, Leah DeVun

I sat down with Leah DeVun to discuss her book, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. We talk about how widespread thinking and writing about non-binary individuals was during the first centuries of the CE and again in the C12th-14th, and the way non-binary bodies actually shaped the way a host of categories and boundaries (not just gender) were demarcated. We talk in detail about the shift in the C12th/13th and the way non-binary sex shaped the project of establishing a non-human other, justifying violence towards Jews and Muslims, and determining who could live in a Christian territory. We also talk about the figures of "Adam androgyne" and the "Jesus hermaphrodite", and how they function as "anchors of eschatological time." Finally, Leah discusses how this study can inform our present, not only by showing that the consideration of non-binary, trans*, and intersex bodies are not novel to our period, but how this consideration cuts through claims of 'natural and immutable' in our own day.

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Ep82. A Christian Engagement with Shari'a, Joshua Ralston

Ep82. A Christian Engagement with Shari'a, Joshua Ralston

I sat down with Joshua Ralston to talk about his book Law and the Rule of God: a Christian Engagement with Shari’a (Cambridge, 2020). We discuss what lead him to this work, why discussions of law in Islam are missing in political theology (and why they matter), the problems of Protestant antinomianism, comparative theology and how recognising different conceptions of the law and its purpose assist interfaith work, and his account of public law as a provisional and indirect witness to the divine rule of justice

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Ep32. The Bible in Australia, Meredith Lake

Ep32. The Bible in Australia, Meredith Lake

“From the outset it has followed a fluctuating path of negotiation and transformation”

I sat down with Meredith Lake to talk about the Bible in Australia. We bust myths about the history of the Bible in this country, talk about where one goes looking to find the cultural history of a book so contested, the way the Bible shows up in almost every major national conversation and debate (often on both sides), the role of the Bible in colonisation, its use by immigrants, and the way Indigenous Christians – from early on through today – have reappropriated the Bible, turning it back on the worst of White Australia. Listen in Apple Podcasts

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