God Forbid

God Forbid is a religion and ethics panel program from ABC Radio National. It approaches belief as something that keeps shaping public life, even in places that call themselves secular. The show’s conversations are built around questions rather than sermons. Why do adults still need fairy tales? Is privacy sacred in an age of artificial intelligence and big data? Has modern freedom become liberating, or has choice turned into another source of anxiety? What does judgement look like when online punishment has no confession, no absolution, and no clear end? Recent episodes show the program’s method clearly. A discussion of fairy tales becomes a conversation about oral tradition, Christian virtue, propaganda, Indigenous story, parables, fables, and moral imagination. A medieval history episode uses castles, kings, television fantasy, Europe, the Middle East, and the Islamic Golden Age to challenge lazy stories of constant conflict. The privacy panel moves from data breaches and doxing to celebrity curiosity and the right to withdraw from public life. The freedom episode weighs rights, religion, liberalism, markets, selfhood, and the paralysis of too much choice. The religious subjects are handled with equal seriousness. Eastern Orthodoxy is discussed through ritual, conversion, cradle belief, seminary life, prayer, ethnicity, and tradition. Conversion is treated not as a puzzle to be mocked, but as a human move through crisis, longing, doubt, practice, and the limits of explanation. The International Women’s Day special places gender, backlash, online harassment, misogyny, embodiment, and power inside the show’s wider ethical frame. Its panels draw on guests with room to think and disagree. The tone is literate, conversational, and occasionally sharp. It can be playful, but it does not treat the questions as cheap. It suits listeners who like public radio with historical depth, theological vocabulary, and moral friction. God Forbid stands out because it lets religion sit beside technology, gender, grief, and popular culture without forcing them into separate rooms.