#247 | Building Unity Amid Polarization: Calling You Deeper Than Media Headlines with James Davison Hunter, Pt. 2

There's also an active nihilism, which is about the will to destroy. And our political culture is now oriented we on both sides of the cultural divide, the political cultural divide.

Can't imagine an America that's united that includes the other side.

Welcome to those who Serve the Lord, a podcast for those at the front lines of ministry. You've given your life to serve, but what happens when the well runs dry?

If you've felt the weight of leadership, the tension between tradition and change, or the challenge of staying faithful while engaging culture, you're not alone. I'm Travis Michael Fleming, founder and executive director of Apollos Watered, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics.

I've been at the front lines for over 25 years, leading churches to become thriving testimonies of God's grace. I've wrestled with the same questions you're facing, and I've seen how God brings renewal even in the hardest seasons.

Each week we have conversations with pastors, theologians, and cultural thinkers as we seek to equip you to lead well and stay rooted in Christ amid shifting cultural tides. So grab your coffee and listen in, because your faith matters, your work is not in vain, and the Lord is still with you every step of the way.

Welcome back to those who Serve the Lord.

Today we continue our conversation with sociologist and public intellectual James Davison Hunter about his book Democracy and Solidarity, the Roots of America's Political Crisis, a book that Tim Keller, who was a close friend of James Davison Hunter, said was a game changer. In part one of our conversation, we explored why so many Christians turn to politics as the primary means of cultural change.

But as Hunter makes clear, real transformation isn't just about laws and elections. It's about shaping the deeper structures of culture. As you listen today, I want you to keep a few key questions in mind.

Number one, why do political solutions so often fail to bring about lasting change? Number two, what's the difference between surface level activism and deep cultural transformation?

And number three, how do we do the deep work of culture, the deep work of bringing about change where we are, as God allows? If we want to see real change, we need to think bigger than just politics.

And be sure to stay tuned to some opportunities and announcements after our conversation. Let's dive in.

Well, I think the exhaustion plays out in two different ways, and I try to describe those two different ways in that chapter. One is the obvious way. People are just worn out. They're tired. They're tired of the polarization. They're tired of fighting.

They don't See it going anywhere. Again, what's the point? We might as well just dig in and. And just try to win it all again. I think that's true on the left as well as on the right.

But the exhaustion is also playing out at a different level, and that is the sense of exhaustion, as in depletion. We no longer have the resources available to us to make cogent arguments, to make thoughtful arguments, to make persuasive arguments.

And I'll give you an example. Millennialism was one of the most significant cultural realities of the late 18th and 19th century. In fact, all the way through Woodrow Wilson.

This sense of destiny for America. And there were secular versions of it, and there were Christian and religious versions of it.

But this notion that the nation has a sense of destiny, it permeated our public culture for well over a century.

What is now being called Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism is, in a way, can be seen from that lineage, this notion that America was a Christian nation, it had a destiny to fulfill, and so on. There are two points to be made here.

The fact of the matter is that when you look at the maturing black church in America, you look at the sermons that are being preached, you look at the. The writings that were being published within the black church. It was every bit as much millennialist in its view of the nation.

There was a sense that God has blessed America and we are part of that blessing.

And yes, we have been mistreated for generation after generation in unspeakable ways, but God in his grace has blessed us, and we are part of that providential movement in history. This is the black church. Christian nationalism wasn't just white, it was also black.

That's a really important point to make, in part because it was embedded within a theologically rich eschatology, a theologically rich view of the nation. That theological depth is absent now. Christian nationalism is only an identity group.

People don't even try to embed Christian nationalism within a serious theology. They don't even try. It's become simply tribal in nature. It's one identity group like any other identity group.

To the point now surveys are showing that people who identify with Christian nationalism oftentimes aren't even Christian. They don't even identify as Christian anymore. It's just a flag to wave. It's an identity group.

And that's part of the transformation of evangelicalism. Much of evangelicalism, it is in the name of Christianity, is becoming something quite secular and pagan and very political, just.

Much more political than anything else.

And precisely because it is Nietzschean in its character. It's about power, not about faith.

You are right now. Here's where I find it gets tricky. And we're actually working on a manuscript right now on how virtues became vices and corrupted the church.

And one of the things that we talk about is just this idea of power that we see within the church, but it's masked under this guise of life, biblical truth that we're fighting for. How do you respond to those who say that?

To say what?

Well, when they say, like let's say you said, okay, it's about power. And I'm not going to disagree with you.

Right.

What I'm saying is that the people that have those positions of power don't give that type of naked, naked confession. It's under the argument of we're trying to fight for life. And how do you differentiate and help people to see?

Because people are trained to respond to certain issues, especially within the pro life idea. We want to stand for the all pro life and all of its different pieces. And yet it seems to me that it just, it's a fear that people have.

They want to stay in power. They want to have their own creaturely comforts and they, they fear the past being lost, which is lost. It is lost. It's. It's no longer there.

But there is something that is for the future that could be even better depending on how you see it and what God wants to do within the nations. But if you're trying to recover some type of idea of cultural utopia of 50 to 75 or 100 years ago, well, it, it wasn't there.

I mean, there were parts of it, yes, but that doesn't exist now. You are dealing with a far different reality.

However, many Christians that I interact with and Christian leaders will say, hey, I want to fight for life. That's what it comes down to to me. And you go, really?

Is it about life for you or is it you're trying to maintain some idea of cultural respect and power? How do you respond to those that have that type of argument?

Well, I would want to address it theologically. I would want to say first of all that God is life, but he is also love. How do you, how do you protect life?

Within the Christian movement today, it is mainly through political means. That's the strategy of choice. Get our person in the White House, get our per. That. That's been the case within for Christians for many decades now.

We need, they would say we need to wield the levers of power in order to protect life. Well, let's understand what the government is, what the state is.

The state is the only institution that possesses the legitimate use of coercion, of power of violence, you break the law. The state is the only institution that has the legitimate use of violence against you for having broken the law.

So they will talk about defending life, but using the power of coercion, the power of violence. State legitimated violence to achieve that. Okay, well, in a democracy you could say that's entirely legitimate. But where is love in all of this?

Where is love in all of this?

Where is the care for the young girl who's been abandoned by her boyfriend, abandoned by her family, who is pregnant out of wedlock and caring for that?

The pro life movement as a whole is primarily oriented toward just changing the laws and using the coercive power of the state to maintain those laws, to sustain those.

If the Christian message, if Christian action isn't rooted in love and care for real human beings, and I would include the unborn child, but also that child's mother, it's simply just going to look to everyone else as power.

It's also significant that the pro life movement and of Christians who are defending life, in my opinion, they should be actively involved in creating a movement toward adoption in every State of the Union gathering. Names of families on a petition that can be announced in public. The state of Illinois, the state of New York, the state of California.

There are no unwanted children. A movement like that is, is a movement of love and of care and of compassion that costs. It announces to the world that this is about love and.

But where is that movement? So there was a lot of gloating after the Dobbs decision.

I think the pro life movement, precisely because it is mainly committed to power, above all power. Not power through love, but just power, failed to demonstrate its care for the young women who are pregnant out of wedlock.

I think had they led with love in demonstrable ways, the pro life movement would have had much, much more credibility. But it doesn't. And as a consequence, it just looks like a kind of power hungry, concrete love.

I'm talking about not just love in the abstract, but it's got to be incarnational.

Yeah. And that's why one of the things that we talk about that doing ministry in the 21st century, you have to earn the right to be heard.

And that means you have to, you have to listen, sacrifice, suffer. And I don't think we, we don't really have an idea of what that looks like in our world.

But as you said before, these deep Structures are carrying people on.

Even if you change the law, which we, you know, you see the Dobbs decision, of course, coming out, but then you see states then codifying it in their constitutions. Because we haven't changed the culture.

Yeah.

We haven't changed the deep structure, and we haven't been able to communicate meaning. So law only can do some good. It can't change the heart of what we're looking at.

And that's really what I see as your argument is that before we used to have.

We could draw from the reservoirs as first from a Christian perspective, but as you said and changed, it became a Judeo Christian perspective that we drew from, there was at least a commonality of language, of expression, of worldview, of outlook, of language. Even Paine Franklin drawing on those resources. And even, as you said, kept in the black church, where you had Martin Luther King Jr.

Drawing all this imagery.

Yeah, right. That's right.

Still very much there. But as you. We've also noticed is we have a younger generation that's grown up that is not religious. They don't have the vocabulary. They don't.

They're very technological. Their worldview is shifting very greatly.

So now, and this is the part where I found that was very interesting, is we have this challenge of trying to create a new language, which means we have to operate in a different way according to this cultural topography in which we find ourselves not trying to recover one, but to live in the one that we have now. Right.

Yeah.

You know, we've talked about a lot of things, and there's just so much. We're only skimming the surface of your book. But where are we now, as Christians, as Christ followers, in the midst of this culture?

I mean, at one time we've been at the center, and now we're at the periphery. But how are we to operate in the midst of a culture that has become very antithetical toward.

I mean, hostile in some respect to Christianity or just ignored, just has no relevancy, except in a political way to how we function today. How are we to operate as pastors, as leaders, as just Christians in the midst of this world in which we find ourselves?

How much time do you have?

We got all the time in the world, brother.

Well, look, I mean, I think the first thing that needs to be said is that that American society, American politics has changed quite a bit. We are in the third decade of the 21st century, a fundamentally different world.

The world that we live in is fundamentally different from the world of.

Of the founders of the Republic and we think that many people believe that if you just know the beliefs and values and creeds of the 18th century, all will be well. And we, and our culture is just fundamentally different right now.

The creeds of historic orthodox Christianity haven't changed, but how they are located within the larger cultural ecosystem has fundamentally changed. The ecosystem itself is entirely different. And that has consequences.

And the consequences are right now we are in a post enlightenment and post liberal and emphatically a post Christian world right now. You need to, we, we need to pause and let that sink in. We are in a post Christian, post enlightenment and post liberal world right now.

And that means so much has changed. One thing it has meant is that there was a time when Christians were very influential. They were at the center of cultural formation.

One illustration of this is of the 180 some colleges that were formed and established before the Civil War. All but two or three were fought by denominations and they were Christian in their purpose.

Higher education is overwhelmingly secular in its character.

And what we now know of as Christian higher education was formed in a reaction to the secularization of higher education in the middle to the end of the 19th century. It was formed as a reaction against the marginalization. So the Christian community in all of its complexity and diversity is now marginal.

It used to be at the heart of Christian, of cultural formation. It's now almost entirely irrelevant.

It is so on the margins to interject there. You mentioned the Christian universities.

I think since COVID there have been 25 Christian higher education institutions that have closed even further, illustrating they've become irrelevant.

That's right. That doesn't surprise me. And it's too bad.

I lament that because I'm all for a rich variety, especially in the, in the realms of, of the intellectual life. And the intellectual life by and large today is a monoculture and, and it's secular post liberal manifestation.

So the, and, and part of the problem is that though we are in this post Christian, an increasingly post liberal moment, Christians are still operating as though it was.

We are in a society that remains influenced by Christianity, that, that its values, its beliefs, its deep structures, its understanding of reality and of truth and of, of the person and of ethics and so on, that it still is influenced by those things. And it's simply not. It's simply not.

And until the Christian community in all of its complexity comes to terms with that, it's going to be, it's going to continue to be marginalized. It will have very little to say to their non Christian neighbors.

So that's a really important thing to the tragic part is that because many Christians in America today, especially conservative Christians, want to believe that we can recover a Christian America. They are wanting the law and the state to do the work of culture, to do the work of persuasion. Just not going to happen. It's impossible.

What happened after Roe vs. Wade? Pro Life groups looked for, look for, for workarounds until they could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fifty years later, what is the pro choice movement doing?

It's finding workarounds around Dobbs until it ultimately changes reverses Dobbs and they are just as intent on overturning Dobbs as the pro life movement was an overturning Roe. And what, what the pro choice groups are failing to do and what pro life groups are failing to do is to address this culturally.

Politics and law cannot do the work of culture. Even though they are artifacts of culture, they cannot do the work of the deep structures of culture.

This is what happened with slavery in the 19th century.

Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision trying to create solidarity, unity around the issue of slavery, that slaves in fact that black humanity was less than white humanity. And that was imposed by the state, by the Supreme Court. Three years later, we are in a war, the bloodiest war in our history.

And the war is what about slavery? The war is won by the North.

The emancipation proclamation, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments are the imposition of a new consensus about and it's called the second founding for a reason. We are living in to a time where black humanity is just as equal, just as free as white humanity.

What's that in law? But not in deep.

But that's right, because it wasn't done culturally. And as a consequence, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were abrogated.

The regime of slavery was simply reproduced through institutions like code Noir, Jim Crow, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan. It's simply because the culture of slavery was simply reproduced. It was a workaround.

So what then leads the shift to change it culturally?

Well, I mean, I think if you look at it, World War II had a lot to do with. It was a war of Western civilization over Western civilization. And everyone counted.

Yes, ongoing discrimination, ongoing bigotry toward black humanity.

And yet the bravery, the courage, the fighting spirit, the willingness of, of black soldiers to throw themselves into this fight for the sake of Western civilization changed a lot of minds. People were fighting side by side. That made a difference.

It made a difference, clearly made a difference, as scholarship has shown, in easing the tensions between Protestants and Catholics. And Christians and Jews, these are people fighting side by side for their lives.

And we all know that soldiers fight not for their nation first and foremost, they fight for the people right next to them. You know, in the heat of the battle. That's what they're funded for because they understand that their survival depends upon others survival.

So there were lots of things that contributed to the easing of these kinds of exclusionary.

The problem is that right now American Christianity, and I would say, especially within the evangelical community, that the word Christianity, and I would say evangelicalism in particular, is a political concept, not a theological one. It's not a theologically coherent one.

As much as some people are trying to retain or to the coherence of the term evangelical, most people understand it to be a political concept that is associated with words like authoritarianism, with coercion, with the absence of love and kindness. And I think that's unfair in many respects.

But there are reasons why, in part because it doesn't acknowledge the complexity of American Christianity as it's being lived.

But insofar as Christianity has become public and as a public face, I think that the view that evangelicalism is a political movement more than it is a theological or religious movement is a fair designation.

Then when you say, just to go back for a moment, I know you said it within a political sphere, but like Bebbington's quadrilateral, the historical term you wouldn't have had much of a problem with, but because it's morphed into more of a political definition is the struggle and the issue.

Yeah, I think the Christian right doesn't exist anymore. Again, I don't think there's anything remotely Christian about it.

So you're responding toward the abuse that has began to occur and how it's become its own arm of the state, but just been co opted by power, drunk with power, trying to maintain their relevance from a, a power and law perspective, rather than actually doing the hard work of engaging people where they're at in their cultural topography, in showing the relevancy of Christ in the midst of it.

So as you mentioned earlier, there are lots of churches, communities of faith across the nation that are doing the hard work of loving their neighbor, of caring for their neighbor, of doing the work of making disciples and, and feeding the poor and visiting the imprisoned and so on. Lots and lots of it doesn't get a lot of attention, of course, doesn't make the headlines.

So, you know, part of the situation right now is that in civil society, conservatives are, as I mentioned earlier, largely marginalized. From the centers of culture formation, virtually absent from higher education, advertising, technology, high end journalism.

Not completely absent, but almost completely absent and largely invisible. They're just so marginalized. So they have no influence in the culture, forming institutions of our society. Where do they have influence?

They only have influence in one place, and that is in politics, in local politics, state politics. They have a voice and they have representation.

So Christianity, and I would say evangelical Christianity in particular, exerts the power that they have, the only power they have, which is politics.

And they want that to compensate for the power that they don't have in every other sphere, which is part of the reason why they are getting state legislatures to create conservative colleges within state universities, as they've done at the University of Florida, University of North Carolina and so on. Within these universities, these colleges have an uproad, you know, an uphill battle to make. So politics is now part of the identity.

It's maybe the central part of evangelicalism's public identity.

So how do we then take a posture of truth, humility and conviction in the public square without being coercive?

Well, again, this is an argument that I made in To Change the World, and it's an argument that I make in this one. We have to depoliticize public institutions.

We have so conflated the public, the idea of the public with the political that we can't see any difference between them. And the left does this every bit as much as the right. For the sake of democracy, I would say we have to depoliticize the civic sphere.

You're beginning to see elements of this and the ways in which elite institutions are stepping back from having to make political statements about this issue or that issue. They, you know, they got their fingers singed on this on a number of different issues in recent times.

There are primary goods, there are intrinsic goods to education that have nothing to do with politics. And this is true with all institutions of civil society. We need to rediscover those intrinsic goods.

The truth of the matter is that Christianity has also been politicized to the hilt. Its public identity is a political identity.

And I think it needs to rediscover its intrinsic goods, which have very little to do with politics, but a lot to do with the public.

Caring for the poor, caring for the infirmed, visiting the imprisoned, creating a civil, a flourishing society has nothing to do necessarily with politics.

There's nothing that's keeping medical professionals who are Christian from coming together, working to care for those who are needy in their communities that is public without being political. Same with artists, right? Professors. There is a way to, to disagree and to say, you know, without, but within the framework of love.

I'm not suggesting that anyone compromise their deepest, deep, most deeply held convictions on a whole range of issues. But none of that impedes the command to love and to love one's neighbor as one loves oneself.

Remember, God loved the stranger and who are we but the stranger, you know.

The Good Samaritan, of course, is the greatest example probably we've seen of that.

But to me that love means willing to suffer on behalf of another and how you actually love them, to give them that compassion, something that we largely lose and then we get into. And I know you've been talking about this. Is this the capturing of language even, you know, what does love mean in the midst of our world?

How do we love? How do we love in a sacrificial way that shows the reality of Christ.

And every generation of Christ follower is faced with another reality of how to re establish their witness in the midst of the world because we're faced with no realities. Something, as you already alluded to, that our founding fathers never saw coming. And we're always confronted with the spirit of the age.

And I think the difficulty is not just the spirit of the age, but the capitulation or the compromise of the church in the midst of the Spirit.

That's where it gets very tough to be able to discern those things and not give in to the cultural idolatries that so jeopardize our Christian witness. And that's where I think, as you've talked about, what role does power play within in our.

In our exercise of power and be willing to give up power even though it might hurt, but we might win. I was interviewing Steven Presley, who wrote a book called Cultural Sanctification. He's an early Christian scholar, the first two or three centuries.

And he talked about Polycarp's martyrdom and how they came to take him. And he said, well, can we, Can I serve you first? He offered him a meal while he could pray. And then he prayed.

And they were so touched by his prayer that as they're taking him to his own execution, they're begging him to stop, you know, but he was willing to suffer and win at the same time. And that's something that I don't know if we're willing to do.

I think our cultural comfort that we've had has really kept us from, I don't want to say authentic Christian witness, but if we're just as materialistic as our Neighbors and so addicted to our own creaturely comforts. Suffering then becomes anathema to us.

And I think we have to recover a biblical theology of suffering, culturally speaking, in order to show the reality of Christ so that people can know who he is. And a byproduct of that is human flourishing, I would think. I mean, do you agree or disagree?

Yeah, I do completely. I think this is the message of a faithful presence in our late and in our late modern world. I think, you know, just to quickly.

Sure.

The deep structures of culture are now profoundly nihilistic. And I think, you know, this is where the book finally ends, that it manifests itself in a passive nihilism, but also an active nihilism.

The very nature of the modern and now late modern world creates structures that are fundamentally dehumanizing. They relativize truth, they relativize reality, they relativize our ethics, and they relativize our self understanding.

They undermine human community, our need to belong as human beings to community. They alienate us from a sense of a clear understanding of our purposes as human beings.

All of that is sort of the background in which all of us, the loneliness that we feel, the estrangement in our, in our workaday worlds from the institutions that we're a part of, from our neighbors, all of that is a kind of passive nihilism. And remember, at the heart of nihilism is annihilation. It annihilates life, flourishing, vitality, goodness.

But there's also an active nihilism which is about the will to destroy.

And our political culture is now oriented, we on both sides of the cultural divide, the political, cultural divide can't imagine an America that's united, that includes the other side. The visions of America that are now on offer depend upon the others not even existing, certainly not having a political voice.

That's a kind of active nihilism cancellation. Culture is not an accidental feature of our political culture. It is the point of it.

This is precisely why Pete Wehner is canceled within the New Trumpian world, why Liz Cheney has been canceled from the Republican Party, she no longer is welcome there. But it's also why cancellation happens on the left as well.

There are these purity tests that determine and you get canceled if you're not part of them. That's the act of nihilism.

And part of the point I want to make at the by the end of this book is that the real enemy here, the real enemy is the nihilism that insinuates itself within our culture, within our Institutions on all sides of this.

And until we recognize that, we're just going to be stuck in a culture war that will continue to get more and more vicious and I think more and more destructive to the very things that we care about most.

One of the things that I remember you mentioning is the thing that we've lacked is the idea we don't even have a way of going about it is forgiveness.

Yeah.

Of interacting, of listening, of having dialogue to the point where we could understand and ask for forgiveness. Because in. In our cultural moment right now, forgiveness is anathema. It's a zero sum game. The problem is, is that it.

Everyone's going to be, you know, no one's going to be left standing anywhere by anybody. And we have to be able to dialogue, especially as Christ followers in the middle of the world as we can.

I mean, we can try to, you know, try to activate ourselves politically and not say we're not engaged politically, but as you said, fighting in a coercive manner to wield power without doing the due diligence of loving our neighbor is really missing the point in some respect. It's just skipping it.

It's saying, I want to work with power because it's quicker, rather than doing the messy work of sitting and listening and loving my neighbor in a. In a place where my time is lost. But that's where the real work is. It's, it's. It's. The real conversation happens at a table.

Not via texts, not via social media, not being sound bites, but in having real conversation with a real breathing human person. And it doesn't mean compromising your views or compromising the truth of who God is in the middle of that you can still love and proclaim.

Well, I don't think we see those as mutually exclusive. So what happens with your book?

Well, I mean, at one level, it'd be nice to have the book read.

So. You know, I've read the book. I've actually read the entire book. Even the footnotes. I went through all of it.

Well, you know, I think I'm a little bit cynical these days. I think the idea of an educated public is a bit of a myth.

People don't read and the pace of life is just too fast and the pressures of life are just too heavy. But it would be nice to have this argument. Tim wrote me and said, james, this is a game changer.

I think it would help enlarge our understanding of the crisis that we're in today. I think, as I say in the book, that it would Allow us to take the full measure of the challenges that we face.

And I think with a slightly different perspective, maybe even a significantly different perspective that I think is offered here, we would find strategies for moving forward. And I'm working on that puzzle with my colleagues right now.

So there's you mention at the end of the book of having a new moral imagination that requires a new vocabulary in order to move forward.

And because we, we are in many respects as a, as a ministry and as a nonprofit mean we are, we are interacting with those that are, that are pastors and leaders within churches. What word of encouragement would you give to them? We often call it the water bottle. We are Apollos watered.

So we want to give a thought, something for them to, to draw nourishment from, from what would be your encouragement to them so that they who are trying to shepherd their people in the middle of this moment or trying to lead. Well, how do you encourage them?

I, I think that the gospel is, is every bit as powerful now as it has been at its best moments throughout the history of the church. It is powerful in the sense that it is transformative.

It is at, at the heart of a vision of human flourishing, of a vision of flourishing that is about the good, the true, the beautiful, the well ordered, the just and the sustainable. I think it is all there. And that vision is not only about private life and about local congregations, it's also about public life.

But it requires a more modest view of what politics can do.

Politics is an administrative tool and for politics to be anything more than that, it depends upon a vision that is not political itself, but cultural. It's a vision of justice. It's a vision of, of equality.

It's a justice of, you know, it is that vision that, that that will give life to everyone and not just Christians. So these are some of the things that I hope to unpack in the, in, in the future.

But it is, it does require a limited view of what politics can do and that, that our faith is a Christian faith is. And its vitality is not measured by the degree to which one checks certain boxes politically in any kind of partisan sense.

But we have to have an expanded vision of the flourishing that God intended at the time of creation and at the time of redemption and the time of consummation. And politics does not play much of a role at all in that and the bigger sweep.

So I think, I think that is the direction where a vibrant Christian theology needs to be moving. What does it mean to be Christian in a post Christian world? What does it mean to be in a post Christian world, but not of it?

And it certainly means being integrated, but it doesn't mean necessarily compromise with it.

But it requires wisdom and intelligence again, the ability to discern in the language of Romans, the patterns of this world that we're not to be conformed to. It doesn't mean withdrawal from the world, but it does mean to understand the patterns of this world that we're not to be conformed to.

That believers might know the good and perfect will of God and that is both deeply personal and private.

But its public implications are, I think, extraordinarily full of extraordinary potential if we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the heart to receive it.

I think this is an exciting time, but I think the church has done itself no favor by identifying itself and its own identity, its own history with the rise and fall of America. The life of the church is not the life of America. Not the same thing, not identical.

That's why I think as, as and we maintain on the show is there's a.

They call it a polycentric missiology now where though everyone around the world is sharing the gospel everywhere, everywhere else and God is growing his kingdom that transcends America boundaries.

I mean we love our country, but the kingdom of God is so much bigger and greater than we realize and that we're, we're a part of and why we are citizens of this culture that seek to. It's flourishing in the middle of it. We also recognize that everything's going to fall. We do our best, but we're still going to fall short of that.

And we seek to maintain those timeless principles of truth and of the word of God so that the kingdom of Christ might continue to flourish and other people might be one. But when we conflate the two, a lot of damage begins to happen.

So this is an opportunity to rediscover, to create what I like to call innovations in love. The opportunities for love in this desperately lonely, hard, difficult world are right in front of us. And I think we're being sidetracked by that.

From, from that mission.

I want to thank you for coming on the show. I do want to recommend that people get the book. It is a great read. It's one that will demand your intellect. It's. It's enlightening.

It's right along the line of to change the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book because you've given us language, the ability to see, given us categories and understanding our experiences and how to evaluate them and how things have developed over time. I thoroughly appreciated the work and I'm eager to see what God does with it. Well, thank you again.

Thank you, Travis.

That wraps up part two of my conversation with James Davison Hunter.

If today's conversation challenged your views on culture and politics, it's time to start thinking differently through the lens of God's mission, not just partisan strategies. That's how you need to be thinking. But there is so much more to discuss, so much more to explore.

For our monthly Watering Partners, we have an exclusive 10 minute bonus where James dives into the state of evangelicalism today. Trust me, you don't want to miss this deeper conversation.

It is James Davidson Hunter, unfiltered and rarely do you get the opportunity of talking to someone of this caliber and has this much insight into our cultural moment. It is a must. Listen, if you're not yet one of our Watering partners, you can correct that immediately. Go and sign up through our show notes.

Pick the amount that works for you and we will send you the bonus insights. But here are a few key insights or takeaways from today's episode. First of all, here's what I want you to do. Take a breath. It's okay.

You don't have to solve all of the problems of the world world right now. Okay? I want you to relax because let's be honest, constantly taking in information on social media can make us all feel overwhelmed.

We don't need to read every single headline or post that some that sends our way. Jesus is still on the throne and we don't have to get worked up every single time something new grabs our attention.

So step back, take a breath and detach from the coming constant dopamine hit for a bit. Number two, Trust that God is in control. Is our God not sovereign? Is he going to accomplish his will? He is Jesus.

Did he panic every single time he heard something about what Rome was doing or about what the Pharisees or the Sadducees were doing? No. He remained calm, patient. Patient and present. Be that for the people around you, a non anxious presence. We know how the story ends.

God is victorious. So let's remember that he's still in charge and he will bring his purposes to fruition. Number three, get clear on your mission.

Focus on what you should be doing. While nothing replaces the Word of God, sometimes we need a roadmap to help us to navigate our time. That's where my book Blueprint comes in.

It provides a biblically faithful and practical guide, Christ centered to show us how to engage the world in a way that aligns with God's will right now.

So grab your copy on Amazon today and I invite you to come back right now, here next week and join me in my conversation on the story of God and why it matters with Christopher J.H. wright. It will be an illuminating and faith uplifting conversation. You don't want to miss it.

Thank you for joining us on today's episode of those who Serve the Lord, a podcast of Apollo's watered the center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics. We trust that what you've heard has inspired and encouraged you in your walk of faith. Remember, serving the Lord isn't just about what we do.

It's about who we are becoming in Him. Whether in the small moments or the grand gestures, each step of service brings us closer to his heart.

If you found today's discussion meaningful, we invite you to share it with others who might be encouraged. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps spread the message to those who need to hear it most.

Until next time, may you continue to serve the Lord with joy, humility, and a heart full of his love. God bless you. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off. Stay watered everybody.