The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge - Are you getting back to God's trust-worthy Word? - Carol McLeod | Redeeming the name Evangelical - Bonnie Kristian

0:00Welcome to the Reconnect with Carmen LeBurg. We are applying the mind of Christ to the matters of the day so that you can connect the eternal with the everyday and get ready to head out into the world that God so loves in ways that honor Jesus. So let's get started. This is the Reconnect. Your daily encouragement that God has the world and the hollow of his hand. This is the Reconnect with Carmen LeBurg on Faith Radio. If we're gonna fly, we fly like kiddos, arms down by. If we're gonna fear, we stand, oh, we will. We will rise, by our power, we will go. By our spirit, we are born. If we're gonna stand, we stand, we're shy. If we're gonna walk, we walk in the light. 25 years ago. I mean, that doesn't seem possible, but it's true. There's been a literal generation born and raised to adulthood

1:07since a dozen, oh, more, 20 Islamic jihadists planned, orchestrated, and carried out a terrorist attack that changed us forever. And when I say us, it didn't just change you and me and the United States of America. It changed the world. It changed the way that we saw things, that we experienced things. It changed the way we saw our nation and our neighbors. It changed the skyline of our most iconic city. It changed our sense of security. It changed whether or not you could walk your loved one all the way to the gate at the airport. And whether or not you could take a jar of homemade jam, home with you, or a snow globe through TSA. 9-11 changed us in ways that are really hard to describe to people who were still children at the time

2:07or not yet born. And so, I don't know what you are thinking about in terms of tomorrow and remembrance or the way you're going to invite people into that shared grief. But I hope you don't treat it as just another day. It's also Rosh Hashana. And so, I mean, I do think there's a lot going on. There's going to be a lot going on tomorrow. But I think today I want to say this. And I'm Carmen LeBurgier listening to the reconnect. I want to say this. It didn't always feel this way. We didn't always feel this way. We didn't always fear others the way we do now. The president of the United States did not always have as much power and Congress did not always concede so much to the executive branch.

3:08Like 9-11 affected us in ways that you have likely not fought much about. We were not always in a forever war with the people in the Middle East. But we have been since 9-11. As I've thought back 25 years, as I'm sure you have done and are doing as well, I have remembered. And when I say that word, I want you to hear me break it up into its parts. Remember to become a member of something again. To return to the time and the place and the feelings and the shared experience. To remember, to reattach, to live again in the midst of. To remember.

4:10I've allowed myself to return to the realities of that morning. I remember where I was. I'm sure you do too. I remember that I heard it first on the radio and drove immediately to somewhere where it appeared that people were gathering where there must have been a television on. And so I went in. Happen to have been a bar in the middle of the little town I lived near, you know, early in the morning. The bar wasn't open open, but it was open because it had televisions. I also remember the sudden visible presence of law enforcement everywhere. I remember the US military planes that flew low everywhere. I remember the English and the fear of waiting. I remember the sense of helplessness.

5:10I remember the busy signals. It didn't matter who you were calling. You got a busy signal until you didn't. And your sense of isolation and fear, which was totally unreasonable. The fear that, you know, I had where I was at the time in the hill country of Northeast Georgia. That was an unreasonable fear. I remember the US military plane that was coming there to do anything naughty. But my desire to connect with the people that I love best in the world, it was real. And it evaporated when I heard their voice on the other end of the line. And I remember that that connection never came for thousands of people. I remember a conversation with a pastor who was in New Jersey and for the next three and a half weeks. They had at least one funeral every day for a member of his congregation every day.

6:12I remember that our churches were full. They were full that night. They were full the next day. They were certainly full the next Sunday and for weeks to come. And then not so much. I remember the t-shirts and the bumper stickers and the declarations that we would never forget. But just as surely as children need to be fed and the harvest needed to be brought in, and we all thought that baseball and football games needed to be played, I'll be it with the singing of God Bless America and the unfurling of field-sized flags. We did move together into rhythms of life that were forever changed by 9-11 but somehow then quickly normalized, right? We gave up a lot of freedoms in order for some sense of security. We all became instantly willing to take off our shoes and leave the people we love on the outside of the TSA barricade. The clarity was real.

7:12And then it passed. And that's the way it works. And there's a cycle to it. And that's the cycle that I want us to recognize today. There's a cycle to this. The clarity that is brought by crisis yields to the desire and the demand for comfort for normalization for finding a new normal. And when comfort is prioritized, a collective form of amnesia sets in. How do I know? I've literally read the book. The book of judges in the Old Testament chronicles this cycle. It's called the cycle of judges. The loop Israel repeated it for centuries. And we've all followed suit ever since. Here in the United States, we're in this cycle of the judges. How do I know? Because we're always in it in one stage or another. People forget God. They drift into compromise.

8:12Sin is evident. Sin has consequences. It allows those consequences. He allows people to suffer the consequences of sin of all kinds. And the consequences of other people sins. One way to describe that in the book of judges is that he removes his protection. There's a crisis. People experience oppression. There's all kinds of terrible things. And then in their desperation, there is this cry. The people cry out to God. And they do so in repentance. They do so on their knees. And today, God hears their cry. And in the book of judges, God raises up a judge, a leader who brings them through a process of restoration to God, a restoration of peace of mind, peace of life, and peace with their neighbors. Here's the way it's described in judges 2.10. After a whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done.

9:13It takes a generation to forget, to forget how God rescued, to forget the pain, to forget the vow. And the cycle, it happens all over again. So my invitation, as we never forget, right? I don't want it to be a slogan. I want it to be a call. What if we were the people that broke the cycle and chose today to genuinely remember, to become members again, not because we're forced to by a tragedy, but because we are compelled by the truth and the goodness of God? Our friend, Carol McClaude, is going to join us next, and we're going to get back to the Bible. What if this became back to the Bible season, just like you're going back to school or back to work? Let's get back to the Bible. That's next here on The Reconnect. Kids have gone back to school. Athletes have gone back to the field of play.

10:15Have you gone back to the Bible? Are you in a Bible study this season? Our friend, Carol McClaude, is back from Carol McClaude Ministries. Carol, welcome back to The Reconnect. Thanks, Carmen, happy September. Yes, happy September. Let's invite folks to recognize that we don't age out of Bible study. That we don't graduate from Sunday school. Let's invite people to reengage with the Word of God. I just love this so much as you know that I do. Carmen, life is hard. People are mean, and the economy is up and down, and politics are gruesome. We all have to have an anchor. We all have to have something that keeps us steady in life. For me, it's always been the Bible. The Bible is our source of eternal truth. When we build our lives upon it,

11:15when we use the Word of God as a map for how to traverse mountains and valleys and storms and oceans, listen, your life will be blessed beyond measure. I always say to women, because you know one of the things I talk about often is to women who are battling depression or other emotional challenges. Listen, one of the healthiest things you can do is join a Bible study where the Word of God is taught with wisdom and truth and strength and power. You will be a better man or a woman when you decide, you know what? You know what? I'm going to go to a Bible study. Now, I want you to go to church. I want you to go to Sunday morning church and sing the hymns of the faith and hear your pastor expound on the Word of God. But I also want you to go to a Bible study where your questions can be answered

12:17where you can wrestle with eternal truth. That's so good. And Carol, I want to give you an opportunity to address maybe one of the... I mean, people object for so many reasons to what you have just said. But I'll just use this one because you unpack it so well in a post on your website. Why you can trust the Bible. So if you're listening right now and you want the notes from the conversation that we're having with Carol, I'm happy to send those to you on the text line 877-933-2484. Let's start with the subjection. The Bible contradicts itself. Is that true? Does it? Okay, that is a great place to start, Carmen, as you know. So is it true that the Bible contradicts itself? Actually, it's not true. You know, while there are things in the Word of God that can cause me to wonder,

13:18they can cause me to say, really, really is that what it says. The Bible in effect does not contradict itself. Now, when you look at the list of contradictions that skeptics throw out there, 95% of them are spelling differences. You cannot say that's a contradiction just because through the thousands of years that the Bible was written, that they spelled words differently. For instance, John, one of the disciples, his name can be spelled a variety of ways. That is not a contradiction. So there's that. And then there's also another area of contradictions is that sometimes God is referred to as the Lord. Sometimes he's referred to as he,

14:18with a preposition. That's not a contradiction. Is it a difference? Yeah, but it doesn't change the meaning of the text. One time I was having a conversation with my dear friends who's an agnostic. And we always have these healthy conversations. And she said to me, Carol, one of the things that causes me to disbelieve the Bible is that it contradicts itself. So I said, okay, show me where that is. And the word of God, you know what she said to me, Carmen? She said, well, I really can't show you that, but I've just heard that. Yeah. So diversity. I would say 90% of the time, that's the issue. Right. Right. Yeah. So diversity and communication does not mean disagreement. Let me give you a for instance. If you and I and our children and our parents and our friends

15:20had all been there that fateful day when the challenger exploded. Remember that day watching it explode there? Vividly. I was in high school in Tampa, Florida, and we were all standing in the parking lot. I remember vividly. Wow. You know, if we were all to write down our memories of that day, Carmen, they'd all look and sound and feel a little bit different. But that doesn't mean disagreement. It just means diversity of expression. So the Bible is not a one-note robotic printout. The Bible is not a government document where you get a gold copy and I get a pink copy and someone else gets a blue copy. It's God's work in real life, recorded by real people, living in real time. So let's use a test case here when it comes to what skeptics say is that the Bible contradicts itself. Let's look at the Virgin birth because I think we all love Christmas

16:22and know enough about the birth of Jesus. Written by four different men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospels. They're telling the truth of Christ from their perspective. Matthew and Mark mentioned the Virgin birth. Mark and John don't even mention it. In the book of Matthew, Joseph hears of it in a dream. And in Luke, Mary is visited by an angel. What does this mean? Is it contradicting it each other? No. And this is one of the contradictions that skeptics point out. No, it just means difference of expression. Does this mean that Mark and John were not aware of the Virgin birth? Or that Jesus was born? Right. It just means that that's a good point. He was born. Mark's account of the life of Jesus is concise and exciting and riveting. And he skips completely the first 30 years of the life of Jesus.

17:25Does that mean that Jesus didn't have a first 30 years? No. It's just difference of expression. Yeah, I'm always reminded that time is limited. And so telling a story and the way you choose to tell it and the details you include, is always limited. And so I think that's one approach to the conversation as well. Look, they had limited time to tell the story. They had told an endless number of stories about the life of Jesus. And they chose what they chose. And it's intentional. And so the author's intent, I think, is a huge part of it. All right, we've got to take a brief break. When we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Carol MacLeod. We'd love to send you the link on the text line, 877-933-2484. Our encouragement is that you would get yourself into a Bible study. And if you're resistant to that, I want you to ask yourself why. Are you interested in knowing God? Are you not open to hearing or encountering him?

18:25Because that's what the Lord is offering you in his word. So we're going to continue this conversation in just a moment. You're listening to the reconnect. Hey, friend, how are you listening right now to this podcast? Did you know there's an app for that? Yes, really. The free faith radio app is a great way to stream this show and avail yourself of other great shows and resources available through faith media. You can hear the conversations that you love on demand and easily share them with someone else. The faith radio app makes it easy to listen live, replay your favorite conversations, and find new programs that you'll love. Hope is available all the time everywhere, right where you need it, and when you need it on the faith radio app. Text the word app, APP, to 877-933-2484, and follow the link or search faith radio network. I'd like to go with you wherever you're going every time of the day and night. So take me with you as you head out there into the world that God so loves by downloading the faith radio app again.

19:29Just text the word app, APP, to 877-933-2484, and follow the link or search faith radio network in your app store. I'm Carmen LeBurg, you're listening to the ReConnect. I need to do a moment of cleanup on aisle 4. If you have texted us from the 605 area code and you are not getting a text message back from us that includes Carol McClaude's notes, it's because your phone is set to not let us do that. So I'm just letting you know, we're trying to send you the notes why you can trust the Bible from Carol McClaude Ministries. If you don't get a text back, it's because it's not letting us do it. That's frustrating. Carol, let's talk a little bit more about the study of Scripture, maybe the motivation to study the Bible. I'm not studying the Bible so that I'll be ready to defend it.

20:31I'm studying it so that I can know God, His character, and His ways. Maybe talk about the motivation. Why do we study Scripture? What should we expect to happen when we do that? Yeah, Carmen, I was just thinking about the Scripture. Mark 1230 that says, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Remember that word mind and with all your strength. So, you know, as evangelical believers, as people who love the Lord, we're really, really good at loving God with our souls and with our hearts. We're passionate about worship and and and going to church, spend time and prayer, listening to Christian music. But we often forget a key phrase in Mark 1230. We're commanded by Jesus to love the Lord with our minds. So, it's it's okay to be motivated by a desire to understand who Jesus is, what the Bible is, what the heart of God is.

21:42Carmen, that's what motivates me. I want to know God and this Scripture invites us to know Him with our minds. Let me give you another Scripture, Carmen, because this is pretty exciting. In Isaiah 118, the Holy Spirit through the prophet Isaiah invites us to reason with God. What? It says, come now. Let us reason together. That's an incredible invitation. So, we as believers in Jesus Christ in the 21st century, we have been invited by the greatest mind, the most loving heart in all of eternity past, in all of eternity come to come to God and reason with Him. This is the Hebrew word, yacac. And it means to show, to prove to be right, to prove, to convince, to search out a matter. It can eat Carmen, it can even mean this, to argue.

22:45So, you can be motivated by your questions, Carmen. If you've got questions about God, and that's what's motivating you to go to Bible study, God says bring it. He says bring it. I can take your questions. When you love God with your whole heart, you can also love Him with your mind. Another thing that motivates me, Carmen, to study the word of God, is I want to be prepared. I want to be, as Paul said to Timothy, be a workman that you don't need to be ashamed. So that when people come to me with questions, I can say, oh, let's talk about that. The Bible actually covers that. So one of my motivations is I want to be prepared to share my faith. And you know what else, Carmen? Let me say one more thing.

23:45Love is enough motivation. If you love the Lord, and you just want to spend time with Him, honey, that's your motivation. Because you love Jesus, and you want to spend time with Him. That's reason enough to open your Bible. That's so good. I mean, I think that we look forward to a day when we're going to be known fully, or we're going to know fully, even as we're fully known. And I guess that's always one of the questions that I asked folks, like, are you not interested in knowing anything about God now? Like, if you genuinely imagine that you're going to spend eternity with Him, wouldn't you like to start getting to know Him now? His character, his ways, his history, his love, his attributes, his nature, what he's done. I mean, all of those things. And so, you know, for me, there is... It's not just the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake. It's the pursuit of knowledge, because I want to know Him.

24:48It is one way that God has provided for us to know Him. We know Him, there's evidence in creation enough that we're without excuse if we don't acknowledge His existence. But I can only know so much by experiencing the art of creation. I also want to know what He thinks, how He is interacted with people in the past, what His plans are, what He's told me about what to expect about heaven. I mean, on and on and on. Like, I want to know all of that. And so, my pursuit of Scripture study is also quite simply my pursuit of God. Yeah. So, Carmen, let me tell this really quick story. The summer before Craig and I were going to be married. We were apart. He was on an even evangelistic trip with a singing group. I was at home planning a wedding. And Carmen, let me tell you, every single day, I was at the post office. The instant the door opened, because I wanted a letter from my beloved. I'd go every afternoon when the afternoon mail had just come.

25:49Mr. Holly, is there anything for me today? And of course, he knew why I was coming. And in the middle of the summer, the Holy Spirit stopped me in my tracks. And the Holy Spirit said to me, Carol, I know you love Craig. And you're aching for letters from him. But do you love me? Are you aching to read my love letter to you? Just as you want love letters from this human source of love. And that sort of changed my perspective, Carmen. I want to read the Bible because I love Jesus. And as you said, I want to get to know him. I want to know the one whom my soul loves. And so the Bible, if nothing else, are love letters from heaven. They're the heart of God written in a volume to mankind. Oh, sisters and brothers, there'll be days when you don't understand it. There'll be days when you scratch your head. But there'll be more days when your soul will be at rest.

26:53And you'll say, thank you, Father. Thank you for the words that you've written to me. I love every one of them. They're honey to my soul. They comfort me. They encourage me. They give me wisdom. They direct me. Thank you, Father, for the Bible. You've just inspired me to consider people who are lonely and are disconnected, who are alone. And you see them walk to their mailbox. And it's some for some of them a very long, slow walk. And they open that mailbox and there's nothing there. Maybe some of us should start simply writing letters to people that we know are lonely or alone. And they don't, they're not our letters. They're actually just passages of scripture. Like you don't have to come up with your own stuff to say. Just open the Bible, find an encouraging passage of scripture, write it out in your own hand, give a direct reference to the Bible passage where it's from, put it in an envelope,

27:56and send it to somebody that you know is lonely or alone. Like I think that is, that could be an incredible ministry, both for you to give you something to do, but also for the one who receives it. So I just appreciate Carol the way you describe, like going to the post office in the morning and in the evening, anticipating a letter from your beloved. And for our letter writers today, because I believe somebody's being prodded by the Holy Spirit to do what you just said, if you don't know what to write, let me help you out. Start with Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible. There's something in there for you to copy and send to somebody. Start with Psalm chapter 119. You'll find good stuff there to send to your friends. I love that. Carol, thank you so much for as always connecting with us. Carol has many, many, very good Bible studies posted at you version.

28:57That's a great place to go to get one of her Bible studies. You can go directly to carolmacloudministries.com. That's the link we'll send you on the text line today, 877-933-2484. Bonnie Christian is going to join us next. She's what I would describe as an insider. She's inside the evangelical world. She's also inside the DC journalistic circle that often conflates the faith of evangelical Christians in America with a very, very political block. She's here to offer a way forward by which evangelicalism might be redeemed to what I would say is its historical credibility in its moral and spiritual movement of a people of God in a place. So Bonnie Christian will be here next. The book is in defense of evangelicalism. You're listening to the reconnect. If I tell you that I'm an evangelical or an evangelical Christian, what's the first thought that you have?

30:01Is that positive? Is that negative? How do you frame that in your mind? Are you one, two? Bonnie Christian, I think would be happy to tell you that she's an evangelical Christian and then she's going to want to know what you think when you hear that phrase. In defense of evangelicalism, it's not a memoir, but it is personal. And Bonnie Christian is the author. She's here to share it with us today. Bonnie, welcome to the reconnect. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm an evangelical Christian. I know what I mean when I say that. And I also know that not everybody thinks or imagines the same meaning when I lay claim to the term. So part of what you're doing, it feels like in defense of evangelicalism is helping us sort of recover the definition of what it means. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, this is a big part of the introduction of the book to say, who are we talking about? When I say I want to defend evangelicalism, what do I mean? And a lot of the public discourse on this subject in recent years has defined evangelicalism as a voting block.

31:04And it is true that evangelicals do have patterns of voting that are kind of unique in American politics. That's real, but that kind of reductive definition, I think is deeply incomplete. And mistakes, an aspect of this very large movement of tens of millions of people in America alone, let alone around the world and across history, mistakes and aspect of it for the whole and misses the shared history and culture and and deep core of faith and practice that I would argue defines evangelicalism. Is an evangelical a person who goes to a particular kind of church? Sometimes that can be a good shorthand. I would say that an evangelical Christian is a Protestant, so not Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. Part of a tradition that dates back to the first great awakening, those big revivals that swept through America and England or the UK more generally, you probably recall these from high school history class several hundred years ago with with preacher, evangelist preachers like non-wesley.

32:12And we have that shared history and that shared culture and today and throughout history, we have shared emphasis that a very, very common and widely accepted list of those emphasis says that we emphasize individual conversion. We emphasize social activism, we emphasize the authority of scripture and we emphasize the cross. And yeah, that does, we do, you can look at patterns of denominations and of non-denominational churches that tend to favor those things more than others. Well, and those, I mean, that really is a wonderful introduction to what you lay out in the book, but also I really appreciate money, the direction that the conversation then turns. When you talk about the dissonance that evangelical Christians by the definition you just provided, the dissonance that we feel today. For those of us that are sincerely trying to like bring faith in Christ to bear in a deeply polarized country, we feel a dissonance and you express that as well.

33:23Yeah, absolutely. I tell this story in the book, it's part of why my own experience of that dissonance is part of why I decided to write the book. I was last spring, I was reading a book by the evangelical theologian J.I. Packer for something at my church. And as I was reading it, again and again, Packer would say, well, I think this because I'm an evangelical or well of course, because I'm an evangelical, I would say. And I was noticing this and I was noticing this strange reaction myself where I was reading and thinking, you know, why is he so chipper about this? Why is he so happy? Where are his qualifications? Where is his layers and layers of disclaimers for his evangelicalism? And then I had to interrogate him myself, why am I reacting this way? You know, like, I'm an evangelical and I know it and I work at an evangelical magazine. I went to an evangelical seminary. I am a member of an evangelical church. So why am I having this response of shame almost about my own tradition, the tradition that brought me to faith and interrogating that interrogating, you know, that reaction and where that came from and noticing that so many other thoughtful and well intended evangelicals are having that same reaction.

34:36Because they're looking out at the public discourse at how we're described as just, you know, would be fascists who cannot participate in American democracy, cannot be trusted to sort of be ordinary Americans that we are. I think people look at that and they look at what's happening in their church on Sunday morning and it's good and it's normal and it's fine and they don't know how to reconcile those two things. They don't know who's right. Should they believe their eyes or should they believe this discourse? And so addressing that dissonance and saying, you know what actually know what you experience on Sunday morning is real. And that's not to say that this movement is perfect and that it doesn't have problems and that it never needs reform. It does need reform. Christians always need reform. This is a basic Protestant conviction. And yet those goods are also real and should not be dismissed. Well, and I think when we talk about always needing reform, an evangelical would, you know, be sure to add always according to the word of God, like the high regard for the authority of scripture.

35:43I do think is something that marks evangelical Christians in a way that can bring us together as opposed to dividing us. We are a Jesus on the cross centered people. Like I think that's as you have pointed out, we do believe that individuals, you know, must experience a personal spiritual change transformation, that conversion is that born again, like we are the born again people and we are the ones who think John three is still relevant. And then you and then activism is a part of this as well. Like we do believe we're a living demonstration of the kingdom of God in the midst of the kingdoms of this world and that we are ambassadors of it. And we're supposed to be doing something. Like the idea that faith is actively expressed through not only the sharing of the gospel, but the extension of kingdom principles in the here and now. Yeah, living on earth as it will be in heaven. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Living demonstrations of the kingdom of the like I think is that you know, so when you when you use the term activism, like some people might hear that differently, we're not talking about necessarily marching around with signs, we might.

36:49We're talking about doing the good that Jesus compels us to do because we're his people. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I think activism in our society is often understood to be, you know, sort of lobbying a politician in some form or another. The activism that I'm talking about here might sometimes include that, but it's a much broader understanding of, you know, being the hands and feet of Christ in the world, not only within our church communities, but in wider communities. And this was something that as I was writing and researching the book, I was kind of pleasantly surprised, you know, I when I started out, I knew that I wanted it to be a journalistic project, a project with a lot of reporting and research. But I didn't know how much I would be able to find like hard data, like large scale survey data and research about this kind of thing in particular to be able to sort of demonstrate beyond anecdote, beyond my impression that even leles are doing good in the world. And that evangelicalism is making evangelicals better than we would be in its absence.

37:51And one of the really remarkable things was just how much evidence there was to those effects that I go into detail in the book, sharing those numbers and that reporting. It is, it is a book that includes a lot of data as you're listening right now, but it also is a book that sort of describes how we might better see ourselves and see what we're doing. See ourselves and reflect the reality of a positive evangelicalism in the world today. The book is in defense of evangelicalism, a response to its culture, despisers. And here with us is Bonnie Christian, we'd love to send you the direct link on the text line, 877-9332-484 will also send you Bonnie's substacks so that you can keep up with what she's writing about there as well. When we come back, I'm going to ask Bonnie to tell us what the monstering of normal church going evangelicals, what does that term mean and how are we experiencing it?

38:51I mean, you might have been monstered and don't even know it. That's up next here on the Reconnect. Sometimes we just need to have a conversation about faith itself. I mean, this faith radio, we talk about faith a lot, talk about putting your faith in Jesus. What does that mean and what does that look like? Maybe you'd just like to have a conversation with somebody about that to get some resources explaining what faith in Jesus really is, what a relationship with Jesus could look like. If you want to explore more about who Jesus is, what he taught, what having a relationship with him could be like, I invite you to text the word faith to 41224. Again, you text the word faith to 41224. You're going to get a series of text messages over the next few weeks just exploring what it means to put your faith in Jesus. The promises he makes, who he is and what a relationship with him can really look like.

39:53I'm Carmen LeBurg, you're listening to the Reconnect. Bonnie Christian is here with us, her book in defense of evangelicalism. Bonnie, when you talk about the monster of normal church going evangelicals, what are you talking about? Oh man, so many examples I could give. I think one that's really useful to give here though is the conversation in our country around Christian nationalism. One of the people who I interviewed for my book is a pastor down in Texas who I had him take this very widely used survey that you do a little bit of math and it gives you a Christian nationalism score. And he scored high, he scored squarely as a Christian nationalist. And if you read the books and the news articles that use the data from this survey, you would think like, you know, he is just ready to implement theocracy in America and he probably hates immigrants and all this kind of thing.

40:56That pastor himself is an immigrant from Mexico. And when I spoke to him about, and he pastors, it pastors a church of immigrants in Spanish, many of whom are in the country illegally and he helps them, you know, assimilate as they can, he helps them find jobs and go through the immigration process and follow the law as they can. And his real life position is so much more nuanced and, you know, he loves in America precisely because he is an immigrant and because he came here to sort of a better life. And when you speak with him, he's very, very unmistakably clear that he is not interested in theocracy. He loves our constitution, he loves the Bill of Rights, he wants to have equal treatment before the law and liberty for everyone. And if you just look at those numbers, you won't see that. You'll see someone who sounds scary. But that couldn't be farther from the truth when you actually talk to Antonio and understand his perspective and how he lives and where he's coming from.

42:00Well, and I, by the way, would score high as well if tested. And yet we have plenty of folks who are with us here every day on the reconnect who, you know, they're their head is on fire frequently when I'm speaking compassionately about the stranger among us, the immigrant. I mean, I write and so. Or when we had a guest on earlier day, Elizabeth Newman, who addresses this, the issue of Christian nationalism in her book and she really does want us to like be identifying. People who we know who are moving in a direction that is is hostile toward neighbor and that's not that's evangelical Christians were not moving in hostility toward our neighbors that's not the posture of Christ. And so I think that the lines are. People like to have lines drawn that are very clear and you know, I know where to put you I want to stick you in that spot. And then people are surprised when they're, you know, railing against evangelicals and I'm like, hey, I am one of those I am an evangelical Christian like, well, wait, but you.

43:10And so I do think that what you're helping us do is repersonalize the conversation like that was my experience of your book. You do you do the data you do the research. But then you like help me repersonalize it and that's important like we it's not a bunch of people in a box. It's it's a very personal reality. I think that's true and I you know my argument about evangelicalism is not oh, it's not that bad and it's not oh, there's some nice ones and they can kind of you know, well, we'll like them even if we hate the rest. It's that you know, this is a movement of tens of millions of people in America alone and in any collection of people that size you will find bad things you will even find evil. That is real. And we, you know, every Christian. We are always called to be on the lookout for sin and to be eager for repentance. And yet at the same time this is the movement with real goods and with people who are just ordinary folks trying to participate in a really messed up political system in this country trying to love their neighbors trying to serve their communities.

44:22Not always getting it right. Absolutely, but normal people and people that you can have a country with. That's so good. I like where you land it, which is that evangelicalism's greatest strength is it's enthusiasm. So, you know, thank you for the invitation to reclaim a joyful contagious, focused on the cross gospel, advancing faith without being combative. Yeah, that's that's the hope. Yeah, Bonnie, and something that you want to leave us with as we part company today. I think the single clear thing I would say is that, you know, there have been so many critiques of evangelicalism and sometimes those critiques have a grain of truth sometimes more than a grain of truth. But what I would encourage my fellow evangelicals to do is where where there is truth in those critiques so often what we need to do in response is to be more evangelical, be more serious in our study of scripture, be more often in church, be more often in prayer.

45:23We have these riches within our own tradition that can help us make repairs where repairs needed and help us communicate the hope and the faith that we have to a wider world. That's such a wonderful and marvelous invitation. Be more evangelical, not less. I just love that. Bonnie, thank you for joining us today on the Reconnect. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm connected with Bonnie Christian at Christianity today. You can also do it on her sub stack. We'll send you that direct link on the text line along with a link to the book in defense of evangelicalism of response to its culture despisers. We'll send that to you on the text line 877-933-2484. All right, I want you to take a deep breath. We've covered a lot of territory today. We have talked about trust. We have talked about AI and it's the fears related to it being out of control. We've talked about how we might prepare faithfully as people in the culture.

46:23We've talked about marking the 25th anniversary tomorrow of 9-11. We've talked about the grief that is being marked today, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And so there's a lot to be thinking about. We've talked about being sure we're in the word of God so that the word of God could get into us before we get out there into the world that God so loves. And so as we part company today, I want you to consider what God is pouring into your life that he intends to pass through to someone else. Is it his nearness? Is it his faithfulness? Is it his goodness? Is it grace? Is it forgiveness? Is it steadfast love? What is God pouring into your life today by the power of his Holy Spirit? Because you enjoy communion with him. Like what is God giving you that he intends for you to pass through to someone else?

47:30Maybe it's a word of hope. Maybe it's the assurance of being right there, putting flesh on the gospel. And then I want you to go out there and do it. As a Christian, you represent Christ every single day. It's who you are. It's what you do. And you don't do it alone. You do it in his company. You do it by his power, in his strength. And you do it with his blessing. You are commissioned by Christ to go and make disciples of others everywhere as you go. And he is with you always in the midst of it. Friend, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace. People do not need another piece of our mind. They need the peace of the mind of Christ.

48:34And you are sent out there into the world to give it to them. Our Fall Fundraiser is quickly approaching. And I would invite you to be praying now about your financial and prayerful support of this ministry. You know how it benefits and blesses you and you know that God is using it to amplify the gospel to more and more people every day. And so we invite you in. Pray with us in advance of next week's fundraiser and have a great day and God bless. Thanks for listening to the reconnect with Carmen LaBurg. Let us know how we can help you more fully reconnect the eternal with the everyday. We want to walk with you throughout your journey of discipleship. So let's connect. You can text us at 877-933-2484 or connect with us online at myfahethradio.com and on all our social media. I look forward to connecting with you as we each seek to reconnect the eternal with the everyday. 25 years after 9-11, the stories of that day still remind us what faith can look like in the most terrifying moments.

49:41Looking straight towards the direction of the Statue Liberty and what I saw froze me in my tracks. I can still see the giant and great plane bearing down on me. All I remember seeing in Lord Utikovan and I dove under the desk. Hear these stories from 9-11 on this week's episode of The Unfolding on Apple and Spotify and at myfahethradcast.com.