Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - Pastor Jim Davis on Fixing America's Crisis of Purpose | The TRUTH Podcast #52

00:00:00.000 Today, less than 16% of Gen Z says they're even proud to be an American.

00:00:12.000 We have a 25% recruitment deficit in our U.S. military.

00:00:17.000 National pride is arguably at an all-time low in the United States of America.

00:00:22.000 It used to be that most Americans actually called themselves proud to be a citizen of this nation.

00:00:27.000 Now, especially in the next generation, it is a small minority that say the same thing.

00:00:32.000 How did it happen?

00:00:33.000 Well, it's not a coincidence, I believe, that we see the decline in civic pride over the same period that we also see a loss in individual self-confidence.

00:00:43.000 Reports of self-confidence report a national decline on that metric as well, with depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental health affliction spreading across this country like wildfire.

00:00:54.000 I don't believe these two things are unrelated.

00:00:56.000 I think they're deeply related.

00:00:57.000 They're symptoms of something deeper.

00:01:00.000 Now take individual's identity with their family.

00:01:03.000 The role of the family in grounding our own conception of our identity, too, has declined in America, and that's in part because of the facts.

00:01:11.000 In that case, 40% of kids in many ethnic subgroups are born into fatherless households across ethnic subgroups.

00:01:18.000 You're looking at 25% fatherlessness rates in the United States of America.

00:01:22.000 So whether it's guided by fact or by identity, The role of self-confidence in yourself as an individual, the role of yourself seeing identity in your family, and the role of yourself seeing yourself as a citizen of a nation, all of these are in decline at the exact same time in American history.

00:01:40.000 We can debate which one is causing the other, or are these all symptoms of a deeper void?

00:01:45.000 Well, today's guest might have an interesting theory on that.

00:01:48.000 He has described a very different phenomenon.

00:01:51.000 Not in the civic life, not in government life, but in religious life.

00:01:57.000 A great phenomenon of de-churching in the United States. 0.91

00:02:00.000 In his writing, he's discovered that a majority of Americans are now questioning whether or not they should even belong to the religious institution they were once a part of.

00:02:10.000 And we are seeing the largest mass exodus from the church, not necessarily from religion or faith, but from the church that we've seen in American history.

00:02:19.000 I don't think that's unrelated.

00:02:20.000 It's no coincidence to be able to see the great de-churching at the same time that we see a loss of national pride, at the same time that we see a loss of family identity, at the same time we see a loss of self-confidence responsible for a mental health epidemic in this country. 0.74

00:02:32.000 There is something deeper going on.

00:02:35.000 And that's the conversation we're about to have with my guest today, Pastor Jim Davis.

00:02:40.000 He is in Orlando.

00:02:42.000 He's joining us.

00:02:43.000 We're having a conversation that we're going to pick up and continue right now.

00:02:49.000 Thank you for having me, Vic.

00:02:52.000 It's good to talk to you.

00:02:53.000 And I know you have written about the phenomenon of de-churching, but before we get into your scholarship, I thought it'd be helpful to hear a little bit about your background, right?

00:03:02.000 You're, relatively speaking, young.

00:03:04.000 You came to religion maybe from a different vantage point than what many people would stereotype as a pastor doing scholarly work today.

00:03:13.000 So tell us a bit about your background, what brought you to be a person of faith, and what you do today, and then we're going to get into the details of what's going on in our country.

00:03:21.000 Well, I appreciate it.

00:03:22.000 I grew up in Orlando, Florida.

00:03:24.000 As I was saying before we started recording, I'm third generation Orlando, which means that my people were here before there was a good reason to be here.

00:03:34.000 I grew up going to church.

00:03:35.000 I was not a Christian until I went to college.

00:03:39.000 You went to Harvard and Yale.

00:03:41.000 I went to the Princeton of the Panhandle Florida State University.

00:03:45.000 And my goal when I was at Florida State was to be one day governor of the state of Florida.

00:03:51.000 That was my track.

00:03:53.000 Actually, my campaign manager for my senior class president campaign was Representative Matt Gaetz.

00:03:59.000 Is that right?

00:04:00.000 We go way back.

00:04:01.000 He was a good friend in college.

00:04:05.000 I wouldn't want to argue him.

00:04:07.000 I remember thinking back in the day, I wouldn't want to argue him that the sky is blue.

00:04:10.000 He was a brilliant debater, but that was the path.

00:04:14.000 We were both on that path.

00:04:17.000 I remember Realizing that I am, one day, that I didn't feel happy.

00:04:23.000 I didn't feel satisfied.

00:04:24.000 I was putting together my resume, which was everything to launch me into that career.

00:04:28.000 And there was a dissonance inside of me, you know, the dissatisfaction of I have everything that I think that I should have, yet I'm not fulfilled by it.

00:04:38.000 And so I began praying every day.

00:04:41.000 Really, God, if you're real, I don't want to just believe something to feel better.

00:04:44.000 I want you to really show yourself, because if you're God, you can.

00:04:48.000 And then a friend shared the gospel with me.

00:04:50.000 Actually, a guy with Campus Crusade for Christ walked up to my fraternity house.

00:04:53.000 Never seen a campus minister in my fraternity house ever.

00:04:56.000 He shared the gospel with me, and it really clicked for me that I was looking to my resume to do something that only Jesus can.

00:05:04.000 I was looking for my resume to fix my sin problem, and only Jesus can. 0.61

00:05:08.000 It just changed the whole course of my life.

00:05:10.000 My desires changed.

00:05:12.000 I decided to go in full-time ministry.

00:05:13.000 My wife and I moved around the world for 15 years, lived in Europe, lived in the Deep South, and finally came back here to Orlando, where I pastor Orlando Grace Church.

00:05:23.000 My wife is a counselor, and we have four kids, age 9 to 16. So it is a very busy time.

00:05:30.000 And one of the things I learned from you is that in Orlando, it turns out, but it turns out it's a trend in the United States, but apparently in Orlando, you see it with your own eyes.

00:05:38.000 People are actually leaving the church as an institution, going to church much less.

00:05:43.000 What do you think was going on there and what opened your eyes to that?

00:05:46.000 Was it anecdotal or was it scholarship from the start?

00:05:48.000 It definitely started anecdotally.

00:05:50.000 We began to see that the majority of the people who we interact with in Orlando who don't go to church used to go to church.

00:05:58.000 We then did see a Barna study that made the case that Orlando had the same percentage of evangelicals as New York City and Seattle.

00:06:05.000 Which really hit us.

00:06:07.000 Like New York City and Seattle, the cultures of those cities feel so different than Orlando, Florida.

00:06:11.000 How could we have the same percentage of evangelicals?

00:06:14.000 But then it's like our anecdotal experience began to match, make sense of what we were hearing, because the majority of the people here still carry with them biblical knowledge, biblical foundation, in many cases seem to very much be Christians, embrace Christianity and Jesus Christ.

00:06:31.000 And so we began to look for more scholarship.

00:06:35.000 We could not find it.

00:06:36.000 My wife was actually in grad school at the time and wanted to do a research paper on de-churching.

00:06:41.000 And the professor said, I'd love that, but you can't.

00:06:43.000 There's nothing to research.

00:06:45.000 So we then commissioned the largest nationwide quantitative Academically peer-reviewed study that has ever been performed, which may not sound that impressive once you know there was nothing, but it's a legit study.

00:06:58.000 7,000 participants over 600 data points.

00:07:01.000 We hired social scientist Ryan Burge to oversee this study.

00:07:05.000 And our thesis was that this is not just an Orlando issue, that we could, in fact, be in the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country.

00:07:15.000 And the study, in fact, definitively proved that we are.

00:07:20.000 And of course the big question, and we'll spend some time talking about it, is why?

00:07:25.000 What do you think is going on?

00:07:26.000 So that is the question.

00:07:30.000 Up until recently, I think if your media or information diet is more to the left, you're going to hear that it's the church's problem.

00:07:38.000 It's misogyny in the church, racism in the church, abuse in the church, scandal in the church.

00:07:43.000 If your information intake is more from the right, you're going to hear the culture's problem.

00:07:47.000 It's secular progressivism.

00:07:49.000 It's the sexual revolution. 0.70

00:07:50.000 These are the problems.

00:07:51.000 What's fascinating is that both of these are right and both of these are wrong.

00:07:56.000 So yes, you see both of those things as reasons for people who are leaving the church, but of the 40 million adult Americans who have left church in the last 25 to 30 years, that group, both of those stories only account for 10 million of the 40 million people.

00:08:13.000 We call those the de-church casualties.

00:08:16.000 The lion's share, the 30 million, is what we call the casually de-churched. 0.99

00:08:20.000 So the number one reason for de-churching in the United States is simply, I moved.

00:08:25.000 Attendance was inconvenient, became a single parent.

00:08:29.000 So the people in the left and the right articulating those stories, they're louder, they're loudest, so it can make it feel like that's the lion's share of what's going on.

00:08:40.000 But the majority of the de-churching, like I said, is pedestrian and the people experiencing that are de-churching unintentionally and they're doing so more quietly.

00:08:49.000 Well, if I just push you on that just for one second though, It's interesting that that's a mundane story and it has a happier valence to it, that it's just a mundane reason I moved.

00:09:01.000 Well, people have been moving from one home to another for a long time.

00:09:04.000 So I think that still doesn't account for why the phenomenon of now, why is it the last, say, decade, accounts for this level of purposeful migration, not to the church, but away from it.

00:09:17.000 What do you think accounts for that, acknowledging that people have moved from one city to another for a long time?

00:09:22.000 Yeah, historically, we really have to focus on the 1990s.

00:09:25.000 That's the inflection point for what's going on.

00:09:27.000 Now, any social scientist worth his salt would argue that these inflection points don't come out of nowhere, and they would be right.

00:09:34.000 We can go to 1776, we can go to theological liberalism, we can go to immigration, but going up to, that led up to the 1990s, four very important things happened that kicked this off.

00:09:46.000 The first was the fall of the Soviet Union, and people don't realize how significant this is to lay the groundwork for de-churching.

00:09:56.000 Before the end of the Cold War, you know, I'm 44, you're younger than I am, but I can remember a time, I'm not sure if you can, when if someone were to say, I am no longer a Christian, it wasn't uncommon for the next question to be, well, are you a communist?

00:10:15.000 I mean, because it was a battle between American Christianity and our godless atheist enemies. 0.95

00:10:21.000 And it's no coincidence that under the Eisenhower administration is when we got in God we trust, on our money, under God, in our pledge.

00:10:29.000 And so once the Soviet Union- Was it that recent that it was added to our pledge?

00:10:34.000 The Eisenhower administration.

00:10:35.000 It was a part of Cold War propaganda.

00:10:37.000 I mean, I'm not against those things, but that was what it was.

00:10:40.000 No, no, no.

00:10:42.000 That's actually an interesting fact.

00:10:43.000 So under God was only added to our pledge under Eisenhower.

00:10:48.000 That's right.

00:10:49.000 And the same thing in our coins, in God we trust.

00:10:52.000 Now, that was always part of the national, I suppose, seal and creed of the United States, right?

00:10:57.000 You've had in God we trust for a long time, going back to our founding.

00:11:01.000 The phrase has been there, but we put it on our money.

00:11:04.000 Yeah, got it.

00:11:05.000 Very interesting.

00:11:06.000 Okay.

00:11:07.000 So anyway, you think that was that was part of it was part of a spike that was created.

00:11:12.000 So now you could you could be a Christian and a patriot for the first time.

00:11:17.000 So second, you have the rise of the Internet.

00:11:18.000 So we're not even talking social media here, which is a whole nother conversation.

00:11:21.000 But by 1994, you had Internet cafes.

00:11:25.000 By 97, you had Internet.

00:11:26.000 While not in most homes, only about 20 percent of homes, it was in schools and libraries.

00:11:31.000 And you could comfortably research other worldviews in a way that you couldn't before.

00:11:35.000 You have the rise of the religious right.

00:11:37.000 So there were a lot of people, well, I'll just leave it at religious right for now.

00:11:42.000 And they would say, to be a Christian means to be where I am politically.

00:11:46.000 And a lot of people said, well, if that's Christianity, I'm out.

00:11:49.000 And then at the end of the decade, you have 9-11, which was overnight, really, our Our national enemies went from godless atheists to religious fundamentalists, and people felt like, well, if that's what religion is, I'm out.

00:12:02.000 Now, what we would argue is the 1990s created an opportunity for people who really didn't fully embrace Christianity to have an excuse to be open with that fact.

00:12:12.000 And in the 1990s, you're going to have more people de-churching from the secular left and from mainline and Roman Catholic churches.

00:12:20.000 But as you continue through the 2000s, it's actually the secular right that's de-churching now at twice the pace of the secular left.

00:12:27.000 And so you could make the argument, well, that's because the secular left- When you say now, how recent is that, that the secular right is actually de-churching at a faster pace?

00:12:34.000 Our research goes until the beginning of 2022. So by the beginning of- When did that trend start?

00:12:43.000 Well, it began to, early 2010s would probably be, the way we did our survey, we can see the shift, but we didn't ask the specific year.

00:12:55.000 We could say how long since, well, we could say how long since you've been in church.

00:12:59.000 And it seemed like the early 20 teens was when we began to see, around 2010s, when we began to shift From the secular left to the secular right de-churching.

00:13:08.000 But the secular right now has caught up in full number to the secular political left.

00:13:14.000 So you have equal shares of people who have de-churched on both sides of the political spectrum, which impacts a lot of not just the church, but the political field.

00:13:25.000 I didn't screen or know what your answer to this would be before the conversation.

00:13:29.000 Do you have a political leaning yourself, left, right, none of the above?

00:13:34.000 I am definitely a conservative.

00:13:36.000 I'm a Republican.

00:13:37.000 As a pastor, I probably shouldn't get too much more specific than Republican.

00:13:42.000 It's not as an honest matter as which way you lean, but what that has to do with your ministry is a separate matter.

00:13:51.000 Yeah, I would say I'm conservative.

00:13:53.000 I'm a Republican.

00:13:54.000 I also would feel very strongly that no church should be politically synchronized.

00:14:02.000 I don't think that the Christian faith aligns perfectly with one party or another.

00:14:06.000 Yep, fair enough.

00:14:07.000 But anyway, back to the question of, I was actually just going to gauge your familiarity with politics when I asked you this question.

00:14:12.000 That phenomenon you described in the last 10 years of the secular right de-churching at a much faster rate than the secular left and in absolute numbers catching up to be the same.

00:14:23.000 That's actually another surprising fact that I've just picked up in this short conversation we've had.

00:14:28.000 That's, to me, shocking, actually.

00:14:30.000 But when I think about it, do you think that accounts for some of the changes we have seen in the Republican Party and the direction of the Republican Party and where the priorities of the party are?

00:14:42.000 I do in many ways.

00:14:44.000 So I'm glad you asked me if I was a conservative or not, in not so many words, because I don't want to lose your entire audience when I say this.

00:14:52.000 But from a social science standpoint, when you have so many people leaving the church from the secular right, it changes the dynamic.

00:15:02.000 I actually would argue that it helps Donald Trump.

00:15:05.000 And the reason that I would argue that is because it's hard to imagine the The Republican Party of the late 90s and early 2000s, who's still battling the Bill Clinton ethical situation.

00:15:18.000 It's hard to imagine them nominating somebody like Donald Trump.

00:15:22.000 And I'm not for or against in this podcast.

00:15:24.000 I'm just saying the landscape has shifted as millions of Christians have left the church.

00:15:29.000 I think they're They're not in the same space as the Republican primaries were in the late 90s and early 2000s.

00:15:37.000 So I hope that you can push on that if you want, but I think it changes the political landscape.

00:15:41.000 I also think that we see a lot of Christians who have left church on the secular right, who find church-like ideals of mission and community in the political landscape.

00:15:58.000 And so that changes things, too.

00:15:59.000 I think that you find some people who feel even more strongly than they did, say, 10 years ago on certain topics.

00:16:07.000 Politics is a substitute for religion.

00:16:10.000 I think it can be.

00:16:12.000 For people.

00:16:13.000 I'm not saying it's an adequate substitute.

00:16:15.000 I'm just saying it is for millions of people.

00:16:17.000 You know, that's an interesting detour that we may just go on and then come back to in a second, because I think a lot of this relates to a theme that is near and dear to my heart.

00:16:26.000 I think it's important in the country and motivated my presidential campaign is the essential human purpose we have for human hunger we have for meaning that goes unfulfilled.

00:16:35.000 But I do think that one of the funny things that happened when I came to Orlando, since you're in Orlando, I'll give you an Orlando story for CPAC a couple of years ago, the conservative conference.

00:16:46.000 I noticed a greater affinity.

00:16:50.000 That was a year where there was actually probably one of the first years where there were a lot of ex-US conservatives, populist nationalists from Europe and other parts of the world that descended on CPAC. And it struck me, leaving that particular occasion in Orlando, that the ties, the commonality of tie between the Conservatives from different parts of the world who were in that room We're probably stronger, right?

00:17:19.000 The human connection and relationship and sense of camaraderie and sense of even shared lowercase c citizenship of a shared set of ideals.

00:17:30.000 That was a tighter tie amongst people of different nationalities in that room than I see actually even between many people who would be in that room, myself included, and many people who are citizens of the United States of America but of a different political ideology.

00:17:44.000 And so I bring that example up because it's a different axis of saying that you might find greater common cause grounded in your political beliefs than you do necessarily in your citizenry, even if it's somebody from Spain or France or Italy that comes from a nationalist conservative background.

00:18:03.000 Even though you're citizens of different nations, the nationalist conservative right today might find greater common cause with any of those people than they do with somebody who's voting for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a given day.

00:18:15.000 And I see a parallel in what you're saying with respect to the church in some sense is you might overtake your sense of commitment goes to where your national ideology is rather than somebody who's sitting in the same pew as you on a Sunday, even if they're going to support, you know, put a transgender flag in their yard or a Ukraine flag and you're going to put only an American flag and reject those.

00:18:35.000 displays at your home, you might find greater common cause for a neighbor who is a, you know, an atheist or a Muslim or a Jew or whatever, even though they're of a different faith.

00:18:45.000 Is that a little bit of, to go double click on what you said, is that a bit of what you see going on?

00:18:50.000 Yeah, I don't think you're wrong on that.

00:18:52.000 I think it's an interesting thread to pull on.

00:18:54.000 Obviously, we have nationalistic situations like 9-11, where for a hot minute, everybody loves everybody.

00:19:02.000 And that bonds us.

00:19:04.000 But we haven't had a situation like that in the United States for quite some time.

00:19:07.000 I think birds of a feather flock together, where our highest hopes and ideals are, is going to bond us the most.

00:19:13.000 And so it doesn't surprise me that a lot of people with conservative desires and ideals across many different lines would feel that way.

00:19:21.000 As a Christian, you know, our understanding is that we have a citizenship that's even greater than that of whatever earthly citizenship we have.

00:19:31.000 Well, I guess there's at least two implications to that.

00:19:34.000 One, when we gather across national barriers, we have something greater that bonds us than even our national barriers.

00:19:42.000 But it should also make us some of the best citizens.

00:19:46.000 Because we have a higher citizenship, our Our ultimate value and purpose is not found here, which would make us more willing to sacrifice and pray for our leaders and serve our leaders even if we don't agree with them.

00:20:03.000 So I would argue that the loss of that in the United States, that we have a higher citizenship, that we have something that bonds us above politics, It has eroded at the political foundation, the fabric of our society, because we don't have something bonding us anymore, so the political landscape becomes more polarized.

00:20:26.000 And what is your perspective on...

00:20:30.000 Whether the inclusion of, greater inclusion of public displays of faith in the public and civic sphere would be a good thing in the country or not.

00:20:40.000 Speaking from your vantage point as a pastor, as a conservative broadly, that's I think a debate that's percolating beneath the surface of the American right right now and I think it's a worthy conversation to have.

00:20:51.000 What do you believe?

00:20:53.000 Well, my theological tradition, my stream, I would advocate significantly for religious freedom.

00:21:01.000 Significantly.

00:21:01.000 I would fight for your right as a monotheistic Hindu to worship the way that you want.

00:21:08.000 I think there's a large misunderstanding of what the separation of church and state means.

00:21:13.000 It doesn't mean that religion can't spill over into the state sphere.

00:21:18.000 It means that the state can't tell us how to worship.

00:21:21.000 So we can go different directions with this question, but my first and main thought is that we should be able to have the freedom to worship how we want.

00:21:31.000 That's a part of the founding of our country.

00:21:35.000 There are challenges that come with that, and I can talk about those challenges.

00:21:41.000 But that's where I stand.

00:21:42.000 I would fight for those freedoms, I would argue for those freedoms, and I would argue against those that use the separation of church and state to erode at those freedoms.

00:21:53.000 So back to the phenomenon of de-churching then, what do you think is going on with the casual de-churcher?

00:21:59.000 That's the majority of them, so let's talk about that.

00:22:02.000 What makes the current moment—you gave those four reasons, right?

00:22:05.000 You get the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s as a turning point.

00:22:08.000 We're pretty far from the 90s, though, right?

00:22:10.000 I think a lot of people—I mean, I spoke to a young audience in Washington, D.C.—where not a single one of those people was born or even close to being born at the time 9-11 when those Twin Towers went down.

00:22:24.000 I buy that inflection point, but right now, and especially a trend that you saw, which was the secular right going further in that direction, you're talking more than a decade after 9-11 when that began.

00:22:36.000 It feels to me like there's something else going on right now where it might manifest itself as, oh yeah, I guess I casually don't have time to go to church anymore because I've got to take the kids to soccer practice.

00:22:46.000 But kids have been going to soccer practice for a long time.

00:22:48.000 People have been moving cities for a long time.

00:22:49.000 time, it feels like there's a greater sort of ennui that has a blanket of ennui that has really enveloped the country over the course of the last 10, 20 years.

00:23:01.000 I think social media probably does play a bigger role in it.

00:23:03.000 That's exactly where I was going to go.

00:23:05.000 That's exactly where I was going to go.

00:23:07.000 So I don't think we can understate the fact that the 90s people have had children now.

00:23:12.000 And so that's contributing to the rise of the nuns in a significant way.

00:23:16.000 But social media, I mean, if you want to talk about the erosion of institutional trust and the church is one of 16 institutions that the Gallup poll has followed for 50 years now in terms of the trust in the institutions, social media creates this Like funhouse effect.

00:23:34.000 You remember to look at the mirror in the funhouse and something that's normal or even small looks very big.

00:23:40.000 And so that's what happens because in social media, you have people who are more willing to, A, talk about politics and culture than they were in the 90s and early 2000s.

00:23:50.000 But then because not only do they get likes when they say something, the algorithm feeds them people who are going to give them likes Which makes them more bold and more honest and you see this across the political spectrum and the net effect is an erosion or a liquidation of the trust that we experience here in this country.

00:24:14.000 So I think social media has done so much to To make us louder, to isolate us, and to individualize us.

00:24:25.000 So you teed that up very well.

00:24:28.000 I 100% agree.

00:24:29.000 When you move into the sphere now, that's a major factor.

00:24:34.000 I wouldn't undercut children's sports as quickly as I feel like you maybe just did.

00:24:41.000 I think that's what is expected of Christian parents with their children in terms of travel sports.

00:24:48.000 And I say this as the father of three teenagers.

00:24:50.000 I feel it.

00:24:51.000 I experience it.

00:24:53.000 I'm sympathetic to it.

00:24:54.000 But we've gotten busier.

00:24:55.000 We've gotten more fluent in some ways.

00:24:58.000 But the great de-churching actually doesn't affect the people that you would expect it to probably.

00:25:03.000 It's not only the upwardly mobile and affluent.

00:25:07.000 It's actually hitting the less educated and those with less income more than anybody else.

00:25:15.000 Because if you think about ordinary life transitions, It's affecting somebody.

00:25:19.000 Who is it going to affect the most if you lose your job and have to move?

00:25:22.000 Who is it going to affect the most if you become a single parent, however that happens?

00:25:26.000 It's going to affect the ones who don't have the financial and social safety net.

00:25:31.000 They then have to work longer hours or more unusual hours, and the way that church exists right now, for many, the church isn't going to work for them.

00:25:42.000 So I think there's a few things that we can follow, threads that we can pull into the early 2020s that affect this casual dechurching.

00:25:50.000 Mm-hmm.

00:25:51.000 Mm-hmm.

00:25:53.000 You know, I think the social media strand is interesting.

00:25:56.000 That's also one that we can study, actually.

00:25:59.000 And you'd be probably the best person suited in the world to do it, perhaps given your scholarship already.

00:26:04.000 You probably know which Americans are using social media and which ones aren't.

00:26:08.000 And my hypothesis is that you probably do see a greater de-churching effect in those who are regular social media users versus those who aren't.

00:26:19.000 And I just think that'd be such a fascinating question to actually answer.

00:26:23.000 And suppose that hypothesis is right.

00:26:26.000 Do you have any basis to believe it is or isn't?

00:26:29.000 Yeah, I mean, none of our research would cover that.

00:26:31.000 Anecdotally, I think because we know from research that social media has an isolating effect, it would make a natural sense that it would affect de-churching.

00:26:41.000 I will say that one of our most unpopular opinions here at this church, I've written on it in the book, The Great De-Churching and elsewhere, is that we are pro-technology.

00:26:51.000 We use technology in many ways, but we have stopped live streaming.

00:26:55.000 Because what God has given us in terms of embodied worship, we don't want anybody to have the impression that what they're doing when they sit on the couch and watch a sermon and music is in any way the gathering that the Bible tells us not to neglect.

00:27:12.000 It does not take the place of the fellowship, the singing, the prayers, the sacraments.

00:27:16.000 So as a point of this is what we are here to do.

00:27:22.000 We are here to worship in an embodied way, to be known and to know each other.

00:27:27.000 We have cut our live streaming and our plan is to never launch or reinvest in that again.

00:27:34.000 And honestly, after we did that, we saw a pretty good uptick in people coming to church.

00:27:38.000 Yep, absolutely.

00:27:39.000 It's like a return to work.

00:27:41.000 There's a return to the office culture.

00:27:44.000 And there's a real parallel there from the world of business to the world of church.

00:27:49.000 I will say that if the hypothesis is right that more people on social media or active users of social media are disproportionately represented in the de-churchers versus those who haven't de-churched, as you put it, leaving church, It raises the question of what vacuum in your heart that sort of social media usage is actually filling, right?

00:28:12.000 And I know that the argument for any person of faith to believe in God is not a utilitarian one.

00:28:19.000 It is one that is grounded in truth.

00:28:21.000 And I think it could be denigrating to somebody to say, well, the reason to believe in God is it's good for you.

00:28:27.000 But acknowledging that there's many different people of different faiths who might be listening to this, I think that there is a, regardless of your basis of faith, I think that most people of faith would agree that it does happen to be also good for you in order to believe in God.

00:28:41.000 And when you stop believing in God, I think there is an innate human impulse wired in us as fallen human beings to believe in something, right?

00:28:49.000 You and I spoke about this previously.

00:28:52.000 In the rise of the modern climate religion, I believe it's no coincidence that you see increased climate fanaticism.

00:28:58.000 You talked about the 1990s as a turning point.

00:29:00.000 Well, I think that that is a new substitute for religion that may have come from the early 1990s.

00:29:06.000 And so I do think that there's some of that innate hard wiring and it may be that social media is not only A cause of potentially the de-churching, but as a substitute, as a substitution effect for at least the void it fills in your heart and the way that an addictive drug might make you think that you don't need, you know, to pursue happiness in the ways that real pursuits of happiness would give you rather than the way an addictive drug would.

00:29:29.000 So I might say the same of climate ideology to the number of likes you get on a social media post.

00:29:35.000 Well, I agree with what you're saying.

00:29:38.000 Let me back up just a little bit and affirm.

00:29:41.000 There's been some fascinating research in terms of physical and mental well-being and attending services and houses of worship.

00:29:50.000 In our study, we polled those who had de-churched and the levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation were off the charts.

00:30:00.000 You can, again, read about it in the book, but it was off the charts.

00:30:02.000 We cite a Harvard study.

00:30:05.000 What was his name?

00:30:06.000 Tyler.

00:30:08.000 I'll think of his name later.

00:30:09.000 But he was at Harvard.

00:30:10.000 They did a big Harvard study.

00:30:13.000 And actually, Harvard's not a bastion of Christian thought.

00:30:16.000 And they came to the conclusion that physicians would do well to consider religious services as a form of healing for people because they can't deny the data.

00:30:26.000 It's good for people.

00:30:27.000 Now, going forward to the second part of your question, you know, Martin Luther said our hearts are idle factories.

00:30:33.000 We are constantly looking for some place to find purpose and find meaning.

00:30:40.000 And I would argue that this is this is I appreciate you use the term fallen nature.

00:30:45.000 It's a part of our fallen nature.

00:30:46.000 We've been separated from God.

00:30:47.000 We're looking to be reunited.

00:30:49.000 And from my perspective, Jesus Christ, because he died on the cross as a payment for our sin, so he took our sin, but then he gave us his righteousness.

00:30:58.000 That is the only way that we're going to find the purpose and the meaning that we're looking for.

00:31:03.000 But even as Christians, we're susceptible to finding new places for meaning, to falling off.

00:31:10.000 Martin Luther also said, you jump back onto the horse and you fall off the other side.

00:31:14.000 So we're all prone to find meaning and purpose in places that are ultimately not going to fulfill us.

00:31:20.000 And the more it doesn't fulfill us, the more we're going to go down that path looking for it even more significantly.

00:31:24.000 So I think that's what you find.

00:31:26.000 You find it in politics.

00:31:28.000 You find it in academia.

00:31:29.000 You find it in sports.

00:31:30.000 You find it in health.

00:31:32.000 You find it in every facet of life that a person can possibly look to to find purpose and meaning when Obviously from my perspective, I have a strong view that it comes from Jesus and Jesus alone.

00:31:45.000 Yeah, look, I think actually this point about the utilitarian value of religion or that need to believe in something, I'd love to probe actually on whether that is embedded a little bit into Christian theology itself, as you just laid out.

00:32:02.000 Speaking as you well know, I'm a Hindu, but I've gone to Catholic school and take a great interest in Christian theology because I also think it is intimately linked with the founding culture of this country.

00:32:15.000 In some ways, that is the heart of the matter, where in the Old Testament, you have the Old Testament God that asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac didn't follow through with making him make that sacrifice.

00:32:30.000 But in the New Testament, the New Testament God sacrifices actually his son for the fallen man who needs...

00:32:39.000 You said Jesus Christ gave us his righteousness, but in a certain sense, tell me if I'm understanding the heart of...

00:32:46.000 New Testament Christian theology here correctly when I say that it was in part because we needed to see Christ's sacrifice that allowed people who were otherwise fallen to actually believe in that example.

00:33:00.000 That was the true sacrifice that God made in sacrificing His Son, is giving people the example of Christ who actually, when we say, died for their sins.

00:33:09.000 That's part of what maybe God is acknowledging about the fallen man is he needs to see the example of somebody who actually made that sacrifice, sort of linking it to that utilitarian argument we had for religion at the start of the conversation.

00:33:22.000 Does that make sense?

00:33:24.000 And I'd love to hear your...

00:33:26.000 Yeah, and I've heard, I mean, I think you probably know more about evangelical and, you know, even Roman Catholic beliefs than the majority of evangelicals and Roman Catholics.

00:33:35.000 I've heard you speak enough.

00:33:36.000 But so I would argue, I would ask the question, what makes Jesus' death on the cross good?

00:33:42.000 Is it an example?

00:33:44.000 Is it just a display of love?

00:33:45.000 I mean, because if I was with my family at the Grand Canyon and I told my family, hey, let me show you how much I love you, and I jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon, that's not good.

00:33:55.000 That's not going to communicate something that we call love and goodness.

00:34:00.000 Now, if one of my children were about to fall off the edge, and the only way they wouldn't fall off the edge was for me to fall off instead, then that's true love.

00:34:08.000 That's good.

00:34:09.000 Sacrificing for their good.

00:34:10.000 And so Jesus didn't just die, and I don't hear you specifically saying this, but you hear this in our culture.

00:34:15.000 Jesus didn't die just as an example or a He died to actually take on the wrath of God in our place because he lived a life without any sin.

00:34:24.000 He fulfilled the law in every way.

00:34:26.000 And so he alone can take on the wrath that we deserve.

00:34:29.000 And it's his righteousness that he earned that he gives to those who put their faith in him.

00:34:35.000 And so we, connecting this to the beginning of your question, we as humans were born to worship.

00:34:41.000 We were born to worship.

00:34:42.000 We were born to worship the God of the universe.

00:34:44.000 Without Jesus Christ, we don't know how to adequately worship.

00:34:48.000 We're gonna look to worship in other areas.

00:34:50.000 We're gonna worship lots of different things that aren't going to fulfill us.

00:34:54.000 And so Jesus came to not only redeem us, but give us his spirit.

00:35:00.000 And now we know how to properly worship.

00:35:02.000 And it is as we follow him and as we are conformed more into his image, the process we call sanctification, we find more joy.

00:35:10.000 We find more satisfaction from worshiping him.

00:35:15.000 And worshiping isn't just on Sunday.

00:35:17.000 It's all of worship.

00:35:18.000 Romans 12 talks about that.

00:35:19.000 It's worshiping Him in the decisions that we make publicly and decisions that we make privately.

00:35:24.000 But every human being, and this is where you're spot on, was born with a desire to worship.

00:35:29.000 We just don't all know what it is we're to worship and what kind of worship is going to give us the purpose, the meaning, the joy, and the satisfaction that we long for.

00:35:40.000 And just because it's interesting to me, even though it's a little bit tangential to our conversation, That is a slightly...

00:35:50.000 There's some daylight between the view. 0.87

00:35:52.000 Forget the idea that jumping off the Grand Canyon because you want to show how much you love your kids as a crazy person.

00:35:56.000 That's just not good, as you put it.

00:35:58.000 But as you did parse carefully, it's another matter if your kid was actually going to fall off the Grand Canyon, but for you actually be the one to jump.

00:36:09.000 That is a slightly different theological account of...

00:36:13.000 Why Jesus died on the cross and why it was good than to say he was taking on the wrath of God and he was alone able to take on the wrath of God.

00:36:23.000 Is that, you know, amongst the theological strand, amongst theologians and whatnot, is that a subject of debate or do you think that there is a unified view of Christian theology on that distinction?

00:36:41.000 Orthodox Christianity has always held that the gospel is good news because the wrath that he received is the wrath that was coming our way.

00:36:49.000 All of us.

00:36:50.000 And so that's why I give the Grand Canyon analogy.

00:36:53.000 That wrath is what we deserve, every human being.

00:36:57.000 And that wrath is what he willingly took on, the Bible says, for the joy set before him.

00:37:03.000 That joy was the glory of God and his love for his people.

00:37:07.000 And so that's the connection point.

00:37:10.000 That's what makes it so good.

00:37:11.000 It's the same explanation.

00:37:12.000 So if you do believe it is a problem, all else equal, de-churching in the United States of America, for either utilitarian reasons or reasons grounded in what we might call truth and the pursuit of truth, wherever you land on the reason for why, if it's a bad thing, What do you think is the right steps for us to take as a society to fix that?

00:37:36.000 Does it start from within the church or does it start elsewhere?

00:37:39.000 That's a great question.

00:37:40.000 I think it starts within the church.

00:37:42.000 I think we have front doors and we have back doors.

00:37:44.000 I think the good news that we see in our study is that 51% of de-churched evangelicals are willing to come back today. 1.00

00:37:52.000 Now, we work really hard in the book to articulate that the de-churched are not a monolithic group. 0.99

00:37:58.000 They're not.

00:37:59.000 We worked...

00:38:00.000 All the information through machine learning algorithms.

00:38:03.000 But there are different kinds of de-churched people. 0.78

00:38:06.000 But roughly about 16 million have articulated that are willing to come back in some way.

00:38:11.000 And so there are things we can control and things we can't control.

00:38:14.000 You know, we can't control your average person.

00:38:17.000 You may have more influence than I do in this, but your average person can't control the sexual revolution, secular progressivism, radical individuality, those kind of things.

00:38:26.000 Um, but what we do have access to is to make sure the church is, uh, is doing what the church is to do.

00:38:34.000 And so again, there's a lot written on this in the book, but, um, but yeah, churches, even though as a whole churches are not doing well, because so many people are leaving, um, churches that hold onto the historic gospel and do so in a winsome and contextual way, they're actually largely doing well right now.

00:38:56.000 I know a lot of churches that are growing and being very fruitful.

00:39:00.000 So I think when we can, I think churches should expect to have leadership that knows its people, that knows how to substantively pray for every member of their church.

00:39:09.000 They should know who's in and who's out, how to care for them, how to invest in them, disciple them, the defensive side of caring for people, the offensive side of equipping them and sending them out, providing adequate ways to worship and grieve and find hope.

00:39:25.000 No matter what's happening in our life in Jesus Christ, the more churches can do those things, I think they're going to do quite well.

00:39:33.000 Even if the total number of Christians, air quotes, decreases, I think there is kind of a purification that's going on because in the 20th century, which is our high watermark, there was...

00:39:45.000 People went to church because they wanted to run for politics or have a good business.

00:39:49.000 And now those kinds of incentives have been removed.

00:39:52.000 And I think what we're seeing is something that's more true and more pure.

00:39:56.000 So I actually think there's a lot of hope in the research that we've done.

00:39:59.000 I think there's some reasons for concern.

00:40:01.000 The social safety net of our country, by most accounts, 40% of it is accounted for by religious nonprofits.

00:40:10.000 If you take the 40 million people who have left, that's a GDP of about $1.4 trillion.

00:40:14.000 You apply evangelical giving standards of 2% to that people, you're looking at $24 billion.

00:40:20.000 That is, I wouldn't say has left the church and religious giving, but is leaving.

00:40:24.000 That's going to have a major effect.

00:40:26.000 So there's things to be concerned about, but I think there's reasons to hope too.

00:40:32.000 And I guess if you're talking about the churches themselves taking that step, there's one strand in an earlier episode of this podcast with a different guest.

00:40:40.000 We explored a topic that I'd love to just get your take on as well.

00:40:45.000 He spoke, at least in his scholarships, I can't represent the facts of it, but a change in the rate of flow of conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism that actually is a recent reversal of a historical trend that actually went the other way.

00:41:03.000 And so even though in absolute numbers it's still more in the other direction, there's been in recent years a reversion in the other direction.

00:41:09.000 Is that something that Is it all, I don't know if you observe that in your studies or you have any view of that, but does that in any way relate to the conversation we've been having in terms of what people might even be doing within an intra-church movement and what that says about broader de-churching more generally?

00:41:28.000 Yeah.

00:41:28.000 So it's funny, I know who your guest was just by your question and the way you framed it.

00:41:32.000 Yeah, I think he's right.

00:41:35.000 What we're seeing, especially among younger generations, is an increasing value of return to the historic church, in some cases a high church, or just something you can connect with the long tradition of the Christian church.

00:41:50.000 So there's been the rise of what has been called, you know, church as Coldplay in a TED Talk.

00:41:56.000 And I don't want to overly vilify it.

00:41:59.000 I think the hearts of many of these people are good.

00:42:01.000 But the entertainment is what we're more relying on in that stream.

00:42:06.000 And I think that that's...

00:42:09.000 The front door is big, but I think the back door is a bit larger because what you win them with is what you win them to.

00:42:15.000 And it tends to be, in these cases, entertainment, not discipleship.

00:42:20.000 And so I do think there is a return that we've seen, that we've studied to higher church historic movements.

00:42:30.000 So while I'm not a Roman Catholic and could articulate why, it doesn't surprise me that that kind of data is coming out.

00:42:38.000 And do you believe that there is going to be, as I actually do, an organic revival, regardless of whether the churches take steps to do it or not, of people coming back in some ways with redoubled vigor after this revival?

00:42:58.000 Pass of the cloud of ennui, social media induced or otherwise.

00:43:03.000 I think that that's something that I think is more or less inevitable because of how we're wired.

00:43:09.000 I don't think that the transhumanist vision of all of us converging into a giant ball of light is exactly going to transpire the way that the transhumanist vision supposes, which means there may be a great awakening coming, whether or not you like it, Christian or not.

00:43:25.000 Of a religious revival in a variety of some kind.

00:43:29.000 What do you think about that if you're a man of making predictions here?

00:43:32.000 Yeah, well, that's the question, man.

00:43:34.000 That's the question.

00:43:35.000 I tend to be hopeful.

00:43:37.000 We're told very clearly in the Bible how this story ends and the church prevails.

00:43:43.000 But even outside of the American context, there are more Christians alive on earth today than all the Christians who have ever lived from the first century to the 18th century.

00:43:53.000 I mean, so in the global east and global south, Christianity is booming.

00:43:57.000 So I don't lose hope.

00:43:58.000 I do think that we're seeing churches that are returning to, you know, what we're calling people to in our research isn't something new.

00:44:07.000 We're calling to a return to something that's very old.

00:44:10.000 And I think the churches that are doing that well are being fruitful.

00:44:14.000 I'll be the first to admit 2020 was chaos in our church.

00:44:18.000 Absolute chaos.

00:44:19.000 You had political, racial, pandemic chaos.

00:44:23.000 And I was a brand new pastor of this church at the time, which wasn't helpful at all.

00:44:28.000 But I'm so encouraged at where our church is now.

00:44:30.000 There is this deep sense of why we're here.

00:44:32.000 There's much less fighting.

00:44:34.000 We can have our opinions, but they're secondary and tertiary to why we've come together as a church.

00:44:39.000 So in my own context, but also in a lot of other churches that I'm in contact with, I'm very hopeful.

00:44:44.000 I'm hopeful that the church is going the right direction.

00:44:47.000 We're owning the things that we need to own in terms of major mistakes that we've made along the way.

00:44:52.000 We're able to more boldly and winsomely confront the changing culture and communicate a hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ that is ultimately what I believe everybody is looking for, whether we realize it or not.

00:45:08.000 And, you know, putting the predictions, you know, of what's going to happen automatically to one side.

00:45:14.000 I do think that maybe we'll close on a theological question, actually, which is the question I just asked you is what he predicts going to happen if the church doesn't intervene.

00:45:23.000 Let me just go in the other direction for a second, which is to say that if God sacrificed his son, Jesus Christ, so that people may be saved, I think that That raises the question of why God Permits the de-churching effect that you're talking about.

00:45:46.000 And just from a theological perspective, I'd love your reflection on that as a pastor in terms of what you think is going on.

00:45:52.000 Because the version of the world I gave is this is a cycle we go through from time to time.

00:45:56.000 And people come back to not new ideas, but very old ones, as you put it.

00:46:02.000 But what do you think is the theological backdrop against which this is happening as well?

00:46:09.000 Well, I thought, and I think it's a really good question.

00:46:11.000 I don't presume, obviously, what I know, I don't presume to speak for God on this, but I think God cares that his church is as pure as possible before Jesus has returned.

00:46:23.000 And I think that the high watermark in terms of church attendance of the 20th century, I would not say was a high watermark for Christianity in this country.

00:46:31.000 I think you had a lot of people in churches because it was socially beneficial.

00:46:36.000 And I can see God being a great blessing to the church.

00:46:42.000 Churches that have departed from the historic faith, from all the orthodox things that we have believed for millennia, they're the ones who are suffering the most.

00:46:54.000 And so suffering in terms of church attendance.

00:46:56.000 And so I can see God giving us a great blessing of purifying the church.

00:47:01.000 I would rather there be 500,000 devoted Christians in the Church of the United States than 500,000 devoted Christians and 9,500 more people just here.

00:47:17.000 Now, let me say, if they're here to hear the message, that's great.

00:47:22.000 But here's just to get something other than the gospel.

00:47:26.000 I just think there's a clarity that comes across.

00:47:28.000 So I could see God's grace in that.

00:47:31.000 I think the church in many ways has...

00:47:38.000 It could be letting go of the main tenets of our theology.

00:47:44.000 And it could be where pastors and church leaders have built a tower of Babel of sorts.

00:47:50.000 How big can we be for my glory, not God's glory?

00:47:53.000 So there's a lot of things that I could imagine God doing and being good and right.

00:47:59.000 And even if we don't understand it all, we can trust that it's good and right because he's in control.

00:48:04.000 Yeah, and it's an interesting calmness with which you and a smile that you approach the whole study of what is otherwise someone in your shoes could think as a discouraging phenomenon.

00:48:17.000 And, you know, let me just ask you about leaving the topic of religion and even the topic of de-churching for a second.

00:48:24.000 What in a civic sense is your diagnosis of how we're doing as a country and where we're headed?

00:48:30.000 I'll ask you the same question, not in theological terms, but in civic terms.

00:48:34.000 I mean, obviously we're experiencing a great polarization.

00:48:39.000 We're experiencing in that Gallup poll, institutional trust is just reeling.

00:48:45.000 I would argue that when you get to the extremes of the left and the right, it's more of a horseshoe effect in terms of It's eroding away at some of the trust that we have, whether it's military, Congress, you know, whatever it is.

00:49:04.000 So I think the extreme left and right work on the same way.

00:49:08.000 I think, you know, I've wondered the question, you know, Does the polarization in society, is that what's causing the polarization in the church or is it vice versa?

00:49:21.000 Because if you look at Christian Twitter in 2019, it's solidly six months ahead of anything that Fox News or CNN or MSNBC are talking about.

00:49:28.000 So in some ways, I think the church has failed.

00:49:30.000 But I digress from the bullseye of your question.

00:49:33.000 Civically, you know, I hope for civil discourse for I mean, we can we can be clear and Yeah, I don't know.

00:49:42.000 I long for something that feels more stable.

00:49:46.000 I long for more compromise rather than my way or burn it down.

00:49:50.000 And I see that in multiple areas.

00:49:52.000 So, you know, I don't know if I'm getting the bullseye of what you're asking, but those are some of my civic desires.

00:50:00.000 Well, look, I ask those two questions together because I think that they're, even in your answer, maybe a tie between them.

00:50:07.000 You surmised, of course, you never purported to speak for God, but you could offer a theory or a vision of why the de-churching effect may have a purifying effect in the church itself, which in theological terms would be in preparation for the return of Christ.

00:50:25.000 And the second coming.

00:50:26.000 And at the same time, in the civic sense of the word, one of the things you said you long for is greater institutional trust, to which I would just inject a view that I have, which is a tough thing to ask of a citizen at a time when many of those institutions have behaved in ways which is a tough thing to ask of a citizen at a time when many of

00:50:48.000 And I think that it's a complicated question where we are in American history of whether institutions ranging from the media to the federal government to local governments to universities have so badly betrayed the trust of everyday constituents or citizens or stakeholders that they're supposed to represent.

00:51:06.000 Is the right answer to incrementally reform that institution or is it to in some way gut the rot of that institution so that it may be, to borrow your language in the theological context, purified before it is restored?

00:51:20.000 And so in some ways, I think that there is a connection between those.

00:51:24.000 The last two exchanges we had and, you know, what God's plan is that God knows.

00:51:29.000 But I think in terms of the United States of America, I am increasingly of the belief that institutional trust is something that we're badly missing in this country.

00:51:39.000 But the cure may be different than trying to rectify the corpus as it exists.

00:51:45.000 But at some points, a little bit of creative destruction through the through the model of the Phoenix of really Abandoning the edifice once it has been so badly corrupted and rebuilding on a new one might be the last best choice that we actually have.

00:52:04.000 And there may be a deeper parallel between what's going on in the context of the church, which we spent most of our time, And part of the civic path forward in our country, which is certainly of great interest to me.

00:52:18.000 So I didn't mean to get so abstract there at the end, but I think that there are some deep parallels between both of those strains in our conversation.

00:52:25.000 Well, I can see that.

00:52:28.000 I would leave that to leaders like you and others to figure out on a larger scale.

00:52:33.000 Certainly, that's kind of how our country was formed.

00:52:37.000 Amen.

00:52:38.000 I'll stick to what I know best and leave some of that other stuff to people whose lane it is more solidly in.

00:52:47.000 I enjoyed our conversation and I hope this is the beginning of more we have.

00:52:51.000 One of the things that I hope more Americans can take away from you, apart from Apart from what members of your church get from you every week is for everybody who watches you and speak about your book so eloquently is The joy with which you're still able to approach complicated and at times even otherwise depressing topics,

00:53:15.000 to be able to bring to that a personal level of positivity, I think is actually something that we're too often missing.

00:53:24.000 You could both see something with clear eyes without seeing it through a rose-colored prism or lens.

00:53:32.000 But still be able to approach even some of the darkest subject matter with a sense of hope of what's possible on the other side of understanding it.

00:53:42.000 And I think that that is a great gift that you have that I hope you're able to share with a lot of our fellow citizens at a time when we could use it.

00:53:50.000 So thank you for joining me today, and I hope this is the first of many more times we talk.

00:53:56.000 Thanks.

00:53:56.000 So I really appreciate you having me, and I'd love it.

00:53:59.000 Hit me up when you're in Orlando someday.

00:54:01.000 Will do.

00:54:02.000 Take care.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - June 19, 2024

Pastor Jim Davis on Fixing America's Crisis of Purpose | The TRUTH Podcast #52

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