Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Do Evangelicals Still Believe Evangelical Things? The 2025 State of Theology

Transcript

Do Evangelicals Still Believe Evangelical Things? The 2025 State of Theology · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian On.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Doctor James Spencer and I'm joined by doctor Ashish Varma
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: today and we've known each other for a long time.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So we're going to have a conversation.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: About the State of Theology report and some of the
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: things that we've noticed as we've kind of played around
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: with the report.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It's a really interesting.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: One and so we're looking forward to a good conversation
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: today about maybe something like generational differences amongst evangelicals on
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: certain theological perspectives.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: So Ashish, welcome to the show. How you doing, man,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks good to be here.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: I'm doing all right, a little cold, but doing all right.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: You're in the frigid Lombard Library and I appreciate you.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you hopping on to do this well.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: So we had a previous conver we had a conversation
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: before the show. But the State of Theology report just
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: kind of give everybody a sense of it. And you
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: can actually just google the State of Theology or the
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: State of the just go to the Stateoftheology dot com.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: It's a report that Liganier does, I think bi annually,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and so they came out with the twenty twenty five
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: results earlier this year and just been playing around with
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: this report for a while.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: They rank and they give you different filters on this,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of different filters on this, and so what
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: we're going to be doing today is just kind of
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: playing around with those filters a little bit and you know,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: waxing philosophical, making some hypotheses about why the different results
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: might come out the way that they did.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: So that's kind of where we're at.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: The report doesn't actually give us a lot of the
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: things that we're going to talk about. It gives us
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: some raw data to kind of play off of. So
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I don't want to give the impression that the report
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: gives us all this information that we're going to talk
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: about today. It just is a jumping off point for
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: some of our scholarly investigation.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Fair enough.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: So, just in case anybody wanted to look at this report,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: like I said, you can go to the state of
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: the dot com and what we're going to do. We're
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: looking at the data explore just so people can find
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: the information we're looking at, and we're going to filter
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: this out for two stable variables, and then we're going
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: to look at the different generational or age demographics as
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: we go through some of these questions. So the two
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: stable ones are going to be affiliation and belief. We're
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: marking both of those evangelical. We did find that as
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: we played around with some of those others, if we
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: put in not evangelical belief or if we put in
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: something like, you know, mainline affiliation, the results do change
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: pretty drastically, and so it's kind of interesting to watch
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: how these things change. But for the purposes of this conversation,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: we're just going to make it a little simplified and
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: talk about evangelical beliefs across different age ranges. So that's
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: what we're going to start, and we'll start with what
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: is statement sixteen. The Bible, like all sacred writings, contains
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: helpful accounts of ancient myths, but is not literally true.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: So that's the statement. And then people are asked, do
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: you agree with this, do you someone agree with this,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: are you not sure about this, do you somewhat disagree,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: or do you strongly disagree.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: It's kind of that five point scale.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So I'll be looking over to the right because I've
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: got the report pulled up, and so if you see
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: me looking off camera.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm doing.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I'm adding quickly in my head agreement numbers. So we
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: looked at this and for statement sixteen, if we filter
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: for the two evangelical and then you do eighteen to
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: thirty four, we have twenty four percent agreement that the
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Bible is contains helpful accounts of ancient myths but is
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: not literally true. Versus if we factor in all the
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: other age groups, which run from you know, thirty five
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: all the way up to sixty five plus, we have
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: a pretty big disparity. There's only seven percent agreement amongst
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: all the rest of the age groups, and so that's
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: a pretty big difference between the eighteen to thirty four
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: range and then all the other age groups. When you
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: say ashij.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah definitely maybe one of the starker different says that
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: we see in this report.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's they're obviously the biggest category at twenty four
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: percent versus even if we factor them in lump them
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: in with everybody else, the whole agreement is only ten percent.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So factoring by age really does make a difference on
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: this one. What I found interesting is when I looked
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: at some of the other statements, like let's say statement eighteen,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: modern science disproves the Bible. Right, you see a very
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: similar trend there. The eighteen to thirty four year old
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: age group really does agree more frequently with that, so
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: twenty seven percent agreement versus let's say the sixty five
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: plus which was only ten percent agreement. So again a
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: pretty big disparity between these are between these ages higher
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: percentage of younger people believe modern science disproves the Bible
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: and that the Bible is not fully literally true. Now
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: that would be disturbing in my mind if it weren't
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: for some of these other stats that we look at.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: So if we move to question I'm getting there twenty
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: or question thirty, excuse me, statement thirty, The Bible has
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: authority to tell us what we must do, and you
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: filter it. All the age groups agree with this to
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: a level of ninety six percent. The eighteen to thirty
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: four year old age group is actually at ninety six percent.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: The sixty five plus age group is slightly higher than that,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: or as slightly lower than that, actually ninety three percent.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: And so there's this interesting variation. And if we just
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: go too statements more, the Bible is the highest authority
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: for what I believe it doesn't matter which age group
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: you pick, you get one hundred percent agreement. And so
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: these things don't seem to fit together. Right now, I'm
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: in that middle age group of thirty five forty nine,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: and so maybe it shouldn't fit together for me.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. What do you make of this man?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Well, one, that it's super interesting and you you you
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: tend to hear a lot. You know, it's sort of
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: the thing that we do as we get older. I
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: think I find myself looking at my kids saying, we
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: used to do things this way, right. You know, in
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: my day, we didn't have streaming services. You just had
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: watch what was on and get over it, right. Or
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: I said, this is my class yesterday because they were
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: talking about fighting fighting among their siblings when they were
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: kids between the remote control, and I finally just piped
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: up and said, you know, our TV didn't have a remote.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: It just had buttons for each channel on top of it,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: so there wasn't really much fighting except who got to
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: the front of the TV first. It's a thing that
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: you do as you get older, right. We have this
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: sense of what's normal that comes from when we were younger.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: Part of it you expect, and that's as you get older,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: your sense of normal is phased out. Right. But the
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: part that is odd about it, or at least that
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: seems to contradict that way of looking at this, right,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: This this notion of as you get older things look
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: different because things are changing. Is that this last question
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: thirty two that you're talking about, it doesn't matter hold
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: you are, if you're an evangelical or you identify as
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: an evangelical, you say the Bible is the highest authority
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: for what I believe, and it's not even like so
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: they divide it up. Agree strongly agree.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Is right?
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Strongly agree? Which is interesting and to me that raises
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: other questions. Is the issue here with some of these
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: other questions of the relationship to the Bible to the sciences,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: the relationship of the Bible to myth, relationship of what
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: we believe the Bible says, to questions of gender and
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: so on and so forth.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is this really a.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Question of lack of trust and belief or is there's
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: some other factor that is entered into play in which
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: we're looking at the Bible as saying different sorts of things.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, when I would just say one thing
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: before we move into that kind of conversation, just to
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: give people a reference point. If you mark not evangelical,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: and then you mark the different affiliations that are not
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: evangelical churches, that percentage the Bible is the highest authority
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: for what I believe. The strongly agree goes down to
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: fifteen percent one to five, and the somewhat agree goes
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: down to twenty eight percent.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: So the evangelical.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Belief and the evangelical affiliation, it's actually really strongly correlated
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: with this particular belief. This is not just something that
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: you know, Like you could ask any Joe schmol on
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: the street. They're going to go, oh, yeah, I strongly
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: agree with that. This is a uniquely evangelical belief. And
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: so I do think that as we get into some
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: of the more granular questions, does modern science disprove the
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Bible as the Bible.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Fully and literally true?
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Probably part of what we're running into is the I
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: think I would say the access to information is just
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: getting more and more open. In other words, as we've
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: gone into a digital age, we're all seeing more information
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: and being less able to integrate it into our faith paradigm. Right,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: So what do you do with some of these things?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are books written on, for instance, like
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: climate science. I have known nothing about climate science. I
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: haven't looked at it at all, But this is one
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: of those areas. Part of the reason I haven't looked
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: at is because I don't feel like I have the time.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know that to get up to speed to
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: understand all of that would be a really long process.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: And so as you're looking at some of these scientific theories,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: looking at some of these scientific studies and things that
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: are coming out, you have to actually have the time
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: to not only gloss them, but to really deeply understand them.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And then once you've deeply understood them and critically analyzed them,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: then you've got to integrate them back into your faith.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And my guess is that what's happening is that that
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: sort of old analytical style of processing information just isn't
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: happen as much.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if I can offer an analogy, I know you
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: love analogies.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: There, go for it.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: So I played basketball. I won't get into the weeds
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: of what all that entails, but the game has changed
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: a lot.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: Now, personally, I'll make comments every now and then again
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: if I think this era was better than that era. Yeah,
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: but I just love the games. I'm going to keep playing.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: I'm going to keep watching. But i play pickup ball
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: with the group, and I'm on the older side of
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: the guys that play. And one of the big things
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: that's changed. And it's not important to understand the ins
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: and outs of this, but there's a rule that's a
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: current way that an offensive player can move with the ball,
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: called the step through. You could not do a step
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: through when I was growing up. In fact, what we
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: call a step through now would have been called a travel,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: a travel back in my day. I've always prided myself
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: on being a good defender. I think it's important not
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: just to be able to shoot, but can you make
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: things hard on the other team. The step through changes everything.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: So I'll be guarding these young guys and in my mind,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: that's just not a move you make. It's not part
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: of my repertoire. So I'll try to lock them down
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: on defense and they'll slip through suddenly with a step through,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: and it's annoying. It's definitely annoying. My inclination is to
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: say travel, and then I have to remember, no, it's
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: not a travel anymore.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It used to be a travel.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: It's not a travel anymore.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Right Now, what do I do with that?
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: The game has changed? Right? I want to keep playing.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: I could throw a fit about the fact that in
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: my day there was no step through, right, I don't
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: know that that gets me anywhere. They're just going to
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: call me old man and keep playing. And they're not wrong,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: right if they if they turn on the TV and
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: watch the NBA or college or high school, the step
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: through is allowed. So what I have to do is
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: I have to be able to adjust. My defense has
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: to take into account that what might have been a
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: lockdown defensive play before now has to be able to
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: account for this step through motion. It makes being a
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: defender harder, but you got to do it well. My
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: analogy in this is that to your point, things have
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: changed just in terms of access. Yeah, whether it was
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: right or wrong to make blanket judgments in the absence
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: of access thirty years ago, we'll leave that to the
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: side unless you want to.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Get into that.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: The reality is just simply access has changed, and complaining
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: about it isn't going to change that access has changed. Right,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: Having taught college students and grad students. I don't think
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: the way it's specifically in theological studies. I don't think
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: the way forward is to spend all this time talking
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: or bemoaning the access that comes to various ways of
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: thinking about the Bible, various ways of thinking about theology.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: And it's more about, Okay, access has changed. Now, what
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: does that mean for how I engage as a professor,
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: how I engage in theological education. To me, that's got
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: to be the way forward. Sure, we can have our
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: moments of griping on the side in our in our
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: old man corners, just the same way I do with
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: my fellow old man basketball players. But when you get
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: on the court, you know, you've got to adjust. And
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: I think this sort of dissonance that might seem at
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: first when we look at this kind of report, we've
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: got to move quickly by and ask the questions that
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: you just asked.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think the other thing we were talking
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: about before this, and I appreciate the basketball analogy. I
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: think that makes a lot of sense. One of the
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: things I would say has changed. And you you know,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: as we talked before the podcast, we both agree on
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: this is that the liberal conservative thing is not the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: way to solve this problem. Those categories aren't going to
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: be as helpful in describing this data. And so some
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: people might look at this and go, well, there's eighteen
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: to twenty four year old or eighteen to thirty four
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: year olds. They're going liberal. They think science just proves
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: the viable. They don't think the Bible is literally true, right,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: and so this is a liberal drift. I as I
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: look at the whole of the report, and obviously we're
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: not covering every question on this podcast because that would
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: be a lot, but I would say, as I've looked
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: at the whole report, sure.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: That's exactly the conclusion I would come to.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I think you have all of these different intersecting beliefs
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: that are being brought to bear on different generations of people,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and that those intersecting beliefs can tend to skew how
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: they answer something. In other words, if we were looking
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: at this just from a you know, a straight theological perspective, right,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: we might say, well, there is a right answer to that, right,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: we might have to simplify it down a good bit, right,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: you know, remove a lot of the complexity of these
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: conversations because even you know, ancient myths, but is not
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: literally true. Literally is difficult for me to get my
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: head around, right. I would have just preferred it to
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: be said, but it is not true because I'm not
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: sure what the difference between literally true and true actually is. Right,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: But that's probably more granular than most people are reading
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: that question. So the point is is I think that
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: and I'll give it. For instance, when I looked at
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: the question about whether or not Christian beliefs or one's
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: religious beliefs should influence their political activities, there were a
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: higher proportion of eighteen to thirty four year olds who
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: said that it shouldn't. They agreed that their faith should
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: not influence their politics. And then you go to some
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: of the moral questions, you know, transgenderism, homosexuality, some of those,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and you're like, how are these not going to be
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: skewed by that particular perspective? In other words, if they
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: think that their beliefs, their Christian beliefs shouldn't skew their politics,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: and they view these as political issues, they're going to
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: answer those differently than someone who actually does think that
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: their faith should influence politics. And so I think there's
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: just a lot there that we when we're looking at
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: how do we correct maybe some of these views, how
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: do we cultivate more agreement on some of these use
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: We can't just go straight at and go well, we
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: need to get back into bibliology, and we need to
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: teach inerrancy, and we need to teach inspiration, we need
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe I mean those are always good things
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: to understand, I suppose, but there are these other areas
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: I think coming around the side that if we're not
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: addressing this is only gonna get worse.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, to the to the question you just raised about
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: should should Christians allow their religious beliefs to influence their
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: political decisions? As we were talking about before, there are
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: interesting trends when you when you take the evangelical population
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: and then you remove that filter and put on the
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: non evangelical population. So generally speaking, we've noticed that with
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: the evangelical box checked, there does seem to be a
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: movement as you get younger in these age backits. But
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: when you remove the evangelical and you go to the
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: non evangelical, the movement is far less fluid. In fact,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: you have a strange commonality and most of the categories
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: between the young and the old. So the eighteen to
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: thirty four being the young plus sixty five plus being
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: the old tend to be in similar positions. So with that,
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: with that pattern in front of us, what I think
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: is interesting on this particular question, Christians should not allow
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: their religious beliefs to be influenced to influence their political decisions.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Strongly agree. The highest population here is the youngest eighteen
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: to thirty four, but the next highest, not far away
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: from them, is that sixty five plus. So this time
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: a general landscape question whether evangelical or not. And that's
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: fascinating to me. You know, maybe maybe it shouldn't be
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: as surprising to me when I look at other sorts
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: of statistics. So, for instance, we have we have a
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: late late night talkshow ecosystem on many of the major networks,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: and the age group that dominates the ratings for those
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: are the sixty five plus people because they're the only
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: ones who seem to watch TV live anymore. But then
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: you go to the YouTube population and that tends to
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: be a younger group and they're getting millions of views
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: per clip, So maybe there's some correlation there as well, right,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: But I think that's an interesting thing to note on
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: this particular question that for the evangelical population, it breaks
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: the otherwise noticeable trend of younger means different, and this case,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: younger doesn't necessarily mean different.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were much closer on a lot of these measures.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: When you just bracketed just the evangelicals versus the whole population,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: there was a big difference. The other thing I would
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: say there were some difference is is I looked at
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: different questions in the density, which I found fascinating. Density
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: refers to whether you live in a large city or
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: a rural area, a suburb or a small city, or
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: what have you. And I was kind of going through
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: some of the questions with those that filter on as well,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and you did see pretty big differences. The way that
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: people in large cities thought about these things was different
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: than the way people thought about in rural areas. Now,
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: all these are just percentage differences, right, and so at
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: some point you're getting probably too granular in your sample size.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: In fact, if you put too many filters on the website,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: will pull up a little note and say there was
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: under fifty you know respondents in this filter. These results
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: probably aren't going to be accurate, But just again as
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: sort of a thought experiment for us. What I think
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: we're seeing is that some of these community aspects actually
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: really matter. So even when I was doing my little
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: experiment and I took off, you know, you'd just use
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: evangelical belief. An evangelical belief alone apart from other factors
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: didn't seem to really get it done. But if I
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: put evangelical belief and then evangelical affiliation, then that percentage
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: would lower. And if I put evangelical belief, evangelical affiliation
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: and church attendance several times a week, it would lower again.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And So while we tend to and I'm definitely guilty
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: of this, I tend to think in terms of headspace, Right.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: What do you actually believe? What do you know?
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's just the academic geek thing, right,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: you sort of like to think about these things. But
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: the reality is, if we were looking at this survey
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: and we follow some of these trends, community and time
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: spent in community is actually crucial to holding some of
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: these beliefs more strongly and obviously others less strongly.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well said, What I think is especially interesting in
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: that equation. If we can dig into this a little
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: bit as the church attendants. Yeah, you spent more time
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: with that filter than I did. Do you mind sharing
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: what you shared with me earlier in terms of kind
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: of the more granular elements there. One of the ways
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: they divided is it's not just church attendants, but it's
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: frequency of church attendants. Do you go religious days? Do
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: you go once or twice a month, or once tw
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: twice a month, once a week, which probably is the
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: most that's right, the most obvious place that people would
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: think of, will you go to church every Sunday? Right?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: But then there once a week times that changes things, right?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: And so I looked at this specifically with a question
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: on the report, does God accept or God accepts the
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: worship of all religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam? Right,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: So this is the question I was looking at, but
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: just to illustrate how some of these filters actually work.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So if you look at evangelical belief there was only
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: forty seven percent agreement on that either strongly or somewhat
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: right or there was forty seven percent agreement, So forty
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: seven percent of people with evangelical beliefs said that God
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: accepts worship from all religions. If I then go down
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: and say, okay, but if you're combined with if you
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: combine that with evangelical affiliation. So now I've got evangelical
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: belief and evangelical affiliation that goes down from forty seven
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: percent to thirty one percent thirty percent thirty one percent agreement.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: And then if I say, well, what about church attendance,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: it drops another ten percent to twenty one percent if
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: I add in several times a week a church.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And so that's sort of the tear that I'm talking about.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: It.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: It's like, you see this, the belief aspect, the.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Evangelical belief aspect I hold, the evangelical beliefs is not
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: as strongly correlated with what I would consider to be
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: a right answer on this one. I mean, I think
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: that should be stated right. I would have said strongly
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: disagree to this question. I think there's ample reason, And
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I'm writing an article for Christianity dot com, so if
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: you guys want to check that out, you can find
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: it there. But basically, what I would say is God
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: doesn't accept false worship. If we think about worship as
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: the reverential homage toward God, recognizing the worth of who
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: God is. There has to be an understanding, a matched
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: identity between what the worshipper thinks they're worshiping and who
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: the you know, who is actually being worshiped. And we
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: see this throughout scripture. I think, so I'll be making
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: that argument in a little bit more of a robust case.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: But my point is for this, as we go down
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: from belief to affiliation to attendance, you see this agreement
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: shifting pretty drastically. I mean you're talking twenty some more
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: than twenty five percent decline decrease in that percentage from
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: just belief all the way down to church attendance. So
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: it's a fascinating trend to look at. I wouldn't have
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: expected that drastic a drop.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Honestly, what do you make of thinking specifically about this question?
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism,
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: and Islam. In terms of strongly disagree, I suppose, somewhat predictably,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: several times a week of church attendance, that number of skyrockets, right,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: most people disagree. What surprises me within it is the
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: next category down is you go once a week to church,
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: and that group is more likely to agree with the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: statement than those who only go once or twice a month.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's funny to me.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: I don't know what to make of that.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure either. I don't know what to make
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: of it either, But yeah, I noticed that trend too.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I would just say.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: If we infer from which it's difficult to do, like,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: what are we doing for with church attendants? Right? Like?
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: What are we How are we supposed to understand that?
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Are we supposed to understand it as a commitment to
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: a bigger commitment to I think certainly I didn't even
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: know you could attend church several times a week at
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: this point, right, Like I just didn't realize that most
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: of the churches I've ever attended have that once a
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: week service.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of it, and.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: And so the Wednesday thing is kind of flittering away.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so it's interesting to think about even just
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: when you're answering this question, are you talking about your
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: worship service in a small group, or are you talking about,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: you know, your worship service and another church function like
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I used to have when I was a kid. We'd
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: go on Wednesday nights, right, Or you'd have maybe a
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Saturday night service or something like that, Like, there were
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: multiple opportunities for you to be at church, right, not
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: in a small group, but at church. And so I'm
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: wondering if some of this has to do with just
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: church structure or not necessarily a comment on the dedication
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: of an individual to be there several times a week,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: but the availability of multiple service times per week at
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: a local congregation doing a better job of educating, like
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: that could be it. Because once a week at church,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: you know, you're listening to a sermon usually, and so
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: if the sermon doesn't address the exclusivity of Christian worship
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: and the uniqueness of it and how God responds to
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: worship of other groups, maybe you just don't get that
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: question right. You know, you're inferring a lot of different things.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: So I don't know that we have enough. I mean,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: I could speculate on certain things, but yeah, my gut
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: is to say, if if several times a week of
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: church attendance doesn't mean small groups, or even if it
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: does mean small groups and some other things, that maybe
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: there is a gesturing toward better training, right, a different
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: understanding of this than what what a Sunday worship service
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: would really do for you, which wouldn't necessarily help you
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: answer this question.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe that's the takeaway that there's a certain
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: level of investment within the larger operation of church training,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: church teaching that if you're involved in multiple facets of
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: church life, that you're not getting on a Sunday morning
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: just by nature of what a Sunday morning is, right,
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: I wonder so that to me, that raises the question
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: of causation versus correlation. Sure, so does the multiple Is
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: it the attending of multiple days or multiple events during
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: the course of a week that's giving you the training
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: to answer the question in this particular way, or is
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: it you're already inclined towards that. So it becomes sort
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: of an in group.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Here.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I say. I don't mean this in a negative way,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: but group think sort of mental If you're the ones
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: who think this way, and that's why you're the ones there,
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: and the self selection of the others are not the
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: ones who think this way, that's why they're not there.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think there's something to that. You
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: can view it as maybe it's better training. You could
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: also view it as the more time I spend around
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: people with similar thoughts as I do, the less likely
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: I am to think that people with different thoughts than
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: we have different beliefs than we have different religious practitioners
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: belong with us. And so that's not necessarily a bad thing.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: That development of a strong in group identity, particularly if
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: it's forged in discipleship, that in Christ's identity, is actually
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: pretty crucial, right. You can identify who's in and who's out.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: You see this happening like First John, for instance. Right
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: the first chapter of First John, he provides some markers
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the true Christian community, right, and says, if they had
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: been of us, they would not have gone out from us. Right,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: So if they really have been part of our community,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: they'd still be here, they wouldn't have left. We see
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: this in probably First Corinthians, where Paul is trying to
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: circumstribe and say, hey, don't have all these divisions, You're
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: one in Christ. And so it's just there's a crucial
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: aspect to this in group identity that I don't want
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: to I don't want it to be polarized and be like, oh,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: they're just an insular community that doesn't reach out or
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: something weird like that. I think there's a really healthy
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: way that we understand ourselves as being different from other
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: religions and that there are clear boundaries between us and
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: other religions. So I think that could be cultivated in
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: a more frequent interaction within the Christian community and with
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: a group of Christian folks that may be the impetus
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: behind this. Whereas people who are like kind of once
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: a week, if you think about how little time that
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: actually is versus what you may be doing for the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: rest of the week. Right, who you may be interacting
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: with the rest of the week, So you're co workers,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: you're you know, you know, maybe members of your family,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: maybe some of your friends, your bowling league, whatever it is. Right,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: You're now not interacting solely with Christians. You now have
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: friends who may be of different faiths, and that may
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: very well condition the way that you're answering this question.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: And so time is a factor. I think that we
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: shouldn't minimize in this because the more time we're spending
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: within the church, I think obviously we're going to pick
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: up a i don't know, for lack of a better term,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: of cultural awareness of what the church actually is and
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: be more inclined to feel a part of it as
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: opposed to it being something that I attend weekly.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: It does. It raises more questions if you're willing to
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: try it on us. So it's fresh. I'm fresh, it's
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: fresh in my mind. This John seventeen dynamic just from
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: class be in the world but not of the world. Yeah,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: which is really interesting. It's not entirely clear what that
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: dynamic looks like. If anything, one could argue it's deliberately
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: a dynamic full of tension, no easy answers. And I
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: hear what you're saying. I wonder if this is also
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: one of those no easy answers. Right, where's the line
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: between what I think you're helpfully describing and on the
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: other side, you're not in the world. You don't know
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: what's going on, and so there's no ability you know that,
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: there's a there's a hermeneutical entailment to not getting the
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: full dynamics of it or right, So what we don't
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: want is an echo chamber, and I think that's dangerous
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: for any community and the group in any place. But
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: there is on the other side, I think something right
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: as you're describing to this iron sharpening, iron sort of
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: way of thinking, and maybe the line is intentionally blurry
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: and that's where our where our discernment has to come in.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: What are your thoughts on that?
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree number one. Yeah, I agree with the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent. I don't want that to come off
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: as like, here's the only narrative that would work. I
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: think there are.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: A variety of factors here that we're not able to
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: get any real clarity on from the survey. We're just
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: trying to give some broad picture of what this could
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: be and what factors are involved. I think you're right,
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: there is that healthy a group aspect, but then there's
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: also this dynamic where we're supposed to be going out
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: and I think the challenge for Christians generally. We see
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: this almost in the Book of Ezra. I've always found
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: it fascinating when Ezra is bringing the exiles back from Babylon.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: One of the things he tries to institute is the
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: elimination of for is the returning exiles with people of
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: the land, like, don't intermarry with the people of them land.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: And part of what I.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Think he's trying to do there is he's trying to
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: preserve the purity of the Israelite returnees, right, so that
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: they can reconstitute and be a part of the restoration
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: of the nation of Israel as a whole. So if
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: we view the exiles as the Judeans largely who are
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: coming back from Babylon, they still need to reach up
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: into some of the Northern Kingdom or even out into
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the Assyrian Empire and know that these other Israelites, the
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Northern Kingdom, Israelites have a place to come back to.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: So he's trying to do is sort of circumscribe this purity.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Ultimately it does. None of it works, right, It's all
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: sort of a disappointing failure. But I think that we
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: can get into that sort of mindset of this has
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: to be as pure as possible before we go out,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: And I think what you're pointing to is it's never
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: going to be as pure as possible. There's always going
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: to be this sort of tension of push and pull
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: of we're going to pick things up.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: From the world that need to be.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Re formed when we come back into the church, and
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: we're ultimately going to probably spend too much time reforming
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: in the church instead of going out into the world. Right,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: And so I think, yeah, that that dynamic. To me,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: We're never going to balance it perfectly. It's always going
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: to be really sloppy, messy line. And this is what
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: repentance is for, This is what forgiveness is for, This
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: is what the encouragement of the community is for. Where
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: I think the challenge of this question and a couple
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: of the other questions, honestly, because I think we probably
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: shouldn't view this one in isolation to like, let's say,
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: statement six, God loves all people the same way. This one,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: no matter what you filter it with, let's say evangelicals,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: evangelical belief, evangelical affiliation, church attendance several times.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: A week, you still have eighty four percent.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Agreement, eighty one percent strongly three percent someonet agree to
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: God loves all people the same way. It's difficult not
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: to correlate those two. You know, God accepts the worship
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: of all these other religions and God loves all people
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: the same way. Now, I would admit that's a fairly
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: opaque statement, But I guess my point is there may
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: also be these other intersecting beliefs that are influencing some
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: of these other responses, and so we can't we can't
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: lose that one either. So Yeah, overall, I'd say the
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: survey doesn't give me a lot of It gives me
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: some hope to say, Hey, being in community and participating
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: in church can help some of these things. But then
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: you come to a question like this, you know you're
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: filtering that the exact same way as we just did
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: for the previous question.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: You're not getting much better result, right.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: If anything, you're getting counterintuitive results for this one. It
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: is because the moment I suppose this says more about
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: my expectations, I would expect this answer to be higher,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: a higher agreement from non evangelicals, but it's actually lower
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: from non evangelical.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: It's actually lower for non evangelicals. Yeah, I mean that's yeah.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Some of that is you hinted at definitions. What are
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: people thinking? What are they meaning?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: Then biblical understanding, it's a complicated understanding. On the one side,
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: we have God is love, greater love has no one
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: list mainly laid on his life for his friends, which
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: is clearly an allusion to the ultimate love of Jesus.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: That's right. And then we have.
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: What on the surface anyway, are hard to square with
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: the Jacob I have loved he saw I've hated, right, right,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: So it's a complicated question and you're not getting that
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: in these questions understandably, also educational questions.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Right right.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: You could even like that you have to educate, and
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: that's not how these things work.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could even get into the conversation about what
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: is love? Right, you know, are we talking about God's
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: covenant loyalty? Because then you have a unique case where
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: God is especially loving Israel a unique way because they're
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: in covenant with him, and so if we view love
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: is equally loyalty, then there is a unique and special love.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: The election of Israel, I think plays into that. The
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: choice of Israel plays into that. You know, all these
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: different things kind of play into that. Whereas we're just
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: talking about a general sort of yeah, God loves his creation. Okay,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: maybe there's a generic way in which God loves everybody
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: in sort of the same way, but there's obviously specific
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: examples we could look at, Like you said, Jacob, you know, Jacob,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: I loved you, saw I hated. That's not a the
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: traditional love hate that we often think of, but it
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: is balled up with these other concepts that are kind
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: of difficult to deal with.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, overall the survey, I think, I will say.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: I looking through all the survey answers, looking through all
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: the demographics I have, I'm not there aren't a ton
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: of alarm bells for me in the survey, other than
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: some of them that I just find quite puzzling. This
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: one where we see, you know, God loves everyone the
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: same way. There's a question statement seven on Jesus was
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: a great teacher, but he was not God. You're getting
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: a pretty I mean it's not it's a relatively low percentage,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: but twenty eight percent of evangelicals agreeing with that statement,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: regardless of age group.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Like, that's all of them.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: And so the eighteen to thirty fours are a little
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: higher on it than any other age group, and so
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: they skew that data a bit.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: But that's a pretty fundamental belief.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: And you've got twenty eight percent of Christians of evangelicals
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: and you know, agreeing that Jesus is not God. So
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: there are these counterintuitive results, I think in a lot
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: of these different places.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and again I think not to be the dead horse,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: you have to take some of that with a grain
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: of salt. What are people understanding when the question is
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: being asked. I think evangelicals fairly consistently point to the
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: importance of the Bible, and so we're not shocked when
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: we see one of the respondence, regardless of age group,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: the Bibles the final authority, or however exactly it was worded.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: But then we throw in the dynamic that we've discussed
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: here in terms of what are we understanding the Bible
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: to be saying materially. Now that gets more interesting, especially
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: when you factor in more data. Right, we can be
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: just just to to draw out the sort of thing
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: we're talking about, the extremes of if you live in
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: a pre Galileo pre Copernican society, you're reading language like
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: the setting of the sun and the rising of the
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: sun in different sorts of ways.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: We still say the rise of the sun, right, but.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: A pre Galileo pre Copernicus person's thinking about it. So
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: that changes the way you read the Bible. But then
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: there's a there's the further dynamic of from where are
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: you reading it? You know, not to get into murky
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: waters here, but.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: If you.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: If you live in the United States with all the
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: social social sorts of things and political unrest, that are
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: going on, right, and you read it from a place
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: of of historic that's the best way to put it. Oh,
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: it's historic sense of what the Church ought to see
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: in the making of the American government. You're reading the
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: Bible in a certain kind of way if you live
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: in the same setting and you come from a historic
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: setting into which things like slavery and Jim Crow were significant,
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: you're reading it. And yet another way, if you're reading
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: it as the children of immigrants, in which you're the
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: first person who is a Christian in your family, you're
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: reading it yet in other set of ways, and maybe
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: to a point that you made earlier, but just starting
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: to highlight it. The agreement is there in terms of
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: the significance of the Bible, Yes, but the things that
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: you're noticing maybe aren't the same. Yeah, yeah, and that
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: that's going to change the way that you shade things. Right.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: We have these in terms of historic doctrinal disputes. Not
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: my favorite doctrinal dispute, but one that has a lot
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: of airtime. So it's a good example, I think, is
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Calvinism versus our Minianism. Sure, there are different different textual
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: starting points, you know, and how one then reads certain
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: passages is going to be shaded by those different textual
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: starting points, and who gets to decide which one started
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: at the right place?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Correct?
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: That that's just a genuinely and generally historically Protestant problem,
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: right of authority, yes, but authority for what We're not sure. Yeah,
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: that's why we have so many denominations. Right, So all
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: these things go into those sorts of questions. So similarly,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: I don't have the same kind of alarm bells. I
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: did some perusing online just to see what some of
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: the talking heads were saying about this report, and there's
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of alarm bell sort of things going off
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: in a way that I didn't shared the same kinds
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: of concerns. To me, It was more a marker of
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: the landscape is shifted in the same sort of way
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: as the landscape of playing basketball shifted. So what are
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: we going to do to adjust accordingly? Right, it's not
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: good enough to just simply say, well, our pastoral and
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: theological education in the nineteen sixties was X, therefore it
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: should be that today, Well, no things have changed. Yeah,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: obviously Jesus is who Jesus was. We're not saying that's changed.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: But the sorts of ways in which you address issues,
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: the sorts of issues themselves they need to be addressed,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: are right.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you might not need to call together a Creedle
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: council to correct some sort of abarrant heresy, you know.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: I mean those worked really well early on in church history,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: or worked fairly well and early on in church history,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: but they may not work now, you know. And I
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: think that that is really crucial to understand. I'm not
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: saying that I'm exactly happy with all the responses on
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: the report, and some of them are a little more
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: troubling than others. It's just there's no reason to get
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: so agitated about it that you jump back in with
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: the response that says, let's hammer these.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Doctrines home one more time, right, we need.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: To start teaching systematic theology in churches, you know, like
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: maybe we need to do that, but there may also
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: be all these other things that need to be massaged
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: into place, and so it's it's like we can't just
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: you know, you we're looking at a jigsaw puzzle. There's
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: all of these different pieces that are laying out on
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: the table in front of us, and if we only
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: focus on putting together one little corner. None of these
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: other pieces are going to get placed. And so we've
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: got to at least broaden our vision enough to sit
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: back and say, look, where would all these other pieces fit,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: and how would they contribute to a.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Reorientation of some of these beliefs. How would that help
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: us if we understood better.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: I go back to the church in politic question, largely
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: because you know, when I was a dean at Moody,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I had this question come up. There was a disagreement.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Some of the students were celebrating a law that had
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: just been passed and it happened to be about, I
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: think about homosexual marriage, and some students were celebrating that.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: And so then you get certain people are saying, oh,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: the students are going liberal. But when I talked to
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: the students, they weren't really. They weren't really going liberal.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: They still believe that, you know what we would have
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: believed about the Bible and homosexuality.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: But they were off or I would say they were confused.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: They hadn't thought about it.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: They weren't integrating in how does government fit with faith?
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: What's a very different thing than saying they've gone liberal.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Right, They're disintegrated maybe, and so there's some education that
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: needs to go into this. But we didn't need to
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: plow into, hey, let's go through all the Bibles that
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: condemn or let's go through the Bible passages that condemn
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: homosexuality or something. What was necessary was some additional exploration
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: into what does a political theology look like, how does
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: the church and the state actually fit, What does it
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: look like to be a Christian in a democracy? How
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: can we celebrate the rights that other people are getting?
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: How is this good for? Like all these different questions
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: that you could ask and reframe in terms of Christianity
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: as opposed to just reacting to it and saying no,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: we have to now preach on this specific doctrinal issue.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: We have to make them read these things.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Like if once we understand why people are believing what
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: they're believing, why they're thinking this way, then we can
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: come up with some solutions to help move them in
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: a different direction. But I think if we just look
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: at this report and go, okay, you know, one of
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: the questions that I found interesting was like, let's say
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: I'm going to find it here in a minute. The
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Holy Spirit is a force, but is not a personal being. Okay, Uh,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: forty three percent of evangelicals agree with that. Well, obviously
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: that's not a trinitarian belief. But how much of it
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: is it conditioned on the way that we tend to
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: ignore the Holy Spirit in our churches?
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Right, Like I mean, it isn't It isn't necessarily solved
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: by going Okay, let's explain the Trinity. It could very much,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: very well involve a number of different practices that we
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: need to draw in. So I think that's sort of
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: the My impression of the report is it just gives
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: us a lot to think about and probably a lot
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: more to explore.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, fully agree, it's the direction of travel, so to speak. Right, Yeah, everyone,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: If a large number of people think the Holy Spirit
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: is an impersonal force, that's probably says more about the
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: way we talk about the Holy Spirit of God, right.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: But equally significant to me is when you put that
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: one next to the statement about trinity. Yeah, got his
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: father's son in Holy Spirit, Hi by in.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: The board, right, And that's those are the difficult things
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: like these.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Some of these feel like.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: They may not be And I know this is strange
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: to say, because they're asking questions about belief but I
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: don't know that there are actually questions about belief I
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: think what you're getting is sort of maybe some top
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: level agreement on main doctrines, but then once you get.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Into the.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Nuances of it, people are like, I don't know, Like
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: you know, there's just not a depth there. And these
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: are not things that we sit down and say, well,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: let's have a class on the Holy Trinity. Like some
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: of these things are things that we just need to embody,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: we need to practice in differently. So there's a roundness
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: to this that I think we need to keep in mind, right,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: that we've got to figure out how it is that
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: we go about reinforcing certain beliefs. If we're looking at
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: this report and I'd say, okay, forty three percent agreement,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: then the Holy Spirit is a force but not a
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: personal being that one stands out. So if I'm going
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: to solve that though, it's not just a question of going, well,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: that's not true. There have to be layers to analysis
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: to this to figure out I think what you would
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: do in order to sort of rehab let's say, the
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: views of the Holy Spirit within the church. Right, So
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: interesting stuff, man, I don't know. This report is always
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: fascinating to me. I enjoy kind of talking through it
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: and fiddling around with the data. But ultimately, I think
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: when I walk away from my takeaway at this time
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: around was I was really encouraged to see that church
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: affiliation and a tendons did have a positive effect in
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: certain instances. At the very least, I think that's that's hopeful.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: That's hopeful. Right in an age where we maybe think
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: that church is sort of optional, it does now feel like, no,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: the church can actually have a really good influence on
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: some of these things, and maybe it can have more
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: influence in other ways. I know the data isn't fully consistent,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: but I just really I felt like that that trajectory
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: I thought was really helpful.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Do we dull that a little bit though, when we
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: see that the spirit does just diforce in that sense?
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: I sadly, yes, that's what I mean.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: The data is inconsistent, but I it's like, if it
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: works for one, maybe it can work for the others.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: You know, it at least pushes us to look at
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: what does our community of practice look like, and maybe
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: we maybe it has an influence that we're just not
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: realizing yet. My hope again, you know, there's a lot
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: of inference going on here because the data is what
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: the data is. It just doesn't lead us anywhere necessarily.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: It just shines a spotlight on certain of these things.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: For sure. One thing I'd like to see from this,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: so when you go into this data Explorer model, it
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: gives you the previous reports as well. Yes, And what
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: I would have loved to have been able to do
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: is say, let's compare this. So they did this every
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: two years, it looks like except for this time it
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: was three years ago.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: I would love to go to the previous report or
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: the eleven years ago report and see what the researchers,
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: the surveyors found for the same questions, but they're not
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: the same questions, right, That would actually help making more
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: sense of some of this data. Has there been movement
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: or could we have gone back eleven years ago? So
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: I tried to find some that were roughly the similar,
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: roughly similar, but there were different adountfas that I don't
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: know that I can say very much from that.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So if you're listening out there and you're one
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: of the surveyors of this, maybe give us the same questions.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Thanks time, give me the same questions, Oliver. I will
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: say I appreciate it on this one. They had one
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: that I dealt with a couple of years ago when
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: this came out. It was I believe the statement was
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: God can learn and change, and this time they changed
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: that to just one of those you know, God is unchanged,
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: And I think it's the way they phrased it, which
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I think is a more appropriate way to phrase it. Yes,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: because when you have the and in there, God can
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: learn and change. I understood what they were doing right,
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: I could get it, but it does add an element.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Confusion there and so many.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they did have some good clarifications in
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: this one, but it does mean you can't compare the results, so.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Not as well as you might want to.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: God accepts the worship of all the different religions was
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: the same as the in this one as it was
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: the last one, and the results haven't changed that much
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: from what I remember. So that was that was interesting.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: And modern science disproves the Bible to another one that
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: does carry over. Yeah, and again it's actually not. Actually,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: what I'm surprised to see is that the number of
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: strongly disagrees up on this one. Yes, maybe I'm less
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: surprised than I should Maybe I'm more surprised than I
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: should be because we do have a little bit more
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: of a polarized The data gives me what I want
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: to see, if not, I disagree. Yeah, sort of a dynamic.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: But well, I know we talked a lot about the
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: meta report kind of stuff today. I'd like to have
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: you back on to discuss some of the specific questions
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: like and and really dive a little deeper into some
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: But will we'll that another time.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: We've been going for about an hour, and I think
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: that that's probably overkilled. But it's an interesting survey and
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: I just encourage listeners to go check it out, play
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: around with it. My encouragement would be not to be
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: alarmed by some of the results, but to be thinking
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: through it in the way that Ashish and I have,
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: just trying to figure out, Okay, how does all this
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: fit together? What does this really look like? And how
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: might our church, my local congregation me as an individual Christian?
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Number one, how do I think about these issues? And
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: number two? What might what might we need to do
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: to sort of move people toward a more orthodox belief
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: So be my two cents, but thanks all she's for
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: participating in this man.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: It was good to have you. Thanks for having me
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: absolutely all.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Right, everybody, we're going to call it a day there
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: and we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Take care, everybody,