Perspectives on American Dechurching from Post-Christian Europe

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Jim Davis
Welcome to as in Heaven Season Three as we get to the end of this season. My name is Jim Davis. I’m your host and pastor of Orlando Grace Church and I’m joined by our executive producer and episode co host, Mike Graham, and our guests from across the pond, Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener. I got to know Andrew at TGC good faith debates back in season one in Washington DC. And I appreciated the dialogue that you had with Bob Thune on gun control and the right to bear arms. Andrew is the teaching pastor at King’s church in London. He is the author of God of all things rediscovering the sacred and an everyday world. And Glenn is an ordained minister and evangelist in the Church of England and who preaches Christ through writing, speaking and online media. He directs the evangelistic ministry speak life, originally from Australia, Glenn now lives with his wife, Emma, and their two children in London, England, and they belong to all souls East born, He is the author of several books, including the air we breathe, how we all came to believe in freedom, kindness, progress, and equality, and 321 the story of God the world and you. So there are few things that I don’t think our audience may know about us collectively. One thing that they might not know is that Andrew and Glen live about 100 yards from each other. Those would be I guess, meters in your lexicon. Over on the coast, south of London and East born. Something else people might not know about Andrew and Glenn, is that they are currently in production for a brand new podcast, yet to be named podcast. And we’ll have more on that later on. And while we’re walking down this line of thinking of stuff you might not know, one other thing that people might not know about Mike grim and myself is that we have known each other nearly 20 years now dating back to our time as overseas missionaries in Italy. So both Mike and I, you know, we say frequently that we feel like that the very beginning of our vocational ministry, we had really the tremendous benefit of stepping into a time machine of sorts where we can live in minister in a context that was in many ways decades of ahead of where we currently minister in our American culture. It’s not a perfect indicator, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But in areas like sexuality, gender, politics and institutional distrust, we do feel like we got to have a glimpse down the tunnel of time that we’re very thankful for. So we both remarked that we felt that time that time was formative for us, especially now that as we’ve seen the American culture really move into these waters that have been previously charted by much of Europe as we continue to progress into what most everybody now would call post, our post Christendom context. So in light of that, we wanted to have an episode here toward the end of the season that talks with some brothers in Christ laboring in a European context to help us understand a little bit better, where we might see our culture going, how we might minister in the context in which we find ourselves now. So after that long introduction, thank you, too, for joining us here today. All right. Yeah. All right, we’ll dive in. All right, I know that while Europe can be culturally predictive for the US, Europe and the US are still very different. And we would be naive to think that Europe is a perfect predictor of where we’re headed, as I said, and really, I just mainly think of the fact of how the church and the state have been so integrally linked in Europe, and really not at all in our history in the US, and that that alone changes the trajectories. But with that caveat, to start out as non Americans, what is it that surprises you about the American church and what aspects of the church do you look at and they feel all too familiar, Glenn, if you want, we can start with you.

Glen Scrivener
Yeah, I think the church and state thing is an obvious place to go. So I’m a minister in the Church of England, and it has a very particular relationship to the states that the king is the governor of the Church of England and there are 20 Odd bishops in the House of Lords and they are all odd, but they are the you know, every square inch of England is covered by the Church of England which plays chaplain to the nation and we were just talking off air about scheduling something for the weekend when King Charles will The anointed as as the the sovereign of, of England and all those sorts of things, kind of in the backgrounds, they are the theme music in, in so much of kind of British life, which means that also Christianity can be tuned out in England, in lots of lots of different ways. And whereas a lot of the population will end up in a church at some point in the year, whether that’s through the baptism of, you know, friends, children, or through a wedding or through Christmas carols, and, and there is still that sort of cultural background to Christianity. It is all pervasive in many ways, and invisible, in lots of ways as well. You know, for, for three minutes in the morning on the major broadcaster in the UK, the BBC Radio four, there is a kind of a god slot, where members largely of Christian faiths, but also of other different faiths Come on, and give a little thought for the day. And it’s, it’s, again, this sort of thing that is not really questioned by very many people, the British Humanist Association tries to get exercised about this every now and again, but nobody really cares about this. They just turn it off, or they they go and do something else for the next three minutes. And that’s kind of what British culture does to Christianity. It’s sort of it’s sort of this thing that people go Yeah, yeah, whatever, and get on with their day. So that’s quite different to a US context in which there’s, there’s separation of church and state, and the church means something, something very, very different. But those are some of the thoughts that run through my head.

Jim Davis
What about you, Andrew?

Andrew Wilson
The main difference I observe is it just the rate of change. And the moment obviously, all Glenn said is true. But I, I think even when I first started going to the States 1015 years ago, I feel like the change that’s taken place in Britain over about 70 years since the war has happened in American about 10. And it feels like the rapidity of both, both numerical and, I guess, decline, which I know is what you guys are doing a lot of work on, but also sort of loss of cultural, prestige and normativity. In Britain, as has never been on the table and Glenn in my lifetime. I mean, Glenn, you’re a teenager, when he moved here, I’ve lived my whole life, it’s just never been, it’s never been on the table that Christianity would have cultural, cultural influence of that. For me. In formal terms, we have a lot has Glen’s has been saying and in practical on the ground terms, just None whatsoever. He just, of course, Christian beliefs are laughable and sort of thing you’d turn into a sitcom. I think he’s not quite as simple as that as as obviously. But that’s the way it presents. Whereas in the States, I think it’s gone from being in large parts of the country, clearly not in New York or San Francisco. But in much of the nation. It’s sort of it’s dropped much more quickly than that, even I would say, even in the last decade, I know you guys have tracked the numbers much better than me, but in a sort of public level of credibility of Christian faith, particularly within sort of white middle American spaces, which I think is often what we’re talking about. And that’s just vastly different from what we’ve experienced. So in some ways, we I think, I’m still got far less cultural prestige than the American church, but our trajectory is fairly steady. And in America, it seems to be in a much worse, which is, which, in my experience with American friends and pastors and church members, means a sense of shock and disorientation. And, you know, sense of loss is much more acute, whereas I think in Britain, you’re going people are going, Oh, that’s just never, we didn’t really sign up for that, because no one’s really expecting to have any cultural power, or prestige. But that has been for much of the last four decades a feature of American church life. So that’s probably the main difference I would notice.

Jim Davis
So what would you say? I think you you identify this really well, because our research, as we’ve said, has shown that 40 million Americans about have left the church largely in the past 25 years. And so, so this can be this kind of loss, as you put it, and change all changes loss. I mean, that’s what we do. As pastors, when people experience change, there’s a measure of loss, we point them to Jesus, what how would you kind of living in the context that it feels like we’re moving into in some ways, how would you minister to people in the United States from your vantage point?

Andrew Wilson
Well, I just I broke first, I didn’t know who that was addressed. I think it’s I think it’s very hard to comment from a distance in an important way. Because Because I haven’t served in a context where that has been lost. I’ve been in context where it hasn’t really been there in the first place for in March. But I’m a nonconformist. So I don’t have an perhaps an Anglican perspective would add something here. So I’ll give him time to think of something profound to say. But I think, to me the adjustment to a sense of the exile idea, I know some people don’t like that language. I personally think it’s really helpful sojourners and exiles, wandering the world that the church is, in some ways as assuming it’s more normal place historically speaking, when it is more on the margins and when it’s saying this is a very different story to the one you live by this is obviously going to be laughed out of the room in lots of ways but this is why it’s distinctive, this is why it’s for the common good and the you know, the the Jerusalem in Babylon kind of idea and, you know, one Peter and others like that, that I think areas where people have had the experience of having quite a lot of wealth, prestige, cultural power movies made. CCM you know, contemporary Christian music, all sorts of things which which were hit Make the charm of being a kid and hear that in America, music was like Christian music was in the charts, I just couldn’t fathom how that was possible. And I think probably helping people adjust to the reality of what most Christians have experienced for most of history, which is marginality, and being soldiers, very visibly, soldiers and exiles and looking like odd balls in culture. I don’t know whether that would strategically tactically work in a lot of American settings, because I think is more complex than the picture I’m painting. There are some parts of the country where it’s there is still a lot of cultural prestige of being Christian in some way. There hasn’t been any for 50 years. So I’m over drawing the distinction. But I think I would probably want to help people, when in fact, I do. And when I’m in the States, we quite often talk about this with brothers and sisters about it. But I think in some ways, the challenge is greater for an American church, which has lost that more rapidly than it is for a British Christian, who has just never grown up expecting not to be laughed at for being a Christian. And so I feel like we might have some things to share. But our journey there is very different than in his way. I wouldn’t want to presume but Glenn, on you, the Anglican and you must have something wise to say,

Jim Davis
well, let me I’m gonna let you go. And I’m gonna let you answer. But I would like if you can work in that answer, maybe what are some of the blessings of living as a sojourner or in our in exile? That would encourage people faced with such? So say whatever you wanted to say, but I want to pull on that thread?

Glen Scrivener
Yeah, no, I think there are definitely benefits, such as I do a lot of work going on to college campuses and talking to students. And I think, over the last, in fact, I’ve been doing that for the last 20 years. And and in that 20 years, I think there has been a sense of in the apologetic sphere, Christians making the case for whatever it is, and kind of standing against the cultural tide that is coming our way. And they’re saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, this No Stop, stop. And we’re kind of getting out in front of the traffic. And we are telling the culture not to come the way that they are going. And what I think is far more possible and far more fruitful, in a time of weakness and in a time when we don’t have the cultural ascendancy is to kind of almost step aside and usher them through and just say, Well, if you must go that way, fine, it is sinking sand will be over here on the rock when you’re ready. And there’s much more of that sense of being able to build something solid and saying, you know, the refugees from the sexual revolution when you’re ready, were here to receive such refugees. We’re going to build this counter culture and away we go. And, and the passage I keep thinking back to is actually Genesis chapter 14, you know, Abraham is living in tents by the trees of the ox of memory. And actually, there are all kinds of wars going on in the culture. There’s the Four Kings up north and there’s the Five Kings around the Dead Sea. And you know, there’s there’s power and this the seduction of Sodom and Gomorrah and lot get swept up in it. And for 14 years, those cultural battles raged on, and Abraham does nothing really except raise the household raise the household raise the household such that at some point, he does enter into the fray, in weakness and with 318 trained men, he manages to get back his nephew, because when it concerns the family of God at some point, he does make a stand he does pick aside in that cultural war, if you want to call it that. And is CO belligerent with the Five Kings, but but he goes in weakness with a 318 Min. And at the very first opportunity he can he brings things back to Melchizedek the King of Righteousness, king of peace, King of Jerusalem, and once to disassociate himself from, you know, the the cultural wars that are raging around. And he goes back to building the household of faith building the household of faith. And I think when you’re in the ascendancy, and you have more than 318 trained men, you might think it’s your job to raise an army, and to have a standing army. When you’re the size of a tent dweller, you’re not tempted to have a standing army, you’re just going to raise the household of faith, and they can be tasty in battle. And they can they can hold their own and mix it with the best of them when the time comes. But you’re not constantly engaging in the battle. You’re building the household.

Mike Graham
And it’s so good. Such a kind of an obscure passage for to draw those things from it is really, it’s actually really good and really helpful. Switching gears a little bit, one of the one idea I wanted to introduce kind of here in the middle of this episode, is the difference between secular traditional versus secular progressive. So at different times, as Jim already mentioned, Jim and I both worked in two very different Italian cities. One was Pisa, which is in the northeast, North ish region, adjacent to Tuscany, and Salerno is in the southwest adjacent to the Amalfi Coast. PISA was secular progressive, and Salerno was secular traditional, when I first got off the train and Pisa in 2003. So 20 years ago, there were rainbow flags everywhere that read peace and protest to the Italian involvement in the war in Iraq. And this was a kind of Italian intersectional. Solidarity over the overlap of those who were both anti war and pro LGBT. So further, also in Pisa, we had a true, quote, Red Square, were legit communist and legit socialist students could gather and share their ideas. Now in Salerno, there were zero flags like that. And this was even two years later, in 2004 2005, and nuclear traditional families were the norm, and they were celebrated there. The region was far less individualistic. However, both contexts had a number of things in common, besides pulling for, you know, the the Italian football team. Namely, there was significant distrust in both places of all institutions, and especially for the political apparatus, the economic infrastructure and for Roman Catholicism as an institution. At best, if you were conducting an Italian ethnography, you would conclude that the country was not religious, but they were actually superstitious. So the university that we were at in Salerno, have 35,000 students, and they had its own, they had their own dedicated priest who conducted daily Mass on campus. To give you an idea of, you know, how secular Salerno was even though it was secular traditional. The attendance at that daily Mass ran about five to seven students, depending on the day. So perhaps that paints a bit of a picture of the differences between secular traditional and secular progressive contexts. But either way, in both contexts, you were in Kingdom wasteland, but for different reasons. In secular, traditional Salerno, we were dealing primarily with apathy. In secular progressive Pisa, we were dealing with primarily active angst. So if you guys were to do a kind of spiritual ethnography, indoor climate of your area, south of London, London, or even the UK at any of those three levels, how would you map some of those things? So I want to hear first from Andrew as a native British person, but then I’d love to hear from Glenn as somebody who’s an Australian outsider who’s been there in that British context for the last 25 years?

Andrew Wilson
That’s a great question. I think it’d be fair to say that, I mean, Britain, like a lot of European nations has a north south divide, it’s the opposite way round to the Italian one. So in the sense that the industrial, the industrial north is is generally poorer than whereas in Italy is obviously the agrarian south. But But I think we but we don’t have it’s not that it’s not to the same degree as that there were there is no, I don’t think there are areas in Britain really like polio or companhia, which are as traditional as that. I think Italy has been a more traditional society for a long time. And that goes back to industrial revolution and probably Protestant, to be honest. So it is different in that way. I think the best ethnographically The best language I found for describing the two realities, I think you’re you’re talking about that I’ve come across before that really helped me is David good hearts language anywheres and some ways which I think maps really well on to lots of modern debates, leaving remain in the Brexit referendum is probably quite a lot of that in the American scene as well not, it’s not quite blue, red, but I think there’s quite a lot of that. And so anyways, people who live anywhere and have the values of the global, the global world washes through like that in some ways that people who are much more written today I’ve got, as you can probably see if you’re watching it. And I often think about this when I go when I’m on Twitter, and then I go into my barbers. And I noticed the difference between the way that people talk on Twitter and the things they just assume are true, and people talking the barbers and things. And I see any words in some ways playing out in that sense, and I think I wouldn’t probably quite use the language of I think it was secular traditional, in quite the same way as it would appear in Italy, there isn’t the language I would use. But I think that ethnographic split between people who effectively have grabbed very heavily graduate influenced elite leaning globalized values, and people who have local, contextual, rooted in a particular place, you know, amazing stats about the, you know, sort of nearly 80% of think of people in Britain who live within 20 miles of their mother, that actually, there’s a lot of that, whereas for the 20% of people who don’t, which includes me and Glenn, you sort of it was actually Brexit that in some ways, revealed quite how large the gap was between people who were very sort of globalized and their thinking, and people who were more localized, which is actually most of the people we serve, and even our most the people in our in our churches. So the church I’m pastoring in London, is a very anywhere kind of area. And but nevertheless, we are dealing with a lot of people who’ve got Christian backgrounds, mainly because of the ethnic diversity in the city. Whereas East born I think there is probably a little bit it’s probably slightly closer to what you calling secular traditional. But I think Britain doesn’t really have that sort of a large areas of very folksy traditional. They just that’s and that’s a Protestant versus Catholic thing. I think as well, I don’t think there are many, might be generalizing too much. But I can’t see that in Holland, or in the Scandinavian countries or Germany, the Protestant nations don’t quite have the same there’s a little bit of an in Germany, but again, that’s associated with Catholicism more, I think, in the south. My guess is it doesn’t quite map in the way it does in Italy. But I think Britain is more like America, in some ways. In that sense, the ethnographic ethnographic split might be closer, in many ways to what’s happened in the States because of its Protestant roots.

Glen Scrivener
Yeah, I completely agree. I think that book by David Goodhart is is really key for understanding Britain and understanding sort of debates about nationalism and globalism, more more generally, although it is rooted in the UK experience. And when you say nationalism in the UK, you mean something quite different to when you say nationalism in the US. And I think what, what we see is those, the media classes, and the political classes are very much the the anywheres, and they are about 25% of the population. Whereas, you know, 75% of the population are far more rooted than the, the meteorologists as it were those who are telling us the cultural climate are those who are coming from a minority point of view. And so I think, the the image I always have, when I, when I think about, you know, what is the cultural climate about things is, I was doing a university mission in Sheffield. And there was a particularly spicy q&a session that I was not a part of, I was just sitting in the audience. And things got incredibly heated. And there was a guy with a microphone who was from the Humanist Association, and he was just shouting down the speaker and everyone’s shoulders were all around their ears. And it was just, it was a very uncomfortable hour. And then a student got up and said, right back to lectures, everybody, if you want to come tonight and hear Glenn speak, I guess you could, and then like, the music starts playing and all that all our shoulders sort of descend from around our ears. And I just turned to the guy next to me, and I said, What did you make of all that? And he thought for a second, and he pointed to the angry question, and he said, I didn’t listen to a word that idiot was saying, it’s just my granddad died last week, and I’m wondering if there’s any hope. Do you have any thoughts? I was like, Yeah, I have thoughts. And we got talking for another hour. And he came back that night. His name is Mark. I know his name is Mark, because that night, he gave his life to Jesus. And he’s still a Christian today, you know, 12 years on and it’s, and my mantra ever since then, has been that the guy with the microphone does not speak for the room. And I think culturally speaking, we’re always tempted to think that the guy with the microphone speaks for the room. And just that cultural analysis that Andrew has done. Well, now the elite media classes, speaking from a very different place than your neighbor is, but you can turn to your neighbor, and your neighbor has just lost someone close to them. And they want to know if there’s any hope. And we Yeah, so much of what I like to do is grab the microphone from the guy with cultural power, and try to dominate that conversation. And I think, certainly in a UK setting where we just don’t have the cultural dominance, and there’s no hope for having that cultural dominance, it gives it gives you real, it gives you a real hope for actually just letting that conversation be that conversation. Don’t try and grab the microphone, don’t try and dominate the culture. Turn to your neighbor, they’ve just lost their granddad, and they need hope. And that’s where I think fruit happens in evangelism.

Jim Davis
That’s a really good word. And it connects to the next question, I want to ask you all. So I’m going to I’m going to pull on this thread of exile on sojourning that Andrew opened up. So one of the differences near to you said this, I think something like this was normative exile sojourning, or the more normative way for God’s people to live. We talked about Abraham, Daniel, the early church, we could include in that, you know, we there, there, I think you can make a strong biblical case for it. I agree with you. And one of the differences between living in the era that we’ve lived in in the United States and being exiles is where we exercise our influence from Is it the seat of power? Or is it from the margins? I made a comment in a sermon this as a couple years ago now that I really didn’t think was that controversial, I certainly didn’t mean it in any kind of prodding way. But I just said, Hey, I think a lot of the ministry that God has for me, as pastor of this church, Lord willing, for the next 20 something years, is going to be walking with predominantly white Christians through the loss of power in our in our culture. And I just felt like I was saying something that was true, and a part of what God is calling the ministry I’m in here. Well, it really didn’t sit well with with a lot of people. And I had to really walk through a lot of fears in that statement and misunderstandings of what I was getting at. But I still come back to that as probably being a true statement. So given where we are losing, you know, if you’re listening, I’m doing air quotes right now, like losing power in society losing influence the way we’ve traditionally known it. I love Glenn, you open this door wide so this is gonna pull a thread that you’ve already started on. How does that shape the Christians public life and shape the ministry of the church here?

Glen Scrivener
I answered a question similar to this the other day, and it occurred to me that keeping Sunday special was was part of the answer to this now keep Sunday special was a slogan of those who wanted to have Sunday trading laws here in the UK, and and, you know, keep the supermarkets from being open on a Sunday and, you know, be Sabbatarian in that sort of sense. And keep Sunday special was a kind of a cultural posture. And it was part of Christians saying no to the world and putting their hands out and trying to stop the stampede that was coming the other way. No, no, no, let’s keep Sunday special by not opening the supermarkets on a Sunday. And I think part of the part of the posture is actually okay, let the culture go that way, if that’s the if, you know, if Walmart and Target or whoever wants to open on a Sunday, you can open on a Sunday, away you go with your 24/7 kind of consumerism atomization projects. Enjoy. We’ll be over here on the solid rock. And I think keeping Sunday special in the properly kind of church sense of things is, is having a little mini Christmas every, every every Sunday, a family gathering that you actually want to be at that is that is close knit that is hospitable, where we truly know each other where we sit down and feast together and enjoy Christ together. And that that, to me is part of kind of retreating to the solid rock of church, letting the culture be the culture and saying, we’re doing something weird. We’re doing something different. Come and come and join us in this counterculture over here. And so I think a lot of a lot of focus then becomes Sunday Sabbath, the Lord’s day, building, family building community that is thick, and that is a true counterculture. That’s where some of my thoughts go.

Andrew Wilson
And I entirely agree. I think it there is a freedom that comes From people not really caring people in the culture, not really caring what you think about things, because you don’t have your agenda doesn’t have to be set by the questions that everyone else is asking. And I think there’s, it’s easy to say and much harder to do in a social media age where people want to have an opinion on everything. But I do think is real it can be I think in many European judges, there’s a lot of loss to it. Right. So not not romanticizing the European experience, far fewer people are Christian in my country, Daniel’s as far as I know, people based on church going, and it’d be far more difficult in a lot of European nations. So I’m not in any way going. This is, hey, this is the way to go. But I think one of the advantages that that has, and one of the things that the church can profit from, is it just becomes very clear that the church and respectable society just completely different things because you just can’t do the two things together. And if it when the two get in meshed. And and obviously this happened, in a way, you know, much of it, much of the outflow of it is good. But this happens when the church reaches enough of the Roman Empire that it eventually becomes entangled with the Roman Empire. And the consequence of that many of them have been good, some have been bad, and it’s lasted 1500 years so far, and that in many, very many of the things we believe now and the the by my neighbors or people in the barbers are caused by that in machine, so there’s a lot of good stuff there. But one of the dangers of it is that it becomes harder to tell where the church stops and polite society or the state or the market or whatever, start. And I think when the church is stripped of that, as painful as that can be, and it has, obviously happened in many Middle Eastern nations long as we’re wrapping here, you know, the first countries to become post Christian in that sense would be in North Africa and the Middle East, and so on with the rise of Islam 1300 years ago. So we’ve we’ve been or fortunately, so we have been here before. And much of it can be very difficult for the for the church and for the progress of the gospel in that nation. But one of the strengths of it can be that clarifying what the church is actually for. And not as you know, Glen’s words I know he’s talking about and I’m not an Anglican, so I don’t have to defend it. But chaplain to the nation Thought for the Day, you know, little nice put on, that actually becomes much harder to sustain a sort of a hello, hello, yes, yes, we’re still here, I’m sure will just encourage you and what you’re doing, you becomes more prophetic critique. And alternative counterculture just becomes an inevitability. Because as long as you’re faithful to Christ, you’re going to end up looking 30 different from the world around you. And I think that can actually serve and strengthen the church’s witness, even though it makes the cultural environment sometimes harder. So Jim, I mean, I bless you for taking that off. And for saying that even on a regular message, I think that’s exactly what I think the challenge from American pastor friends is. And I commend you, because that’s, that’s what I’ve learned when I’m there and thinking, wow, this, this is gonna take a lot of pastoral, heavy lifting, to help people get from where they have been to where they now are, and increasingly will be by 2030. And you think, wow, that’s, as you say, particularly in the white mainstream Evangelical Church, which is the setting that we’re primarily talking about. And I think that we have, for our many challenges, it presents to be in a post Christian environment like we are in Europe, it, it does protect us from some things as well, and makes that distinction between church and world much easier.

Mike Graham
Both of you have spent extensive time in the US, as well as the rest of Europe, in addition to writing residing in the UK. What do you think are some things that we can be expecting in America that are likely coming next that we haven’t maybe yet seen yet? And what does it look like for us to prepare for some of those things that we might not have might not yet have seen?

Andrew Wilson
How’s your crystal ball? Glen? Mine is mine is poor, because I think because of the difference of the relationship in the church, and the state makes such a difference. So that the idea of making predictive statements off the back of what we’ve had here, and the speed at which has happened there, both of those things complicated for me. I mean, I think we can, you know, unless God breaks in, we can expect more of the same. I think that’s, that’s obviously, an increasing marginality, as we’ve been talking about. But I definitely and I think the issues over which the church has mobilized and made a strong public statement on things or something like abortion in the States, where, how that’s gonna go, I don’t think anyone I don’t think any of us would have predicted two years ago, where we are now on the United States. And even I wouldn’t want to predict where it’s going to be in another three years time from here in the States. It’s very hard to read. And so I think that was in in Europe, that just isn’t a way that political issues have been done. We don’t have obviously the same nature of separation of powers and the church has public voice has been on different matters. So I’m basically giving a long way of saying I really don’t know, I think you’re gonna, the trajectory will continue. There is clearly more to come. I think we would say short of God doing something astonishing. And I think that but I think that Churches journey and coming to terms with that, as we’ve been discussing, is more probably more difficult than it has been for certainly adults in my lifetime. Like there might be that someone who was alive who was a Christian pastor through the 1960s, when John Robinson was writing honest to God, and the Beatles, and then the drug culture, and then the sexual counterculture all came out. Once in that 10 year period in Britain, people probably, were asking the same kinds of questions about the loss of cultural prestige. But in my lifetime, that isn’t something I’ve known. So I just, I wouldn’t really know what’s what’s next. And I think it’d be a brave man to guess. But fortunately, we have such a brave man with us. And he’s asked, what is gonna happen in the next 10 years in America?

Glen Scrivener
Have you got a pencil and a piece of paper here is in 2024? There it is. I wonder whether one thing that perhaps has happened in Australia and the UK. And it’s definitely happening happening in the US as well. But there is that sense of the the pastors, the pastors, Monday morning will be so much easier than his congregations Monday morning. That that has been the case. And so many, certainly, certainly so many sermons, that we have been used to have been preparing congregations for the kinds of Monday mornings that the preacher is going to have, rather than the kind of Monday mornings, that their flock are about to have. And that difference is really, really marked. And someone who’s really helped me with that is Steven McAlpine, who is a church leader in in Australia. And he was the first one who put me onto that, that line that so much of our preaching prepares congregations for the kind of Christianity that the preacher lives, which is becoming quite different to the kind of Christianity if, if you are in the workplace, and you are having to navigate the world of you know, HR wants me to put my pronouns at the end of my email, and what do I do about LGBTQIA plus a day and pride day and Pride Month, and what you know, these are issues that pastors have very little experience of, and where their congregations actually have the wisdom and need need to kind of lead the conversations in lots of different ways. So I think where we’ve come from is a culture in which church leaders have been at the cutting edge of difficult discipleship. And now in some, in some senses, it’s, it’s the people we lead, who are in the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego situations. And I think we need to become a lot more, a lot more open to learning from the people who are actually at the sharp end of things and recognizing that the sharp end has shifted quite significantly.

Jim Davis
Alright, so one very personal question here. We Orlando, according to Barna has the same percentage of Evangelicals as New York City and Seattle. But obviously, it feels very different because our context is the church. Their context is unchurched. But we also recognize that typically, D churched. Families are going to have unchurched kids. And so parenting is a question. I think it’s a common fear raising our kids in a society is very different than we grew up in. I have four kids, eight to 15, Mike has two, four and six is that their ages? That get get wrong. Okay, four to six beautiful kids. What what it just quick answer, we’ll start with you, Andrew, what encouragement can you give us wanting to faithfully raise children in a very different contexts that we grew up in than we grew up in? Yeah, well, this, to be

Andrew Wilson
honest, this is where we get practice at the thing that Glen was just saying about pastoring our people through things because this is where my, you know, my kids come back. And my six year olds got the sort of book with, you know, people who change the world, and he goes through page at a time, and it’s all these sort of great heroes of the past. They’re all all those Christianity has been stripped out of, you know, you’re never gonna get a story about Hollywood Equiano that actually talks about Christianity is going to be about the fact that he was just against slavery, which because he was, but then you get to the final page, and it’s this massive rainbow festival, these brave people who fought for gay marriage. And so it’s an age six is sort of that’s we’re reading it and and so I think the encouragement is actually just always just to lean towards rather than lean away from those, those issues. And I think that’s also going to really help us as those of us who are pastors to disciple people who have got the same very same questions because it’s coming to all of us to at least say this is a great opportunity to talk about, about family about love about marriage about to the degree that you feel comfortable to do it with a six year old about what sex is or how it works. But so many things like that where there’s just an awful, awful lot to be said and man Just to be even affirmed and embrace you, it’s always been very difficult, you know, what the way these things are done strategically, is to sort of force you into position where you’ve almost got to deny everything or accept everything. And of course, you never do that. So what do you think about that, and you talk through these things, even as a parent. So actually, what is really good is really good to include a value people and their differences, it’s really important to make sure that people aren’t it’s because of excluded because of this and this, what do you think about that? And how do you answer? And so and because Scripture speaks of all of these things, as well, to be able to read, you really are read almost three, reading your newspaper with one hand on the Bible, the other because you go into bed, you read in the book, they’ve been given a score for their reading projects in the reading scripture as well, and talking about the interface between the two. And I think in doing that you have great preparation and set your arms catechizing yourself as a parent and as a pastor, to handle these issues that are facing everybody in the workplace, as Glenn was saying, to me that it is real encouragement, I’m not being sad about it. I really think that without that, I’d feel like I’m always handling these things degree removed away, but when it’s in my child’s bedroom, and that’s what we’re talking about today. And you know, well, what are we what about this child in my class has got two mums. But yeah, and then you go, wow, well, let’s talk about that. And then learn how to contextualize Christian sexual ethics to a six year old who might say anything about what you’ve told him the following day is just fantastic training. Yeah.

Glen Scrivener
And you end up having to lean sideways, I think as parents, with people who are your own age, and rather than go to granddad and grim, you know, grandma, because granddad and grandma don’t know how to how to deal with any of this grunt, Granddad or grandma just like tearing their hair out. And just saying it was It wasn’t like this in our day. And you just have to say to your own parents, no, it wasn’t, do you have anything you have anything else? To kind of help with? What? Certainly, certainly, what we’re finding in in church life is that this sort of cohort of people in the same generation are figuring it out as we go. And but it does, it does help us not to silo off into the nuclear family, and to just to just pawn things off to granddaddy grandma, but to actually, you know, lean on those who are around you. And at the same stage of parenting, and certainly like within our church, we’re having lots of meetings coming together. And parents just getting their heads together, praying together think thinking again, about this. And being really prayerful about it, which I don’t think would happen, were it not for these issues that we’re kind of facing for the first time. And so it cuts across generations, in some senses, it means that you don’t just rely on the generation above it, there’s a real sense of solidarity actually, as shoulder to shoulder parents are wrestling this stuff through that’s changing on a minute by minute basis. But but we we really look out for each other a lot more as parents now I find I find we’re really kind of like on each other’s side and praying for each other and figuring out the different challenges that the school down the road is doing this kind of transgender, you know, ideology in the year three class, and I’m going to pray for your child in that and you can pray for my child in that way. There’s a lot more solidarity in that rather than just wearing the nuclear family doing a little thing.

Jim Davis
Now, it makes a lot of sense that the common challenge would would bring people together that appreciate both of those answers. Well, as we finish, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you more about your forthcoming podcast project. Glenn, can you tell us about this yet unnamed venture?

Glen Scrivener
A ha, yes. So Andrew Wilson and I are doing a podcast and much of the material is has come out of the books that we’re both working on. Last year, I came out with the air we breathe, which is all about how the Christian revolution has shaped us far more than we might have imagined. And Andrews got a similar book coming out this year called remaking the world how 1776 created the post Christian West. And, and I guess, like, my, my angle with the air we breathe is very much on how Christian we all are, whether or not we know it’s and and Andrew is pointing in pointing really to the ways in which we’re kind of Christian and post Christian, which I think is absolutely right, as well. And we’re just trying to figure out what this cultural moment is. And so in a sense, you know, my book kind of orbits around one of these acronyms that Joseph Henrich has come up with the West is Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, which makes it weird. And Andrew being Andrew and a brilliant wordsmith says, ah, but we are weird, because there’s also we are x Christian is the extra A, and the extra are is that we are romantics as well. And are we weird, or are we weird? And so I want to call the podcast weird and weirder. But Andrew thinks that’s too esoteric and I think he worries that he would be the one thought of as weirder. But we really want to figure out where we are in this cultural moment. And why? What? Yeah, what what is the response for Christians living faithfully in this age as well as we’re losing cultural power? And yet the remnants of Christian faith are all around us. How can we live faithfully for Jesus? So that’s coming out soon?

Jim Davis
Well, now that you’ve explained it, my vote is for weird and weirder. I think it makes sense. And I love the idea that Andrew would be the weirder person. So that’s my vote. Well, I just can’t thank you both enough for joining us, especially with time change, and it was getting late over there this time of day. So it’s just always a pleasure to speak with you to talk about these kinds of things. So thank you so much for being with us.

Glen Scrivener
Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having us.

Jim Davis
We’ll make sure you stay with us next week when we talk to Jake meter editor, editor in chief of mere orthodoxy about the church in exile. So we’re going to continue that thread and the merits of an exhibit posture as we navigate the broader complexities of the de churching phenomenon in America.