Well, hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 481 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thorogood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today we have a conversation that Glenn recorded with Karen Swallow Pryor about her latest book, The Evangelical Imagination. How stories, images, and metaphors created a culture in crisis. Now, just so you have some context for the conversation, here is the short blurb of the book. And I quote, In the Evangelical Imagination, acclaimed author, Karen Swallow Pryor, analyses the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism and unpacks some of the movement's most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices. She shows that understanding what the term evangelical means today means understanding not only evangelicalism's faith commitments, but also the images, metaphors, assumptions, and stories that have cultivated evangelical culture. So I think you'll find this to be a very interesting and thought-provoking conversation, and I will hand straight over to Glenn and Karen.
SPEAKER_02Hello, welcome to Speak Life. My name is Glenn. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. And joining me today from Virginia in the States is Karen Swallow Pryor. Hello, Karen.
SPEAKER_00Hello, Glenn. It's good to be with you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so fantastic to have you with us. Can you introduce yourself to us for those who might not know who you are?
SPEAKER_00Sure. I am a writer and uh a longtime professor of English literature. And uh as you said, I live here in Virginia. You can find my writing um in just about every publication there is, but my primary love is writing books, and we're here to talk about my most recent one. So I'm so grateful.
SPEAKER_02You're fantastic, uh, your fantastic new book, The Evangelical Imagination. Uh the subtitle I like as well, How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. Um, first of all, we've got a very kitschy Jesus who is framed within frames within frames within frames within frames. And I love this. You've got the kind of the speech bubbles kind of going up because it's the imagination, I take it. And are those frames, those are like the metaphors that frame our vision of Jesus? Is that the the idea?
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And what what is this particular painting?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell, so this is a that's a painting um that shows for anyone who can't see it's it and I I it it's a 19th century German painter whose name I can't remember, but it it it's a typical sort of sentimental sweet white Jesus h bathed in light, holding lambs, um, which of course conveys some truth of Jesus because Jesus is a shepherd and he's bathed in light, metaphorically and literally, and we are his lambs. But um I chose this cover, uh the image on this cover because I do have a whole chapter on sentimentality and kind of the dangers for the Christian faith when we oversentimentalize our faith.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah, a a real highlight chapter. I I love that. Um let's press into uh I want to press into at least three things in uh the title of this book, the evangelical imagination and the culture in crisis. Um let's press into the most fascinating part for me, which is the idea of the imagination. And uh at Speak Life we're constantly talking about the imagination and how we captivate hearts and minds and imaginations for Jesus. And one pushback I often get is that um in scripture you'll often find um verses that are quite anti a certain kind of imagination, anyway. So Genesis chapter six says, the imaginations of the thoughts of the heart were only wicked continually, and hence comes the flood in Genesis six. Or you come to the Magnificat in Luke chapter one, and Mary says, you know, the princes are being cast down in their imaginations. Or you fast forward to Second Corinthians chapter ten, and the Apostle Paul uh uses this pugilistic language about his mission being casting down imaginations. Does that mean that the imagination is a negative thing and we should run away from it?
SPEAKER_00That is such a good question. And of course, it does depend on the translation you use. And I I'm old enough to remember a lot of King James, and I think that when Paul you he talks about vain imaginations, um maybe it's in that passage or somewhere else, which is a really important thing to understand because all of those passages that you pointed to are um are are telling us about the power that the imagination has. And like anything, any form of power, that power can be used for good or ill. It can be godly or ungodly, it can be sanctified or not sanctified. So in you know, I as I said in introducing myself, I'm a professor of English literature, so I talk about the imagination a lot. I love the imagination, not just literature, but works of the imagination like art and film. Um I'm sure I'm talking to an audience that appreciates those things. And so I do talk about the imagination early in the book, uh, kind of in its essence, which is simply that we as human beings who are made in God's image are quite literally and metaphorically uh products of his imagination. And because we are made in his image, we also have this power of imagination. We can create with a small c um in imitation of our capital C creator. And so our imagination is a direct reflection of what it means to be made in God's image. That's sort of the basis of what I'm talking about here. But I'm also talking um extensively in the book about what Charles Taylor, um, the Catholic philosopher calls the social imaginary. And so we tend to think of imagination as something that's individual, like I have an imagination, you have an imagination, use your imagination. But what Taylor is talking about is how we as societies, cultures, communities have these collective pools that he calls imaginaries that are filled with stories, images, metaphors, legends, myths, expectations, visions for the good life, or um visions for how we think things are supposed to go. And those are just sort of handed down to us. They're part of our traditions. And we may not be thinking about them. We may not may not realize that they're underneath the surface, Taylor actually says they're pre-cognitive, yet they're driving us and forming us because we don't even know that they're there. Um and so that's really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the evangelical or the evangelical um social imaginaries in this book.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And how do you um pass out sort of with a theological anthropology? Um, what like what does the mind do? What does the heart do? What does the soul do? What is the imagination? Um these things are very overlapping, aren't they? Can you can you help us make sense of of these ideas?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. No, that's a that's a good question. So I, you know, uh the imagination, I think, you know, permeates all of those. It pulls them together. We tend to think of of the mind as being, you know, it's it's the intellectual part, but the imagination is part of that as well. But the imagination also, because it's tied to aesthetic experience, uh, the experiences of the senses, is also bodily. I mean, no thanks to Descartes. We've just, you know, compartmentalized sort of the thinking part of ourselves and the and the heart and soul part of ourselves, but the imagination is what brings them all together. If I if I hear a beautiful song and it moves me in my soul, it can also move my mind to think about, wow, you know, I uh this music reminds me of this, or this music makes me want to create something like it. I mean, the imagination is what ties it all together. And again, it goes back to it's a reflection of our being made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02So as a professor of English literature, um put that together with the imagination. What do what do stories do in order to captivate imaginations?
SPEAKER_00Well, of course, when we use the word stories, we should realize that we're talking about things that could be true or not true. Those are c you know modern categories, and so I could tell you a story about what happened to me today and it would be true, or I could make up a story that's part a work of my imagination and it would be fiction. But they work in the same way uh because we are, as is famously said by a number of philosophers, we're storytelling creatures. Um and that is really how we process um what happens to us in a day. If when we at the end of a day, we you know, we talk about what hap how our day went, it's usually in the form of a story. Um and so we that narrative arc um that is part of I I would say what it means to be human, it reflects even God's story with us, that it has a beginning and a middle and an end. And even some of our worst pain and anguish um that we might be suffering, part of that, so much of that has to do with um either not knowing the end or or thinking that something is the end when it's not. Um so much of what we experience and understand is through the pattern of all good story, and of course, you know, that is why God is reveals himself to us in his word, and it's not a coincidence that his word is in the form of a story, you know, in the beginning, and you know, we uh end the story with a beautiful wedding feast, just like in all the best Jane Austen novels.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. And I guess we're we are at a juncture in history in which in the West Um the stories that we tell um tend not to have as much overlapping kind of audiences and overlapping assent as as they kind of used to, which is why it's i it's interesting you've kind of written about the evangelical imagination, um, because it it's not it's not the case that even in Christendom you have you know a single unifying story that that that unites our social imaginary. Um we are post-Christendom, and you're you're speaking about evangelical imagination. Tell us um for you, um, how are you going to define evangelical? It's a it's a very contested term.
SPEAKER_00It is very contested, and I do acknowledge that in the book, and I acknowledge it here. And I also want to be very straightforward in saying that I am writing um very particularly as an American evangelical living in the 21st century within this cultural moment. And of course, we know that evangelicalism is a global movement, it's not even really being led, I think, I hope, um, in America. It is, you know, really being led by by voices across the globe and churches um that are exploding across the gr globe. But I'm writing about its origins and sort of tracing a particular path to this point. And the origins of what is called the evangelical movement were in uh early 18th century England, came across the Atlantic to America. So we have the evangelical revival and then the great awakenings in America that then spread out across the globe. And I invoke and rely most heavily on um what's called the Bebington Quadrilateral by David Bebington, in which he you know looks at that particular history that begins in the 18th century and identifies the four qualities that um characterize evangelicalism across denominations, across countries and continents from that time until now. And those four qualities are an emphasis on conversion, an emphasis on the Bible is God's authoritative word in the Christian's life, uh, an emphasis on the centrality of Christ's crucifixion for our salvation, uh, and an emphasis on activism, which can take many forms, but um really is I I still think that is uh very much a defining um quality of what it means to be evangelical.
SPEAKER_02So it's not it's not so much the Protestant um imagination, in which case I I guess you'd you'd have to go back to the 16th century and and uh German speakers would, you know, uh you know, because the Lutherans sort of were the evangelicals and and that that's what they meant. But yeah, you're you're tracing things back to kind of Wesley and Whitfield and those sorts of those sorts of movements. And and how has your book I mean it's it's only just really come out, but how is it being received by those who are not from an American of evangelical um point of view?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm uh it's still making its way across uh the ocean, but I you know I did uh I've heard from a couple of people, and one in particular that I worked on uh for uh a project for the Luzanne uh conference coming up. And uh and he just he and his wife are both evangelicals and neither from America, and he just candidly said, this is like nothing like the evangelicalism that we were raised in, which I under which I completely understand. I'm also grateful on his behalf. Um and so uh but then I have I've heard from others who, you know, we I think it's hard not to be affected uh no matter where you live by American evangelicalism or American anything. And so uh it's not entirely foreign. But again, I I do recognize this is very much sort of an American evangelical subculture that I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Yes. It took until your twenties until you um discovered that there was such a thing as as people who didn't believe in the rapture. It took until my twenties to discover that people did believe in such a thing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's so funny.
SPEAKER_02So we've done the evangelical imagination, so we've figured out who the evangelicals are in this situation. We've figured out what the imagination is and the social imaginary. But you say how stories, images, and metaphors created a culture in crisis. So describe to us a little bit what what is the culture in crisis?
SPEAKER_00You know, it's interesting because um this, you know, this book was in my mind for a couple of years, even before I sat down to write it and got the proposal accepted and so forth. So I would say it was about two years of writing. And it's toward the end of that when you and your publisher sit down and try to come up with a final title and subtitle. And it was one of my editors who actually first suggested using the word crisis in the subtitle, and I resisted that. I said, you know, oh, that sounds too, you know, too dramatic. Um but then by the time I finished the book and was turning it in, I said, no, you know what, I think it is a crisis. Um and so, you know, what is the crisis? I mean, I think, you know, really the precipitating crisis for this particular book in this particular time is the American political situation, when the the word evangelical was being used as kind of a sociological political category for polling and surveys and headline writers in the news. And and so people, because of that, you know, use of it, um either are rejecting it or embracing it. And so the whole, you know, the it's that con uh that um controversy around the term that we talked about before. That's part of the crisis. But it's really that crisis, I think, that has been at work to uncover a greater crisis, which I talk about in the chapter, the next to last chapter on Reformation, which is that you know the institutional church in America has become a kind of industrial complex in many regards. Now, you know, institutions can do much good. I've always been an institutional person. However, in this particular political and American context, um it seems like many people are coming to uh face to face with um uh a tension uh between the interests of the money and the power and the leaders and the platform and the individual souls who have either been abused or um betrayed. Um and pardon the use of the term since I've experienced it literally, but thrown under the bus in order to salvage the reputation of the institution or uphold its power and and and its its wealth. Um and many people are experiencing that, and uh, you know, we we have hashtags for it, church too is one of them, um ex evangelical, um, deconstruction. Um, you know, these these cumulatively these experiences are, I think, uh causing a crack in the foundation of the institutional church, and and that is a crisis. It could be an opportunity, but it is a crisis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And so this subculture has been influenced by and soaking in um various uh metaphors and stories uh in this social imaginary that have been um sending it in the wrong wrong direction, shall we say, and and you identify ten. Uh there is awakening. We evangelicals love the idea of awakening, conversion, testimony, improvement, sentimentality, materiality, domesticity, empire, reformation, and rapture. Um why these ten and how did you come up with them?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question. Um and I do want to clarify that you know, it it's not just evangelicals who are driven by stories, images, and metaphors. All human beings are, right? So that so I'm not picking on the evangelicals, and also these stories, images, and metaphors that I pick out are ones that that I, you know, with maybe the exception of one, I think they have a good history. And but like anything that's good, when it is um becomes an excess, it can become a vice. So it's like good, and it's very complicated, I guess is what I want to say. Um and so how I came up with them, I mean, I knew uh I knew that, for example, conversion would be one, because as I've said, um in according to Bebington, conversion is one of the central emphases of the evangelical movement when it began in the in the 18th century. Um, and it continues to be so central today. So that was an obvious one. Um and well that chapter ended up getting really big because I included testimonies, so that broke up into two. Um and I also knew because this is actually um the chapter that really began this book, is the one on um domesticity, um, because it covers like the role of women and how they how women were viewed, particularly in the Victorian era, which is, you know, the evangelicals helped to create for a century for good and bad. And um I teach a lot of Victorian literature and I teach primarily in evangelical undergraduate classrooms. And I over the years I would hear more and more students talk about how these Victorian um portrayals of women, either as angels in the house or as fallen women who were ruined for life because they lost their virginity, even if it was the result of rape, it was still meant that they were ruined. How so many of the students in my classroom um recognize these images of women as ones that they were raised with, you know, two centuries later in a con, you know, a country or a continent away. And so I began asking in the classrooms as we would study this literature, okay, well let's let's look at this idea and this portrayal and and let's say, you know, is is it really biblical or is it just Victorian? And so that question that kept emerging in my classroom was really the genesis of the book. Um, and so that chapter on domesticity was one that, you know, right away I knew, and the rest just kind of evolved as I through the writing process.
SPEAKER_01Hi folks, it's Thomas Thorogood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast.
SPEAKER_02You started with conversion and then that split into conversion and testimony. Let's talk about that for a little bit because um a friend of mine just tweeted out again, he he discovered uh a poem that I did years ago called UI Gave My Life to Jesus, um, which is a kind of a description of my teenage history within evangelicalism, which was I gave my life to Jesus about a about a thousand times. At teenage shrines of rare experience, they blare delirious, then dare obedience. I'd swear allegiance, soul bad and serious, each prayer more daring than the previous. And I just kind of narrated this sense, and it's just fascinating to me how that. Has resonated with so many people. My testimony about testimonies in which it became an utter slavery to me. Because once I've prayed that prayer 990 times, like how am I feeling about a god? Like if I'm knock knock knocking on heaven's door, it it it feels like he's he's no longer at home. Um tell me why is conversionism in Bebington's quadrilateral? What's what is what is good about it and and how does it become a virtue that runs amok?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, now I was afraid you're gonna ask this question because I situate this in 18th century England uh and I'm an American and I'm gonna tell you this history that I hope is right. But um but you know, so it's there was there was a state church um after the the Reformation in England, and about the time that the Wesleys and Whitfield were uh coming of age and figuring things out, uh they and others um became concerned, you know, there was a whole Puritan history there as well and a Pietist history that's part of it. But essentially the, you know, they wanted to say and did say that just because you're born as a citizen in this country that has a state church is not what makes you a Christian. Um they wanted to kind of revive, which is why it was called the um evangelical revival, um, the idea that an individual um needs to be born again, be converted, be saved. I mean, that's the word that we would use now, they didn't use then, but have that personal experience that's a word we'd use now that they wouldn't have used then um with Jesus, right? And so, I mean, this is one of the things that makes me continue to be evangelical because this is a, I think, a central biblical idea, but it can get lost, it can be um understood in different terms, and certainly is understood in different um ways and different uh streams of of Christianity. Uh but that was revived, that idea was revived, and I think it's good. Um, but what happens and what I show through this is that when it becomes so emphasized at the expense of discipleship and sanctification, it turns into just, as we see many times today, kind of well, what you talked about in your poem, right? Like going forward, yourself going forward a number of times, or churches and and events counting the number of people who go forward or raise their hands or fill out the cards and reporting in the fundraising newsletter, how many people made decisions for Christ, it can be so quantifiable that it becomes meaningless. A kind of a flip examp side example of what you just shared is something that came across my Twitter feed the other day, not to get too political, but the way that many um pastors in our country today are are you know saying that um that Donald Trump is a Christian because he prayed the sinner's prayer with several people several times. And so this is this means that he is a Christian. Um and of course it doesn't mean that. Of course, we do know that one must have that um profession of faith. Uh and yet we also know that there needs to be fruit and discipleship and and all of those things. Isn't that ironic?
SPEAKER_02Because you you started your answer by talking about the danger of nominalism when you have a national church and you're just baptized into it. And that yes, there's a danger of nominalism there. But is there not also a danger of nominalism if the whole idea is simply to walk the aisle, sign a card, pray the prayer? You're still left with nominalism.
SPEAKER_00No, exact exactly. I mean, it's it's it's the horseshoe effect, right? That something becomes so goes so long in the opposite direction that it ends up meeting back in the middle.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, are you born again is not do you have a vital spiritual connection to Jesus, but like have d have you added that to your spiritual CV? Which is the the opposite. Like Nicodemus had a lot of things on his spiritual CV. And so like adding yeah, m turning born again into one more little marker that you do just works against itself. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. No, no. So I mean, conversion is obviously an essential Christian uh doctrine, but emphasizing that can result in these distortions in either direction. The one that you talked about and the one that we see in you know certain politicians.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And and how do that how has it affected our social imaginary? Like what are the stories that we tell and the metaphors that we use? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that's why I ended up breaking up testimony into a different chapter, because that really does it because our imagination does kind of run away with this idea. And so um so it does that in a couple of ways. Um so we first of all, with we love famous celebrity testimonies, right? We take comfort when somebody who's really awesome and cool and famous becomes a Christian, as opposed to like maybe our next door neighbor or something, or or our grumpy uncle Sam, you know. Um if if if it's someone who's important in our culture that somehow is more meaningful. No, that's just I mean, you know, that's just human. I'm not, you know, we have to fight against it, but it's not the worst thing. But another thing that can happen um is and I share this in the book, is that because I did truly accept Jesus as my savior as a very young girl, um, and nobody marked it down on the calendar, um, you know, I don't know the day, the time, and the hour. And so I didn't do what you did in that poem, but I, you know, I I I did a couple times, you know, do a check-in, like, oh, did did I really do that? But I re I do remember my baptism at age seven, being baptized in a cold northern lake along with my parents. And so I, you know, for me that is the seal of my um of my my conscious understanding of my salvation. Um and I shouldn't, you know, I I think it's wonderful when people can remember the time and the date and the place and the hour, but we hear that so much, at least in American evangelicalism, that you can just doubt if if you don't have that. And then there's the other um thing that can go along with it is the dramatic testimony. You know, we have like the celebrity testimony, but then we also have the dramatic testimony that there's the assorted sinner who lived a terrible life and did horrible things and then met the Lord and is now, you know, living a clean and pure life. Wonderful story, but also there is nothing more dramatic than, you know, uh a young child uh who hasn't had a chance to do all of these things, you know, dying to self and being raised again in the Lord and not having a dramatic story to tell. Um that is a miraculous thing as well. And so we there can be this because we tend to platform the people who are have the dramatic testimonies. There can be uh what you know, I cite someone who calls it testimony envy in the book. And then also um the even worse is just the people who embellish their testimonies just to make it more dramatic. And I'm not saying that's common, but I've seen it unfortunately, and we probably all have.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I've definitely seen it. And I've I I've seen testimonies from the same person becoming ever more dramatic the more they tell them. And I I I I remember going to the the baptism of a 14-year-old who was in our kind of Church of England youth group, and so most of most of the Christian kids in the in the youth group had been baptized as children. Um he kind of went to a Baptist church on a Sunday, but he came to us on a Friday night for for youth club. But he was he was getting baptized age fourteen. And like this this kid just loved Jesus, and he'd he'd loved Jesus for as long as I'd known him since he was about eleven or twelve. And and yet, as he's giving his testimony before being baptized, he he kind of almost had to invent these wilderness years in which like he drifted far from the Lord's and and he also had to sort of tell the story in terms of um and of course I never really understood the gospel until you know three months ago when I decided to get you know baptized. And and as he says that, you know, I'm I'm looking around at all the other youth leaders who've been teaching him the gospel for the last four years, looking at his parents, looking at his Baptist pastor, and thinking, don't throw all them under the bus as well. It's like why why isn't a good testimony? Uh I can't remember a day when I haven't loved Jesus. I don't know when I was born again, but I know him now. Like, why isn't that a good testimony? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It's a wonderful testimony. And you're your example your example is a really good one because I think that's probably in some level um a very common experience. And and we need to we need to interrogate that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And the other the other thing it does is like because um this kid who's now like growing up and an adult now, but he um he was encouraged to tell a story in which he, as the hero going on the hero's journey, made a made uh a discovery and went from darkness into light. Whereas the I think probably the more truthful testimony is just actually I've been surrounded by a community of faith, and my parents have modelled it to me in just life-giving rich ways, and as as has my church, as has my youth group. Um but perhaps that's another thing that we can talk about in terms of evangelicalism is the individualism that goes on. Um yeah, tell tell me tell me about some of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's actually uh chapter, you know, one of the chapters that sort of didn't make it. I mean, it's woven throughout parts of it, but um you really cannot separate the you know, evangelicalism from modernity and from the rise of the individual. I mean, they just go together. And so um so the the rise of the individual that we saw occur as a result of of really well, the Protestant Reformation and also the print culture, the printing press, and the ability to read the Bible for oneself. I mean, there are a lot of things that that contributed to it. But even evangelicalism itself, as I said before, was emphasizing that personal individual experience and conversion with the Lord, which again I think I think is good. Um, but when that goes too far, it does become, you know, sort of just Jesus and me. Um and we ignore or just our imaginations don't make space for the community as you just talked about it. Like the, you know, and and not only that, but as you were telling that story, I'm thinking of God's providence, right? To have, you know, it's God by God's providence that this young man was born into a family and community that taught him and modeled for him and showed him the way. And and so to not give glory to God um and give it to ourselves is you know, is is a malformation of the evangelical imagination or the Christian imagination, whoever does it. Um, and so I think that is a problem that we have. Um, and of course, you know, uh evangelicalism is not only just caught up in modernity, but especially in my context, you know, America is very much about rugged individualism and um beating the odds and uh the focus being on ourselves. And so all of this is tied into um the evangelical movement. Uh and again, its origins of that, you know, individual conversion might be biblical and good, but we cannot let it stray too far from other um truths that hold it all in tension.
SPEAKER_02To what degree do you think the traffic has gone in both directions on this question? Not just from the church, not just from the world sort of influencing the church, but obviously the church influencing the world. So, you know, last year my my book, The Air We Breathe, was kind of talking about the traffic that goes in that direction from the church out to the world, and kind of like yeast working through a batch of dough, we start to get the idea of the individual and equality and compassion and these these sort of values. And I I wonder whether, especially on the testimony thing, is is there a sense in which that evangelical conversion story and the amazing grace kind of moment and and the awake my soul thing, you you start off with awakening. Um there seems to be a lot in identity politics as well that that's kind of um the that is using those same kind of categories as well. Like in in what ways has the church kind of influenced the culture as well as the culture influencing the church?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you mentioned your book. See, this is the difference between you and me. You're all about the positive and I'm about the negative. No, but the no the the the this is uh no, but this is a really important point. And I do uh bring this up in in the in the book. I try I try to be I try very hard to be very balanced because again, I'm I still consider myself evangelical. This is my heritage, my tradition. I'm not, you know, I'm not mad. Um but I just you know I want us to be better. Um but early in our conversation I really I emphasize the activism part of the Bebington quadrilateral because I really think that is a you know it's not the the doctrinal part necessarily, or at least, you know, it's explicitly doctrinal. Um, but evangelicals are activists on the left and on the right. Like we all are. And and I think that is a great gift. Um, and this is something I think a lot of my um American evangelical friends, you know, who haven't studied the history that I that I have um and are just admired in the American mindset. The the British evangelicals were part of of abolishing the slave trade in in in England. Um, you know, Wilberforce and Hannah Moore. Um now Whitfield you he's a different story, but even though John Wesley was adamantly against slavery. This is our this is our heritage. And that whole idea of um of activism can is deeply connected to conversionism because conversion comes when you have this recognition, this awakening in your conscience that you realize you need the Lord, and you also, you know, once you once you have that, your eyes are awakened um to injustice around you as well as the sin in your life. And so the um eight late 18th and early 19th century abolitionists in England um fought for social reforms across society, not just the abolition of slavery, but they caug fought for improved manners among the the the rich and the poor and open Sunday schools and and advocated for the first animal welfare. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So this is our heritage, um, and I think we still have it even if we don't consciously recognize that it's that it's part of our heritage. Uh and so to your point, um, we have brought much good to the world. I mean, obviously Christianity did way back uh from the beginning, but just talking about evangelicalism proper, um there's a lot that we brought to the world.
SPEAKER_02But and we've exported some of our problems as well. So is if there is a problem when the the virtue of conversionism runs amok and s becomes a kind of an identitarian, you know, sense of you know, this this is who I am. Um I I I I see that in the world as well, with with people wanting to define themselves in kind of narrow categories. And that can end up in in a whole bunch of virtue signaling and and cultural war stuff as well. And at some point, like if I'm gonna make the thesis that the air we breathe culturally is Christianity's fault, I also I also have to like shoulder the the fact that some of the the the negatives are our fault as well. And it reminds me of on page 106, you say something quite provocative. Um you say evangelicalism was and is inherently not conservative, not traditional, but rather innovative and therefore progressive in a social and cultural sense, not necessarily politically or theologically. Evangelicalism is innovative and therefore progressive. Defend yourself, Karen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, me being provocative, no. Um I again, going back to my short history of the rise of the evangelical revival in England in the context of a state church, of course it was innovative for evangelicals to say, oh wait, no, we we have to do something. We can't take this default position, we can't accept just nominal Christianity. Um and and then from that point on, we go through the 19th century, especially in America, and I recount some of this. I mean, it's well-known history, um, all of the different methods and strategies that were used to kind of manipulate or encourage whatever word you want to use, people to come forward to make the decision. Um, and then we go to you know, later 19th and early 20th century, uh, when we see sort of the the marriage of evangelical uh belief and practices with businesses, with entrepreneurial ship, and then you know, we get the birth of the uh what Sky Jathani calls the evangelical industrial complex. Um and so we s continue to see that today. I mean, evangelicals are often the ones at the forefront of you know digital media, um uh b leadership, um, all kinds of different sort of products and strategies for growth and um and that's you know that w is that reflecting the culture or is it um shaping the culture? It's probably probably both, but it certainly is innovative. As you know, as as as our you know small O and capital well, our capital O Orthodox friends would probably say.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's right. Because I I guess you kind of got Charles Taylor on your shoulder a lot in the book. Um and it's it's hard to escape the sort of the Catholic gaze who's kind of looking at us and kind of saying, um Any regrets, people?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, and no, exactly. I said Orthodox, but Cat our Catholic friends too would very much probably uh you know be saying, I told you so right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So we are all popes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well well, exactly. We've just we've just all become our little pulpit popes. Um so tell me uh you are happy calling yourself an evangelical today, in in what sense?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know how happy I am about it, but no. I again, I you know, I've you know, I just I'll never never rid myself of the echo of Shakespeare or Rose by any other name, right? Um you know, I because I I do believe in conversion, I do believe in the centrality of the Bible, and I do uh, you know, as as authoritative in in the believer's life and and the centrality of Christ's crucifixion, and I'm an activist. Um so you know, you could call me something else, but for now I think this is what I am. But with that said, I will say that I, you know, I do think that we are in some sort of 500-year moment in the church. Something is happening. I, you know, I I the ground is shifting underneath us, we're all feeling it and experiencing it in in maybe different ways, but we're facing, you know, I think the breakdown of institutions, because as I said before, of some of, you know, if not outright corruption, just an over-emphasis on the importance of the institution rather than the individual souls. I talk about that in the book. And so, you know, if something else comes from this moment that historians later have a different label for, maybe I'm that. I just, you know, that part hasn't been written yet.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, in a second, I'll ask you uh, like what is your recipe for for reformation um that we can all follow to the tea. And uh Hey presto!
SPEAKER_00I'm a terrible cook, by the way. I'm a terrible cook.
SPEAKER_02You can't be worse than me. Um I'll I'll ask you afterwards, for for for members only, I'll ask you about um the difference between art and propaganda. I've been uh I've been intrigued by that, and especially by a conversation that you had with Russell Moore about uh John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress. Because I don't really get Pilgrim's Progress either. Um why why is he so much better than Frank Peretti? We could we could we can discuss that um for for members only. But why don't you give us your best shot at um laying out how do how do we recapture the evangelical imagination? Um you've you've kind of you've exposed and I guess exposing us to kind of the air that we breathe and the social imaginary that surrounds us. That that is a a huge part of the issue, helping helping us to see what is scriptural and what is simply cultural. Um how do we positively move forward and proclaim uh and live out a healthy vision for evangelicalism?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, of course. You ask me to be positive, I'll try. Um no, I I but I do th I do think the first step is the negative one. It is having the eyes to see, whether through our own will. or more likely just through you know the grace of the Holy Spirit um to s to just recognize our unexamined assumptions. And it's not even to say that all assumptions are bad, but it's to recognize that they are assumptions. I think that's what's what has been happening in especially in an American evangelicalism. If you are a white American evangelical as I am, then you're you're in a privileged position. And I think it's actually harder for the people whose positions and views and places in society have been the default ones. Right. It's just harder for us to s to recognize that we have unexamined assumptions and to see what they are. But this is the gift of the you know kind of the global digital world that we live in now is that we actually have the opportunity to very easily be um acquainted with other people's experiences, other people's assumptions to to come up against the way that someone else thinks about the world or the experience that they have, whether it's about conversion or domesticity or empire or anything else. I mean like one example that I give in the book is from you know an Indian friend of mine who who you know he comes from generation some of his ancestors were the earliest Christians in the church and yet the assumption for so long has been that white people bought brought Christianity to that place. And that's an assumption it's a wrong assumption. And so there that's just one example but we have the opportunity in front of us to just to encounter all kinds of unexamined assumptions that we carry around with us and then to decide to decide in humility to learn from other people to go back to the Bible to see you know is the Proverbs 31 woman really the angel in the house in the Victorian literature or is she something else? Because even we even come to scripture oftentimes with our preconceived stories and interpretations. And and you know if we are we are not Protestants at all if we cannot believe and agree on sola scriptura, right? Like just to go back um to scripture alone. So I really think that the positive thing is to recognize the negative thing or to to recognize um that this is just part of being what it means to be human. We're in this moment of of of privilege and power in in this century in this country that is crumbling and we can um ask the Lord what he has to show us from that because I think he has he has a lot to show us and um and something beautiful will will come out of it but that doesn't mean it's not going to be painful in the meantime.
SPEAKER_02Yeah okay and we will talk together about uh what kind of stories we can tell uh that can reorient us to to a healthier form of of of church life uh in just a minute for for members but um uh Karen how can people pick up this wonderful book? Well it's it's sold at any of your favorite um booksellers if you uh want a quick link you can go to my website Karen Swallowprior.com um it's published by um Brazos which is at Baker uh so you should be able to find it anywhere and I hope you will I hope people will too um it was a wonderful read and it's yeah it did captivate my imagination and I think as a professor of English literature you are sort of drawing in uh all sorts of uh of stories and metaphors that that were really making uh connections in in my head and I I enjoyed reading it very much and I hope that many other people will do the same. If people are members they can uh hear me ask you the question about art and propaganda.
SPEAKER_01But uh for now Karen Swallow Fryer thank you so much for joining me thank you for having me well there we go I hope you enjoyed that conversation you heard at the end there Glenn teasing a bonus question with Karen and it's about the difference between art and propaganda. Very intriguing. Now if you are a Speak Life partner that means you give more than £4.99 a month to the work of Speak Life you can get access to that bonus question bonus questions at the ends of lots of our interviews and all our other bonus content so we have tens of hours of talks from our intensives and other talks that Glenn and Nate have given around the country we have recordings of those so hours and hours of bonus content and it's growing day by day and all of that is accessible to our Speak Life partners. We really do appreciate those of you who support us in any way be it through prayer or financial means even downloading this podcast and listening to it is a great support to us and helps us to reach more people so we thank you very much for that. Now the best way to access our bonus content is via the speaklife discord server. So you can join our discord by going to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give if you haven't done so already and anyone who joins our discord will be able to see lots of cool things in there and they'll be able to interact with the speaklife team and other speaklife supporters but as I said if you are a regular giver to the work of speaklife giving uh at least $4.99 a month then you will have access to some additional rooms within our discord and that's where we keep all the bonus content. If you're in the discord and you don't feel like you're seeing all the rooms that you should be seeing just ping me a message my name's Thomas Speak Life media producer within Discord and we will make sure that that is sorted out. If you enjoyed this episode I'd just like to draw your attention to another in our back catalogue which might be of interest to you The Battle for the imagination with Ted Turnau, the man who wrote Popologetics which was a very influential book in the Christian world in terms of thinking about engaging with popular culture so that was episode four hundred and sixty seven of the Speak Life podcast. If you enjoyed today's conversation with Karen I think you might enjoy that one as well. We have some listener correspondence about our previous episode which was with Michael Tinker talking about music and sharing the gospel and he spoke very movingly about the grief of losing his father. So Martin Green said thank you so much for this such a profound reflection especially about Psalm twenty three isn't it amazing that as music resonates so deeply within especially at times of grief to think that God also sings over us. Was so sad to hear about Melvin that's Michael's father a fellow student at Wycliffe and minister in Hull for a short while thank you both. Well thank you so much Martin for that lovely comment and we hope to be bringing more conversations like this soon. And if you would like to write to the show you can email info at speaklife.org.uk and we will read some of those out on the show. So do get in touch it's always wonderful to hear from our wonderful listeners who are across the globe. Thanks so much for listening and we will catch you next week. Goodbye