Transcript

Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism - A History

(00:00) okay very good my name is John Hamer and I am the coordinator of the Meetup and I often give the lectures here but I'm very happy to say to say that we have a guest lecturer today Brian Caruana who is the director of the encounter world religions Center we talk a lot about encounter world religion center here because we talk about how we have here in Toronto during you talk to tell me the day's July 8 to 14 July 8 to 14th of this week observe this year we we have the discovery week where you meeting over at the University of Toronto Brian for an entire week you get it with a

(00:47) cohort of very interesting people just like what we have here at the at the lecture group Brian will do an incredible course an hour and a half on Islam then you go to the mosque and you actually do the Friday prayers an hour and a half on Judaism we go to the yeshiva we go to the Reform synagogue for Shabbat we learn about see so you go to the goood whare you learn about you know Hindus when we go to the temple so there is this an entire week and how many religions - eleven religions so it's an amazing amazing experience I

(01:24) can't say enough about it so we have the information I think about it you've got a handout for it and so definitely something to be considering so when we always start our meetup we topic we say what our mission is here at Toronto Centre place which is to invite everyone into community to continually learn and grow to abolish poverty and the less suffering to promote peace and justice and to live life meaningfully together and so now we're gonna watch a brief little video about the encounter if Flandre comes back Leandra we watch the video

(02:04) I know so he turned this up and so now now there's people [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

(03:37) [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that's great yeah thanks John for that for that intro yeah if you are interested in that week

(04:49) while I have a self interest in telling you to go it is the coolest thing I do all year my predecessors the the visionary who came up with the program I'm the lucky bloke who inherited it but it is a brilliant program I still enjoy doing it because I know how much people get out of it and if you think you'd like to travel that kind of travel the world and explore all these cultures in one week I'd love to have you I think you will be thrilled with it and as I say I always feel that much of my year is geared towards getting people

(05:20) to come there because I so look forward to it ok so tonight's presentation is not as geared actually to my work with as a director of encounter but it comes out of my PhD work I've been working my PhD for a hundred years at the University of Toronto and it's on earth angelical politics in Canada the talk tonight is not on the subject of my dissertation but it's stuff I had to learn about the history of angelical ISM in order to do my dissertation if that makes sense so today we're going to talk about EV angelical ism and Pentecostalism a quick note about terminology sometimes when

(05:58) people say of angelical z' they are separating them from Pentecostals and from another group that we might call fundamentalist fundamentalist so like Kevin Ogle's but a little more further in or hardcore whatever term you want to use but sometimes people use the term evangelical to mean the umbrella term of all these groups and tonight you will hear me using this term both ways so sometimes when I say have angelical is I mean the whole group but sometimes you'll note that I'm talking about have angelical and Pentecostals so just knowing that I think will help you to sort of follow follow along

(06:31) evangelicalism is a a growth a growth business in the religious world a plant that has sprouted in the last two-and-a-half centuries it has done quite well and what I want to argue to you tonight have suggested to you is that it has grown obviously from Christian roots it is inspired of course out of the Christian tradition and its biblical and all that sort of stuff but that has grown in the soils of the modern world of modernity and as a result the plant is really a combination of both it has these Christian roots but we all become what we eat we're all

(07:09) affected by our environment and what it has been consuming is the soils of the modern world of liberalism of secularism of capitalism and and these things are part of its DNA and so I'm going to suggest to you tonight first that evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are very modern religions and by modern I don't mean just chronological I don't just mean the recent and I don't mean better sometimes modern means like better that's not what I mean what I mean is that these religions are adjusted to the modern

(07:43) world they they grew up literally in the same geographies in the same time periods as the moderns of the structures of the modern worlds was birthed like in America and in Britain in the 18th and 19th century and because he grew up at the same time they have their modern religion see they from the very GetGo they were adjusted to that sort of to the modern world and as a result this modern DNA helps these religions succeed in the modern world today in the West Catholicism is waning it's not as modern

(08:21) if I can put it that way again I don't mean it's not there's a ranking of better liberal Protestantism is certainly suffering but of angelical czar doing reasonably well in the West they're holding their own and in other parts of the world they are flourishing and part of my argument to you tonight is because they are adjusted to the they they were born at the same time as a modern world and they're adjusted to it I'm gonna mix my metaphors here for a moment I've just given you a plant metaphor I'm gonna go to a different metaphor us so the other part of this argument is that in my dissertation I

(08:58) say that you know we have the culture wars you've all heard of the culture wars right if you watch us news that's all it is right there's the Liberals and there's the evangelical Christians and they're at war and they're so opposed to one another but I'm gonna suggest you tonight that they are actually more like siblings in a family and sometimes siblings don't get along right but if you step back to them there's he's completely different from me right but to someone from the outside you can see oh there's a family resemblance liberals and evangelicals grew up out of the same anglo-american universe in the same time

(09:36) period and despite differences that I'm not saying the differences don't exist but despite the differences I want to suggest you that they also there's a family resemblance okay so that's we're gonna talk about tonight dad all sound good you're all kind of trapped here first for an hour so that's good okay so what is the environment that Evan Jellicle ISM grew up in it grows up after the Age of Enlightenment and the age of enlightenment is the time where reason becomes the source of understanding in the West there's a newfound confidence in human reason and

(10:12) its ability to figure out the motions of the planets the motions of objects on earth and to solve problems before this the tendency was to look for truth in the past the the real reservoir of truth was something in the past it was in the Bible or it was with the great Greek philosophers like Aristotle but now in the age of reason they start saying no no actually it's a progressive idea we're actually going to surpass what was in the past we're gonna figure it out in the future using reason and this poses a challenge to religion not only because

(10:45) it's saying it's reason rather than the Bible but some of these folks will start poking holes in the Bible right it says the Sun stopped in the sky well now there's these astronomers saying there's no way right everything would collapse you you do not understand how the physical universe works so those start poking holes that the theologians do not have great answers for now although the age of reason is a powerful movement all movements will tend to generate counter movements or counter reactions and so there were some

(11:15) counter sponses to the age of reason within the broader culture one of those responses was romanticism and romanticism is a movement that the age of reason really says what makes us who we are is our brains it's that we think and we can logic that's what separates us from the beasts and what makes us fully human and eventually the Romantic era sort of says you know this just turns us into like machines we're just cognition machines not only were they using reason to figure out the motion of the planets but some people believe that eventually we'd be able to use reason to figure out the laws of

(11:53) human behavior and you still have this today in cognitive science right there's some cognitive scientists who say that free will is an illusion that once you figure out the neural mechanisms where we are kind of more machinist or whatever and the response of Romanticism is to say push awe to that no no what makes us human is not arid logic it's our passions it's our emotions it's that we can love it's that we can see beauty it's that we can be moved and stirred okay and this affected things like art there was a romantic here and art and music and it was also the the birth of the novel if

(12:31) you guys like to read novels you know what a novels like it's not a deduction on logic it explores the inner emotional life of the person and there's something about that that we find very human okay so that was one response romanticism another response however comes from this guy John walke and John Locke is very famous philosopher he did lots of wonderful things but I'm just gonna focus on one of his ideas tonight and that is that sorry oh oh sorry and I just did focus on one of the things he did tonight and that is an idea some of you might have heard of called the blank

(13:08) slate have you heard of that term the blank slate yes that's right tabula rasa what he said is that there was a tendency before Locke to assume that that character was an eighth to put two there was a strong tendency towards a notion of destiny of who you're going to be and what you're going to be like and Locke says no no this is garbage when you're born you are eatable Arase you are a blank slate and who you become depends on your circumstances who are your parents what did they teach you what Brees at forty twenty schools and they were you know celebrated lectures but in

(13:51) the of Angelica movement they have commoners as ministers who have no theological education the the biggest evangelical movement that grows in this century are called the Methodists the Methodists have these people called circuit riders and they go from town to town preaching and I go there and I preach and and you have a born-again movement and I talked to you afterwards and you have such a great story and I say would you come up front and tell your story and you do a great job everyone is really moved by what you have to say and I say you should come up come back tomorrow and talk again and

(14:27) then I say you know I'm going to this town down the road would you come along and two weeks later we send you on your own because you're really good at it and you are now a Methodist circuit rider you will lead these things you have no theological degree no training you're not well versed in the Bible but you can tell a great story right and so the religious leaders now become the commoners rather than elites who went to Yale there's something like that and you can still see this today now a lot of that angelical ministers today do get

(14:58) schooling but do any of you know who this is Joel Osteen some of you do yeah he's got to be the most televised preacher in the United States Joel Osteen has no theological education his dad ran the church he went got I think a communications degree or something and his dad dies and they throw him up on the pulpit on Sunday and he does a good job and then I throw up the next week in the next week and now the guy owns the stadium that the Houston Rockets used to play basketball in he fills it every Sunday he's all over TV I saw him he

(15:29) came here to Toronto to the Air Canada center and filled the place up Osteen does not have a degree in divinity or theology or religion but he can tell good stories right so it's commoners who can speak to the people so now a different kind of religious leader so that's one change the second one is because you have different leaders the sermons will change in the established churches those learning people gave great on theology and I don't know original sin and the nature of the Trinity stuff like that but in Evin Jellicle ISM the sermons will shift to storytelling to

(16:10) emotional narratives and this is really good in the age of reason because the thing is if you want to use a reason to go after those sophisticated theological sermons it's a pretty good weapon you will find holes you can attack things like the Trinity and the miracles of the virgin birth but imagine instead that this gentleman is talking to you and his story is that he used to be an alcoholic and he had lost his job and he was about his marriage was on the rocks and he was a terrible dad and then he found Christ and now he's a good dad and he's got his

(16:50) job back and his family's there beside him and they have tears down their eyes try and use sorry backwards yes but try and use reason to poke a hole in that who cares about your logical problems this guy's life has been transformed right it's not only powerful it's inoculated against the attacks of the age of reason in the early 1700s of the most famous sermon probably in American history is is told it's by this guy Jonathan Edwards lovely title sinners in the hands of an angry god and Edwards is a brilliant guy and it's you know this

(17:30) it's Calvinist theology and stuff like that erudite all that sort of thing but in the 20th century the leading evangelical of the 20th century by a thousand miles is Billy Graham and if you've ever heard Billy Graham talk Billy Graham does not have some sophisticated theology to dump upon you Billy Graham's health stories and he tries to move you he tries to shift your life he tells you about people whose lives have been transformed storytelling instead of theology okay so now we have new leaders and we have new servants third how would you get saved that is

(18:04) salvation will change in the 1750s United States overwhelmingly Americans are Calvinists and that means that your salvation is determined by what's called predestination do you all know what that means God is determined in advance whether you're gonna be saved or damned this can seem offensive to a lot of modern people but back then they weren't as invested in human freedom and what they were invested in with God's power and the human freedom model God has less power because you kind of decide whether you're going to be good or bad and God has really reduced to a recorder of your

(18:44) leads but in this model no no God determines everything we all deserve to be damned we're all sinful but God out of his goodness will save a few so predestination the problem with this is when the United States is born this doesn't fit the ethos anymore now what is the United States emphasizing its indifference emphasizing that the individual has freedom that the individual should choose that they should be able to vote right you choose for who should be your leaders it needs a theology that values human choice and so within a century overwhelmingly

(19:17) American Protestants will now follow what it's called our minion ism it's named after a guy named Arminius all it means is free will now you will choose whether you're saved or not because you will determine as an agent as a free agent whether you want to follow Jesus or not and you can see how that fits with America right the valuing of the individual the idea that you can become whatever you want to become you can follow whatever profession you want you can vote for whoever you want and you can decide whether to follow Jesus or not right so you can see in the theology

(19:50) fits this new country next is that the focus of their worship changes some scholars have noted that again in the early 1700s just before this period the sermons focused on God and God is the father and the judge and he sits in judgment of you you are a wayward sinner and it's your need to sort of fix yourself by the end of the century the sermons shift far more to emphasizing Jesus and it emphasizes Jesus as as your friend as someone who you have a relation shipped with if I can just add a bit of stuff here at this time in the United in

(20:36) the anglo-american world maybe even west the West in general there was a new remember I said that the individual now was held in higher esteem like there's individuals there was a new valuing of human emotions a century or so earlier like if you think of the Puritans for example they had sort of a negative view of natural human emotions humans are naturally willful they don't want to follow God and so if if you're a purist and dad you love your children but the way you love your children is you discipline them you correct them from

(21:12) their natural willfulness so that they will follow God and be good right by say 1800s with the birth of Romanticism the idea now is that natural human emotions are actually quite good that people's natural emotions are to love and to seek beauty this is where we get the notion that we have in our society of childhood is born here where we all see children as innocent and naive and pure they're all little angels right you know that notion that wasn't there a century or two earlier but it's there now and so

(21:47) just as there's this new valuing of emotions and a new model for parent models well parental books will sort of change instead of saying you need to discipline your kids they'll tell the fathers you need to love your kids and so what happens it's a different notion of God it goes from the stern father the Puritan dad if you will to the father who loves you and it's even your friend which is Jesus okay this will not only affect the way that theology is carried out it will even affect the scriptures that people have have in their hands because in the late 1800s oh sorry the

(22:25) late 1700s in the United States printers for the first time will start reaming off loads not of Bibles but of just New Testaments right can you imagine why that is right you they drop off the old Testament because the Old Testament there's a little bit more of a stern judge right and so they can't edit the they can't edit it go back and change it you just can't do that but what they place in your hand is just that New Testament with Jesus right this is why when you go to a hotel somewhere and you open up often there's out not a Bible

(22:58) often there's just a New Testament okay and they would sorry what's that yeah you will sometimes get a Bible but sometimes sometimes you'll get just a New Testament the other well maybe I've got that wrong but anyways okay you will get it you would get at this time the printing of New Testaments what they did print print from the Old Testament separately sometimes we're just the Psalms which again sort of fit into this model of loving okay so a new theological focus the other thing that changes at this time is the role of congregants in the old churches the congregants will sit and listen sit and

(23:41) listen to the erudite sermon in the new evangelical churches the congregants have to participate emotionally right they have to get up and they have a role to play in the service they get up and say all men and Alleluia and praise the Lord and if the service is effective this will happen The ministers know that an effective service is to have this and you will hear them call out for it can I have an all men right they'll do that sort of thing right you know that you need it and the highlight of the service is the altar call when some people will

(24:12) come up front and they will be blessed or anointed and they're kind of having their born-again moment right and this is what makes an effective service it's not just this sermon it's not just a sacrament it's the emotional response okay and so this refers to what I showed you earlier is that the personal experience of the congregants demonstrates to everyone that there is religious power at work okay and this stresses the individual over say a Creed or over the church okay any questions about that okay music will

(24:50) change they were Oh sir yes yes yeah yes right I'm gonna say we were still recording this and live-streaming it and so when you're gonna have a question and so if I fail to repeat the question yeah sure okay so the question was and that Wesley John Wesley who had mentioned earlier it's kind of the founder of Methodism was a very educated man and a stern person and that he had a hierarchy and that is very true you're very right with Wesley he almost has a foot in both camps a little bit he's kind of a transition person but he does privilege the kind of emotional experience but you're right he's he

(25:47) there is some of the older stuff there he himself is educated but the Methodist circuit writers often are not the people who are going out and spreading it any other questions okay all right music will be populist too they will move from classical hymns to things like gospel music and gospel music plays off of things like bluegrass and stuff like that the big hymn of the period the most successful him is probably Amazing Grace which is written in the UK but really takes off the United States and here's some of the opening lines of this song

(26:23) Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now I'm found was blind but now can see it's storytelling right this is the story of every testimony I once was lost knowing that so His grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved how precious did that grace appear and notice this last line the hour I first believed right it's the born-again moment maybe you were born Christian but you were lost until this happened until that moment happened okay so now we have populist music and lastly the last thing I want to mention to you

(26:59) is ecclesiology it's a big word it just means the church structure and with the established churches they will have top-down hierarchies and you were right that the Methodists will have a top-down hierarchy but some of the of angelical branches that will grow will have more local control of churches and what this means is that they will be more innovative and adaptive you might have a brilliant idea for running a Catholic Church you might know where it should be and how it should run and how the liturgy should go but you cannot go set

(27:37) that up you just can't you might have a wonderful idea of an Anglican Church and again maybe you know where it should be and who should run it and what it should look like and the the visual but you can't go set up an Anglican Church the Anglican Church sets up Anglican churches but if you have an idea for an evangelical church you can set it up and this weekend across North America a bunch of people will they'll invite people to their to their houses for a coffee or to their basement and and they'll start this up they'll start up a little group and it's a and it's

(28:18) innovative and it's a and you know what happens it's like the high tech industry right there's a million people in their garages starting up the next high tech business and ninety nine percent of them maybe don't go anywhere really big but somebody starts up Apple somebody starts up Google or Facebook and the same thing happens here is that some of these people start up great things and they notice that this model is adopted too I'm sorry the screen so low here but this fits a secular state evangelicalism

(28:49) is not looking for this state to support it as a religion right like in France the Catholic Church was aligned with the state and even in Quebec it was right there the evangelicals are not looking for state support they're ready to compete in a spiritual marketplace they're used to America where it's open and free and that's how business works right and so they're all starting these churches in their basement and eventually some of them turn into Google this is Rick Warren I don't know if you heard of Rick Warren he's a pastor in California he is amazingly successful here is he get did the the blessing at

(29:27) Barack Obama's inauguration just started a church on a whim but was really good at it this is Benny Hinn who some of you might have seen late night on your television sets Benny Hinn is healing people there's miracles happening all the time he's casting out demons Rick Warren would not like Benny Hinn but it doesn't matter there's some people who gravitate towards Warren there's some people who gravitate towards him some people like Apple and cannot stand Microsoft and some people are the other way right it's a similar sort of thing

(29:58) this is TD jakes who's one of the most popular african-american preachers in the United States and I've already mentioned to you Joel Osteen Joel Osteen is all upbeat God wants you to succeed God's gonna give you blessings God's gonna make you rich he's going to help you in your career it's the power of positive thinking everything's gonna go wonderful Warren would find out seeing a little vacuous but again they appeal to different groups and this even happens in Canada who do we have in Canada perhaps Canada's most successful Protestant minister is this guy Brooks ekv who's in Burlington the meetinghouse

(30:39) some of you have heard of the meetinghouse Broxson you'll notice his dress down yeah and his old parishioners sort of to say but my god he looks so sloppy it's intentional he said when he grew up going to church people dressed up and it was a marker of class you could tell who had money and who didn't have money and so he shows up on stage with jeans and a t-shirt and some of his message fits Canada more than it does the United States so for example many of you will associate of Angelica 'ls with political

(31:11) activism and this sells in the United States but it's a little dicey here he has no involvement with politics I know someone who wrote a PhD on him he's you know listened to a hundred of his sermons he said I have never heard him in a sermon address a political issue of the day not once he doesn't vote and he tells his people he doesn't vote he even discourages them from voting because he says you don't change the world through politics you change it through bringing people to Christ and another nod to Canadian sympathies perhaps more than Americans he's a

(31:45) pacifist now if he was like oh Steen in Texas arguing for pacifism I don't know that it worked so well right but she's in a different cultural soil and it works right a million people starting up churches in their garages and cave he now speaks there's about two thousand people who show up in Oakville on a Sunday but he's been to all the movie theaters in cities across Ontario you can go into Ottawa at a Cineplex Odeon on Sunday mo

(32:18) rning and listening to him at 11:00 a.m. or Guelph or London or Windsor or Barrie right so this is this is EV angelical ISM it's innovative and it's adaptive okay it is also a kind of entrepreneurial it's used to capitalism I showed you this guy earlier this is a guy who did the blessing at Barack Obama's inauguration Rick Warren Rick Warren has written this book called The Purpose Driven Life have any of you heard of this book before a few of you have if you go onto google and type bestselling books of all time and go to the wikipedia page it's gonna be there like in the top dozen or so harry potter outsold it but not much else

(32:58) it has been translated into gazillion languages its opening line as a very firm it's a misaligned and it says it's not about you it's not about you it's about something greater than you about giving your life to something greater that's Rick Warren made a gazillion dollars and got his message out using capitalism in the book industry here's another set of books series this is the Left Behind series written by the LaHaye's and it's it's an endtime story it's a whole series of how the world's going to end and what's going to happen

(33:27) Kirk Cameron plays the lead in a movie these books are so popular at one point in time that there's a there's several of them in one point of time in the New York Times bestseller list the top four spots were four books from this series despite the fact that the New York Times bestseller list does not count Krish bookstores right they don't that's not their market and it still had the top four spots there was a sensation about eight or ten years ago from another book called the shack I think it was on Oprah and stuff like that but it's not just

(34:00) the Krishnam book market there's guys like James Dobson did some of you know who's James Dobson is James Dobson was a child psychologist who wrote a book about parenting like a Christian it was wildly successful and then he started up a radio program and he founded an organization an NGO a non-profit right this is using our structures of capitalism and how we organize called focus on the family focus on the family was so big that during george w bush's reign karl rove if you remember bush's brain how they called him would call dobson to see if Dobson approved of his

(34:37) Supreme Court nominees because he didn't want Dobson going on the radio and saying he didn't approve him that's how influential this guy was right and the many scholars have noted that the evangelicals have constantly been on the on the cutting edge of adopting new technology around 1800 or the 1820s in the United States the Methodists had the most sophisticated and largest printing presses in the world and their magazine had more a bigger circulation than any journal in the world they had invested in technology to get their message out

(35:13) when radio comes out it is Christian preachers will be at the forefront of using this and guys would get famous like this Billy Graham who uses TV and radio I some of you remember Jerry Falwell and more recently the YouTube generation it's been this guy Rob Bell Rob Bell produces these little 10-minute videos and they are slick and well produced and the younger set just loves him he's he's really good okay and so that is Evan Jellicle ISM right now we have commoners as leaders we have storytelling that pulling your emotions

(35:49) it emphasizes freewill because it values the individual and your right to choose it emphasizes a God that is your friend an approachable friend who loves you Jesus soft emotions not Stern and harsh you have an emotional role to play in the service its popular music and its innovative and adaptive okay let me pause there cuz I dumped a whole bunch on you are there any any questions wait for the mic no I missed the first few minutes but I think I caught this drift it's quite an interesting analysis the weaving of context of contemporary ideas of the time the nature of American society and

(36:35) I'm wondering how cognizant were the people doing that because it would have already been established Christian identity I'm wondering what the resistance was to the traditional way and I imagine traditional could sometimes be flexible to adapt but that's quite an analysis forward there and it's warning that the direct analysis and awareness of what's going on and you see this emptying out into today there's parallels to that today yes some of this stuff would receive backlash from more traditionalist within these within these churches for so for

(37:12) example that the going away from the educated ministers some of the educated ministers of the day so you can't just listen to these people they have no training they don't know what they're doing but the American spirit was very forward-looking very you know throwing off the old and looking to the new and most of the population sort of went that way can I add something else it's a wonderful book by this guy I've shown you half the story which is how the American spirit shaped of angelical ISM there's this one guy who reverses it and says do not ignore how much evangelicalism implanted the Democratic

(37:51) spirit into the American people in the early 1800s he will tell you at the time that the government was tiny most people had little no they weren't wasn't government like it is today regulating life and stuff he said most people had very little interaction with the government other than the post office but what they had were these Methodist preachers and other preachers come and telling them about their individual worth their freedom to choose they would give them leadership roles and empower them they taught a populist spirit you don't have to listen to elites go with

(38:25) your own emotions and here's a lot of stats and analysis that actually says America helps if birth of angelical ISM buteven Jellicle ISM takes the ideas of the American Revolution and helps embedded in the population so I was just wondering if because I know that she showed a bunch of different of Angelica leaders I was wondering have women significant leaders and churches yeah excellent question there always have been some but never by any means half so even today like Donald Trump has a female of angelical that's kind of connected to him named Paula

(39:14) White and I get Christianity today and it often covers some major of angelical leaders but they're you know five out of six are men or something like that so there are some but leadership has mostly been male historically that answers your question oh yeah Joyce Meyers so yeah you mentioned the the left-behind book series yeah why is there an emphasis on the end times in the apocalypse that is a good question the bomb it will yeah there what what will happen actually have a slide coming up that touches on this a bit in the in the late 1800s and

(40:14) then the early 1900s there's a bit of a split in the Protestant movement this is the age of Darwin and it's also the age of biblical criticism coming from Europe and though being split in the movement because some some haven't some Christians will adapt to these ideas and they become the liberal Protestants frankly but some Christians will see that everything's going to pot that the promises of modernity are are eroding people's trust in the Bible and teaching this teaching this Darwin stuff that's completely crazy and what instead of being progressive oriented they will start to say this is a sign that the end

(40:52) times are coming and there was this unusual guy in the early 1800s who invented this whole schema of how the end times was gonna unfold he went through the Bible and sort of deciphers the clues and stuff like this and this idea really took off and it forms it became popular in fundamentalist circles and the Left Behind books are based on this guy sort of schema so what is it a diss the evangelicals started to come distrustful actually of the progress narrative because you know what is the progress narrative puts too much faith

(41:23) in humanity that we have all these brains and science and our elites in the university are going to solve every problem and but where are they leading us they're leading us to Darwin so the leading us to criticize the Bible it's a sign of the end so it's a bit of a rejection of the elites and the progress narrative I'm thinking of some other aspects of earlier America the moving frontier the establishment of small settlement after small settlement they didn't have their own churches probably so they certainly didn't have their own

(42:04) established churches of any kind and so if they had a church at all it was either an either itinerant preachers coming in every so often or the local guy who was pretty good at preaching or a combination of the two the other thing they didn't have was entertainment I think I remember I think it was a steward mcclain years ago talking about the CNE and how important it was when he was a boy because it colorful and exciting and there was all this a big production number and in effect and now he said we have TV yeah yeah that's excellent and that goes to

(42:53) that point I was saying earlier about like about how small government was in that book that's right they did it but they had preachers and they had a church and that was the communal organization that was great yeah two points in terms of the established churches and evangelicalism the the Unitarians where the sort of epitome of that established church intellectual you know ecumenical models at Harvard et cetera et cetera but now they 1800s they also joined with the Universalist Church which is evangelicals so they actually have the two side seat which is perhaps an

(43:37) unusual model I'm not sure because you've got the historical context the second point is that in terms of the the actual the technological prowess of of the evangelicals if you look to for example Noam Chomsky he will describe the manufacturing of consent within the right wing in in the US politics he says you know that I the left missed completely their opportunity when the right actually bought up I think it was in the sixties and seventies most of the the newspapers and radio stations and TV stations in the States and therefore were able to construct narrative

(44:30) populist narratives that then took the politics shifted it from Center to right right and so the left in fact kind of got hijacked as through that the other example of that I think was when Bill Clinton was going through the Monica Lewinsky there he called upon a Protestant minister who was evangelical to do the counts to do his counseling so you know there is an influence the recent influence for sure in recent history of their technological prowess and how how it really has shaped and influenced yes

(45:14) yeah that's true and the Republican a criticism some people lead or levy is that the Republicans were able sometimes to marry big business with this populist narrative by criticizing government even though the government programs are sometimes helping the poor it would be portrayed as liberal elites and so it married big business but the populist of the of angelical movement and that sort of fits Chomsky's on there it is ver describing was there another question there's a danger with Trump that he's leading a sort of religious and that

(46:00) like the house I don't know much about politics but I know that there was two or three days without him you know something that we were shiny pass but that there is talk that he's you know been evangelical that he is using that power to kind of this is going to sound weird but with Russia and never mind his in you know the things with prostitutes that's not so important what he's really after is sort of uniting Russia in America and I think there was another ste I forget what it was I was listening to on CBC I just thought that might be a slob but another thought I've had was when you

(46:57) were talking about going back and I was wondering why he didn't mention Martin Luther oh yes so I didn't discuss Martin Luther just because well of time and because that I actually thought sometimes when I give this talk I actually go back to the founding of Protestantism because Protestantism is also connected to the birth of secularism and things like that but I knew you wanted to go home at some point tonight so he chants a question he's very relevant he's very relevant to the story but in trying to figure out what to tell you and not tell you I I left him aside who he's Martin Luther he's not important okay all right what I

(47:41) want to do from here is from this I debated a lot about how to do the rest of this presentation because there's two directions I wanted to go and it it makes it a little disjointed so I thought about dropping one but in the end I did it so we're going to go in one direction and then I'm going to come back to this slide and we can go another direction is that okay okay again I control the PowerPoint so you have no choice yeah that's right I don't believe in the power of the Communist No okay so evangelicalism today remains

(48:13) quite populist and actually I started to talk about this in answering one of your questions I talked about how Darwin and Darwinism and biblical criticism split American Protestantism in what are now called the mainline denominations they had a lot of educated ministers by this point in time they tended to accept the teachings of Darwin and some of the criticisms of the Bible and what they did is they shifted Christianity to what is called the social gospel and the social gospel means that Christianity that just means Christianity is about helping the marginalized it's not so

(48:45) much about converting people it's about helping the poor and what they will do is that they will make a big influence of America because it is the social gospel folks century so ago who will start getting into government and saying we need to have institutions for the poor we need to fix working conditions we need fire codes in these fire trap buildings they want to and reform society and do stuff like that and they really did change the country evangelicals however are will become the split that does not go with this group this is the progress narrative they'll say no no all this

(49:21) Darwin's stuff is garbage this biblical criticism is garbage the virgin birth is real and we have to hold on to the fundamentals and some of them will hold on so tight to aggress of writings called the fundamentals that they become known as the fundamentalists this is where you get that word it came from them and they will not go to help the marginalized but they will convert the marginalized they will be the marginalized churches and they will empower the marginalized how because it will be the people who are not very rich will become the pastors of their churches right so they're not coming and

(50:00) giving you a soup kitchen but they give you a role as a pastor you know on a Sunday and they invite you up front to tell your testimony of how God is working in your life you see they give them leadership positions and roles and influence and you know you go to these churches and miracles happen that that empower your life and make you feel touched by the sacred even though maybe your job is a humdrum job Monday to Friday okay so it they will be the populist movement and you can still see this today EV angelical ISM today is not so socio-economic ly marginalized its

(50:35) climbing the ladder but the rhetoric today remains anti state anti elites it's populist rhetoric right now the next four four or five slides I want to talk about evangelical politics and in doing this just to lay it out there some of this stuff is touchy stuff this comes more from my dissertation because they're they're sensitive issues when we talk about politics I'm not advocating for their positions or against them but I do want to help explain them and moreover I want I'm hoping that when I'm done that you will see how liberalism is not completely divorced from what

(51:19) they're doing that some liberal even though liberals will often disagree with these petitions if you stand far enough back you'll be able to see the liberal DNA that's in there okay does that make some sense I hope okay so what you will find is that they often use the language of liberalism when they're talking about abortion they don't just say how immoral that is what they argue for our rights the rights of the unborn this is this is John Locke stuff right the rights of the individual they don't just say that what you're doing violates God's will

(51:54) they say you're infringing on my freedom the freedom of religion you see it's it's in liberal language this is a woman I study this is Andrea Rosic she headed up an evangelical Lobby group in Canada till a few years ago they've now been assumed in another group and she also writes a blog called pro woman pro-life rotex a smart cookie she has her master's degree from U of T and she's been a journalist around the world and stuff like that and I want to show you her arguments just so you can understand them and again notice the notice the nature of the arguments so she she would

(52:33) like a Canada without abortion by choice she's not looking to change the laws but she wants to convince people away from it and one of her arguments is that abortion although it's framed she will claim as about a woman's freedom she will say in truth so much of abortion is not a woman with lots of choices making some free autonomous choice she will claim that often women are doing in situations where they feel trapped and pressured and a partner is say you know a boyfriend is saying please get the abortion and the parents are saying please get the abortion and she feels pressured and she will claim that often

(53:09) they are making this decision not being well informed about the consequences and she'll pull out studies saying that it links to health concerns later and to poor mental health consequences and stuff like that and so for argument is who is going to bear the burden not the boyfriend not the parents the woman right and so she argues this often does not promote the woman's freedom and of course she'll argue about the freedom of the child the child's right to life so that's one touchy subject she will also talk about divorce and she will say that while divorce is of course

(53:43) necessary in cases like spousal abuse and stuff like that she believes that we have over liberalized divorce and that liberal divorce by overdoing it has harmed woman women why she says a divorced women and their stats about this and and your higher rates of poverty and lower mental health and dealing with a child sometimes alone sure Larry and I'm saying what she does but actually the she's just an example of what many lobbies and they have angelical world do she'll argue against common-law relationships so again say that these harm women why because the points of studies and the real artist shoots here

(54:20) of correlation and causation but she'll say that studies show that they have higher rates of poverty and are more likely to experience abuse domestic abuse of some type and their children are more likely to experience abuse she doesn't argue by the way that divorce should be banned or that there should this should be against the law but what she says is in schools we should have we should educate children about lifestyle choices in high school and about the statistics of what these that lifestyle choices create and the government should

(54:52) not treat common laws marriage because if people marry the outcomes will be better so you shouldn't give them the tax breaks that you give to married couples and stuff like that right and to give one last example she does not like universal daycares probably written about this more than anything why she says it universe the idea of universal daycare is the government's going to tax you and create a day care system that's free but by taxing you she argues it increases your financial burden which pushes you to have to go to work she would argue and she claims and and this

(55:28) is funny because she is a working woman now she's not married is it but she obviously is not opposed to women working but she has written articles saying this view that is pushed she would say pushed on women that you can have it all then you can have a great career and lead it work that you can come home and be a fantastic mom and be on the school board and do this in this vest she would say is causing a lot of women immense stress and she points his studies about women's health and happiness of mental health

(55:57) and says maybe this is a liberal lie maybe in truth we're being sold a bill of goods and so what does she want she liked Harper's idea don't tax people and create universal they care give to give them checks of money and if they want to use it for day care they can if they want to put the kids with the grandparents though and work part-time they can do that or whatever right and so what you get with Rosic and I realize that that is all sensitive stuff but what you get with music her argument is what promotes women's freedom is it the right to abortion is it universal

(56:36) daycare so you can go to work is it liberalized divorce so you can escape a terrible marriage and stuff like that or is what promotes women's health being in stable marriages that are encouraged by government is it having the money to be able to stay at home if you want does this lead to better outcomes and her argument is that liberalism today has gone over the edge the idea of Liberty has actually turned into license you don't have to stay in a marriage you can leave and stuff like that and that this ultimately leaves us harmed and damaged by our decisions and Christianity she would argue provides a

(57:13) more stable idea it embeds people in relationships and families and this is the nurturing environment for adults to be happier but also for their children okay so that is the argument my only point of showing you all that was a to understand a bit of her perspective and I hope that you can see here is how much there is some liberal ideas in here about rights about what brings true liberty and things like that liberals and evangelicals are not like Catholics arguing with Buddhist it's like Catholics arguing with Protestants they're arguing from a same family

(57:56) sometimes over the same stories or values the united states who owns the founding fathers the evangelicals or the liberals right they're always arguing is Thomas Jefferson a Christian or what's he a deist and stuff they're arguing over the same stock of characters and stories okay did that make some sense okay that was the end of one of these tree branches I wanted to go up on is there one or two questions I don't want to do seven or eight but it sure and again it thanks for listening to that I know that

(58:26) that's a sensitive kind of set of topics she was speaking about how she supports a lot of these viewpoints that also coincide with evangelicalism with different studies do you think that that came to an extent come from a place of this is an originally like a strong belief and then just like searching for facts I justify that oh yeah that's certainly a possibility right is that one has a religious motivation for holding the position and then you go out in the world and look for proof and her partner who was a guy once actually basically said this in a way in an interview if there's a there's actually

(59:10) a theology theological doctrine for this it's a term that some of you might have heard of it's called natural law and natural law says that God made the universe and made the moral laws and if you follow God's laws as a result it will also lead to human flourishing so she expects that social science is going to back up that following God's laws lead to healthy outcomes yeah so that's yeah okay another question I had how and when did evangelicalism like sort of latch on to an abortion as an issue because my familiarity with the Catholic Church and that happening at

(59:52) least North American context is that it became kind of commonplace and then that's why I like there was pushback yeah oh that's an excellent question so here's the dirty secret about evangelicals and abortion if you follow American politics you always hear about roe v-- wade right and of angelical would point to it and what a disaster when roe v-- wade came out evangelicals were of mixed views on it have you ever heard of the Southern Baptist Convention it's one of the largest evangelical denominations in the states when roe v wade came out they came out with a press release saying

(1:00:28) good we're really happy you can feel at least several the first time I read this I almost fell out of my chair I say that kid I really trusted the author but I'm like that cannot be right but I could actually go on google and find their apology statements about they're still apologizing about this thirty years later what happened yes and Christianity today which is the main of angelical magazine had an article that was like we're not sure this is really good we kind of think it's bad but not like today right we're it's like complete horribleness what happened is so Roby

(1:01:03) ways in 72 by about seventy six you can start to feel the shift happening as I understand part of it came from the Catholics talking to of Angelica leaders because the Catholic Church was completely against abortion going back to 68 part of it was it got associated not with protecting the mother but with the sexual liberalism of the 60s so it's not about saving mothers it's about enabling unmarried women to have sex okay and then there was a big meeting of the religion when the Religious Right was formed they did not form over abortion they formed over other issues

(1:01:43) but by the second or third or fourth meeting as they were grasping around for issues someone said how about abortion and I know this is true because you can read people who were in the meeting telling you that this happened and they grabbed onto abortion and about 19 and by 1976 the Southern Baptists are starting to get a little harsher on it and around 77 or 78 some of you remember Jerry Falwell jerry falwell came out and said abortions horrible and by 1980 it was on the Republican ticket so what happened

(1:02:13) in about a seven or eight years period over the set over the 70s and so in 1975 all the right-to-life movement is all Catholic but by 1985 there's a substantial Evin Jellicle contingent that is why in the first place with the Southern Baptist Convention supported is it because I know that it was privacy between the doctors was the grounds that a little bit the other thing is so there were two things one the Catholics refer abortion and so it must be wrong I mean we're against abortion so the Catholics are always wrong and they

(1:02:58) really did see it the other thing with the the Baptist's were about the Bible what's the Bible say and they felt like this is another place where the Catholics just don't care what's in the Bible they invent their own stuff the only Bible passage on this some of you know the line where it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth so that passage is there it's in the Bible but right after that that passage around it what it says is something like well what happens if a man injures a woman and her the child in her womb dies and it says well if the child in her

(1:03:28) womb dies the perpetrator has to pay the father that's how it always works right you have to pay the father some shekels of silver but otherwise its life for life eye for eye eye nose for nose or whatever right and that passage seems to indicate that the life in the womb if you follow me is not the same as another life otherwise its life for life but if you then it's just some some money right and so the Southern Baptist thought the Bible doesn't support this it's another Catholic invention but then they then I switched and maybe a lot of the person

(1:04:04) in the corner had her hand up very early I think yeah just speaking to that I wonder if I recall my Bible reading which is very sparse correctly it was something about the baby quickening yeah but but that's not what I want to speak to um what I want to speak to is that there's a curious parallel movement to this position on the part of secular science represented by ethology some quarters of ethology which too is politicized by the way by ethology I mean the study of humans as animals and particularly human psychology as you know pertinent to the species looking at

(1:04:46) a zoo logically and and so there are big you know big names in this I'm thinking of two figures very curiously named lastname Tiger professors tiger and phlox anyway they got into a lot of trouble with what was the early version of what is now called the politically correct position you know identity politics early left left-wing feminism in that they argued more for the nature position than identity politics and political correctness would allow which sometimes and it's extreme severe stored the tabula rasa idea that we're blank slates

(1:05:20) there is no nature it's all nurture it's all you know the discourse it's all created by social and economic discourses and in institutions yeah you know that you know what human results in human behavior and thought and that's very akin to them do the traditional Marxist position you know whether it's idea of the superstructure and all that anyway there is you probably are familiar with Christopher lash the culture of narcissism oh yeah yeah now he is old school left in fact I call him a Marxist however he wrote a couple of

(1:05:56) books that very much argued that that the breakdown of the family is leading to all kinds of dire you know dire results for America is particularly this phenomenon of what is now almost clinical narcissism you know widespread what looks like you know pathology you know the part of very many young people and he relates this to the breakdown of the traditional roles of the male and the female in the family and particularly family stability I took a course here in Toronto with a guy that's emeritus at a York University and he's also the head of the trying to psychoanalytic Society and he

(1:06:34) did a seminar on the work of a guy by the name of Ellis again was also out of Rochester like like lash wasn't he was a good friend colleague of flashes and they talked the same way anyway so he argues very much that way to that that the early and I mean this is being demonstrated by studies of where you know pathologies and children due to separation and from or trauma you know with the mother in the earliest years so there is science behind this anyway so he argues that you know what we think of as morality in Freudian terms that is the super-ego that that's a later

(1:07:16) accretion to a much earlier structure or stage that he calls would probably be called the conscience in which we learn how to be loving and compassionate when we're infants yeah due to the interaction with the mother anyway so this kind of and so figure like Jordan Peterson that everybody's probably heard of here he's very much of that school and he apparently recently published a book on these themes and of course he's getting you know a firestorm from the identity politics people but it's complicated you know yeah there is um there is I'm serious in universities too

(1:07:53) is there is kind of a on the one hand on the one camp kind of what's called post-modernism that tends to sort of the value sort of biology and see the human is very malleable by culture more of a blank slate and there is a bit of a push back mechanism and some of it does come out of animal studies as you say and the the evangelicals really are in this pushback group there are there are lots of the people there who are not of angelicus but they really argue that and they've written many articles on this including by her biology matters you

(1:08:25) know that there is something to biology and you can't just pretend it doesn't matter so they're part of that yeah that's a natural law yeah yeah that's right that's right but even people like I don't know if any of you know Steven Pinker who's a famous right you know but he's also a guy who wrote a book basically saying the blank slate is an Amer that actually your genes and stuff like that shape you okay all right so yeah sorry sorry about that yeah so I said we're going to go down one trunk of the tree and then I sent him to bring you back we're gonna go the

(1:09:06) other way you remember that so that's what we're gonna do now and also I'll just take a side a second I'm just gonna pass this around it's just a sign-up sheet if any of you want to be in my email list it just asked for your first name I really don't need your last name in your email and I will just tell you if I'm giving talks in trial you have to sign it but I do not need to know any religious affiliation okay all right so back here remember I was telling you about how innovative and adaptive it was and I you know there was Google there was Rick Warren and Billy

(1:09:42) Graham as big Billy Graham was in the 20th century no Christian is more famous other than perhaps John Paul a second as big as Billy Graham once he was not the most important innovation to come out of angelical ISM in the 20th century the most important innovation come out of F Angelico's and started in the most unlikely situation possible it came from this man William J Seymour an educated guy who walks into a home Church in Los Angeles and there is a long prayer meetings going on night after night after night and Seymour one day starts

(1:10:20) to speak in tongues now some of you will know that in the New Testament there is an event where the Apostles the Holy Spirit appears as flames over their heads and they speak in tongues they speak one language but all the people there from all over the world or the Middle East can understand them in their own tongues it's a miracle and some Christians believe that at the end time the miracles in the New Testament will come to fruition again and so here is Seymour and what is Seymour doing he is speaking in tongues the very technical term for this is glossolalia

(1:10:57) now unlike the Apostles other people could not understand him regardless of what language understood but the folks who buy into this understand that he's speaking a heavenly language and soon it's not just Seymour then this woman does it and then another person and another person and these revivals go on night after night week after week it o pros the house they move to a church on a Zuza Street which is why it's called the Azusa Street revival and they launch Pentecostalism Pentecostalism right and

(1:11:28) it is a movement that will grow like wildfire people are speaking in tongues you can feel the Holy Spirit here there are divine healings miraculous healings there are exorcisms they're casting demons out of people and changing their lives and it spreads quickly they quickly create a free newspaper and before very long they're sending missionaries out and within three or four years it's in basically every major city in the United States and it's also very populist he immediately has mixed races at these meetings now eventually

(1:12:00) they will get segregated but a Jinnah Lee there's blacks or whites there's Latinos women are in roles of speaking and leadership early on again some of that will have a way later but it's populist and it will therefore spread not only in the United States but some of these people will spread it back to if they're immigrants to to other countries to Latin America and beyond and so Pentecostalism has spread like crazy to places like Africa to South America in Brazil in Latin America it is it is the greatest threat to the Catholic Church really answer Asia places like Korea have enormous growth

(1:12:39) in Christianity as this China there's definitely more Chinese people going to a church on Sunday than there are in Canada there's no question about it and it's very powerful a developing world in some of these situations in some of these cultures the religion that is there grew up in a different soil in some cases for example it might be a tribal religion and that tribal religion requires tribal life or at least it's suited to tribal life the whole tribe gets together there's a tribal ritual there are roles for everyone to engage

(1:13:12) in but the problem is now is the soil is changed it's like climate change but culturally right because what's happening while capitalism is coming in and it's decimating tribal economies right and now you have to move to a city there's urbanization and there you don't live as a tribe you live as an individual there's just you and your spouse you feel isolated in the city right and now this old religion sometimes it's like a plant that was used to one soil and now all of a sudden the acidity of the soil has changed or

(1:13:42) something it doesn't work very well right but you know what's there there's something that is adapted to this new this new environment there is Pentecostalism which first came from missionaries but now is completely led by local folks because it's well embedded and Pentecostalism knows how to deal with capitalism they run big churches and they collect money and they build enormous churches and they buy radio stations and they create films to spread the spread the message it's used to urbanization it knows how to thrive in the city and how to create a

(1:14:15) community in a very individualistic New Age it's it's ready it's ready for it right as the Western environment spreads this religion born in the West is ready to spread too and there's one other thing Pentecostalism does someone mention Martin Luther earlier Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation and secularism they criticized a lot of things that were in medieval Catholicism medieval Catholicism you could go and touch relics from the Virgin Mary you could see breast milk from the virgin you could see splinters from the cross

(1:14:53) and from Noah's Ark and you could be healed there was miraculous things that you could go and touch and see and there were miraculous times there were feast days for this saints for that saint of that Saint Martin Luther and the others will say this is complete garbage they'll say there's so many splinters of the cross you could build Noah's Ark you know all of this is garbage this is idolatry and all this feast day is praying to Saints is idolatry we should only worship God and when they do this what they do inadvertently this is a law

(1:15:25) of unintended consequences is they strip the physical world of the sacred it becomes homogeneous its secular almost right it's just objects and spore Denari time whether you're secular or Protestant on this view doesn't really matter you see the world as what's called a famous sociologist called it the disenchantment of the world and what is Pentecostalism do many scholars have written it Rhian chants the world now there are divine healings going on on Sunday in that building there's someone speaking in tongues he might be a

(1:16:01) janitor right but now he is empowered he is speaking in the sacred language there are exorcisms I saw Satan cast out of this person right miracles are happening in the New Testament it says that the followers of Christ will be able to pick up snakes and the snakes themselves won't even bite them and so in the Appalachians they have snake handlers these guys who go and pick up these poisonous snakes and of course every once in a while one of them gets bit but it's proof and Pentecostalism you can touch feel and hear the miraculous even though it's 2018 right it's not all just

(1:16:38) ordinary and boring you can touch it and the other thing about the Pentecostals is they often preach what's called the prosperity gospel and the prosperity gospel is if you just turned to Jesus he will bring about prosperity for you he will bring you wealth donate to the church that will come back to you ten times and a lot of this is very morally dicey and gets critiqued even within evangelical circles but there's a lot of preachers teaching this prosperity gospel and it's very popular in the third world and the developing world

(1:17:07) sorry some of these churches include the universal Church of the kingdom of God in Brazil it was found in the 1970s it has 12 million members now what else do you know that was founded in the 1970s that it's 12 million members right what the Mormon Church that's right which started earlier but actually this is growing faster than the Mormons millions more abroad they have a church here in Toronto by the way the largest church in the world is in South Korea the Yodo Full Gospel Church you know three-quarters of a million people one

(1:17:44) congregation with multiple sort of locations right so this is what's going on okay so to wrap up evangelicalism and Pentecostalism i've tried to suggest to you our modern religions and by modern I mean that they empower the individual their roots are in liberalism you can see the liberal DNA there they argue that truth is found in your personal emotions not in the doctrine not in this sacrament not in what the priest tells you but in you in your heart right in the personal experience that you had of Jesus and you have your

(1:18:20) you're valued as an individual so that you have a personal relationship with Christ and it's entrepreneurial and innovative it's ready for capitalism it's ready for a secular state it doesn't need state support it's gonna go and build its own institutions as a result Pentecostalism is probably the most successful religion in the world today there were zero Pentecostals a hundred years ago today some estimates kind of the most accurate I think are that it's around 300 million people which is about as many Buddhists as there are in the world from nothing in a

(1:18:54) century okay and that is Evan Jellico Pentecostal [Applause] I'm just curious why it is that evangelism took such a stronghold in the u.s. and not so much in Canada I mean at least that's my impression also curious if you have any theories on as to why the American strain of evangelism took such political turn whereas in Canada not it seems not so much yeah those are two big questions okay so the first one why did it not do as well in Canada although the original Great Awakening I told you was in Great Britain in Canada and the states and was as powerful heroes in the States what

(1:19:52) happened in Britain is the established churches kind of got back in charge of it eventually and they calmed down those tent meetings and they started educating their ministers and it was very British the stereotype of British formality right and the Britain was a little bit of afraid of the populism of America with its revolution and all that sort of stuff and the same thing happened in Canada which was very British from about the 17 late 1700s to the near the 1800s it calms down in Canada and becomes more

(1:20:25) dominated by a few churches in 1850 Canada five four or five Protestant churches had something like 95% of the Protestants in the land and if you added the Catholics it was 97 percent of the people in the land whereas in the States they've got by this point like denominations all over the clay in place they've got the unites of the Miller writes and the Mormons and Christian Science is going to pop up and stuff like that so in in in the British colonies the idea of the crown and the state and the elites will main tank what will regain control but they don't in the States they never regain it it

(1:21:03) goes it goes crazy not crazy it's you're splinters in a million ways so it remains populist in it and so that was why you had another question I've completely forgot it oh yeah so why did it become so political in the States it happens post-world War two they in the States they start to associate patriotism with being Christian because the Nazis were attacking Christianity and they came out of Germany which is where biblical criticism comes out of they actually start associating atheism with Nazism and then with communism and

(1:21:49) all of that believes in Darwin and so freedom is being Christian and American patriotic and that sort of weird thing happens in the 1950s in the States and has maintained to the current day whereas in Canada studies have shown that Canadian of angelical x' holds similar views on social moral family values issues as their American cousins but they don't politicize it to a party and they don't talk about it at church with the frequency of American evangelicals so they hold similar views but it's not as politicized and they're less likely to see the kind of the elites attacking the country their

(1:22:29) liberal elites attacking the country and stuff like that lots of religions and lots of parts of Christianity specifically have a big focus on creating a community and having churches path your life outside of just Sundays yeah just evangelical church try and do this or it's just turn up you're so different yeah the evangelicals are gurus at this at creating society and culture so Brock's ekv that got the Canadian guy told you the with the the t-shirt and the jeans remember him the pacifist so his church although he gives this great big sermon on Sunday what he really wants you to do is sign up for

(1:23:10) home church and home Church as you meet in somebody's home in a pod of like 8 or 10 people on Tuesdays and you get a list of questions that have to do with the sermon you listen to on the weekend and not only that but really what happens over time is those people become your closest intimates you share the struggles you're having with your son and you're your job and your marriage and when you lose your job those people are there for you they will be there and so and then then there's you know those activities for youth they have fantastic and dynamic youth programs they have

(1:23:44) charity runs and charity events that you can get in and your whole family can go to the you know often in the rest of our life like you go but there's not a place your family can go but here your whole family can go and they know the other whole families so it's very communal and it takes up more and more of your free time but it's you find meaning in it and it becomes your most intimate network yeah yeah the generally people who are religious in North America and attend weekly any religious community show higher levels of happiness than people

(1:24:16) in North America who don't and from what I can gather there's some people who tried to parse this using the sophisticated means and they think it's because they have better community basically thank you for a very nice lecture I believe there are some studies that have been done worldwide to show the sort of inverse relationship to the important of religion and life to the educational level in other words particularly in some of the Scandinavian countries which have a higher education level there's a

(1:24:52) lower interest in religion yeah is there anything specific to evangelism and Pentecostalism which would indicate the lower the education level of a country the higher their interest in these in these strains so with Pentecostalism I think it has done better in cultures that have not had as high education evangelicalism though it's done very well in the States and tends to do well both with lots of them have university degrees that wasn't true in 1950 but it is today they've they've caught up to their to the rest of society on that front there are some worldwide global

(1:25:34) studies that suggest that generally as education Rises religiosity decreases so there is the relationship we talk about but in the States evangelicals do well on education and the Mormons do fantastic on education so there are some groups that bucka a larger trend I guess similarly to that question I lost the gender question it's been considered that with the traditional religions that there's a skewing and this has long been the case towards women attending church more often being the points of conversion in a family the fact this

(1:26:14) goes back to earliest Christianity and to a certain extent this was seen as possibly linked to women's lower educational attainments the greater and interest in mysticism the supernatural the emotional how did the figures play out let's say has anybody done Studies on you know is there a gender imbalance us to who's interested in in in these two forms sure I don't know the exact stats I can say a few things about that the skewing of Christianity towards women actually happens in the very period I was talking to you about in the eighteen hundreds if you remember I said there

(1:26:57) was a revaluing of human's emotions and they went away from the harsh judging Godfather to the loving Jesus who is kind of warm and stuff like that it starts to value forgive the stereotyping but stereotypical feminine emotions of love and compassion and tenderness and gentleness and it's at this point that Christianity starts to become more weighted towards female participation versus male there's something else Oh as for today I don't know the stats what I do know is for Pentecostalism and the developing world one of the great it

(1:27:33) spreads the women are the means that it spreads but its power is that it often and enables these women to bring their husbands to church and the the term for this in academic literature is the patriarchal bargain and what it means it's what's happening is these women because the doctrine is that the men is the head of the family and she has to submit to him and stuff like that but what they're finding a lot of these contexts is when these women do this these men turn away from women izing and gambling and drinking and become devoted fathers and husbands so it's a patriarchal bargain you pledge you're

(1:28:12) sort of that he is the leader but often he's sort of stepping up to the plate and it gives him this leadership role and he has shoes the license that was tearing at the family before so it's well known you know in a lot of like I know this is a thing in Latin America and yeah scholars call it the patriarchal bargain yeah yeah they would fit into it very well and that also is they would fit that label of kind of the patriarchal bargain over here there was a hands over here by the way I know some folks have to leave if you do leave I just wanted to tell you again

(1:28:54) consider coming to mind discovery week I'd love to have you it is so much fun it's just a week of it's just really rich so I'd love to have you okay sorry I think sometimes in Christianity because you have to realize it yeah yeah that's right yeah it's a bit a bit different it's kind of the traditional Orthodox Judaism I rather think there's a relationship between lis shift that you noted between the judgmental God the Father to the friendly Jesus and the advent of lots of women ministers I'm old enough to remember when people used

(1:29:58) to expect their minister or their priest or whoever to tell them what to do he was the authority they necessarily do it but they wanted someone authoritative and at least in those days that was not the role of a woman women were compassionate and kind and and gentle and and so on and nowadays I think people want something different from their Minister and what they want is something that a woman can give also a hundred years ago there were no maybe a little more than 100 years ago there were no Sunday papers in this town and

(1:30:48) the Monday newspapers would have articles covering the sermons in the principal churches I mean this was one you could shoot up a cannon up Yonge Street on on a Sunday morning and not hit anybody and I can remember in the Eisenhower approach to religion was it didn't matter what your religion was but you had to have one it was socially unacceptable of all not to be not to have some religion or other if you didn't go to church at least most Sundays what would the neighbors say that has changed I don't know obviously these churches are doing very well I wonder what percentage of the

(1:31:40) population nowadays goes to a worship service of any kind on a weekly basis yeah and and yeah you're right it has changed I think in Canada the stats are that somewhere close to one in five go somewhere weekly sometimes those numbers might be slightly inflated and in the States people claim a number more like two and five I say claim because there is a particularly feeling in the states that there's a bias to say that you go more than you do because it's a socially valid thing to say but roughly twice

(1:32:18) what it is here okay the recent yeah excellent the way that Mormons and Jehovah's Witness and Christian Science and all those fit in is that the United States someone used the word the frontier the United States is a frontier it's open season and as I told you there's a million people starting things in their basements Mormonism is another Instagram right it just takes off it's founded in the 1830s in the United States a lot of those other traditions start out kind of a generation well more like in the late 1800s but it's because United States is open season anyone can start anything and in the 1800s the

(1:33:15) United States has to be considered one of the most fruitful for starting up Christians and AMA nations since the Reformation basically and but that doesn't happen in Canada because in Canada just that question you asked earlier a few denominations will grab hold and read sir control here and so people don't start starting things up all over the place but United States it remains the Wild West and you can start stuff all over the place and every once in a while something takes off let's thank Brian again okay [Applause]