Post-Christianity? – Details, episodes & analysis

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Join Collin Hansen and Melissa Kruger for their annual recap discussion on the biggest stories affecting the church around the world in the last year. This conversation was originally featured on TGC's Gospelbound podcast.

How did Christianity come to shape Western culture? History is often told as the story of great men and events. But did Christianity come to shape Western culture simply as a “great idea” that carried the day?

In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson explore the role of geography, technology, and coincidence in the spread of Christianity, which has fundamentally shaped our assumptions about the world. Geography, geology, ecology, and economics are not the topics you would usually consider in a Christian podcast, but Glen and Andrew observe how those factors—along with the fundamental goodness of the gospel—combine to create an environment in which the worldview of the West was formed.

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

What's special about church? For this final episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson are joined by Rebecca McLaughlin, author of Confronting Christianity and The Secular Creed.

They discuss the unique nature of the in-person church as the place where the vertical dimension of worship meets the horizontal dimension of embodied community. Reflecting on the long history of Christianity, they acknowledge that the church simply 'doing its thing' has a transformative leavening impact on the world.

McLaughlin offers a critique of some of our attitudes towards church and personal evangelism, and some encouragements to keep proclaiming Christ even when it feels fruitless. Scrivener examines how our fear of being labeled 'bigots' can sometimes lead us to disqualify ourselves from sharing the gospel, even though our friends might be more receptive than we imagine.

The podcast ends on a hopeful note: we are actually living in pre-Christian times—Jesus is Lord, he is returning, and summer is coming.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

How can Christians offer grace, freedom, and truth in this current cultural moment? In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson get practical.

If their books are correct in diagnosing the 21st-century West as post-Christian, what impact can this have on our approach to everyday evangelism, preaching, and parenting? They return to the observation that it is refreshing to be able to say to people, "Here's why you're right," rather than, "Here's why you're wrong."

They tease out the unique challenges of our current context and the need for Christians to offer counter-catechesis. Scrivener shares some examples of fruitful conversations he has had with friends and strangers, and Wilson reflects on how to engage with casual visitors in our churches—people who might not call themselves Christians but are recognizing the radical and foundational nature of Biblical teaching.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

“Be true to yourself” is a dominant refrain in the Western world, but how has individualism come to be such a prominent feature of Western thought? To what extent is that individualism Christian?

Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson are joined by Carl Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and Strange New World, to answer those questions and continue their discussion of our post-Christian world.

Beginning with Rousseau, they trace the ways in which our idea of the modern self has transformed and shaped our understanding of anthropology. Particularly touching on the transformations which have happened in our understanding of marriage, divorce and sex, they ask in what ways the church has become complicit in these changes and to what extent these individualistic assumptions have come to shape both the church and the world.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

How did the founding of America contribute to the post-Christian world we find ourselves in today? Is there something inherently post-Christian baked into the pie from the founding of the nation?

In this episode, Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener continue their discussion of how the year 1776 has shaped our world. They trace the story forward to today, as they discuss slavery, human rights, the civil rights movement, and the sexual revolution. They talk about the apparent inevitability of progress in the 19th century and how those hopes were dashed by two world wars.

Wilson and Scrivener also consider how these huge cultural and societal changes interact with the gospel, and conclude by discussing the extent to which Christianity cannot be forced into the neat political categories of right and left, liberal and conservative.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

Nearly a millennium before the swinging ’60s, a revolution in attitudes toward sex and sexuality transformed how we consider marriage, family, the sexes, equality, consent, and even concepts like free will and human dignity.

In this episode of Post-Christianity?, Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener interview Kyle Harper, a University of Oklahoma historian of the classical and author of From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. Harper unpacks that first revolution, how it shaped the traditional Western understanding of sex, and how it has been challenged and in some ways rejected in the past 60 years.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

The Beatles might have claimed to be bigger than Jesus, but when they said “Love is all you need,” they were just riffing on Jesus’ words. In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson discuss how today’s slogans—Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science is Real, Love Is Love, Kindness Is Everything—flow from a worldview thoroughly shaped by Christianity.

They compare and contrast ancient, Christian, and secular virtues to explore the inherent inconsistencies of today’s culture, question how relativistic our society really is, and describe how we’ve arrived at a new pharisaism where those who don’t get on board with the modern program are the new heretics of our secular age.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

How did Christianity come to shape Western culture? History is often told as the story of great men and events. But did Christianity come to shape Western culture simply as a “great idea” that carried the day?

In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson explore the role of geography, technology, and coincidence in the spread of Christianity, which has fundamentally shaped our assumptions about the world. Geography, geology, ecology, and economics are not the topics you would usually consider in a Christian podcast, but Glen and Andrew observe how those factors—along with the fundamental goodness of the gospel—combine to create an environment in which the worldview of the West was formed.

Credits:

Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.

The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.