Exiles in Babylon, 2024. That's right folks. We're doing it again. Our third annual exiles in Babylon conference will be held on April 18th through the 20th,

uh, 20, 24 here in Boise, Idaho. And this one is going to be an absolute barn burner as we say here in Idaho. The topics we're going to discuss are, uh,

uh, deconstruction and the church. And we're going to actually hear from people who have deconstructed and others who maybe should have deconstructed, but didn't.

We're also going to discuss women, power and abuse in the church, which is obviously a huge issue that we absolutely need to discuss.

Um, we're going to talk about faith and sexuality, specifically how can churches become places where, uh, LGBTQ or same-sex attracted Christians can flourish within a traditional sexual ethic.

Lastly, we're going to discuss, can't believe we're doing this one, we're going to discuss politics. That's right. Politics and the church where we're going to have, uh, various speakers present, we're going to have a right leaning Christian, a left leaning Christian and a,

uh, what do you call a nonpartisan or anabaptist, Christian, share their perspectives, um, share their perspective. And they were, we're going to put them all in conversation with each other. And of course, we're going to have Evan Wickham and Tanika Wyatt, uh, leading us in worship throughout the weekend.

I really, really, really want to mix it up this year. We're going to hear from leading thinkers in each of these areas. We're going to, we're going to be having different viewpoints in conversation with each other. It's going to be honest. It's going to be raw. And you're not going to want to miss out. I really think this one's going to fill up quickly.

So if you want to attend in person, Boise, Idaho, April 18th through the 20th, register very, very soon. Just go to theology in the raw.com. That's theology in the raw.com. I really hope to see you there.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theologian around my guest today is Andrew Bartlett, who is a lawyer, a judge, an arbitrator, an international arbitrator. And he also has a degree in theology from University of Gloucestershire in the UK. And, uh,

Andrew wrote a book called Men and Women in Christ, fresh light from the biblical text. It is a very thorough look at the question of women in ministry or women in church leadership.

And Andrew comes at this question from an interesting angle. He'll explain kind of where he's coming from and how he got into this conversation at the beginning of the podcast.

But I've enjoyed interacting with Andrew offline for over a year now. He's been a delight to interact with through email and we've tried to connect with each other at various points and it just hasn't worked out yet. So it was truly a delight and honor for me to be able to talk to him on this podcast.

So you're going to enjoy this conversation. We do go deep into first Corinthians 11 and Ephesians five. So if you want to crack open your bibles, dust them off and keep them open. That'd be great.

Um, uh, and we do talk more generally about the conversation as a whole. So without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time. The one and only Andrew partly.

Andrew, thank you so much for finally coming on the algebra. This has been a long time in the making. We've had many email exchanges and I've really enjoyed your book and have tried to connect on several several occasions, but it hasn't worked out. So this is in the meantime. It's great to have you on the show. Great to finally connect.

Um, why don't you, uh, just describe to people what, what is it that you do for a full-time job? And then I would also love to know how did you get interested in the topic of women and, you know, ministry or leadership or whatever wording we want to use.

Okay. That might take a little time to explain.

Now, in the day job, I'm a lawyer. I'm an English barrister and I'm currently doing international arbitration and I can explain what that means, uh, because I think most people don't really know what it is. Yeah.

And suppose you're an Ethiopian government agency and you want a road built in Ethiopia and you draw up specifications and you ask for tenders from around the world.

And then suppose the winning tender as a Chinese contractor and you make a contract for the road to be built.

What are you going to do if you get into a dispute about how much the road should cost or whether it was built properly or something like that.

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