← Thinking Fellows
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- [00:00]
Scott Keith
Foreign.
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Caleb Keith
Well, thank you everybody and welcome to the live show of the Thinking Fellows podcast, one of two this year in 2026. My name is Caleb Keith and today I am joined by Scott Keith and a special guest, Dan Van V. For
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Dan Van V
us
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Caleb Keith
now, many of you will recognize Dan from his well listened to daily as he'll remind you at every meeting that he has to go to Daily
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Dan Van V
podcast because you ask, okay, what, what's everyone doing? And I just say, a podcast every day. That's what I'm doing.
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Caleb Keith
Daily Christian History Almanac. But Dan, this, this panel, we're missing Adam Francisco who is going to be here, but he's at a family funeral for this trip. So prayers for his family and safe travel and that. But sans Adam, who would also qualify for this? This group at this table has been podcasting for 15, 17 for over a decade now.
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Dan Van V
So I can tell you Today is the 1st of May.
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Caleb Keith
Yep.
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Dan Van V
And so this is today, the 7th anniversary of the first episode of the Christian History Almanac. It is also 16 years ago on this day that the first Virtue in the WasTeland podcast was 16 years ago today, May 1, 2013. So if you got Virtue in the Wasteland before it disappeared into the ether.
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Scott Keith
13. Yeah. Did I say we should never do math? No, I could just agree on that.
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Dan Van V
26, 13, 13 years.
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Scott Keith
13.
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Caleb Keith
Then 20, 2016, virtue in the Wasteland and Thinking Fellows became podcasts for 15, 15, 17. So that was, that was a decade ago now. So we've been, we've been doing this a while, which is crazy to think about. It doesn't feel like 10 years ago to me.
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Scott Keith
It's funny. Anyway, you tell people what do you do? And you're like, I'm a podcaster. And they still look at you like, yeah, is that real?
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Caleb Keith
It's a, it's an embarrassing job.
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Scott Keith
Or isn't everyone?
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Caleb Keith
But we have a conference topic, so it kind of makes podcast topics easy. We have a conference topic of baptism. And the way I'll tie this into the 10 year thing has been at least in the 10 years that I've been doing it. I think it's the same for my dad. I'm not sure for you, Dan. I do see some of the fan mail that comes into cha, but the number one question or theme around which questions come into the podcast and as a host is about baptism, hands down. In fact, we used to on Thinking Fellows do Q and A episodes, like every six episodes for a couple of years we did that. And we had to strategically move around people's questions about baptism or else every single Q and A would have been about baptism. So it's a, it's an important conference topic. And we're going to steal a quote, I think from Steve Paulson, who I don't know how many San Diego conferences,
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Scott Keith
I think it was the 2017 conference that he said that America was invented to destroy baptism.
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Caleb Keith
Yeah, America was invented to destroy baptism. So we're gonna, we're gonna talk through that idea. Maybe the truthfulness behind this, some data, I think some anecdotes about this and I think our experience with this question. It's not just one question. It's lots of different questions about baptism that get asked. Actually does fill in or color that quote a little bit, which is to say it's the thing that American Christians seem to be thinking about and hung up on the most. They hear messages about the forgiveness of sins or about grace or they start to learn about the history of the Reformation a little bit and worship practices and go Lutheranism or that. That view sounds great, but I've got. Got a hang up.
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Scott Keith
Just as an anecdote that goes along with that. People lately have been able to suss out where we go to church, which is in, in an out of the way spot. Like you're not going to stumble upon this church. No one stumbles upon shepherd in the Pines Lutheran Church, Big Bear Lake. It just, this doesn't happen. It's an out of the way spot. And we now get fairly regularly visitors that'll come up to our church that are kind of know that we go there, are kind of gambling on it might be a Sunday that we're there or whatever because of travel schedules and have questions that they want to talk about at fellowship time. And 100% of the time at fellowship after church, if somebody came up because they had questions, the question is going to be baptism, particularly infant baptism and or baptismal regeneration. And so it's just the more that kind of thing happens, the more questions you get over 10 years of doing this kind of thing, the more you realize what Paulson said, I think, you know, nine years ago now is just probably true.
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Caleb Keith
Yeah, Dan did the responsible thing.
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Scott Keith
He really did. I did research last night. I was like, for this show, despite,
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Caleb Keith
despite the title, thinking, fellows, very little thinking.
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Dan Van V
So I came out, I came out for various reasons. And then it was last night at dinner, Scott said, hey, do you want to jump on the thinking, fello? And I said, absolutely. And so he gave me a homework assignment. And so I took it very seriously. I went back to my hotel room, stayed up late, watched the Ducks beat the Oilers. Anyone?
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Scott Keith
Yeah.
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Dan Van V
And then I was working through this question and kind of going through some past research that I've gone over and then some modern stuff with Pew to answer this question. Was Paulson right? Did America ruin baptism? And if you want me to just
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Scott Keith
start out, I'll go for it. I might have you on the show more often if you're going to do homework.
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Dan Van V
When it comes to baptism, it's fascinating because outside of a very small group of Christians, historically, everyone has believed you should be baptized, Right? You'll find maybe some Salvation army, maybe some groups that won't baptize, but 95% of Christians through time and space have said we need to be baptized. So I think that's one of the reasons why this is a perennial question, right? Because we all know that baptism is important. And so there are questions about. I'll use these two words here. I'm going to use pedo baptism and credo baptism. So pedo baptism, that's the baptism of children. So pedo child and then credo baptism, Credo like creed believers, baptism. And so if we were to look at America, let's start with the world today. If we were to take all of the Christians on the globe today, we could do some back of the envelope math and say that 70% of global Christians are pedo Baptists. So 70% of the global population believes in baptizing infants. 30% do not.
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Scott Keith
In the world.
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Dan Van V
In the world. If you take that same question to America, the Numbers flip. And 30% of Americans believe in paedobaptism. And 70% of Americans believe in credo baptism. And so something has happened. The Globe is saying, 70 to 30, baptize your babies. And here in America, 30 to 70 are saying, are saying that this, this is. I mean, to me, this is fascinating. What is it about America? What is it about the American church that has caused this?
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Scott Keith
You know, just as a side note, it's always fun to have historians on this show because they're so careful and they ask, like, really responsible questions. I hear that. And I'm like, I got the answer.
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Caleb Keith
I know I can, I can analyze that. You can't do theology by data. Exactly. It does, it does give you some insights into human behavior. Of course, minorities can be right, for instance, in things you could have, you know, 70% of Mormons do a particular thing or see that that has success. For instance, that if they do something and, and they have huge retention rates, doesn't make the theology right, but another 70% number that gets floated around quite a bit. This is compiled from Pew and from Gallup and has been highlighted by things like the Creation Institute and Ken Ham. And there's been a couple of other apologetic oriented things that highlight another 70% number in the United States, which is 70% of children who grew up in a specifically an evangelical house will, within one year of attending a undergraduate program, no longer be believers. A very. A very high number and interesting to be sort of associated with that 70% of Americans who don't have this practice. And so I think there's even a lot of those people will have been baptized in high school and things like that. But there's something about the uncertainty in that theology which clearly travels into their lives, too. I run in a lot of homeschool circles and Christian evangelical parents who are very concerned about their children. This number is terrifying to them. You can see that it's at the forefront of people's minds all the time. And the consensus is it's the college's fault. It's definitely the undergraduate institution's fault. It can't be the church's fault. I think, sadly, they're very mistaken about that. I'm not going to say that the colleges don't contribute in one way or another, either through the culture of a campus or the attacks of a particular professor or maybe some student who brings questions into their mind or some college girlfriend or boyfriend who doesn't believe anything. And so it all begins to matter less. Those things matter. I do think, to say it is all the world's fault and not something in our theology. That also maybe goes back to an earlier question of when do we baptize, how do we baptize? Why do we baptize? Would be mistaken.
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Dan Van V
And I think the doctrine of assurance is underneath all of this, that when you lose the doctrine of assurance, that's when you see people start to walk away. And so I just find in my own work doing the Almanac that this. I mean, people leaving or coming to the faith. Yesterday my show was about a Muslim convert who came to Christianity because he thought, you guys have a doctrine of assurance. And it's fascinating because even with Roman Catholics who will fight against the doctrine of assurance, and really at the core of our doctrine of assurance is our doctrine of baptism. Remember your baptism. That's what ties you. So. Yeah, fascinating stuff. So this 7030 number.
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Scott Keith
Yeah.
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Dan Van V
So what accounts for this? I mean, this is really bizarre. Why is it that we are the exact opposite of the rest of the globe. So I'll throw out some ideas, let's do it. And you guys can, can ask me to clarify or jump on it. The first thing is there is an American ethos. There is an ethos, what it means to be an American, what it has meant historically to be an American. And many of these things are awesome, but the problem is when they go too far. And I think we see parallels with the American ethos and the Reformation ethos that are quite parallel, but then the American one starts to go just a little, little too far. So the first thing I think of when I think of the American ethos is the idea of individualism, that we are our own boss.
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Scott Keith
Right.
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Dan Van V
A distrust of authority. One person, one vote, no one can speak for me. And as Americans, we would say, well, yeah, this is perhaps great politically, but when it starts to seep into our theology, it becomes, it becomes dangerous.
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Scott Keith
You remember Rod saying in class all the time, the problem with Americans doing theology is the belief in the Horatio Alger, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
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Caleb Keith
Absolutely.
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Scott Keith
If this is your sort of the myth that bears all the load in your sort of worldview of who you are as an America, that in order to make it, you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you got to have that grind, you got to do the work. And if you do, no matter what, no matter how disadvantaged you were at the start, you're going to make it. But you got to do the work. And that is. And then say, hey, and by the way, baptize your babies. Because salvation comes to those who do no work and can do no work.
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Dan Van V
Absolutely. And this is where I think a doctrine of two kingdoms, another conversation. But that's where we really need to separate our sort of Americanness and what it means to be a Christian. There are a number of historical things that influence American theology. Around the year 1800.
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Caleb Keith
Right.
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Dan Van V
We don't have a state church expansion in the 1800s of we were expanding really, really fast, the church. And so the church was trying to keep up. And so this is the tradition of circuit preachers. This is when Baptist and non denominational and some Methodist churches, they explode in some ways because they have that ethos of let's get on a revivals to
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Scott Keith
towns and become completely unchurched.
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Dan Van V
Absolutely. But that's part of it. And so when we see in America, one of the things that makes us particular is a particular kind of non denominationalism and a non denominationalism that has at its core a sort of distrust of authority. I remember when I baptized my own sons and had people in my family who are Baptist come. The thing they were most offended by was that the pastor asked a question that we answered because the child couldn't, and that exploded their brains. And now this. I can go back to Hippolytus in the third century where this is exactly what.
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Scott Keith
As do we all.
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Dan Van V
As do we all. Sorry. Usually I'm just sitting in my room writing the almanac, nerding out, if you wish, you would go to the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus, third century. And in it he gives us one of the earliest rites for baptism, where they say, if the person can speak, then they speak, and if they are infants and cannot, then the parents speak on their back.
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Scott Keith
Perhaps we all should.
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Dan Van V
So. And that is so contra to the American ethos. Right. I mean, this idea that I am my own person, it's individualism, it's autonomy, it's this idea of emancipation.
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Scott Keith
Right, right.
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Dan Van V
That we today are better and smarter than the people who came before us. And so, yeah, sure, they did that in the past, but we know better, and in some ways we do when it comes to building things or, you
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Scott Keith
know, like medicine or absolutely going to space.
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Dan Van V
Yeah, there are things, but that's where we have to separate our theology from our civic life. But we haven't. And because of that, we see this 70, 30 split, which to me is fascinating.
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Scott Keith
Yeah, I think it's. When Caleb brought that up to me from talking to you, I thought, wow, that really makes sense. I was in the back talking to Chad, and we were kind of chatting about this a little bit, and he just brought up that this was the thing, that when he was coming over to Lutheranism was the thing. And everybody you talk to that has that sort of conversion story from some sort of evangelicalism, it often goes, in my experience, some sort of evangelicalism to some sort of Calvinism, and then maybe ends up over here at Lutheranism. And even in that, the reason is baptism. But when I was talking to him, he's like, this is. It's the most offensive thing. Like, this is the most offensive thing, because in order to say that a baby that can believe nothing can do nothing has. I mean, look at beautiful little Mara back there. She can't do anything on her own. Literally can't do anything on her own. And to say that then that little person is saved and that baptism is the mechanism by which it's brought to them. And if you're an American, even if you sort of give Lip service to. And this is what happens a lot. Give lip service to the idea of grace alone through faith alone. All of a sudden, when you start talking about baby baptism, the rubber really hits the road. It does, yeah, because it's. It's like an illustration right in front of your face. Because not only are you saying, well, I know, I know, I. I'm smart enough to understand that I can't do anything. Now you're saying, no, it's not about how smart you are to understand it. It's that you can't. It's that you're dead. It's that you'. Hopeless, You're. You're helpless. That God has to come to you to give you life. Just like the mother's milk gives the baby life and that they do nothing to receive it. It's literally put on you. And it's a breaking point because you have to actually encounter how sinful you are, how bound your will is, and how hopeless you are apart from the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
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Dan Van V
I can't not get teary when there's a baptism at church. I mean, it is such a picture of the gospel. You can't do anything. You are literally brought by your family to this place and something is being done to you. It's beautiful. But then deeply offensive to some of that Americanness that says, no, I need to do it, I want to do it.
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Scott Keith
I think, I think that's even true on this whole idea of when you're an adult sort of waiting for, like, not just credo baptism itself, but how specifically credo baptism is treated, where you're waiting for just the right moment. Like where. When your expression of faith is complete enough and perfect enough and developed enough and mature enough. And we've now encountered people that have waited so long that they don't know when to do it now. And so even in that baptism is being wrecked, even in the adult, because there's an uncertainty about when is it appropriate. Like if. Well, geez, maybe I was supposed to do it when I was 12 and this magical age of accountability hit me, but I didn't. And now I've just kind of been stewing in this, and I haven't done it. I haven't done it, I haven't done it. And when's the right time?
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Caleb Keith
I'm, by the way.
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Scott Keith
Now.
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Caleb Keith
Now? Yeah, like right now.
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Scott Keith
Okay. Just saying
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Caleb Keith
interesting things to me about the. The occurrence of these questions about baptism is that the. The infant baptism question is even offensive or a stumbling block to those who are at no risk of being baptized as an infant themselves. Somebody who is already baptized. Usually nine times out of 10, when I'm asked a question about baptism or told that baptism is a hang up, the person is already baptized.
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Scott Keith
Right.
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Caleb Keith
They're usually in my experience too. And not even. They're not even at risk of performing an infant baptism because their children are already grown too. And so it's not like it's about them or their own children. It's then deeply offensive even to their own picture of themselves, I think. And what happened in their. The baptism.
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Dan Van V
Because their baptism is oftentimes the mark of their decision.
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Caleb Keith
Yes.
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Dan Van V
Right. And so that their. Their assurance is in, well, I have decided I was baptized. And so in a way they could pervert the. Remember your baptism shirt, because baptism is an act. They do not. An act that's done to them.
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Caleb Keith
Yeah.
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Scott Keith
I mean, it's an. It's an outward expression of your inward belief. Right, Absolutely.
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Dan Van V
But there's also. This is tied into. The American church is deeply un. Sacramental.
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Caleb Keith
Yeah.
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Dan Van V
Right. There's something about. And we can tie Gnosticism in if we want to, but there's something about the physical stuff that we just don't think we need.
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Caleb Keith
Right.
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Dan Van V
It's really about my belief. It's really what's in my heart. And so how could something physical like bread and wine or water actually do anything?
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Scott Keith
Yeah. What does water have to do with my personal walk with God, My personal relationship with God?
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Caleb Keith
Yeah. The individualism is so heavy both in our civic, you know, ideas, civic religion in a lot of ways, and then in the faith as well, that the truth is relativized even amongst people who, when it comes to social issues, are very upset about that. Right. So, you know, the biggest sort of conservative cohort in the United States is the American evangelical as sort of like a identifier block. And they had a very strong reaction against personal identity, language, when it came to sexuality, pronouns, all these other things. But when it comes to the faith, the truth is purely individual. Everybody has a PhD in theology if they care about theology. The debate has nothing to do with how educated you are, how well read you are, how well you've. You're even versed in the scriptures, even in these hyper sola scriptura, solo scriptura kind of situations. It all becomes a feeling of what is right. You'll hear things like, you know, I just love this from Lutheranism. You guys talk about grace a lot. And I like this from the Baptists and I like this from here. Well, who's the judge of where Lutherans are right, where the Baptists are right, where the Methodists are right. Is it the Bible? No, it's how I feel when I hear this pastor speak or how I feel when I do this. And baptism then is the most sort of tangible thing where they had the feels, you know, whether that was, you know, the believers kind of creed that they have walking down the aisle or the moment that they woke up and said I need to be, I know I need to be baptized. Now they're waiting for the feeling to interpret what to do next. And it also I think helps explain some of this increase I brought up. I brought up on a couple episodes of the Thinking fellows that I think gets buried behind the rise of the religion nones N o N E s which is the rise of the Christian non church attender in the United States which has risen at an even higher rate than the person who says they're irreligious. Nothing is. The person who says I'm a Christian
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Scott Keith
doesn't go to church, but goes to
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Caleb Keith
church less than once every other month. Why would I need it? It's just encouragement. So I need it when I'm down. Maybe I need it at Christmas or Easter. I need it when there's a situation, but I only need it when there's a revelation in my feelings that I need it.
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Scott Keith
If you tie that to what Dan said about being non sacramental or anti sacramental, that's kind of interesting because there's no other time really in history where if you thought being a Christian was just about sort of consuming the right information, there's no better time you could live than now because you can consume information 24 7. You don't have to just go on Sunday to listen to your pastor preach. Now don't hear me say that. If you're a pastor out there and think I'm anti pastor or anti preaching, I'm very much pro preaching on Sunday morning and it being good gospel Christ for you preaching. But we do. I've had people say it to myself and it's been to me, it's been one of like somebody once said to me, well I said you need to start going to church and I don't need to. I have 15, 17. And I went, oh my God, no no, no. I was like no, no no, no no no. You need a preacher, you need a pastor, you need somebody to put this in your ears face to face, person to person. This is extremely important. But, but it's easy if you're Kind of anti sacramental. Because one of the things that will keep you coming back to the physical place where you will hear the word from one actual sinner's lips to your sinner's ears is also the fact that this is where you get the goods of the sacrament in person. In your mouth, over your head, in the water. And if you lose that altogether, it's one more step to losing connection to the local congregation with the. With the shepherd that has been called there to be your carer of souls.
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Dan Van V
To me, there's another story here, which is the decline in church membership and this even amongst Christians. The idea of becoming a member of a body has. I mean, the numbers have dropped for the first time to like 46% of Christians in America today are members of a congregation. And that's the first time since we've been doing numbers that it's fallen under 50.
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Scott Keith
Oh, wow.
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Dan Van V
And there's something about saying, I don't need the other people. I'm going to do this by myself.
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Caleb Keith
Yeah, but they're banking on that. When they need to go there, it will still be open. Right. They're banking on when I do need to go to church, there'll still be
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Scott Keith
a pastor there to do to.
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Caleb Keith
Or when evangelized to somebody and they need a baptism, there'll be a church there. Well, why is it there? The other people stuck around, they did the work, they kept it open. And so there is a weird sort of. I don't need to help or pitch in, but I'll bank on that. There will always be Christians around building churches, preaching and doing that too, which is very kind of a bothersome situation.
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Dan Van V
I'm curious what you guys think about church membership, because that can be. I'm going to go to Acts 2. Wait, no. There's nowhere in scripture that tells me I have to be a member. But I also think you should be a member.
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Caleb Keith
Yeah.
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Dan Van V
How do you guys.
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Caleb Keith
I'll go to Acts.
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Scott Keith
I was going to too.
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Caleb Keith
There's an interesting pattern in Acts, and it's not just Acts. If we shorten the names of most of the epistles of the Bible. Right. They are letters to the church in Rome, letter to the church in Galatia. The stories of Acts are the apostles essentially establishing churches in particular locales. I think it's something like 98% of the instances of the word ekklesia, the Greek word for church, are in associ with a location, a particular group of people, and that is local to a city or a house or a family throughout The New Testament. And it's the terminus of everybody who comes to believe. There's a pattern in Acts. You're preached the gospel frequently by the apostles. Immediately you're baptized. If you've heard the gospel, what do
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Scott Keith
I need to do now?
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Caleb Keith
And immediately, what's the next step? You are joined to a church in your locale, your region, your tongue or whatever, Even things like Pentecost, which get all these weird interpretations about the tongues and the languages. It's evident right there in the text. Each heard in their own language the gospel. Why there was a need for this gospel to explode back to each of their homes. They had to go back and set up churches in that region.
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Dan Van V
So we might say the concept of membership is there, how it actually plays out. So when I came to Faith in my teens and I went to the associate pastor and said, well, I think I'm supposed to get baptized. And he said, fantastic. You need to take this class on Sunday afternoon to learn about when we do our potlucks and when we do our this and that. And I said, oh, I'm out. And so I just wasn't baptized because it was like, oh, well, all these. These things that I have to jump through. And so I got baptized, but it took a while. And so I do think, yeah, you're right. Membership is. The idea is core to scripture. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, you're right. Baptism is your entry in, not the carrot at the end.
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Caleb Keith
The baptized are then attached to the body of Christ. The body of Christ gathers. This is keep.
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Scott Keith
What you're illustrating, Dan, is that people get hung up on the membership process and think that that means that not being personally joined to a local congregation is important. I mean, there's a process. And I'd say in a lot of ways, this process is modernized. It's even Americanized in some ways. Like, you know, it's almost like you get a membership card.
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Caleb Keith
Well, now it's like you have. What's so special about being a member? I mean, we had somebody ask us this who attends church faithfully, like 99% of Sundays a month does not want to be a member.
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Dan Van V
I see it all the time.
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Caleb Keith
It's more the polity reasons. But she asked why. I go, well, you can have a say at church. You can vote at these meetings. She's like, I'm fine. I don't need to vote. Okay. It's kind of uncomfortable. But to your point, that is the Americanized part of membership, which is you get to be part of the democracy now that's definitely not what the early church is doing.
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Scott Keith
If we mean by membership that you are, you're connected to a local congregation where the word is preached and the sacraments are rightly administered and that there's a preacher there that feels responsibility for you to give you the word and the sacraments feels a responsibility to you to show up when you're sick in the hospital and to bury you when you die. You are a member of that church now. That church needs to find a way to kind of keep track of you, especially the bigger it gets and so develop membership processes. Right. It's. It's much like saying what are. What's my stance on a church owning a church building? Like, well, I'm pro there being a building I can show up to every Sunday and if that means they need to own it, I'm pro them owning it. If they need to rent a storefront, whatever, I'm pro. I'm pro there being a place where I know to go on Sunday to get the goods. And if that means I need to sign a lease or a mortgage or whatever to do that, I'm pro that. That is one of the. But you, you touched on something that's. I mean it's very, very true that membership in itself is a big hang up. Especially like membership that requires a process. Are you filling something out or you coming up on Sunday morning and saying now I'm accepted as a member of this congregation. And people do have an issue with that. And I've always. Maybe it's because I just grew up here. I've always found that kind of interesting. But the more you, the more you hear them out. What you hear is, I think, think it's the process, not the idea that I'm going to be connected here and that that's my pastor also that we're
- [28:59]
Caleb Keith
united by more than just the like. I liked the sermon last week. I think is the other positive aspect of membership. When it's at its best, it is an I believe it is saying I gather together with the people who share the same confession of the faith as me. A credo. And I'm kind of dedicated to these sets of beliefs. That's. That's the one I'll get here confused is, you know, is you'll go move to town. It's shocking to some people who I'm friends with or talk with that I would not have church shopped. I just went to the Lutheran church in town and that's what it would have been. And they ask why I go well, it's the one that says that it believes the same things as me and that I know theoretically or where I know I can hold teachers and preachers accountable to particular things. I wouldn't shop for just what sermons entertain me. The best membership seems to be perceived as like limiting your options in some
- [29:51]
Scott Keith
ways or the best youth ministry or whatever.
- [29:53]
Caleb Keith
Yeah. Which one? My kids. I didn't, I didn't even ask if there was Sunday school for the kids there. There wasn't. There's.
- [29:59]
Scott Keith
There isn't.
- [29:59]
Caleb Keith
There's not that many. It's just my kids, so it'd be something I could facilitate up.
- [30:03]
Scott Keith
My wife really wants to do Sunday school for all her grandchildren.
- [30:06]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, but, but that wasn't even that. That could have been on my list, but it would never be the make or break between if I was a member of that church or not. It's the, it's the confession.
- [30:16]
Dan Van V
There's also an interesting bit with the American. We look at the sort of reformation divide with what we call the marks of the church. So how do you know a church is a church? The gospel is preached, the sacraments are rightly administered, and, and then for some it was church discipline. And so the question was, do you need all three of these? And when church discipline becomes that third one and becoming a member means, now I'm going to be under church discipline. I think there should be a holding account of each other, but that can get really dangerous.
- [30:48]
Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [30:48]
Dan Van V
Have you ever been attacked by the past? Have you ever. Has the church ever come after? I mean, these are. Stories are legion. And so there's a reason why we say, well no, I'm not gonna sign onto that because then you're gonna use it against me and it becomes a kind of law based. And I think that's one of the reasons with all these stories of so called church hurt, people are saying, oh, I'm not gonna. If I don't have to click accept cookies, you know, I'm gonna say, you know, no. I mean that's just how I am. I don't, I don't even know what cookies are, but I know I don't want them new. They're gonna get me somehow.
- [31:21]
Scott Keith
I answered no to every question. Would you like to sign this petition? No. That's funny.
- [31:29]
Caleb Keith
Well, back to, to baptism is I guess the question how does this, how does baptism then wrap all these issues seemingly into one issue? Think. I think there's a little bit of a zero sum game when it comes to theology that attacks the sort of the Pick and choose of the. The American that is hard to get. But I think once it finally breaks through for people, it doesn't just make sense, it takes over your life, which is the theology of the Word and the word of God doing what it says that if the Word is what brought you to faith, if the word incarnate died for your sins, rose for your life, and that is the creative active power that does everything, then the baptism questions kind of disappear. Because what is baptism? It's water and the Word God gives you his name in baptism, the totality of his name and all of those pieces start to fall in. And I think the power of the Word is missing in America, which is interesting when you look at sort of Dan has done this sort of is America a Christian nation or was America a Christian nation? Video that did very well for us years ago for 1517. Some other questions and what you find is it's a very travel preachy country.
- [32:45]
Scott Keith
Right.
- [32:45]
Caleb Keith
Like there's a lot of emphasis on preaching. Our biggest churches are all these mega church preachers and they bring in guest preachers. But nobody believes that the preaching actually really does anything besides captivate because we're
- [32:58]
Dan Van V
an anti supernatural people.
- [32:59]
Scott Keith
That's right. Right.
- [33:00]
Dan Van V
And I am a supernatural guy. And so I want my baptism to be supernatural.
- [33:06]
Scott Keith
You want to be miraculous.
- [33:07]
Dan Van V
Yeah, exactly. But. But we don't believe in that. And so the sermon becomes a pep talk, motivation. And baptism becomes kind of like, oh, a little thing you did. Yeah, but these are supernatural events.
- [33:20]
Scott Keith
Yeah, it's Caleb, focus on the Word. When you, when you realize that God can regenerate a baby through the power of the word connected to water. And he said it. Once you, once it sort of hits you, it changes everything because then you realize even what keeps you in the truth in the one true faith is not anything related to what you've done, even as a Christ. Like you have to get rid of all your merit, not just from before you were saved to get saved. Which I actually think American evangelicals are pretty okay with that. Unless talking about baby baptism are pretty okay on that end. It's on the other end too. What keeps you in the church? What keeps you in the one true faith? And you have to then also say it's only the continued power of the priest word and the word given in the blood and the wine of the body of Christ and the sacrament. And it's only that. It's not how much discipline I had, it's not how much I mustered up a new sort of effort within Me, because I am now a Christian, is that the thing that brought me here is the thing that is promised to keep me here until he comes again to bring me home, either through my death or his miraculous return.
- [34:25]
Dan Van V
I find one of the main topics that's come up in my 10 years at 15, 17, has been, what do we do with the people who've walked away from the church? And talking to parents and talking to those who've said, well, what do I do? And I remember a conversation years ago, very awkward conversation around a dinner table where some parents brought up their. Their wayward child. And the pastor asked the parents, well, was he baptized? And that so offended the parents, as if that could still be a promise they could hold on to. But, boy, I think we want to hold on to that even more. That that's what keeps us in.
- [35:00]
Scott Keith
Yeah, I got that question. I say it all the time when I'm out talking. When I. When I first wrote Being dad and I would. It's kind of funny. I. The title is Being Dad. Father is a Picture of God's Grace. It's on sale on the back. There's still copies, I noticed, which is weird to me. I. In my head, this was like a very gospel book. It just was, right? And I'd go out and teach on it, and automatically you could see. I mean, I didn't even have to wait for the questions afterward. If I had a. If I had a full crowd, I could pick out for you the 10 people that would hear everything I said as law. And it was not just law, it was literally crushing them, right? And inevitably, when I was done, some of those 10 or 15 or whatever, they would come up and talk to me. And the thing was the same, right? I haven't done any of this, and my kids have left the faith. What do I do? And I was honestly at, you know, month one of doing talks on Being dad, not very good at answering that question. Talked it through with Gymnastigan a little bit. And that's when Gymnastigan gave me what you just said, right? You bring them back to their baptism and you remind them of the promise that no one can pluck them out of God's hand. And that many, many people think that on the assurance side, too, think that they or their children or whatever have jumped completely out of God's palm, but they are baptized into Christ. So the reality is that they're likely running around the borders here, right? They're still in the palm. They're on the edges of it. Maybe they're on the verge of teetering off the side, but they're still here. But the only way to get them back to the center is the thing that brought them there in the first place. And that's to shower them with the gospel, the word of God. And so the eventual answer is, you know, are they still with you? Yes. Are they baptized? Yes. Keep giving them the Word. It's the thing that can bring them back to the thing that brought them here is the thing that can sustain them. And it's the thing that they can bring them back right to the center.
- [36:48]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, I think there's. That gets to, you know, what. What power do you have to help this person? I think a lot of people are caught in the convincing loop, right. The faith now for 10 years or 15 years, and maybe somebody's whole life, it's a brother, a sister, an uncle, a child has been an argument for so long now.
- [37:11]
Scott Keith
Stubborn great uncle who's in his 90s
- [37:13]
Caleb Keith
and still arguing with you is arguing with you. And when people ask questions about that or it's weighing heavy on them, the only thing that comes to my mind is I'm not a very listening for the Holy Spirit kind of guy most of the time.
- [37:27]
Scott Keith
But with your parentage, that's weird.
- [37:31]
Caleb Keith
But I'll tell people it seems in their distress that that sure sounds like the Holy Spirit to me.
- [37:38]
Scott Keith
Telling Caleb's all nervous about saying it.
- [37:40]
Caleb Keith
That sounds like it's telling you that he is calling you to preach to these people. If there's somebody who keeps you up at night who is outside of the faith or seemingly so that. That seems to me like the most clear call to proclaim the gospel, not necessarily to argue, not necessarily to fight at Thanksgiving over it, but to tell them that in the name of Christ, their sins are forgiven, or that, you know, ask the question, do you know that Jesus Christ has died for your sins? That will be offensive enough before bringing up all of the maybe apologetic issues that they've told you. They have the scientific or materialist reasons that they doubt God. At the end of the day, the question is, do they know that Jesus Christ died and rose for their sins? That could be the start of a more productive conversation. And it's the power by which the Holy Spirit promises to act is delivering that gospel. And so though it might not seem like it takes root immediately, you know, to add some color to my dad's example, I now know probably over a dozen people at this point that I met who will come and tell me their story. And it usually starts With I was baptized as a Roman Catholic as a baby. And then when I turned 20, something something, I converted to Christianity. I became a Christian. I'll go, sure felt like we're always like, sure felt like you became a Christian when you were 20. But sounds to me like that baptism actually worked despite everybody's best efforts to assail it.
- [39:14]
Dan Van V
And it's worth noting, right, that we believe a baptism in the triune name is valid baptism. So they could say it was Roman Catholic or it was Orthodox. That is a baptism.
- [39:23]
Caleb Keith
There is only one baptism.
- [39:25]
Dan Van V
I've read that somewhere. There's only.
- [39:26]
Caleb Keith
Yeah. And that you know that it's, it's powerful even when you, when you try to make it. Not even for the people who think it's just a representation. That's just a mask you put on. The power of the baptism still works when, when an enthusiast preacher dunks somebody that works it delivers his promises when and where he pleases. And so.
- [39:48]
Dan Van V
And we can out charismatic the charismatics here. Like an actual miracle is taking place.
- [39:56]
Scott Keith
I've said it in all my talks. When this comes up, I'm like, we believe that we don't, you know, most of us, like, you know, lifelong lcms, Lutheran kind of people don't really look for miracles every single day. But we know that we see them at really particular times. And baptism is one of them. Them, like when you have seen a baptism, you have witnessed a true miracle. Greater, and I think Christ would say greater than any miracle he performed by healing somebody's bodily ailment.
- [40:21]
Dan Van V
You guys are going to do better things than even I do.
- [40:24]
Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [40:24]
Dan Van V
And that's the baptism.
- [40:25]
Scott Keith
You've seen a miracle and it's amazing. I do think that's not to go back to Jim, but that's why when Jim would get that question, he had a very simple answer. Like, I think my child has fallen from the faith. Are they baptized? Yes. And it's like, I'm not so sure. Sure. You know, and they'd say what he said. I'm not so sure they have. And that's because there are fewer unbelievers on even deathbeds than we think there are, especially those who have been baptized. Right. We kind of. We see this interim time where people are sort of warring against this faith that's been given to them as sheer gift. And we don't know the end conclusion. Like, we don't know how it's going to turn out, but we project the end on them as if it's already here and disregard the miracle that has happened to them in their baptism. And we ought not do that.
- [41:10]
Caleb Keith
There's a. We're coming to a close. But there's one more interesting statistic to close on the. Your supernatural comment made me think of, which kind of, I think even demonstrates some of the pattern of this. Young people, sort of high school through 30s tend to be less. They call it spiritual. And that has been the case in America for a long time. The statistic that's changed is like the not coming back part. But people between 17 and 25 basically stopped going to church for the last hundred years. There's a busy period of life where life changes a lot and you just don't do it. It's the snap back. But older people are still growing in spirituality as you age. So even once you get to 50 and older, even 30% of atheists will say they believe in a heaven, for instance, or that they're growing in their spirituality. And you ask a kind of a weird question like, how's an atheist growing in their spirituality?
- [42:03]
Scott Keith
Because they've seen too much.
- [42:04]
Caleb Keith
But that may. Yeah, they've seen too much. But that makes that supernatural question. There is. We should not be afraid of the weird here. As Dan was saying, baptism is spiritual and it's supernatural. Preaching is supernatural. Church on Sunday mornings is supernatural. And that not just that it has an appeal to certain people, but to worry that you're. That this 22 year old isn't really concerned with the supernatural. Well, it seems like they will be at some point. And so keep telling them, keep preaching the supernatural to them. Because like you just said, at some point they're going to have seen too much for that to be the only thing keeping them out.
- [42:43]
Scott Keith
The statistic used to be that the turnaround point was having kids, oftentimes where they sort of started looking for that again. Which is why you should buy a bean family, so you shouldn't see how that happens. Sorry, it's new.
- [42:58]
Caleb Keith
Dan, thank you very much.
- [42:59]
Dan Van V
Hey, thanks for letting me, you know, fill in for Adam and be an honorary thinking fellow.
- [43:04]
Scott Keith
And congratulations for being a podcaster for 13 years.
- [43:07]
Dan Van V
13.
- [43:08]
Scott Keith
While many people in 2026 can say I'm a podcaster, fewer can say I've been a podcaster for 13 years.
- [43:14]
Caleb Keith
Thirteen years.
- [43:15]
Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [43:15]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, congratulations. Well, thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for being here for the live version of it. If you enjoyed this show, subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, Apple Podcasts. Spot anywhere else that podcasts are found and you can also find the thinking fellows on YouTube now, even if you just lock the screen and listen to it on YouTube, just search thinking, fellows. You'll see this yellow logo that's behind me and you can subscribe there. Thanks for listening. Bye,
- [43:53]
Scott Keith
Sam.