1390: Undefining 'God' with John Hamer

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2021

⏱️ 209 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After losing your orthodox Mormon faith, have you given up on the possibility of any sort of belief in and/or association with "God" or "Jesus"? More importantly, are you seeking to fill some of the existential and/or spiritual holes left over after your faith crisis?

Today I sit down with John Hamer, Community of Christ Seventy and pastor of the Community of Christ Toronto Congregation to talk about why he thinks theists especially, but also some atheists have adopted a counterproductive position about the idea of "God." We'll also discuss why he thinks this is even a relevant conversation to have in the 21st century. Didn't rational people hash this all out in the Enlightenment? John Hamer believes that the majority of Christians including many intellectual leaders of the movement took a wrong turn centuries ago and with negative consequences for the whole path of Western civilization today. He proposes going back and exploring an alternative path, including opening up the term "God" as a variable in need of undefinition and reexamination. What, if anything, might this accomplish?

Tune in and pose your own questions and objections.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John DeLin. It is January
0:06.3	28th,
0:07.3	2021 and
0:08.8	Today we are doing a live Mormon Stories Podcast interview with someone that many of you know and love
0:16.5	His name is John Hammer John Hammer has been on Mormon Stories Podcast many many times
0:23.0	He's definitely one of the most frequent
0:26.5	Mormon Stories Podcast guests in the past
0:29.6	He's he's come on to talk about Joseph Smith about authorship of the Book of Mormon Book of Mormon
0:36.2	historicity
0:37.3	He's also talked about his own faith journey and
0:40.5	his conversion to community of Christ and
0:44.3	We've had him on to talk about all sorts of cool stuff and
0:47.6	Let me just begin by saying John Hammer welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. It's always an honor and a delight to have you with us
0:54.3	Oh, it's wonderful to be back. I so enjoy your program and your community and stuff. I'm really excited to be here
1:02.3	I should also say you are a pastor for community of Christ Toronto the congregation in in community of Christ in Toronto and
1:10.7	You are a 70 for community of Christ the organization which maybe means something slightly different to you guys than it does for us
1:18.1	Tell us what that means
1:19.9	Sure, so 70 is a calling that goes all the way back to the early restoration so the same same background
1:27.7	there was a a
1:29.7	Difference in the LDS tradition where lots and lots of people were called to be 70s at some point or other through the let's say the
1:36.1	1960s and stuff and then and then they stopped that and then 70s became I think mostly either general authorities of the LDS church or
1:43.7	Or maybe ten part time general authorities kind of thing so anyway that that whole history and tradition really didn't occur in community of Christ
	...

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