Ep. 75 / What "Evangelical" Means and What It Might Cost Us with Bruce Barron

“Evangelical” can sound like a poll category or a culture-war tribe, but in this episode we get underneath the label and ask a simpler question: what does it actually mean, and what does it cost? Our guest is Dr. Bruce Barron, a longtime observer and scholar of Christianity in the global context. We talk about why many evangelicals feel “stuck with the Bible” and why that conviction shapes everything from church debates to national politics.

We unpack the classic Bebbington Quadrilateral (a previous guest of the podcast), and then move into real pressure points: LGBTQ questions, women in ministry, and why biblical interpretation can both hold communities together and split them apart. From there we step into eschatology and the politics of end times, including the emotionally charged question of how Christians should think about Israel and the modern Middle East.

This is a conversation with no easy answers, but we trust that this episode will be both challenging and clarifying for many who wish to live out their faith in the face of global concerns and complexities. If you'd like to learn more from Dr. Bruce Barron you can find his published works on his website and subscribe to his substack. 

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

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

Brian Stiller 0:10

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, Brian Stiller. Today in Evangelical 360, we're joined by Dr. Bruce Barron, a Colorado-based writer, editor, and longtime observer of global Christianity, public life, and evangelical engagement. For more than four decades, Bruce has worked at the intersection of church scholarship and civic society, serving as an editor, researcher, congressional aide, and consultant to Christian organizations. He's the author or co-author of seven books and most recently served as executive editor of the Evangelical Review of Theology, the World Evangelical Alliance global theological journal, helping shape conversations across the worldwide church. Bruce is a friend, one who is not timid in telling me what he thinks or pointing out where I've been wrong. He brings a thoughtful, seasoned voice to the challenges and opportunities facing evangelicals today. I'm delighted to have him with us. Bruce Barron, welcome to Evangelical 360.

Bruce Barron 1:20

Well, it it's a treat to be here. I'm just wondering, since you're Canadian and I'm in the U.S., are you violating the boycott by uh dealing with me?

Brian Stiller 1:33

Oh, you know, Americans are our best friends, and we like to think that we're your best friends, uh, notwithstanding the political hyperbole that seems to uh uh wreak havoc uh at the 49th parallel.

Bruce Barron 1:47

Yeah, well, uh I grew up in Buffalo, which many of your uh listeners will know, is just across the river from Canada, and I would escape at this point, but I'm not sure the Canadians would let me in.

Defining Evangelical And Bible Authority

Brian Stiller 2:00

Well, uh I'm not sure when this program will be aired, but uh the Buffalo Bills are my dear team, and I'm there every every game, at least on television, to watch. But Bruce, good to have you here. And I've already uh in my introduction, I've given you uh their your background, and I'm fascinated to hear from you because you bring such a collective experience and and uh academic discipline to the issue of of religion, of faith, of politics. And as uh I mean you've been editor of the uh of an evangelical review of theology, so you understand the theological issues that are are are happening around us, and that's at the very heart. So, what I'd like to do is first of all, give me your definition of evangelical. What do you mean when you say evangelical?

Bruce Barron 2:55

Well, I've been talking about it for a long time, and I know over and over when people are asked to define evangelical, they keep referring to Bebbington's quadrilater. Uh, and you know that well. Uh Bebbington says that evangelicals are biblicists, they depend upon the Bible. Uh, they're conversionist, they insist on people converting to come to know Jesus. They're activists, and that they they carry out effort and they want to change things, and they're crucicentrist, which means their whole life is built around the cross and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That's a pretty good definition. And I need to be fair to David Bebbington. I've I'm sure I've never read his books, I'm sure he's much more nuanced. But I want to take a little bit different posture. And the reason is that I've dealt a lot with Catholic charismatics, and Catholic charismatics meet all of Bebbington's four characteristics in most cases, but they're definitely not evangelical. So I would say something different. I would say that evangelicals are Protestants who are stuck with the Bible and who want others to come to know what they know. Now, of course, that's to provoke you to say, what do you mean, stuck with the Bible? So can we talk about that for a little more?

Brian Stiller 4:21

Okay, okay. What do you mean by stuck with the Bible? Let me ask the question you wanted to.

Bruce Barron 4:27

Thomas Schiermacher, who used to be Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, told me that religious groups are not like political partners. They don't get to come together every four years and reconsider their platform. We as evangelicals are particularly that way because we have a very, very strong commitment to the Bible as inspired or even in some people's terminology, inerrant. We don't get to step away from a single word in the Bible as we think it's being interpreted properly. So that means that we, in a way that's unlike most religious groups, let alone social groups, are boxed in as to what we believe. That can have, of course, both positive and negative impacts. Let's take LGBT. We might as well start with a provocative example. Most evangelicals believe that the Bible is very clear about uh how God feels regarding homosexual behavior, that he doesn't authorize. And therefore, no matter what's going on in our culture, we can't change that. Some evangelicals, or at least people who still call themselves evangelicals, have tried to shift on that issue. But in the view of most evangelicals, that's not permissible. And people who try to do that are basically no longer evangelical, at least on that topic. And that's why pretty much every major Protestant denomination in North America has split when some people tried to go to the more progressive viewpoint on that issue. Now let's look at women's roles. There's been decades of debates among evangelicals as whether the Bible prohibits women from being pastors. Some people will read 1 Timothy 2 and say, Paul didn't permit a woman to lead or to have authority in Ephesus, so we can't do it today. I think, in view of the total message of Scripture, that Paul could not have been meaning to prohibit women from leadership in all places and all times within the body of Christ. But if you read the Bible a certain way, you say, I can't walk away from that verse. And so that's an example of evangelicals being more tied to a situation, even if it becomes harder and harder to defend in their culture, because they simply feel they're, as I use the terminology, stuck with the Bible. We could give other examples of theological conflict or division, or the way evangelicals have gotten tied up in knots over their views of the end times. That would be similar instances of people saying, Well, I have the Bible, I think I know how the Bible is interpreted, and I can't walk away from it.

Brian Stiller 7:27

Okay. How what else are we stuck with the Bible on?

Bruce Barron 7:32

Since I mentioned eschatology, let me use that as an example. Eschatology, of course, is how people view the end times. Uh and there's major difference, particularly as to how to interpret the book of Revelation. It's a mysterious thing. Uh, I've always said rather than being premillennial, post-millennial, or amillennial, I'd like to be pan-millennial, which means it's all going to pan out in the end and none of us are going to figure it out before that. But others, particularly dispensationalists who have believed that the Bible is describing a certain way in which things will unfold at the end of time, have, as a result, become very tied to particular viewpoints. Uh, that's become very, very sensitive with regard to how evangelicals view the future of Israel and the state of Israel. In my opinion, it's had some very negative impacts on how Christians have approached the conflict between Israel and Palestine, uh, which has done great damage to our women's.

Brian Stiller 8:42

So, how does the Bible view Israel as the chosen people of God and today's secular state called Israel in the Middle East? How do the two relate?

Bruce Barron 8:57

I'll say two things about that. First, there's a debate about what happened at the beginning of Christianity. Many of us read passages such as Paul and Galatians talking about the churches of the New Israel, and we say the special relationship that God had with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament ended with the coming of Christianity. That does not make the Jews any less important. It certainly does not justify antisemitism, but it means that the relationship that God had with the nation of Israel in Old Testament times is effectively replaced by God's relationship with the church today. So, right there, if one holds that position, one no longer puts the nation of Israel in uh preferred place. But moreover, even though we certainly have been greatly blessed as a world in many ways by the restoration of the state of Israel, political Israel could not is not the equivalent of theological Israel. It's not the essence of the Jewish people today. Most Jews live elsewhere in the world. And uh it's certainly not a political state that can do no wrong. So when Christians act otherwise and in fact uh sadly ignore the presence not only of human lives in Gaza and elsewhere, but of many, many Christians elsewhere, and act as if, in some way, the concerns of a political state uh inhabited mainly by Jews should be privileged over the needs of Christians in, say, territories occupied by Hamas. It really is a misreading of theology, and it causes great harm to many, as we've seen. The virtual destruction of Gaza is something that I know we certainly shouldn't be endorsing Hamas. We have no reason to be on the side of rampant destruction.

Brian Stiller 11:21

So, where does the Jewish people fit into your eschatological, your view of the end times?

Bruce Barron 11:29

Well, because when I put aside the pan-millennial joke, I'm mostly a millennial. I tend to read, although I guess I want to emphasize I'm ironic on this, I do not say mine is the only viewpoint, but because I tend to read the book of Revelation as a symbolic message written in apocalyptic form, not a literal prediction of end times, I really don't uh hold to any particular position for the nation of Israel in the end times.

Dominion Theology To Christian Nationalism

Brian Stiller 12:02

Okay, well, that subject itself is the uh has been dealt with by thousands and thousands of books, and of course, many, many tourists who go to Israel and and have a have a sense of uh of kind of messianic encounter. But what I'd like to do, Bruce, is right now make a shift, and I want to jump back to an interesting dissertation that you did when you did your PhD on American religion about Dominion theology. And what I'd like to do is is is ask you to bit unwrap that a bit for us, but then bring it down to today's world and the kind of theological interplay that evangelicals are making with political influence and kind of political ideology as it relates to one's Christian values affecting the way the country is ruled. But let's go back to your understanding of Dominion theology and how that would relate to today.

Bruce Barron 13:04

Yeah, it's a long story, and it's one of the reasons I don't have much hair on my head anymore. But if people go to Wikipedia and they read the article on Dominion theology, or they read the article on Christian Reconstruction, they'll find me quoted in it. So I guess some people think I'm an authority on this topic. I want to go back into my personal history to explain even how I got to this point, and I think that will give some perspective. When I became a Christian in the early 1980s, I was not politically involved. I became involved in researching the Pentecostal and charismatic movements primarily. And I was well known. I published on the Health and Wealth Gospel in 1987. I published on authoritarianism in the shepherding movement back in 1981. So that's what I was known by back in the 80s when I was hoping to go on to a career as a Christian teaching religion in a secular university. Now, when I got to my dissertation topic, uh finishing my PhD, I was encouraged to study some charismatics who are becoming politically active. And when I started doing them, then I was told, well, you also need to study these reformed people called reconstructionists who have a whole idea of applying biblical law to modern society. I ended up thus writing a dissertation on what was then called dominion theology. And the basic idea behind dominion theology is that Christians have a calling to not just be participants in society, but to take over society as part of restoring it to Christ. The dominion term comes from way back in Genesis where God called people to take dominion over the earth. I don't think that meant to take dominion over political systems, but that's uh digression for now. My point is that I wrote the thesis on dominion theology. Uh, it was published as Heaven on Earth by Zondervan in 92. You can still find it, or if you beg me, I'll send you a copy because I still have some extras. Along the way, I became convinced that I was myself a supporter of limited government. And thus being in the United States and wanting to make a positive civic contribution, and especially wanting to try to rehabilitate the generally bad image of the Christian right in America in that time, I volunteered my services to the local Republican Party. I ended up being the first campaign press secretary for a candidate named Rick Santorin, who served four years in the U.S. House, 12 years in the U.S. Senate, and ran for president and came in second in the Republican primaries for 2012. So I say all that to emphasize I'm not just a theorist here. I'm a longtime practitioner and one who myself has supported uh conservative-leaning political positions. All that being said, and it leads to where we are now, since my time in active politics, and specifically since 2012, the large number of Christians in the United States have become increasingly angry, especially during the Obama years. They become upset at wokeism, they become upset at DEI, so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. They've become upset that feeling the culture has gone away from them, especially in terms of uh LGBT policy and same-sex marriage. And they have adopted what I would consider a very contentious and aggressive and divisive approach to doing politics. Uh, that is the only way in which what used to be, I would say, a much more principled Republican Party with many Christians active in it, has come to endorse the excesses of the Trump administration, particularly the second Trump administration that we know now. And many of those voices are associated with what we call Christian nationalism, which is arguably, although by no means identical, uh, the version today of what I was studying in Dominion theology 30 years ago. So I have some very strong feelings, even though I always try, and we will probably get into this discussion further in a moment, I always try to respect difference of opinion among Christians because our first allegiance is to the kingdom of God, not to any political view. I have very strong feelings about how some evangelical support for extreme policies in the United States is really hurting the evangelical movement, not only in this country, but globally.

Brian Stiller 18:14

Okay, Bruce, that's that's helpful. Let's let's go a little deeper into that. So the evangelical community, of which you and I are a part, uh this the political the polling numbers show that a extraordinary number of evangelicals have voted for the conservative political party in the U.S. And that seems to dovetail with your notion of Christian nationalism, of Dominion theology, of Reconstructionism. Those verse, I guess those words are interplay. But can you give us some more specificity on what that means in the way people live their lives and what they're looking for their political masters to ultimately do? How does what does that look like on the ground?

Bruce Barron 19:10

I'm going to take a step back to try to give a little bit of context because I believe that the general perception of 80% or more of U.S. evangelicals supporting Trump is misleading. And also the number of evangelicals associated with Christian nationalism, I believe, is much smaller than it's reported to be. So let me just make a couple points. First, there are only two parties in the United States. Uh, any other parties that may exist are insignificant. So if you don't like one party, your only choice is the other party. For complex reasons that could take a whole podcast, in the last 40 years, one party has been very receptive to Christian, uh, evangelical Christian views, particularly on social issues, and the other has been increasingly opposed to them. As a result, evangelicals have had nowhere else to go. I believe that even as of 2015, when Donald Trump first announced a candidacy for president, most evangelicals would have much preferred a calmer uh candidate. But some were varying. I can remember one close friend of mine who I thought had been very reliable in politics, who said when I asked him who he was supporting, uh he said he was for Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. And they were definitely the two most aggressive candidates there. And I said, why? And he said, Well, because we want anybody who can win. The perception was here's the person who can really counter democratic liberalism and turn the country. Almost everybody in what I consider the evangelical elite, meaning uh Christianity Today magazine, uh, major writers who are evangelical, uh, major policy thinkers, even if they did support Trump for election, they by no means support all the policies Hayes uh pursued in the past year or so. The National Uh Association of Evangelicals in the United States has strongly opposed Trump, particularly on refugee issues, since they've been heavily uh invested in supporting refugees. So, with that context, what's actually going on here? What's happened is we have a subset of people who are professing Christians in America who have felt that the views of the Democratic Party, which, granted, have not been often very friendly to religious freedom and particularly to the views of most evangelical Christians, are a great threat to the country. So they have grabbed onto the history of America as a largely Christian nation. Although it was always tolerant of people of other religious views, and have said, we need an aggressive posture in the other direction. They have, as a result, grabbed onto the Trump train. And as the Trump train has become blatantly lawless and false in many of its statements, they have continued to take the position because they feel they have nowhere else to go, that they implicitly trust Trump. It has caused Christians to become accepting of a massive amount of fake news and just false beliefs. We're having this conversation just after the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. It's a classic example of people ignoring the truth because they want to hold to their ideology. And so I have a friend I'm dealing with who says, I implicitly support Trump. I want to be sensitive. I want to understand how the MAGA make America Great again people are thinking. But I can't even have a discourse with him because anything I cite from the mainstream media, he calls them the lame stream media and instead cites the fake news he's getting from white-wing sources. That's what is happening all over America or the United States on the ground. And I am constantly dealing with friends who tell me their own families are being torn apart because of the very, very intense polarization happening around these issues.

Polarization Fake News And Church Life

Brian Stiller 23:36

So here we sit in the middle of that. You look at the evangelical community, you've been editor of uh of uh of a global uh evangelical theological quarterly. So you you uh you listen to, you edit, you followed, you listened, you watch what's going on. What's your sense of what the evangelical community is becoming in all of that? Is it still finding its its base within the the four notions of evangelicals that you started this program with? Uh are we losing, are you is the evangelical community losing its way, or are you finding it it right-sizing itself?

Bruce Barron 24:23

I would say the majority of the U.S. evangelical community still finds its way very well. And I'll use my own congregation as an example. I personally express political views. I've done it for 30 or 40 years. I've usually done it in an ironic fashion. Only in the past year, given the excesses of the second Trump administration, have I said that I believe Christians have an obligation to stand up here just as much as Bonhoeffer had when he was dealing with Nazism. However, I recognize that that's my political personal political view. I believe that my church should remain apolitical, because there are many faithful believers in my church and in evangelicalism in the United States who hold different political views for legitimate reasons, and we should not be divided as the body of Christ over our political differences. So when I go to church, except for uh an occasional comment such as that Putin is an example of evil, there's not a word said about politics. Something may happen during the week, and the message and the worship are not largely affected. Now, of course, there may come a time in the United States, just as has happened in other places, say during uh under apartheid in South Africa, when it became obvious to a broad swath of Christians that they could not remain silent on this issue. It was too pressing. And indeed, in evangelicalism, we've had that tension ever since 50 years ago when Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar went to the first Lausanne conference and pushed for a holistic mission or integral mission and said, if we're going to do work uh for the kingdom of God, we cannot ignore the plight of the people which is affected by political realities. And in that sense, the gospel is inescapably political. However, most evangelicals in the United States, contrary to what you may think, are not doing politics in the pulpit every Sunday or even any Sunday. They're continuing to minister the gospel.

Brian Stiller 26:53

So you look at the church today, this excursion or sojourn into a uh dominion kind of theology where they're asking their government to impose on society their values. Do you think that's a short-term excursion, or do you think it has long-term implications?

Bruce Barron 27:15

It depends on how you define short-term or long-term. Uh obviously, many German Christians were uh mistaken in thinking that Hitler's version of nationalism was a good thing. Nobody thinks that now. But Hitler was able to maintain power for 12 years. Trump, as we speak, is entering his sixth year in power. The first four were not as extreme. Uh, the year 2025 has been very extreme. We have had previous instances like that in American history. We had a whole bunch of evangelicals in the southern part of the United States who justified slavery. Nearly a century later, they justified segregation. We had other Christians who justified significant repression during the Red Scare times, uh, often referred to as McCarthyism of the 1950s. I have my own blind spots, and I beg other people to point them out to me because the fact that they're blind spots means I won't see them unless people help. So I do not want to be uh too severe in picking the specks out of other people's eyes, even if I think they're very big specks on these occasions, uh, while not considering that there may be logs in my own eyes. With that said, I'd say I don't see the immediate end of it, because the uh rejection of Trump, when it happens, and it's likely to happen within three years, if not sooner, is probably going to come with the reinstallation of the Democrats in authority, with evangelicals, I think, supported Trump directly in their crosshairs. And we may have another weaponization of justice in the other direction, just as we have one in the conservative direction at this time. My hope is that after we've gotten through the Trump era and people come to see how much fake news they'd imbibed, that there will be repentance and reconciliation and that we will see evangelicals move beyond this phase within three years. But I am not a prognosticator.

Why Burundi And Majority World Hope

Brian Stiller 29:33

Bruce, now I want to I want to shift gears. I want to move to something else that you've been experiencing over the last while. And tell us about why you decided to go to Africa and Burundi itself. And tell us a bit about your three-week sojourn uh as an academic scholar, as a political activist, going into the heart of Africa, uh looking at the evangelical world there. Why did you go there and why Burundi?

Bruce Barron 30:04

Well, I'm happy to tell that story because even I hate getting into political uh clashes, and now I have an enjoyable story to tell. In fact, it's the story behind why I'm sitting here with a purple jacket uh for this interview. As you know, I have had 10 years of involvement with the World Evangelical Alliance. During 2023, uh, because of a shakeup in the organization, I was filling in as interim communications director. That meant whenever anybody sent an email to the World Evangelical Alliance's website, it landed in my mailbox and I was responsible for answering. One day, an email came in from Burundi. Now I have to stop here because when I talk to people in the United States about Burundi, some of them were so provincial, we're so geographically ignorant of the world. People asked me what Burundi is. Well, Burundi is a country in East Africa. It's between it's tucked in among Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, uh, and Tanzania. So this greeting came in from Burundi, and I sent a nice note back saying thanks for being friendly, and I hope you all get involved with our National Alliance in Burundi. Unfortunately, I had not checked the list. We had 142 National Alliance affiliates at that time, but not in Burundi. And the response came back saying, Well, I see that you have not uh reached Burundi yet. And I sent a profuse apology and then offered a challenge. I said, if you are willing to work to create a National Alliance in Burundi, I will help you. Well, the writer was a young man, then 24 years old, just on a Bible school, named Edmund Gakiza, who had a vision for uniting evangelicals for ministry in Burundi. And he took up the offer. And I have enough background in nonprofit work and communications and so forth that I consulted him. I uh read his bylaws in French. Uh, I uh gave him suggestions on how to pull people together and how to avoid offending anybody. I comforted him when some people said, Well, if we're not getting paid, we're quitting the executive committee. And in the last two years, the evangelical alliance in Burundi has done just amazing things. Friends of mine in the World Evangelical Alliance who visited there to do governance instruction or to preach, told me this is one of the best operating evangelical alliances in the world. And that's with no money on a totally volunteer basis in a country that per capita was the poorest country in the world until South Sudan broke off from Sudan. So after all that, although I tend to be one who sits home in a nerdy way and works on my computer, I said, I have to see this for myself. I'd never been to Africa. I took the plunge and I arranged a 17-day visit to Burundi to spend time with evangelical leaders there uh in October and November. Now, why? I have the purple jacket. Well, I love flashy clothing. Uh my wife does not. When we got married, she censored my wardrobe. Uh, when we became salsa dancers, she started letting up a little bit. When Burundi, the Burundi Alliance had their first anniversary. I saw the pictures, and there's Edmund Gakiza, the general secretary, in this purple suit. And I was jealous. So when I went, I said to him, Can I get a purple suit if I come to Burundi? And he said, sure. One of our first days there, we went to a clothing store. Well, their economy is pretty weak. The US dollar goes really far, but even taking that into account, the prices there were as high as they were in the United States. I said, forget that. A day later, another leader brought a tailor to my place to measure me. And a day after that, they gave me a purple suit. So, in honor of my wonderful friends in Burundi, I'm wearing the purple suit. And what did you find there? I found an amazing group of Christians who are incredibly resilient, despite having very little financial resources and living situations that most of my friends in the United States would tolerate for about 12 and a half seconds. Most of what you see just walking around the city of Bujumbura, Burundi's largest city, open digits, poor roads, horrible bumps, not a single functioning traffic signal, we wouldn't tolerate for a moment. The traffic signals were funny because at intersections there's still traffic signals, they just aren't shining. Somebody told me, yeah, when we when they were working, people would steal the bulbs. I said, Yeah, that's why in the United States we hang the traffic lights way up high or hang them, we put them on wires or high poles. So that kind of thing doesn't happen. In any case, so they're living in them in in many ways in miserable situations. The Alliance's head of youth ministry pays $20 USD per month to rent his apartment, which he shares with a roommate. That's what he can afford because he basically lives off his rice field and two cops. Despite all that, they are as joyful, as dedicated, and incredibly harmonious as anybody I've, any Christians I've ever run into anywhere in the world. Now, of course, their quality of theological development is not necessarily the same. And that's something we could talk about in my history of studying authoritarian groups and other heretical extremes and so forth. I've come to appreciate theology is really important. If you don't have good theology, it can be fatal in a great number of ways. So I certainly want to see Christians in Burundi and elsewhere in Africa improve. But they have sincere hearts and a desire to serve and a willingness to give up sacrificially for the gospel. One of the pastors in whose church I preached, it was pretty funny. He does have a car. He was driving me to church. We were going up a bill of hill, the road got worse and worse, and then he pulled over and said we walked from here. Well, there was no church in sight, and it was still a pretty steep hill. But the only way you could continue up the hill would be on motorbike or on foot. So we walked, I said to him, no matter how good a preacher you are, my wife would never attend this church. She would not do a steep climb like this for another quarter mile to get to church. This guy's been doing it for 20 years. No salary. He has to do other stuff for his income. Very solid theologically. And that's why while the church in the West is declining, the future of Christianity is in the majority world, and I think especially in Africa.

Brian Stiller 37:18

Bruce, as we come to the landing strip of this conversation, let's come back to your country. Let's come back to Christians in other parts of the world where there is controversy sometimes political in nature. What are the rules in your mind that could govern how we as followers of Jesus handle these difficult conversations and relationships as it relates to social and political ideologies?

Closing Thanks And Listener Next Steps

Bruce Barron 37:54

I'll suggest a few. First, our prime allegiance is to the kingdom of God. Everything else is secondary. When we read the statement of faith of major Christian organizations, we typically see about eight things. To be a Christian, you have to believe in a few things. You have to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that He came to give His life for others, that He rose from the dead, that the Bible is a reliable source of information on what God wants us to know and how He wants us to live. And that's about it. So as a result, almost everything else, our political views, our view of infant baptism, our view of whether people should do interviews with Brian while wearing a purple jacket, they're all secondary. We can expect disagreement on everything else. And so, as painful as it may be sometimes to have disagreement on issues that are important to us, we have to see them as secondary. We have to have caring, intense, but respectful discourse on all of those other issues. What else can we do? Well, I tell people that the devil has a very limited set of tools. For the most part, he has four: money, sex, fame, and power. He uses them over and over to put people astray. If we will just recognize the threats of money, sex, fame, and power and oppose them with all our hearts, we'll go a lot farther. We'll also go a lot farther if we quit caring about who gets the credit. Jesus had to deal even with the apostles saying, Well, I get the best seed in the kingdom. And he told them how ridiculous they were. We have that problem to this day, it pops up all over. Finally, I'll say, since we've talked a lot about Africa, invest in the majority world. The future of the church demographically is in the majority world. And it's so easy now to offer our support. Once I started doing that through the World Evangelical Alliance, I found that there are people all over Africa, as long as I come in with a submissive attitude saying, I'm not going to be patronizing. I don't have all the answers for you, but I want to support you. I now get WhatsApp messages every day from Burundi, Uganda, and Malawi, from people who value what I have to offer and who are interested in input from people who have greater Christian experience or a theological background. Every one of us can find a way to mentor or to offer support, whether financially or in terms of time. And I would encourage all of us to do that.

Brian Stiller 41:26

Bruce, it's been wonderful having you today on Evangelical 360. Thanks for joining us.

Bruce Barron 41:31

Yes, it's been a joy to be with you. As I said before, we talked. I'm probably the least famous person to appear on Evangelical 360, but I hope I've at least offered enough candidness and comedy to make up for it.

Brian Stiller 41:48

Wonderful to have you here, Bruce. Thanks again.

Bruce Barron 41:50

Thank you.

Brian Stiller 41:52

Bruce, I so love the way you see life, unperturbed by that which can so easily upset the rest of us. What you say in short is helping us understand the times. And to my listeners, thank you for being part of the podcast. Be sure to share this episode with your friends and join the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, just check the show notes for the links and info. And if you haven't already received my free ebook and newsletter, just go to Brianstiller.com. Thanks for joining us today. Until next time.