Confronting the Darkness in a Year Full of Death

Quick to Listen

Christianity Today

Religion, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.3 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2020

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. Halloween has always been a tricky day for conservative Protestants. It has long been seen as a celebration of the dark—joking about bloody gore, the living dead. But this year, death and darkness doesn’t seem quite so amusing. October 31 comes as more than 1.1 million people around the world have died of COVID-19. Nearly 20 percent of those deaths have occurred in the US, a country where COVID-19 cases are once again on the rise. As parents are making last minute decisions about what to do about trick or treating, as churches cancel their harvest festivals and trunk or treat events, and parties are moved to zoom and even schools forego their annual costume parades, we wondered: Is this weird Halloween in a very weird year the opportunity for better Christian thinking and discipleship? Can rethinking this season where we oddly engage death and darkness help us deal with death and darkness the rest of this covid season, and the rest of our lives? If so, where do we look? Back to Halloween’s connections to All Saint’s Day? Or to other ways that the church has formed its spiritual disciplines around death? CT columnist, a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, and author of the forthcoming book, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep, Tish Harrison Warren joined global media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss what our celebrations of Halloween say about our beliefs about death, how we might confront our own darkness, and how prayer provides a place for us to wrestle with the night. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted Olsen Follow our guest on Twitter: Tish Harrison Warren Music by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you in part by The Apologetics Guy Show, the podcast that helps you find clear answers to tough questions about Christianity.
0:11.1	Learn to explain your faith with courage and compassion.
0:14.5	Join Moody Bible Institute professor Dr. Mikhail del Rosario at apologeticsky.com.
0:22.6	Halloween has always been a tricky day for conservative Protestants. It's long been seen as a celebration of the dark, joking about bloody gore, the living dead, things like that. But this year, death and darkness doesn't seem quite so amusing.
0:36.9	October 31st comes as more than 1.1 million
0:39.8	people around the world have died of COVID-19. And nearly 20% of those deaths, one out of five,
0:46.1	have occurred in the U.S., a country where COVID-19 cases are once again on the rise.
0:52.1	As parents are making last-minute decisions about what to do about trick or treating this
0:56.3	year, and as churches cancel their harvest festivals and their trunk or treat events,
1:01.6	parties are moving on the Zoom and even schools are foregoing their annual costume parades,
1:06.1	we wondered, is this weird Halloween in a very weird year the opportunity for better Christian thinking and discipleship, can rethinking this season where we oddly engage death and darkness help us deal with death and darkness for the rest of this COVID season and for the rest of our lives?
1:23.3	And if we can do that, and that's kind of the stuff we do here at Christianity today, if we want to re-engage in a more biblical and Christian way, where do we look?
1:32.2	Do you look back to Halloween's connections to All Saints Day?
1:35.1	Or do we look to other ways that the church has formed as spiritual disciplines around death and darkness?
1:40.5	These are questions that we hope to engage next hour or so.
1:48.7	You are listening to Quick to Listen, where we go beyond hashtags and hot takes to discuss a major cultural event.
1:54.8	I'm Morgan Lee, Global Media Manager at Christianity Today.
1:58.0	And I'm Ted Olson, editorial director at Christianity Today. And I'm Ted Olson, editorial director at Christianity today.
2:14.4	Morgan, let's do our gut check.
2:15.0	Tell me about your weird 2020 Halloween.
2:18.8	Well, I just should offer a disclaimer that I do feel like understanding how to celebrate
2:23.2	Halloween as an adult has never been very clear to me.
	...

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