We're the Ones Lamenting: James McGrath on Reading Revelation from Inside the Empire
Author: Dr. Tripp Fuller
August 12, 2026
Duration: 1:23:29
Welcome to TBC 26 FM, the post-apocalyptic radio station broadcasting from the wasteland of late modern America. James McGrath — the Religion Prof himself — was the right guest for the apocalyptic-themed Theology Beer Camp preview, because he wrote Theology and Science Fiction, he loves some Battlestar Galactica, and he spent a full year of sabbatical thinking about nothing but the New Testament's best apocalyptic preacher. We got the post-apocalyptic factions workshopped (James thinks the sorting needs a Hunger Games battle), then we went where the actual apocalypse lives: what John the Baptist was actually preaching in Second Temple Judaism, why apocalyptic literature always gets the end wrong and why that is a feature rather than a bug, why American Christians reading Revelation as horror instead of hope says everything about which side of the ledger we are on, what AI actually is under the hood and what it does to the way we read scripture, how James teaches a course called The Bible and Misinformation by fooling his own students on day one with AI-generated footage of himself announcing the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant, and — the part that will stay with me — what he says to the person whose evangelical faith is collapsing and who wrote me terrified. James's answer: that thing you thought was faith was actually doubt. Come for the Andor riff. Stay for the pastoral turn.
You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube
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