American Evangelical
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An Undeceptions Podcast. And today in America, we have millions going to church, but no deep commitment to Christ, no deep commitment to God, no all out for Jesus Christ on the part of millions of church members. We play at religion. We serve God with our lips, but our hearts are far from him.

That's just a snippet from a sermon by William Franklin Graham Jr., better known as Billy Graham, delivered in Chicago's Soldier Field in 1962 to tens of thousands of listeners.

Billy Graham is arguably the most influential Christian of the last century. He spoke to around 210 million people in live appearances in more than 185 countries and territories. His total audience, including television broadcasts, runs into the billions.

Wheaton College, where I teach, has the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center and Museum, where people can learn about the history of Christian evangelism in the United States, and in particular, about Billy Graham's extraordinary career. Billy Graham was an American evangelical. That's a term with mixed connotations today.

There is a widely accepted definition or description of the term evangelical. It comes from decades ago and it was proposed in a British setting. We'll say more about it later, but it's known as the Bebbington Quadrilateral and it lists four key features of the evangelical.

One, a commitment to the content of the Bible. Two, a focus on the death of Jesus on the cross for our salvation. Three, an emphasis on the need for personal conversion. And fourth, what Bevington called activism, furthering the cause of Christ through preaching, educating and social reform. Whether Billy Graham style evangelism or William Wilberforce abolitionism.

Now, a distinctive of American evangelicalism, which is the focus of this episode, has often been what you might call political messaging.

As early as 1962, even Billy Graham sailed pretty close to the political at that evangelistic rally to tens of thousands at Soldier Field, Chicago. America will fall, he said, just as ancient Rome fell, if we don't do something about increasing taxation and deficit spending under the newly elected Democrat president, John F. Kennedy. Parallel!

And we are guilty, as Rome was guilty. Secondly, Mr. Gibbons said it was the high rate of taxes, spending public money for free bread and circuses for the populace. The average American has no conception of the disaster that lies ahead with our continued deficit spending. Thirdly, there's the mad craze for pleasure, said Mr. Gibbons.

Four times as much spent for pleasure in America as for religious and welfare benevolence. Our annual tobacco bill exceeds the amount of money spent on education. And Rome...

By 1968, Billy Graham even publicly endorsed Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon of Watergate fame. He even gave permission to Nixon's presidential campaign to use his endorsement in TV ads. Nixon, of course, won. Now, what's fascinating about Billy Graham as an emblem of American evangelicalism is that later in life, he said he regretted being party political.

In an interview in 2011, seven years before he died, he said if he'd had his time again, quote, I would have steered clear of politics. Looking back, I know I sometimes crossed the line and I wouldn't do that now. Check the show notes for more details. It seems that Billy Graham realised while party politics is important at one level for many people,

It wasn't a wise focus for someone who seeks to persuade everyone, regardless of their politics, of a kingdom that transcends the governments of this world. The same might be said of the evangelical movement as well. If evangelicals as a movement are perceived to be cheerleaders for one party, what hope have they got to persuade the other half of the country about the truly important things concerning Christ and his kingdom?

Now my perception is that Billy Graham's regret about his partisan involvement has given a lot of American evangelicals pause. I've been struck, for example, how Wheaton College, where I teach one of the best known evangelical institutions in America, seems to studiously avoid party politics. Now I'm sure my colleagues have their views. I think they're mostly conservative. But you couldn't work that out from the public discourse that goes on here.

To be honest, it feels like home. In the Australian setting, it's usually regarded as crass for Christian leaders to be publicly party political. But there are plenty of evangelicals in America who see things very differently. There are many Christian leaders and pastors here in the US who feel nothing of Billy Graham's regret

They see politics, and I don't just mean social advocacy, but party politics, as a major theatre of the battle for Christ's kingdom. The church must engage in politics as an act of loyalty to Christ and an act of love for the world. And because this part of evangelicalism gets so much airtime around the world,

The word evangelical itself has, for much of the media, come to have a definite political connotation. But what was it about Donald Trump, right? When you think back to the evangelical church, what they care about, their values, right? There is no alignment with Donald Trump, the man, except, of course, he said, let's get rid of abortion. Was that it?

I think it was a few things. I think abortion is in many ways the entry point. I think it's almost fair to characterize it as a gateway drug for many evangelicals. What I mean by that is that... That's Tim Alberta, a best-selling author and journalist and the son of an American evangelical pastor.

He's reflecting on the relationship between the leaders of his faith and President Donald Trump. He's being interviewed on MSNBC about his new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. And he's upfront about the way certain social issues have led members of the church to form close relationships with representatives of the state.

But abortion, for many of these folks, is not a political issue. It is an ethical issue. It is a moral issue. It is a spiritual issue. So they sort of, you know, they create a permission structure to invest in that issue of abortion. But suddenly, Stephanie, when you invest so heavily in that issue of abortion, then the red team becomes your allies. The blue team becomes your enemies.

And then suddenly all of these other proxy wars that pop up over all kinds of other policy issues, they become not R versus D, red versus blue, becomes good versus evil.

And if you start assigning that to other partisan disputes, and this guy, Donald Trump, who shares none of your values, but he's willing to go to war for you. He's willing to fight for you. In fact, I would even say he's willing to fight for you in ways that no good Christian ever would, right? Remember when George W. Bush said that in order to save the free market, he first had to jettison free market principles? Yes, I remember. There's something to that idea here, where for some Christians, they came to believe that...

To protect Christian virtue in this country, the first step was to jettison Christian virtue and embrace this guy, Donald Trump. Okay, but there's a line in the book that took me... Whoa, what a statement. Is this the heart of the American evangelical today? A willingness to retrieve Christian virtue by any means, even by jettisoning Christian virtue itself? For some, the answer is probably yes.

Emergencies demand emergency measures. And it's this picture of the evangelical that has made many other evangelicals around the world wince at the term. But is that truly what an evangelical is? Is that the norm, even here in America? Well, we hope to find out the good, the bad, and the ugly of American evangelicalism. I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions

This season of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic. Get discounts on master lectures, video courses and exclusive samples of their books at zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions. Each

Each episode, we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, science, culture or ethics that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they're talking about, we're trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out. I'm sorry that you were raised for the devil, but I'm going to teach my children what the Lord their God doth require of them. You were raised for the devil and I'm sorry about that.

Your parents obviously did not love you. They hated you. That's the colourful rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church, often referred to as the most hated church in America. They would claim to be evangelical. They would certainly claim to be Bible-believing, one of the key marks of the evangelicals.

And our first guest today has the honour of being attacked by Westborough Baptist Church. In fact, he put their insult on a nameplate that sits on his desk. Lying Whore False Prophet.

I have to explain that a lot because people walk in and they don't know the story. And if you're not from certain parts of the world, you don't know what Westboro Baptist is. So it's kind of a group that protests people with terrible signs about how God hates everybody. And so they showed up one day at my church and they were protesting at our church. We were, I don't remember what brought them, but we were preaching about God's love and they don't believe that God loves everybody. I believe God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son.

So we came out, we welcomed them with tea and donuts. And, you know, we said, God loves protesters too. And in the news, I think it was the Associated Press, they called me a lying whore, false prophet. So one of my staff, who thought that was pretty, maybe funny and apropos, decided to make that into a nameplate. And I keep that nameplate on my desk as a conversation starter.

Dr. Ed Stetzer, Professor Dr. Reverend Ed Stetzer, is the Dean of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University and Scholar in Residence and Teaching Pastor at Mariner's Church, a massive evangelical church in Southern California. He's earned two masters and two doctorates, as well as writing hundreds of articles, including opinion pieces for USA Today and CNN.

He's the editor of Outreach magazine and the author of a dozen or more books. He is the quintessential American evangelical, and I'm glad to call him a friend. We're in the Billy Graham Hall at Wheaton College. Yeah.

And so, you know, you are the... I talked with Ed in the Billy Graham Hall at Wheaton College, an august building complete with fluted columns and stone portico. Billy Graham himself opened this building back in 1980. Ed is a member of the Board of the National Association of Evangelicals, so he's well-placed to help us put together the puzzle of the American evangelical. What on earth...

is an American evangelical? Well, an American evangelical would be an evangelical who's an American. So it's complicated because America, the United States, is an outlier religiously. And it used to be the U.S., Ireland, Poland were just outliers religiously, had this high religiosity mentality.

and Christian identification. That's changed some in Ireland. It's still pretty high in Poland and the U.S. But the U.S., like every place, it has a complex history, and that complex history has woven evangelicalism into certain cultural expressions as well. So the American South is far more religious than the Northeast is. The Northeast feels in some places like Australia or the U.K., whereas Mississippi has the highest percentage of Christianization

Christian church membership and participation in the country. And Utah has Mormonism, a different religious expression, and also has very, very high. So it's different and it's regional, but there's all kinds of historical eddies and currents that relate to that. Okay, but what is an evangelical? The typical most used definition is by a Brit by the name of David Bebbington. And he talks about

David Bebbington is a British professor of history and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Historical Society. Bebbington, and he talks about the Bebbington quadrilateral, which I rely upon. I'm writing a book on some of what is an evangelical and the future of evangelicalism. So there are four things in the quadrilateral. Biblicism, so a high view of the Bible. So there's crucicentrism, the place crucifix, crucify, the cross. And then there's the

Conversionism, which I actually put a little higher place than Bebbington does, but conversionism. So evangelicals believe that we are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins until we're made alive in Christ. We call that being born again. And then activism. And that activism can be through evangelism or service or different things. And so the best of evangelicals

You know, when you look at NGOs, non-government organizations started in the U.S., most of them at a given time are actually being started by evangelical Christians to do ministry around the world, to serve the poor and the hurting and more. You go to the inner cities of some of our most difficult cities or in the rural outlying places,

When there's a need, it's evangelical Christians who are at the forefront of meeting that need, and also to Catholics. Catholics being a unified organization, they're the largest social service organization outside of government work. So evangelicals, it's a mixed description. In Bullies and Saints, you talk about sometimes the best and the worst. Well, American evangelicals have some of the best and the worst. Winding back, how many people would own up to being evangelical in America?

Because even the 5% of evangelicals in Australia, when asked, are you an evangelical, they'd sort of go. And that's largely because of us. We want to congratulate you for having to deal with our negative reputation. So depending on how you ask the question is it's about a third would, would be in the range of evangelical or born again.

So if you use that language, which some of our research firms would use that language, Evangelical Born Again would be Pew and some of the others. So it could be as much as a third. Some would say 25%. Again, it's tricky because depending on how you ask the question and how you count it, but it's much higher here than it is in Australia, for sure.

Researcher Al will put a link in the show notes to the study Ed's referring to. It's from Pew Research, so it's pretty solid. It concludes that 24% of Americans say they are born again or evangelical. That's 83 million people. That's 15 million more humans than live in the United Kingdom. That's three times the total population of Australia.

It's no wonder that American evangelicals have come to set the connotations around the world for the term evangelical itself.

Let's drill down on these numbers a little bit. 62% of American evangelicals are aged between 30 and 64. The highest proportion, 35%, are part of the baby boomer generation. 55% are women, 76% are white, 84% of them are third generation Americans or higher.

What about ethics and politics? Evangelicals are mostly opposed to abortion, 63%. And they oppose same-sex marriage, 64%.

Now you might have thought evangelicals are almost entirely Republican voters, the conservative party here in the US. But while Mormons are 70% Republican or lean towards Republican, only 56% of evangelicals are apparently Republican or lean Republican. That's according to the Pew Research.

That's significantly more than Catholics, who are 37% Republican or lean Republican. But I would have thought it would be more. Anyway, that's a little snapshot of American evangelicals. Let's leave these shores just for a moment. Do you see a different complexion of the evangelical in other parts of the world? Absolutely. So I'll be...

I'll be in the UK teaching this fall at Oxford. And yeah, I'm already, you have that conversation and part of what, you know, they, they're very welcoming and gracious, but kind of behind the scenes is, is don't bring that American evangelicalism over to here. And then we'll whatever, say it that way. Cause you Brits are remarkably kind, nice people. And I'm very aware of that. So,

I think part of it is that, and this might help people understand, you live in a world, John, where you're on the other side of what John Davidson Hunter coined the term the culture war. You're on the other side of that. Evangelical Christians are not going to exert enough political influence to turn back the cultural expressions of

whatever, you know, we want to call the Australian or the Canadian for that matter. So we're not. And so there's still a sense where evangelical Christians in particular can and have exerted significant political influence and allied with people to exert that significant political influence. So they got what they wanted in certain areas, but it also costs in certain ways. And so I think the big distinction is, and you're an historian, so you know,

When Christians, whatever century and ever they might define themselves, evangelicalism isn't a language we would have used a thousand years ago.

But when Christians have enough cultural influence that they can shape or redirect the narrative, they tend to use that and often in ways that are really not so great. And I think, and I've been one who said that we have lost a lot of our witness with the politicization of our faith. And this is, for me, someone who speaks up on really controversial moral issues and holds a biblical standard on those.

I wanted to ask a Brit about all of this. Vaughan Roberts is the Rector of St. Ebb's Church, Oxford. He's the Director of the Proclamation Trust, a British evangelical organisation that promotes biblical preaching in the UK and abroad. He is, in my view, the finest Bible expositor in England. And my darling Buff has his sermons on constant rotation. She's probably listened to one already today.

And he is the quintessential British evangelical. Thinking of Britain, what is an evangelical? An evangelical is fundamentally a doctrinal commitment. So there's some wonderful truths that evangelicals hold dear.

that the Bible speaks with authority as the Word of God, that the focus of the Bible's message is transformative, that we in ourselves cannot get right with God. We need Jesus, his death for us in our place, and the work of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to these wonderful truths. So it's a doctrinal commitment, and that leads to, I suppose,

an experiential response because evangelicals are those who are not just in their heads believing certain things but believe that this gospel and the word evangelical of course the root is "evangel" it means gospel. I'm convinced this gospel is not only true

but it's transformed our lives. So that leads to an experience which is transformative. In my case, it was in my late teens. Not everyone has a particular moment, but for me, there was a change as these truths became real. I should say this person became real because for evangelicals, Christ is at the heart of it all, of this gospel message. So it led to an experience. And then that changed my commitments. So evangelicals have commitments about life

to live under the teaching of the Scripture, to live in the light of the Gospel. And God willing, that leads in all sorts of directions: a desire to serve Christ in the world,

a desire that other people might know this wonderful truth. So Evangelicals have gone around the world telling others about this great message and God willing added value anyway because of course this gospel message transforms the whole of life and down the ages that's had a transforming effect on individuals, families, communities, even societies. Where do they come from as a group? When do they start being called Evangelicals as opposed to something else?

Well, you see, it goes back, I suppose, originally to the time of the Reformation when Martin Luther and co. started saying, "Hang on, let's compare what we're being taught by the official Roman Catholic Church as to what the Bible's saying," and saw a distinction there. So the time of the Reformation, the 16th century, very often they began to be called gospel people, evangelicals. So that's the beginnings of that kind of language.

And then very much at the time of the so-called evangelical revivals of the 18th century, it became associated with the Wesley brothers in England, George Whitefield in America, who came to see that at the heart of the Bible's message was this transforming gospel rooted in the authority of Scripture.

and saying, "We can't save ourselves, we need Jesus," and that changed lives. So from, I suppose, the 18th century onwards, that became a very common word to describe these reform movements, revival movements.

John and Charles Wesley were prominent English evangelicals in the 18th century. John was responsible for a massive outdoor preaching ministry. Think Billy Graham, but in the 1700s. And Charles wrote thousands of hymns, including the one Buff and I had at our wedding. And can it be true?

George Whitefield is another English outdoor preacher who spent ages in America in the late 1700s preaching to something like 10 million people over the course of his visits. He was friends with the famous Benjamin Franklin, who wasn't a believer but who admired Whitefield immensely.

And Franklin was curious about the size of Whitefield's audiences. And so one day he turned up in Philadelphia to calculate the audience. Here's what Benjamin Franklin wrote. "He preached one evening from the top of the courthouse steps, which are in the middle of Market Street and on the west side of Second Street, which crosses it at right angles. Both streets were filled with his hearers to a considerable distance.

Being among the hindmost in Market Street, I had the curiosity to learn how far he could be heard by retiring backwards down the street towards the river, and I found his voice distinct till I came near Front Street when some noise in that street obscured it.

Imagining then a semicircle of which my distance should be the radius, and that it were filled with auditors, to each of whom I allowed two square feet, I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand.

This reconciled me to the newspaper accounts of his having preached to 25,000 people in the fields, and to the ancient histories of generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.

It could be argued, though, that the evangelical movement goes back well before the 18th century. We are not far from the site where some Reformation martyrs, English Reformation martyrs, were burned at the stake. Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer. Were they not evangelicals? I mean, they don't make the 18th century cut off. They're a bit earlier. They make the 16th century Reformation cut off.

which is where the language started becoming. And they were martyred for their evangelical convictions because they were being called on to go with the Roman Catholic Church on something they felt was actually unbiblical. And so their commitment to the Bible and to the gospel as they understood it led to their martyrdom. Now that means original Anglicanism, original Church of England as a reformed,

Protestant, not Catholic movement is true evangelicalism. Yeah, absolutely. And you can say that of all the Protestant denominations, they all have their roots. All the mainline Protestant denominations, many of them going back to the 16th century, others coming out of the 18th century revival, they are all in their roots.

evangelical. Absolutely. This is not some modern 20th century, 21st century phenomenon. This goes back a long way. And by the way, the reformers were not saying, we're inventing something new. Evangelicalism was an invention of the 16th century. What they were saying is, we are proclaiming no new truth. We're trying to hold the church

to what it's always believed. So it was a conviction that actually over the centuries, Roman Catholic religion had just drifted away from the origins. So what they would have undoubtedly say is, "We are representing apostolic biblical Christianity." And they had a very high view of the teaching of the church fathers in the late first into the second and third century. They were not innovators.

You've been to America many times, and we've shared the platform there, and how to put this nicely, do you feel evangelical means something different there from if you just live in England in this evangelical movement? It means lots of different things to lots of different people, but within, so there'd be many in America who would understand evangelicalism just as we've been talking now. But in popular parlance, I think it's associated with a modern phenomenon

that is certainly not trying to go back to 16th century, let alone as I believe that the first century,

but it's a product of the earliest of the Enlightenment and more likely of the kind of televisional age. It's mass marketing. It doesn't really stand for anything. It's opportunistic. It's experiential without a doctrinal root. And it's corrupt. So that's how it's seen, sadly. It's often regarded as essentially allied to a certain political movement and is more convinced

about certain political positions than about doctrinal positions. I think that's unfair for a lot of American evangelicals, but unfortunately the movement's been tainted in popular ways of thinking.

I asked Ed Stetzer if this political reputation was a new thing or if it had been part of American evangelicalism from the very beginning. Well, that's a good question. So I think the answer is it has been in the past. You know, America has two political parties. So what's happened is it's historically the political parties were actually closer.

And so there would be people who would be evangelically minded or use the word evangelical to derive skills in both parties. But what's happened is in the Democratic Party refers to the God gap. So if you are irreligious, you're almost certainly a Democrat.

And that's just people – when I say that, people get mad because I'm not saying – I'm not making all kinds of other statements around that. I'm just saying that's just a question of math. And if you're religious, you almost certainly are a Republican. Not everybody. And the big exception would be in our African-American community.

But by and large, those numbers tend to stay true. And as the parties have sort of moved away from one another and particularly areas of traditional Christian belief like marriage, like the pro-life issue and more. So evangelicals, which this would have been true 50 years ago, but evangelicals have now overwhelmingly moved, particularly white evangelicals have now and among some Latino evangelicals as well have overwhelmingly moved to the Republican Party.

And others have overwhelmingly moved to the Democratic Party and African-Americans being an outlier in both of those settings. So no, the answer to your question is no. Historically, there would be – and it's the same true. What's fascinating to Americans is that you have evangelical Christians who vote for all different kinds of parties because you're not in the same place thinking if we vote for this person, this cultural issue could be –

Could be, you know, rolled back or could be addressed. So you don't think that way. And Canadians don't think that way. So you have Canadians who vote for somewhat big government, somewhat small government, but

Whereas because evangelicals often on moral issues have ended up more, and it's not just moral issues, they're historic issues. And I'm very much simplifying for a short podcast. What happens is, is that most evangelicals also think smaller governments better than bigger government because that's the kind of the space that we're in. Whereas I think Australians, you'd have many evangelical Christians who want a stronger social safety net as well. That's not generally how evangelicals think. Yeah, well, even the small government. It's a really interesting thing.

I've often felt weird in America whenever the topic of healthcare comes up. In Australia, of course, there's universal healthcare through our Medicare system. It's the same as the NHS in the UK. And virtually all Australian and British evangelicals, conservative evangelicals, assume that free healthcare is wise and an important part of society.

But this makes me almost a socialist in America. My conservative evangelical credentials might be seriously questioned. In fact, they were in a recent public event like two weeks ago. Someone who'd read that Australians, even Australian Christians, support universal health care asked me in a public Q&A that had nothing to do with this topic how this could possibly be that Christians would support universal health care.

I'm not sure how satisfied he was with my answer. And my point isn't really anything to do with health care. It's that the political views of evangelicals don't necessarily have much to do with theology. They are sometimes just culturally conditioned.

Certain cultural and political opinions come to be bundled together and then smuggled into the evangelical outlook without much reflection on whether those opinions really are connected to evangelical theology. Now don't get me wrong, maybe that's me with my socialist approval of healthcare.

Or maybe it's American evangelicals with their frequent rejection of universal health care. All I'm saying is that the cultural, the societal, the political, not just the biblical, can shape what it means to be evangelical. And after the break, I want to puzzle through one dramatic example of this, the widespread evangelical support of President Donald Trump. ♪

This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today. He's a

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And President Trump, these are some of your greatest faith leaders. They would love to pray over you. Pastor Jensen's going to start. Apostle Maud and Otto. And we love you. Will everybody just stretch your hands towards the president before he gets up? Because we know that prayer makes a difference. Let's all pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you today and we thank you for this nation that was born in 1776.

We pray in 2020 it would be born again. We pray for your spirit to move across our nation and we humble ourselves and we pray. We repent of personal sins, national sins, and we humbly ask you to bless our nation and to bless our President Donald Trump.

Lord, I thank you that America didn't need a preacher in the Oval Office. It did not need a professional politician in the Oval Office, but it needed a fighter and a champion for freedom. And Lord, that's exactly what we have. Picture a flag deck stage with elect and bearing the seal of the US presidency and presided over by the ultimate stylish, articulate Republican evangelical woman.

President Donald Trump has just walked onto stage to the strains of a classic American song about national pride. We're at a rally in Miami, Florida, where American evangelical pastors have gathered to pray for the president's 2020 campaign. This evening, we're delighted to be joined by many incredible faith leaders. A friend of mine who was on television before I knew him,

And he kept saying, you know, he might not know the Bible as well as I do, or frankly, as well as a lot of people, but he's a leader and he loves God and he's a great Christian. And he said, I love him and I want him to do a terrific job. And I think hopefully I've more than exceeded expectations. Robert Jeffress.

Right? Thank you, Robert. I hope I have. It turns out these prayers weren't answered. President Trump lost the 2020 election. But of course, fresh opportunities for answered prayers re-emerged this year in 2024. I wanted to ask Professor Ed Stetzer about the evangelical support for President Trump. The perception outside of America is that basically he was elected by the evangelicals. I think that's a pretty fair perception.

Is that true and why? Okay. So I'm not a political scientist, but versed in this enough. So President Trump was elected primarily from three groups, right? So – and one of them is evangelicals, but it's rural Americans, which has substantial overlap to evangelical. But it's rural Americans who felt left out and left behind, and they –

And, you know, rural America is 60 million people. So overwhelmingly voted for President Trump. And then evangelicals overwhelmingly voted for President Trump. And then the third group that people sometimes forget is the Democrats had what they called a firewall that didn't hold. And that would be Rust Belt. So Rust Belt America would be once the thriving steel belt and now the Rust Belt. People often felt left out and left behind in those contexts.

who voted for President Trump as well. But you can't see any path to victory for President Trump that didn't involve substantive evangelical support. Yeah, so the question I think a lot of people have, and maybe it's wrongheaded, but...

They'll say, aren't those evangelicals, you know, meant to be the kind of moral majority people that they're the people who believe in, you know, living a squeaky clean life and so on. Here's the people who said Bill Clinton should resign for his actions with Monocle. And so it's seen as completely hypocritical that they voted Trump and so passionate for him. And, and the, the perception is, and you can correct it. Yeah.

Evangelicals really are just a political movement. They could overlook moral issues for the sake of more power. No, I'd say not just a political movement, but certainly their political ramifications. So, you know, most of your listeners don't know me from Adam. So I was pretty public and vocal about my concerns about the evangelical alliance with President Trump. At the same time, I defended at times, and where I would say is this, I was very uncomfortable with two things. One, I

was the percentage of people, and there was actually a study that PRRI did that I commented on, that when asked, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but does the private lives of public officials matter? And evangelicals before President Trump were overwhelmingly the highest group that said yes. And then after President Trump, they flipped. I mean, just stunning shift.

PRRI is a non-profit, non-partisan research organisation with an interest in the intersection of religion, culture and politics. The study Ed commented on, which is in the show notes for you, discovered two key things about the importance of personal morality in politics. Producer Kayleigh?

Key finding number one: Americans have grown more likely to believe that an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfil their duties in their public and professional life. The percentage of Americans who agreed with this statement went from 44% in 2011 to 57% in 2020.

Key finding number two, the belief that an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life increased among white Christians between 2011 and 2020. And I think that's fundamentally wrong. Now, that being said, you have to remember, too, there were two people at the end of the campaign.

and two parties at the end of the campaign. And so I would be one who, though I was not a supporter of President Trump, I would be one who would speak up for evangelicals who said, you know, I was down to two choices and they're really, neither of them were great. One would also align with some of my issues and concerns. I think as now we're seeing Roe v. Wade and more, I think those who voted for President Trump would point to and say, look, the Supreme Court has been changed.

And so what I would say is my concern is that – I said at the beginning there were two concerns. One was those people who changed their view of the morality of public officials in order to accommodate this. I think that was wrong and I called it out on more than one occasion. People got mad at me. And that's OK. I don't mind people being mad at me. The other is –

Just to be blunt, I don't think that – it bothers me and concerns me when I see the full-throated endorsement. I'm all in. I like what he says. I like how he says it. I think ultimately President Trump has shown himself to be a person who says –

deeply wrong things, who has lived a life that should... People say maybe he's changing that life. But I think ultimately the full-throated endorsement of the president... I can understand that evangelical Christian who said, these were the choices that I had, and I made a difficult choice between these two, and these are the reasons...

For me, I'm concerned that people will change their view of morality to accommodate that. And I'm concerned about people who embrace all of the things that were around. There's comments about immigrants, there's comments about refugees, comments about women, there's comments about his opponents and more. I don't think that we need to hold President Trump up as a role model. And in order to get to that full-throated place when you do that, I think you've really had to

intentionally blind yourself to some realities to do that. So those would be my two concerns, keeping in mind that I think where you are internationally, people will look and say, how could you possibly do that? Let me also say too that many African-American pastors, pastor friends, they would say, you know, I couldn't overlook those things. And they say, by voting for him, you voted for

this way differently and chose, made a choice that impacts me negatively. So I get people of different views. I just, I try to recognize that when people walk into a voting booth, they have complex reasons for why they vote and some charitability issues

for people of different views, I think is a good thing. Now that may be shocking to people in Australia, but, and I will tell you for people, most evangelicals wouldn't agree with what I just said. Keeping in mind that I am an outlier in this is that the vast majority of white, I'm white, the vast majority of white evangelicals made a different decision than I did. Ed's great. He's one of the most connected humans in American evangelicalism, but I wanted to get another perspective.

The Gospel Coalition is a group of pastors and churches in the Reformed evangelical tradition that aims to further the good news about Jesus Christ and uphold biblical truth as the standard in the church. These, of course, are core evangelical aims. One of the founders of the Gospel Coalition was Tim Keller, who is perhaps the most influential evangelical preacher in America in the last 20 years. His death from cancer in 2023 was devastating for many.

Good for him, of course, as he reminded us in our interview with him, but tragic for one of the healthiest strands of evangelicalism in the world.

Melissa Kruger is the vice president of discipleship programming at the Gospel Coalition. She's the author of 10 books, including Ephesians, A Study of Faith and Practice. I started by asking her about the political nationalism that seems to be present in much American evangelicalism. Christian nationalism is a very important part of our lives.

is not a thing we know anything about in Australia or in Europe or the UK. It's not really in Asia, but it seems to be developing its muscles here in America in the last five, 10 years. Is Christian nationalism...

an evangelical phenomenon? That's a good question. I was just having a conversation about this this weekend because we lived in the UK for a while. And one thing that we were really struck by in the church in the UK was people voted for a lot of diverse groups. It wasn't like, oh, to be a Christian is to vote for this political party. And some of that is the difference in a two-party system.

So when you only have two parties, it's very easy to kind of become one is right and one is wrong and all of this. And I think what has actually happened is because the evangelical movement has political power, then it is courted by the two party system to say which one is the most effective. And when you get to other places, yeah, if you get to most of Europe, Christians have no block of power.

You know, so therefore they're not courted. And therefore, in some sense, no one expects you to vote one way or the other. And so what what is very concerning to me when I look at what's happening is.

is the effects that politics can have on the divisions in the church. I would hope that the church can have an impact on our political system. Like that would be a really good thing. What is disturbing to me is that it seems to be happening more in the reverse. And that is very concerning, that politics seems to be pressuring the church in certain ways. And I'm very uncomfortable with that.

Can you be specific? Well, I think we would definitely say there is something called theological liberalism that we are against, meaning we don't believe the scriptures to be the inerrant word of God, things like that. And I would say that is a danger in the church. I think we've gotten to a point where differing views on something like immigration—

can now suddenly become, oh, you might be theologically liberal if you differ on that. Well, that's an area where I think Christians might have some robust disagreement. I am very willing to say, goodness, this is a really tough issue. But what I would say is a political party might come in and say, this is the only view a Christian can have. That I'm very uncomfortable with. There are some issues, I think, like abortion.

to me is not a political issue. That's a biblical issue because we're talking about the sanctity of life. There's one view I'm going to have on that issue. But when it comes to certain other issues, I think there's room for Christians to have definite disagreement. And I think when a political party determines what the church should believe, that concerns me. Okay. I mean, we'll explore. Let's head back to the UK just for a second. Are British evangelicals involved in politics?

in the way that that caricature in the US would depict? No, in very different ways. Whereas, at least with predominantly white evangelicals, you might typically predict which party they vote for, at least in the popular mindset that they're going in one direction. You couldn't do that in England at all. There's a whole breadth of political views

Probably in history, I mean, certainly socially engaged, deeply concerned for the poor. So within the 19th century, it was the evangelical Lord Shaftesbury who was the leading social reformer of the age. And of course, William Wilberforce, again, an Anglican evangelical, who was a very leading light in

and in the slave trade. So there's certainly an engagement in the whole of society. Sometimes that's been drifted away from, but that's in our DNA as evangelicals. But you couldn't, it's not just latching onto a small number of political issues and you couldn't label it left or right in simplistic terms.

And here amongst evangelical ministers, would it be completely gauche to get up into the pulpit and urge people to vote a particular way? It'd be unthinkable, unthinkable. And within, we've got Cotter Launch Church here in Oxford, and we would have a whole variety of different ways.

convictions about which way to vote. I mean, I couldn't predict that. And nor would I think there is an evangelical way to vote in British politics. No way. One of the other criticisms that's leveled at American evangelicalism came in a book years ago called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And it was written by an evangelical saying that evangelicals turned away from mainstream academia.

as corrupt and leading people away from the gospel. Was that a problem here? Yes and no. So here in Britain, there is a breadth within evangelicalism, and I think there are some movements within evangelicalism that are not embracing the life of the mind enough, not engaging with scholarship enough. But speaking generally, if you were to look around British universities, biblical studies departments, I mean, a very high number

are evangelicals in conviction. In this university, and not just biblical studies, I should say, but across the university faculties, there are professors of engineering, of physics, of chemistry, of theology, who would hold an evangelical conviction with a Christian mind, are thinking about the whole of life.

So no, some have moved away from that, certainly. But it's within our DNA to take the mind seriously and thinking seriously. I think the reality, part of what we have is a discipleship problem in America. So we have a lot of people who know a little bit about Christianity, which is very different than having a strong biblical foundation. I would say we are an increasingly biblically illiterate

group of people. And therefore, if we don't even know what we believe ourselves, of course, we're not going to be uniform in the way we represent that to the world. So I see a huge problem and it's a lack of roots. We have spread wide, but we haven't always spread in truth in the depth of what the scriptures teach.

And so I think it's a problem. And so you get a lot of offshoots going a lot of different ways. But when you look at the historic Christian tradition in that, I'm very hopeful. I'm not very hopeful in a modern expression of kind of a weak form. It's like a weak strand of coffee, very watered down Christianity that I think you see a lot. And that's very confusing to people. I totally agree that that's a very confusing thing for the watching world.

Do you think all these other problems stem from that one? I mean, is it that kind of superficiality in Christian knowledge that leads to sex scandals, over-political, you know, politicization, race problems and so on?

In some sense, yes. But what I do know is even Paul, in his letters to the church, what did he say? He said, be on your guard. There will be wolves among you. And in fact, he said there will be sexual impropriety.

there will be pride and there will be greed. And sure enough, 2,000 years later, we still see that exact thing. And it says that they will try to destroy the flock. So Paul was very aware. This isn't actually a new problem. I mean, it's something that's been plaguing the church throughout all of history. And so I think as we look at it, the scriptures themselves warn against this. So yes, it's there. And yes, it's concerning. And for sure, the popularity of

of American religion leads to a lot of people who want to be a part of it just for how it can serve them. That is for sure a problem.

I wanted to ask Melissa about the hot-button issue of abortion. Roe v. Wade was a legal case in 1973 that guaranteed a woman's right to abortion. During the Trump administration, though, Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, effectively making abortion a state-by-state issue, not a constitutional one, to the rapturous applause of American evangelicals.

Was this a peculiarly evangelical victory? I actually think so. I think evangelicals for a long time have prayed and hoped for a change from Roe v. Wade. And I think they have worked hard at a grassroots level for a lot of years. And I'm really thankful for what happened and that it has been overturned. I don't think any of us actually expected it.

I mean, yeah, we hoped for it, but I don't think we expected it. And so it's one of those things that I'm truly thankful to see happen in our country. And yeah, yeah, I am thankful for that. Are you simply thankful? I mean, I would hold your exact view on abortion. And we've done an Undeceptions episode where we tried to

explain that the classical Christian view isn't as dumb and mean as everyone thinks. I guess, do you have any worries about how the victory is being...

talked about? Do you fear that there's a perception that, you know, this evangelical victory was really just more of the war on women, which is what one sometimes hears? Do you give any credence to that without at all budging on the morality of abortion? Are there any parts of it that make you feel uncomfortable for the reputation of the church?

Not really, because I actually will say I believe that's the lie of the other side. I know more women who are very opposed to abortion. And so it's always interesting to us when they claim it's a war against women that

Because we are at war against abortion in a lot of ways for many of us. It's because we've held this life in our body and we think, what an amazing thing. And we've also sat across the table. I've got to admit, I was really struck by this part of the interview. Melissa is the sort of Christian thinker who can see and admit the excesses of some evangelicals, especially around politics.

She isn't the caricature of the American evangelical. But she wasn't going to give an inch on abortion. For her, this transcends politics. It isn't blue versus red, that is, Democrat versus Republican. It's about the truth that the unborn human has the same value as a born human.

And she doesn't mind if that ruins her reputation among some. And we've also sat across the table from women who have had abortions and we have wept those tears of regret with them and we have watched the harm it has done to women.

So it's, you know, I really do think it harms women and it obviously harms their children. And so it's really interesting when kind of those who are proponents for abortion say things like that. It's a war against women. I actually think it's a war that has been really convenient for men. Let's talk about

in evangelicalism in America. The cliche or the perception might be that women are just submissive in American evangelicalism. I don't get that impression from you, Melissa. But I'm not talking about, you know, those Bible passages about submission to husband. I'm saying like the idea is that a woman, an American woman evangelical is a mousy little woman.

creature who just works in the kitchen. And so, I mean, I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean? Can you, can you speak to that?

Yes, I think we have at times adopted a very odd take in American culture. And again, it was super helpful to live overseas and see what complementarity, which is what we would call it, you know, this belief that men and women are both equal in the sight of God in creation, but there are distinctions that we hold very clear and we believe in. You know, I don't believe

you know, a woman is a man and a man is a woman. I mean, we hold these distinctions and we even see those distinctions lived out in the family and in the church. So that being said, when we spent time in the UK, that felt different. It was really interesting to be outside of

of some of what it looks like in the church. And what I would say has maybe happened in American evangelicalism, there has been a picturesque view of kind of a 1950s Americana that has been applied to the scriptures rather than the scriptures informing our understanding of men and women.

And so, and I would say at times I've even bought into some of these things without thinking. So letting Christian culture inform what I understand about myself or about my husband, rather than letting the scriptures inform that. And I really am hopeful that increasingly we are waking up to the reality of what scripture teaches, not just what culture teaches. And I think that's really important, but yes, there has been for sure certain teachings,

that I do not, I think are extra biblical. I don't see them in scripture. I think when you look at the New Testament, Jesus is robust in his treatment of women. It's shocking. I just finished a Bible study on Mark and you know, it's this incredible,

everywhere and they're everywhere as the positive example. And it is pretty shocking. If you look at Romans 16, when Paul is greeting the church in Rome, women are interspersed throughout the whole thing. Paul talks about Rufus's mother, who has been a mother to me. So what you see

the New Testament is not a CEO with hierarchy in that way. You see a family, you see fathers and mothers, daughters and sons. And I think American evangelicalism needs to get back to that versus a CEO model of a church that I don't see in scripture. So again, I think the more we go back to the Bible, the healthier we're going to get on men and women.

So you're involved with the Gospel Coalition. One of the things that strikes me about American Christianity, you know, as a newcomer to your great country, is the division amongst people who otherwise believe very similar things, but on a few things they don't agree.

It's an interesting word, coalition. It sort of connotes an attempt for unity and camaraderie and affinity. Is this possible in American evangelicalism? It's not going to be possible for everyone who claims the name of Christ. I mean, that's for certain, right? I mean, look at just our denominational commitments. We have more

more denominations forming every single day. So there's a reality that Christians are divided on what they believe. And so I think it's definitely important to understand the core of Christianity and then different modes of baptism. I mean, so there are going to be these disagreements that people have on things that aren't core all the time. So when we talk

about a coalition, what we're hoping to say is these central tenets of the Christian faith, we're going to say we all assent to. And while we have serious disagreement on other issues, we're going to say that the basic truths that there was a historical Jesus, that he lived in

that God became man, dwelt among us, and he died on the cross. Like these things that Christians say and that he was resurrected. I mean, that's the important part of all of that for the sins of mankind. I mean, those basic things, can we be unified on those? Hopefully so. But the fact that, you know,

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in John 17, that the very thing he prayed for was unity in the church. And I think it's because it's such a difficult thing to come by. More after the break. 68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.

It pushed his family into financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.

There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Tarat.

Disunity among American evangelicals is a problem. Ed Stetzer thinks there are bigger problems still facing them.

In part, this has to do with the riot in the capital on January 6, 2021.

You've gone so far as to say that evangelicals in America are due for a reckoning. I did. Yeah, that was an article that got some mail. Tell me what you mean. Yeah, so, and that's the, I don't know that the book's going to be called that, but it may be called an evangelical reckoning. So I think one of the things that, and what I just said is what I wrote after January 6th. You cannot escape the fact that there were deeply religious evangelical sounding or adjacent elements involved.

that were part of storming the Capitol that day. They prayed in Jesus' name on the floor of the breached House and the Senate. And I think that was a stunning reality. And I was one, I wrote in September, I wrote my concerns about, for USA Today, one of our national newspapers, I wrote an article saying evangelicals need to deal with the QAnoners in their midst. And people were mad at me. Oh, there's not a QAnon.

What is QAnon? Who are the QAnoners? Well, you might not thank me for this, but QAnon is a movement in America that claims a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibal pedophiles controls the world. They apparently manipulate politics, not the QAnoners, but this cabal, and they control the media.

It all comes from an anonymous queue on the online message board 4chan. The poster queue implied that he or she had access to high-level government intel, and he or she dropped the messages via coded queue drops, as they were called. Social media platforms played a pivotal role in amplifying these theories, expanding its audience far beyond its dark web origins.

The movement, once fringe, now intersects with various conspiracy theories, including UFOs and the JFK assassination, while introducing new ones like the dangers of 5G networks. Central to QAnon is the belief that Donald Trump was chosen by American generals to expose and dismantle this malevolent group, implicating high profile Democrats and celebrities.

The narrative intensified around the 2020 election with claims of a stolen election leading to the Capitol Hill riot. Surprisingly, QAnon adherents aren't just fringe extremists. They apparently include politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene,

professionals, and even health-conscious yoga mums, a 2021 poll found that 17% of Americans believed in QAnon's core claims, illustrating its widespread appeal. There's a fascinating article in the New York Times, and we'll link to it in the show notes. It'll tell you far more about QAnon than you could possibly want to know. But its author makes the point that QAnon is like a church. In

in that it, quote, provides its followers with a social support structure as well as an organizing narrative for their everyday lives. But surely there aren't any QAnoners in the actual evangelical church. Well, yes, there is. It's

deeply influenced into evangelical spaces. We just passed one on the road today, a big flag outside the house. The marks of the flag, yeah, and more. So this is a real issue. And so what I think is one of the questions I think we need to ask is why, not everybody, right, but why some of the full-throated endorsement folks were so easily drawn into that orbit in a way I think that they compromised their witness. I think we need to ask that. So I think there's a reckoning

That still needs to happen. But what do you mean by the reckoning? Do you mean there's going to be a great turning against evangelicals? No, no. In the article that you're quoting, I was actually – I was writing that evangelicals need to deal with this. So I think part of what we need to do and are doing is have a national conversation. And unfortunately, I don't think it's going particularly well in a lot of places. We're actually experiencing now because of some of that reckoning what I call the great sort reckoning.

So people are now in American evangelicalism sorting themselves ideologically. And you can actually see this probably even from Australia. You'll see all of a sudden there are conferences and churches that are very much decidedly in a lane that has been shaped in the last four, five, six years.

And there's actually a growing division between evangelicals that I think are hold of the authority of scripture, are focused on personal conversion, but have not become politicized to that level. Now, they would say that you're politicized to the other level, that you're engaging in, I don't know, woke, whatever else the term may be. I don't find that word particularly helpful. But I get what people are saying. Well, I think right now we're seeing a sorting in evangelicalism.

which I think is what I was hoping would happen and maybe still will happen, as we might address. Some of these things went too far and people need to be drawn back in. I think some are. Some are like, yeah, I kind of got too caught up in that. But I still think there's a reckoning to be had. And I think part of that reckoning

is the lack of, here's what we found. There's a phrase that the kids use. It's, you know, he's just not that into you. He's just not that into you. She's not just that into you. One of the things we found in the last few years when it comes to the church, they're just not that into you. They're far more discipled by their cable news choices and spiritually shaped by their social media feed. And so I think there needs to be a reckoning about the lack of discipleship that so many were so easily swept up, and I would say swept away, by some of these cultural, political curses

And I think we're still walking through some of the consequences of that. So let me say, I do have some concerns about some evangelicals who I consider my sisters and brothers in Christ who I think have been swept up into political torrents and places that are unhelpful. I don't know that I would see myself as better or worse. I would say actually that one of the things if we learned anything the last year

four or five years is that my views are not particularly the views of those in charge because i think ultimately my view just percentage-wise is more of a minority view and and so so i don't feel superior to anybody what i think is is as a missiologist you know that's my phd feels in mission i've seen uh historically people get

syncretized, over-contextualized into the cultural context in ways where they lose the gospel. Dean Gilliland, in his book, The Word Among Us, says that ultimately we can either be caught up in obscurantism, where the truths of the gospel are obscured by our ways of practicing and teaching the faith,

And there are some people who it's like it's just obscure because we're so driven by maybe tradition of the past three, four years ago. And that was a concern that I would have as a missiologist. But then there's also syncretism where we've lost essential elements of the faith to the culture. And I want to be aware that I, too, can fall to the right of obscurantism and the left of syncretism. And I think that's part of where – so, again, I'm OK when people criticize me.

Because I want to look at and say, is there some truth to that? There sometimes is, and I've got to address that. So I don't think anybody in evangelicalism should be above criticism. I also think that we have to acknowledge, I mean, all Christians around the world, here you are coming from Australia. You have listeners all around the world. What I would say is I think the global church is deeply concerned about the state of American evangelicalism, and I share their concerns, and I think that we should look at what the issues are and address them.

What are the biggest challenges facing evangelicals in Britain? I think one change that's happened in the last 10 or 15 years ago, evangelical Christians used to be regarded as a little bit quaint, a bit weird. Now there's an increasing view that it's a bit dangerous because you might think that the concept of truth has disappeared in our culture. Not at all.

So the idea that you can believe what you like, well you can believe what you like as long as it's not certain things and actually as long as you are convinced that anyone's truth is their truth. And however graciously one says it, evangelicals believe that there is a capital T truth, that there is a God, he has made himself known in Christ, that there's a good way to live and any perceived challenge to those convictions

can be regarded not just as quaint and weird as it was a while back, but actually dangerous and threatening. Especially when you touch on very personal areas, which we're all grappling with, I think, in the Western world, issues of sexuality and gender. I think many of us have begun to, of whatever conviction, Christian, non-Christian, that actually there's a bit more complexity around here than used to be said.

But those who are saying, actually, God is saying something in these things that might challenge some alternative views. That's a challenge. How we express that in a gracious way, but also in a way that shows that there's good news here is a challenge for us. I think our Achilles heel is that we are rich. We have a lot of money and it makes us not prayerful. And we do not know how poor we are.

Because we believe money can solve everything. And I see the church in other parts of the world that has so little money and they have so much more joy. And so I would say that's our biggest problem. We think power will cause us to succeed where I think the Spirit's work will cause us to succeed. But for all the charges that can be brought against American evangelicalism, what can be said in its favor? So what is...

best about evangelicalism? Let's leave aside these difficult conversations. What's best? Yeah. I think if you walk to and you find, come to rural America and we have the Rural Matters Institute here at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. And I remember listening at the Rural Matters Summit and someone got up and talked about, if you don't know someone who's a meth addict, you're not serving in rural America.

But, you know, when you get into those situations, whether it's a meth addiction or whether it's a mental health crisis, pastors and police both tend to be first responders.

But it's pastors, and numerically, it tends to be evangelical pastors who are in the most difficult places showing and sharing the love of Jesus to the unlovable, to by the world's standards, ministering to the poor. You know, here, I mean, Salvation Army, you know, is a key part of that. But there's an army of people who believe in salvation at all these evangelical churches. Right.

who are not in the Salvation Army, who are still doing that kind of work. And you generally can't find a small town in America where some evangelical church is not doing substantive, impactful work to the least of these, to those who are struggling, let alone the cities. I mean, you go to the cities and it's everywhere.

What are the strengths of evangelicalism? I think a strength is this conviction that God has spoken and that there is truth. Because I think the Western world is in crisis. We've got moral commitments, but without any foundation behind them. And actually that foundation was a substantially Christian foundation. And if you try and get rid of that foundation, you're on very shaky ground. And

We actually have got answers to the questions that people continue to ask. Who are we? Why are we here? What's the meaning of life? Is there hope? These are profound questions that don't go away. And actually, we have got some great news answers that enables us to live life with security, a secure identity, and with joy and hope. That's a real strength, and I think it's very attractive once people see it.

And the superpower of American evangelicalism? The superpower, I would say we have some of the richest teaching in the world. The word has been translated in how many versions do we have in English?

So we have access to divine wisdom. I mean, it's just so hopeful. I mean, the word has the power to transform. The word has the power to comfort. The word has the power to heal. We have it. And we actually have people who have studied it greatly and can defend it. And we have wonderful access to teaching like probably no other culture has had before. Can you envisage...

a renaissance of the word evangelical and American evangelicals. Well, so I'm not driven by the word evangelical. I think one of the things that, again, it reminds us because I'm on a podcast that people around the world listen.

is that Americans don't own the word evangelical. We may have ruined the word evangelical, but we don't own the word evangelical. So come with me to Brazil or where I just was in Greece or where I was in Bulgaria or wherever it may be. The word evangelical is a positive word to people all over the world. The World Evangelical Alliance.

Often, I've worked with some of the leaders there, it's like, you know, it's fine everywhere else. And that's not true everywhere, but, you know, Australia, a lot of the English-speaking world is impacted by what they see on English-speaking television. So I'm less concerned about the word than I am about the root of the word, the evangel, the gospel. Is that I'm actually, so I don't think that changing the word helps. Because in other words, let's say we called everyone who was an evangelical started calling themselves purple instead of evangelical.

Well, then it's just purple. Then it's just – it's still – the issue is not the word. The issue is there are things in our movement that we need to address, that we haven't addressed, that we have to address. So I want a renaissance. How do you pronounce it in Australia? Renaissance. Renaissance. I want a renaissance of –

gospel people living on mission in their context. Now again, I don't want to imply because I don't believe that this is not happening all over the place. It's happening. I want it to happen more, but we also have to address some of the issues that are distracting people from the reality of evangelical faith and practice that is robust and impactful in places all across America. What should a skeptic make of the evangelical? Or perhaps to put it another way, why would you want a skeptic to walk into an evangelical church?

as opposed to any other kind of church. At heart, evangelicals are Bible people and we're Bible people because we're Jesus people. So if you want to engage with authentic Christianity, you've got to engage with Jesus Christ. And if you want to engage with Jesus Christ, where do you look? It's got to be the Bible because any other Jesus is a speculative Jesus. We've got to go back to the source material. And evangelicals of all people

should be about trying to hold up the Bible and proclaim and teach the Bible and try not to obscure Christ by anything else, but just get back to the Bible. So I hope that if you went to an evangelical church, you'd encounter Jesus because you encountered the Bible.

So it sounds like you're not giving up the label evangelical. You don't think it's too damaged a brand? No, I'll stick with it. Some conversations I'll use a different language, but what it stands for is hugely important. My final question, Melissa, is for my skeptical listeners. Have a very low view of American evangelicalism. I'd love you to speak to them about what evangelicalism is.

can actually offer them as someone who just doesn't know what to make of the Christian faith? Well, what I would say mainly it can offer is an introduction to Jesus, because evangelicals believe in sharing with others the God who became man and dwelt among us in the form of Jesus, and He has the power to transform your life. And the reality is you're going to spend your life on something

And we all will. And the whole Bible is crying out, "Why will you spend your money on what is not bread and your life on what does not satisfy?" And it says, "Listen, listen to me and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest affair." So what I think evangelicalism offers is an invitation to come and follow Jesus and have life. And that's the best news that I could offer or that any evangelical could offer.

Offering an introduction to Jesus. I love it. And I think I agree that this is the great gift, the superpower of evangelicalism. Despite everything, at its best, this movement, more than any other Christian movement, is devoted to introducing people to the person of Jesus Christ as found in the Bible. And in the end, that's why I still call myself an evangelical.

And it just dawned on me as we were finishing off this episode that in view of where I now live, I'm an American evangelical. ♪

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