Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. Thomas Thoragood again here, assistant media producer at Speak Life. And today we have another interview for you. Glenn will be talking to Rebecca McGutlin about her new book, The Secular Creed. This interview went out live on YouTube on Thursday, so you will hear Glenn and Rebecca interact with some live comments. Really hope you enjoy this discussion and please subscribe to the Speak Life podcast on your podcatcher of choice. I'm sure you have already. The other thing we'd like to draw your attention to, which we're very excited about, is the Foundry Unlocked. I was an intern at Speak Life this year, which I really enjoyed. It was fantastic. But we understand that it won't be feasible for everyone who's interested to come and live on the South Coast for the best part of a year in order to access training with Speak Life. And so we are widening the options available to you. This is called the Foundry Unlocked. And so we are offering hours and hours of training in theology, mission, and creativity. And it's very flexible depending on how much time you can give, depending on whether you can attend in person or online. For more information, you can go to speaklifefoundry.com, and that's where you can sign up as well. So we look forward to meeting some of you in person to learn about Jesus and creativity together. That's all from me for now. I will hand over to Glenn and Rebecca McLaughlin, and I will catch you on the other side of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome one and all to the live cast. My name is Glenn Scrivener, if we haven't met before, and this is Speak Life. We exist uh in order to equip the church to reach the world. We believe that if you love Jesus, you share Jesus. And uh we are really privileged to have with us Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin, the author of many books, including uh The Secular Creed. Let's bring her here all the way. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Is she there? Hello, Rebecca McLaughlin.
SPEAKER_01Hello.
SPEAKER_02Glenn's there. It's worked. It has worked. Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us. What what time is it uh over there in is it is Cambridge, Massachusetts? Is that where you are right now?
SPEAKER_01Cambridge, yes, which should be called New Cambridge, but isn't. Uh it's 11 o'clock in the morning.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01So not exactly bright and early.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that's fine. That's fine. Although I'm still tasting the toothpaste at that kind of time of day, but uh a leisurely, a leisurely uh start to my day, I I prefer. Um so Rebecca, you've got so many books that are out, so many books that are on the boil. Can you even remember writing the secular creed?
SPEAKER_01Do you know I really can, and I feel oddly passionate about it. Is that a weird thing? So it ended up coming out um right uh like a month after the the junior version of my first book, which is called Ten Questions Every Teen Should Ask. The junior version, not the original. Um should ask be the junior version of that. And yeah, I feel so passionate about the issues that I'm writing about in this book that um yeah, it feels it feels sort of fresh in my mind and kind of deep in my heart, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02You uh you you talk about kind of um going past a uh sort of a placard, not a placard, but a yard sign. A yard sign. I would not know to call that. A yard sign. Um and are are these are these regular occurrences? Like are people kind of putting political slogans on on their in their yards quite commonly in the States?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one of the interesting differences between the US and the UK, I grew up in the UK, is that in America people often have what's called like a front yard or a side yard, which is like a little bit of garden for for English people, a little bit of garden in front of your house. And that is where uh some people, it's certainly not everybody, but it's not uncommon for people to stick these signs up that have you know two little legs and a big sign, often which will say, you know, vote somebody or somebody else. But sometimes they say other things. And especially in the last couple of years, there have been a lot of yard signs sprouting up in in the northeast of America where I live, and actually all across the country, which say um they start like this in this house we believe, and then the usual progression is this house we believe that black lives matter, love is love, women's rights are human rights. And then there are sort of two or three other claims which seem to vary depending on the exact yard signs. So it could be no human is illegal, or it could be water is life, or science is true, or any number of things. But those three claims, black lives matter, love is love, or women's rights are human rights, seem to be a common theme. And I and I wrote this a little bit, you actually see uh almost a yard sign or or a yard sign without any words on the front, uh, for those who need a visual aid to understand what a yard sign even looks like. Um, to dig into those claims and to explain why I think from a Christian perspective, we can't take an all-or-nothing approach to the these sorts of claims.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Uh, because what what would be the two sort of gut gut level responses to this? Where we're in some culture wars, people see this and they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, what what do they tend to say?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think that the two most common responses that that I've seen among Christians to not just the yard signs, but the sort of set of ideas that they represent. There are some folks who will look at the first claim, Black Lives Matter, and they'll say, you know what, I I am deeply and increasingly aware of the ways in which racial injustice and oppression have actually been plagued American history. And I think this you know spills over into other parts of the world for sure, but just taking kind of an American snapshot first. And so, you know, I deeply believe that Black Lives Matter, and this is something that's really important for white Christians in particular to say, because of the complexity of white Christians in the oppression of black Americans historically. And I I've been told that actually that second claim, love is love, is intrinsically bound up with believing in racial justice and equality. That actually affirming LGBT identity and romance is sort of bound up with affirming racial justice and equality. And so I'm gonna kind of grab that whole sign and hammer it into my yard.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01The second response, kind of the the opposite. Some Christians who will look at that sign, they'll say, there are some things on that sign that I know that the Bible doesn't affirm. And so I honestly don't want to hear any of it. I'm just gonna, you know, maybe not literally, but sort of uh ideologically kind of knock the whole thing down. I don't want to hear about Black Lives Matter, I don't want to hear about any of this, don't I don't want to hear about women's rights in in any respect because I know that uh abortion is sort of signaled by that, and I know that blah, blah, blah buzz against that. You know, I don't want to hear about Black Lives Matter because I know that there's an organization that's tied itself to some other ideas that has that slogan, so I'm just gonna, you know, retreat from all of this, I don't want to hear any of it. And and I think actually from a Christian perspective, we can't take either of those approaches.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. What is what is the third way though? What is the third way, Rebecca?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, the third way is honestly the Bible's way. And that the more you read the Bible, the more you will find that it not only affirms racial adjust racial justice and equality, it actually demands it. In fact, I think the New Testament is is the most profoundly, and and I say this in its literal sense rather than it's sort of, I know this this term is very um loaded with all sorts of other things, but like anti-racist in the sense of like against racism text in the history of the world. It actually sprouted the ideas that we now hold to be self-evident. Uh, for example, you know, in American terms, especially that all human beings are created equal. Like this isn't this isn't a self-evident belief or a natural consequence of of anything in particular. Yeah, well, the declaration of independence, you know, sort of assumes uh, you know, some some degree of Christian worldview, but um, you know, it's it's not a natural understanding from a scientific perspective, for example, like this idea of human equality, which actually all of the claims on the yard science, ironically, they're they're all based on the idea that all of human beings are are equally morally valuable, and that the strong and the the rich or the powerful shouldn't oppress and trample on the the weak and the poor and the marginalized.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01That men and women are equally morally valuable, that people of different racial backgrounds and heritages are sort of equally morally valuable. Like those those fundamental claims are sort of like the soil in which the outsides are planted.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01And and that's actually Christian soil.
SPEAKER_03Very much.
SPEAKER_01So from a Christian perspective, I think we need to recognize that. I think we need to to claim it.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01But then I also think we need to do what we should be really good at doing as Christians, and that is to repent and believe.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And the the first kind of response that I mentioned earlier majors on the repent and doesn't on the believing. So folks who say, you know what, I I think, especially speaking for myself as a white Christian, I think my my tribe has a lot to repent of in terms of their treatment of folks of other um racial backgrounds and ethnicities. And actually, also in in our treatment of people who identify as gay and lesbian, like the history of the church in terms of loving as Jesus loved those who identify as gay or lesbian outside the church, or actually those who, like me, experience same-sex attraction within the church, that record has not been good.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01So there is repenting that needs to be done, and that as Christians, we must lean into. But we also must sorry, I was just just to finish the thought, we also must believe. And that is where we need to take very seriously the Bible's specific claims about Christian sexual ethics, which do limit sex to male-female marriage, and do so not as a kind of random arbitrary rule that God's given us for no good reason, but actually because of the profound relationship between Jesus and his church, that the whole thing is true in the first place.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. And so kind of traditionally, um, as you say, yes, indeed, black lives matter, in the sense that in which you you say that in your in your chapter one, um, you might be pushing up against one one half of the church. Uh and as you say, um, and marriage is a male-female, um, and that's a non-negotiable, um, you might be pushing up against uh another part of the church. What's it what's it what's it like to be um uh uh yeah, what's it what's it like to provoke reactions from both progressive Christians and conservative Christians at the same time?
SPEAKER_01The interesting thing to me, and I think this is true both of progressive and conservative folk within the church, and actually sort of politically progressive and conservative folk outside the church, is that we've all been buying into a very misleading narrative which fails to recognize that actually um black people are far more likely to identify as Christians than than whites, actually, uh, in the first place, and less likely to be affirming of LGBT identity and romance. So there's a sort of there's a a simplif, overly simplistic and misleading view um that's you know quite commonly held, which is that you know, there's over here we have all the people who believe in kind of diversity and um caring for minorities and justice, and that that is sort of um you know, especially America, that's that's black people, and it's also LGBT fact that it's like this is a sort of coh cohesive group um or sort of interest group somehow. And actually it really isn't. I mean that the the fact that the vast majority of black Americans vote Democrat, for example, and um and that the democratic uh platform here uh tends to to lean more um in the direction of LGBT um identity is actually a really odd thing because in terms of of um sort of social issues, actually black Americans are some of the most conservative folks in in town. And interestingly, even I mean, you know, people sometimes talk about intersectionality and recognizing that you know if you're experiencing life as somebody who is both black and female, for example, you're kind of in the crosshairs of of two things which which may make you know life more challenging in different ways. Um, and so a lot of you know very liberal folk were saying, you know, we really must listen to black women. And I want to say I I fully agree with that for a lot of reasons, but if you actually start listening to black women, you'll find an awful lot of people telling you about Jesus and his exclusive claim to be the savior of the world, you'll need to repent and believe in him, and actually Christian sexual ethics. So it's kind of like a yes, what I'm saying is potentially upsetting to folks on both ends of the spectrum, but I actually think the spectrum is just I think the spectrum is a fiction.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. And you know, in in my own denomination, the the Anglican church, uh, I think the median Anglican in the world is a 24-year-old Nigerian woman who has to walk more than three miles to get water every day. Um yeah, what's yeah, a black woman is much more likely globally uh to be a Christian. Um yeah, and and what what's that phrase that you've you've used a number of times in your books? I've seen you say, you know, when you're making fun of Christians, you're not making fun of the people you think you are.
SPEAKER_01Um Yeah, that that's not original to me. There's a guy called Stephen Carter, who's a professor at Yale University over here, and he's uh leading black intellect. And he wrote an article a few years ago about the reaction that people had to uh a fast food chain called Chick-fil-A starting to set up shop in New York City. And the reason this was so controversial is because Chick-fil-A is known to be a Christian company. And I think they may even have little Bible verses on their food stuff. So I can't, I mean, not on the actual like chips and things, but on the boxes or something like that. And and they're known to, you know, support more conservative uh causes and so to not be affirming of LGBT identities, for example. And so there's this big backlash against Chick-fil-A setting up shop in New York City where you know we don't want any of this weird Christian, religious, conservative, anti um, you know, anti-justice from their perspective stuff. And what Stephen Carter's saying is honestly, if you look at, you know, maybe let's leave aside the label evangelical, because that uh, especially in America has become very kind of politically weighted. So there are a lot of black Christians in America who wouldn't use that term evangelical, even though actually, in terms of a sort of diagnosis of somebody being evangelical, they would check all of the all of the boxes for their you know high view of scripture, their um belief in the exclusive claims of Jesus, etc. So what Stephen Carter is saying is when you, you know, when my sort of white liberal friends mock and deride and um sort of generally uh are extraordinarily dis dismissive and and hateful towards anyone who doesn't affirm LGBT identities, actually, the majority of the people they are hating on um are likely to be black or brown, like globally black or brown, and especially women of color.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So when he says when you you mock Christians, you're not mocking who you think you are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. We just had a great uh comment from uh Megaloschemos. I hope I'm saying that right. Um she says, I can tell you as a black person, most who I talk to are not at all happy that we are included in the pride flag colours. Yes, as a black Christian woman, I concur. Um help us with that, um Rebecca, because the the narrative that's often told is okay, well, we had the civil rights movement, and um we we had that movement towards equality, and and so black, white, brown, we're all we're all equal, we're all the same. Surely it is just an extension of the civil rights movement to say that LGBTQ plus um are all the same and that gay marriage is the same as heteromarriage. Uh is that not the natural progression of the civil rights movement?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so I I I want to say no. But first, I want to say something that's maybe slightly more challenging to us as Christians, because I think you know, many uh folks who identify as Christians listening to this will probably be like, yeah, definitely no, and I'm I'm going to explain why no in a second. But the the argument which says, you know, just as the white 60s Christian segregationists use their Bible to oppose interracial marriage or desegregation of schools, so you Christians today are using your Bible to oppose like LGBT identity romance questions. And I want to say, until we recognize the first part of that statement is true, and until we really kind of reckon with that, we have no moral legs to stand on to be saying anything that we're saying today. And I think that there's a a major problem, again, I mean, I'm speaking to someone who's now lived 13 years in in the US, um, and and I the dynamics are a little different in in the UK, but certainly from the US perspective, until we're willing to properly reckon with the sin of our tribe. And it's funny there, because we don't, we we're very individual thinking thinkers, and we really hate the idea that you know the sins of folks who are not us would actually in any way be something that we're at all like vaguely at all responsible for. And yet we oddly at the same time are absolutely willing to celebrate the good things that our tribe has done. So, you know, we're all really proud of how like we Brits or we Americans fought in the Second World War. We show the Nazis what you know what was what. We were the heroes who came in, like swept swooped in. I'm like, I mean, okay, like we can say that if we want, but we also then have to say, if we're going to, if that's if that's true of us, to the extent that it's true of us, it's also true that the the terrible things that have been done in the history of our tribe, we need to kind of own this.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01So then to the question of is uh affirming um LGBT romance and identity for Christians, and again, that's important because I think sometimes as Christians we get a bit blurry and hazy and not recognizing that actually things that we might rightly insist on for Christians and say this is a non-negotiable for Christians aren't necessarily things we should insist are laws for everybody else. So, for example, I think it's like vital for us as Christians to regularly participate in church, to pray, to read our Bibles, to give generously to the poor. I don't think those things are things that should be like legally enforced on other people in our society. So I I think you know, we need someone needs to distinguish carefully between what we say is this is non-negotiable for followers of Jesus versus this is something that we think necessarily everybody else should be expected to follow. And and Christian sexual ethics, I think, is an important thing there to say, you know, for Christians, this is how followers of Jesus live doesn't necessarily mean um laws should enforce this on other people. But so why is the the gay rights movement and and now the transgender rights movement, why is that not just the natural progression from the the civil rights movement? Um a few thoughts on that. The first is that actually a lot of the underlying reasons that were given for segregating black Americans, for enslaving um Africans in the first place, um, for uh insisting on a sort of lack of equality were were spurious claims about sort of intrinsic difference. When in fact there was only like the the differences are skin deep to use a sort of cliche there. So to say that interracial marriage, like say a black man and a white woman, is the same as a same-sex marriage is actually quite misleading. Because there are real biological differences between you and me as a man and a woman. There aren't real biological differences between you and a black man or me and me and a black woman. So we're actually kind of we're we're stepping there into one of the the wrong biological claims that was made by scientists for a long time, trying to justify why we're treating black people differently. Well, it's because there are biological differences that we're somehow sort of giving way to. The second problem is that whereas our racial heritage is something that we're we're born with and we have zero control over and it has no moral weight, our our sexual choices, the things that we choose to do with our bodies sexually, do carry moral weight. And I think we can all agree on that, even if you know, I I could if I sat down with my most liberal friend, we might disagree about which specific sexual acts are right or wrong, but we would agree that they are morally weighted. So, for example, I might have a friend who thinks that, you know, um sex before marriage is totally fine, but actually cheating on your husband or wife, they would say that's that's actually morally problematic. Or they might think, you know, sure, uh having a one-night stand is completely fine, but sexually assaulting somebody is is morally wrong. So so we all recognize that there are certain, there are certainly some circumstances in which sexual actions are morally weighted. And so to to just uh and there's a sleight of hand that happens here, and I think it's really important we make the distinction. People sometimes sort of talk as if, for example, being black is like being gay, as in this is something that you were born with, it's unchangeable, and it's just sort of who you are, and therefore you must sort of live as you are because of because of this thing. But actually, you know, I'm I'm someone who was born white. Nothing I can do to change that. It's just like an artifact of my DNA of having two European and ancestry parents. I'm someone who's always been attracted to women, actually more much more than than men. But I have moral choices to make about what I do with that. So the the the fact that I, you know, you could say, well, you I was born gay, like maybe fine. Let's admit, let's just assume for a minute that that's true, that I was somehow, you know, it's sort of something baked into me deeply rather than something shaped by my experiences. I think it's probably some sort of fixture for most people to be honest. But but even aside from that, I now make choices about what I do not do or do not do with my body. And so so to just kind of uncritically compare somebody's racial heritage with somebody's sort of patterns of sexual like behavior is actually a mixing up of two very different categories. And and oddly, it ends up dehumanizing people who experience same-sex attraction because you're saying, well, you you can't you can possibly choose to do something other than your heart and your body are sort of calling out for you to do.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. I I've been doing some work on the the the very first sexual revolution of the of the first century, not not of the the 1960s, but of the the 80 60s. And um it's very clear that the the pagan understanding of sex at the time was very much that you were bound um really by your desires, and and you were bound in a kind of a social hierarchy, and so your sexual options were limited, um, not so much by your gender or orientation or that kind of language, which is incredibly sort of 19th century and afterwards kind of language, but they were very much constrained by your social class and and by you know your urges, and actually Christians who stood up and said, you know what, we're gonna we're going to buck the trend of nature, and we're going to actually reflect this supernatural reality called you know the um you know the the cosmic romance between Christ and the church. And far and above the level of the flesh, I'm going to actually constrain my flesh so that it might point to something far higher and more significant. Um, and therefore that means you know, marriage, whatever my pattern of inclinations might be, or it means singleness testifying to the the great marriage to come. And in that stance, you get the birth of consent, right? You get the birth of choice, you get the birth of the individual who is suddenly able to make choices out of all this stuff. And it seems to me like the repaganization of sexuality is to actually rob us of these categories that we need for our sexual ethics. We need consent very, very, very strongly. We need a sense of the individual, we need the sense of choice and that sort of thing. Um, but it seems like with Foucault, he wants to bring it, drag us back to a pagan world in which everything is libido and freedom goes out the window. I think that's a very scary world.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and the odd thing is we talk about freedom, we're we're profoundly programmed as sort of 21st century Westerners to think that freedom is is pretty much the highest value. If you give me enough freedom, enough choices, enough opportunities, then I'll be happy. And if I'm unhappy, it's probably because I haven't had enough freedom. And it's fascinating to me, both reading the scriptures and actually studying the insights of modern psychology, that is just not a good read on human nature. Um, we actually do really badly with unlimited freedom. It's not that we need no freedom at all, but this idea that really limitless freedom is what's most conducive to human happiness and flourishing has been disproved time and again. And that's especially true when it comes to sexual relationships for women. So there's there's quite a lot of data to suggest that as women increase their numbers of sexual partners, they actually it's correlated with decreases in um mental health and happiness and increases in depression and suicidal ideation and potential drug abuse and alcoholism, et cetera, et cetera. It's actually really not good, especially for women. The fact that we have normalized um sex without commitment. I read a fascinating, a beautiful short short story the other day, um, called Zikora by an amazing Nigerian um novelist who's written some really interesting, sort of full-length novels that I haven't I'm sort of eager to read now. Um and in the course of this short story, which is written very much from a sort of liberal feminist perspective, it's it's telling the story of a woman who's who's um giving birth and her mother is there in the hospital rather than the father of the child, because the father of the child, when even though they were not only dating, but like practically cohabiting, and she thought that he'd agreed to her stopping using um birth control, when she said I'm pregnant, he had at first said I'll take care of everything. Um and then when she said that she wasn't planning to have an abortion, completely abandoned her. And it's just it's this this fascinating, kind of beautifully written lament, really, uh, about the the ways in which we have normalized sex without commitment, really, and and how the impact that this ultimately has on women in particular. I actually think it's really bad for men as well. Um but I think that the data is is even stronger and more immediate tests outside of them.
SPEAKER_02It's also more confronting to tell people that surely it's the women's liberation movement, isn't it, Rebecca? And and have you had much pushback from people when when you kind of cite the statistics that that women have been less happy since you know their sexual freedoms have been equalized with the sexual freedoms of men and they've been able to be as licentious as men have been able to be. Um the mythology is that that will lead to greater flourishing and happiness. Um have have people pushed back at you um for for actually saying that the trend goes in the other direction?
SPEAKER_01I mean, probably not as much as they should, to be honest. I think it's the it's the the biggest con of the last century, or one of the biggest cons of the last century that the sexual revolution was meant to give women freedom when in fact it resulted in giving men what they at least think that they want, um, which is sort of unlimited commitment-free sex.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. And it it seems like, you know, so the the sexual revolution of the first century equalized men and women by actually restricting men to, you know, the the the very strict um sexual ethic that was expected of women, suddenly in the New Testament, that's being expected of men as well. And so it's profoundly equalizing, but it's equalizing in the sense of sort of suppressing um the expression of your libido. Um, but it does seem like the data is in um since the 1960s, that when you equalize it in the other direction and just allow allow women to be as as licentious as as men naturally tend to be, it just doesn't fit the human person. Um which I guess is a surprise because you you would think that we become more and more happy and we flourish better when we're just allowed to follow our desires, but it turns out not so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, really not so much. And it it makes more sense of some of Jesus' most startling claims. For example, when he says, Um, anyone who wants to come after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life and I say will find it. Jesus doesn't call us to self-fulfillment, he calls us to self-denial. And that's it, that's a very dirty word today. Self-denial, especially when it comes to anything to do with sex. Like the idea of self-denial seems repressive and unhealthy from our sort of 21st century Western vantage point. Um, but actually it really isn't. And and the the the reverse, pursuing fulfillment through multiple sexual partners, increased sexual freedom, as much experimentation as possible, is just a dead end. And that's not so I I think the other, I mean, well, one of the things I I try to do in the book was to not oversimplify because it it's it's very true that Christian sexual ethics started a whole whole new thing and it was incredibly good for women. It's also very true that for centuries men found ways to sneak around Christian marriage and had women free sex, and women, you know, were were um at least significant proportions of women were um exploited, uh, you know, whether it was enslaved women who were used sexually by their masters, or whether it was women who were um pushed into prostitution by sheer poverty, or whether it was, you know, etc. etc. So that's right. It's I don't think we want to paint any kind of rose, rose-tinted picture of Christian history um in terms of how we have rolled this out. I think there is much to repent of.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_01But there's also much, much to believe. And I think one of the one of the extraordinary and striking things about Jesus' teaching is how he is incredibly strict when it comes to sexual ethics. I mean, we it it's it's startling um how Jesus says, if you're uh you know, he says if anyone who um looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery, never mind actually doing it, you're already you're already guilty. Um and then goes into, you know, if you're if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, because it's better to get into the kingdom of God without your eyes than to to have your eyes and and to be thrown into hell. Like there's really hard language when it comes to to sexual ethics. And at the same time, this complete embrace of people who knew that they were sexual sinners. And here's I I love his line to some of the religious leaders of his day where he says, look, the the tax collectors, most obviously central folk as well, and the prostitutes are getting into their head view. So I think sometimes when we wanted to sort of elevate Christian sexual ethics, we've done so at the expense of welcoming and embracing people who know that they're they've failed in this area. And I don't think Jesus allows us to do that. In fact, he very clearly refuses to do that.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. So yeah, Jesus, Jesus welcomes sinners, and and in fact, the the righteous need not apply. Um only only the sick go to the doctor, um, not the healthy. Um on the other side of things, um, it's fascinating that you you've called your book The Secular Creed, and you're you're very upfront about saying, okay, secular people have creeds, secular people have beliefs, um, quite detailed beliefs, quite worked-out beliefs, quite philosophically um rich beliefs, if you were to interrogate them. What do you think is the the usefulness of making that point? First, first of all, um in your conversations with non-Christians, but second of all, in your conversations with Christians, what why why is it worthwhile pointing out the Christian soil um that these things have have sprung from?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think for a whole host of reasons. One is that for for any of us, we have an instinct to disbelieve messages that come from kind of out there. We'll we'll listen to people who who think like us, but and you can see this most starkly in sort of any kind of political conversation. You you could sit down, a dyed-in-the-wall Republican, and present them with the best possible data for a democratic position and they wouldn't believe you. Or you could sit down with a lifelong Democrat and present them with the most clear arguments and like irrefutable data from a Republican position, they wouldn't buy it, because we're sort of deeply programmed to not really listen to folks from outside our tribe. And one of the things that I think happens when we recognize that uh our non-Christian friends probably have you know deeply held beliefs, and what's more that that in in many respects their deeply held beliefs are ones that we can share, then we can start conversations on the basis of those shared beliefs and values, rather than starting them on the basis of the places where we radically disagree. And I think one of the mistakes that's often been made in you know what Christians sometimes call apologetics, sort of seeking to defend the faith on a number of uh of questions that arise um from our culture, we've tended to go first to here's why you're wrong. When actually often I think we need to start with, here's why you're right. And I think that's particularly hard for us when the ways in which our non-Christian friends are right are ways that are actually critique, like legitimate critiques of the church. So I think we need to be ready to come humbly into any conversation, not wanting to defend ourselves, not wanting to defend our tribe, not wanting to sort of say, like this is I'm sort of going to talk down to you from my my moral high ground, but actually more with a posture that interestingly the apostle Paul takes. I I love that moment in his first letter to Timothy. Uh, a few verses after he's listed a number of sinful practices um that are not acceptable for Christians, including, and this is sort of interesting to me, um, gay relationships right next to enslaving, like both of those adjacent to each other and in one of the whole sets of things that are not right for Christians. And then he says, This is a trustworthy saying and worthy of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners if you might in the worst. He's not coming from a moral high ground, he's actually coming saying, Do you know what? Jesus saved me to show that even somebody as bad as me can be saved. Yes, and that's the basis on which I'm approaching anybody else.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01So I think having that posture, and it's honestly it's hard. Like I I'm very willing to believe that I'm I'm a better person than other people. I mean, I sort of instinctively, like my pride naturally bubbles up, and and I anyone who feels like they're attacking me or my tribe, I want to fight back. Like that's my human instinct. So I I continually need to coach myself, no, actually, you're not on the moral high ground, you're on the moral low ground, and that it's it's from that position in moral low ground that you can look up and choose Jesus for who he is. So don't go speaking down to your friends. Actually, listen to them, recognize the ways in which they are truly seeking, often truly seeking justice, for example. And truly passionate. I mean, one of the things that breaks my heart about the whole Black Lives Matter drama, which you know is happening within the church, is that Christians are saying, Well, you know, I don't want to say the words Black Lives Matter because of all the things that have been associated with that specific slogan. And there's a piece of me that gets that, but there's also a piece of me that says, Do you know what? It's to our shame that that that that sort of movement has been often led by progressive folk, whether Christian or secular. It's to our shame as evangelical Christians that people don't immediately hear words like that and think, oh, that's what Christians say. That should be our song, that should be our mantra. I'm not saying like it those specific words, like it's a great formulation, whatever, there could be other ones. But what I'm saying is we should be the people most known for singing loudly and acting well when it comes to racial justice and equality. And if we have been so quiet because we frankly don't want to reckon with the history of our own subtribe sin, to where anyone who starts talking about racial justice gets dismissed by a lot of conservative Christians because they're like, oh, you're like those progressive folk, like to our shame, if that sounds like what progressive folks say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's so much been kind of politicized, hasn't it? This this idea of whether sin is individual or whether sin is systemic. Um, and and it seems like folks on the rights, um, and and there's a great historical tradition to this, tracing back to some very liberal, politically liberal roots. Um, that I am I am an individual standing before the law with certain rights and and should be held accountable before the law as as this you know individual or by myself. And there's lots to be said for that. And and Western civilization has has been kind of built on um some of that as a as its premise. At the same time, um those on the left lean more instinctively towards, okay, we are members of a community, and there are not just individuals who exploit people, but systems that exploit people. Um, and we need to reckon with um we need to reckon with the way in which structures have dispossessed people and been unjust. Um, can you can you help us? Both of those seem true to me. Can you can you can you help us with a biblical case for for both of those?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it seems to me uh uh as we read the scriptures, again, we'll do it with our sort of 21st century eyes wide open or eyes wide shut, depending on how you look at it. We absolutely come with an individual mindset, and we find it very strange when God judges families or nations or tribes as any kind of coherent whole. It sort of feels all wrong to us. We're thinking, well, why wouldn't he just sit down with every individual member of this tribe and sort of assess them individually? Now, I do think we see in the scriptures, and you know, Jesus is is very clear in his teachings that you could have two women sort of working away together and one of them will be taking the other left. Like it's not that ultimately we won't be judged before the Lord on the basis of whether we personally have put our trust in Jesus, even if you know, if your whole family did and you didn't, or if your whole family didn't and you did, like that that will be the the divider ultimately in terms of um whether we're entering the kingdom of God, have we repented and believed? Absolutely true. However, there is a reality to the the groups that we're part of, and they can be all sorts of different, they can take all sorts of different forms. Uh and I think even even with our in um a sort of 21st century western mindset, we do recognize this, as I mentioned earlier. We are quick to uh celebrate the the triumphs of our our nation, which quick as well. It's so interesting. I I watched the the heartbreaking um uh UA um Euro final on Sunday. And so quickly, when people are watching uh the sports team that they're supporting, they start using we and us language. You know, we we won, we lost, we're doing really well this season. And I'm like, who's the we? Like, I don't know about you, but I am not qualified. Like, I'm putting me on the I don't think you made the final 11.
SPEAKER_02I I didn't I didn't see you, I didn't recognize you on Sunday night.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I'm thinking, okay, like, uh are you on the pitch or are you not? Because if we if we just want to boil everything down to individual, you and I are not on that pitch, and it's nothing to do with us. It's just these guys who are not us, right? But we we instinctively grasp towards oh no, no, no, this is my my team, this is my group. And and I think we have a tendency to just be very selective about that. So I want it to be my nation when it's doing good things, I want it my team when it's sort of everything's you know fine and we're winning. But when really bad things start to happen, I'm sort of sadly, oh no, no, no, I have nothing to do with me. I wasn't even there. Like I'm not a totally individual here, forget it. Like just so I sort of feel like we have to pick one on the other. And and I think um from a Christian perspective, I think I think when I say we have to pick one, I I think we can't be inconsistent to say I'm part of this tribe when everything is when I can be proud of what's going on, and I'm totally not when I'm I should be ashamed of it. I think from a Christian perspective, we need to recognize that we're human beings who who operate within social frameworks, whatever they are, and that's it's just is what it is. It's it's there are brilliant and beautiful things about it, and there are terrible things about it as well. Um, and so yeah, we just need to recognize that.
SPEAKER_02It's a it's a very biblical thing, isn't it? That you know, Israel would sing its songs and they would say, We did this and we did that. When it's speaking of of centuries earlier, I was just just before this. I'm I'm doing some writing at the moment on Matthew 19. And and Jesus says to the Pharisees, um, Moses wrote you this law because your hearts were hard. Right, yeah. Who's who's you?
SPEAKER_01Like marriage, right? Even specifically, that's one of his great favorites on sexual sex.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. It was all it was all about that, and yet that that's an incredibly scriptural way of speaking. Um, that's yeah, that there is a sense of we, and that we is corporates in the moment you know across a whole people, and it's it's kind of diachronic, it's kind of you know, down through the ages as well. Um, we can have this sense of of solidarity. Um, so scripturally it seems to be both, but but here's another example about where in the culture wars we either lean left or right, and we need we need far more of a perspective from above, I think. Yeah. Um let me come back to that issue of the the the believing nature of the secular world and and the Christian soil from which our kind of modern humanistic assumptions um sort of spring from. Um you you quote uh Yval Noah. Harari, who in Sapiens speaks of human rights as just one more story that we have invented, just like the God story, and very much you know related to the God story. You can't scientifically prove rights. You can't, it's there's no mathematical equation that ends up with, and therefore we have human rights. You can't slice somebody open and say, Oh, look, there, there's human equality right there. Um, and for him, it becomes this very scary. Well, well, I I think in in reading him, I get a very scary vision for a world that's walked away from the God story must necessarily walk away from the human rights story. And then we're left in a very Nietzschean kind of world where where it's just will to power. Um is it dangerous to point out to people that their most cherished beliefs in human rights actually come from Jesus? Um, and if they're gonna toss away Jesus, they need to toss away human rights as well. Might that work out really badly for us?
SPEAKER_01I I think it's more dangerous not to, to be honest. Um, I think that the most dangerous place that people can be in is um thinking they don't need Jesus.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And and one of the ways that we can help people to see that they do need Jesus is to help them see that some of their most treasured beliefs and the things that they most passionately hold on to in their hearts as not just true for me for now, for here, but actually universally true. For example, racial equality, for example, equal of men and women, for example, that um you know sexual abuse of children is wrong. Like all these things that that at least my non-Christian friends hold on to deeply in their hearts, to help them see that actually those beliefs have been brought to them by Jesus is is to help them recognize their their need for him, which is what all of us need to recognize every day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And actually though those beliefs are actually quite personal, aren't they? That that to see in every single member of the human family, someone of inherent dignity and worth and value, and to treat them as such, um, is such a personal value, it's such a personal belief that that without a personal foundation, such as in the person of Jesus, it uh it kind of doesn't make sense anymore. Um but it's it's it's very helpful, I think, in evangelistic conversations to tell people look, you don't really need to to so much make a leap of faith towards believing in things that you can't prove. Because you already believe a whole bunch of stuff that you can't prove. Right. You you believe this stuff really, really strongly. You know, you even make a yard sign out of it, and like you believe this stuff so much that every human being has an inherent, you know, value and dignity, and that the poor should be privileged and that's you know um a society should be judged by the way that it handles the marginalized and the weak and and all this sort of stuff is incredibly Jesus-y. But without Jesus, it's it's a nonsense. Um, you don't really need to take a take a leap of faith, you need some ground beneath your feet. Um can I give you Jesus? Here he is. Um, I've I've I've found that very fruitful in my evangelism. Talk me through way ways in which you've found that to be a helpful way forward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh it's interesting. Some people, um, for some people, those kinds of conversations are sort of eye-opening. And I think the the best way to have them, um, what I try to do is sort of gently point them to other non-Christians who have made these points. Yeah, so so listening to people who have a reason to disagree with you is always a good place to start in your research. Um, I find. And so also when I'm talking to a friend who's not a Christian, I'll I'll first want to cite some people who they're ideologically aligned with, at least at a basic level, and say, you know, as you mentioned, folks like Tom Holland, you all know Harari, who speaking from a non-Christian perspective and coming to similar conclusions, whether from historical or philosophical angles. Um, and so to yeah, to start there by saying actually all the things you hold to be self-evident moral truths aren't. They're Christian beliefs, and without them, they without Christianity, they don't make a lot of sense. But then there'll be sometimes people who already know this. Uh, I had a conversation with a guy um a couple of years ago who's a professor at Harvard. Um, and he and I were chatting, he's sort of uh secular Jewish guy, so you know, somewhat practicing as a Jew but doesn't actually believe in God. And his work is uh on public health and things that you know make a difference to people around the world. And I said to him, Do you do you realize that you have no actual kind of real basis for believing that these folks around the world should be careful that there is a sort of moral imperative for you as a privileged person in the West right now to invest any of your time or energy in in caring for people in other parts of the world in very different circumstances. Um, he said, Yeah, I know. He I mean like he was smart educated enough to actually know that there is no objective morality from his uh atheist perspective. That there is there's no ultimate reason to say that racism is wrong or that the poor should be cared for or that sexual assault is evil, like all of these things are just really preferences. Um, a very kind, very intelligent person who knew and sometimes will be interacting with folks for whom this isn't news, it's something that they know and and and something they might actually be quite sad about.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_01Um so there we need to to tread carefully and to recognize the uh the the kind of different human experiences that that our our friends will have had, um, and at the same time, in love, reach out to them with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, right. Um so in in your book, you you go through um the the five statements of the yard sign Black Lives Matter, Love is Love, the gay rights movement is the new civil rights movement, women's rights are human rights, transgender women are women. Uh, and then you finish with uh a call to loving arms. Um what what what is your what is your call to loving arms for the church?
SPEAKER_01Going back to what I was saying earlier, it's to repent and believe, um, to repent of the ways in which we have failed to live up to Christian ethics on a whole range of of topics, whether it whether it's our treatment of people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, whether it's the our failure to to defend women, whether it's um our our un-Christian mistreatment of gay and lesbian folk outside the church, or our failure to listen to and care for same-sex attracted people within the church, or whether, and and honestly, I think this is happening a lot today, whether it's the the way that we um mock and um ridicule and sort of uh um treat poorly, even if even if it's only in our hearts, people who are struggling with their gender identity. Um and and this is an area in particular where I think we we can and must hold on to pretty clear Christian convictions while at the same time not falling prey to the massive overgeneralizations that Christians sometimes make when it comes to people who identify as transgender or or who struggle with um identifying as the sex that they were um you know born into. Um I it's it's really easy for us, especially if there's there's not been any part of our experience, it's really easy for us to just be dismissive or oversimplistic in our treatment of of this um this issue in particular. And I think we need to resist doing that. And I think we ultimately need to reclaim one of the most important pieces of Christian ethics, which is the ethic of communal love. And this this cuts across all the different topics that I I look at in this book because it's about how do we do we pursue love across racial difference in in the church? It's about are we creating communities where unlike often what happens out there in the world, where where people who aren't in sexual romantic relationships aren't sort of lonely and left out, but are actually embraced into the warmth of loving community and connection? Um are we providing the extended family that single mothers need when they've been abandoned by the father of their child or children? Um are we being a place where people are um loved and listened to as they process how they feel about being a boy or a girl, about being a man or a woman? Um are we? I mean, Jesus famously said that the way that people would know his disciples was because how they loved each other. And we often, I think, especially in our sort of particular cultural contexts, we've boiled down intimacy to just the nuclear family. Um, and we've we've elevated marriage at the expense of singleness to where we haven't offered a realistic, loving, exciting vision for what it means to be someone who doesn't get married, whether because they're exclusively attracted to folks of their same sex or because for other reasons they haven't got married, or because they you know they feel called to singleness for a whole host of reasons. We should be a family, and we should be actually, I mean, the the language the New Testament gives us is one body. So our local churches should be places where people of all different backgrounds and life experiences and pains and and struggles are welcomed in and held together. And I think we often spend more of our time sort of speaking into political situations up here and less of our time actually embracing the real people around us. Um and I'm not saying this should not be done, but it has to come with the kind of embrace that means, and and my friend Sam Albury puts it beautifully here. He says something like, you know, if somebody somebody leaves a gay marriage or a gay relationship in order to become a Christian, they should find more love in the church than they had in their previous life. And that should be true for anybody, whatever, whatever they're leaving in order to follow Christ, that should always be true. Because there's one thing of the many kinds of suffering that the early Christians faced, whether it was persecution or or famine or hardship or or you know, danger or sword, what they didn't experience with was loneliness. And we have somehow managed to create church situations where the epidemic of loneliness in our in our culture has sort of spilled over into the church. We need to fight that like hell.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Do you find yourself going back to the early church more and more? I I certainly do when I when I start thinking about where where the culture is. And and certainly as you were speaking about the the need for these communities of of love, that that certainly was the apologetic, wasn't it, in the in the early centuries? Um they didn't just preach this sexual revolution, they they lived as family before the Lord. Um they didn't they didn't just preach about an anti-racist movement, although they did, but but they embodied it and and lived it. And this is the power that kind of over overturned the empire, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do think that's super helpful. I think at the same time, honestly, sometimes what I find most encouraging is to go back to the really early church and to look at the letters that were written to the first century and second century churches, first century churches, I guess, predominantly, and to see, oh my goodness, there was so much sin. I mean, what a mess. Like the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that that gives us some hope as we look around our churches today and think, look at our churches like riddled with racism, riddled with abuse, riddled with failure to care for the poor, riddled with all these things. Um, but actually, honestly, that's that's been our condition from the first. Uh, and so I think I don't know for me, it's always to not to be cliche about it, but really going back to Jesus is the most helpful. Um, because anytime we go back to the church at any age, we're gonna find like significant disappointments, right? Um I think that's the encouragement of knowing that even those first Christians to whom all these two words were written were a bunch of useless sinners.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You've trumped me. You've you've trumped me, Rebecca. You know, I want to go back to the early church. And Rebecca's like, no, I want to go back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01In America, it's called Jesus Duking, apparently. Jesus recently learned that.
SPEAKER_02So lots of people uh loving stuff in the chat. Hatoon Tash says, Thank you, Speak Life and Rebecca, for all your service to our glorious Lord Brian Turner says hello from Dublin, Ireland. We've had people from India and Australia. Uh, we've had this one question about the book that you mentioned um by the uh Nigerian author. Who who is the who was the book by the Nigerian Rebecca?
SPEAKER_01So I was catching up with a Nigerian friend the other day, and she was helping me um pronounce this name correctly. So forgive me if I'm mangling it. Um so Chimamanda Naughty Adiciye. Last name, A-D-I-C-H-I-E.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Fabulous writer.
SPEAKER_02Chimamanda Adiche. Okay, all right. We'll we'll find that. We'll find that. That was brilliant. Um, Rebecca, thank you so much. You've been so generous with your time. Are you coming out to the UK again anytime soon?
SPEAKER_01Do you know? I hope to be home for Christmas. I was meant to be coming uh just over a week, but COVID, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01So uh never mind. Christmas.
SPEAKER_02Never mind. Christmas. All right. Well, it'd be lovely to have you on these shores again. But um, thank you so much uh for sharing with us. And people should run and not walk and go and get a copy of The Secular Creed. It's a terrific book. It will help you as a Christian and will help you explain your faith to others as well as understand this cultural moment and help us all to repent and believe in the way that Jesus wants us to. Uh guys, thank you so much for all the lively chat that's been going on. Um, we will uh keep you updated uh on all our stuff. Uh and uh you can uh sign up to our emails by going to speaklife.org.uk slash sign up, and that will get you uh an email that every week will tell you all the stuff that uh is going on in uh in Speak Life's worlds. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you again next time. Okay, God bless. Bye bye.
SPEAKER_00Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening. As always, any comments or questions can be emailed to infospeaklife.org.uk. And do remember to check out speaklifefoundry.com, where you can learn more about our training options for the coming year, and you can sign up. And as I said, very flexible in terms of time commitment and whether you attend in person or online. So do check those out. Thanks for joining us today and keep speaking life.