Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Cultural Discipleship: Don’t Miss This Exciting Opportunity | Alisa Childers
Are we in a uniquely pivotal moment for Christians to shape culture? As interest in the Bible and openness to Christianity seem to be on the rise, believers might have a unique window of opportunity to disciple the nations. But how should we approach this exciting challenge?
Today, we sit down with well-known author, speaker, and podcaster, Alisa Childers to go over the three predominant approaches to Christian cultural engagement, as outlined by theologian Owen Strachan in his clarifying article, “One ‘Holy Nation’ in Christ: Christian Nationalism in Historical and Theological Perspective.” You’ll hear us wrestle with each approach’s pitfalls. Could there be another way? Hear Alisa share her perspective on whether a “fourth way” exists—one that remains faithful to Scripture while effectively influencing society as a whole.
Join us for a thought-provoking and relevant discussion on faith, culture, and the role of Christians in our exciting contemporary moment.
- View the transcript, leave comments, and check out recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page!
Whenever something crazy happens in the world, our tendency is to go crazy on the other side.
Alisa Childers:I mean, I have concerns about extremes on both sides in the church right now, I have concerns about some of that real far right Christian nationalism thing and I'm concerned about what I'm seeing on the left and sometimes, when that's the case, christians recognize that and they say well, I want to be balanced, I want to be in the middle, and that's the wrong way to think too. I don't think that balance or being in the middle is the goal right. Sometimes the right view is going to be viewed as extreme, sometimes it's going to be viewed as wimpy, and I think my point would be, as Christians, there are always going to be people on either extreme, and our goal as Christians should be just right in the bullseye of biblical truth. Come what may, whether we are praised or persecuted, whether we're given a party or put in a prison, we just need to speak what's true. Hi friends.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Scott Allen:Well, welcome everyone to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and joined today by Dwight Vogt and Luke Allen, my co-workers and friends, and today we're thrilled to have a very special guest with us, someone I've been wanting to talk to and get to know better for many years now Elisa Childers. Elisa, thank you for taking time out to be with us on the podcast today.
Alisa Childers:Oh, it's great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Scott Allen:Oh, it's great to have you. Elisa's well-known, so probably doesn't need much of an introduction, but she is a lifelong Christian follower of Jesus and known as a contemporary Christian music recording artist with the Dove award-winning group Zoe Girl. But today Elisa is known as a best-selling author, a teacher, a podcaster on issues of culture and worldview and particularly postmodernism and the influence the disastrous influence that postmodernism is having on the church and the broader culture. Her passion for that grows out of her own experience as a member of a progressive church many years ago, and her books include her best-selling book, another Gospel. And her books include her best-selling book, another Gospel A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity. That was published in 2020. And her most recent book, which was just published last year, is called the Deconstruction of Christianity what Is it, why it's Destructive and how to Respond to it.
Scott Allen:So yeah, elise, as I said, really thrilled to be able to have some time with you. I've been wanting to connect since I was first kind of made aware of you in 2020, because I wrote a book that year called why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice, published very similarly timed to your first book, and I think we were both seeing kind of similar things and responding to similar things, and I listened to one of your podcasts and I thought, oh my gosh, I would love to talk to you. Part of what motivated me to write my book was I was involved with a very influential church in Phoenix that really had gone down the direction of what you might call progressive, or they really bought into a lot of this idea of social justice and what you know we kind of colloquially call woke now and I was very alarmed at that because it was such a, you know, a good church, well-grounded church, but I was just so puzzled on how they had gone so deeply into that.
Scott Allen:So, anyways, I am glad that we have an opportunity today to get into some discussion around these things.
Alisa Childers:Yeah, me too, and I definitely echo that sentiment. We definitely have a kind of kindred way of seeing things, and we were seeing some of the same things at the same time, I think, and so I'm really looking forward to see where this conversation goes.
Scott Allen:I was thinking as we were talking as a team, Elisa, you know, I feel like we're in this kind of really unique moment where a lot of these ideas that we were writing about.
Scott Allen:They're still really powerful and prevalent in the Church. But there's been a shift and I think everyone feels that and sees that there's just much more openness and awareness to seeing how damaging and destructive they are. People are willing to kind of reconsider them. I think there's a lot of turning away from it. It's a really fascinating time.
Scott Allen:I didn't expect that we would see it in this way, so kind of quickly. I'd love your thoughts on that, by the way, just kind of what's been happening even over the last year. But it got us thinking gosh, it would be fun to talk about. How do we, you know, in this moment, with what's happening, how should we as the Church, the evangelical, Bible-believing Church, how should we rightly respond to culture? We've seen some of these ways that the church has been responding that have been negative, that we've been writing about. But how should we? So before I get into—as kind of a jumping off I was going to use a really terrific article that Owen Strawn, the great theologian author. He wrote an article on Christian approaches to culture. I use as a jumping off point. But before I kind of get into that, elisa, any thoughts on just where we find ourselves today. I'd love your thoughts or reaction.
Alisa Childers:Yeah, it's a really interesting time to be a Christian because in one sense we've watched the church over the past several years really probably last decade go really sort of drifting into this mushy kind of progressive theology, progressive political policy, progressive like what you called wokeness, that sort of thing, and even, by the way, in churches that might not be progressive theologically or political or whatever, you still kind of see this influence of that cultural Marxism or the wokeness and the oppressed versus oppressor narrative, which has honestly been a bit puzzling to me, because when I wrote my first book about progressive Christianity I pretty much just focused on theology.
Alisa Childers:That was pretty much the only angle that I was looking at it from. But then of course I noticed there was a really strong political difference, there was a really strong ethical difference, there was a really strong difference as far as how to engage with culture, and so I didn't necessarily make the connection that every church that sort of leans into these woke kind of things was going to go theologically progressive. But I do think that's what we are starting to see happen.
Alisa Childers:So, even churches that might have been checking all the right boxes on gospel truth and biblical inerrancy and things like this. They're maybe loosening up on those things because of caving into wokeness, for lack of a better word. Now what's really interesting to me is that culture seems to be quite split on this because, as we've seen with the last election and so much of that for I think even just your average non-Christian person had to do wasn't so much about abortion or something like that, but it was really more. They wanted DEI out of their sphere of or their environment. They wanted that out, and so you see a lot of these sort of even atheists, secular humanists, almost taking a right turn. You know away from the left, and a lot of that had to do with things like DEI and, of of course, the border was a huge issue as well.
Alisa Childers:So I think we saw a lot of common ground emerge between maybe some Christian principles, like all throughout scripture, god speaking positively of establishing the borders of nations and having those boundaries, that he sets those boundaries, and things like biblical justice, where that has to do with fairness, giving someone their due, with there being different punishments in the Old Testament for different sins, different rewards for different behaviors, so it's not like just everybody has the same exact outcome.
Alisa Childers:So we're seeing some people that would have been on the left maybe coming to the right politically I'm speaking more politically right now but some of the commonalities really are undergirded by Judeo-Christian principles that our country was really founded on.
Alisa Childers:Now what's interesting about it is that, as the church continues to go left, it seems in many ways now some are pushing against that, but culture is almost doing the opposite, and, as my friend Natasha Crane pointed out in her book, when Culture Hates you, it's a good thing maybe that some of these secular humanists and atheists and agnostics are seeing the value of some of the biblical principles that they're having to kind of borrow.
Alisa Childers:If they don't get there, if they don't get to the gospel, then it's just going to be this back and forth and it's not really going to have a foundation to root itself on. And so I think what this brings us back to is the reality that and I think I don't know a lot of Christians, even the ones who are really engaged politically, who would disagree with what I'm saying here but we have to change hearts with the gospel. I think that's the primary thing that's emerging for me is that, yeah, we can have maybe some political relief in one area or another, but nothing's going to ultimately change until the foundation is on Christ, and that, in my view, is not something we'll have until Christ returns. And so it was interesting seeing these three sort of camps emerging, and I might make some distinctions a little differently, but I do think it's helpful to kind of see that there are these different responses to culture coming from the evangelical church.
Scott Allen:Yeah, yeah, wow. Those are really really great thoughts and interesting thoughts. I share a lot of what you just described there. I do think it's interesting. You see a lot of elites in our culture right now, very thoughtful people like Jordan Peterson I think typifies this and there's many others now that have joined him highly educated, often people on the left now that are rethinking the Bible and, I think you know, very open to Christianity for the first time maybe in their entire lives. Often they were very secular, very progressive, and I think part of the reason my own kind of analysis of this is that they saw the danger of—they are thinking culturally and they saw the danger of these ideas. You know, like you say, it kind of reached a tipping point.
Scott Allen:I think you mentioned DEI, which you know. I think it sounds good diversity, equity, inclusion but everyone kind of saw this is just kind of overt racism against one particular group. You know people that don't have, you know, brown or black skin or not, you know it's, you know. So there's this kind of overt racism with this there's. I think the transgenderism issue kind of was also a critical turning point, especially transgender surgeries.
Scott Allen:People were like this is horrible, that really.
Alisa Childers:Especially for children. Yes, you know, I think there were even people within the LGBTQ that would identify as LGBTQ that were saying like this is a step too far.
Scott Allen:And then I think, you know, in my own analysis, I think, the censorship you know, this was a group that was very willing and happy to use really strong power tactics to kind of get their way in the culture, including silencing and censoring people that had opposite views.
Scott Allen:And they could because they had, you know, their hands on power. You know the power to do those kinds of things, and I think that was a wake up call. So people were going gosh, I don't want to live, you know, in a culture that doesn't support freedom or does these things to children or has this kind of overt racist, you know, kind of undertone to it. I don't want to live in that kind of a culture. I want to live in a culture that supports freedom, that supports freedom of speech and values the life of children and teaches children to be virtuous and doesn't have all this LGBTQ curriculum in public schools. And so they were saying I want to live in a different kind of culture than I see us moving in. And then they started asking the question what supports that culture? How do you get that culture? We used to have it, it seems, and that led them to the Bible, you know. Lo and behold.
Alisa Childers:Right right.
Scott Allen:These ideas come from the Bible and you get people like Jordan Peterson teaching about the Bible and how this biblical story produces these kind of good public cultural outcomes, and so that's all I think, fascinating people moving away, an openness to the Bible. I think my concern with the church is that the church—I agree completely that we need to prioritize preaching the gospel just having a kind of an openness to Christianity and culture. The influence of Christianity on culture is not enough. People need to have born-again hearts. But I also think it's not enough for the church to say you just need to believe in Jesus. In other words, these people aren't coming to Christianity in the Bible with that kind of an interest right now. They're coming with a cultural interest, right, and that's the thing that I think the church isn't used to even talking about hardly.
Alisa Childers:Yeah.
Scott Allen:You know we've kind of forgotten that. You know that we should be having an influence on culture and shaping culture with the biblical worldview. We, you know we want to preach the gospel or whatever it is. So just a couple of thoughts on my part. I kind of want to get into the Strawn article, if you don't mind, because he puts forward these three approaches, that he kind of sees three camps within the evangelical church and I think they're quite valid. You know, as I was reading his article and I just want to kind of summarize the three, get your reaction to them, lisa, and then just kind of quick reaction and then let's have some discussion about you know is one of these two of these right?
Scott Allen:Is there a third way or a fourth way that is kind of missing? Is there a better way for us to be engaging, have that kind of discussion? Yeah Well, let me just go ahead and quickly pull this up here. So this is again an article that Strawn wrote. Let me reference that so people can look it up and read that it is called One Holy Nation in Christ, christian Nationalism in Historical and Theological Perspective. So he's writing here mainly as a critique of Christian nationalism, which is one of these three approaches that he puts forward. But he also really lays out these three in this article. And the first one that he lays out is what I'll call winsome, faithful presence.
Scott Allen:And this is probably, in some ways, maybe the largest kind of camp of ideas, the school of thought, I guess, within evangelicalism. When it comes to engaging culture, it's put forward most powerfully by Tim Keller, the late Tim Keller, people like James Davidson Hunter you know Christianity Today David French, russell Moore, maybe, to a certain degree, the Gospel Coalition. So these are very influential people and groups and their basic idea in terms of how the church should engage with the culture is that well, first of all, it should be actively engaged in culture. So they would say that yes, we should be actively engaged and we do want to see people saved. We want people to know the gospel, to respond to the gospel. We want people to know the gospel, to respond to the gospel.
Scott Allen:But it puts a heavy emphasis on being winsome or kind or gentle and really wants to build bridges of understanding with nonbelievers and particularly elites. It has a real particular focus on powerful elite people in urban areas Washington DC, new York, these big cities. It's very sensitive to optics, the perception that the church has in the eyes of powerful cultural elites, and it doesn't want to look bad. It tends to downplay hot-button cultural issues and often talks in a really critical or negative way about Christians who are just into fighting culture wars. It doesn't want to be seen as culture warrior-like.
Scott Allen:It puts a lot of emphasis on love but often will downplay biblical truth claims, especially those that are unpopular with cultural elites, and you see this particularly around issues of sexuality, are unpopular with cultural elites and you see this particularly around issues of sexuality. So it would want to be welcoming to LGBTQ but it's going to struggle a little bit to speak truthfully on issues like that, when it comes to politics it's very famous for its neither-left-nor-right approach Doesn't believe that the Church should be partisan in any respect, although it would say yes, it should be engaged in politics, although what I've noticed in my own view is that it tends to lean left. So it's not.
Scott Allen:It says neither left nor right, but it tends most of these people probably ended up voting for Kamala Harris in the last election, so they certainly did not vote for Donald Trump. Go ahead, elisa.
Alisa Childers:Well, sorry. So yeah, I would say too, like of course, tim Keller is no longer here.
Alisa Childers:So you know for what I'm about to say. I'm going to say I'm talking mostly about David French, russell Moore, christianity Today and, to a certain extent, maybe some affiliated with the Gospel Coalition. But one of the things that I think this is a good summary that you kind of summarized for me, the article that Owen wrote. But it's interesting because you know to say that they always promote themselves as being politically neutral but they're not politically neutral at all. In fact, we know that Megan Basham wrote a book called Shepherds for Sale where she actually followed the money on David French and Russell Moore's political curriculum that went into hundreds of churches before the last election. That was marketed as neutral, marketed as saying we don't want to be on the right or the left, we just want to be in the heart of the Bible. But this curriculum was funded by radical secular progressives who have a very strong agenda to change the church's mind on some of these issues, and that's one of the things that Megan's book pointed out.
Alisa Childers:So I think a lot of Christians were frustrated by the way that this particular group was presenting itself as hey, we're trying to do this third way, we're trying to be outside of the right or the left, but really what they ended up being is just a bit of a shill for the left.
Alisa Childers:I think is what ended up happening.
Alisa Childers:And, as you mentioned, several people within this stream, for example, roy Ortland, who's a local pastor here in Nashville, who's Russell Moore's on staff at his church he made a post basically saying that he was going to be voting for Kamala.
Alisa Childers:And when Trump was elected, you know, russell Moore did a podcast where there was just like this mourning, there was just this collective mourning, and the only reason I'm bringing that up is not to defend Trump or say that that's good or bad, but it's to point out that it's not neutral. That's the main reason I'm pointing that out, because I think that that is probably the group I'm the most concerned about right now, because they are marketing themselves as if they're this voice of reason in the middle that are just. We just want to go with the Bible, and they'll even put down other Christians that have political opinions that disagree with the left, but they're not going to punch toward the left. My friend John Cooper says lean left, but they're not going to punch toward the left, my friend John Cooper says lean left, punch right, and that's kind of what they're doing.
Scott Allen:And they do, they have no problem, that's right. Yeah, doing that, that's for sure. I would love your thoughts, just before we move on to the other two, on this one because it's been historically so influential. Okay, when I say influential, let me clarify that what I see is that these are people that have—they're kind of almost Christian elites. They are the ones that run our publishing houses, our big ministries, christianity Today, large megachurch pastors, big ministries and— and yet I don't think they're well represented in the hearts and minds of just your average everyday evangelical Christian. I do think there's been kind of a separation there a little bit, where leadership has kind of gone off a little bit in ways that the regular church-attending Christians aren't quite following, I agree.
Alisa Childers:I do, I agree. I think there's like this disconnect. In fact, you hear people talking about the rise of the normies. You know just the normal people because we've gone to these, like you mentioned, elites for so long, these big Christian platforms that are and you know the difficulty, sometimes people refer to this as big Eva, big evangelical because, it's this big infrastructure where people are rewarded. And I'm not saying, the Gospel Coalition puts out some good articles still.
Scott Allen:Right for sure.
Alisa Childers:It's not like you know. I don't want anyone to mistake.
Alisa Childers:You don't want to paint with too broad a brush stroke, exactly exactly, and I actually used to write for the Gospel Coalition. I don't really anymore, but I think that you know, and we can't just all everybody guilty by association and we can't just all everybody guilty by association, but, with that said, just the infrastructure itself of having these big platforms where people are rewarded with platform with. You know, and I saw this actually, this is when I kind of backed off from the Gospel Coalition a little bit was during COVID, when I was In fact, I had come out with this big book review right when the George Floyd thing happened, and so I was really I was so nervous about my book review because I was reviewing a big progressive book and I thought, oh, I'm going to get so much hate for this. But thankfully everybody was distracted by the other thing that it sort of just flew under the radar. But I noticed during that time that when I would look I think I was still on Twitter at this time, but I would look on Twitter and other authors that I would have thought otherwise I was unified with. They were all sort of coming together with this one voice, and you mentioned this even in your summary here, that it was like you must get the vaccine, because the Bible says love your neighbor. And it was like I felt the pressure, like I don't think I'm allowed to disagree with this and still, no, they never said this to me. And I actually have to give the Gospel Coalition a lot of credit because in subsequent couple of years they actually did allow me to do some disagreement. So I have to.
Alisa Childers:I want to acknowledge that, but there's this pressure within that big EVA structure to toe the line on the narrative, and that's, I think, the big challenge with some of these big EVA platforms is that they really, for a long time, were controlling the narrative, and that's, I think, the big challenge with some of these big Eva platforms is that they really, for a long time, were controlling the narrative. And so what I think happened during COVID especially because it wasn't like they were saying, hey, this is a matter of conscience, we think it's a good idea to get the vaccine, but as a Christian, you are free to follow your conscience on this. This isn't like something that the Bible says, but they were binding people's consciences to what I think the Pharisees were doing man-made traditions. This is something we're adding to scripture and binding your conscience with. And I think that's when normal people, the normies like I'm a normie right we're going. Something isn't smell right about this. This is not passing the smell test.
Alisa Childers:Something's off about this, and so I think it caused a deep mistrust with some of these big platforms that people otherwise would have said oh, if the Gospel Coalition puts it out, it's reliable, I can trust it. If it's with Christianity Today, I can trust it if it comes out of this or that platform. But I think that all became eroded during that time because what we saw was that there really was this agenda that it turned out in many cases not in every case, but in many cases was actually funded by secular progressives to change the church's mind. And so I think that there's been a lot of trust eroded in some of those bigger elite platforms, as you mentioned, and I think you know elite platforms, as you mentioned, and I think you know this particular group.
Scott Allen:on COVID, let's say they were quick to go along with what you know the government was saying about it with you know the vaccines and things like that, because again its interest was we want to. You know we want to build bridges with powerful kind of elite groups. We don't want to be seen as kind of weird Christians.
Scott Allen:We want to be seen as normal Christians normal in the eyes of these powerful people and they would say so we can build, you know, bridges. You know this is the Winsome idea. So we can build bridges of trust and you know, so that we can share the gospel within these elite circles. And that's how you kind of win the culture. James Davidson Hunter is quite clear on this in a lot of his writings. Culture changes from the top down.
Scott Allen:You need to win these elite people and you win them by not pushing back against them or, you know, by trying to understand them and I think a lot of you know Megan Basham's book's been highly influential on you know, kind of pulling the cover back and saying you guys got kind of played here a little bit. You became pawns in a larger political game. The left was happy to use you, you know, to move the culture to the left and you kind of went along with that to move the culture to the left and you kind of went along with that.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, I wanted to take a quick minute to encourage you to hop on the podcast app that you're currently listening on and leave this show a rating and review. A little one to five star rating will only take you a second and, depending on how thoughtful you'd like to be, a little review should only take you less than 30 seconds. So thank you for taking the time. Also, I wanted to remind you that our guest today has an amazing podcast. It's one of my favorites. So if you love podcasts, like I do, then make sure to subscribe to the Elisa Childers podcast.
Luke Allen:I particularly like to recommend her recent episode, number 274, with some guy named Scott Allen who talked about some new book that he wrote called 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World. It actually was a great episode, guys, so if you'd like to check that out, I would recommend it, but so are all of her episodes. So again, elisa Childers podcast. It's available wherever you get your podcasts, so go, make sure to check it out. Or if you'd like to learn a little bit more about it, you can just head over to this episode's page, which is linked in the description. Thanks again for joining us guys, and I really hope you enjoy the rest of this episode.
Scott Allen:Okay, let's do this. Let's move on and talk about the next group that Strawn references in his article. This is an approach to Christian engagement in the culture and this is really, in some ways, the main thing that he's referencing in this article. Christian nationalism and the way he describes this particular approach is these are people that are quite proudly countercultural. They distrust the powerful cultural elites. They distrust the powerful cultural elites, they distrust the mainstream media strongly and they're quite proud to be engaging in the culture on hot-button cultural issues the sexual revolution, the woke cultural Marxism, abortion. So they're quite, very—they're very, you know, happy to be deeply engaged in the culture. They're very, you know, happy to be deeply engaged in the culture. They believe that, yeah, there is a role for the church to shape culture to—the word that Strawn uses in the article over and over is Christianize. I don't know if I love that word, but he says that their focus is on Christianizing the nations and that they would do this primarily this Christianizing through politics, policy and law. If we can change laws, if we can change policies, public policies, work through political structures, then we can Christianize the nations. So I mean, that's in a nutshell. They were very highly critical of you know, pronouncements during COVID on vaccines. Most of them, you know, were happy to go against those pronouncements.
Scott Allen:Nationalism, elisa. I'd love your thoughts on it because in some ways for me, I first became aware of this term, this phrase, christian nationalism. You know, it was at the same time that, you know, the Church was kind of starting to kind of wake up to the whole woke cultural Marxist revolution and using phrases like critical race theory a lot. Wow, there's this thing called critical race theory. And then suddenly there was this other phrase, christian nationalism. It was the people pushing back against critical race theory. So I almost feel like it's—I've often felt like it's a kind of a creation of that first group in some ways to challenge people that you know they're opponents. But I'd love your thoughts on this whole category of engagement. I think Strawn would say Douglas Wilson, you know, the theologian and pastor in Idaho, would be a good example of a Christian nationalist.
Alisa Childers:Who was that example again?
Scott Allen:Douglas Wilson.
Alisa Childers:Doug Wilson, yeah, so yeah, I think I really just detest the label Christian nationalist because, as you mentioned, people define that word a hundred different ways. I've been called a Christian nationalist for writing an article that had nothing to do with politics. Even that was my first introduction into the Christian nationalist conversation. Actually, it was back when I was writing for Gospel Coalition. I wrote an article that was comparing the theological beliefs of atheists and progressive Christians and showing how there's a lot of overlap in what they believe about the Bible, about heaven and hell and things like that. It had nothing to do with politics at all, but it went viral on progressive Twitter and it was just thread after thread of how I'm a white Christian nationalist and I was like what is happening? So I am very sympathetic to no, sympathetic isn't the right word. I'm very sensitive to just throwing that term around, because what you have with people like a Douglas Wilson, joel Web that where people are actually saying I am a Christian nationalist, here's what that means and then they give their view. Now someone like an Ali Beth Stuckey or even a Charlie Kirk I don't think they would embrace that label. I think that they often are unfairly labeled that, in fact, I talked with Allie on my podcast about Russell Moore calling her a dangerous Christian nationalist in his documentary, which, if you follow Allie, yes, she's very engaged politically, she's passionate about politics and political philosophy.
Alisa Childers:She's a big supporter of Trump. She thinks Trump is the right guy. But I've never seen her mix that or elevate that over her emphasis on the gospel and on preaching the gospel, on making sure that, as Christians, what we believe is biblical. But she is often called a Christian nationalist because she is politically engaged and on the wrong side, according to people who are. You know, because this is the thing about Christian nationalism. If you define it as putting politics over the gospel, then progressive Christianity are. They're Christian nationalists. Because you have Kamala speaking in progressive church. You know, on her campaign trail she's speaking in the progressive churches.
Alisa Childers:Every progressive church that I follow is heavily political, heavily, heavily political with no apology, but it's just when Christians on the other side maybe have political opinions that they're bringing into the public square, they can just throw this boogeyman of Christian nationalism at them, and then they have to be quiet and then, oh no, you know, it's almost like being called a racist. You don't want to be that.
Scott Allen:Exactly.
Alisa Childers:Right, so it's a very effective. It's a very effective pejorative.
Scott Allen:Yeah, yeah, it's a way of silencing people, silencing opponents, you know by labeling them with a dangerous label. Yeah, I think that's. That's really at the heart of it in some ways.
Alisa Childers:I don't I don't know.
Scott Allen:I think the first group is a genuine group I mean, I think for sure you know there's but this one, I think, is it's not that there aren't some people, but I think this one is largely kind of a. In some ways it's a creation of the first group, to kind of you know to.
Alisa Childers:Right, because if you actually think about the way our country even works and this was pointed out by my friend, krista Bontrager in a recent episode on her All the Things podcast but you have this idea of what's called principled pluralism, where Christians might say well, we want everybody to bring their beliefs into the public square and then vote on the policies that are best and then may the best idea win.
Alisa Childers:But if we really think about it, what America was really founded on was this idea that there is a supreme creator and we have these unalienable rights based on the fact that we have there's a higher law, there's a higher moral law, and that kind of has to be Judeo-Christian in order for any sort of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, to actually work. Because if you think about Islam, if we just all, if there are more Muslims in America than Christians, then we'll be under Sharia law, and so the question is is that good? Or should we try to privilege one religion without saying you must be this religion? But if Christianity is privileged, then that provides a free space for other religions to practice, and I think that's a very valuable question to ask and think about. But the problem is is, if you answer. Well, maybe Christian principles should be prioritized so that other religions are able to freely practice their religion, but maybe we don't want a Muslim president. You will be called a Christian nationalist and I'm not sure that's fair.
Scott Allen:I think these are conversations we need to be able to have without fear of being silenced with the label Christian nationalist Boy that last point that you made I think is so important, and I just want to underscore that because I think you know it's something that I've only kind of come to recently. I would put it in a couple of ways. Number one some religion, if you will, is going to underpin or be at the foundation of any kind of political order.
Alisa Childers:That's right.
Scott Allen:There's no way of separating them. There's no way of separating them. There's no purely secular, if you will. In that sense, at the foundation of everything are these deep worldview beliefs, and some set of them is going to be at the foundation of any kind of nation or political or cultural order. So it's not a matter of should it be Christianity order? So it's not a matter of what should it be Christianity or—it's something is going to be. And then the second point is and you're correct in this, this is really something that's worthy of a lot of thought Only the Christian belief system, of all the ones on tap—secularism, atheism, islam, animism, whatever it might be kind of paganism only Christianity has within it this seed of freedom and freedom of conscience that creates a space culturally for other belief systems, this kind of pluralism, for them to actually have a place at the table.
Alisa Childers:That's right.
Scott Allen:And I think that's part of what we saw with the woke revolution is that it didn't create any space for anything else at the table. It had to destroy, you know. It had to silence, you know destroy any kind of challenger to its kind of system of belief. And it woke a lot of people up. They were like, wow, I don't want to live in a kind of world where, you know, there isn't freedom. Let's just say, and it caused people to go where did you know what religious belief system supports freedom? And they came back to the Bible. So I think it's really important what you're saying there. Let's go on Strawn then puts out a third approach to how Christians should engage in the culture, and he puts himself squarely in this camp.
Scott Allen:He basically says we have to think first of all in terms of just what does it mean to engage culture? What is culture? And here he kind of divides things. He says God's involvement in the world is through the church. In other words, jesus is the king of the church and of the believers. He's not so much king of the, you know, outside the walls of the church, let's say, or the community of the believers. That's the fallen world, that's the world that is coming under judgment, it's going to be destroyed, and so it takes this kind of negative view towards cultural engagement because it views it as kind of like wasting your time, almost it's like it's not going to matter in the end. What's going to matter in the end is that people are saved. This is the real emphasis. We need to preach the gospel. People need to be saved. They need to be brought into the church and, ultimately, into heaven. To be saved, they need to be brought into the church and ultimately, into heaven.
Scott Allen:Strawn doesn't say that we shouldn't have an influence on the culture. He uses pro-life as an example of that. Yes, we should stand against abortion and things like that. So he's not against an influence in the culture, but he just doesn't like that having too much emphasis. The emphasis needs to be clearly on preaching the gospel, bringing people into the church, discipleship, and this kind of overly focused involvement on politics and culture—and he points to the Christian nationalists here—that they would have is wrong. This is just not right. We're not called to change the culture through changing laws and election politics, all of that stuff. That's not really our calling. Our calling is to preach the gospel and disciple people. This is a historically hugely influential and clear way of understanding Christian engagement towards the culture. Thoughts on what Strawn is saying here.
Alisa Childers:Yeah, I'm sympathetic to this view. I think—I don't think that this necessarily has to be an either-or. I agree 100% that for a Christian, our political engagement should be downstream from our theology which, interesting, a lot of people that are sort of considered to be in the Christian nationalist camp would say the same thing that we start with our theology and what we believe about God and preaching the gospel. But I suppose I'm sympathetic to the view that we—America is a very unique country. In fact, I've been reading quite a bit, I've been memorizing 2 Peter, and you know, subject yourself to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish evil and reward those who do good. And there is a specific institution of government that is very biblical, going all the way back to the. In fact, you know the three institutions God actually instituted are marriage, the church and, or, you know, family, church and the government, and the Bible is very clear that a good government is supposed to, you know, punish evil and praise those who do good. The unique thing about America is the way we have our government set up, is that technically, we are the king, the people are, and so we have a responsibility, as you know, because of the way our government is set up, I think to be a participant in the activity of punishing evil and rewarding those who do good. We're very unique in the world that we have a constitutional republic that's set up that way, and so I think that an extreme piety maybe, where a Christian would say we want to be completely disengaged from—now I don't think that's what he's saying, obviously—but I think that—here's my—I guess the way I see it, since we do have that set up and this is where we were— is where we live and where God has chosen to put us. Why wouldn't we have political influence if we can Now? Should that ever become our main focus? No. Should that ever take the place of the gospel? No.
Alisa Childers:But even taking the pro-life issue, if I have an opportunity participating in my government in a very unique way that's kind of unprecedented in all of history to be able to save lives by voting for policies and even loudly advocating for policies that will save more lives, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I do that as a Christian? And I think the fear is is people don't want to be associated with this label or that label, and you know, I'm probably most sympathetic to this third view because I think if people's hope is in politics, it's going to fail. Just like you know, listen, I've been very pleased with some of the pro-life things Trump has done since he's been in office. That even you know I was very concerned about sort of the gutting of the pro-life platform of the Republicans around the time Trump kind of rose to power this time and I was thinking, man, the church, we've got to stay on this because we can't, just because we feel better about DEI policies or the border, we can't let up on this. But I mean, he's done some tremendous things in the short time to save a lot of lives, a lot of lives.
Alisa Childers:So I think we can praise those who do good and I think that that's something we can do, but without putting our hope in Trump or our hope in the Republican Party, because you know who knows? I don't know what God's going to do. Maybe God will humble Trump and it won't all turn out the way we were hoping or the way some were hoping. Our hope has to be in Christ, our hope has to be in the gospel and ultimately none of this is going to change for good unless people's hearts change, and I'm sympathetic to the idea that I think it's probably going to get a lot worse before Jesus comes back. Like I don't know if we have a little bit of reprieve right now. I don't know what's going on. All I know is that, as a Christian, and based on my biblical view of what the Bible says governments are supposed to do, I want to be engaged politically and speaking out on policies that are promoting good, and so I guess maybe I'd be a little bit in between these last two groups.
Luke Allen:I suppose, yeah, when I look at these last two groups, I struggle too, because I, I, I, I also am sympathetic to this last group in the fact that I probably go to a church that believes in most of this stuff. A lot of my favorite uh, authors, preachers, come out of this camp. You know kind of camp it's it, it seems. It seems to me like a lot of the issue between this group we're talking about and the last group we talked about is just the words that we're using, and I think we're just defining words differently a lot of times and that causes a lot of friction. And, for example, someone in this camp really doesn't like, usually doesn't like, the terminology bring the kingdom or Christianize the nations, as Strawn points out here, he dislikes. But then they would also say but be salt and light.
Luke Allen:And I'm like okay, aren't we saying the same thing? Those are pretty similar. Right, you're just making an influence and living out your faith, right, and I can say bring in the kingdom of God. You know, that's often a very common term in the New Testament. Or you can say being salt and light, and they're very similar. And yet people will get all hung up on the difference in terminology there, and I think a lot of it does come down to just the words we're using.
Luke Allen:Where I would differ from this final group is that sometimes they would say, like you were saying, dad, there's kind of these, this is the most important thing, this is the second most important thing. And I would say, like you were saying, dad, there's kind of these, this is the most important thing, this is the second most important thing. And I would say, yes, you know, salvation is the most important thing. Yes, but then what and it flows right from there is how you're going to live out your faith in this world, what that's going to look like, and if living out your faith in this world is just like this secular thing that we should try to avoid. No, I would disagree with that. No, we need to be salt and light, as you would say.
Scott Allen:Yeah, the way I put that, luke is this group, I think, makes gospel proclamation slash, salvation the end that is the mission of the church, whereas I would say it's an essential means to a bigger end, and I think that's a really important distinction. So what I like about this group is it puts, you know, a lot of emphasis on the gospel. We can never lose that. That's the central story of the Bible and we need to be saved. You know people need to be born again, but it's not an end, you know. I mean we're born again so that we can live out our faith in a way that blesses nations. I always see this bigger thing that God's doing in the world and you know he wants to see nations blessed. That, you know, is a theme from Genesis 12 all the way to the very end, and he does that by saving people and redeeming them so that they can be salt and light and bring this truth to the nations. I think that's the other thing I struggle with with this group is this idea of kind of the kingdom of God it's only in the church Kind of it limits Christ's lordship in a way I'm not comfortable with. You know, yes, christ is certainly lord of the church and of believers, but he's the lord of all. You know there isn't a separation there in my mind. You know one side acknowledges it, the other doesn't. But it doesn't mean that he doesn't have authority and his truth—and I think they would agree with that. But somehow that doesn't work out in their theology very well of cultural engagement. They almost act like Satan has the authority in the fallen world and we just kind of give up on it.
Scott Allen:This came out by the way in the last election. Because who was it? Barna did all that research and found out that something like two-thirds of evangelicals or not two-thirds, a third don't vote at all. And the question was why don't they vote? And I think a lot, know a lot of it has to do with their being influenced by this school of thought. It's kind of it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. So if it doesn't really matter, then why do it? You know I've got other important things I've got to do, you know.
Alisa Childers:You know, I think that you know that was the only demographic that the numbers actually went down on voting evangelicals and I actually think I don't know if it's it's so funny to hear you say that maybe it's because of the third. I actually think it's because of the first group because they advocated so heavily for Christians to.
Alisa Childers:I think their whole energy was to get Christians to not vote for Trump, and so what that caused a lot of Christians to do is say, well, I'm just not going to vote at all, because a lot of Christians were saying I can't vote for Kamala but I can't vote for. They did such a good job of convincing the church they can't vote for Trump that I think a lot of evangelicals sat out because of that group.
Luke Allen:That first group.
Alisa Childers:But if I could, I just wanted to tell one little quick story that sort of might be a good picture as to what we're talking about here. I was teaching at the Billy Graham Association a few years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine and I was literally sitting. I've never told this story publicly. I was literally sitting across the table at lunch across from Franklin Graham. Now people say all sorts of things about him and I don't know him super well. I've met him. I toured the Samaritan's Purse offices there and I was sitting at lunch across from him when someone came over and said that Ukraine was requesting his assistance to bring in their field hospital that they send out on a plane. And he said, yes, let's do it. So before even the government could do anything. Here's Franklin, I'm watching it happen. Franklin Graham sends his field hospital out there. And let me tell you something about Samaritan's Purse. They always bring the gospel with them.
Alisa Childers:They're not one of those organizations that just brings in the hospital and, oh, we're just going to treat the physical. No, they treat the spiritual and the physical, and they're able to go into places that nobody else can get into. They bring the gospel with them. And here's the thing. This is the revelation I had when I was there, because everybody's like, oh, frank Graham is so political, he's so political because it requires good politics for him to be able to send his plane where he sent it that day. If we are in a totalitarian leftist society, he doesn't have the freedom to do that anymore. And so it made me much more sympathetic to being a little more political, because I got. I was kind of like I get it, I get it, you're not. If things keep going the way they had been going, he wouldn't be free to do that, and so I'm sympathetic to that as well if that makes sense, really good point.
Scott Allen:Yeah, well, I think, as we wrap up, elisa, you know, here's these three. How should we? I think is the key question, how should we, you know, be—what's the right approach for Christians, especially now where we're at at this kind of unique time? What's the right approach for Christians, especially now where we're at at this kind of unique time? What's the right approach for us to be engaged in culture? Vis-a-vis these three? Any final thoughts from you, or just kind of your sense on that?
Alisa Childers:Yeah, I think that whenever something crazy happens in the world, our tendency is to go crazy on the other side, and so I do. I mean, I have concerns about extremes on both sides in the church right now, and I've talked about this on my podcast as well Like I have concerns about some of that real far right Christian nationalism thing, and I'm concerned about what I'm seeing on the left, and sometimes, when that's the case, christians recognize that and they say well, I want to be balanced, I want to be in the middle, and that's the wrong way to think too.
Alisa Childers:I don't think that balance or being in the middle is the goal right? Sometimes the right view is going to be viewed as extreme. Sometimes it's going to be viewed as wimpy.
Alisa Childers:And I think my point would be, as Christians live according to what is true. And then culture. I don't have a whole lot of hope that culture as a whole. Maybe there's little pockets of time. We might be in one right now where it's going to swing a little bit more toward common sense and biblical values. But I would be sympathetic with the third group here to say I don't think that's, I'm not post-millennial, I don't think it's looking good for the post-millennials, to be honest.
Alisa Childers:Although I mean brothers and sisters in Christ. I think that's a secondary issue, but I sort of more hold the view like this is just going to keep getting worse. Apostasy is going to be getting worse. The world's going to get worse before Jesus comes back. So I think for the Christian we have a very rare opportunity right now.
Alisa Childers:With the way our country is set up, to be able to have some influence and we should use that. Why wouldn't you use it? But we can't rely on it. We can't depend on it. There could come a time in four years, eight years, 16 years, where we are heavily persecuted like Christians all over the world, and we need to be ready for that. We need to be prepared for that and we need not be making small compromises now, because if you make the small ones now, you'll make the big ones later.
Alisa Childers:So, rather than thinking like, oh, I don't want to be called this or I do want to be associated with, just do what the Bible says.
Alisa Childers:Take advantage of whatever opportunity you have in this time and be ready to make sacrifices for truth, because even you know, one thing I'm kind of concerned about too is that even in some of this maybe second group, where you have a lot of people united around politics and they're all over the place theologically I've been critical of that publicly If you're going to be doing pastors conferences to equip pastors to engage politically, you better have theologically sound people speaking, not people who are atheists, not people who are part of heretical movements or don't believe in the Trinity.
Alisa Childers:If you're going to be equipping pastors, those people that are equipping your pastors should be biblical Christians, and if they're not, then that tells me there's something uniting you that isn't biblical principles in the gospel. Nothing wrong with equipping pastors to be politically engaged, but I think we need to make sure that we keep the main thing, the main thing, which is the gospel, and for the most part, I think most people that are lumped into that second group are doing that well, but there are always going to be people on either extreme, and our goal as Christians should be just right in the bullseye of biblical truth, come what may, whether we are praised or persecuted, whether we're, you know, given a party or put in a prison, we just need to speak. What's true.
Scott Allen:Let me just build on what you're saying because I feel like what I'm excited about. I think the opportunity that we have right now is to put the emphasis on biblical truth, but I mean that quite broadly, in the sense of Jordan Peterson, I think, has done us a favor by talking about the power of story and that we all live according to these deep stories. Stories are very important the story of reality and worldview, and I think that the church, all three of these categories, have kind of missed this. We have to come back to the big biblical story. The third group that Strawn puts himself in really emphasizes the high point of our story the incarnation, the resurrection and our response to that story the incarnation, the resurrection and our response to that. It's almost like they pull that out and kind of neglect the rest of the story. You know they downplay a lot of Old Testament stuff and they say this is what's really important, this is what you need.
Scott Allen:But I think what we have to do now is we have to tell, yes, that central part of the story within the context of the whole story, because I think that that's the biblical truth that I'm speaking of.
Scott Allen:You know the whole account, all the way from the very beginning, because it answers the questions of who am I, what's my purpose as a human being, where's history going?
Scott Allen:All of these big worldview questions, big worldview questions, and I think those answers create cultures that are free, just flourishing, and I think this is where a lot of the Jordan Petersons are coming to right now. They're seeing that and I'm afraid that the Christians need to—we used to, I think the Church used to understand that Our job is to bring this whole story to the nations, because the story that guides those nations, whether it be an animistic story or a secular story, is destroying them and they need the whole story, the true story. This is truth, and we have to represent that. Not just you're a sinner and you need to be saved, as central as that is to our story, but the whole thing and that's what I'm hoping for right now is just to kind of. Can we return to that whole story and then represent that? Speak that truthfully, regardless of what people think of us, elites or whoever, but represent that well and clearly for the good of the nations.
Alisa Childers:Thoughts on that Elisa.
Scott Allen:I'm putting my cards on the table. That's my heart.
Alisa Childers:Yeah, and that's.
Alisa Childers:I think my main goal is if we have the opportunity to influence the nations right now, why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we use every—I mean, if you even think about Christians in the first century, the Roman roads are what caused them to be able to go out and spread the gospel, which really did sort of in a way I don't necessarily mean it in the, you know, in the Christian nationalism kind of way but it Christianized the nations. And we have Western culture. We have a lot of things that were built on Christian principles. Not everybody within that system is a Christian or was a Christian, but there's a sense in which that brought good to the world, and why wouldn't we if we have the opportunity? I think my main point is we just need to be ready for either and do what we can, but also be ready to suffer as well, because that's promised.
Scott Allen:Going back historically, I think, is helpful, and this is a little bit of where I have a critique with the Christian nationalist group. I love their engagement in politics and policy, but my concern is they put too much emphasis on that, whereas the older church said no God's Lord of everything over. You know farming and agriculture and education, and even language itself and words and definitions, everything, and so we need to live out the truth of all of that in all of these areas. And so they created beautiful architecture and art and music and they created an entire culture. In other words, it wasn't just hey, we need to come into this nation and change the politics of the policy. I'm not saying that's not important, that's very important. But it was much broader. They had a much broader understanding because they saw biblical truth as touching everything you know.
Alisa Childers:Yeah.
Scott Allen:And this is where I sometimes struggle a little bit with when I talk about the Christian nationalist approach. It's like if we could just right, if we could just get that policy changed. Or you know even DEI, now if we could just get the DEI out, you know, and I'm like you're talking on a policy level, that's good, but we have to go back to this broader worldview, this whole story, the whole thing needs to be changed at the very front end of that.
Alisa Childers:Well, and just to add to your point, there, it's like with DEI.
Alisa Childers:I mean, I'm thankful that they're you know, you see some of these big companies getting rid of their DEI policies. It's now an official thing of the government, but DEI is so deep, oh yes, but DEI is so deeply embedded in everything, even through other names, like social, emotional, learning and all sorts of things that are so deeply embedded. Policies alone aren't going to change. Like you said, they're not going to change people's hearts, and I wonder if we're not just maybe seeing a little bit of both. I'm hopeful that maybe we are, but ultimately, yeah, a policy isn't going to change a heart and ultimately, these things get deeply embedded because of the darkness of people's hearts, and that should be the focus.
Luke Allen:Yeah, policies downstream, from paradigm and principle and truth of the gospel. Elisa, you travel around a lot and do a lot of teaching on how to do what we're talking about right now, on how to equip people with biblically sound theologies and how to live those out in their lives. What are some practical steps that you have seen people pick up and that have changed their lives as they're going about this process of hopefully discipling their friends and their families and eventually their nations? What are some of those simple takeaway steps that you've seen really really make a difference? I know a lot of times this stuff can become head knowledge really quickly and not exactly hands knowledge, so yeah, that's an interesting question.
Alisa Childers:I think one thing that I think is probably good is that I think people are thinking for themselves a little more. I mean, it's kind of like the Wild West out there right now, where it used to be. Maybe you could turn on the news at night and everybody was sort of united around that this thing happened and that's a bad thing. This thing happened and that's a good thing. And I think also, people deeply distrust, obviously, the legacy media now. So there's a lot of conversations happening where people aren't so constrained maybe by those narratives that have been controlling things for so long, whether it be the elites in the church or the elites in the news or the elites wherever it might be.
Alisa Childers:I think the normies, I like the rise of the normies. I think people are like you know what? I'm a normal person, I have a brain, I can think through these things, and I think maybe people are feeling less fear to just say what they think, and I think this is a good thing. I think that's a really good thing and, honestly, even some of the secular people have really gone a long way to help that. It's people like Joe Rogan, where he'll have a conversation with anybody, and I think that's been good for our culture and it's kind of provided this atmosphere of hey, let's just talk about ideas and not worry so much about what we're supposed to say and what we're not supposed to say, and I think that that does provide a space for people to bring the gospel into a place that maybe it wouldn't have been welcomed before.
Luke Allen:That's super helpful. For me, a practical takeaway in this whole discussion was I just reread your book Live your Truth and Others' Lies. That was super helpful. There's a bunch of really helpful practical takeaways that I took away from that book and that book, I think, does a good job of supporting someone in, you could say, kind of the good times right now. We live in a pretty comfy society and if you can be faithful in these times, then you're going to be faithful when the battle hits. And so often we fantasize of, oh, if things get really bad and persecution happens, I'll be strong. It's like, yeah, well, maybe, but what are you doing right now?
Alisa Childers:That's a great point. I think it's harder to be faithful in an affluent, successful culture than it is being it's harder to be faithful in an affluent, successful culture than it is being.
Luke Allen:You know it's not easy to be persecuted, but it's probably harder to be faithful in an affluent culture. Yeah, it's too comfortable to be quiet.
Alisa Childers:It's so many distractions.
Scott Allen:Yeah Well, listen, Lisa, I sure appreciate you just coming on to the podcast and just engaging with us on this and helping us try to sort our thinking out as well and just move the ball forward. It's been really helpful for me to get your thoughts and reactions. I just so appreciate you're a real sensitive kind of watcher of culture and what's happening and just have a deep heart for the church and desire for the church to be all that God wants it to be. So just really grateful, grateful for this opportunity. Any final thoughts from you as we wrap up today?
Alisa Childers:No, I really loved this. This was a really interesting conversation so I appreciate the thoughtful questions and sending that article and kind of getting to just chat through some of these things. I loved it, thank you.
Scott Allen:We'll keep pushing forward because I really do believe God is giving the church a unique window of opportunity. Right now, I feel a sense of responsibility to how can we just really make the most of this unique time that we're in right now. So let's keep learning together and seeking the Lord and being faithful as we were able to. So, Elisa, thank you for joining us today on this episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations.
Luke Allen:Thank you for joining us for this discussion with Elisa Childers.
Luke Allen:If this discussion was helpful for you and you'd like to continue to delve into today's topic, make sure to visit this episode's page, which is linked in the show notes, because on it we have included all of the resources that we mentioned during this episode, including Owen Strawn's fascinating article that inspired today's topic, and then, on that page, we've also, of course, included more information about today's guest, elisa Childers, including links to all of her amazing resources, including her website, elisachilderscom, her three books that we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, and then her podcast, of course, that I mentioned during the break, the Elisa Childers podcast.
Luke Allen:So, again, all that and more is on the episode page, which is linked in the description and is also available on our website, disciplenationsorg. Thanks again to each and every one of you guys for your time and attention, which is linked in the description and is also available on our website, disciplenationsorg. Thanks again to each and every one of you guys for your time and attention today. We really appreciate it and we hope that you'll join us again for another episode on Ideas have Consequences. You.
