With All Due Respect

A Christian's guide to online politics and polarisation

Show Notes

This episode is brought to you by Anglican Aid. Your gift will strengthen churches and help transform communities. You can donate to With All Due Respect's featured causes here.

For argument's sake: where we take a debate, cut out the party politics and try to talk it out

Can social media be done well?

It's easy to dehumanise people in social media debates. Just look at the hurtful comments directed at 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg after she spoke at the UN's Climate Action Summit in September 2019.

So how do you disagree online without being aggressive? Is it OK for Christians to block or unfriend people? And how can Christians enter into social discussions without making Christianity look mean or dumb?

Mentioned in this segment:
Further reading:
You did WHAT now? A peek at what the other 'M' has been up to

Megan's article on how Christians should respond on social media to the same-sex marriage plebiscite 

During one of Australia's biggest social debates, Megan chose to speak out about how Christians should speak out online.

She raises this crucial point: What's more important to win arguments at all costs or our relationships with people and our gospel witness?

Mentioned in this segment:
Further reading:
Glossary:
  • epistemologically - relating to a branch of philosophy that studies how we know things
  • polemic - an aggressive attack on or defence of a particular opinion
Marg and Dave: reviews from two people obsessed by stories, but not always the same ones

Jan Fran's social media 

Can you review social media pages? Yep, looks like it.

Megan introduces Michael to Jeanette Francis, better known as Jan Fran – an Australian journalist and presenter, who is also queen of the short video Facebook post. There's a lot to learn from her about social media dos and don'ts.

Mentioned in this segment:
Join in the discussion online

www.facebook.com/groups/WADRbyEternityNews/


Help internally displaced people in Africa!

Disasters and conflicts have led to a record number of over 75 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, around the world. IDPs are people who have been forced to flee their homes but have not crossed international borders. 
 
Almost half of all IDPs - more than the population of Australia and New Zealand combined - are in sub-Saharan Africa.
 
Most of the displaced have left everything behind: their homes, belongings, and livelihoods. They urgently need food, shelter, clothing, and trauma counselling. So Anglican Aid has launched a Forced to Flee Emergency Appeal to provide essential aid to IDPs in Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and beyond. This aid will be distributed by local churches, who are sacrificially providing for the needs of the displaced, and pointing them to the God who is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble
 
To find out more about this appeal and make a tax-deductible gift, visit anglicanaid.org.au/wadr

What is With All Due Respect?

Less aggro, more conversation.

Is it even possible to have a deep discussion without it descending into chaos? Michael Jensen and Megan Powell du Toit think yes, and want to show the rest of us how to do it.

There’s plenty of things they disagree on: free will, feminism, where you should send your kids to school and what type of church you should go to. But there are also plenty of other things that they have in common. They want to talk about all these things with conviction. But they also want the conversation to be constructive. Tune in to find out if that’s possible.