In the Ashes of Evangelical Empires

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello. Good morning, everybody. Beautiful day today, isn't it? Yeah. There's sunshine. Let's take it in and enjoy it. I love looking out the windows. The branches. Rather like God's church, isn't it? You look at all the different branches, the way they go, and they. They all connect to the roots. So Pat Costigan here, part of the adult Ed. What an honor to be able to introd Heath again. He's going to wrap up for us, if that's possible. The complications of evangelicalism. Quite a tall order and probably be a good part of your professional life trying to make sense of God's purpose in the faith, in the body of Christ represented that way anyway, so let's bow our heads and come to our dear Lord. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you that we're a church that has such so many gifts, so many people with gifts who can help us make sense of the times we're in. We thank you for Heath and for his labors and for his love of you. And, Lord, we want to follow you as we listen to this information, as we construct questions in our minds about where to go, how to see things. May we remain humble towards you. And knowing that we know in part and we see in part, may we get a double portion of kindness as we meet our brothers and sisters in other denominations who share their faith or live their faith in ways we find hard to understand. And, Lord, may we be implementers of your justice. And one thing we know about justice, your justice is it is filled with mercy. So give us a merciful heart as we dispense justice and a humble heart and kindness and help now his family. Keep them safe, keep them strong in the days and weeks and months ahead. Help him now as he teaches us the things we need to know. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Amen. Good morning. Thank you, Pat, for that beautiful prayer, which actually we didn't. We didn't collaborate, but she picked up on a lot of the themes of what I want to talk about today. So I appreciate that this is my last installment of this LinkedIn series, but there will be another final session next week. I'll be at the American Academy of Religion Conference. But Lauren Davis, who has been here, I'm not sure if she's here right now. She'll be here and talking about conversation across difference. I hope you'll be here for that. We've been on a whirlwind tour from George Whitefield to Donald Trump in three weeks or less, and I'm going to try this is not a wrap up session. It's really teeing up some of my just historically informed reflections. I think this is where my expertise as a historian runs into the fact that we got to talk about the present, which is something that we can do about as well as anybody else. So I'm going to share some of my reflections and I hope we'll have some time for conversation together. Over the last several weeks, we discussed the boundless social energies of Evangelical 1.0, which in its emphasis on the faith of the heart, its insistence that God speaks directly to individuals, no mediator needed. Evangelical 1.0 nurtured surprising turns in the ways that Christians understood power and authority, helping at least in some small part to pave the way for the American Revolution. So in its most surprising and egalitarian moments, the fires of revival went on to catalyze some of our democracy's earliest egalitarian breakthroughs, with white women like Sarah Osborne and black women like Jerina Lee experiencing calls to teach and preach when the world told them that wasn't possible. We also discussed how that faith of the heart became intertwined with US nationalism in the nation's earliest days, and eventually too with white supremacy, and how the benevolent empire of the antebellum years was torn asunder by the fight over slavery. We discussed the unbelievably capacious tin of Evangelical 2.0, with its desire to bring together anyone and everyone who affirmed the lordship of Jesus Christ into a coalition that set out to underscore the unity of the church and and the urgent need to reform the world, to quote Christianize the social order in the parlance of this earlier Christian national vision. We discussed the perils of that tent's construction, how at its worst, that world prioritized the concerns of white evangelical men, but also the promise of its breath. The truth is, in the early 20th century, if anyone was going to be excluded from the Big Tent, it would have been black Christians. Their inclusion in that tent bore remarkable fruit. We saw as the leading agencies of Evangelical 2.0 beat the political parties to the punch when it came to condemning Jim Crow and working for a more racially just society. We also saw how that world began to come apart at the seams in the 1960s and 1970s, when more radical forces on the one hand and reactionary ones on the other, started to mount arguments that the Big Tent was fundamentally compromised and compromising. Finally, we discussed the sweeping ambitions of Evangelical 3.0, which embraced the religion of the heart but rejected the Big Tent ethos of earlier iterations of evangelical faith. Flush with nostalgia for a supposedly bygone glory day, the revivalists and organizers of that world embraced a, quote, old time religion brand even as they were themselves disruptive innovators powering cultural industries and parachurch ministries and non denominational congregations that circumvented traditional churchly and denominational authority. Like the Evangelical 2.0 folks before them, they were interested in power. They always had at least one eye trained on the White House and the Supreme Court. We talked about how the appeal of a faith that promises new life and a new start is not hard to understand. Just as characteristic of Evangelical 3.0 was an eagerness to forge an alliance with Republican Party leadership from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, folks who promised to deliver on some of their key concerns. For some of the leading institutionalists of this decentralized evangelical world, Trump was a bridge too far. But we talked about last week that their objections had little discernible impact, as white evangelicals in this 3.0 incarnation formed the leading edge of the Make America Great Again movement. It remains a bit unclear to me whether what we see now is Evangelical 4.0 or something more like Evangelical 3.1, as my friend Eric Barreto suggested to me after last week's session, I don't know if we know enough just yet. The leading figure of Evangelical 3.0 was Billy Graham. The best I can tell, the closest thing to a leading figurehead that evangelical faith in the US has today is Donald Trump. One can trace some similarities between them, perhaps, and yet those two men also cast different kinds of shadows. Remains to be seen what may come for MAGA and the evangelical worlds that have powered it on the other side of the current presidency. Meanwhile, alert observers will also take note of the growing significance in this moment of Pentecostal and neocarismatic currents, the rising influence of far right pastors like Doug Wilson and Dominionist movements like the New Apostolic Reformation, the militant reactionary takeover in recent years of the already very conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the tenor of the Christian books that actually sell millions of copies, and the extent of conspiratorial thinking and suspicion of expertise in them. Those, of course, as we've seen long a trend in some evangelical worlds, as well as the startling racial and ethnic diversity of those who self identify as evangelical in the US these days. All of these developments seem to me to augur significant change might be in the offing. I'm a historian, not too good with predictions. What we know for certain is that here, in the ashes of various evangelical empires and across the theological spectrum, Christian institutions have entered a period of numerical decline. We've talked about this before. In here we know about the rise of the nones N o n e s the kind of startling convergence in recent years of those who identify as Christian coming to meet with those who say, I don't have any religious affiliation. What we know, furthermore, here in the ashes of various evangelical empires, is that the United States, as it approaches its 250th birthday, is experiencing a crisis of confidence in the health and the possible future of our democracy. We're living through a period marked by hyper polarization. I've talked about this in past times in this room as well. Neighbors increasingly see their neighbors as enemies. Something like 40% of folks in this country in June of this year believe that it's likely or somewhat likely that there will be a civil war in this country in the next 10 years. Crisis of confidence, indeed. Truly, there are dangers in these times. In recent months we've seen immigrants demonized, profiled on the basis of their race or ethnicity, apprehended from the streets and from homes and from schools, and thrown into the backs of vehicles by masked men. We've seen campaigns and laws that target the dignity and civil rights of our queer neighbors, a growing chasm between rich and poor, and millions of young people struggling with despair and indignation at the economic realities that they're inheriting, a gig economy that offers no pensions or college benefits, and a brave new world of artificial intelligence approaching on the near horizon. And I could go on. So much of this has been baptized in Christian language, endorsed by powerful Christian leaders, not to mention cheered by their followers. Lord have mercy. It's also true that others see the dangers differently than I do. Two summers ago I found myself unexpectedly in conversation with a white evangelical couple in the Central Valley of California. They learned that I taught at Princeton Seminary and were suddenly bombarding me with questions. It was quickly clear that she in particular was an unreconstructed Christian nationalist and that we disagreed on many fronts. But I listened carefully, and as I did, it was clear that their own felt experience as evangelicals was one of being judged, ridiculed, marginalized, and even persecuted for what they understood to be living out their faith with integrity. Lots to say about that, and I pushed back firmly and respectfully in the conversation. But there is no question that that's how they felt. You've given me a lot to think about, she said at the end of our conversation. To bring it a bit closer to home. I was with my grandfather last month. He's in his mid-80s now and has been in poor health this past year. He's always been a conservative Christian, a bit far afield from the mainstream of Evangelical 3.0. He went to Ozarks Bible College for his seminary training, but there's always been a soft heartedness in him too. I'll never forget the time in the aughts when, amid an extended family debate about immigration, my grandfather shared that at the JCPenney warehouse where he was a manager, there was a federal immigration raid. They came and took many folks, he shared, and they were good people. It was a mic drop moment that put him at odds in that conversation with other members of our family, sort of a surprising way. But in recent years a deeper fear has crept into his perspective on our country. Christians are endangered here, he told me recently over breakfast. Again, much to say about this, and it's also his deeply felt belief. I worry that my grandfather, like so many millions, is being formed by media and in particular social media companies that have little interest in truth or justice or democracy, but are raking in billions from fomenting mistrust, outrage and enmity. They are capturing our imaginations and making it hard to see, let alone love, our neighbors who see and experience the world differently than we do. I often reflect that if someone were to come from outer space and study Christians in the US today, they might presume Jesus commandment was to love your like minded neighbor as yourself. Our media environment's damaging impact on imaginations is not limited to conservative evangelicals. I speak at a lot of mainline churches and was at one recently where after my talk, someone stood up and declared, But Dr. Carter, we are surrounded by fascists who are beyond redemption, beyond the kind of reconciliation that you're talking about. We are the righteous remnant. The comments stopped me in my tracks. Beyond redemption I've had any number of others tell me in recent years that adults don't change their minds and that Christian nationalists in particular are a lost cause. It's one small part of a larger loss of faith in the possibilities of persuasion A couple of years ago I interviewed Anand Garud Haradas about his terrific book the Persuaders. Kira Herodotus is on the left. The book is written really to the left, with the basic message being that persuasion is key to democracy. The left shouldn't give up on it. There are people that are beyond the point of being able to enter into dialogue, he argued. But too many of us assume that it's 80% of the country that can't enter into dialogue, when in reality it's flipped. About 20% on either side maybe aren't up for it. Eighty percent are, Curatoradas argues, drawing especially on the views and experiences of the women of color at the forefront of today's justice movements. But in this moment, when to so many it seems that democracy itself might be careening off the rails, it will not be enough to circle the wagons and talk only with our holy huddle. We need to expand our circles, growing the ranks of those who affirm justice and equality and pluralism and democracy. But I think there's something that goes even beyond democracy. The theme strikes to the heart of Christianity, the notion that God isn't done with me yet, and perhaps not you either. I think it can be reasonable to say that it's not my job or your job to walk with every person, no matter their ideology or politics or whatnot. Certainly that responsibility should not fall to the most vulnerable in our midst, though middle class white mainliners should think carefully about how much of this kind of responsibility they should be willing to bear. That's a matter for individual and collective discernment. But I don't know when any of us get to decide that someone is beyond redemption. I certainly don't feel I'm in the position to make that judgment. Isn't the truly Christian hope that God isn't done with any of us yet it can be possible to affirm many things at once. Our faith calls us to oppose tyranny and to protect the vulnerable, to vote and organize and protest and create spaces of refuge and more. Our faith also calls us to tell the truth about injustice, to dream big dreams about what the world would look like if God's will was done on earth as it is in heaven, and to take courageous action to make it so. Our faith also calls us to love all of our neighbors and even our enemies, and to hold out hope that truly God is not done with any of us. Yet it calls us not to snubbing and sneering, but to sharing the beautiful, joyful, generous, justice seeking gospel more widely than perhaps we might otherwise be inclined to do. Beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. Contrary to what I take to be a popular view that somehow we have to choose either a justice oriented faith or a big tent faith. We can do all of these things. Maybe not each one of us as individuals in every season of our lives, but together we can do them all. And for the sake of the church and the world, I think we must do them all because sometimes Christian nationalism looks like a high ranking government official with power to implement a nefarious policy agenda, and in such cases we need to organize and vote and the like. And sometimes Christian nationalism is a person who lives next door or down the street who has no idea that there might be a different way to be Christian. In such cases we might start by having a cup of coffee and over the course of the years sharing the good news about the breadth and depth of the God's love as we've experienced it. I was recently with my younger cousin who grew up in the soup of white Christian nationalism across the table. He shared with me that he no longer believes and that he doesn't because he couldn't accept a God who was so narrow in love as the one he had been formed to believe in. He was so nervous to tell me and so all the more stunned when I told him I didn't believe in that kind of God anymore either. I went on to share a bit about my own story of faith and it was clear he never knew it was possible to believe as I and perhaps many of you do. After a long conversation he said to me, you should write another book. I said, I've got to finish this one, man that night, that recent dinner with my cousin reminded me of a few years ago when I received a message from another younger cousin that said, all of my life this is a DM on Instagram. Out of the blue. I was taught through the actions of my family that Democrats were of the devil, even at the point where I believed conservative and Christian were synonymous. For this I want to apologize to you for being ignorant and for anything I may have said that was offensive or bad taste. I wish I could say I didn't know any better, but I had you as an example of a free thinker and a kind soul. I grew up hating in the name of God and called it justice. I say this not to toot my own horn, but rather to say that people can change and I know that because but for the grace of God go I. I grew up in the wilds of white evangelical Christian nationalism myself, not in fancy intellectual corners of that world, in fundamentalist churches in Kansas, in a megachurch in Southern California. I had so many assumptions about the connections between Christian Faith and U.S. history, about the implications of the Gospel for public life. It wasn't until I got to college that I ever met a Christian, for example, who for Christian reasons opposed the death penalty. I genuinely thank God today for Marty Lafalse and Gilbert Cruz, who I got to know my freshman year of college. Neither of them are especially pious, but they became my friends and they saw the world differently. And they had been raised in different Christian traditions than I had and they respected and they loved me when I was an 18 and a 19 year old white Christian nationalist. They didn't befriend me in order to change me, but I was changed through our friendship. I still remember what I believed at that moment in time. I still remember some of the things that I said. They didn't cut me out of their life. They hung in the conversation. And what they didn't know, and I didn't know either, is that along the way my faith was being transformed. It took many years for me to find my way from deep down in the worlds of Evangelical 3.0 to the worlds of Evangelical 2.0, to this world of this church. Many people played a part in that story and many of those folks loved me deeply when I was, I think now, deeply wrong. But for the grace of God go I. For my part, I don't think the answer is some kind of Christian missionary, evangelism, kind of new way of doing that. We shouldn't befriend folks to change them. The reality is that not everyone will change. Truth is that we may be changed in ways that we don't anticipate. I have another cousin who I've had many exchanges with through the years who has not changed. My most recent exchange was after Charlie Kirk was killed. That cousin sees the world so very differently from me. I think he's deeply wrong about important things. I also see how he loves his kids and contributes generously to his congregation and his wider community. I have on occasion gleaned real moral insights from our conversations with one another. Hopefully, one of the things you've taken away from this series, as I promised at the outset, is it's not only a series about those people out there, it's a series about us. This has been driven home to me in the conversations after my talks by so many of you who have approached with a personal connection to the material that we've been traveling through. I think in a moment like this, it is possible for a church like ours to lean into some of the better parts of our own evangelical heritage. The evangelical 2.0 world that I talked about a couple weeks ago was a world that churches like this one helped us sustain. It was a world with many problems, and we should be clear about those. I'm not interested in nostalgia, but at best it was also a Tradition that pursued righteousness without becoming self righteous, that promoted loving folks when they were wrong, holding out hope that they would be transformed and recognizing that we too still need to be transformed. Truly, that God isn't done with us yet. Evangelical 2.0 that world didn't imagine that one had to choose between the pursuit of justice and witness to the unity of Christ's seemingly hopelessly divided church. These in fact went hand in hand in a really complex, sometimes maybe even paradoxical way. There was a sense in that world that faith in Jesus Christ created traction for relationship with those on the opposite side of even the most important questions of the day. You'll recall that John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were in that big Ecumen medical tent with many of the leading Christian socialists of their day. That Ida B. Wells and Reverdy Ransom and Adam Clayton Powell, black progressives, were in that tent with many of the white segregations of their day. And that tent was not a quiet place. They were not afraid to talk about the toughest issues, to raise their voices when the moment called for it, and to take hard votes when their faith demanded it. Talked a couple weeks ago too about the World Council of Churches. I think that kind of hard nosed, huge hearted, big tent faith that empowers the WCC to navigate the thorniest issues of the world today with some 360 plus member communions, an unbelievable diversity of theological and otherwise kind of thought. I believe I mentioned a couple weeks ago that when Jerry Pillay, the president of the WCC was here last month, he talked about how successful they've been in recent years at building coalition between mainliners, Catholics, orthodox evangelicals and Pentecostals. Our faith can offer us traction even when we don't see eye to eye on all else. And when we lean into those cross cutting relationships, that thicker faith that calls us into those kinds of relationships, we don't have to be shy about our own convictions about what's good and true and just and right. We do have to, I think, forsake condescension and churlishness in those relationships. When we do that, we make it possible for the joyful, generous gospel that flourishes in churches like this one to get a wider hearing. And I think we can create new means of accountability too with other kinds of believers. Accountability for ourselves and for them. Along the way we can be changed. We can learn in surprising ways from those we don't believe we have anything to learn from because all things are possible with God. The billionaires love the sneering and the snubbing. It's pure profit for them, but it's corrosive to our faith, and it seems to me that it makes it less likely that America will ever be, to borrow a phrase from Langston Hughes. Those of you who read his poem this past week in small groups, our goal should not be to revive an evangelical empire past, let alone to build a new one today. Where to begin? We might start small, perhaps with finding ways to muster curiosity, generosity, or care for a member of our extended family or an old friend who posts glaringly awful social content on social media. Perhaps with reducing our own time on social media, or at least paying attention to the ways that our scrolling habits are affecting our attitudes toward our neighborhood neighbors. Perhaps by showing up to a civic meeting or a local protest, or by joining in our congregation's already ongoing efforts for caring for immigrants and refugees, or forbidding the moral arc, perhaps with playing on a team, or joining an organization with people who see the world differently than you do, and developing friendships with them that don't run through shared conviction but rather just recreation and fun. Perhaps by forging a partnership with another congregation or a community organization that doesn't form fully align with the values of our congregation, but where there's alignment on one important issue addressing food insecurity in the community, or increasing the supply of affordable housing, or attending with care to our groaning creation. Perhaps you begin this week with something as small as asking more open ended questions, ones which leave space in conversation for neighbors who see the world differently but are hesitant to share their perspective. Yesterday I was in Valparaiso, Indiana for the funeral of my friend Loi Reiner, who was 96 years old. She was 90. This was at her 90th birthday party in Valparaiso, Indiana, a small town about an hour outside of Chicago where I taught for seven years. Loi is a remarkable embodiment for me of kind of what we might do. She wasn't trying to solve all the world's problems in her life and in Valparaiso, but she deeply believed in a faith that called her to love her neighbor as herself. And that meant that she was in her 90s, showing up to city council meetings, and she was just a woman about town, involved in all kinds of stuff. She radiated a deep love that even those who in town really deeply disagreed with what she was working for. And there were many who did. Everybody loved Loe. They talked yesterday at this beautiful service, a beautiful tribute to a life well lived. Her husband and her really were on an adventure together and it was an Adventure of really living deeply in small, faithful ways into a faith that called them to love their neighbors as themselves, right where they lived. Her husband died a number of years ago, and on his tombstone it says, love thy neighbor. And she, her tombstone right next to his, had. And one thing led to another. And that's how they sit next to one another today. It's a beautiful thing. One thing led to another. That was the story of her life, and it was told so beautifully yesterday. We are living in dangerous times, ones which will require agility and imagination and convenience, conviction, big dreams, big hearts, extraordinary courage. I want to reiterate something I've said in the space a number of times by way of closing, which is that our challenges are distinctive in their shape, but not unprecedented in their scope. Doing that small, faithful thing right in front of you can make a tremendous difference. You never know what the God who is already making all things new, the God who brings new life out of cold ashes might do. It's been a delight to be with you all, and I hope we do have more time for questions today and I look forward to the conversation. Thank you. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Thank you so much. And we will be continuing to pray for you as you write your books. [00:29:00] Speaker B: Thanks, Pat. [00:29:02] Speaker A: Okay, so any questions? [00:29:11] Speaker C: Thank you, Dr. Carter. That was powerful this morning. A question. So the saying popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Is that a fact or is that something that people of faith that we say to ourselves so we can sleep better at night, but actually those that the moral arc bends towards injustice, and actually those who are not held back, who don't have a moral compass, who are not held back by ethics or morals, that actually those that. That wins the day time and time again, and that actually the moral art bends towards injustice. So just curious about your perspective as a church historian and as a Christian about that. [00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah, the church history isn't going to get us an answer to that question entirely. But I think. I mean, my initial gut response to that is. I mean, as a historian, I don't think if we think that that phrase means that history is moving slowly onward and upward, that's, I think, empirically falsifiable, like it does. It's not. It's just not the case that history is a story of progress towards some. You know, even in our own country's history, things go up and down, things get better and things get worse. And that's partly the stakes of our own lives. Right. Is it is really, in my view, possible for society to be better, and it is also possible for things to get worse. I think the Christian faith would teach us, though, that in the longest run, in the sense of eternity, in the sense of that God and love win, and in that sense, God's justice is going to win in the end. But I don't think that should give us some sense. In the liberal Protestant tradition, maybe there was at times like a naive belief that you don't really have to do too much because progress is inevitable, and that I think we should reject. But I think we should hope that it is in fact the case that God wins in the end. As a historian, do you see parallels between our time now in the 1840s and 1850s? Are there things that we can learn from that or avoid from that? That. Well, and you mean in terms of the head, the road to the Civil War, or something like that? I mean, I think the thing we can learn from that is that. Or one thing we can learn from that is that is that depth of animosity is not impossible in our own even national past. It's not impossible to fathom that level. I mean, we've experienced it. I mean, that's why when I talk about polarization, I say this is not unprecedented. We fought a civil war. I get worried about trying to find patterns or something like that in history where it's like we can see. I think some of the stuff I'm talking about today, about reaching beyond our circles. I mean, we live in a pluralistic democracy, probably the biggest tent, one of the biggest tents humanity has ever pitched, our society as a whole. I don't know that that doesn't necessarily come intuitively to us. When you see the levels of animosity and whatnot that we do see right now, that should give us pause, and I think it should give us a kind of spur to think about what is it going to require for us, knowing that we're not all going to agree on this side of the veil? Can we, nevertheless, if we don't at all agree, can we find ways to sustain a common, complex society like this one? I do worry, I guess, as I travel around the country that people on all sides of the lines of divide are kind of losing faith in the possibilities of pluralism. And that's concerning to me. But I wouldn't want to say like, that there's some road to civil war that we can find in the 1840s and 50s. But I do think the propensity, and maybe in our own human communities to not to struggle to Build a society and to build community with folks who are quite different from us is real and we should be alert to it. We shouldn't be naive about what is possible. [00:33:56] Speaker D: So first making. Yeah, hold it higher. [00:34:01] Speaker B: Put your hand up closer to the white tape. [00:34:04] Speaker D: This hand. Got it. Okay. So I've worked with Bendy the moral arc from day one. [00:34:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:10] Speaker D: And what works in that, first of all, it's like it's a constantly. We started from very different places, but we were ready to hear. And I think what has happened is once you've heard, you can't unhear, which is maybe what you're talking about with your family. We've now walked in the footsteps of each other and we can't walk back. [00:34:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:34:36] Speaker D: So it's a model that's worked, but it's not easy. [00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. [00:34:53] Speaker A: Thanks. [00:34:54] Speaker D: Heath, I was interested in your comment about your relationship with your college friends where you said you were changing and you didn't. You weren't aware of it or you didn't know about it. Can you say more about that or generalize it to a way that we should be maybe less discouraged when we are talking with people who are different from our hours or how one comes to notice in oneself? Oh, look, I changed, but I didn't even realize it. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks. This has been my experience, both personally. Part of what happened in those conversations with my friends was late night college dorm room debates where I was arguing strongly for one position. And these were smart folks who were arguing back. And I never was like, you're right, I'm wrong in the moment. Who can do that? No. Who does that? No. But over the course of time through them, I mean, this is really the reality. And I think this is not true for everybody. But I didn't know better. I didn't know another way to be Christian. And I really had grown up in a world that was so sealed off. I was taught in the world that I grew up in, Catholics weren't Christians. Certainly the people at this church, you know, wouldn't have been Christians, you know, and so I happened to be kind of placed in these relationships with folks. And I realized that there was. There was a wider Christian tradition, but I realized it over the course of a long time, you know, And I think I started from a place of like, that's just wrong and a lot of confident arguing against right. I've seen this a lot in my own family. I mean, that's a whole another story. I was raised in that world in a really sealed off kind of way by my parents, who themselves are not part of that world anymore. And it started slow and small. And I've seen it in teaching, I've seen it in my personal life, that part of what can happen when we enter into relationship with folks who haven't known a faith like yours, I think it just, I think in these highly polarized times, the data will back up that if anyone's going to change their mind about anything, it's because somebody loved them and showed them a different way of thinking about it. In that way, it's not going to be because they like the perfect tweet or whatever or some, you know, it's going to be through a long, often a long standing relationship. And I think this has been true on all kinds of issues over the course of history, actually, that this is how people change their minds. So that's why for me, I worry sometimes in the worlds that I travel in today that there's an understandable desire to say I won't relate to these folks because I think their views are harmful. And I think that some folks should definitely feel at liberty to say that. I don't feel personally like I should cut myself off from folks because I actually, but for the grace of God, go out. You know, I feel that in my soul. And I think, I think in some ways if I cut myself off, if others do, I worry that it makes it easier for the views that I think are the harmful ones to become more powerful in our midst. And that's what I have seen is that, you know, yeah, people can change and it doesn't. They're not going to declare it to you in that first conversation. I think even in teaching we know this, you spread seeds. And I sometimes get a note 12 years later from a student who was like, I never forget this thing that I don't remember that I said. But they're like, I'll never forget that moment. And I'm like, oh, okay. I'm sure that happened. So, yeah. Thank you, Heath. Appreciate it. You're clearly fond of 2.0, and I think you've made a strong case for some of its characteristics and strengths that we should be considering. Yeah, I'm wondering about 1.0. Like, are there pieces of 1.0 that you think should also garner some particular attention and might be ripe for our reflection? I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of parallels in some ways between the 1.0 and the 2.0. The, the thing that's true about 2.0, is at that point you have independent black churches which become partners in the work in the 1.0 world. Some of the continuities between 1.0 and 2.0 that we talked about, the faith of the heart, the kind of ways that God can connect with individuals, that's there in both. And the sense of broader circles, both 1.0 and 2.0 are into the broader circles thing. And I think there's a lot to like there. I mean, I've tried to say as much as I think I've been critical of 3.0, rightfully in my view, I. I even think that that promise of new life that people at Billy Graham. I tried to say this last week that I do think there's something that's really good in that hope for people like people who are experiencing. There's a lot of despair and loneliness in our society. And if a church like ours can't in some way offer that what 3.0 was kind of in some sense saying on its face that it was about, which is new life in Christ and a new beginning is possible for us with God, we've got to offer that too. So, I mean, I think there's a way in which there's problems in each of these worlds. There's some continuities across them, and I think we can learn from all of them and also learn what not to do from some of them too. Yeah. Yeah. Carol's being patient up here too. Yeah. [00:40:54] Speaker E: Thanks, Heath. This has been great. Really thought provoking and interesting. And I'm wondering. So I recently read Ted Smith's book the End of Theological Education, and he has kind of a narrative of like, how religion worked in America with the death of the standing order and the growth of like, the. What does he call it? The like, associations, the, you know, voluntary associations. And, you know, basically the idea that the United States was primarily like a culture of voluntary associations, not just churches, but Lions Clubs and et cetera. And what he said is that like, that's dead. Like this world is entirely dead. And, you know, the end of his book basically is like we're in a new age of like, authenticity and individuals are constructing their selves and ideas. And, you know, the idea of like people joining an association to find out who they are, that's an old fashioned idea. Now people need to like, explore new experiences that are individualized so they can find out who they are in any event. So, I mean, he's in part saying, like, we should change the church and so on. That has always Ever since that's left me feeling unsettled. I don't like this. And it strikes me that I'm very much like an evangelical 2.0 kind of guy. I think we should join organizations. We should. But what is your response? Thinking about. And I know this veers into journalism, but what is your response to that? Like, that question, like, is it even possible to imagine a world filled with lorries anymore when we have a new sociological period we're entering? [00:42:35] Speaker B: I mean, my brief thought on that is that I don't think we're going back to the world of like the 50s and the associational membership kind of culture of that world. But I'm also, I guess, reluctant to go fully full throttle into. I think actually that person prescription or the kind of authenticity thing is very compatible with the kind of radical, entrepreneurial, individualistic energies of the 3.0 world that I talked about last week. And I worry about that. I think there is value in congregations and institutions that have helped to sort of structure life in our society. Obviously, those are under great strain, and it's not clear what's going on with young people and their interest or lack thereof in them. But I think the jury is still out on that. And I'm not convinced that institutions are going away entirely. I think we need them. And I think it'll be interesting to see as younger generations come more fully into the heart of things that. Yeah, I think we should be careful about making too strong predictions there. I think we may find that, you know, we know from students at the seminary that people. There's a. There's a world of folks that are like, I want the liturgy, I want the, you know, like, that kind of thing. So, anyway. Yeah, Carol, I think was. [00:44:05] Speaker A: I guess this should be the last question or. Yeah. [00:44:12] Speaker B: Well, I think my question and concern sort of dovetails with that. And that is that there are fewer and fewer opportunities for people of different minds to come together. That used to be much more common. Yeah. And families now just splinter. Yeah. Where do we go with that? Yeah, I think. Well, I think that's a great question. I think. I think it is hard and it requires a kind of intentionality that. I mean, we know this is a. The big sort, the ways in which we are actually often moving to places where more and more people agree with us. And, I mean, that's all real. But I think even in a town like Princeton, there are different kinds of churches here. There are different kinds of folks right here. We don't have to look to other places. I don't think to find. I think it does require intentionality maybe in a way because it used to be in the evangelical 2.0 world that a church like this one, and I think actually maybe even internally to our own church, this is also true. I mean, I've experienced it in some of the conversations I've had with you after that. There's a mix of people in here and that's I think a positive, but I think intentionality about how as individuals and as a community community, we engage, being mindful. I mean, I think it can be something as small as, like I said, asking more open ended questions when we meet somebody, not indulging in the kind of. I mean the worlds of our online lives are places where we're constantly invited to be sneering and snubbing and I think resisting that. And then I think in our in person lives finding ways, whether it's asking someone to coffee or like I said, partnering on food insecurity with a congregation that maybe has some different beliefs than we do. But that is also concern. I know this is actually true in Princeton. There are congregations that don't share all of our faith, but they are really worried about food insecurity. That's a place to begin. So I think there are possibilities for those who want to pursue them. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all. It's been a delight. Been a delight. [00:46:50] Speaker C: Sa.