Jason Thacker's Blog, page 9

Is Facebook discipling your church members?

Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of concerning reports about how social media — Facebook, in particular — is having extremely negative effects on our society, especially among teenagers and even shaping the content that Christians are exposed to on the platform as well. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, the issues range from certain high profile accounts being shielded from standard content guidelines to how the company has long known that Instagram is toxic for ...

How can Christians navigate the digital public square?

My family lives just outside of a small town in Tennessee with a historic downtown district. Like many small towns throughout our nation, we have a downtown square that serves as a hub. In prior generations, these public squares were gathering places for everyone. People regularly traveled in from the outskirts of town to shop, eat, and do business. They would also come together for community events and to freely engage with one another. While many historic downtown public squares have been aban...

Pornography, ethics, and digital governance

In last few weeks, there have been a number of developments concerning the availability of pornography on social media. OnlyFans, a social media service that caters to sex workers and profits off the promotion of pornographic material, intially announced that it would bar sexually explicity videos beginning in October which caused a massive conversation about the morality of pornography in the digital public sqaure. Bloomberg reported that the service has attracted over 130 million users and exp...

Why Christians should navigate questions of vaccine mandates and religious exemptions with wisdom

Between the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in winter 2019 and the subsequent worldwide pandemic that has killed over 4.4 million, the astounding speed at which treatments and vaccines for this deadly virus have been developed is nothing short of miraculous. This speed is due in large part to the concerted and concentrated efforts by governments, medical providers, researchers, local communities, and pharmaceutical companies around the world. In the United States, Operation Warp Speed and other maj...

Deepfakes and the Degradation of Truth

Charles Spurgeon singing! Frederick Douglass moving! Tom Cruise playing golf on TikTok!

If you’ve seen any of these things online, you’ve encountered an amusing and significant new technology: deepfakes. While deepfake technology, powered by artificial intelligence, may have been in the limelight in recent months, this technology is not that new. It is just becoming more believable and more accessible to the public.

Recently we saw this technology used by a 50-year-old Japanese biker to tr...

Why theology and ethics should be central in the Christian life: Herman Bavinck on a neglected discipline

A few years ago, I was introduced to the Dutch Reformed theologian and ethicist, Herman Bavinck. His works began to revolutionize the way that I thought about the rich relationship of theology and ethics. Throughout my life, I have always (and rightfully) heard how the church must see the study of theology as central to our pursuit of God because that’s how we learn the fundamental elements of the Christian faith. God reveals himself to us through Scripture. The structure of church theological t...

Where do we draw the line on hate speech?

In 2009, I was encouraged by some friends at work to join a new social media platform called Twitter. I remember watching a short promo video and hearing about how this site allowed people all across the world to connect and speak freely about whatever came to mind — whether about our favorite sport teams or the most important social issues of the day. But as the platform grew in users and influence in the public square, real challenges emerged about how to navigate violence, misinformation, and...

A conversation with Dr. Carter Snead on public bioethics and the nature of humanity

This is a transcription of the WeeklyTech Podcast interview with Dr. Carter Snead. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app to get new episodes each Monday morning or listen online.

Jason: In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Carter Snead, who serves as a professor of law and the director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. Today, we talk about his latest book, What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. Dr. Snead is one of...

Technology (Still) Can’t Replace In-person Community – A Roundtable Discussion

A Roundtable Discussion with Jason Thacker, Julie Masson, Jay Kim, and John Dyer on Technology and the local church during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Jason Thacker: As churches haven’t been able to gather in many months and as some begin to gather again under various restrictions, what kinds of things do you think we miss about the gathered church that technology cannot replicate or replace?

Jay Kim: Embodied presence. Almost everyone I talk to expresses the same sadness and longing—that all o...

A conversation with Dr. Jonathan Pennington about Jesus and Philosophy

This is a transcription of the WeeklyTech Podcast interview with Dr. Jonathan Pennington. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app to get new episodes each Monday morning or listen online.

Jason: In this episode, I’m joined by my friend, Dr. Jonathan Pennington, who’s an associate professor of New Testament interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Pennington holds a PhD in New Testament studies from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He’s the author of numero...