In the beginning was a bunch of words spoken by a host about the purpose of this podcast. Special guest Jai Mantravadi interviews host Amy Mantravadi about what motivated her to start the (A)Millennial podcast, what listeners can expect, and how she prefers to name goldfish. Also in this episode: Amy explains her theological background and why her baptism was somewhat delayed.
NOTE: Apologies for the background noise at various points. It will be reduced in future episodes.
Amy's blog
Amy's novels
Further reading:
In the beginning was a bunch of words spoken by a host about the purpose of this podcast. Special guest Jai Mantravadi interviews host Amy Mantravadi about what motivated her to start the (A)Millennial podcast, what listeners can expect, and how she prefers to name goldfish. Also in this episode: Amy explains her theological background and why her baptism was somewhat delayed.
NOTE: Apologies for the background noise at various points. It will be reduced in future episodes.
Amy's blog
Amy's novels
Further reading:
Jon Guerra: (00:07)
(MUSIC PLAYING) I have a heart full of questions quieting all my suggestions: What is the meaning of Christian in this American life? I'm feeling awfully foolish spending my life on a message. I look around and I wonder ever if I heard it right? (MUSIC STOPS)
Amy Mantravadi: (00:28)
Welcome to the (A)Millennial podcast, where we have theological conversations for today's world. I'm your host, Amy Mantravadi. I'm a Christian lay woman and writer living with my husband and son in exotic Dayton, Ohio, where I'm coming to you live today. Actually, I should say we are coming to you live because I'm joined today by my husband Samuel Mantravadi, more commonly known as Jai. He won't usually be taking part, but he's joining me for this introductory episode. Jai say hi to everyone.
Jai Mantravadi: (00:57)
"Jai: Greet as desired." Oh, sorry. Hello! I'm Jai. I'm the husband
Amy Mantravadi: (01:03)
Very well done, sir. Now some of you may know me from reading my articles or books, noticing my tweets in your feed, or perhaps even having the misfortune to know me in real life. But for those of you who aren't as familiar with me, I thought, "What better way to introduce myself to people than to have my husband interview me so you could get to know a bit about me and then a bit more about me by knowing him?" Well, it made sense to me when I originally thought about it. This is an atypical episode, but hopefully it will be a profitable one. So Jai I'll hand it over you and you can ask me the questions.
Jai Mantravadi: (01:37)
What is this podcast about?
Amy Mantravadi: (01:40)
Well, that is an excellent question. To describe what this podcast is about would take a few different things that I need to focus on. The main thing that has been in my mind lately is this concept that was put forward by the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor in his book, A Secular Age, which came out back in 2007. It's something that's been pretty influential on a lot of Christian intellectuals for the past decade and a half. And in that book, he argues that non-belief in God is now what he calls a "live option" for many people. Whereas a few centuries ago, it was almost unthinkable that you wouldn't believe in God, because you wouldn't have the right philosophical background in your mind to make that an easy or desirable or reasonable belief for you. We all walk around with a lot of background philosophical assumptions, and today those are very different than they were a few hundred years ago. And where we are seeing this really occur in our society is through what's been popularly called the "Rise of the Nones," the word none there coming from different surveys that have given to people where they're asked to identify their religion and more and more people are checking the box that says none or unaffiliated. And just to give an example of this, the Pew Research Center has been conducting surveys for years on this topic. And in 2007, they found that 78% of American adults identified themselves as Christian and only 16% as religiously unaffiliated. Fast forward just 12 years later to 2019, and they found that only 65% of American adults identified as Christian - that's a drop of 13% - and 26% identify as religiously unaffiliated, which is a rise of 10%. So in just over a decade there, you're seeing quite a significant shift in the number of people who are identifying themselves as unaffiliated. And this is something that has become a real trend in Western society in the United States and elsewhere, and has been accompanied by what a lot of people see as some concerning political developments. Now you can take it all the way back to what some people would regard as the sort of original sin of secularization in our society, which was the banning of prayer in public schools. But really it picks up with a lot of things that have to do with sexuality and gender, such as the legalization of no-fault divorce, the advent of birth control, legalization of abortion, and then what I would say is the normalization of homosexuality. That is where it became sort of accepted by our society as a perfectly normal thing for a person to be. That really predated the actual legalization of gay marriage. And now in our own, most recent time, we're seeing an expansion of rights to transgender persons and all different kinds of sexual identifications, as well as calls for an end to federal funding for religious organizations and/or the removal of tax exempt status from certain churches based on the position they take in regards to human sexuality. Now that's a lot of big words that I've just given, but the reason I've gone through that history is just to catch us up to the cultural moment we're at where it seems every day when I'm on social media, or in a lot of discussions I'm having with people, in the books I'm seeing released - there is a growing anxiety about the direction that our culture is taking and how the church is going to respond to it. Under these conditions that I have been discussing, it's been growing increasingly difficult to live as a faithful Christian in the United States or anywhere in what's usually called the Western highly industrialized world - that'd be North America or Europe - and also difficult to raise up a new generation of faithful Christians. And there have been many possible solutions that have been put forward for this dilemma and a few that I've thought are particularly good that are not original to me, but which I'll now mention, would be increasing our understanding of scripture and historic Christian theology, praying fervently for the revival of the church and the spread of the gospel, improving our religious practices through the cultivation of historic Christian disciplines, ensuring that our worship and our testimony are truly reflective of the God we serve, and training up the next generation with faith and confidence in the Christian faith. So that's a lot of material I've just covered in a small amount of time, but each episode of the podcast will be aimed at addressing these issues in one way or another. I'll interview a different Christian author, artist, or minister each time, usually about one of their projects in particular. I think that about sums it up.
Jai Mantravadi: (06:52)
Why is this podcast called (A)Millennial?
Amy Mantravadi: (06:59)
Well, that's a good question. First of all, there is a debate over how to pronounce it. Usually when you hear people talk about the view of the end times, they'll say I'm "ah" millennial but you could also, you know, maybe say "ay" millennial or "uh" millennial. But in terms of this podcast, the title is a combination of two concepts. The first is that "ah" millennial or "ay" millennial understanding of eschatology. Eschatology is our theological understanding of the end times, and this theological view is often associated with Reformed Protestant theology. That's a tradition that has particularly influenced me and that maybe gives an idea to listeners of where I'm coming from. And then the title also refers to the fact that I belong to the millennial generation. So I am a millennial and the millennials are people aged 25 to 40, depending on who you ask. They're actually not the teenagers that are in high school now. So sometimes millennial has come to refer to anybody who is young, but it actually is that group that's about age 25 to 40. And this group is taking on more and more influential roles in the church and society. They're also raising the majority of the small children. They're sort of caught between the older generation, which is passing on the knowledge of the Christian faith, and the younger generation, which needs to receive knowledge of the faith for the first time. So those two concepts capture a lot of what I want to do with the podcast, and that's why I chose the name. And I'm going to be going with the pronunciation "ay" millennial, but we can have a debate about that, I suppose.
Jai Mantravadi: (08:37)
What made you want to do the podcast?
Amy Mantravadi: (08:41)
Well, many of the issues I've already mentioned were influential for me. In addition, you might've heard that I became a mother this year. Did you hear about that? Yeah, I think he did. So that certainly caused me to think about this idea of leaving a legacy and training up a child in the way he should go in our case, because we did have a son, actually. So I felt very keenly the deficiencies in my own knowledge of God and my own faith, as well as the great need to introduce our son to Jesus and set him up for spiritual success to the best of our ability. Obviously we can't control his decisions. He'll ultimately have to decide whether he's going to follow Christ or not, but we have a responsibility to proclaim the law and the gospel to him. As you know, that is something I try to do every day and hope to continue doing for as long as he's under our roof, and you've done a great job of coming alongside me in that. I know many other parents feel the same way, and beyond that, I know many people share my concerns about the way our society seems to be headed and wonder what strategy we need in order to successfully survive and thrive. And I should stress there that this isn't meant to be a political podcast, so I'm not just talking in terms of politics here, but it's even bigger than that. It takes up the whole society. So I've thought so much about this question in recent years, but what comes to my mind right now is the story of Daniel and his friends when they first were taken into exile in Babylon, which was a society that was totally opposed to the worship of the true God, and while God did eventually bring them into positions of influence in the government, their main goal going in was not to take over the society, not to keep their heads down and just try to survive. No, they just attempted to live faithfully according to God's law, not in a particularly confrontational manner, but certainly in what I would call a testimonial manner in which their simple faithful actions really testified to the truth of God. They ate different food from other people. They refused to bow down to an idol when they were commanded to do so, and they continued to pray even when it was outlawed. And in all of these ways, they had a powerful impact on that society, and they were just showing simple obedience to the truth of scripture. I think that's a really good model for how most of us can positively impact our society today. We shouldn't respond in anger or fear, but with great hope and an appropriate confidence based on the power of God and not the power of man. And I hope that this podcast can highlight ways for Christians to do that.
Jai Mantravadi: (11:15)
How many episodes will there be?
Amy Mantravadi: (11:18)
Well, because I am the mother of a little one and I'm also attempting to finish my third novel, I don't have a lot of free time. I have to limit my commitments. So I'm going to release an initial batch of five episodes and then hopefully do another batch of similar size at some point in the future. We'll see how it goes. So consider this the first season and I might get renewed.
Jai Mantravadi: (11:42)
So during this podcast, who will you be interviewing?
Amy Mantravadi: (11:47)
So for the first episodes, we're going to have Rachel Joy Welcher, who's written book called Talking Back to Purity Culture. It's coming out in November this year, which depending on when this podcast airs might be before or after our airing, but she's going to talk in that book a lot about how Christians understand biblical sexual ethics and how we've sometimes stayed very true to that biblical teaching and sometimes managed to add things to it. I'm going to talk to Matthew Lee Anderson, who's written a book called The End of Our Exploring. It talks a lot about the way that we as Christians ask questions of God: you know, philosophical questions, not thinking so much about simple questions like "How are you doing today?" but questions like, "How do we deal with the problem of evil? How do we know that God exists? Why does scripture say certain things that it does? What's my purpose in this world?" So we're going to talk about biblically faithful ways to question as opposed to ways that don't really help anything. And then I'm going to talk to Samuel Renihan, who's written a book called The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom. And that gets into how we understand the biblical covenants, which is a very important subject if you're going to be doing Bible study to understand how the covenants work together. And then finally, I'm going to talk to two ladies, Danielle Hitchen and Jessica Blanchard, who are respectively the author and illustrator of the Baby Believer series of books, which I have purchased for our son and we've really enjoyed reading to him. And Danielle's also been part of a podcast called Sacred Season, where they talk about how to make use of the liturgical calendar in family life to really benefit everyone's spiritual walk.
Jon Guerra: (13:41)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Jai Mantravadi: (13:52)
What has your own Christian journey been like?
Amy Mantravadi: (13:56)
Well, I was very blessed to be born, as the popular saying goes, into a Christian family. What that means is that both my parents are professing Christians and I was raised in the Church. When I was very young - either three or four years old, I don't exactly remember - I was able to understand the basic message of the gospel and profess faith in Christ. I was baptized at age seven because the church we attended was Baptist, so I wasn't baptized as an infant. And actually my baptism was somewhat delayed because I was afraid to put my head under the water. I had this experience in swim class where I slipped under the water for a while. I'm not sure exactly how long, but enough to make me feel like I was drowning and make me scared of being immersed. So it wasn't until I was seven that I was baptized, and maybe the moral of the story is that I would have been better off getting sprinkled than immersed, but we're not going to open that can of worms now! We'll leave that for another episode. So I attended the same Christian school from kindergarten through 12th grade, which was also attached to my church, so I was very much within that community all the time, and overall I would say I had a broadly evangelical upbringing. After graduating high school, I went on to study at Taylor University, which is an evangelical university in Indiana, and that was a time of real growth for me emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I had my first serious struggles with anxiety and depression while I was there, and I think it affected me in a couple of ways. First, it forced me to rely upon God and his Word in a new way, and I ended up doing a second major in biblical literature, in addition to my original major in political science. Additionally, I think it caused me to sympathize a lot more with the struggles of others, having to fight every day against an anxiety disorder. It forced me to become a lot braver in many ways. So after graduating from Taylor, I went on to attend graduate school at Kings College London studying international security, which at the time was my chosen career field. I spent that year attending an Anglican church, which had a real evangelical fervor, and I really benefited from seeing some of the Christian experience in Britain. When I completed my master's degree, I got a job working for the press office of the Egyptian government in Washington, DC. And as I always say, that could be a long story in and of itself, but we'll leave it for another time. I was very blessed there to end up at a great church in Arlington, Virginia - which for those of you who don't know, Arlington is just across the river from DC. My faith really deepened at that time. I made some very important friends, not the least of whom is the man who is sitting with me in this room right now, and we were married in 2012. And that became the next phase of the adventure. I'll say right now for the whole world to hear, or whoever happens to listen to this, that meeting Jai was a massive blessing in my life. I think the four greatest blessings I've received are God seeking me out to know him, having parents who love me and raised me in the knowledge of God, receiving a husband who loves God and wants to grow with me in knowledge of God, and most recently receiving a beautiful son who we can raise to know God together. And as you may recall, Jai, you were in the Air Force at the time we were married. You remember that? Yeah. So they moved us to Dayton, Ohio, where there were few if any jobs in my chosen career field, but I eventually made my peace with that because I truly believed God had called me to be your wife and go with you wherever you go, since you had already made that commitment to serve our country, and also because sadly I grown increasingly pessimistic about the possibilities of truly improving society through the political system here in the U.S. I was already feeling very much like a person without a party at that point, and that feeling has only increased in the years since. It was a really perfect time to get out of politics, but I didn't know what to do next. So gave it some thought, and the first thing I came up with was to start working on The Chronicle of Maud, which is the series of novels I'm now attempting to complete. I also took a job where I had to drive all over Southwest Ohio, visiting people in their homes. And I can assure you that the fields of Ohio, while wonderful, get rather repetitive. So I wanted to have something profitable to listen to during those hours on the road. I initially tried a philosophy course from the University of Oxford and maybe one or two other things, but I arrived at a course in medieval Christian history because I thought it would help me write my novels, which take place in the 12th century. The professor of that course also had another of his courses up on iTunes U, which was on Reformation history. Now I knew more about history than the average person and even some about the Reformation, but I had only very limited exposure to the original writings of the Protestant Reformers at that time, and through listening to that course, I was introduced to the writings of Martin Luther. And the one that particularly affected me was the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation. If you've never heard of it, Google it and tell them I sent you. This was an occasion on which Luther debated his developing theology, which would come to be known as Protestantism, with colleagues in his Augustinian monastic order. This was when he was still a monk and all of his theses from that debate are worth examining. But the one that really grabbed me was when he said, "The love of God does not find but creates that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it." I had for many years been struggling with the issue of divine sovereignty. I thought I knew what Calvinism was, but I'd never heard it presented ideally. The church I grew up in didn't really emphasize predestination very much, which was in keeping with most of evangelicalism, but it was naturally popular topic of debate among my fellow students in college, and even in the young adults group where we met, it was a popular topic of debate. I'd become very attached to the notion of free will as I understood it and considered myself to be more Arminian than Calvinist. But when I heard those words - again, the quote was, "The love of God does not find but creates that which is pleasing to it." - I instinctively felt them to be true, even if I wasn't entirely sure why. And I now realize I'd been moving in this direction for a while because I'd been researching the topic of reconciliation in scripture and reading some of those passages I saw so clearly that God had taken the full burden upon himself to bring about reconciliation with us. It's like Paul says in Romans 5:8. He says, "God demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." So the seed had already been planted in me, and that is why I understood the truth of what Luther had to say, but there was still work to be done in my heart. I sensed the resistance within myself to this high notion of God's sovereignty. So one night while I was laying awake, I prayed to God, and I really felt in that moment that I needed to say to him that, "Even if this is true, this understanding of predestination and all the rest, even if it is true, you're still good." That was in some ways a difficult prayer for me to pray, but in the following months I continued reading and became really convinced that the Protestant Reformers had been correct about that issue. So the great thing about this wasn't really that my view of predestination changed, but I was introduced to a much deeper understanding of salvation as rooted in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ and union with him. Of course, I'd heard about those concepts before, but somehow they hadn't clicked with me at the same deep level as they did then. I'd always struggled with assurance of my salvation, particularly because I'd also struggled with doubts from time to time. But I can truly say that that period, which was back in 2016, was a very special moment in my spiritual journey where I felt like God really led me in a certain direction theologically. I never felt that before, but the benefits to my spiritual life were pretty immediate. However, immediately after that, I entered a very difficult period in my life. During 2017, I dealt with a chronic condition that caused me to be very tired all the time and have all kinds of aches and pains. Beyond that, I also fell into the deepest depression of my life. I had never experienced the kind of shame in my life like I experienced in late 2017. Then early 2018, I began having really a crisis of faith, which overlapped with my depression, such that it was pretty impossible to tell which was causing the other. And that whole time I'd been moving increasingly into the Reformed Protestant world and doing more and more writing for different Christian organizations, but it seemed like I was dealing with crisis after crisis in my own personal life, some of which I won't discuss here, but there were just a lot of them. And I experienced a lot of fears of fraudulency, but when I really considered things, I was convinced that I should keep writing, keep sharing the gospel. So I kept doing that and my faith has grown in many ways as a result of those crises, but all along the absolute hardest thing for me to get over has just been the rancor I've seen among Christians, the arrogance of so many Christian leaders, and the way sin has really been swept under the rug in a lot of cases. I've been brought back time and again to the question I once asked you, which was, "Is it possible for any church to remain faithful long-term?" I could just as easily apply that to any Christian leader or organization. I've seen so many people claim to be filled with the Spirit, but show little evidence of having the fruit of the Spirit. That's been really difficult for me. I've grieved a lot over that fact. However, God is still good. Even in the midst of so many difficult controversies and embarrassments in the Christian world, he's also connected me with people who are godly: not perfect people, but people who are striving to be faithful, and I so appreciate that. It brings me hope whenever I see the Church being what the Church should be, and I actually hope that going forward, I'll see that more and more the work of the Spirit being revived in our days, because the only way the Church is going to make a dent in this rising tide of unbelief in the West is if it actually looks like Jesus Christ and follows his commands. So did you have any more questions for me?
Jai Mantravadi: (24:22)
"More questions if desired, especially funny ones." Oh, sorry. Actually you mentioned something that jogged my memory of something when we were first dating that I found interesting. Why don't you tell us about the names of all your goldfish?
Amy Mantravadi: (24:38)
The names of all my goldfish...Well, growing up probably starting around high school through college and beyond I would have goldfish: not like the 10 cent ones you buy, but the bigger ones that kind of waddle when they swim and have the really fancy fins. And I always thought it'd be funny to name them after either tyrannical dictators or world conquers or, you know, philosophical, you know, experts or something. And I know I had an Attila at one point. I don't know if I had a Gengis Khan. I had a Napoleon. But I think when I met you, I was getting a goldfish early in our relationship: a new one, because they do die. Occasionally that does happen with goldfish. And the two that I...yeah, you told me, did you tell me to name one of them Calvin?
Jai Mantravadi: (25:36)
Before we get to that, she had two goldfish that one was named Erasmus and the other that was named Cromwell.
Amy Mantravadi: (25:45)
Ah, right!
Jai Mantravadi: (25:46)
Why did you name them Erasmus and Cromwell?
Amy Mantravadi: (25:48)
Well, because they're two awesome historical figures. I mean, Erasmus was one of the greatest intellectual minds of the Renaissance who gave us one of the first great Greek translations - not Greek translation, but an edited together version of the Greek New Testament and a new Latin translation that became the basis for a lot of the Reformation era translations into German and English and other languages. And Cromwell I believe was named after Thomas Cromwell and not Oliver Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell - if you have any familiarity with the Wolf Hall novels, if you don't, you should definitely read them - but he was chief legal strategist for the king of England, Henry VIII. So he was very interesting.
Jai Mantravadi: (26:43)
Then when we first, uh, were dating pretty seriously, she got a new goldfish because I believe Cromwell had died. And this goldfish had kind of like tiger stripe looking things. And I said, maybe you should name it Calvin after Calvin and Hobbes. Now if I remember correctly, Hobbs is actually the tiger, but I was just thinking in terms of that. But she was so...at that time, so this is predating her delve into Reformation theology. She was so anti-Calvin, she named her fish Arminius just in response to the suggestion that I say that she should name it Calvin...
Amy Mantravadi: (27:28)
As you recall my dear, this was before we were one flesh: before I was expected to submit to you in all things. And when you tried to name my fish, I objected to you attempting to name my fish for me. So when you said, "You should name it Calvin," just to be a stinker, I said, "I'll name it Arminius."
Jai Mantravadi: (27:48)
So why don't you tell the good people in the podcast audience...what is your recollection of our first meeting?
Amy Mantravadi: (28:01)
Well, my recollection is that you came into the room and there was this kind of glow about you. And I heard this kind of angelic chorus. No, no? So we were, as I said, we were attending the same church and there was a young adults group there that met on Sunday afternoons after church. And I was sitting at a table with this other guy whose name was Chris. Shout out Chris, if you're listening. Hi! And we were talking about football, or somehow you sat down and started talking about football. And I remember you were wearing a red shirt with black stripes, but anyway...you were talking to Chris and you were giving him a hard time. And he said he went to Texas A&M and you said, "Oh, I'm sorry," like that was something...
Jai Mantravadi: (28:56)
Now a little backstory. Before I had met Amy - long before I met Amy I've met many Aggies and I have many good friends who are Aggies, but I always feel like I have to give them a hard time, regardless of how well I know them just based on the fact that they're Aggies. So I sat down at the table and I asked Amy, I said, "Oh, what are you guys..." They were talking about different football teams, but I didn't quite know the names of teams that they were talking about. And I said, "Oh, what sport are you talking about?" And she said, "Football." And I said...I turned to Chris and I said, "Oh, great. Where did you go to college?" To which he said, "I'm an Aggie." And I said, "I'm sorry." And after that, Amy turned to me and with a bit of a screwed up face went, "And where did you go to school that was so great?" Now, for those of you who don't know, I went to Cedarville University and Cedarville football has been undefeated since 1953 because they haven't had a football team since then. And actually those of you who do know Cedarville college football history, they actually still have one of the record-breaking losses in college football history. I think it was triple digits to single digits. So, you know, I didn't really have a leg to stand on, but as Amy said with her goldfish, she gave me a hard time just to be a stinker and she's been doing it ever since. It reminds...our relationship a little bit reminds me of C.S. Lewis in The Horse and His Boy where the two main characters - Cor and Shasta - would at the very end of the book, they would fight and make up and fight and up, so they got married so as to do it more conveniently. So our marriage is not generally filled with fighting and things like that, but we do have our disagreements from time to time.
Amy Mantravadi: (30:58)
Dear, I think you'll find that you asked me the question and then you answered your own question.
Jai Mantravadi: (31:05)
I'm filling in some details. I asked you what your first recollection was.
Amy Mantravadi: (31:08)
That's true.
Jai Mantravadi: (31:08)
So I was, I was filling in some blanks.
Amy Mantravadi: (31:12)
Okay. Well, anyway, did you have any other questions or are we done? Okay. That's a good way to wrap it up. So I'd like to end every episode with a prayer for all of you who are listening, and today I'm going to read from the end of Jude's epistle. He says, "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy, to the only God, our savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever." Amen. Thanks so much for listening! The music you've been hearing is the song "Citizens" by Christian recording artist Jon Guerra off his newest album, Keeper of Days. I highly recommend it and invite you to check it out. May God bless you this week, and I hope you come back to join me for the next episode. Thank you very much.
Jon Guerra: (32:08)
(MUSIC PLAYS) Is there a way to love always? Living in enemy hallways? Don't know my foes from my friends and don't know my friends anymore. Power has several prizes. Handcuffs can come in all sizes. Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one. (MUSIC STOPS)