Thinking Christian about Religious Influence

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, and welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today, what I want to do is I want to talk through a recent Pew research study that came out. And this research study deals with the perspective on religion in public life. And the study shows that 80% of the U.S. adults who were surveyed actually think that religion is losing influence in public life. About 57% of those who responded believe that that loss of influence is a bad thing. So that encompasses around 49% of people who felt like the waning influence of religion was bad and another 8% of those who believed that religion was not losing influence and saw that influence as good. Now, the report is really interesting because as we think through religion, as we think through the influence of religion, you know, many Christians out there may be saying, yes, this is great. 80% of people believe that religion is losing its influence. And the majority of people feel like that's a bad thing. But as we dig into the other aspects of the report, we find some rather problematic matters. And so there is a sense in which Christians need to temper, I think, their anticipation that religion can long-term be influential in the way we might like it to be influential within the United States. What do I mean by that? Number one, I mean that there was a book written a few years ago by Andy Stanley. It was called Irresistible. And in it, he suggests that the early church was just that, irresistible, that their way of life just brought in all of these different converts and that people in the Roman Empire and really anywhere they were, were just so compelled by the life of the church that the gospel message became irresistible. Now, that may very well be the case. There are instances throughout church history where the church has been more and or less successful than other times. Oftentimes, that can be due to the character of the church and how compelling the church actually is in presenting Christ to the world. At the same time, you know, we have examples throughout church history, throughout the Bible, really, that demonstrate that even faithful proclamation of a truthful message, the faithful proclamation of the gospel, the faithful proclamation of a word from God are not met with the same sort of fruit. And so my mind goes directly to Jeremiah, who did a lot of ministry and saw very little fruit as people still go into exile. And so I just think that we have to temper our understanding and temper our expectations on what the influence of religion actually does. So the first thing I want to talk about is just that. What does the influence of religion do and why should we be concerned about it? Number one, I do think the influence of religion is actually quite important. I do not think that it's dependent on governmental structure. I think that people who are committed to Christianity, and I'm using religion and Christianity a little interchangeably here, but let me just speak specifically to Christians so that it doesn't get confusing. I believe that the church, the body of Christ, people who are united in him, should and should continue to have an influence on our nation, regardless of whether we are effective in that influence. Now, what do I mean by effective? What I mean by effective is really just that we are going to define some ways in which we would like to see our influence change the world. And to the extent that those changes come about, we might say that that's effective. I think that's the wrong way for us to be thinking about it. I think at the very least, we need to be very open to releasing that concept and abandoning it. For me, when I think about influence, our influence is to be salt and light. Our influence is to be different in the world. Our influence is to point to and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, whether or not it has the effect that we desire or not. I think that many of the teachings in Scripture, particularly in the Gospels, suggest that, you know, we are supposed to be doing a particular sort of work. We are supposed to be faithful and God produces the growth. We see this in 1 Corinthians, for instance, where Paul says, you know, the one who plants and the one who waters are nothing. It was God who causes the growth. And so I think that there is something to this idea of, yes, we should be faithful. Yes, we should be putting forth effort to proclaim the gospel. We should be theologically critiquing the world around us. And in that sense, we are proclaiming that truth outside the walls of the church. We should be living differently so that the world has an alternative that it can see. And that in that way, we could be influential as a people group. But at the end of the day, whether or not that has its desired effect, whether or not people are converted to the Lord Jesus Christ is very much out of our hands. And so we need to be careful about how we think about influence and the influence of particularly the body of Christ and I would say religion in general. Now, does that mean that we shouldn't try to influence the culture around us? Absolutely not. I think that there are ways in which we should be proclaiming truth to the public. So just as a for instance, you know, this research study was done and it's largely related to Christianity and the government. It deals with that and we'll get into some of that in a little bit. But essentially, if we read Romans 13 and we understand what Romans 13 is saying, it's saying that all governing authorities sit underneath God. All the governing authorities that are established by God and instituted by God are actually under the authority of God. They don't have an authority that is not delegated to them by God. And so part of what the church does having received this revelation from the Lord, having seen this in our holy scriptures, we are supposed to remind our governing authorities that they are not ultimate, that their authority, whether they would like to believe that or not, is delegated from God. And thus, they have a responsibility to serve him. And so I think that's the sort of conversation we should be having with our government. Not necessarily, you know, general morals or broad ideas. Those things aren't bad. But for the Christian church, we've got to start with this notion of, here's the theological reality. Here's who the triune God is. This is how you fit in the equation. And so these are the implications of where you fit in that equation. And so there is that sort of an influence there. I think oftentimes when we're thinking about influence, what we're thinking about are what I would call sort of the picking up the weapons of the world, right? Trying to solve the problems before us. And sometimes, potentially, losing sight of what we're really trying to do. That, you know, solving one problem or another may not be a bad thing, but the reality is that if we're solving these, you know, these little issues, right, but we're not really proclaiming Christ, we're not pointing to and glorifying the triune God, we are doing something wrong. And so we have to address the world as the body of Christ. We have to address the world as the church. We'll be coming out with a little series on the Barmen Confession. Barmen Confession was written in 1934 by the Confessing Church in Germany in response to the German Evangelical Church's acquiescence to the Nazi regime. And so it's got some really rich theology in there that we're going to be talking about on the program. And I would just say that as a broad summary of the Barmen Confession, one of the things that it really does highlight is that the church has to engage the world as church. When the church engages the world on the world's terms, we're sort of losing an aspect of our identity that we really can't afford to lose, and we're conveying something to the world that we really shouldn't be conveying. And so we've got to really root ourselves down into our identity as the body of Christ in order to be influential at all. Now, as we get back into this report, some of the things we see are actually encouraging. So, for instance, and I'll read a couple stats off to you, there's an increase in the percentage of respondents since 2020 who feel that there is some conflict between their religious beliefs and the mainstream American culture. So that's 42% in 2020, but that's 48% in 2024. We also see that 33% of individuals said that it was not, we might as well not discuss religion at all if someone disagrees with you, and that was 33% in 2019. It was 41% affirmed the same strategy in 2024. And so we're seeing this sort of growing...

Tension, potentially, of the way people dialogue with one another, the way people discuss religion with one another, and the way that the culture is sort of beginning to contradict much more explicitly, perhaps Christian ideals, Christian tenets of religion, Christian ways of living and the messages about Christianity. Now, I tend to view this in a couple of ways. Number one, I think that things have definitely intensified. I think that we're seeing more overt and explicit messages that are counter the Christian message. When I think about Christian values or Christian virtues and sort of biblical principles, all these sort of abstract terms that oftentimes we hear as part of the U.S. conversation, you know, maybe the Judeo-Christian ethic, for instance, I do get a little concerned about that. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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And so it's very difficult for me to believe that, for instance, the United States was founded on Christian values in the sense that Christ was indispensable to the United States at its founding. It's not that I don't think that Christians had some sort of influence there. It's not that I don't think that abstracted ideas, ideas pulled out of the Scriptures and divorced from their theological context, informed the institution of the United States. I think that did happen. I'm just not willing to call that Christian. And so when I say Christian values, what I mean is the things that people who are united in Christ value, the things that we care about and believe. That's what I'm saying when I say Christian values. And so as we kind of think about that, what I'm seeing is there's this sort of ramping up and intensification, and possibly that's due to media exposure and all of these various things, but there's this intensification of an explicit interest in opposing Christianity and Christian belief, really heavy distortions of God and a step away from what might be referred to as wholesomeness or these general morals with which many people used to believe. And so I think, here's basically what I'm saying. I think that we should have felt this way probably much sooner. I think that the church and the nations in which the church is embedded, so if we just broaden this out from the conversation about the United States, but the church is embedded within nations, right? We don't exist outside of a national context at this point. We're all embedded within a given nation. And as we're embedded within that nation, we should be viewing ourselves as sojourners and exiles, as we see in 1 Peter, or as recognizing that our citizenship is in heaven, as we see in Philippians 3. And so we are strangers and aliens in this context. We should always have felt a counter-culturalness. In other words, that the culture was not in favor of shaping and forming disciples for Jesus Christ. I think at best the culture can be neutral on that issue, because ultimately when we see the influence of religion coming in, probably what people are talking about, I think some of the survey data actually supports this assertion, so I'll get to that in a minute, but probably what we're talking about is the good influence of religion. We're not looking at the entire United States being converted to Christ. We're not looking at the elimination of all practices that would be non-biblical or against the Scriptures. What we're really talking about is a return to something that's a little bit more normalized, maybe a little bit more conservative, probably a little more, like I said, wholesome or moral, and sort of a shaping of this culture. But still, the stumbling block of Christ is going to be where Christians separate from even the people that they may agree with on the conservative and or liberal side. Christ is the crux in all of this. And so to be Christian is to believe in an authority that is above any governing authority. And in the United States, those governing authorities, we might say, well, that's the president, or that's the vice president, or that's the Senate, or the House of Representatives. But the reality is, it's us. There is an authority above us that our consensus-driven decisions sit underneath the authority of another, and that other is Jesus Christ. That's who we are. And so we can assume that throughout the nation's history, there have been a number of decisions that have raised tensions because ultimately, the United States was never trying to conform itself to the image of Christ. Not every American citizen was trying to conform themselves to the image of Christ. Christians are the only ones who have the primary vocation of pointing to and glorifying the triune God. And thus, when I read these statistics and there's this increasing number of people who see a conflict between their religious beliefs and the mainstream American culture from 2020 to 2024, I don't necessarily sit back and say, oh my gosh, the world has gotten so much worse. What I sit back and say is, I think we're just starting to feel the pain in very particular ways. In other words, I always see the world in a dichotomous relationship between the church and the world. There is a real distinction, and that real distinction, again, that crux is Christ. And so when I look at this, I say, well, maybe we should have felt worse about it previously, but now what we're seeing, it can't be ignored anymore. We're not comfortable with the type of sin that we see going on in today's world, and thus, we're feeling a little bit less comfortable and a little bit more in conflict with mainstream American culture. So there's that aspect. That's sort of, again, what I call matched or supporting data, where we see this 80% of people who are seeing the waning influence of religion as a negative. We're also seeing then an increasing number of people viewing their faith in conflict with American culture. Now, there's also some conflicting information in the report, which I found kind of interesting. For instance, regarding the upcoming election, relatively few U.S. adults believe that Biden or Trump were particularly religious. I think the category was actually very religious. Only 13% saw Biden as very religious and only 4% saw Trump as very religious. Again, we might look at that and say, wow, that's really strange. Here we are, we're saying that 80% of people feel like religion is declining, and yet the two running leading candidates for the president of the United States are not viewed as particularly religious at all. And so the person who's going to become the most powerful man in the world, right, hold this powerful position, neither of our candidates are particularly religious. Very odd. But the report does sort of address that. And so here's what the Pew report notes, and I'm just going to quote it because I think it's a really important thing for us to get our heads around. It says, quote, though they don't think Trump is very religious himself, most Republicans and people in religious groups that tend to favor the Republican Party do think he stands up at least to some extent for people with their religious beliefs. Two-thirds of Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP, 67%, say Trump stands up for people with their religious beliefs, a great deal, quite a bit, or some. About the same share of white evangelical Protestants, 69%, say this about Trump, end quote. And so what we see here is that even though many people don't see Trump as particularly religious, they are viewing him as something of a friend to religion, that he is going to stand up for people of faith, to stand up for religious freedom in ways that perhaps the other candidate won't. And so, again, we sort of come to this moment where I think we've created in the political

I think we want to be careful not to create someone with a, you know, the outlaw and the cowboy. We don't want to create a sort of black or white picture where there's a good guy and a bad guy. What we want is we want to understand that these are definitely shades of gray on this side, and that having a president who maybe isn't particularly religious or very religious stand up for people of religious faith has political implications. In other words, there's a political reason that he's doing that. There's a political service that he is putting forward. Now, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, right? Far from identifying Donald Trump as the new Cyrus, which I have seen some people do online, I am not trying to argue that at all, not even close. What I would say is, as we look at the Old Testament, we do see God use leaders who are not part of the covenant community of Israel to correct and then ultimately deliver his people. So I would think all the way back to something like the first Pharaoh, who knew Joseph, and the way that Joseph was able to gain influence within that culture to demonstrate God's blessing and then ultimately help his family come over into Goshen and really save Israel from famine. That would be a great example. Then I think Nebuchadnezzar, who is called God's servant in Jeremiah 25, I believe that's the right chapter. Jeremiah 25, Babylon, or Nebuchadnezzar is called God's servant. And he's going to come in and he's going to punish Israel for some of the things they've done. And then ultimately God will sort of break him down as well. And Cyrus, the Persian, will become God's anointed. We see that in Isaiah. And so Cyrus is now God's anointed who's going to come in and free Israel from exile to some degree and send them back to rebuild the temple and rebuild Jerusalem. And so the Persian Empire had a different sort of governing strategy that allowed the Jews to be sent back to their homeland and allowed them to rebuild. And that was a good thing. Cyrus was God's servant in that respect. And so I think that as we as we look out at the landscape of what's going on in America, we have to consider not which candidate is best for us. I think what we have to consider first is what is best for us. That would be sort of my number one question. Who is, you know, what is best for us? What does our best look like? You know, I doubt that many Israelites would have raised their hand to vote for Nebuchadnezzar. And yet Nebuchadnezzar was inevitable. He was God's servant. God was using Nebuchadnezzar to do something with his people Israel. I have a feeling that more of them may have said, okay, Cyrus, maybe. Good stuff. Thanks, Lord, for sending Cyrus. And yet that was an opportunity that was not easy either. And so all I guess I'm saying is this. Sometimes we don't always understand what God is doing. And so as we're voting, as we're electing these people, what we need to do is not become so consumed with who ends up being in office, right? These beliefs are kind of tough, right? If this larger percentage, 69% of white evangelical Protestants, believe that Trump is, you know, helpful too, and in defense of people who hold religious beliefs, and he doesn't get elected, does that cause us problems? Sure. It probably does. It could. I'm not denying that. But at the same time, does that threaten our security? Not really. You know, the church is secure in Christ. It's not secure in a president. And so no matter what God is doing, whichever person God appoints as president next, the church needs to be prepared to be faithful regardless. And so, you know, some of these survey results are interesting, right? Like they're very interesting to see. It's interesting to understand how people think. It's interesting to see these statistics. And it's interesting to think about the way that Americans are thinking and feeling about religion. I think it's actually fairly hopeful. And yet at the same time, we have to sort of temper our expectations and remember that religious rights are not what give us the freedom to obey God. Christ has given us the freedom to obey God. Whoever it is that happens to be reigning over the United States, whoever happens to be ruling over the United States, whatever laws are passed, whatever else there is, they are not the ones who are giving us our freedom to obey Christ. We have been given that freedom through Christ's death or crucifixion and death and resurrection. And so as we're united with him in faith, we now have the opportunity to obey him regardless of the consequences, knowing that at the end we will be glorified with Christ, raised with Christ. That is the Christian hope. The Christian hope is not found in the next presidential election. It just simply isn't. And so I think that while this perspective that's offered in the research is important, and, you know, it expresses an understanding of the political maneuvering and the sort of political landscape that is out there. The reality is that we need to make sure that these percentages, these rather large percentages, and these perspectives do not replace our hope in Christ. That at the end of the day, as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 7, you know, we serve God where we are. We do not need to change our situation at all to serve the Lord. And if we start thinking that we need to change our situation to serve the Lord, we are thinking wrongly because we simply do not. Our job is to serve the Lord. If through serving the Lord things change, great. If they don't change, great. Either way, our job is to continue serving the Lord. Now our context does matter. It changes the way that we serve the Lord. It changes what we need to be prepared for. I certainly don't want to say that our context doesn't matter at all. I think we have to be adaptable. I think we have to learn to live within the confines of what we're given as a context. And yet our task doesn't really change. We're still to point to and glorify the triune God. So finally, what this research report on Pew, and it will be linked. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. As shown notes, so you'll get to see it. One of the things that it talks about is the sort of polarized conception of how Christians have sought to be influential. And this isn't about religion, this is about conservative Christians. So here's what they say. 72% of those who are unaffiliated with a religion, who are atheist or agnostic, or just, you know, sort of have like no comment when it comes to religion, no affiliation whatsoever, they tend to think that conservative Christians have overstepped in attempting to control religion in government and public schools. Now on the flip side of that, 63% of Christians believe the same thing about liberals. And so what we have is we have this 80% number of people who believe that religion is waning in its influence. 57% of those believe that that's a bad thing. And yet, when we look at these numbers and we look at, you know, how would we go about influence? How would religion go about exercising its influence? There's a lot of ambiguity there. It's just unclear how we would go about doing it. And so, you know, people tend to want Christians to stay out of public schools. They tend to want to stay out of public policy. I've talked about this before. You know, I think as individual Christians, we need to, and it's certainly appropriate for us to be involved in making policy decisions for our government. I would love to see us speak theologically about that. I do not think that voting and an upper, you know, a yes or a no, is particularly helpful from a theological speech perspective. It does not provide a lot of nuance. It's just basically a yes or a no, and that's all you get to say. And so I think that while voting is certainly not trivial, I also believe that we have to do more in

speaking to our government and our representatives and speaking theologically just to the world. And so it's not enough just to vote for the right person, the quote unquote right person. It's also important for us to figure out how do we go about speaking theologically to the world in which we live, right? So there's that aspect. But if we can't, you know, sort of, if people don't want us to go into schools, if there's going to be all this opposition, if it feels like, you know, we're using the political system a little too much, we're becoming sort of a lobbyist and advocacy group as opposed to the church, how do we go about doing this? And I would just say the first place to start is probably not cultural change. I don't see in the scripture that cultural change on a broad scale, sort of on the societal level, it is something that Christians in the New Testament, at least, and really even in the Old Testament, are particularly concerned with. It's not that they're not concerned at all, but it's that usually those changes occur within the Christian community. And so what we find, I think, is that, you know, Paul is going to reorient the master-servant relationship. Paul is going to reorient the husband-wife relationship. Paul is going to reorient the parent-child relationship, all of which happens within the community of faith. And so what Paul is counseling is not, hey, everybody, talk to your non-Christian friends in, you know, Ephesus and tell them that we should all be submitting to one another. Reorient completely the notion of headship in that community. And I've written a little bit on this. I'll link that article in the show notes as well. But I think the idea is that Paul wants the Christian community to be an alternative community. He wants them to live differently than the world. And so that requires different activities taking place in the world. It does not mean that we change what the world is doing. It means that as we live in the world, we are living differently. We're showing the world the difference that Christ makes. So I think we have to start there. I think we have to start with the house of faith. I think we have to start with discipling each other, committing ourselves to discipleship so that we learn how to live under the authority of Christ. And my deep belief is that as we lean into discipleship, as we bet on discipleship, opportunities will open up to us that are beyond anything that we could ask or think. There are strategies that God will use and implement through us, activities that he will do through a discipled people that we simply wouldn't do otherwise. And so we have to start there. The second activity I've already mentioned a little bit is that when we speak to these public policies, when we speak to, you know, what's going on in our schools, I do think that we have to speak theologically. We should be careful about speaking morally to these problems. My conviction on this issue, and again, I know there's a lot more nuance that could probably be brought to these kind of statements, but in a relatively short podcast, I would just say this. Do I believe that morality is a bad thing? Not at all. I believe that what I would call secondary structures, these are structures, if the church is the primary structure, the primary vehicle through which God's glory is revealed to the world, and it's primary because we have knowledge and insight, we have the Holy Spirit, we have, you know, resources that God has given us to proclaim him to the world, right? Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God is demonstrated. That's Ephesians 3, I believe. And so we've got this, right? The primary vehicle is the church. But then there are these secondary structures. And so one of the secondary structures would be the state under which things like public policy and public schools currently sit. And what the state is told to do is to essentially make judgments and it is supposed to gesture toward God's coming justice. This is something that Oliver O'Donovan in his book, The Ways of Judgment, sort of argues, and basically what he's saying is that the state is this, he calls it a secondary theater of witness to God's glory and that the state functions to what, the way I would phrase it is restrain evil, right, and to enact some sense of justice within the world. And so I think that the moral conversation on the level of a secondary structure is absolutely appropriate. And I think to the extent that Christians are working with and interacting with and participating in those secondary structures, the moral conversation is an appropriate one for us to begin with, but we have to advance beyond that moral conversation. We have to be pointing people to the Triune God. We have to be pointing people to a theological conversation and a theological reality. Our Christianity is not an opinion, folks. Jesus is Lord is not just my personal opinion. It's a fact. It's a reality. And so if we lead people out of our reality, what are we really doing? We are the only people on this planet, Christians, are the only people on this planet who can proclaim Jesus as Lord. And so if we're not doing it, if we're not constantly pointing to and magnifying the Triune God, I just don't see how we're ever going to accomplish what we are supposed to be doing, which is to go and make disciples of all nations. And so my encouragement is, you know, number one, just make sure that we root our hope in the right thing. Let's not make our bet on the next election. Let's not put our money down on somebody who is, you know, just sort of more friendly to religious folk, right? Let's really root our hope in Jesus Christ because that is who we have freedom in. Number two, I think we just need to speak theologically to the world. We need to be on message. And our message is always Christ and him crucified. Christ crucified and raised is the basic Christian message. It is the way we live our lives and it's the proclamation that we need to be making all over the place. And so we need to learn to speak theologically. And then finally, I think we just need to build a deep devotion and commitment to discipleship. We need to figure this out, church. We got to understand how this goes about because at the end of the day, if we're going to have any influence at all as the church, as the body of Christ, we have to devote ourselves to discipleship. We have to be sitting underneath the authority of Jesus Christ in order to make an effect as the body of Christ. And so we've got to get into that sort of discipleship mode. And so as we think about reports like this, as we sort of delve into them, again, I find this sort of hopeful. I think there's a lot of great things that come out of this report and very interesting things that come out of this report. At the same time, this report is not speaking to these trends, these ideas, these notions from a theological perspective. And so I wanted to try to, in this episode, situate some of these things in a theological perspective just so we have a slightly better idea of what it might look like for us as Christians to engage in these, you know, in our culture and really understand how we can demonstrate who Christ is to a watching world. So hopefully this has been helpful to you. I encourage you to check out the report, check out the article that I'm going to link in the show notes, and have a blessed day. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. I'm Mark Vinet, host of the Historical Jesus Podcast, which presents the new series, Miracles, focusing on biblical miracles from the Old and New Testament. Join me on the Historical Jesus Podcast as I explore the interesting, compelling, intriguing, and wonderful miracle stories of the Bible and the many great miraculous events inspired by the words and deeds of Jesus Christ.