Hello and welcome to the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas Thoroughgood, assistant media producer at Speak Life, and I'm currently in a lunch break at uh the Foundry Unlocked Friday session, so it's been a great day so far. Just had some lunch, a packet of crisps, sandwich, two satsumas, and other items. Today's episode is controversial in more ways than one, so brace yourself. Controversial topic number one. Glenn and Nate discuss Coming Out Day, which happened just this Monday. It's a day encouraging those in the LGBT plus community to tell their stories of how they came to publicly own a gay or trans identity. That's not the controversial bit. The controversial bit is that Glenn and Nate reckon these stories are very similar to Christian stories of conversion. Our testimonies of coming to Christ sound very much like coming out stories, and coming out stories sound very much like Christian testimonies. Have you ever noticed that? Is it true? What does it mean? Listen on to find out. But if you think that's a controversial topic topic, hold on to your controversy caps, because Glenn and Nate then tackle an even thornier question in this episode. And this is the real reason for my trigger warning. Nate and Glenn talk about baptism. That's right, they openly discuss one of the most contentious issues in all Christendom. What is baptism and who can be baptized? Perhaps you're thinking, how on earth do you get from coming out day to Christian testimonies to baptism? What's the link? Well, as I say, listen on to find out. Perhaps you're thinking, why wade into the controversial issue of baptism at all, especially given how people disagree? Well, Nate and Glenn confess to holding a less popular view of baptism in the evangelical world, and they beg our indulgence as they explain where they're coming from. Perhaps you agree, perhaps you disagree, but we hope you take this podcast in the spirit it was offered, a good natured discussion among friends. And feedback is always really welcome, so do get in touch with us if you agree or disagree with anything said here. You can email info at speaklife.org.uk and we would genuinely love to hear your thoughts. But without further ado, brace yourselves, people. Here is Nate and Glenn discussing coming out, Christian testimonies, and baptism.
SPEAKER_06We should probably give trigger warnings for some because we're making a bit of an assumption about your sacramentology. Is that right? Right. We're assuming that if you're watching us and you're a Christian, we're assuming, and this is probably wrong, that you would hold a Baptist view.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Because everyone does. You know, even even if you're not Christian. Okay, right. So okay, so so if you've inherited probably from if if you can trace back your sort of cultural heritage to a 1776 kind of declaration of independence type thing, you're already on a baptistic like track. Okay. Is is we we've gone deep, haven't we? We've we have already.
SPEAKER_06Let's just define some terms well, let's just land on on a on a cultural artifact which will help to explain what we're setting up here, okay. Which is a blog post written by Russell Moore in Christianity for Christianity Today, which says everyone's a Baptist, yes, but let's not fight like Baptists.
SPEAKER_02Is that right? That's what he's saying. That's what he's saying. And what he's identifying about Baptist kind of ecclesiology is it's very democratic and everyone gets a vote, and and there's a there's a kind of a flat hierarchy going on. Um, and that's that's certainly where we tend to land in the West, isn't it? You know, everybody gets a vote, everyone's on a level, we don't like hierarchy, we don't like institutions. And we have an allergic reaction, whether inside or outside the church, um, to things like bishops and the institution of the church and medieval Christendom and all that kind of stuff. We've all inherited that from a medieval monk called Martin Luther, who 500 years ago this year kind of stood up against an emperor and against a pope and kind of said, No, my conscience says something different. Okay, and I don't care what the institutional church says, I don't care what the emperor says, I don't even care what the Pope says, right? I'm gonna stand on the scriptures because my conscience is bound to the scriptures. Now the scriptural thing is contested, and and lots of secular people say say no thanks to the scriptures as well. Let's toss out the church and the scriptures. Yeah. But that whole move to to walk away from institutional Christianity and from our history and from yeah, the uh it's it's just not very sexy, it's not very glamorous to be involved in an institution. I'm not I'm not I don't believe in the institution of dot dot dot. Yeah, nobody believes in institutions anymore. Which they believe in the intuitions.
SPEAKER_06Oh, there we go. Just came up with that. We don't want institutions, we want intuition. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There is a truth inside my heart that I must confess. Wouldn't it be amazing if John Calvin wrote, you know, his intuitions instead of his institutes? Yeah, yeah. If he was alive today, yeah, his intuitions rather than his institutes.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and we're we're we're contending, and Russell Moore was contending, that the the generations, the the descendants of this kind of thinking where you're skeptical of the institution and you need to be true to yourself, yes, is a kind of modern self-expressive identitarianism. Right. Right? Being having to wait till someone tells you who they are to find out who that person is.
SPEAKER_02And this is where the overlap with your sacramentology comes in. Because at what point do you baptize somebody? And uh, you know, we're in the room, we've got the speak life interns with us, and there are a range of views on this matter. Yeah, you know, so some would be very happy uh baptizing infants, some would say no, only believers ought to be baptized. Yeah, um, and so again, we're we're gonna assume that people are not on our side, yeah, and that we have to explain ourselves.
SPEAKER_06And you know, our side is I baptized both my children almost like the first week they went to church. Yes. It was like, oh, well, you're gonna you're part of the church, so you're being baptized as we take you along.
SPEAKER_02Right, yeah. And I'm about to baptize our second child, the first opportunity we've had to baptize him, but it's it's a very odd age to baptize him, yeah, because having been adopted, JJ's nearly four. Yeah, the court order has only just come through. Yeah, so first chance we've got to baptize him, we're gonna baptize him, yeah, but he's nearly four. Yeah, which is nobody baptizes a four-year-old. This is the this is the strangest thing to do. Yeah. Um, and so you know, I will be getting up in in church on Sunday and explaining, you know, this is this is why we feel like we want to baptize JJ. Yeah, and a lot of that reason is um we are a Christian household. Yeah. And you know, as for me and my household, yeah, we follow the Lord. And so, you know, from from our sacramentology, we kind of think that actually God's word about us comes down from on high. Yeah. Through water and the word, you pronounce the name of God on somebody and you say, This is who you are. You might grow up and walk away from it. Um, and we would consider that to be tragic. Yeah, um, in the same way that JJ might, he's just had his name changed to be Scrivener. I mean, bad luck, JJ. Sorry, I think it's a solid last name. It's all I mean, it's associated with some people, but you know, yeah, that's true. It's a nice name. You do have to spell it too many times, but um, he's become a scrivener, and he might by deed pol get out of that. He might he might sort of unadopt himself, you know.
SPEAKER_06It would it would be add his fiance's name to his, like I did, and change his name by deed poll. See, that's that's the battery. That's the battery. So, but here's the thing part of the the the challenge for those who would go for believers-only baptism is that they're actually expecting a f the four-year-old who is to be baptized to give their testimony before they can be baptized. Right. Because ordinarily in those sorts of services you would give a testimony and explain why it would be right for you, based upon your own faith, yes, to express that faith by virtue of baptism and then join the church. And are we expecting your son to give a a brief word? A short conversion narrative.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. He was doing drugs and yes, there were there were plenty of car chases and models, but you know, he eventually came back to the law when he was three, and and now yeah, so no, that's that's not what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_06Actually, I would like to write one. A conversion, a classic conversion narrative for a three-year-old. Right. Who's just like, yeah, and then one day I I just found myself in the sand pit, and I'd I was at my lowest point. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And someone told me about this youth group, and I thought I'll go along, and then I went there and found a little bit.
SPEAKER_02The scales fell off my eyes. But what's interesting about as a parent, you don't want your kids to have an exciting testimony, do you? I don't want my kids to have an exciting testimony. No, no chance, you know. No, um, so what I want is um so we we've had uh Christina Basri. Um, she says she goes to a Baptist church, um, and she says, sola scriptura, guys, sola scriptura. Okay, work with me on this, Christina. Okay, so I think go back to scripture, go back to Genesis 17, yeah, and you've got Abraham with his household. He's given the covenant sign to put on his household. It's a male-only sign. Lots of things in the old covenant are like that. Lots of things in the old covenant are bloody. When you come through into the New Testament, it goes to male and female, it goes to non-bloody signs. But in the Old Covenant, there was this bloody male-only sign called circumcision that was given to not only Abraham, who was a believer, but to his whole household. And long story short, in the New Covenant, I take it that Colossians 2 baptism fulfills what circumcision points to as well, which is the death of Christ for us. The seed was cut off because circumcision is like it's nearly the seed getting cut off. But this bloody sign points to Christ, then Christ comes, the seed is cut off for us. Now it would be totally inappropriate to have a bloody sign, and it's completely appropriate to have a male and female sign, and so we've got baptism, which is for believers like Abraham, and for his household. And I think if you begin, if you begin your solar scriptura telling of the story in Genesis, I think it unfolds in a kind of a covenantal baptism direction. I think if you begin your story in Acts, you might well end up as a Baptist. Um, but that's that's my that's my best shot at in two minutes, Christina, having a go at Sola Scriptura as a as a as a way of defending covenantal baptism like this.
SPEAKER_06Um so what we're contending in this speakeasy, when have you poured yourself a drink? I hope you have. I hope you've got something. Um what we're contending is that there is a significant similarity between the the conversion narratives or the testimonies of of evangelicals and the sort of coming out narratives of the LGBTQ plus community. Yeah. Okay. To the extent where we think that there's sufficient overlap in terms of the type of language used, yeah, that you might be might be unsure as to which one you're hearing without context. So this may be a terrible idea. In fact, even as I'm explaining it, it sounds worse with every syllabus. Commit. Jump in with both seats. Um, our um tech deck crew who are over there are going to say hello, guys. Are you on are you on screen right now? Hello, say hi. Um screen.
unknownUh yeah, there we are.
SPEAKER_06You're on, you're on. Wave, give us a wave. Say hi. This is the crew behind the scenes. This is part of the crew. This is part of the crew. This is the crew behind the screen. Oh, yeah, not all of them. Um but you can come on, guys. What you're gonna give us. What are you gonna get? It's guess the testimony.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. Okay. Uh affectionately we call it guestimonies. It might be a recurring thing, it probably won't be. But the idea behind this is that I'm gonna read out a testimony, and neither of you know whether it is from a Christian or if it is from somebody who is becoming a part of the LGBTQ community. You both will have to guess well, who is it? Okay. So I'm gonna read these things.
SPEAKER_02All right, and let's let's get a chance for people at home to actually answer as well. But yeah, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now, full disclosure, this is all in respect, just noting the similarities. None of these have been modified, and they're very, very small snippets. We're just looking at the similarities in language. So without further ado, let me begin with the first one here. I don't know if it was a feeling or anything like that, but at that moment, I just said, Oh, this is a possibility for me. I thought it would make sense because I would live a much happier life. For me, it was definitely a journey. I use that word journey because it contrasts from a definitive timestamp. It's not that simple for a lot of people. Is that a Christian? Oh is that somebody in the LGBTQ community?
SPEAKER_02This is hard. This is harder than I thought it would be.
SPEAKER_06So conversion or coming out.
SPEAKER_02Yes, conversion or coming out. So yeah, on the on the top chat, number one, put next to number one, whether you think it's conversion or coming out. Uh oh, it's so similar.
SPEAKER_06I've I know I know what I think it is. I I think I think it's a coming out. I'm gonna say conversion.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I'm looking for an explanation. Why coming out? Why conversion? Give us a little synopsis.
SPEAKER_06Um, just because I think the it's it star as a feeling or something.
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think that I that that that seemed to me to be more of a coming out story.
SPEAKER_02The journey thing. The journey thing might make makes me think maybe more Christian than coming out. That's because when you think journey, you think don't stop believing again when you know the thing happens.
SPEAKER_01That was a member of the transgender community describing their experience. Can you read that again? I love the I will read that again. Yeah, but I don't know if it was a feeling or anything, but at that moment I was just like, oh, this is a possibility for me. I thought it would make sense because I would live a much happier life. For me, it was definitely a journey. I use that word journey because it can contrast from a definitive timestamp. It's not that simple for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_02The similarities the similarities are huge, they're vast, and yeah, the journey, the progress, the pilgrim's progress towards the trans identity. Um brilliant. So uh we had quite a few people. Uh so Orange Queenie guessed conversion, as did I. Uh, we were both wrong. Orange, and then uh Louie said conversion, we were both wrong. Uh Christina Basry coming out. Yes, the feeling. Rory guessed correctly, coming out. Okay. Okay. Let's um you guys ready for the next one? Yeah, let's go. Number two.
SPEAKER_01All right. I grew up in a Christian home with amazing parents. I was raised in the church, but not everything in my childhood was good. On multiple occasions, I experienced abuse at the hands of childhood friends, leaving me feeling unclean, like I was a bad kid, and that I could never tell anybody. As I grew up, I believed the lie that I had to keep all these secrets hidden so I didn't hurt anyone. I remember thinking if I just filed them away, sooner or later the hurt would go away. That's the end of that. Is that a conversion or is that a coming out story?
SPEAKER_02It's certainly a common trope, isn't it? Of both. Um Christians are forever throwing the church like like like you can understand in that circumstance, like this is a really negative church experience. I think even even people who have very positive church experiences will begin their you know, their testimony with my church never meant anything to me. I never really heard the gospel, there was no real life, and everyone seemed like a hypocrite to me. But then I found faith. So it it it could be.
SPEAKER_06I feel like I I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with coming out again.
SPEAKER_02Wendy, okay, you're agreeing with Wendy Loramont. She's she's gonna say coming out. I think sounds to me. Um Rory says sounds like my testimony. I'm gonna I'm gonna say it sounds like I'm gonna say I agree with Benjamin Vance. Sounds like conversion to me.
SPEAKER_01That was a Christian conversion story. Oh right. That was a stuff story of somebody who had left the church young and returned to it much later, dealing with problems they experienced in their youth. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But it is isn't that interesting. Yeah, yeah. It could be it could be either, couldn't it? Like stories stories of finding your true self in finding your liberated self. Yeah. Often involve leaving behind institutional Christianity. Yes. Whether it's a conversion story or a or a coming out story. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've saved a difficult one for the third one. Nate, did you have something you were gonna say?
SPEAKER_06No, no, I was just gonna say, yeah, let's let's make this the last one. This will be last one apiece right now. Okay, the tiebreaker.
SPEAKER_01So this is the tiebreaker. This is the stumper here though. Ready? Throughout this entire time, I was absolutely a miserable human being. I was deeply, deeply unhappy. It led to other problems in my life. I had a period in which I was absolutely lost in internet porn. It's not something that's fun to talk about, but it's one of those ways my feelings presented themselves. This led to problems in my marriage, and I was unfaithful in my marriage. All these things came from this problem of having this hole really deep within myself that I didn't know how to fill. Is that a conversion or is that a coming out story?
SPEAKER_02My instinct My instinct is is because with a conversion story, you want to paint the past as as black as you possibly can. Yeah. And so it would be it would be a slightly better story if they then became a Christian because you could paint the porn thing blacker if it turned out that they came to Christ later. So for the sake of the story, I'm gonna I'm gonna say it's a Christian conversion.
SPEAKER_06I I'm I'm I'm gonna go. I feel like I'm gonna go with the same.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh, well, okay. We can both but then the fact that Nick thinks this is a hard, quite hard one, a tricky one. I'm I'll go with coming out again.
SPEAKER_01Nate, you just won the tiebreaker. That is a coming out story. It's a coming out story. Wow. Yeah, wow. These are tough ones. That is uh that is that is a person who has changed gender, that is a transgender person.
SPEAKER_02Ah Christina says sounded like conversion, sounds repentant. Yeah, that's what that's what made me think. Yeah, yeah, cast casting the porn thing in that negative light, but yeah. I mean, lots of people can cast porn in a negative light, but yeah. Um Greg Dole's existential language always lacks a discernible definition, it can always apply to everything. Existential. So yeah. Making my human flourishing and story central. Um yeah. It's to be honest, I I I wonder how many different um stories, like you know, becoming a Huvian, you know, like before I met Doctor Who, my life was a mess. And you know, before I met Formula One, I had nothing to do on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_06And then I found meaning and purpose.
SPEAKER_02Maybe maybe maybe the church has taught everyone to tell conversion stories. I don't know.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and and at the same time, I wonder whether so there's this sort of this the kind of the Disney princess trope where she has to be sort of in some institution. She's a princess, she's in the institution of the royal family, and of course she has to sort of grow tired of of these kind of luxurious trappings, and she has to sort of break free and and cross the threshold into her own, you know, sort of personal identity. You know, um and What what feels so so difficult is that for the Christian parent or the child who grows up in a Christian home is the institution is the is the church and is the Christian family. And if the only story we know how to tell is how you must escape the institution, you must escape um the the domestic and the familial and enter into some wild wilderness period and then finally you might return back as this kind of victorious hero and and finally become a Christian. If you assume that that has to be the succession of events that leads to an authentic Christian experience, then you are going to really struggle if if you haven't had some kind of dru sex, drugs, and rock and roll period in your childhood or teenage years or twenties.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And in it in a sense, it almost presents that as normative. Right. Right. To say unless you have this great rebellious phase, then you can't really be a Christian. You only believe this because other people believe it. And you never properly tested, yeah, stress tested your faith with some proper sin and any sort of thing. Oh, it's tragic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so people kind of bend the truth when it comes to their testimonies. I think I think there's a lot of cradle Christians who invent wilderness years that might have been you might have been a little bit spiritually listless for 18 months. But in the telling of the story, it's like, oh, I didn't want anything to do with the church. And I read every atheist book going, I listened to all the atheist videos on YouTube, and I I really stress tested my Christian faith. And then, you know, nine days later, I became, you know, I I recommitted. And you have to invent the wilderness wanderings. And you have to exaggerate the spiritual darkness that you had because you're just intent on telling a darkness to light story.
SPEAKER_06And the problem that comes when you feel that you need a completed narrative in the form of a hero's journey, this this complete, you know, uh law then gospel narrative. And then you get to get baptized. Yes. Is how do you know when to shoot that shot? Because you can only really do it once. Right.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_06So you now need this properly like rounded Christian testimony of like almost like a prodigal son kind of story, and then you come back, right, and then you can get baptized and you can go, oh look, I'm part of the church now. Yeah. If you've done that as an experiential thing, expressing your personal faith before you get to the age of 20.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06What do you then do when you have a real crisis of faith in at 25? Yeah. What do you do when you get to some other massive milestone in your in your life?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And things feel like they're falling apart again. It's like, oh, well, have I got to become a Christian again? Or is there actually something much more reliable within which to understand the con the my faith, which isn't my own personal experience of spiritual renewal.
SPEAKER_02And this, you know, coming from the position that we come from, this is how we look at this doctrine that you that the baptism is the public events, this milestone coming of age where you own your faith personally, yeah, in front of other people. If that's what baptism becomes, you've kind of you've you've burned up all your sacramental ammunition on that one coming of age moment. And one of the things it does is is it means that the definitional state of your Christianity is defined when you're 14, 15, 16 years old. It also means you don't have um, you don't really have a language for what to do at the next milestone, which might be when you enter the job market for the first time, or when you get married, or you have your first child, or you have a midlife crisis, or empty nesters, retirements. There are all sorts of milestones that happen in life. And and we're no good at shepherding people through all of it. We're very good and very focused on the youth thing, and we expend incredible energy on the youth thing, and that's a good thing. But we've but we've burnt up everything on that on that youth moment. And I also wonder whether it makes our teenage faith that that if that's kind of the definitional moment when I'm a true believer, then do I ever progress beyond my teenage faith? Um is a question I have.
SPEAKER_06And because coming of age means going from going through adolescence, um, whereas as you point out, there's all these milestones and stages in a person's life which involve great change. And if we've convinced ourselves that the only coming of age stage there is at the point of sort of 13, 14, 15, 16, it's a teenage thing. Yes, and so well, that's the time you're gonna have this big moment. And I think it's a challenge for us to think, well, is that the purpose of baptism as given as this moment of self-identification? Yeah, yeah, because of course it can't be self-identification because you are baptized, it's it's passively, it's received. You can't baptize yourself, and yet an argument which says, I believe, and therefore I'm you know, yeah, I'm baptized. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Rory Martin uh says this very interesting. I have to say that when I hear the testimonies of my West African Christian friends, their families play a more prominent and positive part in their stories. It puts us all to shame. Which is like we always like I go to the baptisms of I I remember distinctly remember a kid in our Anglican youth group who was also kind of a member of a local Baptist church, and when he was 14, he got baptized at the Baptist church. And I just I just remember him sort of giving his testimony on account of which he was then baptized, and and he had to invent these wilderness wanderings, which had to do with this silly little story about you know, he had uh a pillow that played MP3s, and it was like a pillow speaker, and it was the worst thing that happened to him because he would stay up late listening to music when his mother told him not to, and it made him really tired in the morning, and and that made him skip on his Bible devotionals in the morning. And this was sort of the sum total of the of the wilderness wanderings, but he he had to really build it up as and then I decided that I would give my pillow to my brother instead, and I renounced the pillow and now I'm following Jesus. I thought he'd okay, because I thought I didn't know how much further the spiral was gonna go down, there wasn't much room, and there was MDMA. That was it. It was literally that, but he he he felt really compelled to come up with some kind of dip, and then he gave he gave away the the this source of sin to his brother, which apparently was the was a righteous move, and then the pastor saying, and now on account of your testimony, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Um and and part of his bapt part of his testimony also was, you know, um, you know, I I grew up in church, but I didn't hear the gospel. And I never I never heard the good news of Jesus and blah blah blah. And you and you look around the church at this at this point and you're like, there's his mum, there's his dad, there's his youth pastor, there's his pastor, yeah. All of whom I know, and there's me away from his youth group, and you're just like, we've all poured ourselves into you. Like I don't I didn't give up my Friday nights for nothing. Um but you've got to, you've got to throw family under the bus, you know, yeah if you can tell the story.
SPEAKER_06Because you the only because it it's got to be this personal experience, it has to be because that's the only way that you can can know that you're a Christian, yeah, is to have some kind of heart strangely warmed, right? So to use the John Wesley line now to thinking about you know where does this sort of idea and these stories come from, conversion narratives became a um a condition of entry to the communion table for churches in 17th century uh America because you couldn't just you know it wasn't just that you were a member, um, it wasn't just that you weren't living a scandalous life, it was that you had to be able to st to talk, to to say, hey, it happened to me, and you can trust it happened to me because my conversion fits these these six uh stages, and most of them are to do with knowing that I could never be a Christian. Um so it's bizarre that this the idea of the testimony or the recounting of the conversion narrative has shifted from 17th century point of entry into the community of faith. I now need to convince you to now we've actually flipped it in this much more expressive evangelistic age to say, no, actually, now it's it's a message not for my church family, but for my non-Christian friends and family, yeah, so that they might feel that they could become a Christian too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I I I think we we were reflecting earlier that Mike Reeves's talk on sacraments that we heard back at All Souls Lamb Place must be 15 years ago, um, was was quite foundational in that what are the sacraments? Are the sacraments an arrow up or an arrow out? Me declaring to God and declaring to the world my faith, or are they rather God's word to us? You know, God's word that comes in water, wheat, and wine, you know, um, and declaring things.
SPEAKER_06Where's where have you got water, wheat, and wine?
SPEAKER_02Oh, Lutherans are all over that. Do they use that all the time? Yeah, I know they love that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, alliteration. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_06Sorry, I just I interrupted you mid-flow.
SPEAKER_05I just wanted to acknowledge the glory of that.
SPEAKER_02But it's it's kind of it's God's word down to you. And we know that when we take communion, we know that we're not going if you're from an Anglican point of view, you go up to the communion rail, or if you're you know receiving the the bread and the wine coming down, you're not saying, Hey, you know, watch watch me eat. Yeah, hey, I'm doing the I'm doing the eating thing. Yeah, you know, we know it's not our testimony up to God or out to the world. We know we're receiving Christ in bread and wine. Yeah, baptism, similarly, is receiving the blessing of God as the the name of God is placed on us in that aeronic sense from Numbers chapter six. The Lord bless you and keep you. You know, fascinating in in Rome in Numbers chapter six, there's a threefold name that is bestowed on the people. You know, this is the blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you. So the Lord who is the fountainhead of blessing, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. So there's the shining, gracious face. The Lord turn his face subjectively to you and give you his peace. So there's the peacemaking movement. You've got this threefold movement of the one name of God. And then Jesus says, Matthew 28, go out into all the nations and baptize them in the name. Yeah. The name, the singular name that has these three movements: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the source of blessing, the shining face, the subjective peace that you feel from it. And so it's all this arrow-down kind of stuff, which is why Christoph Keating um says on the slides, um, testimony for baptism is testimony of God. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty. And it's and it's on that basis, like, why get baptized? Yeah, it's not because I've got a great story about how I renounced a speaker pillow.
SPEAKER_06You know, on the basis of S. Who gave this child a speaker pillow and thought he wasn't gonna stay up late listening to music?
SPEAKER_02The tool of Satan. It was just a tool of Satan, it's all it was. You know, get behind me, speaker pillow. And but he turned from it, and on that basis, he's baptized. No, I am baptized on the basis of Christ's death and resurrection, and it's his story that's front and center. Um, you know, it's interesting. I've got this big doorstop of a book, um, Derman McCulloch's History of Christianity. Um, he's an Anglican, he's not an evangelical. Um, as he writes about evangelicals, it's fascinating. He says the one thing you need to understand about evangelicals, which evangelicals are a Bible-centered form of Protestantism that, you know, was all over that New England kind of Puritanism that you were talking about earlier. He said, To understand it, you need to understand this one phrase. It's all about your choice for God. Right. Which obviously raises the hackles of anyone who is actually reformed, yeah, of anyone who's in that Puritan tradition, you're like, well, no, it's God's choice for us, it's not our choice for God. How dare you? You've completely misunderstood evangelicalism. And then he goes around global Christianity, yeah. And he goes around what evangelicalism looks like on the ground, and you know what it looks like. Yeah, it looks like a lot of people continually making choices for God, choices for God, choices for God, arrow up, arrow out, yeah, telling my story, you know? Yeah. So is it any wonder that a world that has been preached to by us, you know, evangelicals have had a massive, you know, Protestants have had a massive impact on the world. Is it any wonder that we live in a society that's been described as as prizing um individual expressive individualism? Yeah. You know, is it our fault? You know, and that's why, you know, the the the topic for this this video is identity politics. Are evangelicals to blame? If if we're always beginning every sentence with well speaking as a dot dot dot if if that is my entrance into everything, maybe it's our fault, you know.
SPEAKER_06So did the the the Christian testimony with this focus on the subjective experience of coming to faith and just choosing Christ in that way, did it train the Western world in expressive individualism? Is that what we're yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think like like Martin Luther, um you know, so his famous, you know, standing up to the Emperor and the Pope 500 years ago this year, yeah, in April 1521, he says, unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason, for I can believe neither Pope nor counsels alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves, I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis. My conscience is captive to the word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound. Now he's standing on scripture, but his conscience won't allow him to stand anywhere else. Now, s the secular world has kind of gotten rid of the scripture side of things, but we've very much laid hold of the conscience thing, and ain't nobody gonna tell me what to believe, what to do. I'm not gonna define myself according to the institution of medieval Christendom or popes or emperors, no thanks. And you know, this is the invention of the modern individual in 1517. And and so I I I think it's definitely come from that Protestant religious impulse. And we've developed it in a churchy kind of a way, and identity politics has has developed it in a secular kind of way. And I think what we need to do is is have a healthier, you know, because Luther did not ditch the scriptures, you know.
SPEAKER_06Um and and yeah, at the same time, we I think we want to say phrases such as to thine own self be true, which I think is from Hamlet. Um that's what we should do. We should do the Shakespeare or scripture quiz next time. Okay. Um there is actually something helpful in that in knowing that you don't actually need to be someone else in order to be valued or accepted. You don't need to sort of change yourself in though in that way, but is is now so loaded that it's not only that we need to, you know, as Liam Gallagher once saying, you need to be yourself, you can't be no one else, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um that now, unless what I am saying about myself has is a self-constructed identity, something that no one else in any way, shape, or form has has sort of um dared to to impose upon me, but is a properly self-identification, then I can't I'm I can't be a true human being. Yeah, and the problem with that, of course, is that you get you get locked into this cycle of constantly questioning yourself, and of course, it's impossible, it is absolutely impossible to divine yourself, and even if you were able to do so, to be able to properly articulate that in a genuinely authentic way forever will kill you. You will you will not be able to do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, whoever wants to find their life will lose it, yeah. But whoever loses their life, I mean for the gospel will find it. And and that's that's fascinating, isn't it? Like if if you're trying to find yourself, you'll lose yourself completely. Um Fresh Freshers Week is the most brilliant example of this, you know. So so there's this freshers' week's just happening right now around the country, and there are people who are leaving behind their family. Ooh, boo hiss family, because like especially in the UK, because yeah, like in other countries, you tend to go to university where you live, because in other countries we actually like our parents, but in the It's also considerably cheaper to go to university in state when you're in in the US, so it's part of the reason why people tend to stay around. Yeah, you know, but even but yeah, I I wonder whether the UK has some of the highest levels of people traveling to go to university. Um because it's part of this narrative of I just want to fly, I want to be free, you know. And you go around um Fresh's Weeks, I often go around Fresh's Weeks to give talks and things on campus, and you've never met such lost people in your life because you know they're geographically lost, they don't know where the lecture theater is, they don't know where the library is. Three years later, they're not much the wiser. But you know, they're also spiritually and metaphysically lost, yeah, you know, and they're trying to find themselves, and that's good. That's the great wisdom, isn't it? Yeah, which is nuts wisdom because you know, if you're lost, the last piece of person you need to find is yourself because you're lost.
SPEAKER_06And so, what you need to do in that situation, Glenn, is to give your life to Jesus. And the reason why I say that is because we're now gonna go to uh the video that I mentioned at the top of the show. I sounding like an actual sort of broadcast person then, kind of. Uh, we're gonna go to um Glenn doing a spoken word on this very topic of the sort of conversion experience and the giving of life to Jesus. Let's roll the VT.
SPEAKER_00Oh wait, oh, you're still listening. Wow, you you haven't thrown your device at the wall in outrage. Well well, that's good. That's good. How are we doing so far? Nate and Glenn have wandered into several minefields at once, wearing clown shoes and attempting to tap dance. Have they succeeded? Would you like to push back on anything? Email us at infospeaklife.org.uk. And I imagine we'll have a thoughtful mailbag to discuss next week. Uh, this is the point in the show, by the way, where Nate and Glenn watched uh Glenn's spoken word, I gave my life to Jesus, you know, which is about the phenomenon of um Christians giving their life to Jesus a thousand times. They watched that and then they resumed their discussion. So here is the final part of their discussion.
SPEAKER_02So that's where it kind of leads youth-wise, yeah. You know, in in terms of giving your life to Jesus, if it's the arrow up the whole time. Um it certainly proved to be a slavery in my life. I mean, do you uh were you similar? Did you give your life to Jesus? Not a thousand times.
SPEAKER_06I mean, no one no one's as melodramatic as me, but Well, I would say the tables have turned, Glenn, because wasn't that just a conversion narrative narrative?
SPEAKER_05Aren't you doing the very thing you condemn?
SPEAKER_02I see what you mean. The scales have fallen on my eyes, mate.
SPEAKER_05So now finally you're free.
SPEAKER_02I've been converted from yeah, trying to deconvert people from conversion.
SPEAKER_06But I think I think you mentioned something earlier on, which was the If there's something that is cathartic or is expressive or I feel that I need to do, right? If if the if it's about me and my um experience of spiritual renewal, enlightenment, revival. Right. I'm probably gonna need to do that again. Oh yeah. Like in a couple of weeks. And so it's it's endless. It's like an addiction. It's like, and for those who are, you know, we talked about the coming out stories, for those who are having this sort of calming out, like finally finding themselves, right? If you say, right now I am I am satisfied with who who I am, yeah, it's like it doesn't take much for someone to go, are you really though? Yeah, is that really being true to yourself? Yeah, or is there something else you need to do? Are you actually, you know, are there other things that are now imposing upon your explosive identity which must themselves be removed and you need to come out from that? And the detransition stories that you get, and the the just this sort of cycle of people finding themselves leaping from self-expression to self-expression.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, which is just so tragic. And and the labels will change. So it's not it's not just that your need to prove yourself uh will continue and and and increase, but but the the the multiplicity of labels that you can wear is is only going to proliferate, you know, from here because we're finding that um yeah, the labels don't fit us.
SPEAKER_06Well, and this was the thing uh Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, yeah, uh put something out recently which included not just LGBTQ plus, but also had I think two S LGBT, so two spirit people had to be included. And and there is only one direction of travel for that acronym, which is just add more and more and more and more. Yeah. And it will never be long enough to include all the people.
SPEAKER_02And then with intersectionality, you've got to map, you know, on one axis, you know, I I might be, you know, lesbian on another axis, what about my ethnicity? What about my age? What about my abilities? And and uh yeah, it's it's absolutely endless. And it gets you down to the level of you're an individual. Yeah, and and so I mean, you get people like Jordan Peterson kind of saying, you know, this is what's interesting about intersectionality is that we're we're discovering that as you get more and more finely grained, you're getting yourself back to the individual.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so he wants to raise a banner for individualism, but it it seems it's impossible to just stand on your own two feet and say, I'm just an individual, I don't care what people think. That that is not actually an option on the table, yeah, you know. And he even as Jordan Peterson kind of says that, he he will also always say things like, you know, um, individualism has been one of the great discoveries that we have made in the West. You're like, Well, who's we? Like, like all of a sudden, he's kind of he cannot help but find himself in a tradition. Yeah, he cannot help but find himself identifying uh according to a much grander narrative and a story and a history and institutional which isn't atomized but is institutional. Yeah, so you must find your identity in something else. You you do not stand on your own two feet. But Chr you know, Christ says Um, if you find your life, you will lose it. But if you lose your life for me and for the gospel, you will find it. Yeah, and at that stage, I I think there is real liberation because here is the one identity I can find that is unlosable, that is unconditional, yeah, that is not based on my performance or my achievements. You know, here is something that that I am qualified for precisely because I can't live up to it. I'm qualified precisely because I'm Peter in the garden and I'm not praying for Jesus, but Jesus is praying for me. It's precisely because I'm a sinner, therefore I need salvation. I'm sick, therefore I need the doctor. Here is the one identity that I don't need to work for, but that I'm given at the outset. And therefore, on the far side of receiving that, then I can just be myself. I don't have to prove myself. Yeah, I can just be myself. And and I think it's the it's the liberation that Christ gives you that actually helps you to become the individual you're meant you're meant to be. But if you go for if you go for the individual, yeah, you lose yourself. If you lose yourself in Christ, you find yourself.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. And so the idea then to take it back to this um the infant baptism question, yeah. Is that uh almost for the for the child of that's born into the Christian family, the the precise right time is at their most vulnerable and helpless, in which the promises of baptism, the arrow down from God is is declared to them in the waters of baptism, and that's being declared to the rest of the church as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I just I just love the the French um baptismal liturgy, the Huguenot Protestant Reformed baptismal liturgy. The um the minister holds the child in his arms and he says this he says, For you, little child, Jesus Christ has come, he has fought, he has suffered, for you he entered the shadow of Gethsemane and the horror of Calvary. Gethsemane. For you, he uttered the cry, it is finished. For you he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and there he intercedes for you, little child. I mean, just imagine it. For you, little child, even though you do not yet know it. But in this way, the word of the gospel becomes true. We love him because he first loved us. I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. I've got goosebumps. I don't know if anyone else has got goosebumps at that point. But that's that's the beauty of the arrow down, isn't it? From the outset, before the kid can do anything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So last week we go into church and I'm with I'm with JJ. And uh and someone says, What are you up to after church? And I said, Actually, I'm gonna take JJ to the pool because we're gonna we're gonna practice. It's a weird, it's a weird one baptizing a nearly four-year-old. Yeah. Um, so are we gonna go full dunking? I like full dunking. Let's let's give it a go. Yeah, JJ can't even get his hair wet. He hates he he hates even getting a hair washed. So we we've we're doing a little bit of practice. So I say, you know, I'm gonna take him to the pool and we're gonna you know practice his baptism. And and this woman who was not from an Anglican tradition, she was like, Well, has he even asked for baptism? And I said, No, that's the beauty of it. The beauty of it. He doesn't know what's gonna happen, you know. For you, little child, though you don't yet know it, the covenant sign is on you. And you're going to have, and we pray that you have all sorts of milestones in your life where you come to a mature teenage faith, and then an even more mature 20-something faith, and an even more mature 30-something faith, 40-something faith. But those those are not the milestones of baptism. Yeah, that's just growing up under the covenant sign and owning it for yourself. But we love because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and it makes me think of the Lion King because you know, obviously, the beginning of the Lion King, the circle of life, and all of the animals gathered to Pride Rock. Yes. And there, um what's his name? Raf Rafiki. Yeah, the priest. He he just gives the cat simbra the sign, right? And then he holds him up before the community, and the cat simbra's there sort of looking all sort of weird. And all of the the kingdom rejoices that this helpless little lion cub has been has been born into the kingdom and now takes a pl his place as part of um as part of the life of the of the community into which he's been born, rightly taking his place. And the challenge is if if we think that Simba is supposed to, you know, oh no, it's actually later on, because he needs to be able to like give a little speech about you know being the Lion King and all that sort of stuff. It's like, oh don't worry, we've got loads of time to do all that sort of stuff. Yes. It's like actually there is there is this way of welcoming our covenant children into the covenant family, yeah, at their that at their youngest and most helpless, yeah, that they can live in the freedom of those promises for their lives. And they may run off to an elephant graveyard and end up singing Hakuna Matata to the Warthog, um, and a mere cat. But yeah, actually, from the outset, we have this celebration that they've been born into, yeah, into the promise, the family of promise. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The parallel with adoption is very suggestive to me because JJ is adopted. Um, and it's fascinating that you know it's not the case that JJ is in a neutral state right now, you know. Like, um, and then when he's old enough to make a decision, he can choose to be a scrivener or not. You know, it's like, no, no, you're a scrivener now. Yeah, and you you might undo this, you know, yeah, you you might walk away from this. Um, but you're not in a neutral state, and we're not waiting for your ratification of this. We pray and trust that you will grow up within the love, this adoptive love, and own it for yourself and walk out into the world and God save you, become a become a scrivener, you know, like and walk into this world like a scrivener. Poor, poor fella. But you know, that's that's the way around it is, and that you know, that's that's kind of why I'm that's why I believe what I believe about about baptism anyway.
SPEAKER_06And that's why I'll be happy to join you there on Sunday.
SPEAKER_02And uh the Godfather, the godfather. The godfather should be known from now on. Heidi Regier, I'm sorry if I'm uh getting that pronunciation wrong. Well, I've never thought of baptism in this way. Thank you for your humble biblical approach, which is always thought-provoking. I don't always agree, but it always gives me food for thought. Um, Wendy Lomont has said, I didn't grow up with the infant baptism uh baptism tradition, but this has been a helpful explanation for the reasoning behind it. Thank you guys. Yeah, like we say, we weren't assuming that people would be with us on this. Um, but yeah, there's a the there are gospel reasons behind it. It's it's not just and I I think a default kind of understanding that people have is okay, there's there's sort of infant baptism, which is kind of the Catholic thing. And we've walked away from that and we we do this other thing, and then there are these strange Anglicans who are kind of we're they're kind of semi-Catholic in a way. So that's that's you know, bless them, pray for them. They might come out. But I think you know, there are there are biblical and gospel reasons behind it. And we we offer them to you.
SPEAKER_06And you know, potentially some strange strange ramifications, strange implications that spin off from a focus on the conversion narrative and my own testimony, right? Which is then can be used for any any purpose and it becomes a language that that can be used uh for people to say all sorts of things about themselves.
SPEAKER_02Right, yeah. Um a blank slate view of humanity that waits for teenagers to make choices about their own identities. And I think I think every Christian gets very nervous when you when you just say that. We want teenagers to make a choice about who they really are when they're teenagers, and it's uh there are blank slates and they can make that choice. I think given everything that's going on, we're all nervous about that. Yeah, and I think the the infant Baptist position is saying, see, yeah, you know you keep walking down the the individual choice road, and there there aren't the happiest kind of um uh uh consequences. Jackie Knowles says, really helpful. Thank you. Well, thank you for sticking with us, Jackie, and thank you everybody for sticking with us on a Monday night. We hope you've enjoyed uh this different way of doing the live cast. And um the reason why we're doing it in the evening is we want you guys to kind of travel together with us. And uh one way that you can continue to travel together with us is by going to uh speaklife.org.uk slash give. And uh there are different ways that you can join the party and uh help us to do what we do. And uh we're setting up a thing so that uh whether you support us by Patreon, if you're out of the UK, um that might be the most helpful way that you could support us on a monthly basis. You can support us via Patreon and uh you'll get access to exclusive content. But there are other ways that you can give tax efficiently, especially if you're a UK taxpayer, and uh and again that will get you um to a special uh enclave where other speak lifers are, where we pray for each other, where we share uh concerns and questions, and where we share exclusive content as well. So if you want to uh get into speaklife unlocked, uh then there are details, and uh please go to speaklife.org.uk slash give. That's right.
SPEAKER_06And hopefully we will be back with you next Monday for another speakeasy. We'll let you know the password.
SPEAKER_02Knock twice on Oscar Ridge, yeah.
SPEAKER_06That's it. Well, thank you very much, Clan.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Nate.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it's been a pleasure. It's been fun.
SPEAKER_00God bless you all. Well, there we go, we made it. Hope you enjoyed this installment of the Speakeasy. And as always, you can email us any questions, comments, agreements, disagreements to info at speaklife.org.uk. Thank you very much for listening and goodbye.