Ep. 64 / A Faith that Holds in a Fractured World with Richard Mouw

What if the word "evangelical" could mean conviction without coercion, and courage without cruelty? In this episode with sit down with Dr. Richard Mouw—philosopher, former president of Fuller Seminary, and one of the clearest voices in public theology—to explore how the gospel speaks to both the restless heart and a fractured society. 

Dr. Mouw tells the story of how a simple hymn pulled him back to evangelical faith, not as a retreat into private piety, but as a public summons to engage race, war, gender and immigration with a cruciform-shaped imagination. We trace his path from preacher’s kid to philosopher, and how the Kuyperian vision—Christ claims every square inch—turns classrooms, labs, stadiums and city halls into places of discipleship. 

Richard contrasts two familiar temptations in the modern evangelical story: disengage from culture or try to dominate it. He proposes a third way marked by persuasion over force, neighbourly partnerships, and a voice that is “softly and tenderly” truthful. The conversation cuts through culture-war noise to offer practical handles: ask about hopes and fears, build coalitions with Catholics, Muslims and Latter-day Saints on shared goods, and model a faith that can think deeply and love well. 

If you’re hungry for a generous orthodoxy that is both intellectually serious and pastorally kind, this episode will meet you where you're at. To learn more from Dr. Richard Mouw, you can purchase one of his most recent books, find his bio online and follow him on Facebook. 

And please don't forget to share this episode and join the conversation on YouTube! 

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Richard Mouw

Brian Stiller 0:10

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, Brian Stiller. Perhaps you've had the experience of meeting someone who is so unusually wise and so markedly gifted in what they do that they seem to have no equal. For me, Richard Mouw is one of those people. Richard came to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, one of the most influential evangelical institutions of our time. That was in 1985, as professor of philosophy and ethics. He then served as Fuller's president for a number of years from 1993 to 2013. Richard has provided insight and understanding to the growing evangelical community for decades. For me personally, he was a godsend. Because I was a seminary president in Canada while he was president at Fuller. Richard was an invaluable source of peer support. His carefully considered, sometimes startling perspectives on critical issues had great influence on me. Amidst in the fury of today's American politics and its public dance with evangelicals. There's no one I'd rather hear from than Richard Mouw. Though unapologetically evangelical, he moves easily among other groups, including Mormons, Roman Catholics, and mainline Protestants. Provides the most sublime, logically solid and hands-on advice I have encountered. But I want to also thank you for joining me in this inspiring conversation with Richard Mouw. Would you please consider sharing this episode with a friend? And when you do, if you haven't already done so, hit the subscribe button. You can also join the conversation on YouTube in the comments below. Now to my guest, Richard Mouw. Richard Mouw, thank you for joining us on Evangelical 360.

Richard Mouw 2:16

Thank you, Brian. It's great to be with you today. Thanks so much. I'm honored.

Brian Stiller 2:22

Rich, as we've been developing Evangelical 360, this global platform for evangelicals and for others who are interested in the whole evangelical community and theology, yours is the one voice that I want to hear. And let me tell my our listeners why this matters. I've served the evangelical community in North America, specifically Canada, for a number of years. And when I was called to lead a seminary in Toronto, you were the one person that I gravitated to to help me understand

Evangelical Identity Amid Politics

Brian Stiller 2:56

both the theological implications of education, what it meant to be an evangelical in today's modern secular world, and how to handle people. And you were such an instructor and a mentor to me. I'm just I'm thrilled with this opportunity of us being together.

Richard Mouw 3:14

Well, whatever I was able to contribute to, you did magnificent things with uh managing the growth and influence of that university. That was wonderful.

Brian Stiller 3:27

Okay, Richard, we are at a particular moment in our North American and our world history. The evangelical community over the last five, six, seven decades has gone from about 90 million to 650 million. And yet we are in the midst of some major conversation that has started and is and and and boils more in the U.S. than elsewhere. But for you as a as a philosopher, as a head of the largest and probably the most influential evangelical seminary in the world, you were there for 30 years, uh your speaking and writing in leadership has been, in my view, one of the most important and impressive. And I say it for this reason. In the discussion about who evangelicals are and the politicization of the very idea, it's your ideas and thoughts and leadership that I have I have returned to again and again. So my question to you is, my friend, why do you continue to be an evangelical and publicly defend that idea and theology in today's

A Return To Evangelical Convictions

Brian Stiller 4:43

world?

Richard Mouw 4:43

Well, you know, I can honestly say that in my younger days, especially when I was in graduate school at the University of Alberta for a while, and then the University of Chicago, I tried not to be an evangelical. I became very concerned about social concerns. In Alberta, I worked hard on uh issues of nuclear disarmament and uh peacemaking during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, uh, racial justice. And uh I was kind of disillusioned with Eva Job, you know, with the evangelical world, because they didn't take those kinds of things very, very seriously. And um and and I I tried other things, you know. I read a lot of the Catholic social documents, uh I went to liberal churches, and the radical uh ideology of the student protest movements, uh, none of that really satisfied me. And I was puzzled, I was I was very concerned. And one day I was sitting in my apartment uh alone with my my baby son, and uh he was sleeping, and I I uh was working on my dissertation, and uh I turned the radio on, and it just so happened that as I dialed around, I got WMBI, which is the radio station of the Moody Bible Institute. I didn't feel very connected to those folks. Uh but the Moody Corral, the wonderful musical program, at that point they sang. And I I probably could have uh, if I had to choose, I would have picked a little better aesthetics in the song. But it just spoke to my heart uh that that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness. You know they they sang the blood will never lose its power. And they sang though the vile as me, it washes all my sins away. And I thought to myself, uh, I really believe that, you know. And as an evangelical, I believe that our fundamental problems are our own rebellion as individuals against the living God. But that when Jesus came to save us, he shed his blood so that we would be redeemed from the fullness of sin. And that means that the power of the blood of Jesus Christ has to address our race relations, our understanding of military matters, of political issues, of uh gender issues, and all the rest. And I want to think at that moment I decided I'm one of the evangelicals, and I'm gonna spend my time within that community really working for them to take seriously what they taught me as a kid. How can you begin to say the war in Vietnam? It's our government policy. And I'm gonna say this, you're all on the altar. Doesn't your draft card, doesn't your visa have to be on the altar of sacrifice? Uh Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. And I was convinced that evangelical, uh the evangelical understanding of the basics of the gospel is about as radical as you can get. And because it speaks to the deepest issues of the individual heart, but it also speaks, you know, we're moving into the Christmas season, and when you think of the kinds of things we say, he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found. And that means that that baby born in Bethlehem came to do something about the global conflicts, about Gaza, about uh Afghanistan and Russia. It has to do with the issues of immigration and all the rest, you know. So uh I made a pledge. And later on, as I thought about this, because I used to go in for ecumenical discussions uh at a school that had a monastery, and I would I would hear these monks on a daily basis, and and I realized that in many ways, uh we, people like you and me, who continue to identify with the evangelical community, it's just it's like we've taken vows. It's not just a theological agreement. We've taken vows to take this community seriously and to educate in this community and help this community understand what it says it believes and the full the full scope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yeah. Anyway, that's my testimony.

Brian Stiller 9:59

I want to come back to that, Rich, because the could the I guess the could the follow-up question would be is for many who have uh been in the Evan been raised in the evangelical church uh have found the the simplicity of the message that you've described not to be harmonious with the secular

From Preacher’s Kid To Philosopher

Brian Stiller 10:21

age. I want to come back to that, but but I'd like to jump in and just introduce you to uh uh the community of people who tend to listen to our podcast. Give us a thumbnail sketch of of your life. You were raised as a minister's son, and uh you have a you have a great uh reputation of uh being a uh a walking book of of Christian songs and hymns and and so forth. But take us back to your beginning and and how did you become a uh a moral philosopher and how did that integrate itself into the theology of your family and your being raised?

Richard Mouw 11:03

Well, you know, I was a as you say, a preacher's kid, and uh I I always see I've always been a kind of a sociable person, and and I can still remember eight, nine years old, people in the church would pat me on the head and say, you're gonna grow up to be just like your father, you know. And uh the presumption was that uh uh I was gonna end up the kind of pastor that my my father has had been. And a lot of that was accompanied, Brian, and you know this in your own faith community, your own version of evangelicalism, uh supported by a lot of anti-intellectualism, you know. I mean, I would hear these preachers come around and we'd go to revival meetings and like, uh, well, education's okay if you get the victory over it, you know. The only school you really need to go to is the Holy Ghost School of the Bible, you know. We don't need exegesis, we just need Jesus, you know. All this kind of anti-intellectual sloganeering that we were raised on. I I belong to a Bible club in a high school, a large public high school in New Jersey, and one of our alumna uh came back to talk to us, and she'd been studying for two years at a university, and she said, you know, it's okay. You can be a Christian at a university. She said, but what's been hard for me is I had to take a stupid philosophy course. And uh, you know, they ask all kinds of questions. You know, does my desk in my office exist when I'm not perceiving it? You know, and all these all these questions, and we all rolled our eyes, and then she said, but the important thing is that uh you don't have to ask those questions if you know that Jesus is the answer. And I was so inspired by that. But then when I got to college, I went to Houghton College in Western New York and I took philosophy courses. I enjoyed them, and I really had the sense that the questions that were being raised had answers in the gospel. And uh maybe not whether my desk in my room exists when I don't perceive it, but that God is everywhere. I'm connected to a God who is the Lord of all creation, including academic desks and all the rest. And so I I started when I would go home for uh holidays, I would I would say to my parents, yeah, I'm really thinking about going into teaching rather than the ministry. And they got really upset with me, you know. And then when I got under grad school and I got involved in uh social action, you know, social concerns, protest movements. And that was during the Vietnam era. Yeah. And uh they they my my you know, I I still can remember a good friend of my parents writing me a note saying, uh, I hope that the Lord will save you from your interest in all of this philosophy. And uh I had a very hard time explaining to people in my evangelical world that uh I wasn't leaving the evangelical faith. I was I was embracing it and trying to understand it's the breadth of this vision that I had learned as a child. Uh there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from a manual of veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains, including the guilty stains of our racism and of our uh uncritical allegiance to governments that don't deserve the kind of critical allegiance that we can give only to Jesus, you know. If he's Lord at all, he's the Lord of all, you know, those kinds of things. And so as a part of that whole experience, I wanted very much to get into the Evangelical Academy. And uh I got my first job at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was wonderful because there I also learned about this this great Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, who had also been the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, you know. And that wonderful line of his that really has shaped my life. There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, this is mine, this belongs to me, you know. And that's really been the motivating thing of my life. Uh yeah. So I um I did I decided to go and do um get a PhD in philosophy. I was able to do that. I got a good job at uh Calvin College, and I was there for 17 years. And then uh the president of Fuller Seminary, David Allen Hubbard. I met him at a conference at Wheaton's College one time, and he said, I'd really love to see you come to Fuller Seminary. Uh and all of that got some things rolling, and but I never wanted to be an administrator, right? I wanted to teach at Fuller, which I I did for a couple years. Uh but I gotta. David Hubbard came to me uh when I was on the faculty for three years at Fuller, and he said, Um, I really need a provost. The provost had died of a heart attack. And he said, I need a provost. You want to be a provost at Fuller? And I said, No, absolutely not. I don't want anything to do with that. And he said, Are you sure? I said, I'm absolutely positive. He said,

Brian Stiller 17:13

Provost is your senior academic officer.

Richard Mouw 17:16

Yeah, it is all the deans report to the provost. And and um he said, Well, can will you at least work with me to find a good person? You know, so we would come up with names and interview people, and nothing worked out. And one day he called me and said, I've got somebody that I think I should offer the job to. And I've got an appointment with him tomorrow. But if you will say that you were willing to pray about this for a couple days and talk to people that care about these things, I'm gonna cancel that appointment and wait for your answer. Uh if you're still willing. I had a good friend, uh, more on the liberal Presbyterian side of things, Barbara Wheeler, who was the president of Auburn in New York City, Auburn University, uh, Auburn, Auburn Seminary. I called her and I said, you know, David Upper's given me permission to talk to you and a few other people.

Called To Lead At Fuller Seminary

Richard Mouw 18:16

Should I be the Fuller, the provost at Fuller Seminary? And she said, Well, Richard, there's an easy test and there's a hard test. And here's the easy test. Uh when you were a kid in New Jersey and you went to Yankee Stadium, and you looked down on the field and you saw Yogi Berra behind the plate and Joe DiMaggio in the in the outfield and uh Soro Zudo at short shortstop. Did you look down on all of that and say, Oh, wow, when I grew up, I want to be an umpire? And she said, if you say yes to that, then of course you ought to go into administration.

Brian Stiller 19:00

Yeah.

Richard Mouw 19:01

And I failed that test. But then she said, you know, you've talked a lot about what what seminaries ought to be and what Christian colleges and universities ought to be. Are you really serious about that? And are you willing to put that into practice as a kind of practical philosophy or a practical theology of education? Uh and I think that's what you ought to be praying about. And I didn't ended up becoming the provost, and a couple years later I became president.

Brian Stiller 19:36

Well, you you this story interests me, and I'm sure it interests many other people because it it's it's uh a narrative that is descriptive of uh what I would consider you to be one of the prime and most senior evangelical voices in America. But to help understand what makes your voice, give us course 101 in the reform theology that is descriptive of your essential evangelical faith. Help us understand what that means over against the kind of the larger landscape of evangelical theology.

Richard Mouw 20:18

You know, when I first latched on to this kind of reform theology about the importance of having a worldview, of acknowledging the full authority of Jesus Christ over all of life, whether it's poetry or medieval history or philosophy, uh chemistry. When when I was interviewed at Calvin, the president of Calvin, a wonderful guy, and he was trying to say, explain to me what Calvin College, what its basic understanding of liberal arts education was. And I said, let me put it bluntly. He said, if tonight the entire theology faculty dropped dead and the science building burned down, we would be as Christian tomorrow as as we are today. Because it's our understanding of science and the way in which our theology relates to all of these other areas of of learning. And I I mean I I thought he overdid it a bit in his exaggerated uh comment. But but I think that was at the heart of that reformed vision. And I'd gone to Houghton College and uh I really liked Houghton. I loved John Wesley and the hymns. But there was an understanding of holiness there that was very narrow, you know. Personal holiness. And uh you could lose it and gain it again, and all the rest. What I find more recently is that there are some wonderful Wesleyan theologians who talk about the broader sense of holiness, that it's holy discipleship. It's the disciples, you know,

Reformed Vision And Whole-Life Discipleship

Richard Mouw 22:16

John Wesley said, the world is my parish. And he didn't mean just simply, my parish is my whole world. He meant that the world itself is kind of like a parish. And that means that, very similar to Abraham Kuyper, you know, that when we leave our church and we go out into the supermarket, when we go out into the factory, when we go to Yankee Stadium, we're also on sacred ground. Because all of that belongs to him, and we need to acknowledge his lordship over what happens there. And I think your Pentecostal world, some wonderful things. I think one of the great challenges, but one of the great uh steps forward in the evangelical movement has to be the growth of not only a global Pentecostalism, but a global Pentecostal scholarship with wonderful things that are happening in Pentecostal institutions of higher education. And I just think that I'm I'm I'm still a Kuyperian Calvinist, but I also see parallels to the rest of the evangelical community. And I think they're a good thing. Christianity today speaks to all the issues that we ought to be caring about. World vision takes all of that seriously. And those are particularly reformed institutions. Interversity speaks to all of those issues, you know. And so I think we have a very strong intellectual substructure in the evangelical community today, and that we we need to be uh supporting that and developing that. And so when people resign from the evangelical community, I hear that word a lot, you know. Uh that's that's a terrible thing. Your schools and mine, uh, we have trained people. When I was president of Fuller, we had students from uh 70 nations on campus. And we taught them to take the evangelical faith seriously. And I had a I had a Nigerian student come back to visit two years ago, and he said, What's all this thing about people didn't want to want to use the word evangelical anymore? You folks inspired me uh to take all of that seriously. It's the foundation of who I am and what I'm doing. And I feel betrayed by those people in North America, the United States and Canada, who say they don't want to use the word anymore. And we need to rescue it and keep drawing on what it points us to about the nature of the gospel.

Brian Stiller 25:25

Richard, as we look at this wider landscape of evangelical theology, churches, mission, faith, uh, publishing, all of those institutions that are part of this historic evangelical community, uh, you are part of the Reformed community out of a out of Calvinism, which has a particular kind of theological bent to it. I come out of a Pentecostal tradition, although I was trained in an Anglican seminary, so I have a bit of a I'm a bit of a hybrid. So in that broader world, which in your country comprises up to 25% of your community, uh, in our country it's less than 10%. Uh but out of that wider landscape of faith and community, today now we're wrestling with some issues about how that world, how that theology uh speaks to the broader world, or civic world, or political world, or educational scientific world. And there are some pretty hot conversations that sometimes will lead even to what some would dub a Christian nationalism or a a kind of a hyper-Christian influence over society. So, in in that conversation, you come as a reformed, as a theologian, as a philosopher, one who has written some very important books uh uh uh on common decency and a variety of things on how we engage in that world. Give us a bit of a tutorial on how evangelicals, in your view, might look at the current world, the cultural wars and all that's going on, and how we might respond from the position of the of the gospel uh into this world and into the issues that our younger generation is facing. It's a huge topic, but you're the best in my view to address this.

Richard Mouw 27:33

Well, I don't have all the answers on that. You know, it it's it's clear to me in looking at evangelical history that there are two strong tendencies about our relationship to the larger human community. Uh public life, for example. One is that we separate ourselves from it. Uh I think our our theologies, various theologies for the first half of the twentieth century, were theologies of cultural marginalization. We can't gain anything by trying to do

Rescuing The Word Evangelical

Richard Mouw 28:15

politics or scholarship or anything like that. Uh because Jesus is gonna come soon. I I once gave up during the uh 1972 election, I I spoke at a conference at Wheaton College, and they had an evening event, which was a public event. They asked me to, they were gonna talk about philosophy, but for for the broader community, and they asked me to give the opening prayer. And I I said in my prayer, I'll never forget it, I said, and Lord, as we we gather here today to honor your lordship over all things, uh help us to uh learn more about how you care about peacemaking and the work of justice and the quest for truth. And afterward, a guy came up to me, angry, really angry, and he said, I really resented your pro-mcovern prayer. George McGovern was the Democratic candidate for president. And I said, What was your what was pro-mcovern about my prayer? He said, Well, you you pray that we need to learn about peacemaking and justice and truth. He said, and he shook his finger in my face and he said, Young man, there will be no peace until the Prince of Peace returns. There will be no truth until the Lord of Truth returns. And our job is just to be faithful. Well, I agree, but our job is to be faithful. But but that sense in dispensational theology, for example, that we're just waiting for the rapture, and we're basically going to be those of us who are Gentile Christians will be raptured out of this mess, and then God will get to the final business that he had in mind all along, you know, with the Battle of Armageddon and all that stuff. But you had that in the Pentecostal community too, you know, that uh nothing much is going to happen by our efforts. And the main thing is not to have people get people active here on earth, but to get them ready to go to heaven.

Brian Stiller 30:37

Come up from among them and touch not the unclean thing.

Richard Mouw 30:40

That's right. That's right. And so that tendency to marginalize, the celebration of cultural marginalization. But then the other tendency is we start to want to take it over. You know, it was it was interesting, and in many ways I admired Jerry Falwell. I can't say I agreed with him on a lot of his policy issues, but uh he uh he said once in a sermon back in the 70s, ten years ago I preached from this pulpit that Martin Luther King was wrong when he said that Christianity had to take politics seriously. He said, I want to say here today, Martin Luther King was right and I was wrong. Well, that was kind of a graciousness. And he also said in the 80s, he said that uh God does not hear the prayers of Jews.

Culture Wars: Separation Or Takeover

Richard Mouw 31:45

And a rabbi friend from New York City called me and he said, What can we do about this? I said, condemn him. Just say he's wrong about that. And say you're willing to talk to him anytime about your prayers and the years of God. And the American Jewish Committee issued a statement, and Jerry Falwell announced, I've gotten an invitation to talk to rabbis in New York City, and I'm going. And this rabbi friend called me afterward, and he said, Falwell walked in the room with tears streaming down his face. And he said, I'm so sorry I said that. Will you forgive me? You know? Well, there's something very gracious about that. And I think we've lost the graciousness that he brought into his support of Ronald Reagan, which he was very instrumental in helping Ronald Reagan become the president of the United States and forming the moral majority, which was really one of the first organized political movements in the evangelical world. And uh but it's gotten so mean-spirited today, I kind of miss Jerry Falwell, you know. And on the sexuality issues, which a lot of your people listening and watching us today are concerned about, and I'm rather conservative on my views about these things. But uh the mean-spiritedness of so much of the ways in which we speak about these things to people who are living lonely lives, confused lives, you know. And uh there's a part of me that uh, you know, Fuller Seminary was founded by Charles E. Fuller of the old-fashioned revival hour, you know. And uh one of the one of the hymns that they would sing a lot when he was giving his altar call. Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling, oh sinner, come home. And there's something about that sense of presenting the gospel to lost human beings softly and tenderly. Not harshly, not you've got to believe the way we do, you've got to conform to our standards of life. So we're not here to impose our views on the social order in a manipulative, uh, authoritative way. But we want to create a world in which it's possible for us to speak softly and tenderly about a savior who came because the Lord loved the world. And uh I yearn for a softer and more tender voice in the evangelical movement. We've lost that.

Brian Stiller 34:46

I'm from Canada, as you know, and uh many of our people internationally look at what's going on in the U.S. and they're uh we're either curious or disturbed by this sense among some evangelicals that they have the right to impose on civic standards and policies a Christian view of life, be it Catholic or Protestant. And we find that to be out of step with what our historic evangelical position would tend to be. And we're befuddled. Can you help us understand why that has emerged and why it's become so strident within the American community?

Richard Mouw 35:34

Well, you know, in many ways, the argument that you and I would would would see ourselves as having become convinced by in our earlier days, and that is that Jesus does care about politics. Jesus does care about sexuality, you know, all of these issues. And he cares about the policies, about the laws, the practices. But that does not mean that he wants us to impose conformity to our beliefs and our practices uh by using government to poke. I think uh we certainly want to bear witness in public life to all of that. But but I think in many ways we we need to work and encourage the the value of a pluralistic society. That we can work alongside of other people of goodwill, and there are people of goodwill who are not Christians, but that we can work alongside of them on specific causes that we that we care about. And uh so I I like that idea of forming partnerships with people of a variety of uh views. I mean, we have a I think a wonderful opportunity these days to uh find people in the Muslim community who care deeply about issues of justice and peacemaking. There was a survey done of uh Muslim young people about 15 years ago in the United States, and most of them were very critical of their local imams and their local mosques because they they kept reinforcing the idea of Iranian identity, you know, or uh identity with with places they came from, and they and these young Muslims said, we want to be American Muslims, yeah. We want to learn what it's like to be like our American counterparts and yet maintain our convictions. And I think we have some wonderful opportunities. I I am very encouraged by a younger generation, Brian. Uh as I've gone, I've stopped my travels, but over the last 25 years I've spoken at a lot of evangelical colleges, universities, seminaries, and I'm so impressed by a younger generation that gets this stuff. And uh they they they care about they're very concerned about what their parents believe about uh imposing things and you know the like. So I think we have

Softly And Tenderly: A Kinder Public Voice

Richard Mouw 38:24

a wonderful educational opportunity to uh equip a younger generation uh to a kinder and gentler evangelicalism that is willing to uh uh not impose our views on others, but invite people to tell us their stories and invite people to listen to our stories about why we care about these things and see if we can build coalitions and people working for common cause. And uh that's what makes it very difficult today. Although, you know, it's it's interesting. One of the big changes in your and my lifetime has been the relationship between Catholics and uh evangelicals. Um and a lot of that had to do with we met each other, you know, Tim George, Timothy George, an evangelical scholar, has said uh uh evangelicals and Catholics are are nicer to each other these days, not because some group got together and proclaimed that we've got to be nicer to each other, but because ordinary evangelicals and ordinary Catholics got together in the Right to Life movement, you know, and concerned about poverty and feeding hungry hungry kids. And he says uh this is a kind of local ecumenism. We don't do big-scale ecumenism with bishops making proclamations, but we form relationships. And I think that that sense of what's happened between evangelicals and Catholics is a model. I I've you know I've I've worked a lot with my LDS uh friends in the last uh 25 years. And uh

Brian Stiller 40:18

the LDS means of Latter-day Saints.

Richard Mouw 40:21

Yeah, the Mormon community.

Brian Stiller 40:23

Yes.

Richard Mouw 40:24

And uh there are a lot of good things that are happening there. Of uh Mormon and evangelicals working together, being concerned together about certain things. And uh so I I think forming coalitions, partnerships, rather than taking our view and trying to impose it on everyone is the is the answer. And there has to be a third way between let's not have anything to do with it or let's try to take it over.

Brian Stiller 40:55

Rich, looking at where you are from a outside, from a global perspective, how does an evangelical retain the core values and beliefs of of our theology and not get caught up in the cultural wars that we see raging in your own country? Is there a way of going forward in evangelizing our world and making Christ known without getting caught up in these skirmishes that seem, at least from the outside, seems to suck up a lot of energy and focus of what would otherwise be a public witness of Christ.

Richard Mouw 41:43

Big challenges there, and I don't have all the answers, but I I do think that uh it's so important for us to create trust with and and cultural wars are not trust building, trust cultivating relationships. Uh they're they're attacks. And and at the heart of it is something very

Pluralism, Partnerships, And Common Cause

Richard Mouw 42:14

basic. Uh I I I keep going back to the fact that we need a spirituality of public life, a spirituality of culture. And that is not so much trying to impose our views or angrily denouncing but uh but a a softer and more tender voice. And you know, there there's a lot of little things that we can learn. Part of it is how we talk to each other. And I I think this one of the big things we need to be teaching in our churches. There isn't much teaching going on about these things. But uh, you know, I have a good friend who's very pro-Trump, uh very MAGA, very you know, culture wars type person. And we've had some arguments. But I keep thinking, suppose we had a real conversation. The worst thing I could do is, why did you vote for him? You know? Because I'm I'm I'm putting her on a defensive. But you know, she's a grandparent like I am. And suppose I said to her, uh, you and I really care about our grandchildren and how they're being raised in this society, which incidentally I think is behind a lot of what's going on in the evangelical world, a genuine concern about raising the next generation. Tell me why you're convinced that uh Donald Trump is really doing the kinds of things that can make it possible. For your grandchildren to grow up as uh solid, flourishing Christians in our secular society. Uh, asking her about her hopes and fears. You know, that's another Christmas carol I love. The hopes and fears of all the years are mad on me tonight. And I need to get her talking about her hopes and fears. So, you know, Young Life, a wonderful youth ministry organization, has uh an interesting uh practice uh that I've learned so much from them. They say, if you want to talk to a 15-year-old girl about what she believes about God, don't say to her, What do you believe about God? But ask her, What do your friends believe about God? Because it takes the pressure off her to be defending herself and making sure that she doesn't get dumped on by you. And so by by allowing her to become an amateur social psychologist, you're probably gonna learn a lot about what she believes about God. But you're giving her a question that's safe for her. And we need to find safe ways to open up conversations, you know. I I understand, my friend, you're very interested in politics. And you're very much against so much of what's going on in the world today. Uh how did you how uh what first motivated you to get get excited about this stuff? Yeah. And and I think you're uh you you're gonna find answers that have to do with what her hopes are for America or for Canada? What her hope, what her fears are for America and Canada, and and and instead we we get this harsh attacking people kind of approach.

Brian Stiller 46:05

Rich, as we uh as we land today in conclusion, what song comes to mind as you think about how we as evangelicals might best present the risen Christ to our world?

Richard Mouw 46:21

Well, I I mean, again, I don't I'm not sure I want to do the aesthetics of a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. I mean, although there's a power there that I believe every word of it. But quite a while back, I was uh I was on a at a university campus, a secular university campus, where they had a a rabbi, a priest, a liberal Protestant, and me talking about the past, present, and future of our respective religious communities in America, in the United States. And we did uh four four sessions in one day, very well attended. And the evening session was just a lot of QA. I talked about the past of evangelicalism, present, what I hope for for the future, and and the rabbi did the same for his community. And in the Q ⁇ A, a young man stood up and said, Dr. Mouw, I'm an evangelical. And I've learned a lot from what you've said about us today. But would you just answer this question for me? What do you believe

Building Trust And Better Conversations

Richard Mouw 47:31

up there that none of the other people you're up there with believe? And I said, you know, last Sunday in church we we sang a wonderful hymn, It is Well with My Soul. And the words of that third verse really stick with me. My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, it is well with my soul. I say, you know, the rabbi can't sing that. That his sins are forevermore covered by what happened on the cross of Calvary. Uh and I go, I go very cautiously on this. The priest, if he stands for what Catholicism stood for when we split from Catholicism at the time of the Reformation, I cannot say with confidence to people, because of what happened 2,000 years ago, it is forever more well with your soul. And the liberal Protestant, who actually had quoted Harry Emerson Fosdick, who had this horror line that we don't want anything to do with slaughterhouse religion, you know. And he can't preach that, he can't sing it either, you know. And to me, that really is at the heart of things. That because of what happened once on the Hill of Calvary, that is forevermore well with my soul. My sins, not in part, but the whole are nailed to the cross. But then I want to go on, and I said this that night too, I want to go on to say, but those of us who say that also need to be able to say, but it is not well with the world that God has created. It is not well with in black inner city homes tonight, in Brooklyn, with Harlem. It is not well in marriages and suburban Chicago, you know. It is not well in the Middle East, it is not well in China with persecuted Christians. And so for those of us who believe it is well with my soul, forevermore, uh we need to understand the ways in which God grieves over the things that are happening in the world. And we're not going to solve it all. But Christ will someday come to make all things new. And when he returns, he wants to find us being very concerned about the fact that it isn't well in the human community and that we've been doing things about it. So to me, it is both that very personal thing and the way it's related to the broader life of discipleship.

Brian Stiller 50:34

Richard Mouw, thank you so much for joining us in Evangelical 360 today.

Richard Mouw 50:39

Thank you. I'm just so delighted to talk to you. And I'd like to ask you all those questions, Brian, because I could learn a lot from you on that. But maybe another time, huh?

Brian Stiller 50:50

Another day. Okay. Another day. Thanks again. Thanks, Rich, for joining me today. Your writings, leadership, and creative initiatives have been strategic in enabling us to see how the Spirit is at work guiding the Church of Jesus Christ through turbulent times. And to you, my listener, thank you for being a part of the podcast. Be sure to share this episode using hashtag Evangelical360 and join the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guests, check the show notes for links and info. And if you haven't already received my free ebook and newsletter, just go to Brianstiller.com. Thanks for being with us. Until next time.