730: The Idolatry of Church Growth with Andrew Root

Welcome to the Holy Post. Why was there almost no emphasis on church growth before the 1970s? And how does the fixation on it for the last 40 years correspond with the American economy? Today I talk with my guest Andrew Rout about his new book "Bale and the Gods of More" about the link between the modern church growth movement, the economy, and ancient pagan fertility gods. Then a new report by Ryan Burge says that for decades those who left the church were turned off by partisan politics and the religious right, but that trend might be changing. Also this week Brazil blames its poor performance in the world cup on evangelicals, European evangelicals issue a statement, and an old theory about early Christianity and psychedelic mushrooms is back. Hey, this week we have a bonus segment with my guest Andrew Rout. Those extra long interviews are exclusively on Holy Post Plus, along with all of our other shows like Getting Schooled, 66 vs. to explain the Bible, and full episodes of the SkyPod. And in case you haven't heard, a subscription to Holy Post Plus now includes with God Daily, my daily devotional for people who hate daily devotionals. I've been writing it five days a week since 2014. It's available in both written and audio formats, and it's just the latest offering for those who support our work at Holy Post Media by signing up for Holy Post Plus on either Substack or Patreon. To learn more and to access this week's bonus interview go to HolyPost.com/plus. That's HolyPost.com/plus. Here is episode 730. I did see many politicians. I at one point watched Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders make a joke with Tim Scott. That's crazy. That was crazy. I sat at lunch and say what was the joke? No, I couldn't hear it, but I was curious about it. And I sat by, like, as far as you are from me basically, by Rafael Warnaug at lunch. Is that because you're so liberal? No, he just had lunch. He's been on our show. I know that. Okay. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Also, Skyjitani. I'm here. Hi. Can you tell people why you were there? Yeah. It's incredibly public information. My dad was nominated for a job in the military. He's been in the military. Yeah. That requires congressional approval. So there was a hearing. I'm sure Warnaug has become a big fan. I'm sure he has. It sounded I watched the hearing. And maybe he's got no problem. Yeah. Maybe Bernie Sanders was telling a news of the butt joke to Tim Scott. That's not impossible. Can I have the steering wheel back? Yeah. Are you sure? Yeah. And Skyjitani. Hi, Sky. Hi. How are you? I haven't been nominated for anything. No, but you've been nominated in our hearts. You've been nominated for many things. Some of them good. High school. No. No. I flew so far under the radar I could have been a. That was my goal too. Still fly under the radar. Any of your books nominated for something? Oh yeah. I'll see. There we go. Although we did recently find out that you drove illegally in high school. I did. Yeah. So my older brother let me drive his car a lot before I had a driver's license. Yeah. I don't think that's legal. No kids. Kids. We have a live studio audience again. More more students. Live student audience in the studio. Don't listen to what he just said. It's bad. Do you have your driver's licenses? How many have your driver's licenses? No, no. One and several people thought they did but then changed their minds. Okay. I don't know what that means. They might be in a sky situation. That'll be the interview for this episode. Why did you think you had your driver's license for about three seconds? Curious. It's time for the theme song. What's the news that you like the most? Who's your favorite podcast post? If it's breakfast, get your toasted sky. Fill Caitlin in the Holy Post. Sky. And sometimes other people. You know what I love? Easy wins. I define an easy win as a simple thing I can accomplish that disproportionately improves my life. Setting time limits on my social media apps. Easy win. Signing up for TSA pre-check. Easy win. Surprising my wife with flowers for no reason. Easy win. But when it comes to my health, easy wins are a lot harder to find. It seems like everything takes so much discipline and time. That's why I love AG1. All of the multivitamins, pre- and probiotics, super foods, and antioxidants I need in one scoop plus eight ounces of water. 20 seconds and I'm done. How great is that? By the way, right now, AG1 comes in original, citrus, berry, and tropical flavors. My favorite is the tropical, but you should experiment with all of them because they're delicious. AG1 has over 50,000 verified five-star reviews and comes with a 90-day money back guarantee. Go to drinkag1.com/holypost to get their best offer today. You'll get a free AG1 flavor sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavors. Plus, free vitamin D3 plus K2 and the AG1 welcome kit with your first subscription order. That's drinkag1.com/holypost. Drinkag1.com/holypost. Thanks to AG1 for sponsoring this episode and forgiving me a very easy win every morning. The Holypost is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly now, but asking for help can still feel hard and BetterHelp's latest research confirms it. BetterHelp's 2026 State of stigma report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that while 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, 74% say society still discourages people from doing so. Growing up in the church, the stigma around therapy can be even worse. Aren't you a Christian? How could you be depressed? I grew up singing Happy Sunday School Songs and struggling with depression until I found the courage to say, "I think I need help." 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I answered it. It's got to be like Ct. Is it a drug magazine? I don't know, I don't know, Toker's Monthly. High times? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's the only drug magazine that I have ever subscribed to. Popular mechanics. Oh, why? Exactly. Why are they taking seriously? Well, because a lot of guys have wood shops in their garages. That's why it's around. They're also woodworking magazines, but it's a lot of, you know, learn stuff and do your own thing. It's mostly online now, I imagine. But that was a story in popular mechanics. If you're wondering what it was all about, the Jesus was a mushroom theory has been around since 1970. It was proposed by British Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John Allegro in his 1970 book. And I'm sure you read this because it was right up there for that decade with the late great planet Earth, the sacred mushroom and the cross. It's always something in the cross. It's like this cross in the switchblade and the lynching tree and crossing the lynching tree. The cross in the mushroom go into a bar. You need to do the cross in the tomato. Cross in the tomato. But what's it about? Jesus. He suggested, so this is interesting. Do you want to hear more about this? Because you might say, what? Why would that even be an idea? The Jesus was a mushroom theory suggests that Jesus was actually a personification of the psychoactive mushroom, Aminita Muscaria. The author claimed early Christianity began as a secret sucks fertility cult that used a psycho whatever that took mushrooms. So it was a fertility cult that took mushrooms and he figured this out. He was one of the first scholars to go in and study the Dead Sea Scrolls. They took one back to England and they figured out what it said. And he started It kinda going off a little bit. bit on the side and saying that there were hints, some of the terms in the New Testament were hinting at Sumerian words that may have been psychedelics. And so therefore, the whole thing, the New Testament is really code about a fertility cult that used psychedelic mushrooms. So the whole thing is just a giant parable. And this guy, Jesus, is metaphor. It's kind of like puff the magic dragon. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is like the joke for any kind of ridiculous thing in religious studies. Like if anyone is publishing something, representing on something that seems obviously absurd, people will compare it to this. Yeah. Like famously, but it's-- You've heard this before. Oh, totally. Okay. The Jesus was a mushroom thing. It's like if someone's presenting something at a conference that seems like because there's a whole genre of it where it's like you kind of know this isn't true, it's sort of ridiculous. Yeah. And you're talking because you put something very provocative in the title. People will say things like, oh, it's like the Jesus is a mushroom thing. Oh, I just looked at that. But I hadn't heard about the fertility cult part of it. Yeah. So that's a twist. So the mushroom that he's referring to in his theory is the white mushroom with the red cap with the white dots. Yeah. Just like-- Jesus. Just like in Super Mario Bros. That was our like, the most serious one. The mushroom that died for your sins. Right. Okay. That's pretty amazing. It was a great idea for Christopher Nolan's next movie about this fertility cult, ancient fertility cult that produced Jesus as a metaphor mushroom. Is there any chance that this guy may have partaken? Surely. And some of the things that he-- It's possible. We could do a video game where you have to collect Jesus mushrooms like Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. And you get supernatural powers. The more Jesus mushrooms-- Mushrooms have spores, right? Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. That could be like-- Holy Spirit. Right. Poof. That's a great idea. Wow. Yeah, you're trying to light the cat, but the cat doesn't work. Studio audience, do you want to hear more about-- would you play a video game where you collected mushrooms that were Jesus mushrooms? Oh, oh. That's a good version. I have one final question. It's one of those-- It's a book. It's a book. It's seasonal. You know, it's like we talk about Santa at Christmas. We talk about Jesus when we're thinking about psychedelics. I don't know. You think that I know. Do you think I know anything that I talk about? I think. World Cup, did you watch it? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, really? Were you into it? Yeah. Is Noah into it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We watched the final yesterday, but then we watched the-- what is it? Not the semi-final. The third place game. It was the bronze medal. That was insane. That was insane. Way more fun. I actually do miss that one. Those two games were quite the contrast. It was fun. It was fun. Exactly. Well, I like watching soccer because I feel like I know the most how it works of all the sports. Yeah, I was going to ask, you have no interest in any sport. So why are you excited about the World Cup? I played soccer for a while as a kid. Did you though? Did not know that. Yeah. Like, you like well? I was really good as a small child. And then the minute that it moved from being athletic focused, from being just like, can you follow instructions? I wasn't as good. But as a very small child, I was like the best five-year-old at following instructions. So they were like, put this ball in that goal and I was like, I got it. You got it. Yeah. But I definitely know how it works. So unlike lots of other sports where I'm just like, I don't really know what's going on. It's had to. If you had to, you could explain off sides to somebody. I did, yesterday. Okay. Good. Yeah. I mean, and I-- Wait, wait. Did you understand off sides as a five-year-old? You don't do off sides as a five-year-old. I know. So how did you know off sides? I played until like middle school. Oh, you did? I wasn't very good in middle school. Because you said you were no good as soon as it became about being athletic. But of course, you're veered a little bit. You kept at it. But my point is, I like watching soccer because I understand what's happening, but I much prefer watching the third-place game where stuff is happening constantly. As opposed to yesterday, I went to a party to watch it. And a lot of the time I was just chatting with people because until their stage, it's just not as fun. Well, so was the crowd yesterday. I mean, it was such a quiet crowd for two-thirds of the game. Yeah. That was exciting. No. But some World Cup fans have some interesting theories. Brazil lost. And some fans in Brazil are blaming-- we've blamed a lot of things on white evangelicals over the years. Most fairly, maybe not all. Some World Cup fans are blaming Brazil's loss on evangelicals. There's a popular saying going around Brazil today that if we pray like a gringo, then we play like a gringo in the debate over whether-- it's like the family that prays together, stays together-- the family that prays like gringo plays like gringoes. Fans claim in the debate over whether Catholic or Protestant faith produces football champions. So in the theory, it's kind of interesting. They say, since Brazil won a ton of championships, the teams has a change in playing style. And they argue this change in playing style mirrors the religious transformation that's been underway in Brazil for decades. The more evangelical the country has become, the worse their national team has played. These fans link-- okay, here's the theory. Let me know if you find any credence to this theory. These fans link Catholicism once the country's overwhelming majority faith to improvisation, the somba and the dribbling of past generations. Not dribbling as it's-- but soccer. They dribble. They dribble. Did you get to that level where there was dribbling? I guess. If you played through middle school and you're not sure you engaged in dribbling-- Hope. I mean, I hope so. What about your basketball career? Popular Catholicism in Brazil is often understood as more communal and festive, making fewer severe demands of religious commitments on its adherents, while evangelicalism in Brazil is more often associated with prohibitions and austerity. The fans supporting the theory associate evangelical growth in the country and in the faith most current players themselves profess to a more structured, austere, rigid way of playing soccer. That's interesting. Interesting theory. Okay. Two things. First, they're-- might understanding this correctly that they're saying essentially evangelicalism is a more individualistic approach to faith, whereas Catholicism is more communal. Well, it's more about rigid versus improvisational. Everybody looks at the Catholic Church as being-- That's what my second question was going to be. I had never thought of the Catholic Church as improvisational because it's so liturgical. But Brazilian Catholicism-- That's a good point. --has-- I think what they're hinting at is that there's more cultural additives to Brazilian Catholicism, right? Make it more of a party. It's more synchronicistic. Well, Catholics do have-- They do parties. They do have more parties. Yeah. And not just Bingo. And-- But they have Bingo. They have much more diverse manifestations of itself in different cultures. I think there could be an argument made for because of its history and some of its doctrinal distinctives. Catholicism is more able to kind of-- synchronicistic would be like the more negative way to say it, but to adopt features of a culture and blend them with Christian belief. Whereas evangelicalism might be more rigid and belief, but I actually think it's more just that because evangelicalism does not have actually a very clearly defined set of doctrines, that then everything else is play room, which is more true of Catholicism. Like these are the doctrines, but then there's all this other stuff that's clearly not one of the like canon law kinds of things. We've talked about this before. Evangelicalism, because we don't have that, there's more pressure to conform to all sorts of non-doctoral things to kind of prove that you're in the end group. Okay. I'm not sure that that affects soccer, derogatory-- I don't know that it does either, but-- Absolutely. That's the one part that seems like a true difference to me. But here's Julio Nascimento, a Brazilian sports journalist, says he attributes the change in the way Brazilian players play that most now leave Brazil for Europe at very young ages and develop within a European style of play. That's an alternative theory. Yeah. So one theory is, it's because they're evangelicals. The other theory is, is because they're being trained by Europeans. And yet, I don't know, which one holds more-- let's ask our studio audience. Okay. Vote. Do you think it's more because they're not Catholics anymore? Raise your hand. Do you think it's more because they're being trained by European coaches in the European style? Oh, overwhelming support for theory number two. Can I poke a hole in this, however? Maybe you can pray like a gringo and not play like a gringo. So Brazil has not won the World Cup since 1994? Yeah. And they're saying it's because they're playing more and being trained more by the European style of soccer, but three of the four teams in the final semi-- in the semi-finals of this World Cup were European teams. Yeah. But they're, but it's not, like if they're playing more like the Europeans, shouldn't they be doing that? Brazil was known for a very free-flowing, improvisational style. That's fine. And now like Spain and England and whoever else, they are just turning it into a system like a factory and they're winning. I don't know. So what I don't know what I hear them saying is the game overall has changed. And they haven't changed with it enough to be good at it. Yeah, but they're saying they've changed too much. These are people who are upset that the glory days are behind them. I'm going to move on. Great. I'll just say this. Correlation is not causation. Yes. The fact that the percentage of evangelicals in Brazil has increased since 1994. That is the cause of the-- A large number of them are on the soccer team. It is, it does not mean-- Three quarters of this year's team was evangelical. Three quarters. Did you notice yesterday-- We're recording this on Monday. Three quarters and they lost because they refused to play on Sunday. Did you notice during the final game yesterday, whenever Argentina would sub somebody in, whoever was subbed in would do the sign of the cross like 15 times as they were entering the field? You got to stack them up. It's just kind of weird. Power up. It's like, it's like Hail Mary's. The more you say, the more you, the more it works. It's just so it's like an incantation. Yeah. But also proof that the opposite is true, because there's plenty of evangelicals that would be like, I don't know, the more evangelicals on a team, the better you should be at everything. Yeah. Clearly-- And the more people in your prayer chain, the more likely you're already get which pray for. More successful. Holy Post is sponsored by the new Living Translation. If you've been listening to the Holy Post for a while, you know we work hard to think deeply about our faith and to engage with scripture thoughtfully and faithfully. 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It summarizes who European evangelicals are, what they believe, and what their major stances are on current public policy issues. Why do you think they might feel the need to do that at this moment in history? Well, the brand of evangelical hasn't exactly been shining lately. I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Tell me more. I've been hearing about this for some time now. Apart from outlining its own views, the statement also has a subtext that European and by implication world evangelicals should not be equated with some American evangelicals. The statement maintains that collectively European evangelicals are diverse, multi-ethnic, and non-partisan, and that they represent a broad spectrum of political views whose primary identity is rooted in Christian faith, not political allegiance. Shouldn't that be true of American evangelicals? That's it. We're not talking about American evangelicals, Staysky. This is a show isn't about American evangelicals. It's about European evangelicals. The statement emphasizes that because we believe every person is made in the image of God, we value every human being. So we are concerned for all, including migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, the poor, the prisoner, the marginalized, and other misunderstood groups, the unborn, children, youth disabled, elderly, and dying, victims of human trafficking, religious minorities, and anyone discriminated against for their beliefs, anyone. Not just Christians, that's weird. People affected by addiction, loneliness, mental distress, or social exclusion. The E.E.A. further stresses that this is not a political ideology, but a consistent ethic of human dignity, and that it does not seek political privilege or dominance, but supports a pluralistic and civil public square and respects democratic institutions, rule of law, and human rights, while rejecting coercion, manipulation, and the misuse of religion in politics. So what have we learned? They say they made their statement at a time of growing confusion in public discourse, where the term evangelical is wrongly linked to political movements and narratives that do not reflect the reality of evangelical communities in Europe. Turns out a whole bunch of us are European evangelicals. Sounds like. I guess. Yeah. So what do you think? They do make a point in here as well at saying that their description of evangelical social life includes many of Americans as well. Yeah. This is something we've talked about literally since the very first episode of this podcast back in 2012. And that is the historical and global definition of evangelicalism, very similar to what you just read, is quite admirable. It is the dominant form of white American evangelicalism that has deviated from this historic and global definition. Yeah. I do wonder because some of the pushback that we get when we refer to white evangelicals is that I know a lot of people who vote Republican reliably, who don't necessarily either don't support everything that's happening or just are unaware of everything that's happening because of their news diet where they get their news. So when how do we say here's a contrast between European evangelicalism and American evangelicalism without painting in too broad a brush? Because I mean, who are these guys to say this is what all European evangelicals believe? I mean, go ahead. They're painting with a broad brush as well, but I think one difference between how evangelicalism has functioned in Europe and the US that helps them, that could be helpful for us to remember is the majority of evangelicals in Europe are taking on that description for themselves as a theological description, largely from within other denominations that are not as a whole evangelical. So I know a lot of people who live in different European countries who call themselves evangelical because they're Presbyterian or they're Anglican or they're whatever, their large national denomination is not evangelical. And what they really mean by calling themselves evangelical is they're saying my state church or like my large denomination really doesn't actually take some pretty important Christian belief that seriously. It's largely kind of a cultural thing or it's become so progressive that it's really ceased to believe very much distinctive about Christianity. I am within that institution or denomination. Someone who believes with the Bible says, things we should share the gospel, like all those kind of theological distinctions of evangelicalism. And the benefit of that is that if you are a minority within your larger denomination, you are going to create cooperation and relationship across denominations and across other minor disagreements that American evangelicals don't. Like we fight about a lot of stuff that in Europe it's like Skyjoke, there's four of us in our denomination. So like we're not going to have a big fight about women's ordination or about some very specific political issue that Christians can, you know, rightfully disagree about. We're going to work together to do the most important things that Christians think that we should do because there's only a few of us. And when you're a minority in your denomination and you don't expect to create your own denomination or you don't expect to take control of your current denomination. It just puts you in a position where I think your goals are smaller, they're more realistic, you're not as concerned with some of the same things American evangelicals are. So while it's true that I don't think we want to say all European evangelicals believe these things and are just like more righteous and vote better than American evangelicals, I think it's worth saying that there is a difference because some of it's not about just their better evangelicals over there. I think who you become as someone who is a minority within your denomination is going to be different than what you become when you're an evangelical in America that has access to a lot of denominational power. We have a bunch of evangelical denominations that distinguish themselves from other evangelical denominations by sometimes things that are pretty silly to fight over and you have organizations in the US that can issue big statements for their entire denomination so you get into a lot more political stuff here I think than you would over there. So I don't think it's painting with too broad of a brush to just say the history of how you became who you are in both of these contexts is really different and there are some benefits to one that you lose and the other. That's definitely a factor in all this. However, my hunch is if you were to pull some statements from the National Association of Evangelical website, the American evangelical, it would probably be-- They're very similar. It would conform to a lot of what they're saying. They just don't encapsulate the majority of evangelicals. Right. The difference is this statement from the European evangelicals or even the statement from the N.A.E. is rooted in doctrine and theology. What they believe as evangelical Christians, the popular understanding in the United States of the term evangelical is far more defined by cultural beliefs and political beliefs. That's the difference. Yeah. So evangelicalism partly succeeds because it's so unhierarchical. It's non-institutional. It's entrepreneurial. It's a guy on a horse riding out into the wilderness saying, "In it holding a revival meeting." And then saying, "This is Christianity." Because of that lack of hierarchy, you have a lack of oversight, which raises the question, how can a group even say we're telling you what evangelicals believe? Who has authority to say that? It could actually be pretty similar. It could be the N.A.E. puts out things that I think we would all be like are very true, good things. And tons of American evangelicals don't actually subscribe to some of that. And I wish they would. Which is true of this. The same could be true of this. And Catholicism. Right. And they put out statements about contraception and 90% of Catholics say, "Ah, what did you say?" Right. I think this might be true globally as well, but at least in the United States, I've always thought of evangelicalism as being bound together more by its parachurch organizations. Right. So look at the belief statements of mission agencies, world vision, compassion international, campus crusade for Christ, crew, university, young life, different publishers, whatever. And you look at what they actually believe on paper. It tends to be pretty similar. Perhaps the most global statement you could say of evangelical belief is the LaZone Covenant. And so your right, Phil, there isn't a hierarchy. There's no Pope saying here's what we believe or don't believe. There's no Magisterium. But there are the consensus beliefs of these organizations that people from different particulars, denominations come into as evangelicals and say, "Here's what we all believe together." And there's the authority in the US, was Billy Graham and in Europe, was John Stott. Is that what you're saying? It could be. But what's happened is over time, those people who think that way and lead those organizations, there's a widening gap between them and popular evangelicals. So the person on the street who identifies as an evangelical is less likely to make that definition based on doctrinal beliefs and more likely to make it on political and cultural beliefs. Yeah. So what do you do with all the European political parties that have Christian in their name? Some that are fairly left wing and others that are quite right winged. You just say that's irrelevant. It's historical residue. Okay. And none of them are evangelicals. I don't know. I mean, you gotta take them on a case by case basis. Right. Yeah, a case by case basis. But it's a little bit like when you drive down the street and you see different hospitals with Christian names in them. Yeah. Or universities. Or universities, right. Well, is Benedictine University very Benedictine? Maybe. And so are we seeing more of an American evangelicalism growing in Brazil, for example, where it is heavily intertwined with politics? Yeah. In some cases it is. Do you think I'm right about that, Caitlin? I don't know. I mean, maybe I have done very little stuff of evangelicalsmen Brazil. I do think it's worth saying that some version of this has been true always. Like the internet obviously changes so many things and accelerates so many of these dynamics. But it's always been true that like the local pastor in your parish was probably shaping more of what the people in that church believed than whoever writes the documents for that era that we read historically. So it's always true. And it's always been true that there are plenty of Christians who belong to denominations or institutions that believe us very specific set of things. And those people don't actually believe any of them. I think there's a Catholic version of it and a Protestant version of it both involve the kind of elites at the top saying this is the theology and other people just not choosing to believe that. Yeah. Okay. It would be interesting to see what are the similarities in why people retain labels while jettisoning most of the beliefs that used to be central to those labels. I think it's about belonging. I was going to say, you want to belong to that tribe regardless of what they believe. Or culture like I think of I have known a lot of people growing up in public school who grew up Jewish or Catholic and at some point their family left the faith. But the celebrations, the cultural festival, like all of that was so strong that they weren't going to stop calling themselves Jewish or Catholic. Whereas evangelicalism doesn't have that kind of like culture set. I mean going back to celebrations, Catholic festivals, we don't really do that. Baptists would be the closest thing to having that kind of historical attachment. But evangelical. That's what it was saying. Why are you evangelical? Because my grandfather was evangelical and his father. Okay. Our friend Ryan Birch has an interesting study out this week. He's been on the show a bunch of times. He's probably become the leading. What would you say researcher reader of tea leaves and data from very large data sets? You should tell him that he's reading tea leaves. Yeah. That would be really well. Ryan. He's talking about the nuns, not the women with hats. That would be fun too. Yeah. The religiously unaffiliated and that we have a second wave or a second generation of people leaving the church or leaving organized religion who seem to be leaving for different reasons than the first generation. The first generation, he says, there's pretty strong data to show that the people who walked away from a Catholic upbringing or a Protestant upbringing 20, 30 years ago were largely moderate or liberal and were reacting partly to the rise of the religious right. That you can see that in the data that few political conservatives became nuns. Right. Another way of saying it. You were a Republican in the 80s or 90s. You were probably going to stay part of the church. If you were a Democrat in the 80s or 90s, you were more likely to be one of the people who left the church or left the faith in the 80s or 90s. And so there was clearly a partisan political kind of shading on all that whole phenomenon. Right. And he's saying that today based on the newest data that he's looking at, that is no longer the case. He says he had a holy cow moment and the holy cow moment was when he realized the type of nuns, the types of nuns who are the least democratic today are those who have been non-religious their entire lives. People who actively exit a faith tradition aren't just drifting, they're making a decision. At one point that decision appeared to correlate with a political, particular political worldview. But now those that have been always nuns, so raised and continue to be nun, do not have the same connection to politics. They're secular by default rather than by conviction. And their politics reflect that. They're more independent and less reliably democratic. So if you go back to a certain, if people leave the church to become nuns, they are typically also rejecting right wing politics. If people are raised as nuns and continue as nuns, only a third of them are Democrats. So much less than those that become nuns by leaving the church. I don't see why this is surprising. Yeah, this trash. Okay, then why did you want to talk about this? Why did you even bring it up? Why did I just waste? You wanted to be like, "Dire to do this." I just, we got a live studio audience here and I just wasted five minutes. No, no, no, no. I know. Here's how I think people. Just to you guys too, you're like, "Oh, I would be surprised by that." Here's the way to think about it. I don't even think they're listening anymore. Think of Newtonian physics, right? I think we lost them at Jesus mushrooms. You lost me. Newtonian physics. An object in motion will stay in motion. Oh, this is going to pull a live audience back in. Let's talk about Newtonian physics kids. Okay. Most people, just because of momentum, stay where they are. Yes, an object that rest stays at rest. Or in motion stays in motion. So if you're Protestant, you're probably going to stay Protestant. If you're Catholic, you're probably going to stay Catholic. If you're non-religious, you're probably going to stay non-religious. Most people stay where they are. If your mother moves you to Glen Illinois when you're in middle school, you'll probably stay. You'll never leave. You'll be within 20 miles of Glen Illinois when you're 60. I'm on that course as well. (laughing) So for somebody to move, it usually takes an energetic input that drives them to leave. Holy Spirit. Well, hold on, I'm not gonna play, I'm not gonna make this spiritual, I'm just gonna make it sociological. It's Newtonian. So to jump the track, in other words, to leave the course I'm on, there needs to be some energetic impulse to do that. What he's saying is back in the 80s and 90s, as the white American church, especially was becoming increasingly partisan in its identity, becoming more and more Republican, those who had more democratic leans were like, looking around, going, "I don't belong here." "I don't belong here anymore," and they felt the urge to leave. Now, once you get enough of those people to leave, and there's enough momentum in that direction, future generations, it's not as hard for them to leave. If a ton of people in your tradition are leaving anyway, because of their Democrats ahead of you, but what he's saying is, it's not about the people that leave, because the people that are leaving are still matured. It's the ones who stay nuns are less democratic. - Exactly. - Yes, it's the one who were born as nuns, and then remain nuns. - It's the same as a convert versus somebody born into a faith. - Right. - If you're a convert, you tend to have more energy and identity around it. - So you're born into it? - So you move because something repelled you or attracted you, you stay because nothing motivated you to the point of rethinking things. - Right. - And Caitlin, isn't sure she agrees, and we're gonna find out why. - No, I do agree. I think the other part of this that we've talked about on the show before is a lot of people who leave evangelicalism, especially those who leave it out of great concern, even like horror at some of its political captivity, tend to be people who grew up in church environments that had a really black and white rigid, verging on fundamentalist view of the world. And so when they changed their mind, politically and theologically, they don't always leave that framework behind. So it makes sense that people leaving Christianity because they're horrified by how captive it's become to the Republican Party would sometimes, not all of them, but sometimes take the same framework that says your political beliefs tell you how morally good you are. There's a very clear right and wrong to everything. You must be on the right side of every question. They take that framework and they apply it in new direction. They wouldn't surprise me if they were more dezealous in their political beliefs than people who grew up in a largely democratic, largely non-religious environment and just sort of stayed vaguely in that world, but didn't become more or less political. - So if you were raised binary, you're more likely to flip the binary than to reject binaries. - It's hard when you've been formed in an environment that teaches you that. Like I don't want to judge people too harshly for this. If you have grown up in a place that placed a high value on being morally correct and put a lot of value on what that meant politically. And you not only change your mind about the politics of the church you grew up in, but you see the hypocrisy and the great evils of it. You think like people are worshiping idols. They're not reading the Bible while it would make sense that you would go, this is horrifically wrong. I now need to find the one correct moral righteous thing. And that's gonna probably lead you to have stronger political beliefs. - Fundamentalism is a mindset. It's not a set of beliefs. Okay, then you can apply that mindset to all kinds of different beliefs. Okay, then. How do we connect Ryan Berger's study with European evangelicalism? What's the connection between those two stories? Is there one? Is there none? Can we work mushroom Jesus into this? - I mean, in that article about European evangelicalism, they were directly responding to the politicization. What's the right word there? I think that's correct. - The politicking. The making of politics. - Politicalizing. - Politicalizing. - Politicalizing. - Politicalizing of Christianity. - None of you in our live audience know the correct, could correct us on that and help us out. Nobody. - I have no problem if somebody wants to reject. - She's right. - Okay. - If somebody wants to reject the way and message of Jesus fine, reject the way and message of Jesus, what bothers me, and I think it was kind of behind the wording of that statement from the European evangelicals, is people walking away from the faith not because of Jesus and not because they understood his message, but because they are disturbed by the political veneer that has clouded their understanding of Jesus and the church. So that's the problem. Is people aren't rejecting Jesus, they're rejecting conservative politics or the Republican party or Donald Trump or MAGA or whatever it might be. And that's not a good reason to walk away from the faith 'cause you're not rejecting the faith in that case. Does that make sense? - Yeah, or you don't believe the faith is possible because you've given up on the notion that anyone who taught it to you actually believed it. So what that statement's trying to say is this is what we actually believe in Stanford. If you reject this, got it, fine. - Right, right. - But if this isn't the Christianity you've been exposed to then you're rejecting something that was Christianity. - So if the NEA, if the National Association of Evangelicals puts out a statement like this and says, this is what evangelicals believe in America and then people point to the people that are violating those principles, can't they just say, well, they're no longer evangelicals? - That's the no-true Scotsman argument. - Yeah. - Why do we do that? And then evangelicalism will be helpful. - We'll be saved. - But just very, very small. - Very, very small. I don't know, I think rather than saying this is what evangelicals believe, I'd rather say, this is what historical and global evangelicalism has affirmed. - Yeah. - And if you don't, then you're not in line with historic or global evangelicals. - And by the way, if you say evangelical, instead of evangelical, it means you're a European evangelical. - Or you're old. - Old. - Have you not heard that? - No. - It's like a generational thing. You all say evangelical. - I always say evangelical. - He says evangelical. - I've said evangelical on my life. - You're so young. - I'd never heard anyone say evangelical until I was hanging out with all the people. It's old people like you say, "Evangel." - It's just tomato tomato. - Okay, wait, there's another part of this article you didn't talk about. - What? What did I miss? - The other kind of thrust of this is where he's showing that that was true but is increasingly less true. That people leave as part of a political shift. - Even the levers are less liberal than they were? - Yeah, so he says, for those born in the 1990s and 2000s, who left Christianity behind only about a third identifies Democrats, the political premium that came with religious exit has nearly vanished. Now, I think you could interpret this in a different way. You could actually say lots of people are leaving the church and they're actually staying Republican or becoming more Republican, like the bar stool conservative thing of like you can actually find it necessary to jettison religion. But if his take on it is right, that's really interesting. He says, "These younger detarchers don't look like political refugees. They look more like people who simply stopped going gradually, quietly, without it meaning much ideologically one way or the other." And well, I think there's a bunch of different ways you could interpret this data. Like I said, I think you could interpret it as they just didn't actually feel like leaving. The Republican miss of evangelicalism wasn't what bugs them. It was going every Sunday. It was whatever. That's possible. But the slow exit thing is also interesting. And his point later on is when so many people in your generation are leaving the church, it becomes less of this big statement that comes with a political shift and more of just a thing you do when you grow up. I think there's another interpretation. And obviously I don't have any data to back this up. Those are my favorite interpretations. I would love to talk to Ryan about this. Because there is data out there. I just don't have it in front of me. What I've seen recently is the fastest growing political demographic in this country are independence. It's not the Democrats and Republican parties are both losing members. So it could still be the case that people are leaving the church because they're disturbed by how politicized it has become on the right. But they're less likely to identify as a Democrat when they leave because people are not drawn to the Democratic Party. What they're doing is they're becoming independence and they're saying-- Or Democratic Socialists. Right. Or they're just saying, I reject the conservative MAGA movement in my church environment. And I'm leaving, but I'm not going to join the progressive left either. I'm finding this whole thing disturbing, like most Americans and they're out of there. So I don't think he's right. They're fewer than identifying his Democrats. It doesn't mean they're not leaving because of politics. And if this is a generational thing like he's describing, it could really be that they've seen that. They saw the generation of youth group kids before them that left the church and became super progressive. And like we said before, kept the fundamentalism. And they're like, actually, I don't want to be an either group that says you make one misstep. You have one difference of opinion. You end you're out. I actually want to do something totally different. OK. So what did we learn? That could be hopeful. I don't know. That could be-- couldn't that be hopeful? I don't know what we learned. I know one thing. What? Jesus was not a mushroom. Do you know that? I'm willing to stick. No. I'll stick my beliefs on that. Do you know? OK. All right. That's a bolt. You heard it here, folks. Skyjitan, he's going out. He's hanging a flag. He's going out on a ledge. He's saying-- No mushroom, Jesus. But he was a fun guy. Here I stand. I can do no more. Other. Other? I think no more. I do no other. All right. Thanks for listening in. Thanks to our live studio audience for being here. I hope you have fun. And I hope you come back every week. And we can do this again. And we'll leave the-- no. You don't seem as excited about that as I am. OK. That's fine. All right. We'll see you guys next week. Bye. I grew up in the 1980s and 90s. That was a time when the American church started to be obsessed with growth. Mega churches were multiplying. The secret driven movement was all the rage. Church growth conferences were everywhere. And pastors began to celebrate and emulate the marketing and leadership strategies of corporations. Most of us probably can't remember a time when this was case. But before the 1970s this approach to ministry was incredibly uncommon in the US. Back then churches rarely talked about the need for growth. And my guess today says the reason comes down to one thing, economics. For the hundred years between 1870 and 1970, the US economy grew at a staggering rate that hasn't been matched since. And once that golden age was over and economic growth slowed, so did church growth. Ever since we've been looking back trying to figure out how to make America great again? And that goes for the church too. Andrew Rout says this desire to recapture a golden age that's passed perfectly parallels what happened in ancient Israel after the golden age of David and Solomon. And it's what led God's people to embrace pagan fertility gods promising to make Israel great again. Rout believes the American church is doing the same thing. Our insatiable desire for growth he says has more in common with the cult of fertility idols than it does with the God of Scripture. His new book is called "Bale and the Gods of More," rescuing church growth for my Dollar Tree. I'll be upfront with you, this was one of the most fascinating and most challenging books I've read in a while. And it's not an easy read, but my goodness is it illuminating. I cannot recommend it enough, especially for church leaders or those of you who are wondering why you feel so burned out about church all the time. There is a whole lot in here, so I decided to break my conversation with Andrew Rout into two parts. On this episode we talk about the role of fertility gods in the ancient world and how that relates to the American church. And the way capitalism over the last 150 years has deeply shaped the church to mimic the efficiency of a machine rather than the relationality of a family. But I also did a bonus interview with Andy Rout exclusively for Holy Post Plus subscribers. In that conversation we dig more into the biblical parallels with Israel from 1st and 2nd Kings and how gods people mingled the worship of Yahweh and Bale without really seeing any problem. And why many churches today mixed the worship of Jesus with the worship of the idol of growth without seeing any problem either. So to get that you'll need to be part of Holy Post Plus. If you're not yet, go to HolyPost.com/plus to learn how. Andrew Rout is a professor of youth and family ministry at Lutheran Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He writes and researches in the areas of theology, ministry, culture, and younger generations, and he's the author of more than 25 books. He serves as staff theologian at youthfront, he's a frequent speaker, and he co-hosts the ministry in a secular age podcast. Here's my conversation with Andrew Rout. Andy Rout, welcome to the Holy Post. Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be with you. I've been really looking forward to this conversation because people around here, the Holy Post media know that for years, when they ask me like, who do you want to have on the show or what topics you want to deal with, I've been saying to them, I really want to find somebody who can talk about contemporary Christianity and the church who understands economics and economic history. They look at me like, are you nuts? That person doesn't exist. No one's interested in that. Then your book came to me, and I started reading it. I was just so grateful that you've written the book that I've wanted someone to write for so long. Baal and the Gods of More, do you say Baal, Baal, there's all kinds of different pronunciations, right? It's totally tomato tomato. I'm kind of a Baal guy, but I'll all the school too. I don't know. We'll go with Baal. We'll go with Baal for today. And the Gods of More, Rescuing and Church Growth for My Dollar Tree, speaking of my Dollar Tree, Holy Cow, this book was fantastic. I've been raving about it to everybody. I've been talking to you because you hit my bull's eye. All right, let's get into it, Andy. The opening of the book begins with a meme of Artemis, the Goddess of Ephesus, and a picture of the Madonna and Child, explain the meaning of this meme and why you open the book with it. Yeah, well, the first thing it does is I really reveal I'm old because I don't know if this is really how you do a meme, you know, like I'm from a generation that has not grown up doing memes. So I think this is a meme. It's at least an old person's take on a meme, but it really is the idea. I was in Israel actually about nine months before the war broke out and was really taken going through the museum there, the Israeli museum, just looking at these clay bales and how kind of remarkable that was. And then we went from there and it was a family trip and we ended up in Rome and we walked down the kind of Hellenistic wing of the Vatican Museum and there's Artemis, you know, with her arms open. We were actually there with a, this was, wireless was 23. So still to get into the to the museum, you kind of needed to do a tour. I was still kind of COVID, this stuff hanging on there. So the best way in was a tour. And we actually ended up doing a tour with a bunch of homeschool moms from Denver. And so it was, you know, we had our kids with us and we were not homeschoolers, but you know, this was a bunch of whole school moms and I think people that listened to this podcast will recognize that there's something about Americans that were over confident, you know, and we're loud. And if you're from a homeschool culture, you kind of have that going for you too, you know, so we were walking down this and we had this Italian tour guide and she was like she, she clearly smoked three packs a day, you know, you could hear it in her voice. And she struggled with her English, but she was leading this tour and we walked up to Artemis and one of the homeschool moms goes, oh, are those, are those eggs all over her? Does she have eggs all over her? And if you've seen Artemis, you can Google it, you'll see that she stands kind of arms open and it kind of does look like she has eggs all over her, but then the Italian tour guide goes, no, no, no. And she was looking for the English word. She's like, no, no, no, no, no, those are, those are, those are teets, those are teets everywhere. And this homeschool mom just went bright red and it was a made for sketch comedy moment. But that did actually get me thinking about how much we become obsessed with kind of fertility. And especially at these moments and kind of Protestant church decline and these conversations about what is the future of the church and and how do we kind of survive this secular moment. We become really, I think, obsessed with fertility. And in many ways take on a kind of ancient adultery of seeking for a fertility god. But then we walked on the hall and went into the Renaissance art and the picture of the Madonna and the child is just very different than of a fertility god, like Artemis or our bail as we'll talk about. And so it's trying to kind of contrast those two things is that even though we would think of ourselves as, you know, bail worshipers, there's a certain way that in that kind of late form capitalism and late modernity we become pretty obsessed with fertility. And we fall into that trap. And so there's something pretty ancient that becomes quite contemporary in that in that experience. Okay. When, when modern people encounter images of fertility gods like Artemis or bail, and there's many, many, many others, and if you've taken like an ancient history class or some of the primary member pictures of these, these clay idols often women with very large breasts, cradling them in their arms or somethings or phallic symbols for male idols, it's the way we interpret these things tend to be hypersexualized. Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of the reflection of our own culture and our puritanical kind of prejudices and things. But in the ancient world, this wasn't just about sexuality. And this wasn't just about the reproduction of children. Explain what fertility deities represented in the ancient world and why you equate them to where we are in late capitalism today. Yeah. I mean, I think that's really true. We look at those pieces of museums and we do, you know, work or products post sexual revolution, you know, a consumer society that's sold products by sexual titillation, if you will. So we always see it through kind of pornographic perspectives. But really it is about kind of economic gains. It's really, you know, like we even say this when we read first and second kings, you know, we talk about the Jezebel spirit as if it's a sexual kind of reality. And I think the better way to read that is Jezebel isn't a sexual temperous. She's an economist. I mean, she's like a top of the field, you know, Harvard economist. And she's really trying to bring together a different kind of, maybe we don't call it an economic system, but we'd call it a stabilization system. And so that's really what I'm trying to draw a connection here is that every, every human society, every collective, every group we have has to think, how do we last? How are we long for the world? And so that really drives us into like what stabilizes us, what makes it so that we can live or have a community long into the future. And we tend to think that what does that today is capital, that you have to have capital to do that. You know, you have to have money or if you're in a church, you have to have members, you even have to have some kind of more subjective experience of relevance, but you need to continue to grow that capital to do that. And this is what the German sociologist Hartmont Rosa calls dynamic stabilization. And what he means is that we need to continue to escalate our capital gains to stabilize ourselves. So in some ways, it isn't even like dreams of living in a mansion or being a billionaire. It's just like if we're going to survive, we need to grow. And growth is what stabilizes you. And you can see this in churches all the time where churches kind of feel like, well, we don't even really want to be the biggest church in our community. I mean, that maybe we do. Maybe that would be great. But what we just want to do, survive and if we don't grow, we're done for. And so this dynamic stabilization is this kind of economic pattern that says you have to escalate your capital or you will not exist. And I think when you impose that into the ancient system, they're not thinking capital. You know, they're not thinking we got to invest stocks, but they are thinking cult and the cult, you know, doing these kind of practices towards the gods are what stabilizes you. And this is why Jezebel is a great economist because she comes with a supposed escalating cultic system that will stabilize Israel. Like Israel has this problem that they are not like the days of Solomon. They're in decline. And so Ahab has this great idea of bringing Jezebel, who comes from the land of Bale and Bale worship and mixing that cultic system in with Israel's cultic system with the hope that it brings escalation. And so that's the adultery that plays into it. Yeah, you mentioned with these fertility gods, it isn't just about reproductive fertility, meaning having children. It's an economic system where the strength and stability of a society comes from its agricultural produce. We need crops to grow. We need more wealth to sustain the country. So when you think about, well, what's going to make growth, what's going to make crops reproduce, it brings to mind fertility imagery. So very fertile women, very, how do we put it? Amorous men, things like that. So it's all linked together. So rain from the sky is synonymous with sexual reproduction. And all these things get jumbled together in the ancient world. And so they create these deities that represent fertility. But to your point, it's ultimately economic fertility that they're after. It's the wealth, the expansion of the wealth of the nation in the form of agriculture. At one point, you bring up the link. Bale was represented in the ancient world with a bull, was a symbol of his presence and this ancient idol. And you make the link to the bull on Wall Street, the sculpture of a literal bull on Wall Street that everyone takes their pictures in front of. Because we talk about a bull market, explain a little bit more the link you see between ancient fertility cults and the growth of agriculture through the cultic practices of these pagan nations. And modern consumer capitalism and our drive forever increasing economic strength, not through cults, but through capital and markets. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating. You know, if you're down on Wall Street and you just see all these tourists taking selfies and pictures with this, you know, this raging bull that's right there. And it, yeah, it just takes a little bit of reading of the, you know, the ancient Near East and in the biblical text to be like, oh my gosh, there's a there's a parallel here for for sure. But I think one of the big, the big moves for us or what, you know, we're as late moderns and as, you know, secular people, there's a very complicated one in itself. But as I think one of the things that occurs for us is we disconnect, our escalation, the stabilization of our society, it gets disconnected from cultic practice. So it gets disconnected from kind of fundamental religious practice. And this is, you know, this is again to your point earlier why the king is so important because the king is the one who brings fertility, you know, so when the king can't bring fertility, the king is a problem because the king is in charge of the cultic system. This is one of the reasons that the prophet keeps telling Israel, you do not want a king because if you, you get a king, then the king runs a cultic system and then you're going to have a cultic system like Egypt, which is, you know, the, the epic of all cultic systems. And then you've just taken yourself back into slavery. You, you become, you just have to continue to burn yourself out in modes of action to escalate. And Yahweh is very different. Yahweh doesn't want cogs in a machine of escalation. Yahweh wants children to be in community with, to be in relationship with. But the big move for us that allows this kind of disenchantment to occur is really the machine. And when industrialization happens, we can kind of start to have a growing economy disconnected from kind of cultic practice. I mean, it becomes inherently religious and there's been a lot of people who've worked with, you know, thinkers like, like, email, third kind that want to say that there's always religion in based on our economic systems. I mean, these are always religious kind of systems, but it doesn't have a really strong kind of cultic system like maybe we used to have. But the machine does something really powerful. And, you know, Karl Marx for all the critiques we can give the Karl Marx was, you know, fascinating on on showing that the movement that kind of change in the equation of our economic system once the machine comes about. And it's really not about creating resources to be able to trade them for coin to represent something else, but it flips and it's about kind of money for commodities for more money. The whole point of investing money in commodities is to make more money. So this end becomes making more money, not just having enough to subsist on and to live on, but actually continuing to escalate and grow money. And so now that becomes without end and there's becomes this powerful way that money becomes more well, we'll just say this this way money becomes more powerful than God because money in some sense becomes a God money, money has no other end than to continue to grow and it demands that we serve it with our imaginations, with our thought life, with our with our action. And that is, you know, that's a significant form of adultery. So industrialization really does something. The machine changes things in a significant way and it unhooks a little bit of the cultic reality, but it demands is much kind of burden of the human human soul and spirit as it did in the ancient world. Okay, I mean, we could geek out all day about ancient Near Eastern history and cultic practices and even economics and more recent modern history. I love all that stuff. But ultimately, you make a turn to apply all this to the modern Protestant church in the United States. You talk about two different kinds of growth. I mean, the subtitle of your book is "Rescuing Church Growth for My Dollar Tree". You talk about two different kinds of growth, growth of something versus growth into something. And the growth of something you already mentioned, the logic of escalation, talk about the difference between these two kinds of growth because it's important. A lot of people think that every time we talk about church growth, we're either just demonizing the whole idea or not understanding, but you have a more nuanced take on it. So talk about what you would see as a good form of church growth and what is the warped idolatrous kind. Yeah, well, I think I've probably been critiqued or people think that I'm the anti-church growth guy. You know, like I'm a growth is a bad thing. I've probably have been critiqued for that maybe rightfully so, but I'm trying to maybe redeem myself a little bit here and saying that there is something fundamental about growth in the Christian tradition, you know, that there is something about growing here. And right as I was writing this book, we got a puppy. And I can't tell you how much this puppy, great puppy, you know, but wanted this thing to grow. Like grow its bladder, grow its teeth. We have a six month old puppy right now. And yes, although he's growing far rap more quickly than he's already like 60 pounds or something. So he's a massive dog. But yeah, yeah, yeah, growth. So yeah, not all growth is bad, but at the same time, you know, like with your puppy with my puppy, I don't want to, you know, your your puppy's 60 pounds now. I don't think you'd be very happy if this puppy ends up 600 pounds and just continues to grow constantly and constantly and constantly. And that's a bit of the logic of this, this escalation in this kind of late capitalist form is that you just want to keep growing indefinitely, even though cancer is a form of growth that kills you, you know, like when we often say and we'll hear this in kind of church life that healthy churches are growing churches. And at one level, that's true. At another level, it could be a dollar trist, you know, like you don't want your dog to be 600 pounds. You also don't want your dog to be six ounces. You know, you there's a legitimate way of growth. And I think in the Christian life throughout the Christian tradition, the kind of growth really is growing into Christ, what it means to grow into this relational dynamic. And one of the kind of core themes of all my work has been to look at the way late modernity and kind of capitalist forms like we're talking about here really lead us into instrumentalizing everything that everything becomes an instrument for some other gain. And that even happens in church life that church has become about instrumental, instrumentalizing everything, you know, instrumentalizing our relationships with one another, intermenz, intermenzizing the gospel itself. And I want to I want to escape that and think that there's something really beautiful and dynamic about relationality itself. And relationality is not a means to another end, but it is a beautiful universe within itself. It's this kind of sacramental reality where God moves and meets us. And that's what we see in the Madonna. And that kind of iconography is an invitation to grow into this relationship, which is not about escalating, but it's about a deepening of something. And so that's really the tone I'm trying to hit here. But I think American Protestant life has been really addicted throughout the 20th century into the 21st into this kind of escalating kind of logic. This is one of the reasons why I appreciate your book so much as it resonates with things that I've been talking about, right, about forever. The first book I ever wrote almost 20 years ago now was called The Divine Commodity, which is about the transformation of God into an instrument, into a commodity, and then of course the commodification of us and the church and all the other things. So yeah, that instrumentality, is that what you called it? Is inherent to when the ultimate goal is numerical growth or institutional growth, it changes everything. Talk about what that looks like. Once a church or its leaders or its people have been shaped by this capitalist idea of escalation, how does that change the role of the pastor and how does it change the functioning of the church? Yeah. Well, I mean, in many ways, it turns the pastor, I think, you know, we could be crass and maybe a little rude here, but it ultimately turns the pastor to your point into some kind of sales rep, really, you know, like trying to, and at one level to be an American Protestant, in some ways, you're always running a small business, you know, just to be, you know, really crass. You are. I mean, we have, we have no state funds that connect and float churches. So there's a certain way that American Protestantism is always kind of like running a small business. This is why Dietrich Bonhoff for 1939 wrote a little article when he was in New York City called America, Land of Protestantism without Reformation, because there's always this tendency to, to be kind of looking for this angle. And if you have a conflict, you know, kind of confessionally with people, you just move west and start another church. That's why we have first Baptist and second Baptist and third Baptist and fourth Baptist. You just, you just kind of keep moving. You never really have to fight over doctrinal issues and find some, some kind of commitment beyond that. But I think that that really, especially in the late 20th century, and you know, this is part of the economic story I'm trying to tell here is that really from 1870 to 1970 was an utter time of American economic growth and really standard of living just leaps and bounds moving ahead. And it was, it was a golden era. It really was a golden era. And that, that cultural reality transferred to a kind of Protestant congregational reality of really being a golden era. But since the 1970s, that just hasn't been there. And we start to even see conversations about church growth. They don't really start to arrive until the 1970s. Like we don't start having conferences, church growth conferences and things like that until the 1970s, because the 100 years before that, you know, really the 50 years before that growth just kind of happened. It just happened in the kind of zeitgeist of the cultural reality. But all of a sudden, post 1970, when the economic realities went down, and this is a strange thing about America, that when our standard of living is doing well and our GDP is high, for some reason, we Americans start to look around and think we should join a church. I know that we should pause you there for a second. Yeah, I was just a part of the book. I found really fascinating two things you already mentioned. There's really no conversation around church growth until you hit the 1970s. That alone, we'll get into more evangelical stuff in a little bit. But what is the correlation? Or you didn't get into this deeply in the book and I wanted to pick a brain about why? Why does rapid growth of GDP, like the 3% plus growth we were seeing post-World War II up through the 1970s, why does that correlate to church growth? I didn't see the natural connection that just because the country's growing wealthier and people's lifestyles are becoming more luxurious, that their instinct is, well, I guess we go to church now. Why didn't the church worry about numerical growth in the middle of the 20th century? Was it just the baby boomer? Was there something else going on? You know, I think it was partly the baby boom, especially with the second industrial revolution, like the movement into electricity and all those realities. But I think it has something to do with this deeper kind of imagination. We have it as Americans that has both the reality of kind of being founded on these Protestant principles, or particularly these Puritan principles of coming over. But then the way the great awakenings function for us. And I guess you could argue that we were concerned about growth when we were talking about the great awakenings. But there's just something very different I think about the American consciousness when it comes to our relation to congregational life as opposed to the Europeans. And this is what Charles Taylor talks about is the American exception. And what he's really getting at is that why of all the Western societies as America, at least on self-report, had a stronger affiliation to congregational life than any of the other Western European countries. And he thinks part of that, and I tend to agree with him on this, has to do with the fact that us, we Americans are very strange. And it's, we have this kind of hubris about ourselves that we just created ourselves out of nowhere. You know, we're kind of at the glorification of that moment right now as we celebrate our 250 year anniversary. Like we just we just decided to be America. And part of the point of that is that we have no real memory of the on-shut regime of the world of kings and queens. And the way that the church and the crown were really pulled together and how deeply the church was in society and how it was based, de jure by law. We've never had that kind of conception. We once our revolution happened, we have all had kind of religious life has always been de facto. It's been by choice. It's been the peoples, which is why every American president has for the most part lie and say that they love the Bible and love going to church, you know, because it's it's it shows you're not a stuffy head elite, but that you're one of the people, whether you really believe it or not. So America strange that way that we feel like being part of a congregation is being a kind of it's a true American expression in some way. And so when you start to you see how this fuses with the with the kind of living the American dream, once you start to move into the American dream because your standard of living is advancing because the larger GDP is raising standard of living, you start to look around and think, well, I'm the kind of person who goes to a church and particularly you start to look around and think I'm the kind of person who should go to a mainline church, you know, like I should join a pressitarian church, especially as I get educated and things like that. And that all really held from the late 19th century into the 1970s and then kind of ended in ended because of this correlation, I think, to economic realities. I want to want to be that deterministic. I think it's probably a little bit more complicated than just one leading to the other, but there just is something culturally strange about being Americans that we feel like religion is a kind of individual experience of expressing our kind of grassroots down to earth way of being. No doubt that's got to be a factor in all this. I also wondered if, especially in the middle of the 20th century, two other things came to mind. One, it's the height of the Cold War. Yeah, oh yeah. You had the Eisenhower administration putting in God, we trust on the national motto, adding it to the Pledge of Allegiance. There was this sense of to be truly American means I'm not a communist, which means I'm not an atheist, which means I'm probably a Christian. So there's a welcome expression of my Americanism by being part of a church. But then to your point about the mainline, this is a generation after the great wave of immigrants coming in the late 1800s, early 1900s from all over mostly Europe. And part of the way you establish your credentials as an American is you become part of a core American church tradition, which is the mainline. So if you grew up the child of immigrants and maybe you fought in World War II, and now it's the 1950s, 1960s, and you're trying to express the fact, I'm a true American now. I'm going to be part of a true American church tradition. You go to a mainline church. It's just all the markers of establishment institutional Americanism line up there, not a communist, I'm not an atheist, I'm a true American, I go to a true American institution of a church. So it makes all, it all makes sense. Let's jump ahead now to the era we've been living in. I was born in the mid 1970s, went to seminary in the 1990s. I can't remember a time where people were not talking about church growth. And the mega church thing was huge. Willow Creek was sucking all the oxygen out of the room, telling everybody how to grow through. Talk about why is late capitalism and the decline of the growth of the American economy since the 1970s or at least the slowdown of its growth. Why does that trigger a different approach to church in your mind? Yeah. Well, and this you said you kindly said that I'm someone who's in conversation with economists. That makes me feel deeply insecure. I know enough to fake it here. But the economists that I'm really in conversation within this book is this guy named Robert Gordon who wrote this big thick book, which people read my stuff know I'm addicted to big thick books, but this book called The Rise and Fall of American Growth. And his basic point is that we had a special century from 1870 to 1970. That was this unprecedented growth. And he thinks it happened because you had one industrial revolution that really changed the way we live our lives and change GDP and change our standard of living, then got picked up by another one. So you get steam to electricity. And then there's supposed to be a third one that's supposed to come in silicon. And it takes a while. It just doesn't lead one to another. And you know, this plays into this Protestant imagination is that there's something weird about us American Protestants too is that when things are going good, we get worried about being disobedient. You know, like we start to worry, maybe this isn't good. So you know, in the first kind of movement here, things are really good. We're trying to build civilization. You get a publication like the Christian century, which the idea is like a Christian civilization is here, but then you get the social gospel that kind of disestablishes that. And then after World War Two, you get this civic religion perspective is exactly what you were just saying where you know, you come back from the war and you move to a suburb and you you end up going to a Methodist church. That's just what you do. But that gets disestablished by the late 1960s in the counterculture. But what happened to particularly mainline Protestantism is that there was no third, there was no third industrial revolution. There was no third gain in GDP to kind of push it forward. So that disestablishment happened. Mainline decline starts to occur and American evangelicalism starts to find its hate it. And American evangelicalism, I think, my take is particularly positioned to be able to deal with the headwinds of this new economic reality. So you do start to get a shift of the American Protestant no longer being the mainline kind of representation of that. But it becomes in the late 1970s into the 1980s. And then it's heyday in the '90s and on is really the American evangelical. And so you get this new changed economic system where you get neoliberal capitalism comes around. Looking to try to bring growth, but that idea of that growth is going to be, we're going to deregulate markets and what's going to happen here in what has occurred over the last 40 years is some are going to become wealthy rich and others are going to have to really fight. So you're going to get huge mega institutional structures or we can just put this into church life. You're going to get mega churches. I mean, there's very, there weren't probably, you know, there were things like mega churches before the 1970s, 1980s. We didn't call them mega churches. And it was very rare to nearly impossible that you could have a kind of mythology that would say, I had 10 people in my living room in Southern California and within four years we had 10,000 people at our church. Like that kind of mythology that you could just take a dozen people and turn them into 12,000 people was not possible. But inside American evangelicalism, that becomes a reality. And it really is a kind of fighting in this, in a similar parallel to the economic reality that some can become, you know, really, really expand and have that expansion really quickly. And others will really struggle along in the midst of that. - Okay, one last thing before we're probably going to have to wrap this up and then transition to a bonus segment. You talk about in this, since the 1970s at least, since church growth is not just a given, like it was prior to that, there's always this threat of church decline or closure altogether. There's this constant refrain of the church needs to do better, to achieve more, to grow. And it has to be super intentional. And we're going to use all the strategies of corporations and businesses, things like that. And you talk about this coming in two forms. And you draw this from another source, but techno optimists and identitarians. So relatively briefly, can you define what those, I know it's a big question. What those two things are, but more specifically, how they manifest in the church. - Yeah, yeah. Well, I laugh because it's just gonna, I've just created a reality where I can have no friends. Like I'm just making everyone angry with me. But I do, I mean, in the kind of church world that I'm in, in the denominations that I find myself in, you find these people, you find the techno optimists who essentially feel like we're just one program away from getting our growth back. Like we can get our groove back if we can just get the right pastor, the right pastor can be a dynamic kind of person or we can find the right way, I don't know, to do VBS or something. And then all these families will come, like there's some kind of technological innovation that will get us our growth back. But then you also find these other people, and they usually are, at least in some of the main line denominations that I run in, they're usually enemies. Like they hate the techno optimists. And these are what I call from a French thinker, identitarians who really believe that the issue is, that there are certain identities, that there are certain folks who understand themselves in a certain way, who are not getting the recognition that they need, they're not being affirmed enough, and so they need more affirmation. And I have sympathy for both those sides. Like I don't wanna be anti creative ideas, nor do I think that there aren't people who need to be affirmed and seen. But what I find fascinating is they both an operative allogic of capital. And one is a kind of capital of, if we find the right innovation, boy, we'll launch into growth. And the other is this sense that the church will only do better and be better if it affirms affirms affirms affirms affirms. And it becomes just like kind of late stage capitalism, and has no end other than just more of it. And so the point becomes just being an affirming community more and more, and I'm trying to find it, I think the gospel is deeper than just trying to turn our pastors into tectophtomists or into identitarian, kind of identity raiders into what it means to proclaim the gospel that includes all people and gives us a future. - Yeah, and this is where you link it all back to these idols, these fertility idols, which is whether you're a techno optimist or not an identitarian, the sense is the church has to do better, it's in our hands, we have to do better, and it becomes a relentless sort of slavery to growth, whether that's through innovation or it's through social justice, it's growth, and it's in my hands and we have to do it. And it ends up exhausting people and slaving us to these idols of growth. And you to wrap this up before we transition to a bonus segment, you can trust this do better mindset about the church just needs to do better with a simple call to obedience to God's word and taking this all the way back to that image of Artemis, the fertility goddess, and Mary and Jesus in this Madonna and child image, explain the difference between the do better approach to church versus the simple obedience approach and how they relate to these two images. - Yeah, and you're really right. I mean, I do think that the do better approach just is fodder for burnout and one of the things of being a late-modern person is that we're just how he's burnt out. That's why we're a society of utterly anxious and depressed people because we just have to continue to do more and do better and now have algorithms on social media that can actually tell us how well we're doing and if we need to do better. But I do think that there is this deep call towards obedience, but obedience too can become a rigid reality if it's not embedded in this deeper relational perspective that I'm getting at. So the obedience really is to come and to rest. The obedience really is to find yourself embraced by this mother and to find your life in the life of her son. Like it is a sense of, it's very much kind of, for me, everything always comes back to Bonhoeffer and it really is Bonhoeffer's call in discipleship and in his book, The Coss of Discipleship, where he says, "Only obedience believe and only those who believe obey." And there's a sense of what you're obeying is to follow Jesus Christ and follow Jesus Christ not into doing more, doing better, but surrendering your brokenness and death over to a God who can heal and bring life. And that's really the kind of obedience is the release from the relentlessness that you have to do better and then have to be part of a church that does better to receiving the gift of God that brings life out of death, that brings communion in the midst of exhaustion that really does have a easy yoke that wants you simply to be and be embraced. And to me, that's the good news of the gospel. - This is the part of the book, and I'll have to wrap it up here, but this is the part of the book that I think was most challenging. There's a couple of places where you basically argue that many of our Protestant churches today, and I'm gonna lump evangelical churches certainly into that as well. Many of our churches today say they worship Jesus, but they're actually worshiping Bale. They say they're following the God of Scripture, but they're really following a fertility God of never ending growth that enslaves them. And to your point about doing better and following obedience to God's word, I've been in the evangelical world for a long time. I've talked to a lot of these church leaders, and they're driven by the mission of God, they're driven by expanding the church, growing the church, reaching more people, whatever their language might be. And I have no doubt if you were to sit them down and ask them why they would say they're doing it in obedience to God's word. They genuinely believe that this drivenness is what Jesus wants of them, and therefore their willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for the mission of the church is gotta be good and right. They don't recognize it as anything other than obedience to Jesus. So final thing, I promise is the final thing in this segment. How would you respond to that pastor who's saying, "Hey Andy, I am obeying God's word." That's why I'm so driven by the mission in the growth of the church. What are they mistaken about? - Yeah, I think where they're mistaken, and I would say this in great humility because the vision really is of the crucified Christ. So I think that to arrive at the core of my own theological construction really is with the theology of the cross, is that the cross gives us the picture of who God is. And God first comes near to us in brokenness and suffering. So it isn't this doing more that God becomes near in, but it really is in this place of the humility of death that God is the one who consoles in the midst of loss. And that's ultimately where the church needs to go and needs to grow into is how do we be with and for one another? How do we echo this kind of pro-mease sense of God for us is for you and it's not doing more. It's surrendering and receiving. It's about a gift, about receiving a gift. And so there's always a temptation with every gift exchange to turn it into quid pro quo. And I think that's happened too often across all forms of Protestantism is that we've turned the free gift that God gives us in the person of Jesus Christ into a quid pro quo. And that just simply is not the gospel. So, you know, the last thing I would say is that Luther had this great little story where Malanth and asked him some people came to Whitonburg and were like, you know, should we trust these people? They seem like they're with us. Malanth and's writing Luther and saying, but we're not sure, you know, should we trust them? And Luther is a way from Whitonburg and writes a letter back to Malanth and says, ask them what their afflictions are in the faith. And he says, because the devil, the devil would take on a form of, well, to use our language, escalation and glory, but the devil would never take on a position of humility, brokenness, and death. So there's something genuine about the Christian faith that is willing to suffer and to find inner is suffering experiences, the presence of God as this kind of sacramental reality that brings life out of death that's central there. So ultimately, what I'm concerned about is that we've extracted the cross from the center of Christian life and congregational life. All right. The book is bail and the gods of more rescuing church growth for my Dollar Tree. Andrew, thank you for the book. I mean, like I said, I have not been able to put this down and I'm talking a lot of people about this book can't recommend it enough. You're going to stick around because we're going to do a bonus segment for Holypost Plus where we'll get into some more details that we didn't get to in this main interview. If you're not a subscriber to Holy Post Plus, go to Holypost.com. You can find out where you can sign up both on Patreon and on Substack. As you thanks for being with us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Mergentize and much, much more.