Beer Christianity – Details, episodes & analysis

Flamy Grant is the first drag artist ever to top the iTunes Christian charts, with her soulful songs about growing up queer in the Bible Belt of the US and navigating faith, Scripture, gender and sexuality with honesty.

[there would ordinarily be an image here but Libsyn is a bit ropey today]

We caught up with Flamy at Greenbelt festival and talked about God, the Bible, personal authenticity and why she still makes Christian-friendly music. It's a lot of fun, you should listen.

The episode was recorded out in the wild, so expect some background noise and for us to be quieter than Flamy, because THIS ISN'T ABOUT US, OKAY? If we're quiet it is because we are good allies choosing not to centre ourselves (and not because we were so concerned about making sure we got Flamy we kinda forgot about ourselves) (also not because Jonty can't find the backup recording where we might be louder) (why would you even think that? shut up).

Flamy's latest single, If you ever leave, is out now. Find out more about her and what she's doing at flamygrant.com and check out Greenbelt's helpful payment plans for 2025's festival if you want a cool way to spread the cost. 

About Beer Christianity

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-imperialist, post-post-post-evangelical podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, helpful and entertaining.

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. He updates it according to his own wildly inconsistent neurodivergent schedule, but it’s a good read. Sign up for the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

Support Beer Christianity…

Putting the show together costs a bunch of money in hosting fees, editing software, equipment and time. If you can, please help out by donating via Buy Me a Coffee (or in our case, a beer) where you can make one-off donations or do the membership thing.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and, probably, loads of other places. We love hearing from listeners. You can email us at beerchristianity AT yahoo DOT com. We often respond to mails we get on the show. And if you leave us a voicenote on Insta we might air your question on an episode.

There's also a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and random chat.

Malky’s design work has graced many good magazines and music videos. You can find his stuff and even commission him if he’s not too busy, here. Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not literature but it’s quite fun if you like Supernatural, Africa or the Goth scene. Laura doesn’t want us to post her BookTok until she’s posted more videos. She may have prayed for the app to be banned just to avoid it.

Beliefs…

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be, while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

The greatest festival in the world did not disappoint in 2024.

Greenbelt: Dream On was lovely, and we're here to tell you why.

If you were not there (or if you've never been to Greenbelt) we're here to tell you why we loved it again this year. If you were there, let's compare notes!

We loved: 

• Bob Vylan
• Dutty Moonshine Big Band
• Flamy Grant
• Brian McLaren
• DAM
• Richard Rohr
• Seeing our children
• Drinking enough cider to forget things
• Beer and Hymns
• Siskin Green
• Drinking enough cider to forget things
• Vibes

Join us on this special episode for Greenbelt 101. Contains rollerblades. And crazy goat.

Thanks again to the people who put this lovely festival together. And thanks to you for listening.

You should book now for Greenbelt 2025, there are amazing monthly plans!

About Beer Christianity

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-imperialist, post-post-post-evangelical podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, helpful and entertaining.

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. He updates it according to his own wildly inconsistent neurodivergent schedule, but it’s a good read. Sign up for the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

Support Beer Christianity…

Putting the show together costs a bunch of money in hosting fees, editing software, equipment and time. If you can, please help out by donating via Buy Me a Coffee (or in our case, a beer) where you can make one-off donations or do the membership thing.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and, probably, loads of other places. We love hearing from listeners. You can email us at beerchristianity AT yahoo DOT com. We often respond to mails we get on the show. And if you leave us a voicenote on Insta we might air your question on an episode.

There's also a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and random chat.

Malky’s design work has graced many good magazines and music videos. You can find his stuff and even commission him if he’s not too busy, here. Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not literature but it’s quite fun if you like Supernatural, Africa or the Goth scene. Laura doesn’t want us to post her BookTok until she’s posted more videos. She may have prayed for the app to be banned just to avoid it.

Beliefs…

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be, while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

Is the essence of Christianity basically Judaism through a Zen lens? Can we understand some great artists and theologians better if we assume performative masculinity? Is there really a crack in everything? Is it where the light gets in? 

In Episode 92 of Beer Christianity we answer these and other important questions (like: Is later Leonard Cohen better than his earlier oeuvre? Is Avalanche the most devastatingly romantic song in history? Do you know what I'm thinking and who does vengeance belong to?) with Matthew Anderson, Pauline scholar, Leonard Cohen aficionado and author of Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul. 

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-imperialist, post-post-post-evangelical podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, to be helpful and entertaining.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. 

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. 

Sign up to the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

There's a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and weird chat. It's not terribly serious. 

Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not available in all good bookshops, but if you bought it and left a review that would probably make that more likely. 

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

After the horrific attacks on Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, an image of a Christian in England standing guard outside his local mosque went viral. Andrew Graystone was the good witness. Speaking in a press tent at Greenbelt festival, he talks to Beer Christianity about power and whether the Church needs it. 

Also on the podcast, in the pub: a man called Drabs and a woman called Laura talk about losing our confidence in evangelism, how beer once funded the Baptist Missionary Society (but sadly doesn't anymore), power and light stuff like universalism. 

Beer flows. Jukeboxes get loud. Truth is mumbled to power.  

Thanks to Greenbelt for organising the interview. You guys are lovely. 

The pub: Broadways, Didcot. The presenters: a 22-year-old feminist environmentalist and a 42-year-old Christian socialist. The beer: American and surprisingly hard to pronounce. Also: gin.

Beer Christianity episode 2: Ginesis features a long and funny interview with Harry and Chris, whose entire back catalogue you should get immediately. It also features reflections on Greenbelt festival 2019, which hosted Harry and Chris, Justin Welby, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Extinction Rebellion and Brass Against. You should go next year. Greenbelt is wonderful. And they have a thing called Beer and Hymns, which is as amazing as it sounds. 

Apologies in advance for the jukebox noise. It's a real pub. A real, great, noisy-ass pub. 

Many thanks to Greenbelt for making the interview possible and to Harry and Chris for being wise and funny about being Christian in a comedy space, what to do if you want to make it as an artist, and why Chris was washing Jonty's feet. Well. Foot.

Introducing Beer Christianity - the podcast of faith, hops and love. The opening episode features an exclusive interview with Noam Chomsky from a few years ago that is still depressingly relevant, as well as some lone beer-sipping and musing from host and former Baptist Times 'news communist', Jonty Langley.

With the aid of a bottle of Tusker (a tasty Kenyan beer), Jonty talks about what you can expect from Beer Christianity - a progressive Christian podcast with a sense of humour and a strong drink ethic. 

It's a pubcast, really. Enjoy. 

AI is going to save the world. Or kill us all. Or another, secret, third thing.

Trying to find a pattern of truth within all the cultural noise about Artificial Intelligence is pretty hard right now, so we turned to someone who has been working on and with AI since the 1980s.

Jean-Louis Ecochard has been in on the development of everythting from caller ID and online banking to video conferencing and e-health, and was one of the people behind what became WebMD. He now heads up the Center for the Digital Nonprofit and is Senior Head of Innovation for Nethope, an organisation that acts as a bridge between large NGOs with Big Tech. 

He's also a whole lot of fun, and helped us reframe our thinking about AI.

In this episode, we asked JL about the dangerous intersection between capitalism and AI (of course we did), the ethics of big data and what, if anything, humanity has to fear from this latest great jump forward in technology.

It's a fascinating conversation that we hope will help you think about this much-hyped subject in a fresh way.

We should also make clear that, if we didn't like JL so much or think this might reflect badly on him, this is the title we would have gone for:

See the kind of restraint we show? You are all very welcome. 

You can find out more about the Center for the Digital Nonprofit, its mission and research here. 

We also recommend The Eye of the Master: a Social History of Artificial Intelligence for a left-wing academic take of what, really, is being automated. 

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-imperialist, post-post-post-evangelical podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, to be helpful and entertaining.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. 

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. 

Sign up to the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

There's a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and weird chat. It's not terribly serious. 

Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not available in all good bookshops, but if you bought it and left a review that would probably make that more likely. 

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

Socialism means 'bad', right?  That's what many of our churches assume. Whenever anyone suggests Socialism as an option, many Christians have a set of anti-Socialist questions locked and loaded, ready to fire. We decided to put some of them to an expert.

To us, Socialism is really just a system of making sure nobody is left behind, of controlling greed and making sure it doesn't result in needless suffering. 

It's not a perfect system/ideology (and there are many variations, versions and expressions), but if you've ever felt like the Capitalist system most of us live under is not working, this episode may be for you.

In it, we talk to Matt McManus, a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Michigan, and ask him for his responses to the most common Christian chestnuts (roasting on an open fire) that make Socialism out to be the devil. 

Questions we ask in this episode:

• What about 'If you will not work you will not eat'?
• Isn't forcing people to be generous bad?
• Shouldn't Christians and churches help the poor rather than governments?
• Without the threat of poverty, won't people be lazy?
• If society got better, how would hte Church witness?

Matt helps us understand Socialism, the long and rich history of Christian Socialism, and some potential answers to common objections to Socialism, while having a beer with Jonty. Malky and Laura were either unavailable or have become filthy capitalists. You decide.

Check out Matt McManus' writing for Jacobin magazine and his book, The Political Right and Equality.

You can find more from Beer Christianity at beerchristianity.co.uk, on most social media and on Substack.

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-imperialist, post-post-post-evangelical podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, to be helpful and entertaining.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. 

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. 

Sign up to the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

There's a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and weird chat. It's not terribly serious. 

Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not available in all good bookshops, but if you bought it and left a review that would probably make that more likely. 

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

The Democratic Republic of Congo and its citizens should, by rights, be among the richest in the world.

Congo is a country with vast and rich natural resources, abundant  potential energy and a strategic place in the heart of Africa. And yet, Congo is currently home to one fo the worst humanitarian crises on earth, and its history is littered with genocides and wars that rival the scale of Europe's World Wars. The vast majority of Congo's people are not rich -- and many face brutality we cannot imagine. 

Since 1998, more than six million people have been killed in Congo, and the killing continues. And yet most of us have never seen a headline about it. 

In this episode, we talk to Maurice Carney, head and co-founder of Friends of the Congo, which seeks to raise awareness not only of the crisis in Congo, but of Congo's many great contributions to global life and the inspiring people who are doing amazing work there. 

Maurice talks to us about Congo's history, from the brutal period under Belgium's King Leopold II to the moment Western powers destroyed Congo's democracy and the current crisis, where Congo's neighbours continue to destabilise the East of DRC. 

We also talk about the connections between the Congolese situation and other crises around the world - like Palestine. And about the solidarity being shown between activists for all these causes. 

Covering topics like Reparations, Chinese involvement in Africa and how our own Governments might be facilitating violence in Congo, this is a fascinating episode. We learned a lot! We hope you doo, too. 

You can find out more about Friends of the Congo here and connect with their socials here: FotC Facebook,  @CongoFriends on Twitter and their presence on Insta.

You can find more about this episode at beerchristianity.co.uk

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, anti-imperialist, post-post-post-evangelical (and apparently republican) podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, to be helpful and entertaining.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Stitcher. 

If you leave us a voicenote at speakpipe.com/beerchristianity we might air your question on an episode.

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. 

Sign up to the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

There's a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and weird chat. It's not terribly serious. 

Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not available in all good bookshops, but if you bought it and left a review that would probably make that more likely. 

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice. 

Jolyon Maugham has been called 'Public Enemy No. 1" by terrible right wing newspapers, attacked by Rishi Sunak and belittled with smears by the BBC. 

And if that wasn't enough to make you love him, he also heads up an organisation that works for justice in our laws and legal system, challenging powerful elites and holding wealthy corporations and careless governments to account on behalf of ordinary people. Come to think of it, the smears on his name may have something to do with that.

Jolyon joined us to talk about the most popular of the slurs he's faced and the story behind it, as well as his work with the Good Law Project, a not for profit campaign organisation that uses the law for a better world.

Jolyon talks about the unhealthy closeness between the executive and the police, whether newspapers and government officials really care about free speech and how the law can be used to make the world a better place from gender based violence to tax law. 

This interview was made possible by the lovely people at Greenbelt festival and you can hear Jolyon's talk at Greenbelt 2023 here for just three British pounds. 

You can buy Jolyon Maugham's book, Bringing Down Goliath here and follow him on Twitter here.  

You can find more about this episode at beerchristianity.co.uk

Beer Christianity is an anti-capitalist, pro-BLM, pro-LGBTQ+, post-post-post-evangelical (and apparently republican) podcast where we drink a bit and talk a lot. Our aim is to be real, to be helpful and entertaining.

Follow Beer Christianity on Twitter: @beerxianity and find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Stitcher. 

If you leave us a voicenote at speakpipe.com/beerchristianity we might air your question on an episode.

Beer Christianity also has a newsletter in which Jonty and guest authors comment on the news, theological issues and stuff that matters. 

Sign up to the Beer Christianity newsletter on Substack. 

There's a connected Show With Music on Spotify called New Old Music. Check it out if you like eclectic music and weird chat. It's not terribly serious. 

Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not available in all good bookshops, but if you bought it and left a review that would probably make that more likely. 

We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice.