SPEAKER_00

Well, hello and welcome to the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas Thurigood, media producer at Speak Life. What do you know about ARC, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship? Well, they had their second global ARK conference, and that will be the focus of today's episode. I imagine lots of you listening will know about the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. You may even have watched clips online or even attended in person. I believe 4,000 people from around the world attended their conference in London from the 17th to the 19th of February. And among those attendees were Speak Life's very own Glenn and Chris. It was really good that they were able to attend and meet all sorts of fascinating people. In this episode, you will hear Glenn's reflections on the conference and focusing in particular on what he would describe as the defining moment of ARK 2025. So what is ARK? How Christian is it? What are some positives? What are some concerns? Plenty to be getting into in this episode. I hope you enjoy it, and I will hand over to Glenn.

SPEAKER_04

Is it anti-woke devos? Is it a megachurch? Is it a megachurch? Is it a climate skeptic vidcon? Is it apocalyptic Reaganism, as Sebastian Milbank called it? What is ARK? Uh we've uh spoken about ARK before. I was at ARK number one at the end of 2023. Probably the most significant thing that happened at ARK 2023 was the coming out of Ayan Hersey Ali. That was the first time she pinned her colours to the mast, coming out as Christian. But what is ARK? It is in the orbit of Jordan Peterson, and so there's certainly a constellation of uh podcasts and YouTube channels that are in the orbit of Jordan Peterson. They are represented at ARK. There's also this kind of anti-woke Davos thing going on. It's a little bit like a World Economic Forum, and certainly people are talking a lot about the economy and about uh the environment and those sorts of things. And so very much because Jordan Peterson is so vociferously anti-net zero, um, it's uh that certainly takes uh a flavor of things. But Baroness Stroud is the convener of uh ARK, and she leads the movement. She is a politician, she's in the House of Lords here in the United Kingdom. She's also a conservative evangelical, and in a sense, Jordan Peterson is like the least Christian element of ARK. Um but he sort of sets a very high bar in terms of cultural Christianity and in terms of Christian adjacency, in terms of somebody who is very interested in Christian things, and he has been, perhaps to the church's shame, uh, one of the best evangelists in the 21st century, certainly in terms of uh generating interest for Christianity. Um there's a half dozen people in my church who are in church because they've started listening to Jordan Peterson. They have no idea that I listened to Jordan Peterson, they had no idea that anyone else in that church would listen to Jordan Peterson, and we're on this sleepy seaside town on the south coast of England. Uh Jordan Peterson has done something. There are many people catching that train, and uh many people who get off at a station that is further on than Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson tends to get out before baptism and before commitment to Christ and commitment to uh church community. Uh he also has a very Jungian psychologizing approach to the Bible, and at points that means that his theology is 180 degrees uh from uh an orthodox Christian understanding of the gospel. Nevertheless, many are leapfrogging Jordan Peterson into the kingdom. So, what do I, as a Christian evangelist and as a pastor, and as a YouTuber, what do I think about Ark? Well, have a look at my video from 2023. Uh the thumbnail there says it all. I'm torn. Uh I was at Ark 2023, and you had everything at Arc 1 that you get at Arc 2. You had profoundly Christian lineups of speakers, uh, whether they had come out as Christians, or whether they were in the process of coming out as Christians, or whether they were just sort of tacit Christians. Um it was an incredibly Christian thing, such that by the end, Jonathan Peugeot asks people, Are you religious? And 85% of the room puts its hands up, and probably only three people say that they're not. Jonathan Peugeot makes a great joke about we're just taking names. Um and so it's it was a profoundly Christian-ish sort of a movement. Um, but it's got lots of different things hitched to it. So there's the social media side of things, and that there's the environmental side of things, and they've picked a side on net zero, and that takes them in a certain direction. And among the big finance people, there's a lot of skepticism towards woke capitalism and ESG environmental, social, and corporate governance plans. So that's the anti-woke Davos uh kind of side to ARC. But then there is the political side to ARC, and certainly at Arc 1, Kate Forbes uh from the Scottish National Party, um, she was there and she was raising the question: is there a place for those on the left on the ARC, as it were? But given that Kate Forbes did not come to ARK 2, perhaps she concluded that there isn't a place for those on the left at Arc. Uh Maurice Glassman came, uh a Labour peer, and so there was, you know, somebody from Labour was there. Uh the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenok spoke on the first day, and Nigel Farage was interviewed on day two from Reform UK. So there's an attempt to bring together Labour, Conservative, and Reform. But if you take the Jordan Peterson view on gender, and if you take the Jordan Peterson view on net zero, and if you take the Jordan Peterson view on DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, uh, and if you don't mind Trump, then you will have an alliance that sits somewhere on our modern spectrum of left-right. And interestingly, in 2025, 4,000 people come to ARC 2, as opposed to 1,500 coming to it uh in 2023. And perhaps that's one more piece of evidence that the vibe shift is real, and many more people are just willing to question some modern liberal platitudes. Many more people are starting to think, well, even though I was told it was compassionate to transition children who are confused about their gender identity, um, it turns out it wasn't compassionate at all. It's a medical scandal. What have we been doing? And if people start to wake up to these sorts of issues, what else have we called compassion that has masked policies that lead to real harm? So many more people, I guess, are willing to be in the orbit of what Hillary Clinton called the basket of deplorables, and think to themselves, well, JK Rowling is not a bigot or a phob. Maybe the people I've been taught to call the bad guys are in fact the good guys, and maybe some of the guys that I've been calling the good guys are in fact the bad guys, and perhaps I've been captive to one kind of vibe, and I need to investigate my beliefs more deeply. And this is why as an evangelist I see the audience for ARK being an incredible mission field. I was there for three days, I went with three evangelistic books of mine to give away to people, and I got rid of those before lunch on day one. Having one conversation after another after another. So whenever I talk to somebody, I would just say, What's it like being surrounded by so many Christians? Because they're just they are just Christians everywhere. The the great majority of those on stage are Christian, whether they declare that or not. And I would say the great majority of those who are in attendance are are Christians of one stripe or another. And so if if it turned out that somebody wasn't, I was like, what's it like being surrounded by all these Christians? And then I would explain. I am one, by the way, just before you say anything too horrible about Christian. And and we would get into deep, rich conversations about you know what? I started reading Job. You know, that that's what one guy, one guy, he he wasn't even a Christian, and yet on his business card, he was a writer. On his business card, he had proverbs written, like he had a proverb, like with the Bible reference underneath it. Um, as he gave it to me, and he's been like really deeply impacted by Jordan Peterson and wanting to read the scriptures more. And so we get into this conversation, and by the end of it, I give away one book. And and like the very next person I talk to, uh, another very deep conversation about Jesus. The next person, a very deep conversation about Jesus. I was I was done with all these, but I've now got to go and post, I've got to go and post another couple of books to people. Afterwards, I just didn't bring enough uh evangelistic literature with me, which means next arc, I wonder if uh I I don't know if I'll pay for a ticket, but I might pay for a stand and go into the exhibition hall. And I I think what I'll have is just a massive sign and it'll just say, Stop talking about biblical values and read the darn thing, and I'll just hand out Bibles to people. I think I think that that might be incredibly fruitful. And like, how does that strike you if you're a Christian? How does that strike you that there is an incredibly fruitful mission field on the right of things? Um because I'm one of the good people, I've always been one of the good people. I went to the right univers I went to the right college at the right university with impeccable kind of liberal credentials. And I've always been used to being that kind of person. And I do evangelism sometimes on university campuses, in which um generally through the 2000s and the 2010s, um, the tactic has always been to say, um, Jesus is also an environmentalist, so become a Christian. Jesus is also a feminist, so become a Christian. And uh a lot of apologetics has always been left coded while I've been an evangelist. I I guess I've uh worked full-time for churches for the last 25 years and officially as an evangelist with evangelist on my business card since 2010. So um I've done a lot of this stuff and a lot of it is left coded, which is great. I mean that's that's where I'm from, and that's that's kind of the the political home that I've always um felt most at home in, and I guess anyone who is my age um has always swum in those sorts of waters. And now there's a vibe shift happening, and this current vibe shift is very much a reaction to the previous vibe shift, because I would say that ever since gay marriage came in on either side of the Atlantic, from that moment onwards, I think there's been a sense of you're on the right side of history if you take these social and cultural views, and in that setting, the apologetics talk, Jesus is also a feminist, um, just met much stronger opposition. Jesus is also an environmentalist, met much stronger opposition when the vibe was in that direction. Now I fundamentally believe you do not have equal rights for male and female without Christianity. I've written a whole book about it. It's called The Air We Breathe, and how equality and compassion and many other of our values have come from the Jesus Revolution. I also think you don't get proper environmental concern without the Jesus Revolution. We can get into that. But the vibe shift meant that such left-coded evangelism, which was very well-meaning, fell on a lot of deaf ears. And the more recent vibe shift means that the kind of evangelism that I think resonates today would be let's get Louise Perry to talk about, yes, Christianity and feminism, but also gender and identity and sex and the sexual revolution. And she has gone on a journey from left, and I guess most people would identify her on the right, you know, writing for the Telegraph and the and the Daily Mail and people like that. But she gives a robust critique of the sexual revolution. And I'm not saying that that's a universally popular view now, not saying that at all. But it is at least a fruitful minority, a creative minority in the midst of a culture, and those who are seeking truth beneath the vibes are the sort of people who will actually read The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry, and they won't mind that, oh, if I read Louise Perry, oh she also writes for the telegraph, oh, therefore I am in the orbit of the basket of deplorables. Vibes actually matter in terms of whether people will give themselves to certain causes, whether they'll give themselves to investigating truths. And if there is a vibe shift that says, you know what? You can order a Bible from Amazon and you can just crack on. You can start reading at Genesis, and you can take this book seriously. You can take yourself to church, you can take your family to church, maybe you even should. The vibe shift makes all of that very plausible. In fact, it actually makes it attractive, not to the great majority of people out there, but to a significant minority of people who are now willing to give the Bible a chance, to give church a chance, to give faith a chance. Might we be seeing a surprising rebirth of belief in God? That's the title of Justin Briley's excellent book and his podcast series. And we might be beginning to see confirmation in the data, confirmation in numbers of people turning up to church, confirmation in Gen Z saying, uh I am happy to be spiritual, I'm happy to be considered religious. I don't want to be called an atheist, even though my parents are happy to call themselves atheists. Is there some kind of renewal and revitalization happening? It seems like there is something happening, and it seems like it might be happening more on the right of politics. And again I asked the question, are Christians okay with that? In the 1970s, the Jesus Revolution and the hippies who turned to Christ was very much a movement on the left. And hopefully a movement that people at the time and people now looking back can celebrate. Would it be okay if there was a revival on the right? In a sense, we better pray that there's a revival on the right, because as Ross Douthit said in the New York Times, if you don't like the religious right, you are going to hate the post-religious right. And that's why for me the defining moment of ARK was a talk given by David Brooks. David Brooks has been on a really interesting journey. David Brooks is also a columnist for the New York Times, a political conservative, but writing for that uh very mainstream left-leaning publication. And he gave a masterclass in rhetoric. Uh, he opens up with uh some jokes. He gets the entire audience on his side. I think he got more laughs than professional comedian Constantine Kisson. Check it out.

SPEAKER_03

So I have a confession to make. I'm a member of the educated elite. My parents were historians of Victorian England. Our turtles, when I was growing up, were named Israeli and Gladstone. The culture in our home was think yiddish, act british. Very stiff upper lip, we showed no emotion. And then when I was seven, I read a book called Pattings in the Bear and decided I want to become a writer. And that was central to my identity ever since in high school. Um what you call like fourth form or something like that. Um I once date a woman named Bernice, and she didn't want to date me, she dated some other guy. And I remember thinking, what is she thinking? I write way better than that. So those were my values. Um and then when I was 18, the admissions officers of Columbia, Wesleyan, and Brown University decided I should go to the University of Chicago. And some of you may know the thing about Chicago, it's where fun goes to Dominic. My favorite thing about Chicago is a Baptist school where atheist professionals teach a Jewish student St. Thomas McCoy. And my favorite end, I had a double major in Chicago in history of celibacy while I was a member. And then after school, I'm a jumper and an educated elite history of jumbo. I was hired to be the conservative columnist of the New York Times.

SPEAKER_04

I'm a brilliant. I see Paul Vanderclay. I didn't I didn't spot him before. There, there's Paul Vandercle. He was there. Um, pastor to the intellectual dark web. Uh, and there he is with Marcus next to him. And um, so he has them eating out of the palm of his hand. And David Brooks has gone on a spiritual journey. I think his wife was Christian first, and uh I I think, I don't know, I I might be speaking out of turn, but I I think he might have embraced the faith for himself. Certainly, um, he was friends with Tim Keller, and you can hear Tim Keller kind of through David Brooks in so many different ways. Tim Keller, a Christian pastor in Manhattan and ministering a gospel um in a more left-leaning place. But one of the criticisms of uh Tim Keller, coming from uh some other Christians, is that he would coddle left and punch right. Um, that Tim Keller, when he spoke of the gospel being a third way, that the sort of there's left and right, but from above, Jesus is different. He's not left-wing, he's not right wing, he's something else, and that left and right have devolved from this original way of Jesus. Um Tim Keller uh was very much known for winsomeness um towards both left and right. Um but the big question was, was he winsome towards the right, or did he punch right in order to coddle left in Manhattan and say, ah, you know, my church, Redeemer Presbyterian, is not like the Rubes in Alabama. We are uh sophisticated, we are left-leaning Christians, and it's possible to be a a Christian and you know. And the sort of message that you don't get feminism without Jesus and the equality of the sexes that he brought, and you don't get environmental concern without Jesus and his vision for the world based in Genesis, right? That stuff goes down much better in Manhattan than it does in Alabama, and that's where Tim Keller ministered. And so the criticism, not so much from global evangelicalism, but the criticism from within US evangelicalism was that Tim Keller was coddling left and punching right. I don't think that's fair. And if you want to know what Tim Keller would say to Ark, I think just watch what David Brooks said to Ark, because uh I hear a lot of Tim Keller coming through David Brooks. And what you see here is David Brooks going into a a more right-leaning place and doing a wonderful job of ingratiating himself to them, but saying hard truths too. Um look at this pause screen. I didn't know how many people I know here. Look, there's Luke Martin at uh Eton, and there's Sam Hailes from Premier Christianity magazine, and next to him there's Dan Strange, who is a Keller Fellow. I am a Keller Fellow as well. Um so a real mixture of people in this audience, but David Brooks has all of them eating out of the palm of his hand. But I think he was very brave to do what he did later on in the talk. And the way he brings critique is actually by first owning his own culpability. He's like, I I am an elite, and us elites have rigged the system against all those on the outside, and it is our fault, and I'm sorry. So he starts with contrition, he starts with humility.

SPEAKER_03

So we members of the Educate Elite did some good things. We created the internet brunch and mocktails. You're welcome. We did some bad things. We designed a meritocracy designed around the skills we ourselves possess and rigged the game so we succeeded and everybody else failed. By age 12 children, American children of affluent kids are four grade levels above everybody else. By university age, rich kids are 77 times more likely to go to university or to I believe university than kids from poor schools. In adulthood, 54% of the people at elite workplaces went to the same 34 elite colleges. So we ended up creating a caste system. People with high school degrees die nine years sooner than people with college degrees. People with high school degrees are five times more likely to have kids out of wedlock. People with high school degrees are 2.4 times more likely to say they have no friends. So we created a caste system, even though we pretend to be egalitarian.

SPEAKER_04

So having through humor ingratiated himself with others, he he then moves to humility, he then moves to contrition, and then he has some hard things to say about those on the right. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03

The third thing the educated elite has done, and this may not please you, is we produced Donald Trump. Uh some people think Donald Trump is a populist. Donald Trump and Elon Musk went to the University of Pennsylvania in Ivy League School and became billionaires. J.D. Vance went to Yale, Pete Heggseth went to the Princeton of Yale, Stephen Miller went to Duke, Fox News type Gloria Ingram went to Dartmouth. And they represent the educated elite. And the key factor of the educated elite is that they're not pro-conservative, they're anti-left.

SPEAKER_04

I think that's a key question for the vibe shift right now. The vibe shift is the vibe shift actually, let's return to the sources and let's return to Jesus and the gospel, or even just classical liberalism, or even just conservative values. What are we returning to in the vibe shift? And so much of it, says New York Times columnist David Brooks, so much of it is just anti-wokeness. So much of it is just I'm sick of the left telling me I'm a bigot for actually wanting to protect children against gender ideology. I'm sick of it. And I'm sick of their virtue signalling, and therefore, they've been wearing a mask the whole time. I'm gonna tear off that mask and reveal that it was wicked all along. And then you ask the question, okay, but what have you got in its place? What is your positive vision? Or is your mask tearing? Every bit as much of a vibe as their mask wearing? That's the big question he's asking.

SPEAKER_03

They don't have a positive vision, conservative vision for society. They just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. And this means, in the first place, they're astoundingly incompetent. I have a lot of sympathy with what drove people to vote for Trump, but I am telling you, as someone who's on the front road of what's happening, do not hit your wagon with that star. Thank you. You're supposed to boo.

SPEAKER_04

You're supposed to boo. Listen, I was in the room, okay. There was warm applause and there was booing. There were conservatives worried about Trump and there was MAGA. And they were both in the room, and this is the defining moment, I think, of Arc. Listen in, I think you'll be able to hear there's one guy up on the left in the bleachers uh who yells out traitor. Does it get picked up?

SPEAKER_02

Thank you. You're supposed to boom.

SPEAKER_04

Did you hear it? At 5 minutes 35.

SPEAKER_02

Traitor!

SPEAKER_04

Traitor! The applause and the heckles. This is what's going on on the right right now. In the vibe shift, on the right, are people hitching their wagon to the Trump train, or is there something deeper and more grounded going on? And when David Brooks can't even point out some of the inconsistencies with MAGA, without getting heckled, we have a big question. What's going on within the vibe shift? Can you point out problems with Donald Trump without being accused of suffering from Trump derangement syndrome? And if you find yourself pointing to others critiquing Trump and just saying, you've got Trump derangement syndrome, you've got Trump derangement syndrome, you've got Trump derangement syndrome. Well, there are three fingers pointing back at you. I think there are questions for those who are on the right, there are questions for those on the left as well. As Ross Dalthert has said, if you don't like the Christian right, you're really not going to like the post-Christian right. Listen to David Brooks's critique.

SPEAKER_03

Elon Musk has 25-year-olds firing people who are controlling our nuclear codes. It's like Sam Bankman-Fried got control of our nuclear arsenal.

SPEAKER_04

Wait a minute. Who's Sam Bankman-Fried? Commonly known as SBF, is an entrepreneurial American who is convicted of fraud and related Oh, is he the effective altruism guy? And the cryptocurrency guy. Right. Bankman Freed founded the FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange and was celebrated as a poster boy for crypto. At the peak of his net worth, he was ranked 41st richest American. A friendly math nerd. Uh, and a fraud. Right, yeah. Imagine. Imagine he's in charge of the codes. Now I understand the reference. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Second, elite narcissism causes them to eviscerate every belief system they touch. Conservatives believe in healthy societies are built on healthy institutions. They're anti-institutional. Conservatives believe in steady and gradual change, Edmund Burke. They're disruption. Conservatives believe in constitutional government. Donald Trump says I alone can fix this. Conservatives believe in moral norms. They're destroying moral norms. Conservative the other belief system that they are destroying is Judeo-Christian faith.

SPEAKER_04

I must have heard the phrase Judeo-Christian like at least a hundred times in three days at Arc, Judeo-Christian, Judeo-Christian. To the point where a friend of mine was Christian is like, when are people gonna mention the J word? And like he meant Jesus. And I was like, You mean Judeo-Christian? Everything like so weird. I've never met a Judeo-Christian. It's such a civilizational word. It's the it's the perfect arc kind of word, Judeo-Christian, rather than Rod Dreya. I noticed, um, would talk about Jews and Christians, which I which I think is might be a more fruitful way of talking about things. Um, because I've never met a Judeo-Christian. I've I've met Jews and I've met Christians, and it's wonderful that we can share the scriptures and all that kind of stuff. But Judeo-Christian is a particularly political, cultural, civilizational coded word um that makes me break out in a rash at times. Um David Brooks uses it because he's at Arc, but anyway.

SPEAKER_03

Judeo-Christian faith is based on service to the poor, service to the immigrant, service to the stranger.

SPEAKER_04

Now here's the question for those on the right: can they hear that from David Brooks without being triggered? Because the previous vibe shift, the one that lurched very much left, told us that it was all about the marginalized, it was all about the weak and the poor while they were giving puberty blockers to teenagers and doing double mastectomies on teenagers in the name of compassion, in the name of the marginalized and the weak and the poor. And now that that mask has been ripped off, we we see through the fact that sometimes the virtue that is pretended is uh a virtue signal rather than virtue itself. But are we now not only against virtue signaling, are we also against virtue itself? And can we hear this love for the poor without being triggered? Kemi Badenot gave a talk uh on day one. I thought I thought it was uh really misjudged for Ark to have her there, and she used the word weakness a number of times.

SPEAKER_01

It's not liberal values that are the problem. It's weakness. Weakness, weakness, weakening ourselves. Weakness, weakness. It's not liberal values that are the problem. It's weakness.

SPEAKER_04

Do you hear the spite in the voice? Do you hear the disdain? Weakness, weakness, weakness. No, the new conservatives are gonna be strong. And of course, playing the strong card when the conservatives were the ones who just brought in gay marriage and and brought in all sorts of trans stuff. I think most people, even at ARK, saw through the fact that this is posturing. But what kind of posturing does Kemi Badennock think it's worthwhile doing? It's now not worthwhile to be on the side of the weak. Now it's worthwhile saying weakness. Now it is politically expedient for Kemi Badenok to ride the vibe shift rightwards and to despise weakness. That apparently she feels she's banking on being a vote winner. And she might be right, and that might be really concerning because what David Brooks just said about the weak and the marginalized is true. It's Christian. But because that's the same language that people use to bring in assisted dying, it's the same language that's used to kill 73 million babies in the womb every year. That's apparently a compassion and a quality issue. It's about looking after the marginalized as as we kill 140 babies per minute. And the trouble is, those who are pro-abortion, those who are pro-euthanasia, those who are pro-gender ideology have used the language of we are just on the side of the marginalized and the weak and the poor and the outsider. And those on the right are presented with a question: Are Christians on the right still going to be able to hear the language of compassion? Are those on the right going to be able to hear the words of Jesus? I was very heartened that Toby Young spoke about uh freedom of speech in one of the talks and said the reason why we believe in freedom of speech is because you want the marginalized to have a voice. I thought that was a much needed appeal and kind of the opposite of the Kemi Badenock message. The Kemi Badenock message is that weakness is to be despised. Toby Young said to those on the right, as a fellow person on the right, he said, These rights are to protect the weak and the poor. Can you hear Toby Young? Can you hear David Brooks? Can you hear Jesus? Or is the vibe shift going to sweep us away, not only from that language, but also from those convictions? That's a real danger. Uh let's go on a little bit further in David Brooks's talk.

SPEAKER_03

My friends in America are conservative evangelicals in government who want to fight sex trafficking, poverty, they want to preserve national security. Donald Trump is declaring war on those Christians. So don't worry about it. So I've described three different things we educated elites brought you. We destroyed the social fabric through inequality, we destroyed the moral fabric through privatizing morality, and we destroyed the institutional fabric. What's happening right now? How can we come back? Well, we already are.

SPEAKER_04

So David Brooks, he started with laughter, he started with humility, and I'm part of the elites, and I'm part of this problem. I'm sorry about that. He brought his critique of MAGA, but he's halfway through his talk and he's gonna turn things around. And David Brooks, I think, would agree with what Os Guinness said later in the conference that through a Christian lens, civilizations don't so much decline and fall, but there is exile and return. Certainly from a Christian point of view, there is exile and return. And could there be a return? David Brooks thinks it's already happening.

SPEAKER_03

How can we come back? Well, we already are. I often ask people, tell me about a time that made you who you are as a human being. And they never say, I went on a fantastic vacation in Hawaii. They never say that. They say, I went through a really hard time. The death of someone, the loss of someone, moving away from home, entering a new vocation. Paul Tillich, the theologian, said those moments of suffering interrupt your life and they remind you you're not the person you thought they were. They carve through the floor of your basement of your soul, and they reveal a cavity below, and they carve through that floor and they reveal a cavity below. In moments of suffering, you see yourself in a more deep way than you ever did before. And in those moments of suffering, you can either be broken or you can be broken open. And people who are transformed decide, I'm gonna be broken open. And nations that are gonna be transformed by moments of suffering say, we're gonna be broken open.

SPEAKER_04

I think that's a beautiful moment, and it's what you can get when you have a Christian message rather than a civilizational message. A civilizational message, you can talk about Christian values, and you can talk about the Judeo-Christian legacy, and you can talk about the rules-based international order, and you can talk about human rights, and you can you can talk about values, values, values, values, values. But all talk about values does is make you feel angry when the other side are not upholding them, or wistful for the past, or determined to scrunch up your stomach muscles very tightly and become the sort of person who lives up to such values. What it never does is is break you open. Suffering breaks you open, love breaks you open, and love in the midst of suffering, that's what will really break you open and heal you. And that's the Christian gospel. The Christian gospel is we are not those who are ascending a mountain by our own virtue. We are those who are in a valley of deep shadow. And the good shepherd has joined us there. To love us, to identify us first as the meek one, as the lowly one. A couple of times this note was struck at the conference. Johannes uh Hartle uh came onto the stage on day one and kind of corrected what Jordan Peterson was saying about we need to climb Jacob's ladder to the top. And he said, No, no, no, it's it's about grace, isn't it? It's about the love that descends down into the valley with you, isn't it, Jordan? Um he only had sort of three minutes to to speak. I thought he did a great job of bringing that message of grace down. And Amy Or Ewing uh spoke as well on a panel, and I thought she made the excellent point that so often we abstract from the story of the Good Samaritan and we abstract some kind of compassion ethic from it, and the right take it in a certain direction, the left take that in a certain direction. But she focuses us on the fact that we are first of all the beaten-up guy by the side of the road, and we are first loved by that beautiful stranger. We are first the recipients of incredible mercy. We are broken open in the midst of suffering and in the midst of love. And you know, and and you can't get that. Like you won't get that at Davos, you won't get that at the World Economic Forum either. You won't you won't get that at these civilizational levels uh in in terms of of how civilizations transform, in terms of how humans transform. It's gotta be a faith-based message, it's gotta be the gospel that comes to us as individuals and that convicts us of our sin first, that shows us the depths of our darkness, and then reveals to us the love of Jesus, who loves us nevertheless and sets us on our feet. And and then there will be certain ways that we can rebuild as society from there, and certain of them will sound left-coded, because it will be about the weak and the poor and the marginalized. It will be if we've learnt from the Good Samaritan at all. And certain of those rebuilding enterprises will sound right-coded, of course they will. And look, this is not squishy centerism, this is an acknowledgement that both left and right have devolved from an original way of Jesus. It's not, in that sense, not even third wayism. It's the original way of Jesus, from which left and right have devolved. And in order to be disciples of the true good Samaritan, the one who has loved us at our worst and raised us up on our onto our feet to pass on his compassion revolution, to follow in that original way. Sometimes it's gonna sound left-coated, sometimes it's gonna sound right-coded. And that's not squishy centerism. And what David Brooks does is not squishy-centerism. Coming into the midst of ARK and critiquing MAGA, that's the difficult move. And listen, if you're a Christian on the right and you're finding yourself now more in the center of the public discourse, and now the Overton window has shifted such that, oh, you're now included, and the vibe shift is a vibe that you can get on board with. Well, now you are experiencing cultural power. Now you are the elite. And you might think, I'm not the elites, you know. I live in a flyover state in the US, and because I'm MAGA, I'm not elite. Well, if the vibe shift means that you are now in the center of cultural power, you now must steward that power. And at points you will have to critique those on the right. I I hope you do, because there's plenty to critique, plenty to critique on the left as well. And I think those from flyover states who looked at Manhattan and looked at Tim Keller having to distinguish himself from left and right, they they thought he was just playing a squishy centrist game. Maybe they will discover that as they have more cultural power, they too are called upon to do that distinguishing work, and that it's not the squishy centrist who does it, it's the disciple of Jesus who occasionally has to call out people on the right and on the left because the way of Jesus is something else. Let's hear from the end of David Brooks's uh talk.

SPEAKER_03

I believe the in that we are inheritors of a great spiritual legacy, what Michael Oakshaw called the Great Conversation. We have the voice of Genesis, that we're all made in God's image. That's the foundation of democracy. We have the voice of Exodus, that we wander through the wilderness and we eventually get to the promised land. We have the voice of Jesus, even if you're not Christian. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit. That's a source of great strength.

SPEAKER_04

So you can check out the rest of David Brooks' talk and all the other talks from ARK. Um and look, I'm not trying to hold it up to a standard. It needs to be a Christian conference. I don't want it to be a Christian conference. It can be whatever it wants to be. And honestly, I've been asked many times uh this week, what would you say if you were given, you know, ten minutes on the ARK stage? And honestly, I would be most happy in the exhibition hall, uh, alongside all the other exhibitors, and genuinely, just a big sign up saying, Um, stop talking about biblical values, just read the thing. And I'd I just want to I just want to hand people the scriptures and pray that they would meet Jesus himself. Because I think all the civilizational speak is true. Christianity has indeed given us classical liberal values, it has indeed given us enlightenment values, it has indeed given us a rights-based international order. If you trace back the intellectual genealogy, you will find Christianity above all other things. And without Christianity, I don't think you get to those things. But if you want to get back to the roots of civilization, don't get back to values, because values are the fruits of that which is the true root, and his name is Jesus. And when you try to encounter Jesus as though you are a cultural mover and shaker, he will take you down a peg or three. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. He was a member of the ruling council of Jerusalem. He was a Pharisee, he was rich, powerful, educated, strong, not weak. But he comes to Jesus and wants Jesus' help so that Nicodemus can forward his own project in the world. And you know what Jesus says to him? It's the famous saying, whether you've read the Bible or not, you know that he says to Nicodemus, You gotta be born again. You must be born again. Here's this guy in his forties ruling the world. And Jesus says, None of that counts with my kingdom. Start again with me. And Nicodemus needed to start again with Jesus. He goes on within John's Gospel, and we see how actually his cultural and political power is helpful at the end of John's Gospel because he's a member of the Jewish ruling council. He is able to pull some strings and and help with things to do with the burial of Jesus. The cultural power of Nicodemus really helps. But Jesus doesn't help Nicodemus become culturally powerful. Jesus converts Nicodemus. And that cultural power ends up helping the gospel. I will happily go back to Ark again, but I will go back to Ark, I think, as an evangelist, and I will talk to all the Nicodemuses in the room. And my message will be the same: you gotta meet Jesus. You gotta be born again. If you want to meet this Jesus for yourself, why don't you do 321? Go to 321course.com and we've got this eight-session learning platform where you can discover who is Jesus and his vision for God, the world, and yourself. You can do it for free right now. Go to 321course.com. That'll do me for now. Give us a like, a share, and a subscribe, and we'll see you on the next one.