Navigating the Chaos: Dr. Albert Mohler on the Future of Faith and Culture

The language that I inherited as a teenager and as a 20, something about countercultural Christianity really owed a lot more to hippie dreams than to biblical theology. So, look, you know, Christ is Lord. That's the most revolutionary statement we can make. I think also the truest statement we can make.

And I think the difficulty for the church or the challenge for the church is understanding that we have to emphasize a Christian culture that is, if anything, thicker than any other culture.

Time, everybody.

It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And. And today on our show, we're having another one of our.

In our last conversation, we spoke with Pete Wehner on politics and the church. Right? Everybody's favorite subject that you want to talk about.

I mean, how do we deal with the tensions and realities of the political sphere in an election year? And I know you have your convictions, I have mine, but what things do we need to consider?

Now, I know that for some out there, it's only one issue or maybe two issues, and that's it. And you couldn't possibly cross the line if anyone disagreed with you on those subjects. And I understand it. That's where I've been.

I'm not saying I'm there now. I mean, those issues are still hugely important in my mind, and it's vitally important. But I want to look at the full breadth of the conversation.

I mean, how do we as Christians live faithfully in our modern world without jeopardizing our witness in the process? How do we think about these things? What influences the way we vote? Is it the greater good?

Is it a question of pragmatics as to what's the lesser evil? What's the alternative? What happens, though, if our witness is at stake? And I mean that, really, what happens if our witness is at stake?

That the very name of Christ is impugned because we believe that we are taking a stand for certain issues when we're really not. Today, I'm talking about someone who has a totally different tact than Pete, someone that I respect or whom I respect greatly.

Someone who thinks deeply about a lot of different issues facing the church. Today he's a seminary president, author, and speaker, and hosts the Daily show, the Briefing. And of course, I am talking to you about Dr.

Albert Mohler. Now, I wanted to speak with Dr. Mohler for a variety of reasons.

First of all, because he's been an astute cultural observer for some time and has his finger on the pulse of a lot of issues the church is facing today. Secondly, I have tremendous respect for him as a Christian in the public square.

Not an easy thing to do to be able to take on all of those who are simply coming at you because of the name of Christ. And we honestly have many of the same theological convictions. We share them. And I'm grateful for him for coming on the show.

It was an incredibly gracious act, and it was so generous of him to give his time.

We do have differences, however, and I hope that we can dialogue again in the future, because we don't resolve some of those differences or disagreements that we have. However, he did leave me wanting more, to dialogue further, to probe down deeper, because.

And this is where I agree with Pete Wehner when he talked about owen Barfield and C.S. lewis, that they disagreed not because they just wanted to fight, but because they wanted to get to truth. And I think Dr.

Mohler shares that conviction. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So without further ado, let's listen into my conversation with Dr. Albert Mohler. Happy listening. Dr.

Albert Mohler, welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Glad to be with you, Travis.

Are you ready for the Fast five?

Well, I guess time will tell.

Okay, well, I know you grew up in Florida, and you've posted this online that your first job was at Publix.

So shopping is a pleasure.

What's your favorite Publix memory?

Oh, my dad was with Publix for 43 years. And, yeah, my favorite memory was when a very young woman came in who obviously didn't cook. And she asked me where she could find the eggs.

And I showed her the eggs, and she said, well, where do I find the yolks? And I said, well, inside the eggs. I don't want the rest of the egg. I just want the yolk. And so I.

I found a way to, you know, get a deli container and just sell her yolks.

That's a really good one. That's the first one for me.

She appeared to have no idea where they would otherwise be found. So.

All right, number two, here we go. The author that has influenced you most is who and why?

Oh, you know, just historically, I would say Francis Schaefer, because at a decisive point in my life, he really helped me to understand the big questions when I desperately, definitely needed someone to help me.

Oh, I actually got a chance. I was working with the guys at Crossway, and they have all his personal letters that have never been published. Just wonderful, wonderful, great man.

I got to meet him and, and see him and so just a remarkable man. And, but I know him primarily through his books.

Wonderful, wonderful. Here we go.

Number three.

Now, we also know, seeing what you, you know, you, you're a well dressed man, you've got a little fashion sense and how you put it out there, but your preferred fashion, fashion choice is what and why.

It's what I'm wearing right now. Because when you reach a certain age, a man needs to bless humanity by wearing as many clothes as possible.

All right, number, number four. Here we go. In light of that, the smartest dressed seminary president besides you is who and why?

Oh, I'd have to say Jason Allen at Midwestern Seminary because he cares about these things too. We work together and we've actually been in men's clothing stor. All over the place together. So.

All right, next question.

We may go down fighting, but we'll go down dressed.

I thought you were going to say Jay Ligon Duncan. I really did.

Well, Duncan is another one, obviously, incredibly dear friend Ligon Duncan is one of those guys that, in terms of how he dresses, is wise enough to have a uniform and, you know, that's just very Presbyterian. He is going to be well put together in a dark suit and a white shirt and a respectable tie anytime you see him.

And all of his warmth and all of his conviction is going to come. But that's one of the reasons why SBC guys like me and PCA guys like League can stay together. Because we all show up dressed like we're supposed to.

We're confused by liberals who show up. All right, number five.

Last of the fast five. Here, here's, here's kind of a little one out there. But if you were a restaurant, what restaurant would you be and why?

Oh, no, I, I didn't see that one coming. Because there are fewer things I could imagine being than a restaurant. But, and so I, I honestly. You stumped me on that one.

Other than to say, I, I think I would probably want comfort, I'd want to serve comfort food just because I think it's, it's great when food makes people happy. You know, the older I get, the less interested I am in being exhilarated by food. No, I know what you mean.

The more interested I am in just having a good meal and good conversation.

Just reflect, relax.

Right.

Hospitality. Something about Jesus talking about that. This, just sitting down and eating.

Absolutely. Let me put it this way. I think it is not a good thing.

It's a good thing for our civilization at the moment that we have access to so many foods we wouldn't have otherwise.

I don't think it's a particularly good thing that there's such a fascination with food that quite frankly, it transcends and eclipses many other issues of greater importance. And by that I mean variety and thrill.

Well, let's transition into that. We're talking about the current state of the church. I know that that is something that you have your finger on the pulse, what's going on right now.

And we've seen some of the data that came out. I'm not sure if you've had the opportunity to read the great Detourching yet. I know you're very well read, but we've seen, now we hear the stats.

41 million people have left the church over the last 25 years, 16% of the adult population. These weren't people that were fringe Christians. These were people that were considered to be the pillars necessarily in the church.

I know you have seen so many of the different things that have gone on, but what do you think of that? I mean, what's your thought? Was that a surprise to you to see that data, or is that right in line with what you've been seeing?

You know, I have some issues with the data, frankly, as presented, partly because I am in my seventh decade of life. I'm in my mid-60s, and so I've seen this data and I've learned how to read it over time, and I've seen the arguments made.

There's obviously something to it. So I'm not detracting from it and saying there's nothing there. There is something there.

But anyone who's surprised by this, I mean, frankly, hasn't really been watching what's been going on for decades. So this didn't. This isn't something that just happened. This is something that is being noticed.

But, you know, there are some things that, you know, first of all, what's the overarching question? The overarching question is what cultural conditions pertain or prevail at any given moment.

And so, you know, my entire adult life, and so, you know, we're talking about, you know, 50 years, a half century. We haven't been able as intelligent Christians to talk about this without the pattern of secularization.

And the only question has been how fast is it going?

So even when in the 80s, 90s, and even a little bit beyond that, people were talking about American exceptionalism, it wasn't that secularization won't happen. Here or isn't happening here, it's just happening here more slowly.

The other thing is that we basically know how it works and it's exactly what is seen in the numbers about church attendance and religious participation. I'll say this participation in Christian churches. So I don't think we've lost a lot of convictional, confessional evangelical Christians.

I think we've lost a lot of hangers on and an awful lot of people for whom it was culturally convenient to identify as Christian and quite frankly to be involved in a Christian church once the social price of Christian conviction goes up.

Well, guess what, you know, it doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that people who are going to lose social capital but don't really believe in what the church teaches, they're not going to hang around. So in other words, I find a few people who say they have deconstructed and they follow a pretty traditional narrative.

But those numbers don't add up to what you're talking about.

For instance, in that project, it's the numbers of people who were attenders of one sort or another, but evidently weren't deeply committed Christians. I just don't meet that many people who say I was once a very deeply committed Christian and I still believe the same things.

I just don't go to church anymore. I haven't met that species. I think the other thing is not taken into consideration or say three trends. Number one, people get older.

Well, I don't think any of us honestly thought all those numbers were going to continue. I mean, even the birth rate, that's the second thing.

The birth rate has fallen significantly and it has fallen among evangelicals, again, very significantly. And so, you know, you look at a youth group, well, guess what?

If you used to have four kids, now you have one and a half kids, you're missing a bunch of kids. And it's not because they're not coming to church, because they're not there. Now, I do know that the numbers still indicate a precipitous fall off.

But again, it's, I think what we should have explained expected.

And you know, I read that differently also because I'm a part of a church that 30 years ago was probably down to about 14 people and is now filled to the gills with hundreds of convictional young couples. My wife and I are among the old people in the church. And so there are 20 somethings.

And you know, yesterday, Sunday morning when we were sitting in church, we're behind a bunch of families and, you know, they're just babies and toddlers and preschoolers everywhere. And so I just want to say, you know, I know what those numbers look like, and I think big evangelical ism we all knew just wasn't going to last.

But I think evangelical Christianity in terms of the gospel is as powerful as ever.

That's a very good point.

Do you think that it's going to be more along that confessional church mentality, as you said, that the kind of the hangers on are falling off more of that Bonhoefferin idea of the confessing church as we move forward in this century?

Well, I mean it even deeper than Bonhoeffer. I mean it in the deeply creedal, confessional, say, reformation sense. And that was part of what Bonhoeffer meant.

But I want to go far beyond Bonhoeffer because in other words, I think it's a comprehensive affirmation of the truthfulness of the confession that binds us. And I think it's what keeps us. So here's the deal. When I was a teenager, I wasn't a big Southern Baptist megachurch.

And by the way, there was a real church there and real spiritual formation. I was really fed. The word had wonderful spiritual influence in my life. But you know what?

Our youth group was like the best thing in town if you're a teenager. We had the best show in town, the music the best in town.

We had a gymnasium in our church, which back then was so revolutionary, people couldn't believe it when they saw it. And so you could come play in the gymnasium, you could come hang out. You know, it was just a very popular place to be. Well, you know what?

The world doesn't need us for our gym anymore and we can't keep up anyway. And so the world does not need us for entertainment anymore.

The world doesn't even really need us as a safe place to park teenagers and middle schoolers, you know, because parents say, hey, they need friends, let's get them some church friends. That world is basically evaporated. So guess what?

We're about to find out who the Christians are and where the Christian churches are and how serious they are about preaching the gospel, reaching their communities, taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. So in other words, I'm basically not surprised by much of this at all. It's the younger guys who are surprised. The older guys are not surprised.

I think that's true because I've heard you say about, talk about this for years. You've cited it in your programs over the years about how the decline was the secularization.

How do you differentiate though, between secularization, what we see going on, as well as just Western culture finding its root around it? That's the thing I think of Lesslie Newbigin and how shall the west be converted? I mean, we've talked a lot about that.

We've seen this Homo syncretism with a lot of Western culture attaching itself to biblical Christianity, creating something entirely new. How do we try to detach as much as we possibly can and keep the essence of the gospel, what we seed to continue to proclaim the truth.

Of who Jesus is? Yeah, so I'm going to argue with you just a little bit here.

Go. Let's do it.

Because I don't think we're non cultural people. Of course, at least a part of what Imago Dei points to is the fact. I mean, you and I are speaking the English language.

Yeah, there's a lot of baggage there. But otherwise we're not having much of a conversation.

And look, we started out talking about the clothes we're wearing, et cetera, the books behind both of us. So in other words, we're part of an enormous culture, right down to the technology we're using and all the rest.

And so Christianity needs to be transcendent of the culture, but it can never, until the kingdom of Christ is fully realized and Christ claims his church, it can never be as countercultural as some people want to declare it to be. So you take, say, the most glaring example of the cultural syncretism. And we all know it's exactly what we're trying to avoid.

It was the German Christians, which Bonhoeffer was pointing to. And I mean the movement known as the German Christians, where it's Germanized Christianity.

And of course that ended up being subservient to the Nazi state. The thing I want to point out though is that Bonhoeffer and those who were with him in the Confessing Church, they still spoke German. Yeah.

You know, they still dressed like Germans and they were actually hearkening back to other German sources such as Luther.

And so all I'm saying is that, you know, I want to be really careful because I think the language that I inherited as a teenager and as a 20, something about countercultural Christianity really owed a lot more to hippie dreams than to biblical theology. So I look, you know, Christ is Lord. That's the most revolutionary statement we can make. I think also the truest statement we can make.

And, and I think the difficulty for the church or the challenge for the church is understanding that we have to, we have to emphasize a Christian culture that is, if anything, thicker than, than any other culture and quite frankly, is adaptable. You know, the gospel, thanks be to God, can be spoken in any language.

And, you know, one of the big, I think, important issues of the church, responsibilities of the church, is to translate the word of God into as many languages as possible.

And, you know, right now, with controversy going on with Pope Francis and his latest declaration on the blessing of same sex couples, you know, culture makes a difference because you've got super liberal cardinals in Germany who are already doing this, breaking the rules of the church, and quite frankly, just becoming the apostles of lgbtq. And then you've got African cardinals and bishops who are stalwartly in opposition.

You know, I don't think it's an accident that some of them are in Europe. And it's not to say all Europeans are liberal, but European culture is very liberal.

And then, you know, the opposition's coming from Africa and the global south, as it is called. I don't think that's an accident. And each has an explanation about why the other is as they are.

And so all I'm saying is I think we need a very sophisticated understanding of culture. The first book I wrote was entitled Culture Shift, and it was about the massive shift that's come in Western culture.

And I think I pretty much still think along the same lines.

You're right. We are in total agreement. The culture shifts a lot. What we see as we go through all of that.

We've done a lot of study on culture and how much it affects what we see, but the truth of the gospel remains. We've also said there is no such thing. And you have to understand this.

The naked Christ, because culture Christ always comes clothed in a culture itself. So I'm in complete agreement with you. And let's talk about this for a second.

Now six out of 10 Christians are from the global South. We see this all around us.

In the United States, we see God bringing the nations to either revive the churches that the ones that are coming in are Believers and or to be reached with the gospel of Jesus. We have this awesome opportunity.

Yet the criticisms that have come against the greater white evangelical church is that they don't seem to go well together to play well in the sandbox. How do we help keep the truth of the gospel? Because many of these groups that are coming in aren't. They're bible believing, many of them.

But yet there seems to be a resistance by. In some respect, there's some churches doing great jobs in reaching out and becoming more multi ethnic. Not that that was their intention.

They're just trying to reach the around them. How do we help our people to see the mission opportunities around us at this cultural moment?

Don't reload, if you don't mind.

No, not a problem.

Yeah.

Demographic shift is clear.

It's demographic shift.

It is happening across the United States, but yet we see it almost by the media portrayed as American evangelicalism is a monolithic, it's just by itself.

And yet we see, and I interact with pastors all the time that are still resistant and they can't see the opportunities for mission right here with the different nations around us. And part of the reason is I.

Guess I just see it otherwise. I see churches that are doing the opposite. I'm sure you're right, you're seeing something.

But I'm just saying I think most of the pastors I know are as eager as possible to get about that task. And I do think we gotta get over some rather simplistic thinking about this.

And one of them is, and I'll never forget a hard conversation I had with a Korean Christian brother about one of these issues. And he said, look, here's the problem, he said, you think we're standoffish? And he said, actually we like Korean food.

And he caught me off guard, but he said we speak Korean. And he said a lot of our family members really are. That's not only the first language, it's still kind of the main language.

And what he was saying is that this idea of an evangelical gospel centered church in which in this age you have in one congregation men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. He's just saying that's not exactly quite how it works. And so I think we need to call out, we need to preach the gospel to all people.

We need to call out Christians and help Christian churches to be established.

And it goes back to, I think the great missionary insight you know, the first insight of a person like William Carey was we have to take the gospel to the nations. The second thing was things are gonna look different in India than they do in London. And that's not wrong.

Right.

And so just trying to figure. I hope we're talking about the same thing, but just trying to figure that out. So I want to be a part of a church in which everyone is welcome.

And I see some marvelous illustrations. For example, Metropolitan Tabernacle, you know, the church that Charles Spurgeon. Yeah. Established there. I had some friends who were there.

I've been there myself years ago. I had some friends who were there just a matter of weeks ago.

And they said, you know, it was being simulcast into something like 27 languages in the service. And, you know, there are all these earpieces. People are listening and there's someone translating.

You know, there's something absolutely wondrous about that. But that is a particular neighborhood in London, you know, in rural America, it's not going to look the same way.

And so I'm saying that with great appreciation for what they're doing. I think in wonderful picture of faithfulness to Christ. I also think it makes me yearn for the kingdom of Christ in its fullness.

It makes me yearn for heaven, because in heaven, we won't have to be in different groups with earpieces in our ear, just hearing our own tribe. Does that make sense?

Oh, no, that makes total sense.

I couldn't be further in agreement with you just because we've seen such an explosion, but we've also seen a resistance, or not resistance, perhaps a blindness to see the realities of that opportunity around them. But you and I are in complete agreement on what's going on there.

Yeah. I think maybe some encouragement is in order here, because I am really seeing.

And maybe it's just because I'm a part of a specific community here in Louisville with a bunch of churches. But you may have heard a horse racing industry here and.

Keep going. I'm sorry.

Yeah. No.

And, you know, over the last 20 years, there's been a huge shift in the ethnicity of a lot of people who are in the back of Churchill Downs and of the racing industry. They're the people who make it all happen, who take care of the horses and, you know, that. That entire culture. And so I've just been really thrilled.

There's some incredible ministries, many of them involving our students. But, you know, we don't want. We don't want just to encourage a parachurch ministry.

They're deep Gospel churches who are just there seven days a week ministering to people and in languages that, quite frankly, you know, we're never here before in any sizable numbers. So I just want to say, you know, I think maybe this is a bit generational, and so maybe it's younger pastors. But.

But then I'm, I'm correcting myself because I think of the churches directly involved in those ministries, and those pastors are. Some of them are my age and, and, and near it, but they're younger people in the church.

And, you know, I think they are just, to be honest, more accustomed to, to some of these questions. But I think some of them are also, you know, having to kind of chase in some of the things they said they wanted. You know, what.

What does faithfulness look like? Faithfulness looks like men and women for every tongue and nation in a church on the Lord's Day.

Well, you know, that's going to make preaching really complicated, which is one of the reasons why, I mean, the Day of Pentecost is a picture of the challenge, you know, and we do not have the Day of Pentecost happening where everyone hears what Peter preaches in his own language. And so there's a reason why we need to call out preachers. That's the reason why we.

You know, when I came here as president, we didn't have a Spanish language program. Well, we're now expanding into a Spanish language PhD program. That means only Spanish. We already have the Doctor of Ministry program.

We already have the entire Master of Divinity program, and that's just one. We've got other languages already.

I mentioned Korean, the same thing, but I'm not really throwing stones at the past because they didn't even maybe see the challenge or have the opportunity or the technology. Frankly, the technology is vital here. And so, yeah, I'm just incredibly thankful. So I want to agree with you. There's a lot of missed opportunity.

I just want to encourage and say, man, I'm just seeing evangelical Christians who really love the gospel really leaning into this.

That's incredibly encouraging to be able to hear that. And there are so many different things that we've been faced. You talked about this in crisis, happening all over the place, even in our own backyard.

And today you can't talk about the mission of God unless you're talking about how to deal and interact with the political culture in which we find ourselves. We're coming up on an election now.

No, I hadn't noticed. Glad you told me.

My question is, though, is we?

We've seen a lot of the stuff coming up with Christian nationalism, the Moscow mood. What are your thoughts? That's what's going on with that right now.

Well, again, I've been at this a long time, so I'm not scared off by the term Christian nationalism. And I know that the most egregious problem here is on the left, which wants to basically tell Christians to get out of the entire arena.

And I've just seen this.

It's the radical right, it's the Christian right, it's the new Christian right, It's the new new Christian right, it's the radical Christian right, it's the white Christian right. And it's. It's all. It's all the same people. People.

Yeah, same stuff.

Yeah. So, I mean, I had a young reporter talking to me not too long ago for the Washington Post, and, you know, which is kind of throwing this around.

Everyone went, well, that's a new thing. No, it said, this is. This has been around a long time. And look, I am a Christian, and I also unapologetically believe in the importance of nations.

And I'll tie that to a biblical theology. That's not the end of the story because of the gospel, but it's very much a part of the story.

And I think the Christian doctrine of subsidiarity, and I know a lot of Christians are going, well, what is a Christian doctrine of subsidiarity? The fact that people don't know it's part of the problem. It's a deeply Christian principle that the greatest truth, unity, flourishing, subsides.

Good Latin word at the lowest, most fundamental level of society, which is how the Bible starts.

You know, male and female created he them to the the man and the woman in marriage be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, which is to say, the most basic fundamental institution in all of creation when it comes to human beings, is marriage and the family. And now you say that these days, people say, well, you're a radical right Christian.

Well, yeah, that's Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, you know, folks, and I have nowhere to go other than Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And if you're going to tell me that some agency or the state can raise a child as well as a mom and dad, I'm not even going to take you seriously.

Now, in a fallen world, because we do have Genesis 3. In a fallen world, there are going to be unfaithful moms and dads. There are going to be absent moms and dads, they're going to be dead moms and dads.

And so someone's going to have to step in. But subsidiarity says it needs to be the next most fundamental level. And in other words, you don't abstract that to a national adoption agency.

I'm not saying there's no national responsibility. I'm just saying nothing national is going to feed one kid and clothe him and take care of him or her.

And so, you know, I hope I'm answering your question.

No, you're going keep.

I think in biblical theology, and I realize the word nation, let's be intellectually honest, you know, ethne culture, language group. I think, though, that the modern nation state as we know it is as big as things can get and be workable at all.

I think subsidiarity just says, you know, again, I think globalism is a Genesis tower of Babel problem. And I'm saying we don't have a global responsibility. I got a responsibility everybody, everywhere.

But the Christian responsibility is first to exactly what's described to Israel. The widow and the orphan and the alien in your midst.

Right.

It's repeated over and over again in the Old Testament. And so, in other words, same thing with a church.

Where you find a church in a neighborhood, that neighborhood should be flourishing more because that Gospel congregation's there. Does that congregation have an impact in Africa? Well, let's hope so.

It may mean that there's a direct relationship with some brothers and sisters in Africa where things are happening, but it's also just in building a culture of flourishing. But if someone's going to feed a child in Africa, you know, it needs to be someone who's there.

And optimally, it needs to be someone who knows that child and loves that child and is going to care for that child. So it's not just about one meal.

We need something more than just, you know, feeding a Meal we need to look at, you know, the comprehensive needs. So all I'm saying is I'm not going to be. Because I realize you think that was a very deft move. Mohler, you just talked about.

You were asked about the Moscow mood and you went to feeding children in Africa. And so I want to acknowledge that I am getting there, and that is that I believe that a nation is a comprehensible unit.

And look, nations can get too big, they can become unwieldy. And that's the problem of empire.

The empire is a complicated question, but the biggest problem with empire is that it becomes unwieldy for the imperial nation. And so, in other words, it just doesn't work. It's overextended.

Britain thought it had an unshakable empire, and all it took was the first few months of World War II to prove that the empire was in many ways becoming a liability rather than an asset. Other issues involved, to be sure.

But all I'm saying is I'm a Christian, and I am committed to an understanding of the stewardship of nation, and I think it means something. So if you want to call me a Christian nationalist, as I tell people, I'm not going to run from that.

That does not mean what anybody wants to define as nationalism, because you can say that nationalism is what brought about Nazism. Yeah, but it's also what brought about the American response to Nazism.

In World War II, they weren't printing arbitrary colors on things to show American identity and solidarity against the Nazi evil. They were showing red, white and blue.

It is because we're a part of a culture in which just even to see those colors evokes certain commitments and a certain responsibility. And I'm not going to be run off from that.

I think that an awful lot of younger evangelicals somehow think that we can have an ordered civilization without political limitations. I don't believe that's at all true.

It's interesting you mentioned that, going back for. Just for a moment and introducing something to you that I know you've read, you've interacted with, you've written on it.

James Davison, Hunter To Change the World. He's got a book that's coming out in the spring called Democracy and Human Solidarity with Yale.

And I was actually at a symposium with him recently, and we were discussing the necessity of cultural regeneration.

And there were some that were there not Christians, but we were talking about Christianity and what role that it plays in institutions and Christian social thought and all these different pieces that are there and one of the things that was interesting, one man was there and he wasn't a Christian. And I talked to him and I said, why are you here? And he said, well, I believe that Christianity is essential for a liberal democracy.

Which really caught me off guard that you have an unbelieving man who sees this. Do you think that's true? That we need Christianity as essential?

Absolutely. This is the Bachenfurted dilemma. It's the same problem.

In other words, the system of government, of constitutionalism, of respect for human rights that is part and parcel of the West. Representative democracy, electoral representation, all the rest. This didn't come from nowhere, came from somewhere.

And by the way, it uniquely came somewhere. And so, you know, even if people say, well, it's wrong to call that a Western invention, well, everybody else copied it from somewhere.

I'm serious, I'm thankful for that. But the fact that in India you have a parliament is not accidental. You know, that is not a Sanskrit word.

Right.

You know, in other words, and I'm not being condescending here, I'm just saying because we're all in the United States, we're the great absorber of every idea we can get from anybody, anywhere. But on the other hand, this civilization is only what it is because of the influence of Christianity in Western culture.

You know, the notion of human rights, it was not based contrary to the French Revolution and merely being a citizen. It was based on something far deeper, something explicitly biblical. And by the way, the French Revolution led to chaos and to the guillotine.

It takes the restraint of Christianity to understand why given, say, the Christian doctrine of sin, you must have a limited government with checks and balances, lest there be a pooling of depravity in an autocrat.

It's fascinating you mentioned that. I had a conversation with Osginis about the same thing and the same with Glenn Scribner.

As he wrote the book the Air We Breathe, he talked about how basically rights, technology, education, medicine, all this comes from a Judeo Christian worldview. Everything that we have that's here today, right? And right now what we see people doing is sitting on the branch and trying to sever itself.

And then, then it is chaos. It just completely continues to ravel.

Well, it's not gonna be chaos, it's gonna be anti human chaos. And so let me get in trouble with you here.

Let's do it.

Let's go ahead and get in trouble.

Okay.

There are, there are goods and, and there are evils in every human civilization. And that's because the Good is explained by the imago dei and the evil is explained by depravity, human sin, of course.

Okay, that does not mean all cultures are equal. They've not all made an equal contribution. China is an incredible resilient civilization.

No native development along the lines of human rights and representative government that you've seen in the West. And that's coming right down to the rivalry between the west and China right now. Now that's an honest disagreement.

But the differences at base is even someone like Will and Ariel Durant is writing history of civilization in the 20th century without embarrassment. They said one's based in a Confucian understanding, that is based in a Christian understanding.

And that was said not by some wild eyed fundamentalist, that was said by just an historian.

Looking honestly at the world in the early 20th century, you've got one part of the world influenced by Christianity, another world influenced by other things. And it makes a difference that shows up in the culture.

Well, Vishal Mangawati talks about that in his book, the book that made your world. And he actually says that the Bible made Western civilization, but in some ways it's made modern India in this.

As you said, you've already alluded to it.

Right.

That's one of the reasons why when we talk about colonialism we have to say, yes, there was a lot of evil in it, but on the other hand, the courts that are trying the evils are also the result of the same colonialism. And so, you know, Paul Johnson, very prominent British historian, I think got it right.

And it was a crystallizing moment for me when he said that colonialism is one of the unanswerable moral challenges of human history. Like he said, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire at its worst was tyrannical.

On the other hand, it brought about institution structures that the colonialized have not wanted to forfeit and not wanted to give away. And you know, look, there are horrible things. It's like abortion in the United States right now. It's just, it's just a horrible thing.

Yeah, it's, it's.

I think we've been awakened in the last several months to how horrifying this culture's commitment to abortion is. When William Carey went to India, one of the first things he had to deal with was sati.

You know, widows of men being burned alive with the cremation of their Husbands. Okay, so you know what?

The only answer to either one, and don't we know it right now in the abortion challenge in the United States, the only answer is imago dei, unless you believe that that unborn child is made in the image of God, it's just a woman's reproductive health that's at stake. And so that's what they're calling it. And they don't even make reference to the inhabitants of the womb.

And we have to make reference to the inhabitant of the womb as a person.

So all I'm saying is in both cases, the only corrective I know is Christianity and the mago dei, and quite frankly, I would say throughout all of human history, all of human history. I'll say this comprehensively, without any fear of contradiction.

In all of human history, the only sustained arguments for human dignity are biblical arguments, period, exclamation point.

I would agree with you and talking about that, the answer is Christianity.

But one of the things that we've also noticed, and again, I know you, you've read James Davidson Hunter, where he talks about how we have the centers of society, we have our institutions, and right now the trust in institutions is at least what we hear in the media, is that it's an all time low. How do we though, continue to move on as a society without the institutions? Do we try to find a way to help reinvigorate those institutions?

Is this an opportunity to do that? Or we just put it aside?

What is our role for contributing to the flourishing of society as we serve within institutions that convey greater meaning to the subsequent generations that come?

I think Dr. Hunter and I are probably in a very different place in answering that question. We're in a very different place than just speaking.

He's at the University of Virginia. I am at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. You may note we have linkages, we have some shared history, but we are not the same thing.

And I do not believe that an overly ambitious plan for a Christian reconquest of existing institutions is very plausible.

I think the danger is, number one, that we'll spend our energy there and lose our own children, or two, that we will redefine what victory looks like and be very settled with something like Victorian religiosity and a veneer or slowing a collapse slightly, as if that's a final victory. It's not, of course, so I hope I'm making sense. But I think Christians have to create parallel institutions.

I mean, I'm working every day with people who are in orphan care, who are being pushed out of the business if they won't buy entirely into the LGBTQ revolution.

I had to deal an hour before I talked with you with a Christian university under sustained attack simply because it holds to a biblical understanding of sexuality. And they're being told, look, you're not going to be able to do this without the active opposition of the state. You know, so let me ask this.

How overtly Christian. I'm not speaking of Professor Hunter himself or of others, of, I'll say, our generation. I'll put myself with his generation.

I want to speak of 20 or 30 somethings, those who are looking for jobs, say, at a place like the University of Virginia. How outspokenly Christian can they be?

Or even, you know, just under duress, acknowledge that they hold to a Christian understanding of sexuality issues and gender and all the rest? What's the hope any of them could get hired? I think the honest answer is very little. I think we know that.

So, you know, I'm very, very suspicious of claims of a Christian reconquest of the institutions. I just don't see any model in history in which that was meaningfully done in the modern age.

Do you think, though, creating parallel institutions is. I mean, is that completely feasible, number one, or how do we be. I mean, most people just can't do that. They can't find other institutions.

They go to their job. They have to work within it. They have to ask themselves, how do I contribute and show Jesus in the middle of this? I mean, we're not following.

Rod Dreier's idea of the Benedict option is just completely withdrawing from society. So how do we then.

Rod Dreher didn't completely withdraw from society either. Oh, that's true.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, his book was published by a major American publisher, in other words. But he's making a serious point.

And just to answer your serious question, I think nearly every week I'm contacted by someone in the military saying I am really coming very close to a point at which I will have to violate Christian conviction to remain in uniform. American corporations and others very much involved in this. And I'm not making a blanket statement. I can't tell everyone when that point comes.

I have met with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to talk about these issues. And I've been told basically they're on the winning side, I'm on the losing side, and their employees are pretty much aware of the same thing.

I think there are entire professions, Travis, that Christians are going to get kicked out of in fairly short order.

I have professors of pediatrics in medical schools telling me, I think it's going to be very, very difficult for Christian young people to become pediatricians, given the direction of the pediatric profession and what is now being defined as standards of care on gender questions and all the rest.

And in some medical schools, not so far as I know in the United States at this point, but elsewhere in the English speaking world, medical school applicants are being asked if they'd be willing to perform abortions. And the policies of some of these schools is, if not, then this is not an acceptable answer for someone who's going to be a medical professional.

Right?

I took office when Bill Clinton took office, and that's a world ago. I want to prepare students for the world they're going to have to face.

And look, I think that means for Christians in the United States, a whole lot of professions we're not going to be in. And I think that's a new thing. I think that's a very new thing.

I think the great threat is to the middle class existence of confessional Christianity in the United States. I'm not sure we're going to have much of a middle class existence.

What's that going to look like then? If you're saying there's not going to be much of middle class existence, what.

Do you see then? You know, first of all, I don't think this society can continue along the same lines ad infinitum.

And so now you're talking to the host of the briefing.

And so in the course of the last seven months, what's happened, Italy, the Netherlands, even in some Scandinavian countries and elsewhere you have the election of people who are, the American media says, far right peoples, Geert Wilders, who just won the election in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands, which has been one of the most liberal places on earth, just elected someone who's an anti liberal who won the election and got to put together a coalition and all the rest. But the point is this is a wake up call. People won't march off a cliff indefinitely without some pushback. Now, does this mean cultural recovery?

I'm not saying that. I am saying some pushback. And so I don't think things can continue.

But here again, Travis, I would simply say if we didn't have the New Testament, I would really despair. And I guess that's an early comprehensive statement on every score I would despair.

But, you know, Paul was writing to Christians on the underside of the Roman Empire, not on the top side of the Roman Empire. So evidently Christianity can do really well on the underside of a civilization.

I'm not praying for that, but I think we have to be willing to face that.

Do you think, though, that the Constantinian temptation is always there? That we actually do do better on the underside when we're not?

I will not make that argument. I simply will not make that argum. I think that is one of the most fundamentally stupid arguments in modern Christianity.

So I'll simply say no, it is, it is. I think it's a fundamentally stupid argument. And look, the older I get, the less I prance around these issues.

If you have a chance to save human lives, save them. Of course, if you have the opportunity to conform the law to protect human rights, do it.

And that means that I am not going to apologize for hoping that the culture will be more driven by Christian impulses than less. And that means that in a system, I would rather have a Christian king than a pagan king.

I will be with Luther here to say I would rather have a pagan king who upholds Christian truth and Christian understandings on these issues than a Christian king who didn't. But those who look to Constantinianism, I'll simply say, look, there's a price to being on the underside of the culture.

There's a stewardship to being in the driver's seat of the culture and at every point in between. But I simply say, I think it's irrational to look at Western civilization and say, I really wish that the Roman Empire continued pagan.

Of course, when you put it that way, yeah, it sounds foolish.

Well, and I know what you were doing and I know what you're citing. And so when you look at people like Leslie Newbiggin, I mean, they're onto something.

And you have to give him credit for having been on both sides of the equation, for having been someone raised in the apogee of the British Empire, the apex, I should say. And then also being a bishop in India. And so I think his seminal insight was to come back and say, there is such a thing as a post Christian culture.

It's harder to reach than a pre Christian culture. But in the middle of that's a Christian culture. And look, it comes with all kinds of moral problems.

But I'll simply say, I still would contend for I would rather have a Christian prince than a pagan prince driven by paganism.

And if I have a chance to save the unborn, and that means electing people who will commit to save the unborn and who will affirm what marriage is, you go down the list, then I'm going to do that without apology. And by the way, this is where our modern conversation among some evangelicals about post Constantinianism and kind of a neo Anabaptism.

Well, my family originally was Anabaptist. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The houses are still there and a lot of molars are still there, too.

I'll simply say that it is not an accident that Anabaptist communities thrive when they're surrounded by non Anabaptist communities who actually do have police cars and do have standing garments. And so I say that with respect to my relatives and evangelicals who want to be Anabaptist, that is not what they really mean.

They're buying into a little. It's consumer Anabaptism they want. I have gotten deep into it with you. Anyone else we can offend while we're at it?

Well, that wasn't my intent. Just so you know. But really quick, I know your time is limited.

Just five concluding thoughts here for the church going forward, because we want to see the church thrive. We want to see the gospel of Jesus go forward. We want to see the kingdom of God grow, lives transformed.

We want to see God glorified in the middle of all this. We want to see all of the things that we know the New Testament speaks about at this moment, what you see.

Because again, you have your finger on the pulse of everything that's going on around. What do you see as the biggest challenges for the church going forward right now, at this moment?

Yeah, well, I certainly. I'm going to correct you on one thing, which is I certainly don't have my finger on the pulse of everything going on.

Well, more than most.

Well, more than most because I wade into the swamp every single day. And so, yeah, I can name more than most. So, you know, I think the big danger here is that we'll lose all historic perspective. I think the now is so.

And look, what does the now have now? Now is milliseconds on Twitter or X or.

Yeah, whatever Elon Musk is going to call it tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, in other words, so the now, you know, people. People always have talked about the.

The Christian challenge of, you know, getting out of the now into, you know, a larger perspective of time and God's purposes. I think it's a lot More difficult now, no pun intended. I think it's very.

It's very difficult, you know, so one of the things I say is read books, not tweets. I'm not saying don't. Don't care what's on social media, but, I mean, you can't care too much.

But the Christian church leans into, like, lots of words, not just a few words. Leans into comprehensive arguments. Like I say, I don't trust people who argue with 280 characters.

You know, if that's all they do, I don't even have time to paste them all together, you know, and most of them. Most of them couldn't be, you know, give me a. Give me a. Give me, you know, a book, and I'll take it seriously. It's what I do in my program.

Thinking in public. Most of those conversations with people with whom I disagree, but they've written a major book, and now we got something to talk about, buddy.

And so I'm exhilarated by that.

And look, I consider it an honor that major publishers want me to do these programs with their authors, and they know I'm coming from a very different viewpoint. But you know what? I had a guest tell me we talk more about my book than any of the other book programs I've been on.

Well, it's because we take it seriously. And so I can say is we got to get out of the. How do I get through the next 15 minutes? Not that that's irrelevant. We got 15 minutes.

We got an answer for here, but how do we do anything for the long haul? And, you know, I think right now you've got young people who say, you know, I'm just scared to have kids.

Well, you know, the answer to that is, first of all, I'm assuming you're married, and that's a man and a woman in marriage. So let's just start there. But you, you know, if you're not scared to have kids, you're an idiot. You know.

You know, anyone who thinks, you know, gosh, this is so hard these days, you know, my goodness, look at the book of Romans and tell me how hard things, you know, can get.

Peter.

Oh, right. Oh, and it gets worse. It gets worse, you know. You know, and. And yet, you know, the Christian responsibility is, you know, I. I love church history.

I did a thinking in public with Peter Brown. You invented a whole area of history in the late antiquity. You know, he's now in major universities at Princeton for.

He was writing in his 10th decade of life. How's that for an aspiration. But wow.

You know, he points out, he said, look, Christianity's impact on the Roman Empire was not just in terms of morality and truth and all the rest. It was, hey, plant a field. You know, plow that field, put seed in it and build a civilization. And he said, that was Christianity. That was Augustine.

You know, that was the battle between Augustine and the Pelagians. And the Pelagians were saying, let the field go fallow. And Augustine's saying, no, plant the field. People are hungry.

Go have babies, get married, build a village, start a business. This is human flourishing. And plant a church.

And may it be a gospel church, and may it preach the word and give your life in due sequence and proportion to everything God has given us in stewardship. And go to bed at night every night T and with something to do that wakes you up in the morning.

That's a good concluding thought. No? Amen. Pass the plate. Let's go. I loved it. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. Really.

You've been an inspiration to so many people over the years. Your voice has been one that's guided so many people as they're trying to navigate these cultural chaotic waters in which we find ourselves.

But I just want to thank you for coming on Apollos Water.

Travis, good to be on and I appreciate pray God's blessing to you and all who listen.

We covered so much ground in such a short period of time.

I'm going to be thinking about this conversation for quite some time and I've played it back in my head a few different times because I have to say this, Dr. Mohler is a master at conversation. I mean, seriously, he reframed my questions, he dodged others and even admits it that he did that on the show.

So I'm not saying something here that he himself did not admit. It was a very interesting exercise for myself and one that I have learned from.

And I really do appreciate him again for coming on the show because there is much that we do agree on. We have very similar theological convictions and we are on the same page in many key ways.

But we do differ, especially when it comes to the great deturching. I think he's both right and wrong. He was certainly right that this was something that has been coming for a long time. I don't disagree there.

But population shifts and people merely going to church because it was culturally beneficial, while true and significant, doesn't really tell the full story, especially of what I am seeing and what I have heard.

We've talked with several people over the last year, including Russell Moore, who speak to the fact that we have lost our credibility, our integrity as a church, because of the way we have handled or not handled allegations of abuse and financial impropriety, as well as racial issues and others. And that's just to start that we, as Christians, we need to live out our mission.

And when we don't, well, it's no wonder that people say, you don't believe what you say. You believe I'm out. Some might disagree with me on that. And that's fine. You can be wrong, because you are wrong. I mean, seriously, you are.

We agree that we have to create a thicker cultural institution, but we believe strongly that the threat of empire or of Constantinianism is alive and well. I don't believe for a second that we shouldn't be involved in the public arena generally, or politics specifically.

At the same time, we have to be careful about the tendency to want to force what we believe on those around us. Now, does that mean that we don't speak up about important issues like abortion or gay marriage? Of course not.

We have to stand for biblical truth no matter what. But we should expect non believers to act like non believers. We need to show them a better way in the way of Jesus. I think Dr.

Mohler's concern that we may be coming to a place where certain professions are going to be very hard for us as Christians to maintain our places in the coming years is true. That is an area where we have very much to learn from our brothers and sisters around the world.

And that's one of the reasons why we try to speak to global voices, to someone outside of our sphere that they can speak into it. They see it differently. And I agree that there is the danger of losing historical perspective.

We need to both recognize what's going on right now, and we have to look broader. Church history has much to teach us about both the trials that we have and will face and about the kinds of things that we need to believe and do.

When we look to Christianity's impact in the past, we can see both where we went wrong and where we went right. There's hope there. God is still sovereign, and he has given us a mission in this world. Again, I want to thank Dr.

Mohler for being so gracious and generous in his time. Even though we disagree on some issues, I hope that we can continue to dialogue in the future.

I want to thank our Apollo's water team for helping us to water the world. And I want to thank you, the listener, for tuning in to our show today.

Be sure to check out any of our past episodes, go to our YouTube channel or communicate with us. Tell us about the show. What do you agree with, what do you not agree with? And we will interact. We will respond because we will want to hear from you.

Without further ado, this is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Water. Stay watered, everybody.