Thinking About a Post-Christian West

Summary

Thinking Fellows: “Thinking About a Post-Christian West”

Podcast: Thinking Fellows (1517 Podcasts)
Date: March 4, 2026
Hosts: Caleb Keith (A), Adam Francisco (B), Scott Keith (C), Bruce Hillman (D)
Total Runtime (content): ~41 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode brings the Thinking Fellows together for a roundtable on what each host is working on in writing, research, and teaching. The hosts use their current projects to spark a wide-ranging conversation about theology, apologetics, and the shifting religious landscape—particularly the phenomenon of the “spiritual but not religious” and the evolving challenge of evangelism in a post-Christian, often “pagan” West. They share updates on significant publishing efforts and conferences, key trends in faith transmission, and offer insightful commentary on confronting new cultural and philosophical shifts affecting Christianity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are the Fellows Working On?

Adam Francisco (B)

• Recent Publication:
  The Reasoned Defense of the Faith (apologetics) just released.

  • [01:32] “That book just came out what I think five, six days ago and it's…connected to the nexus of apologetic stuff I'm working on.”

• Upcoming Projects:

  • Organizing an apologetics conference (March 13–14, Texas).
  • Collaborative project with Discovery Institute and Stephen C. Meyer at Cambridge University:
    • Recording the “mother of all apologetics courses,” which will reach millions, distributed in multiple languages using AI dubbing.
      [02:14] “It’s going to be multi language…when they run it through AI, my mouth is going to change and out it's going to come Chinese or Persian or whatever.”

• Next Book:
  The Turk at the Door (on Luther, Islam, and threat to Western Christendom in the 16th century), releasing after Scott’s new book.

• Current Research:

  • Studying the “spiritual but not religious” phenomenon and its implications for apologetics.
    [03:11] “A lot of apologetics training is organized around the objections that atheists and higher critics…have, and that's a relatively small percentage…a large swath fall into that spiritual but not religious category.”
  • The issue is epistemological: “It’s a turn away from an external objective word to the innards.” [04:00]
  • Also researching the concept of the “church militant” and “church triumphant” in ecclesiology.

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Scott Keith (C)

• Book Release:
  Being Family: Passing Down the Faith Through the Generations

  • Out May 5 (pre-order available). Emphasizes the importance of marriage, parenthood, and faith transmission in the family.
    [05:22] “It’s kind of a follow up to Being Dad…but dealing more with how these interactions happen within the whole family…why getting married…having kids is important…why raising them in the church…is important.”

• Current Focus:

  • Deep engagement with Pagan America by John Daniel Davidson (and related writing):
    • Argues America hasn’t just gone secular but has witnessed “a turn to paganism,” with novel religious practices and rituals.
      [08:20] “There’s some real creepy portions…movements online teaching women to set up altars to perform worship for their abortions…paintings that look like sacrifices to these old gods. It’s just really disgusting.”
  • Reflects on the transition in apologetics—from answering intellectual objections to grappling with new forms of spiritual and moral crisis.

• Other Engagements:

  • Ongoing internal collaboration with Adam on the “post-Christian” theme and apologetic strategy.
  • Recommends MP Woodward’s novels for geopolitical hypotheticals.

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Bruce Hillman (D)

• Forthcoming Book:

  • On Ecclesiastes: Not a commentary, but an exploration of its wisdom quest and a Christ-centered reinterpretation.
    [10:15] “First half…the guy who wrote Ecclesiastes…went on a wisdom quest…the second half, in light of Christ’s coming, what does Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection have to say about these conclusions?”
  • Release window: August to early November.

• Teaching Initiative:

  • Developing a new 1517 Academy course with Adam on world religions (target: Spring next year). [12:20] “We’ll each tackle a bunch of religions and talk about those and what they believe.”

• Research Interests:

  • Examining a range of theodicies (defenses of a good God amidst evil and suffering).
  • Studying gratitude in Scripture, hypothesizing it relates to suffering (especially “God’s silence”). [13:42] “There is a particular kind of suffering in Scripture…a spiritual sickness…the God of my theological knowledge…no longer matches my experience. And in the midst of that apparent contradiction, what do I do?”

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Caleb Keith (A)

• Recent Writing:

  • 1517 blog articles—“Sanctification in the Lutheran Confessions” and “Christ as the Fulfiller of All Things.”
    [15:49] “One was an overview of sanctification…another on Christ as fulfillment, starting from those Matthew 1 & 2 texts that use fulfillment so frequently.”

• Content Expansion:

  • Producing more 1517 video content for YouTube—short, high-quality, both stand-alone and event footage (Here We Still Stand conference).

• Ongoing Reflections/Writing:

  • Current article in progress on the “rise of the non-church going Christian” and its impact.
    • Cites Pew data: 51% of self-identified Christians now attend church less than once a month.
      [18:47] “…the rise of the non-church going Christian…we’re now to the point…about 51%…do not regularly go to church.”
    • The conversion deficit: “For every one person converted to Christianity in the U.S. in the last decade from another religion, six people leave Christianity.” [21:50]
  • Concern over the weakening connection to doctrine/tradition and the rise of merely “moral” or “cultural” Christianity.
  • Critique: Digital/virtual church reinforces the trend away from embodied, communal Christian life. [24:10] “Digital church is bad, too…can you even attend church online? I think the answer…is no.”

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2. New Phenomena: “Atheist Christians” and Cultural Religion

• Bruce shares discovery:

  • The emergence of self-styled “atheist Christians”: individuals who reject belief in God but retain Christian values, Christian language, and church attendance as a cultural framework.
    [25:56] “From what I can gather, it's people who have left Christianity but don't want to leave Christian ideology behind.”
  • This trend mirrors longstanding patterns among “cultural Jews” and now “cultural Catholics” and Hindus, who see religious identity as heritage/social identity, not faith.

• Adam notes:

  • The challenge of apologetics is heightened:
    [31:35] “It's much harder because…every individual is their own authority or perhaps even deity…There is no common epistemology.”
  • Expressive individualism and loss of shared standards complicate establishing common ground for argumentation.

• Common ground for evangelism and apologetics is shrinking; Paul’s approach at the Areopagus (Acts 17) is cited as a model—using “nominal common ground” (quoting pagan poets) as starting points.

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3. Generational Trends & Faith Transmission

• Caleb identifies a pattern:
  Gen X as the “Christian but not churchgoing” generation, which gave rise to Millennials and Gen Zers who are “nones” (no religious affiliation).
  [36:35] “I'm gonna blame Gen X…a pollster calls him and says, ‘Hey, are you Christian?’ ‘Yeah bro, yeah, I’m Christian.’ … ‘Do you go to church?’ ‘Nah, haven't done that since the 80s or 90s.’”
• This creates a fragile link—cultural Christianity without practice—accelerating decline in genuine belief and membership.
• Faith transmission now faces a steeper uphill battle. The hosts urge congregations to see the “mission field” as including their own children and to double down on catechesis/retention. [22:56] “While leaving out any sort of…catechesis and retention…statistically…we are strictly not doing enough kind of catechesis and retention of the people who say they are members of our churches.”

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4. Theodicy, Suffering, and “God’s Silence”

• Bruce’s Research:
  Explores a distinctive kind of suffering: spiritual anguish from God's apparent absence.
  [14:17] “I'm calling…’the suffering in suffering’…the God of my theological knowledge…the God I've learned about, no longer matches my experience. In the midst of that…what do I do?”
• Connections are drawn between biblical lament, doubt, and contemporary doubt among those who feel increasingly spiritually isolated.

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5. Memorable Quotes & Thought-Provoking Moments

• Adam Francisco on “spiritual but not religious” apologetics:
  [03:11] “If apologetics is a tool in the evangelistic task…when somebody asks, it kind of misses a large swath of people…that fall into that spiritual but not religious category.”
• Scott Keith on America turning pagan:
  [08:31] “Americans…is post-Christian for sure…but…it’s gone pagan. There’s some real creepy portions…altars in their house to perform altar worship to their abortions…like the old gods.”
• Bruce Hillman on God’s silence:
  [14:17] “There is a particular kind of suffering in Scripture…which I’m calling…the suffering in suffering, a spiritual sickness…God…no longer matches my experience. What do I do?”
• Caleb Keith on the risk of churchless Christianity:
  [18:47] “We’re now to the point where according to Pew…it’s about 51%. So we’ve crossed the halfway line of Christians…who do not regularly go to church.”
• Bruce on “atheist Christians”:
  [25:56] “He’s like…I’m an atheist…but Christianity is the language and the story by which I think and process the world…So I still want to live my life using this story…”
• Adam on modern apologetic difficulty:
  [31:52] “Every individual is their own authority or perhaps even deity…There is no common epistemology…”
• Caleb on generational drift:
  [36:38] “It was, by the time it got to me guys, it was D’s get degrees, which is kind of scary to think about. I’m gonna blame Gen X…”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------| | 01:32 | Adam on new apologetics projects, upcoming conference | | 02:14 | Announcement of major apologetics course at Cambridge | | 02:58 | Adam’s new book: The Turk at the Door | | 03:11 | “Spiritual but not religious” as apologetic challenge | | 05:16 | Scott on Being Family, family faith transmission | | 07:41 | Decline of faith being driven by non-intellectual factors | | 08:20 | Discussion of “Pagan America” – occult/pagan trends | | 09:56 | Bruce’s new book on Ecclesiastes and Christ | | 12:20 | Upcoming 1517 Academy course on world religions | | 13:42 | Bruce’s research: suffering/God’s silence in scripture| | 15:49 | Caleb’s writing on sanctification and fulfillment | | 18:47 | Rise of the “non-church attending Christian” (Pew data)| | 21:50 | Six people leave Christianity for every convert—conversion crisis| | 24:10 | The problem with digital/online church | | 25:30 | Rise of “atheist Christians” and cultural religious identity | | 31:35 | Adam on individualism, “no common epistemology” | | 35:57 | Rise of “religious nones” from “churchless Christianity”| | 36:35 | Generational disconnect: Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z | | 40:12 | Suffering/theodicy as a hidden apologetic issue |

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Interconnections & Takeaways

• Shift in Apologetic Audience:
  The old apologetic battle lines (science, reason, atheism) are receding, replaced by the post-Christian, “spiritual but not religious,” expressive individualist, and even “atheist Christian.” This necessitates rethinking engagement methods, emphasizing listening and existential questions.

• Transmission Failure is Generational:
  The breakdown comes less from hostile external culture than from weak embodiment of Christianity (non-churchgoing, thin doctrine/tradition) within Christian families and communities. Retention and deep-rooted formation are now urgent priorities.

• Faith As Cultural Ethos:
  A growing number relate to Christianity (or other religions) as cultural or ethical traditions, not beliefs—making for a more slippery identity and presenting new challenges, as well as opportunities for ministry.

• Suffering and Meaning as Evangelistic Openings:
  The universal experience of evil, pain, and God’s apparent silence could be a critical entry point—reframing apologetics around existential ache, hope, and the promise of meaning in Christ.

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Conclusion

This episode orbits around how to proclaim the Gospel and “be family” in a profoundly shifted and uncertain spiritual environment. Each host’s work highlights different angles of this question—from global apologetics and the legacy of Luther, to family formation, to the longing and silence of suffering, to the search for wisdom in a post-Christian context. Wrestling with both data and anecdotes, the Fellows call listeners to attention: the harvest is here, but the fields—and the weeds—are changing fast.

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Recommended Episodes, Articles, and Courses

• “Spiritual But Not Religious” (with Michael Horton)
• Scott Keith’s “Being Family” (Pre-Order at shop.1517.org)
• Adam Francisco’s Reasoned Defense of the Faith and The Turk at the Door
• Forthcoming Ecclesiastes book by Bruce Hillman
• 1517 Academy’s upcoming course on World Religions

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For more, visit 1517.org for articles, podcasts, and resources on these current topics and more. Show notes include all relevant links and contributor pages for further exploration.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith. Today I'm joined by Adam Francisco, Scott Keith and Bruce Hillman. Thinking Fellows is part of the 15:17 podcast network of shows. You can go to 15:17 podcasts to see all of our shows there. You can also subscribe to 1517 on YouTube. You can go do that now. There's a link in the show notes below to that and we have all sorts of new video coming out over there every week. Okay guys, so this episode I'm basically going to ask you what are you working on? What are you guys thinking about? What are some theological problems that you've got rolling around in your mind? Have you been writing anything for 1517? Do you have a speaking engagement coming up? What's that topic about and why does it matter? Give you an opportunity to have people engage with some of the other work that we do around here and then if we have time, maybe I'll read some stuff that's going on in Christianity right now and just get you guys reactions. So Adam, what are you working on? You writing anything right now? Is there stuff people should know about? Should go read from you. I know you're speaking soon enough here in Texas. So what do you got going on?

[B]

Well, we did a show on the reasoned defense of the Faith. That book just came out what I think five, six days ago and it's sort of, it's connected to the nexus of apologetic stuff I'm working on. You mentioned though he didn't use the name yet, the apologetics conference in March, March, 13th and 14th. So a lot of planning involved in that. We have, I don't know how much I can say but 1517 is working with a, another group that is recording a apologetics course at the end of the summer at Cambridge University with some heavy hitting folks. Stay tuned for an announcement there.

[C]

I think you can just announce it.

[A]

Yeah, just say it.

[B]

Right. Okay, so we're working with Discovery Institute, Stephen C. Meyer and others. Yeah, Jedbird and I are going out to record some lectures with them. So that'll be huge because as I'm told, not only is it going to be this package course, I think at Discovery they're calling it the mother of all apologetics courses. But the, the distribution list for that is going to be in the millions and it's going to be multi language, meaning Adam's going to be speaking in English there in Cambridge. But when they run it through AI, my mouth is going to change and out it's going to come Chinese Or Persian or whatever. So that's kind of. Kind of cool, I think, writing wise. Should I keep going, Caleb, or do you want to keep going around?

[A]

No, no, keep going.

[B]

Yeah, I got a book coming out after Scott's book, which he's going to talk about, I'm sure, at the end of summer. Mine's coming out called the Turk at the Door, which is a look at Luther and the challenge of Islam and the fate of Western Christendom in the 16th century.

[A]

That.

[B]

Looking forward to that. So that's already written. It's just sitting there waiting to come out. The latest project, I've got two. One is I'm wrestling with this spiritual but not religious phenomena. We had Michael Horton on the show a while ago. He's been doing a lot of historical work on that. And I'm trying to think about what that means for Christian apologetics because as Michael Horton put it on the show, what was that about, like eight months ago? I guess a lot of apologetics, Christian apologetics training, is organized around the objections that atheists and higher critics and so on have, and that's a relatively small percentage of the American population. And so if apologetics is a tool in the evangelistic task, you know, to give a reason for the hope within you, when somebody asks, it kind of misses a large swath of people. And that large swath of people fall into that spiritual but not religious category. So I'm trying. I'm doing a bunch of reading on that and thinking about it. As of now, I'm kind of at the point where I think it, at least the root of the issue is it's an epistemological issue. It's a turn away from an external objective word to the innards, if you will. So, yeah, that's the big writing research project I'm engaged in. I. I sent a text to your dad. He never responded because he doesn't always respond to my texts. I'm also interested in. This is more of a nerd nerd project. It's the locus in our theology, especially under ecclesiology on the the church militant. What does that mean for the Christian who will be in. Why can't I think of having a brain fart, as they say, the church who is a member of the church triumphant. So that telos that end is a done deal for all who have faith in Christ. But what does that mean in the interim, like as we're here now struggling against flesh, and not just flesh and blood, but powers and principalities. So, yeah, that's probably Enough for now.

[A]

Yeah, that's good. I'm just going to go in order here. Dad, we know you've been working on a book. I'll be curious if you got any other things to share with us as well.

[C]

Well, the book is done, in fact, actually have a physical copy right here.

[A]

Ooh.

[C]

Being Family, Passing down the faith through the generations. It's kind of a follow up to Being dad in a way, but dealing more with sort of like how these interactions happen within the whole family and that type of thing, and how the faith is passed down through the generations, why getting married is important, why having kids is important, why raising them in the church and in the faith is important, and how that, you know, many cases just ends up in sort of the ideal that we want, where our kids grow up and they stay in the faith and they have families and they raise their families in the faith too. So check that out. It's on pre order right now at I think Amazon and our website, um, [e-mail] and it comes out May 5th. We're doing a lot of advertising on that. And so a lot of sort of the things I've been working on on and off lately are sort of shortening up various portions of the book that can go out and little advertising segments or reels or blogs even. So that stuff will all be coming out as that comes together. I've been as far as writing and thinking a lot lately, Adam. We've been in a kind of on and off conversation last three weeks about this book by John Daniel Davidson called Pagan America. I think a couple episodes ago I recommended to Adam and Adam has since read. And so his sort of talking to me about has prompted me to go through it again, which kind of also fed into the episode we did on abortion and then the article I wrote on abortion and the video that I did on abortion. So that's been in my head lately. And I'm just kind of finishing up my second pass through. I'm a little behind Adam on finishing it up, but on that. John Daniel Davidson, Pagan America A lot of the same things Adam's talking about. Just how when Adam and I were in college with Rod, we really learned kind of in and out how to defend the faith against intellectual objections to the faith. You know, as Rod got that from Dr. Montgomery and then passed it on to his students through his 30 years at Concordia Irvine. But then now we're in this area of life where it seems like those intellectual objections to the faith, it's not that they don't exist. And I think Adam said it.

[A]

Well,

[C]

it's a small percentage of the population that are wrestling with those objections to the faith. And mostly there's something else going on. This Davidson book, I mean, I'm. And then to our conversation with Mike Horton really kicked off this idea that Americans is post Christian for sure. But we all sort of assumed that that meant it was just going to kind of go straight secular, like materialist sort of secularism. And in reality, I think Davidson's right to say that it's gone pagan. There's some real creepy portions of that book where you're just talking about. I mean, it's just super creepy. He's talking about the abortion culture and how there's this movement online that'll teach you, teach women how to do set up altars in their house to perform altar worship to their abortions and stuff like this. And the paintings that go out that look like, you know, the old gods and the sacrifices to, you know, babies to these old gods. It's just really disgusting. But I think we need to wrestle with that and I think we need to wrestle with that insofar as we talk about how to bring long gospel to these people and then to how, you know, we. We set up addressing the apologetic task to a world that's gone pagan. It might look more like, you know, what Paul was doing than sort of kind of throwing their science back at them. I don't know at this point, but it's an interesting thing. A lot of my mental energy has been spent with that. Then I've always got a couple novels going on inside that nobody's interested in. I would say if you are interested in sort of models and sort of novels that are dealing with sort of like hypothetical things that could be going on in the grander geopolitical world. I've recently come on to MP Woodward and he's pretty good.

[A]

Cool. Very good. Again, links in the show, notes to those things which you've written, especially the book available for pre order now. Bruce, what are you working on? Have you been writing for the blog or anything? What do you got going on?

[D]

I haven't done much with the blog in the last month. Actually. I did send Kelsey some stuff, so I don't know if that'll come out at some point. Not like responded to any specific requests for the blog, but no, mostly so I've been. I'm joining the club with the other two illustrious colleagues here. So I also have a book coming out.

[A]

That book is everybody's writing books.

[D]

Yeah, that book is due to be out sometime between August and late October, early November. There's no direct date set, but that's kind of the plan. That's a book on Ecclesiastes. It's not really a commentary on Ecclesiastes. It's more looking at. It's kind of divided into two parts. So the first half of the book is there was this guy who wrote Ecclesiastes. His name was Koheleth, and he went on a wisdom quest to try to figure out a bunch of things like the meaning of life and where God is and suffering and all sorts of stuff like that. And he came up with his answer. And then the second half of the book, I say, okay, well, in light of Christ's coming, what does Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection have to do or have to say with these conclusions that this author in Ecclesiastes came up with? And so I kind of try to show how the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ in some ways magnifies the lessons that Ecclesiastes taught and in other ways corrects them. Because that author didn't have the knowledge of the resurrection and stuff when he wrote. So some of the things that he's bothered by are fulfilled in Christ. So as far as this, where that's going, I'm kind of working with the marketing team right now to figure out the final title for that book. We have a couple things we're looking at. And then I guess I think it goes next to what they call a copy editor who's going to kind of put it into form and check just any spelling or grammar that may have lingered after the first edit happened. So that's that. I'm also working on doing some research and starting some writing on a new academy course for 1517 that Adam and I are actually going to co teach. Probably sometime in the spring is the plan. And that'll be on world religions. So that, I don't know, it'll be sometime probably. What would you say, Adam, next year? That it would actually premiere by time it gets edited and everything? Yeah, but we're in the process of doing that. So we'll each tackle a bunch of religions and. And talk about those and what they believe. And then just in my own kind of theological research, I guess you could say so kind of three different things I'm looking at right now, they're all connected in my brain, but I don't have a. I mean, obviously this will probably become a book at some point, but I'M really reading and looking a lot of different theodicies right now. Defense of how can you have a good God and evil and suffering exist in the world. That's what a theodicy attempts to do, however. So that's one thing. I'm also looking at the biblical idea of gratitude. And I see these things somewhat connected, probably not in an obvious way. And I haven't fleshed this all out yet. So I'm not inferring in any way that, hey, if you suffer, you just need to be grateful for it. That's not at all where I'm going. The third thing that connects all these things is I'm particularly interested in a specific kind of suffering that I'm looking at, which is people suffer for all sorts of reasons. Terrible things happen to them. But there is a sort of spiritual suffering that can be magnified within that suffering that comes from experience in life. And that type of suffering is the suffering someone might experience with God's silence. And this is actually the suffering, I think this is my hypothesis, is the suffering that's most talked about in scripture when it talks about suffering. So the psalmist is always like, how long? Where are you? What are you doing? What are you up to? Job is like, if I could just get my day in court and God would just listen to me, I could fix this whole problem. You know, Jesus quotes the psalm, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So there is a particular kind of suffering in Scripture that's addressed all the time, which is. Which I'm calling right now, the suffering in suffering, a spiritual sickness, a spiritual suffering, which is that the God of my theological knowledge, the God of promise, the God I've learned about, no longer matches my experience. And in the midst of that apparent contradiction, what do I do?

[B]

Where.

[D]

Where is God? And so it's. It's really a question of God's silence. Is God ignoring me? What is he doing? I'm in this terrible moment of my life where I need him the most, and he seems to be the most far away that he's ever been. So it.

[A]

It.

[D]

The gratitude thing, I think, is I have a hunch that that's going to factor into the answer in some way, among other things. And I'm curious to look deeply into that particular struggle. So that's. I don't know where that will end or where that'll go. I'm just. I've gathered a bunch of resources. I'm reading a bunch of things, I'm jotting down notes, seeing where as you're

[A]

reading, as you got your stack going, Bruce, right over there. May I suggest, if it's not on there, volume one of Luther's Outlaw God. So it deals with a lot of this.

[C]

I'd also say Chad Bird did a little, I guess I call a pamphlet.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

On Christian gratitude kind of as it relates a little bit to generosity and stewardship. I want to check that out. It's pretty good. We gave it away at one conference.

[D]

Thank you for those recommendations.

[A]

I've got one more. Barclay, Barclay, Paul and the Gift. That's a lot of gratitude stuff.

[D]

I have. I have that one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes, There you go. All right. Yeah, no problem. Bruce. That was interesting. All right, my turn. Story time.

[C]

Story time.

[A]

Story time or whatever. So I have been writing more for the 1517 blog. I will try to put it. Actually, there's already links in the show notes every week. This is a great way to introduce this to people that may not have known this. The bottom of our show notes every week are links to our names. They're hyperlinked versions of our names, and they go to our contributor pages on the 1517 website. And the contributor page is a collection of everything that we've tagged on the website with our names on them. So if we've written articles, they're there. If we have a book in the bookstore, it's there. A video playlist or podcast episodes. As you can imagine, if you go to any of our names on there, the thing you're going to see the most of is probably thinking fellows episodes. But you could also go see some of our latest writing there. So I have had two blogs come out in the last month, back to back. One was like a overview of sanctification in the Lutheran Confessions, which I tried to then, with Kelsey's help, just kind of turn into a, you know, a basic dogmatics kind of article. I had done a lot of these in the past. I had done like two or three of these in the past, and they were always a great format for me, which was about like the 1200-1500 word sort of what, what is this and why? Article on various doctrines. And I don't know, I always feel like I should probably just keep writing those because they do well and they're nice little explainers. So this was that. But then with a heavy emphasis on do the Lutheran Confessions actually speak a certain way about this doctrine? Because we all seem to just assume what sanctification must mean or what doctrines it must be related to. I think without consulting Our confessions are tradition at all. So did that and then one on sort of a unused title of Christ, which is Christ as the fulfillment or the fulfiller of all things. And sort of did an article on that that started cooking in my brain all the way back during Advent just because of those Matthew 1 and 2 texts that use fulfillment so frequently even before Christ was born, to talk about Christ and then sort of looking at that through Christ's ministry and then even in the epistles and their reference to Christ and just how fulfillment affects the way we view Christ and his gifts and his promises to us. So that's a shorter article over at 15:17. And then I've been working on a lot of video projects, been recording videos with these guys that you may have seen up on the YouTube channel. Some singular video and now some scripted videos that are going to come out soon or maybe have already come out depending on where this episode is in the hopper. But we're working on just more high quality direct to YouTube, direct to online video sources, video from 1517, engaging with our audience in that way. There's certainly, you know, I know thinking fellows listeners for the most part this is, you know, a decade of audio podcast content. And so most of these listeners and subscribers are probably well rooted in listening to their podcasts and things like that. But YouTube is the largest digital media space in the world and sort of not putting this kind of theology there, not putting this Christ for you emphasis there would be a big miss because there is a large audience there. So I would encourage everybody who listens to the thinking fellows to go subscribe on YouTube. I think the videos that we've been putting out are great, high quality. They're usually on the shorter end, not full length, think you fellows style, but then also mixing in some longer singular topic stuff like here we still stand conference video and plenary talk and breakout talks and things like that. So I've been writing a lot about that and that's just paired. I don't know, I've been thinking about, I know we loop around on this, but sort of what Adam was talking about. So the spiritual but not religious thing, the article I'm working on right now was inspired. I don't know if it was your, if the episode we did on your book or what it was Adam. But one of the episodes, something came up and I started pulling up as quickly as I could some, some Pew data because I was thinking about the fact that for the last decade, like since 2015 at least, everybody including us, including 15, 17, including various things we've been related to have been talking about the rise of the religious nuns. Right. It's been a recurring theme on this show. It's been recurring theme in Christian magazines and newspapers and articles and stuff online. And while I was kind of looking over some of that stuff again and thinking about how do you reach people who were raised by Christians in all likelihood, but are not Christians themselves, I was kind of thinking about what's the origin of this problem? Because the data also shows kind of what Horton has talked about and what you're talking about, Adam, which is that the religious nuns tend to be spiritual. They. They'll often, you know, the vast majority of them say there is a God or some prime spirit or something like that that they have had or look for spiritual experiences. And so what happened that you had Christian parents, kids who were probably raised at least nominally Christian, and now they're completely religiously unaffiliated, but yet there's still, there's some spirituality there. And a stat that I don't think we've talked about much, except that I brought it up briefly on that show has just been sticking with me. I've been writing about it a little bit. Nothing published yet. But is this the non church going Christian and the rise of the non church going Christian over the decades, it challenges the rise of the religious none. And we're now to the point where according to pew, it's about 51%. So we've crossed the halfway line of Christians, of people who will self identify as Christian, do not regularly go to church. So they go to church less than once a month is basically what that means. And I think there's a lot to explore here about the impact that has on evangelism, the impact that has on apologetics and the way we talk about the faith, the audience for particular types of preaching and doctrine. And it's a problem that I kind of see in my own life and I think connects even to this other thing where I've been writing about sort of singular dogmatic issues, which is just a lot of people who again, are Christian but probably couldn't even the word doctrine would be foreign to their ears or teaching or something like that where there's not a lot of meat or hook to grasp onto that they associate with the idea of doctrines. Somebody might be able to tell you the canon of Star wars, but not know what the word canon means in reference to the Christian faith. Right. And that seems like a more frequently occurring thing. So I've been thinking about that problem there Was another set of stats and I hopefully will have an article out in the next week or so on this. But for every one person converted to Christianity in the United States in the last decade from another religion, six people leave Christianity. Kind of an amazing arc contrast about even sort of missions and event thinking about missions in evangelism, about, you know, if you're putting a lot of effort amongst that while leaving out any sort of, you know, as this counter against like, hey, the church is just a club. All we do is care about the church. You know, we need to be. This is a critique of the Missouri Synod. Often from within too is like we focus way too much on our own churches. We need to do more community stuff, we need to do more outreach, we need to do more evangelism. Well, I mean I think statistically it could be said that we are strictly not doing enough sort of like catechesis and retention of the people who say they are members of our churches, who would self identify as members of our churches or as Christians raised in our churches as well. So I think if you think about the mission field, you think about evangelism, you have to think about every child and future child as one of these potential religious nuns that it's like kind of this small window you have to preach to them and actually while they're going to church is the best window you're ever going to have to proclaim the gospel to them to do that. And so why wait until they're a non believer to then like reach out, quote unquote, reach out to them when you have people potentially captive to hearing the gospel now. So just just thinking about that a lot a bit. But I, I think that's been interesting. I think digital church is bad too. Like a lot of the non church going seems to be supported by quote going to church online, which is interesting as well. Like that number, that 51% number, kind of that's in person worship. It changes drastically if people say that they attend church online, which gets into a whole nother problem about what is the church. Can you even attend, can you attend church online? I think the answer to that question is no. But I'm trying to integrate all those thoughts into some work on that.

[D]

Caleb, can I add a thing I sent Adam this week? I can send it to you too, but I only sent him one. But there are two different people I follow on Instagram who are younger. They look like they're in their mid-20s to almost 30, both somewhat intellectually minded guys, but they consider themselves atheist Christians. Which is a new thing for me, which is why I kind of sent it to Adam.

[A]

I've been watching a video doc, YouTube channel of a guy who calls himself an atheist Christian.

[D]

Yeah. So this is an interesting thing, and I don't fully understand it yet because I'm trying to find more voices who are in this camp. From what I can gather, it's people who have left Christianity but don't want to leave Christian ideology behind. So this one guy's very overt about it. He actually just says this. He's like, look, I grew up a Pentecostal pastor, son, and then I got degrees in historical theology. And I kind of, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but I kind of thought that the tradition I grew up in was a little bit crazy. And so I got really into historical Christianity, but then that didn't work for me, and now I'm an atheist. But Christianity is the language and the story by which I think and process the world. And I don't want to give up that story. So I still want to live my life using this story, both for myself and for promoting my own active participation in social affairs and stuff in the world. Now, of course, his, I'll call them readings or interpretations of passages are, you know, incredibly serving a progressive ideology, at least this one guy, the other guy less so. But I find it interesting that there's this sort of apparent embrace of a contradiction, of claiming, well, I'm an atheist because I don't really believe in God, but I'm also a Christian because I want to support parts of that worldview and think it's the best worldview by which to live by. And I actually wonder if that's more dangerous than, say, a new atheist would be, because it kind of lets you eat your cake and eat it, have your cake and eat it, too, if you're not carefully thinking about these things. And it reduces Christianity to kind of a moral ethical frame. And I have found this is totally anecdotal, but I know two people at my former church who are in this age bracket who don't really believe anymore but aren't hostile to Christianity. And then these two guys on Instagram, and I just keep seeing the same pattern, which is that a lot of these young men at least seem to be leaving. Again, anecdotal, because they don't like the ethical, moral positions that the church has and how it's wed itself in many cases with the Republican Party. They just don't like it. And so they end up losing their whole Faith because they can't separate the fact that it's sort of a fad, if I could say it right now, that like evangelicals just happen to be all in on this sort of version of Republicanism and that'll probably change to something else at some other point. And that doesn't. Like that nuance doesn't seem to be boss. So there seems to be, as they're growing up, they seem to equate. Okay, so if I'm going to be a Christian, that means I have to hold these political views and they don't want to hold those political views. So then they just kind of dump the whole thing. But then they don't want to dump the whole thing because they kind of believe part of it. So now they're keeping it. It's this whole weird. Anyway, I won't keep going, but I find it interesting.

[A]

That is interesting. There's kind of a. I think that one is like sort of a uniquely kind of Protestant or evangelical kind of thing. Like this one I've been watching. He literally said I'm a, I'm an atheist Protestant. And I. And he even goes to church sometimes, which is just like wild to me. Like as a, as just like a concept of a, A thing. I'm just like sitting here watching these videos going just repent and believe the gospel. Just like, just do it really. But the, the counter side to this is sort of the cultural Christianity, which is different. But you know, I was kind of, I wasn't shocked. But for instance, things like Roman Catholic have become a cultural identity as much as a religious identity. So I don't remember what it was. 13% of, I don't know, think it was like all Catholics in the U.S. it was like of some other subgroup but consider themselves Roman Catholic sans any religious identity. It's not a religion. They said it's not a religion for them. It's a personal identity. Roman Catholic personal identity.

[C]

I mean, there's a category for that that we've known about in a sense for a long time when it comes to kind of like cultural Jews, non practicing Jews. And I think within Catholicism, we've all known that as a category for.

[A]

They had three religions.

[C]

Cultural Catholics that are sort of barely practicing.

[A]

Yeah, Pew had three religions with this kind of social identity component. So they had a Judaism, they had Roman Catholicism and they had Hinduism as the three. Where people would commonly say, yes, I'm this, but I don't believe I'm not part of the religion.

[D]

Which is Adam Deep.

[A]

Kind of interesting. No No, I was just gonna ask

[D]

Adam on this whole weird phenomena, do you think there's apologetics being done in this area? Cause here's what I see happening and where I think there needs to be a new apologetic or. Or relative. Whatever the right word would be apologetic. I think it kind of gained a lot of ground, actually, with Jordan Peterson, who kind of reads the Bible like a social scientist or a psychologist, and therefore, you know, finds all these deep, like, deeper truths, universal truths behind the text and quote, atheist Christians kind of doing the same thing, but usually more from a political bent than from a sociological bent. So if you try to, like, it's. You could say, oh, well, here are the reasons for the existence of God for these people. Which could still be helpful. Right, because they're atheists in that sense. But in another sense, they're just going to say, yeah, but the real meaning of these texts is it represents this deeper truth and Jesus is teaching this ethical view, and Jesus. And I find that's a harder apologetic than, like, the proofs for the existence of God, maybe. That's just me, though. I mean, what do you. What are your reactions to that?

[B]

It's much harder because. So what. I mean, I think. I don't know how to put it, but what you're dealing with is what is the. What's the phrase that. I know, you know, this Bruce Charles Taylor used to use to describe the spirit of the age, so to speak. Oh, expressive individualism, I think.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

You know, every individual is their own authority or perhaps even deity, and they get to determine what is the case about whether it's. They're reading the Bible or, you know, what's a male or a man or a woman or whatever. So all. There is no common epistemology. There is no.

[D]

The world's gone flat. Right. Like, there's no transcendence.

[C]

Oh, that's funny.

[B]

There is no.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, especially given Caleb's here. We need to revive the mythology of Caleb being a flat earther.

[A]

Again, that wasn't. That was not like.

[B]

That was like, we need to demythologize round earth talk.

[C]

Demythologize my reputation. That'd be a great teacher.

[B]

But I mean, there is no. I mean, there never. There is no such thing as neutrality anywhere.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

But. But you could, you think, Scott put it earlier, that it looks like our interaction with the world evangelistically, apologetically, is going to look a lot more like what Paul's doing, whether he's in Thessalonica, in the synagogues or Mars Hill down in Athens with philosophers. You know, Paul's speech at Athens is kind of instructive, though. It's. We don't. I mean, I wish. I mean, if I could go back with Bill and Ted, that's one place I would go. I'd get on the road to cultural reference.

[C]

Thank you. Thank you.

[B]

I'd love to be a fly on the back of a donkey's rear listening in on Jesus going through all the law and the prophets, or Moses and the prophets on the road to Emmaus. And I'd love to be a fly on a piece of rotting fruit up at the Areopagus to hear what Paul's sermon. The extent of Paul's sermons. Because what we were given from Luke is that Paul quotes pagan literature as if to establish not real common ground, but nominal common ground.

[D]

He does that in Corinthians, too, doesn't he? He quotes pagan source in Corinthians.

[B]

Yeah. Today's different. Every person is their own sort of knowledge. They produce their own knowledge based on what they feel or what their background is. And so there is. I mean, finding that nominal common ground is getting increasingly more difficult. What it means, though, is you've got to spend more time with people, you know, rather than assuming, you know, what their worldview is, because maybe they said this or they have this bumper sticker or whatever. You got to let them. This is Greg Koukl's thesis from long ago. Let them do the talking. Let them expose or teach you their worldview by a series of guided questions.

[A]

And

[B]

that's. That's how you figure out the starting point.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's good. I think, to connect all three of your, you know, topics. I think I can do this because I. This is why this one has been interesting to me, which is, I think, from connecting it to sort of Adam's apologetic work, it's a new. It's a new difficult, as Adam said, difficult audience for apologetics compared to scientism, new atheism, various materialism, because you can really chip away at that, even with its own sciences and processes and methodology. You don't have to just sort of do theology or accidentally just end up in the realm of opinion. When they say they're trying to deal with objective fact, you sort of have then an angle in. To work with and to argue about. Even if it doesn't work out, both people can kind of walk away. But the people who are this difficult apologetic group seem to me now, I'm not a professional at reading data. I do have A couple of college degrees. So I think I know how to read.

[B]

Do you though?

[A]

Do I though? That's a good question. But it seems to me that the rise of the religious nuns stems from parents who were the Christian but not religious. The Christian but not church going the Gen Xer. So sorry to. I don't know what Bruce is. Are you a millennial or a Gen X Bruce?

[C]

Yeah, what are you?

[D]

I'm 19x.

[A]

Whoa. Okay, it's your guys fault.

[C]

But somebody just made the cut.

[D]

I did, but I still made it.

[A]

Okay, well, all right.

[D]

So now I'm gonna blame C's get degrees, Scott. C's get degrees.

[C]

Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm a college professor again.

[A]

It was, by the time it got to me guys, it was D's get degrees, which is kind of scary to think about. I'm gonna blame Gen X. It may or may not be true. Gen X. Feel free to defend yourself here. There's a substantial, at least from the age numbers and some of this thing, amount of Gen X who, you know, a pollster calls him and says, hey, are you Christian? And they're like, yeah bro, yeah, I'm Christian.

[C]

Why wouldn't I be?

[A]

Yeah, why wouldn't I be? And then they're like, you go to church? Nah, haven't done that since the 80s or 90s. And then it's like, how many kids do you have? I got two. So now those kids are now.

[D]

So they're like Ronald Reagan.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And so now those kids are my age or a little younger.

[C]

You know, you were barely born when

[A]

he was president and guess what? Those kids don't even know what the word God is. Like. They, they maybe said two prayers in their whole life. They kind of know that they're supposed to be kind of religious, but you know, they also know that Christianity, they went to public school. Christianity's kind of silly for the most part, but hey, like loving each other is not bad. But I don't really need like to go to church and worship to know all that, dude. Like, I just want my kids to be good people. And good people meant like nominally Christian. Those Gen Xers are now like surprised that those kids aren't Christian. They're like, hey, are you Christian? Nah, man, I don't really think so. I mean, I believe in God, but I'm not really Christian. And that's the kids of the church. You know, the Christian but non church going. That problem's only getting worse as the number of Christians who are non church. Going are up. So it's something I kind of think about and to connect it to Bruce's, I think a lot of this actually has to do with sort of unanswered questions for people like the church isn't providing value, but also get into that conversation. No, no, but Bruce, in the problem of evil thing, the problem of evil is often cited as a reason people aren't Christian. Right. I can't believe in a God who would allow X, Y and Z to happen. On the converse though, it's also sort of amongst the spiritual, but not religious. The problem of evil, they need the divine, like the big divine being the spirit, who's going to like kind of reward people for living a decent life to be true. Or else this really is all meaningless. So you kind of have this flip flop with the problem of evil and suffering, which is for some people who maybe grew up in like a religious system, it ends up being the default proof that there isn't a God. My system, you know, could not really answer for this. But for people who are generically religious or generically spiritual, it's often the reason, you know, sin, death, pain, suffering. That's the reason I have to have hope. That's the reason I have to be like some kind of religious. I might not have a religion, but I have to believe it's better than this or that there's somebody, look something looking out for me. Right. Kind of thing. So I do think in this whole apologetic and theological scheme of people who need to hear the gospel, I don't know, I think that's. It's kind of something to consider that the problem of evil. You've been talking about the desire for

[C]

God for a bit now. I think the thesis is interesting and I think that if it's possible, you should get some more sort of input on it to see how much it can be fleshed out. I mean, all I could say would be anecdotally, I think there's a way in which you're right where it does kind of fit sort of the generational ethos of Gen Xers to just be like. Like I said, well yeah, I'm Christian, why wouldn't I be? And then also to not do anything about it, like go to church or.

[D]

That's why I said Reagan though, because he didn't go to church, but he said he was a Christian. Meanwhile, Nancy was doing seances in the White House and hadn't. There was no contradiction.

[C]

Okay, enough of the Reagan bashing. Again, you were barely born.

[D]

The Reagan bashing He's an archetype of what we're talking about.

[C]

But go ahead. Don't talk to me about the kipper. You don't know anything.

[A]

Assault weapons ban in California. Thanks, Reagan.

[C]

Talk about not born.

[A]

I was really not born, but I am critical.

[D]

Do you have the, like, the guy at my old church? You have the picture of Oliver north in your workshop?

[C]

No, but that would be hilarious. I have pictures of no politicians in my house of any stripe or era. And there's a reason for that.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's. I don't know. That's what I'm thinking about. Maybe that's what listeners are thinking about. Maybe we'll hear from some listeners as well. I think one of the reasons we think about these kinds of topics and why all our topics can be kind of spiderweb, interconnected, is that it all does come back to how can you get people's ears to proclaim into. That's certainly the apologetics question. That's certainly the being family kind of thesis, is, hey, you got these people in front of you. It really sounds like it's kind of what Bruce is thinking about as well, but is sort of the job, which is, you know, preach the gospel, proclaim the gospel, and who and how can you do that is always top of mind. So if, if you've got questions about that, if you got thoughts about that, if that's something you're concerned with. Code 1517. Org, a lot of articles there, videos, podcasts, about these subjects. We thank you for listening to this episode today. We will catch you next time. Bye, Sam.