Latest / Vox ministries Podcast / Is The Quiet Revival A Revival? (With Jim Paul - L'abri)

Transcript

Is The Quiet Revival A Revival? (With Jim Paul - L'abri) · Vox ministries Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, welcome, Jim Paul.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jim, how are you?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing okay, actually.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a busy day,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: but I've just been reading with a group of students,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Martin Shaw's Liturgies of the Wild.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right, okay.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Which is, do you know that book?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I have to confess.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's good, yeah.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's a very interesting person who became a Christian about seven years ago from
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: a sort of shamanistic...
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds interesting.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Quite, quite, quite wild.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure it is.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jim, I was trying to work it out.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've probably known you for about over 20 years.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's a scary thought, isn't it?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've seen that I've gone a bit greyer.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that was your observation before we went on air, as it were.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't gone so great, but, you know, wisdom and stress, let's put it that way.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So for those who don't know you,
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: can you just tell us a bit about yourself, where you live, where you work?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've got family.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just tell us what you want to let the listeners know a bit about yourself.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be great.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm currently the director of the English branch of Libri Fellowship,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: which I've been there for over 20 years,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: live there with my wife and our two boys who are grown up now in their 20s.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: For those who don't know what Libri is,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: it is a Christian community and study center where we give people space,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: time and the resources to work through their questions about Christian faith.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And let's see,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: before that,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was a doctor trained in palliative care and was a palliative care specialist
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: in London.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got, have you got grown up kids now?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're in their 20s.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, mid 20s.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we're kind of, yeah.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what we're supposed to say.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're at this stage of life.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: People talk about adult kids and grown up kids.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I guess they're all adults, aren't they really?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: One's left home.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: One's still with us sort of on and off.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And they're there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're a joy.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: We worry a lot about our kids, too, don't we?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's life.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Once a parent, always a parent.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And is it on the south coast of England?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Hampshire?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hampshire.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not far from Portsmouth.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: These beautiful sunny days have been able to go down to the beach and South Sea and swim.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You've been sort of in the Riviera, the English Riviera.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we are.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Stony beaches though.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things we're trying to do on this podcast is speak to people
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: that are involved and have experience in Christian ministry,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: in life as a whole,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: and particularly interested in leadership, having been in leadership myself.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to think about your 25-year-old self, Jim,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: which is probably a bit of a scary thought,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe it's not,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: what might you say now that you're older to your 25-year-old self?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Should this be relevant to being in leadership or just life in general?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just life in general, yeah.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It can be, okay, some lessons you've learned, but whatever.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I would say is take up birdwatching.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've only taken up birdwatching in about the last five or six years,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: and it's become a bit of an obsession of mine,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: which just brings so much joy and relaxation and,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, interest and wonder and delight in God's creation.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say take it up when you're 25.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Why wait till you're 50 to take it up?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: What else would I say?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Read more poetry.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: I would definitely encourage my younger self to read more poetry and learn poems
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: that I love and let that become a rich part of my life earlier than it has done.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And probably the last one would be Worry Less because I think
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm a worrier, prone to worry.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Probably most of us are.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess over the last 30 years or so,
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: since I was 25, I've seen God care for me through all those things.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I often think, why did I worry so much about that?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: I could have just trusted him more.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's an interesting connection there, isn't there?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Watch, you know,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: become a birdwatcher because,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: of course, Matthew 6, Jesus says, don't worry about your life.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the birds of the air, you know.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: so I remember my confession,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: those who know me well know I enjoy sort of looking at,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Goldfinches and greenfinches as well as birds of prey.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I did in lockdown was try and teach myself bird songs,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: identify the song, you know, when you're going in the woods.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, great as it is, we're not a bird watching podcast, but there is a relevance.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: There is a relevance.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Go check out,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: goldfinches and greenfinches and all kinds of different birds and worry less.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's good what's come from you there.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We are not talking about birdwatching specifically,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: but we are talking about something called the Quiet Revival.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been doing a bit of thinking about that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: You recently did a lecture at Labrie.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this, Jim.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think it's called The Quiet Revival and not maybe The Quiet Awakening or
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: The Slow Awakening or something else?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's your thoughts on that?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder because the,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: the awakenings of the past,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: like the Great Awakening, were, I think, more profound cultural change went on.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's what we're seeing at the moment.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing...
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, hopefully, the beginning of a wider phenomenon.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see what happens as we go on through the next few years, the next decade.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I think with the Great Awakenings, I was thinking of...
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: A friend of mine who was telling me about the Welsh revival,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: and one of the things he says that was written at the time is that you could tell
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: when a Welsh miner had become a Christian by the way they treated their pit pony.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: So there was this,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: there was a cultural change of people's treatment of animals that went on as they,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know, as they found faith in Jesus Christ, the creator of all things.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think we're seeing that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a kind of, I would call it like a bubbling under of something.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I like the word,
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: in one article I read,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: it said it's not a revival or an awakening, but there's a ferment going on.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's the kind of same as a bubbling under,
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: but there's probably still a continuing decline overall in numbers of people going
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: to church, particularly because, particularly in the...
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: The more kind of middle of the road denominations.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: there is, I think, a new interest in Christianity and spirituality that's going on.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So there's probably sort of two things going on at the same time, a ferment.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's why, yeah, it's not an awakening yet.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's more, I call it a bubbling under of something.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: We'll maybe put some of that up a little bit later.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting...
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: A way of kind of trying to define it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I guess in shorthand, that's what it has been called because a report came out, didn't it?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a couple of years ago now?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 2025, I think it was.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, last year.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, last year.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So a report came out from,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: and in that study,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: it particularly said that young men in particular are going to church and converting
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: to Christianity regularly.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Reading the Bible or asking for Bibles,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: the report that was initially put out was withdrawn as YouGov got the stats
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: a bit wrong.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So does that mean there isn't a revival or there isn't anything going on or what does that mean?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would still argue there is something going on,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: even if the stats at the moment are not showing that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, yeah, the original study was done by the Bible Society and through no fault of their own.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Actually,
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: it was the secular organization, YouGov,
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: that they had used to collect the data that admitted
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: that they had made serious mistakes in doing that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: The data wasn't reliable.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll see.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I gather that they are.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: We are repeating the study,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: but without the data problems this year, I think, to be published next year.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll see what that shows.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there have been other large scale studies,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: which have, you know, So in continuing decline in numbers of people going to church.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that's pointing the other direction.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And for example, I would say things like...
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: In the Catholic Church in France,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: for example, they have got record numbers of baptisms this Easter.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the same actually is true in the Westminster Diocese of the Catholic Church in London.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: There are in...
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Other countries like Sweden,
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Denmark,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Norway are reporting increasing numbers of young people coming back to church.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is in Sweden.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to check my facts.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the lecture I gave.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But in one of the Nordic countries,
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: in a secular magazine, they voted Jesus the Influencer of the Year recently.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a kind of... That is the new guy on the block.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he hasn't been around very long, just 2,000 years.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And anecdotally, I've certainly spoken to someone that's in a small city near us.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: It says that their church congregation has gone up 20% in the last year,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: and it's nearly all young people.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Another elder in a church that I was talking to down
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: in Portsmouth said how just one Sunday service they had six 16-year-olds just turn
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: up to their service wanting to see what happened and then being absolutely delighted
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: at the end of the service when they were given a Bible to go away and read
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: and were just delighted and interested.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there is this...
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that could be repeated.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've spoken to so many people in all kinds of different countries where that kind
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: of pattern is going on.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so maybe you're not getting that showing up in the days,
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: as I said, because perhaps overall church attendance is continuing to fall.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because in traditional,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: some of the traditional denominations and sort of middle of the road churches.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a growing interest of young people coming,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: particularly to Orthodoxy,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Catholicism and Pentecostalism, but also in many other evangelical churches as well.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there's definitely something going on.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I could...
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I could talk more about that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's also another area
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: where something really interesting is happening is many people who are,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't quite call them perhaps celebrities,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: but influential people in a whole lot of disciplines The first one I would think
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: about would be Jordan Peterson.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: He sort of kick-started this interest in the Bible.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in spirituality,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: in the lectures that he gave,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think in 2016 or 17,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: gave a whole series of lectures on the Bible and looking at the stories from
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: a psychological point of view.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then you've got people like Tom Holland, who.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So he calls himself a cultural Christian now and his book,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Dominion,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: arguing that actually our cultures and the values of cultural are not based
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: on enlightenment values, but on Christian ones.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: In the music world, people like Nick Cave, who has come back to his faith.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So do you think it would be fair to say,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: on the back of what you said there,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it certainly would be fair to say when I used to work
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: with university students 25 years ago,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: the predominant thing in universities when I would go and speak
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: a mission week would be New Ageism, Richard Dawkins.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: So right away you had this defence against you, which was that Christianity...
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not plausible.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not believable.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God is a delusion.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so anybody that had just,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: read the latest thing or read the latest book would have this opposing argument.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't really open at all.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was like kind of trying to walk through cement in many ways in terms of apologetics.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's definitely been...
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: A shift,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: and I was just thinking as you were describing those people, Jim,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland and Nick Cave,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just wonder whether,
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: so there's definitely been a shift,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: doesn't there,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: from new atheism and closeness to maybe an openness to Christianity as a worldview,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't necessarily mean they're necessarily totally open to the gospel,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: are they, in terms of all becoming Christians per se?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think for many people, it's,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: they don't, I mean,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: they don't,
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: they've become,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: I would say,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: it's an openness in a way to something beyond the material worldview of
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: the new atheists.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think now,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the new atheism I often call it a change in the plausibility construct.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of sociological term to do with what is plausible in our culture,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: in our society.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And previously it would have been,
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know, new atheism was totally plausible and Christianity was implausible.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's almost shifted the other way around now.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think very few people buy the,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: materialistic,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Atoms and,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: blind chance is all that there is behind the universe
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: for various reasons we could go into.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think new atheism itself has sort of became a, yeah,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: it's interesting with the advent of woke,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: it became a very divided movement because people
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: within new atheism suddenly discovered what they stand against was religion,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: but they had no idea in one sense what they stand for.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the values,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: and it's split between a more kind of conservative atheist,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: the kind of the philosophers,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: for example, and then the kind of atheist social activists.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so they suddenly discovered that actually This belief in know God,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: it doesn't really give you a set of values.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a time when I think what we desperately need is a culture.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people are feeling that more and more is a set of values to live by as
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: a culture, as a society.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: So there's an opening.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you're right.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's an opening to something beyond.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I think,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: another expression,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: it's got to be said,
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: is not towards Christianity,
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: but towards, say,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: kind of new spiritualities or towards people kind
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: of rediscovering pagan spiritualities and Wicca and...
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, becoming sort of Vikings and all that kind of thing that we see going on as well.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: A great book called Strange Rites by Tara Isabella Burton.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And she really explores that kind of world of these new spiritualities.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's that going on.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: many people,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: what's really happening is it's not people sort of,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to the faith of their childhood,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: it's really people discovering Christianity for the first time,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, a lot of these people.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so they don't yet know in a sense what the message is,
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: but they're interested in this ancient faith that might have something to say
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: to them.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely agree.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And having not spoken in universities for about 20 years,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: the last two years, I have been going in and speaking in universities again.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't believe the openness of students.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, two quick examples.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Two years ago,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was coming across people talking about manifesting and being open to spirituality.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then on the other side,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: you've got people who are really investigating manifesting They've come from
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: a Hindu background or a Muslim background or not believing in anything background.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And where you would struggle to get any probably honest questions at the end of
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: a talk,
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was finding that I was having half an hour conversation before I even got to do
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: the talk, you know, with questions.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely a hunger to learn.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And some people have equated this to first century Christianity.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's just no background of...
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: People that have any understanding of what the gospel is, what the Bible is.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we're starting from scratch, aren't we, in many ways?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I was thinking about in terms of, you touched on orthodoxy here.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: As I kind of stood back from the report that came out and a lot of
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: the discussion that's happened since, Jim,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of thought, right,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: we've got a lot of stats and there's a lot of talk of young men going to church.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of talk of...
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: People going towards orthodoxy or going towards Catholicism.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that the report doesn't really tell us is anything sort
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: of theological, like, well, what do these people actually believe?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or do they understand who Jesus is?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or do they understand what salvation is?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm particularly intrigued by,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: in your lecture, you spoke about this shift in To do with orthodox bros.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And how Christianity appeals to a certain type of male
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: who desires orthodoxy.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think there's a shift towards that?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And is that healthy or unhealthy?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's your observations on that?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about this
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: desire for something beyond and for something maybe
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: that has mystery and wonder in it.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about there are various ways which this new interest
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: in Christianity can be misdirected.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And one of those ways could be into,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the lecture I go through, you know, could be nationalism, for example.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Tommy Robinson has now said he's a Christian,
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: for example, leader of one of the, you know, one of the far right parties in the UK.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see...
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Marches where you've got a Union Jack with a crucifix in the middle of it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: To me that is total anathema of co-opting Christianity for nationalism for example.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe,
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: and I think this is probably true,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: this could be true in many different ways,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: but perhaps for some of the interest for some people is,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: again, it's part of our modern culture, the kind of self-actualisation that goes on.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Substack is a deep part of our modern culture and expressive individualism.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a way, another way of kind of becoming a better me.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Only this is a kind of religious, disciplined, religious way of becoming a better me.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: the kind of ortho bros,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: that was a phrase I came across on the Substack post about orthodoxy,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: this turned to orthodoxy,
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: written by someone Actually,
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: who'd become Orthodox for about five years ago and then was writing about
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: that experience.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that,
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: part of that could feed into this current need there is in our culture
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: for many young men to rediscover what it means to be a man,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: what it means to be a masculine and,
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know, a kind of way of like, yeah, hard spiritual discipline life.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, I don't want to talk about it entirely in a negative way.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is amongst people.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I talk about, if we go back to the new atheism,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: The world that New Atheism and our Enlightenment philosophy that we've been under,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: modernity, post-modernity, it has been termed a disenchanted world.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: We live in this world where everything has become molecules and physical processes
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: and just time and chance and there's no mystery or wonder in it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a deep need in people is they want mystery, they want wonder.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: They want something beautiful in their worship
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: and actually they want somebody something to worship rather than just
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: as we're taught in our modern culture to worship ourselves and our own desires.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: I could see that fitting quite well with Orthodoxy and Catholicism,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: where if you go into a divine liturgy or you go to Catholic Mass,
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: there is a sense of mystery.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: There is a sense of, again, something that is historically true.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just a modern invention of the self.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's something beautiful.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: You go into an Orthodox Church and you've got all the icons and the mosaics on
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: the walls and the gold.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the priests and what they wear and the chanting and all those things.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there is this wonderful, yeah, there's a kind of connection with beauty and awe and wonder.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a drive for people, an attraction for people.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's a challenge to many evangelical churches that,
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: if you just worship in a church,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: let's say,
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know, a building that's a bit like an office or like a cinema or something.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's maybe just saying, well, this is functional or this is entertainment.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that sense, that desire for mystery and for wonder is missing.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're absolutely right and that's really interesting to observe that
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: because I think what we've seen,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: haven't we,
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: historically is that philosophy and theology kind of parallel one another.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's an influence on theological thinking and how churches operate
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: and I think what we've got The recent challenges of those
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: who are desiring maybe orthodoxy more is that in the last 30 years
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: where particularly evangelical churches have come out of a seeker-friendly kind
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: of environment will make our churches look And
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: then people don't see a distinction
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: of it.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think maybe the challenge is to say, well, you know, doctrine is okay.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Order is okay.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: But actually having a doctrine of creation that's reflected in our buildings,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: there's a level of,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we want orthodoxy in terms of not just reinventing the wheel.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the challenge is if people don't see that
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: within many modern evangelical churches,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: the challenge is they'll probably go for that orthodoxy elsewhere,
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: but miss the freedom of the gospel, isn't it?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in the lecture I gave,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I talked about these three desires
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: that I think there are quite strongly amongst people.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And one is, I said, for...
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: for in a sense that, yeah,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: mysticism for actually something that is a real encounter with God,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: rather than, again,
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: this could be a critique of many of our conservative evangelical churches,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: where the sermon is,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's more information about God rather than a service meeting with God,
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: an encounter with Him that really transforms and changes you.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what people want.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want a dry intellectualism, a cognitivism.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: They want actually to meet with God and be changed,
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: be spoken to, which is, I mean, exactly really what we would want to happen.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why some of the stats on the other end,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: the Pentecostalism probably appealed on another level, isn't it?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's exactly right.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that would be a different kind of way of encountering God.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Pentecostalism.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other two things that I think are,
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know, people want is, I said, an understanding.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's aesthetic and aesthetic.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: the desire for beauty,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: something, again, that is beautiful and kind of full of wonder and mystery.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then I talk about an aesthetic.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, like a spiritual disciplines.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Actually,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: people are saying,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I want young people actually saying,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I want something that's a bit tough, you know, that's a bit demanding in a way.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want the seeker friendly, massage my ego, Jesus, you know.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want just that self-actualization that we're told all the time in our culture.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: I actually want something that maybe pushes me a bit, demands something of me.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: What I think,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: where I think actually that,
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: evangelical churches have got a real place here is that I think, again,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: these desires can become misdirected so that,
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know, We can replace God with beauty, for example.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: We can mistake beauty for the experience of God.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, they're deeply connected, aren't they?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not quite the same thing.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we can mistake the spiritual disciplines as the path of faith.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: What we need in there is,
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I call it a kind of,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: I call it a mysticism of grace,
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: an aesthetics of grace, you know, so that actually the center of
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of where we need to direct and point people to is to
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving work,
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: as Francis Schaeffer,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: the founder of Labrie Communities would say,
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: his finished work on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Counter God in his grace,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: in his forgiveness,
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: in his Jesus dying for our sins and rising again,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: and in the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome our sinfulness,
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: where the spiritual disciplines in that are important,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: but actually it's the gracious power and working of God in us that changes us.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where I kind of have actually do think that the Evangelical churches have
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: a,
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know, a real voice in this actually to direct people towards the grace of God.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: In that sort of way of thinking, just literally got a couple of minutes left, Jim.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think we can learn from this?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just if you were to sort of summarise or add anything else into this conversation.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: What's next in terms of this study has been done, it's going to be revised.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: What can we learn from it?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's next?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to encourage evangelical churches to really take up this challenge and
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: to really try to meet these people and what they're looking for.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think part of that,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: there is a real,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think a really helpful challenge here to many evangelical churches is to make sure
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: that we're not just churches of a dry intellectualism,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: or just a kind of cognitivism where we pay,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: just mental assent to God,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: but to actually see our church services as places where people encounter
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: the living God through his word and are changed by that.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'd also encourage places to think deeply about beauty.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Churches, evangelical churches, to think deeply about beauty.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, beauty matters.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: God is a God of beauty.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Just look at his creation.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Look back to the gold.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the green finches and all those beautiful birds that are in our fields and in our gardens.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: So he's a god of endless creativity and beauty.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: So to actually,
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: recapture a proper ascetics,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: a proper sense of the spiritual disciplines and how those can be means which open us
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: to the grace of God.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I'll give you an example.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Often talk about fasting in evangelical circles,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: but at the Brie we try to practice at least once a term we have a fast,
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: a day of fasting and prayer.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And fasting is an amazing thing because what it does is you realize pretty quickly
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: by the time you missed one meal that you're utterly,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: utterly dependent on food for energy, for your energy to do things.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: But also, you know, you start to become bad tempered without a meal.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you realize your nice, holy exterior is pretty dependent on having food.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it suddenly brings you into this deep sense of your fragileness,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: your finiteness and your deep dependence on God.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then of his grace for you, you know, that he will meet you in that need in his grace.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: thinking about, yeah,
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: those kind of spiritual disciplines in that kind of way that lead you to grace.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's just crucial.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's brilliant.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've covered so much in such a short space of time.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to wrap it up there and hopefully it will make people kind of want more.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if they want more,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: this podcast is on Spotify, but also Libri have a podcast on Spotify as well.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for your time, Jim.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely to be with you.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.