Transcription
So, what is the greatest threat to evangelicalism? >> [music] >> Is it a crisis of authority, ideologies, or is it the celebrity pastor? Today, we're going to unclog evangelicalism with Michael Foster. We're going to talk about social media, and Neil Postman, the death of the gatekeepers, define the real threat, and offer a solution. Let's unclog evangelicalism. >> [laughter] >> Let's go.
So, Michael Foster [music] grew up an atheist, and then he was converted in a small town church, and eventually became a charismatic for about a year. Never got slain in the spirit, never spoke in tongues, never did any of that stuff. >> No, no, I didn't. It all looked uh fake to me, actually. So. But, for the most part, I came to a lot of my theological convictions by reading books.
Now, after he was a youth pastor for a little while, he started noticing the a pattern of young men coming up to him asking him for advice. >> That led to eventually starting uh a little Facebook page called It's Good to Be a Man, and then that turned into a podcast, and that turned into a book, and we kind of caught the wave um as it was just starting to come up on all the masculinity stuff. We're too that pretty early. What I love about this is that this started for him in ministry. It was natural. It was local. We'll get to that in a little bit. >> I still write on that stuff. It's not the whole of my ministry, though. It never was. We We used to always tell people like the red pill is like a semester I passed in college. >> [laughter] >> Right? It's not It's not a degree, right? There's some people that that's all they want to talk about. They get stuck in it.
And for that matter, talking about masculinity is not a threat to evangelicalism. Talking about masculinity is not the problem. The internet is. We might be tempted to look at books, conferences, social media influencers, and so on, which focus on masculinity as the [music] problem. But, if writing books dedicated to young men are problematic, then books like Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle are out of the question. But, considering the angle of media, for our purposes, social media, shows us why both a Joel Osteen and a Mark Driscoll are results of the same problem.
The written word no longer plays a a central role in culture. And with that being the case, we can assume, and we can also see that every social institution will alter. I was so delighted in my conversations with Michael Foster to find out that he is also a Neil Postman guy. I've talked about Neil Postman before on this channel. It's not the main thing, but he's always there kind of looming around, hovering around all the videos, all the topics. A lot of his ideas in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death are really rooted in a play on words that the medium is the message. Postman explains that the medium of media and technology, it is a metaphor, and that metaphor impacts the way that people think individually, and the ideas that they share as a collective. One of his concerns is that uh television would make everything into entertainment and amusement, and it would dumb things down and make everything into little factoids. And I mean, he really nailed social media before it even existed. [music] >> He has a fascinating uh explanation for how people think.
And they were able to uh think in long, you know, long streams of thought. And And his point is that um that's a typographic mind, a mind that's shaped >> Yeah. um by the printing press. >> The move from a typographic public discourse uh to an imagistic uh uh public discourse uh tends to trivialize all uh forms of discourse. Nowadays, you write something that's 750 words, and people will say, "Too long, didn't read." Right? >> TLDR. So, the metaphor is now that it's entertainment, it's the show business. And he actually has a point where he he says that public discourse has converted into show business. This is a dangerous way of thinking. Now, Postman's work was in like way before smartphones. And now that smartphones have been introduced, we have to ask the question, not is Postman's words relevant? They were They're more relevant every single day. The question is, how What is the metaphor of the cell phone, and how does that impact our social imaginary and the way that we view public discourse today? And I think that this becomes really, really clear when you think about how technology today, as it is advanced, changes the way that we think about authority. On the internet, there's no such thing.
So, [music] ordination tells us that in the church there has to be some level of gatekeeping, obviously, [music] right? And uh but now people can position themselves as trustworthy experts, and they haven't put any time in, right? They haven't And they haven't like, you know, there's a lot of problems with seminary, but people say, "What can seminary give me that self-study can't?" Well, pushback. They can give you red ink on your on your paper. >> Or worse. >> YouTube. [music] Self-study on YouTube. Or YouTube.
Topics like masculinity are often hot, and people get pretty emotional. They can feel extremely confusing. But again, not when we see J.C. Ryle cover it. But, the masculinity conversation, or any other topic for that matter, isn't dangerous in and of itself, but because of the way social media has shaped the conversation. And if the cell phone, like every other medium, shapes our minds, how does it shape how we view authority and freedom? Here's a question. Who are the experts and gatekeepers? You ain't the boss of me. I'M A FREE MAN. WHEN I was online, people were asking me to answer questions I wasn't qualified to answer. And they sent me all I mean, I I I have thousands of messages that I've never responded to because during the early COVID years, I got so many messages, and people were asking me on how to solve things that were outside of my expertise. So, I just don't speak to those things. I don't think this was in our interview, but Michael Foster did tell me this in a personal conversation. He said that the internet has created this really egalitarian environment where there's no hierarchy, or no authorities or gatekeepers. Everyone has the microphone. We are all equal. And this is just the latest development in a very long-standing developing pattern, a phenomenon shifting to what Patrick Deneen calls a shift from old liberty to new liberty. I'm listening. He actually references Neil Postman. Early on in the book, he argues that liberty was the condition of self-governance, whether achieved by the individual or political community. Because self-rule was achieved only with difficulty, the achievement of liberty required constraints upon individual choice. So, in other words, liberty is not just doing whatever you want, your innermost desire, just being able to do whenever whatever you want, whenever you want, but it was the result of discipline and virtue. He says, "Liberty by this understanding was not doing as one wished, but choosing the right and virtuous course." You see the difference there. Liberty is not freedom to give in to your most basis desires, but is freedom from your most basis desires. [music] Well, when you put it like that. Also, you have to be careful because a lot of these ideas did come over into influencing America. And so, whatever our criticisms are, or whatever our analysis is, we have to be careful about what we have to say about America's conception of a liberty. Right, Deneen? The precondition of our technological society was that great achievement of political technology, the quote applied technology of liberal theory, our Constitution. Liberty. >> [music] >> Now, books like Deneen's tend to focus on our cultural issues without understanding the influences on America's founding like Calvinistic evangelicalism. And this book comes out during phenomena that [music] repeat over and over throughout history like Breaking news, the deal is done. Twitter has been sold [music] to Elon Musk. It's a mixed bag. Obviously, we wouldn't Trump would not have got elected without Elon buying that. So, now we have all these people without any form of quality control. Which sometimes results in a pendulum swing overcorrecting against abusive gatekeepers. Look at me. Sure. Look at me. Sure. I'm the captain now. But, the answer to this problem is not to question the mood of the West which influenced America's founding. Thus, this isn't an evangelical answer. It's not surprising since Deneen is a Roman Catholic. And it's not even a full and robust evangelical identification of the problem itself, or the threat. Because remember, our question is, what is the greatest threat to evangelicalism?
I want to devote our attention just for a moment to Michael Foster's article that he wrote. He actually sent this to me like the the night before or the morning of our interview. He He notes how, for example, Charles Finney changed the way that people saw evangelical theology as it had been understood in the past, certain conceptions of things like regeneration. Now, because of Charles Finney, are just understood in terms of decisionism, or you just need to make a decision in order to follow Jesus. There's something very spiritual and unquantifiable about evangelical theology, and a lot of that's due to the fact of its deep-rooted Calvinistic influences. Let me just remind you, if you don't remember, that Luther was one of the guys who invented the term evangelical. He he's just refer evangelical, which will continue to find throughout this season, just means surrounding the gospel. There's the evangel, that's the good news, and then an evangelical is one who surrounds himself around the gospel with others that surround themselves around the gospel. So, evangelicals are those that surround together that reformational gospel. And so, Charles Finney is a deformation of the evangelical gospel. That is a step away from what evangelicalism needs to be.
So, what is the greatest threat to evangelicalism? What is the biggest threat that evangelicalism faces right now? It's probably personality-driven celebrity ministry that breaks down into micro-cult-like segments of It's is Let me put it this way. I'll put it a better way. It's hyper-fragmentation of of the church built around personality-driven ministries. And technology will allow you to do that because of social media. I think that's the biggest threat right now. That it's building the church on on men and their idiosyncratic ways and not building it on uh with men through the the patient, steady teaching of historic biblical Christianity. I think the threat is to always love what's trending, what's exciting, what's novel. It is entertainment- based theology, entertainment-based Christianity um which is the worst part of evangelicalism boiled down into a thick syrup. That's what I think is threatening us at the moment more than anything. This fragmentation spells great danger to our witness as evangelicals to the watching world. And it's a fragmentation shaped by social media and driven by an algorithm which favors personality cults. How is social media shaping the way evangelicalism sees itself and its associational public discourse? If this frames the problem unique to evangelicalism, we need a uniquely evangelical answer. Books like DeYoung's are helpful, [music] but sometimes over-diagnose problems outside of the human heart. And that's why I brought up Michael Foster's article because he's focusing on the real heart, no no pun intended, the real heart and substance of what evangelicalism is. And if it's reformational, if it's Puritan, if it's reformed at its most basic historical level, then stepping away from that reformed theology is stepping away from evangelicalism. But books like The Redeemed Man do a much better job at diagnosing our problems. In the first chapters of Redeemed Man, some of these celebrity pastors might actually find very very problematic because Hey, if we're going to talk about masculinity, we need to talk about repentance and faith and real conversion. We have to talk about the godly man's relationship to God. And some guys therefore might pick up the book and say, "Oh, this is boring. Evangelical theology is boring." But that's not the only thing that they talk about. It's just what they start off with. Why? Because of the Christian worldview. You need the Christian worldview and a proper understanding of who God is and who you are in relation to him if you're going to understand the other things that they talk about like in part two, a godly man's relationship with [music] people. Part three covers a godly man's work. And part four, a godly man's finishing well. I've never seen a book on masculinity talk about a man facing death, but that's in this book. It also covers calling, how to handle your resources, how to live as a citizen, how as an adult man to relate to your parents, how to do family worship. All of those things are in this book. So, go check out The Redeemed Man by Reformation Heritage Books if you haven't already. And enter discount code Stay Baptist in checkout.
This dislocation, we're not localized at all anymore, and we don't even have a deep relationship with those that God has put over us and to watch over our souls. So, that that's I think the greatest danger is people not being in a church and not having relationships with their pastors and vice versa. Um or being in a church but being checked out and their real life is online. >> [music] >> And there's of course a chapter on a godly man's relationship to his church. You would think that that's where I'm going to go in this piece, but I actually and I'm sure >> [music] >> that would be super super relevant uh that that chapter by Kevin DeYoung in this book, but I found Michael Haykin's chapter to be even more compelling. And he has a lot of things to say about friendship. Now, friendship is an idea that obviously makes sense within a local church setting, but it also can make sense outside of a local church setting as well. And definitely maps onto the idea of localism. Now, he covers the story of two men, Benjamin Francis and Joshua Thomas. What they would do is they would ask a question, and then that person would respond to those questions and then send their replies back with more questions. This went on for years. I'm sure there's a number of things that they talked about, but Michael Haykin decided to focus on their correspondence regarding prayer. Now, what they're doing is they're talking back and forth about the difference between their personal closet quiet times, we might call them, or their spontaneous prayers. And they're saying, "Hey, in the closet prayers, my prayers start off very cold. It's really hard to break free from that coldness." In response to Thomas's answer, Francis confessed to his friend, "I am barren in all my prayers, but I think mostly so in closet prayer." And Haykin notes the time that Francis and Thomas took to read each other's letters and queries, and then with their quill pens and equal craft answers speaks to the way that friendships like theirs take [music] time. Little wonder that far too many Christian men do not have deep friendships [music] like that of Francis and Thomas, for our modern Western culture is a busy busy world. The nurture and development of deep, long-lasting, and satisfying friendships takes [music] time and sacrifice. The internet's not going anywhere, obviously. AI's not going anywhere, [music] but I do think there is a desire there will be a desire for local institutions, things that are tangibly verifiable and getting people back into the local church having actual relationships with their pastor. Like, you need to be known. And we're not in churches where we can be known, where we can grow. While books like Why Liberalism Failed might be helpful to some degree, it might not be evangelical enough. So, stay evangelical in your diagnosis of the problems. Stay rooted in your local church. Go pick up >> [music] >> The Redeemed Man and Stay Baptist, my friends. Am I clear? Your glasses are green. Little. You can lick the plunger. Just don't do anything. I mean, I am like 100-ish percent sure it's never been But don't lick it. I'm I'm >> Baby, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT? BABY, just don't lick it. That's all I'M SAYING. >> YOU SAID THIS WAS SAFE. >> IT >> [laughter] >> It is. Like, look like you're about to lick it. >> I'm getting dizzy.