Special Event -Conversation with Dr. Amy Orr Ewing: Dr. David Capes, 09/22/24

Orr-Ewing
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[00:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Morning. Are you doing well? Yes. Are you doing good? Yes. Well, who knows, right? That's a different question. No, I'm just kidding. That's, that's the grammar in me coming out. The grammar scholar in me. Um, my name is David Capes and I am privileged to be here today in March. Ted, I'm gonna be interviewing Dr.

Amy or Ewing about a lot of stuff, and I really love doing interviews because, uh. I get to know people and a part of what we're gonna be doing today is getting to know her through. So I'm not gonna really introduce her. I'm gonna let her introduce herself through her stories so that you'll know more about her, know more about her books, nor more about her family and, and, [00:01:00] and, and her great, great work.

So if you don't mind, join me in welcoming Dr. Amy y Ewey.

I'm not a lawyer. So I can't depose you. Um, but uh, state your name please. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, for the record, uh, Dr. Amy or Ewing. Okay. Where did you grow up, Amy? Well, I was born in Australia. Um, two parents who didn't have any faith at all. My dad was an atheist. He was a lecturer in politics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

And, um, my mother had, was. A full-time mom and they became Christians quite dramatically. That's a whole nother story. Was that back in Australia? Yes. Okay. Yeah, and moved back to the UK with a real sense of a call from God to minister as evangelists and church [00:02:00] leaders. So my father trained at Theological College with JI Packer and Alec Mather, and amazing people, amazing scholars, and then led churches in different parts of the uk.

So I grew up. Living in different cities. The ma the, the sort of longest period was seven years for me between the age of nine and 16 in Britain's second largest city, city called Birmingham. And we were in the inner city in one of the most, um, difficult crime ridden neighborhoods, but also with a majority Muslim population.

And so saw many, many Muslims coming to know the Lord during that time. And that was a very formative time for me. So you grew up mainly in, in Britain, in the center part of the country. And then how did you come to Faith personally? Mm-hmm. You had parents now who are believers. Yeah. They started out as [00:03:00] atheists, but now they've become vibrant Christians.

How did you come to faith? So to, just to scroll back a little bit, so my, um, my grandparents, my father's parents had escaped Soviet occupation of East Germany in 1948. My grandfather was a brilliant scientist and was able to get onto a really small plane with his wife, my grandmother, and my aunt, and my father, and they arrived in the uk.

Landed at RAF North Holt, which is about 20 minutes from where I live now. One day in 1948, just in the clothes they were standing up in. That's all, all they had. But my grandfather, um, was such a convinced atheist that he forbade any mention of God in the house. And he forbade a bible from crossing the threshold of the home.

So my dad grew up, um, became an [00:04:00] academic himself, was quite intellectual himself, but that was his formation. And two things happened to him. One was that a colleague who was also teaching at the university was a Christian and invited him to come and hear a talk at lunchtime that was happening on campus.

And my dad went to Long and the guy was giving a. A talk about the Christian faith, and my father was astonished by various things. The main thing that he just couldn't really comprehend was that the man was making what he described as a category mistake. He was putting two things together that don't belong together, and those two things were truth and reality and religion as he perceived it, God, he thought.

Religion, God, Jesus. That's about superstition. That's about wish fulfillment, that's about family background that doesn't belong with truth, evidence, and reality. So he was kind of disturbed by that. [00:05:00] And then a few months later he was at home in his study marking some papers. My sister and I were asleep and he had an experience of the living God.

And he saw his whole life flashing before him, which took over two hours. And as he saw the things he had said and done and thought, he saw the reaction on the face of Jesus to the way that he lived. And then at the end of this vision, he saw Christ on the cross and he found himself just on his knees, realizing I need forgiveness.

And he, he said to Jesus, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to pray. Give me the words. So he's kneeling down before a vision of the cross of Christ, and these are the words that came to his mind. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And he got up off the floor a Christian. Two weeks later, after he'd gone and bought himself a Bible in a shop, his Christian colleague had moved away.

So he [00:06:00] just went and did that himself. He was astonished to read those words in the mouth of someone else. Okay, so after this, my parents, my mom took about six months to become a Christian. She was. So appalled at what had happened to her husband. My dad would try and evangelize her and he would say things like, Jane, the thing is that you are lost and you need to be found, and you are in darkness and you need to come into the light.

And it really did not work. And that one day, my, my dad said, I, I, I really wanna meet other people who are Christians. Um. Maybe church. Maybe that's what what we should do. And so he said to my mother, I'm too embarrassed to go on my own. Please, will you come with me? So my mom thought, I know my husband is intelligent.

I know how to cure him of Christianity. So she said, sure, I'll come to church with you on one condition. It has to be Anglican. She thought once he's experienced that he'll be killed for life. He'll be absolutely fine. So they show up. This is in Sydney [00:07:00] diocese where the Anglican churches are full on evangelical Bible preaching.

You know, first sermon she ever heard was on Romans chapter one on the WR of God, uh, for 40 minutes, which made her even more furious. But about six months later, she became a Christian. And to say that they were transformed by the living God is an understatement. Their whole lives were completely changed by Jesus.

And as a child, I grew up in a home seeing that as undeniably real. My parents loved Jesus and they introduced people to Jesus. They were great evangelists. So our home was full of skeptics, former addicts, former Muslims, coming to know Jesus and. I just found that utterly compelling myself, as is probably the case with some of you, if you've grown up in a Christian home, it's hard to say.

When did you make a decision? [00:08:00] Because I went forward at virtually every meeting. You know, I, I wanted to follow Jesus and made multiple decisions. But as a young adult, I had the opportunity to go to university. Um, I had the opportunity to go to Oxford University, which is an extraordinary blessing. And I think having made decisions as a child and then as a teenager.

As a teenager, in Britain, you are not surrounded by other teenagers who know the Lord. I was the only Christian in my class at school until other people came to know Jesus. And, and so you are, you are making stands for for what you believe in all the way through. And then again, when you get to university, faith is tested in a different way.

And that was certainly my experience. There were moral decisions to be made and intellectual questions to be wrestled through, but it was my experience there. Jesus is real. The Bible can [00:09:00] be trusted and stands up to all the scrutiny that has been thrown at it. Wow. Amazing story. That kind of experience that your parents had, it's not the usual Christian experience, is it?

I mean, maybe, maybe your mom, but your dad. This vision that he had in his sense of his life and then of being present with Jesus in that moment, really unusual. So you came to faith. Kept coming to Faith Baptist like that, you know, we keep making decisions, right? We want to do that. Making decisions and firming up that decisions.

Re I remember, I don't know how, how many times I rededicated my life to Christ. Yeah. Right. So that, that kept, kept, uh, happens over and over again. And then along the way, you came to faith. When did you, you're married today. Tell us about your husband and how did you guys meet? So my husband is an amazing guy.

His nickname is Frog, as in the Green Animal, and that is what everybody calls [00:10:00] him. And once you get used to it, it's not strange at all. So, um, we met in our first term at Oxford. The Lord was doing an amazing thing. This is in the 1990s. And there was a real awakening amongst students and young people.

What's interesting, I don't know if you know this is happening again right now at the moment. You, you've had this happening in Asbury and in other colleges around the world. It's, it's happening in Europe. Students coming on fire again for Jesus in that mission call. And so, um. As part of the kind of Christian union of students, we had prayer meetings every morning for a different part of the world.

And Friday morning was for the 10 40 window, the most unreached people in the world. And my husband and I met at a 7:00 AM prayer meeting really focused on, on China and that Silk Road, [00:11:00] um, area, and then, and, and the Middle East. And we ended up. I am feeling called to take a mission trip to China in our first summer, our first summer vacation, and we spent six weeks in the summer of 1995.

Traveling through China, and because we were students at Oxford, we were able to get into the University English departments because the students was very much more closed than it is now. The students wanted to practice their English. The last three weeks of that trip we sent spent focused on the Xinjiang Province.

Which is majority Muslim, where there are many Uyghurs. And we, um, we had extraordinary experiences. Um, let, can I tell you about one of those experiences? So we would give a lecture about life at Oxford, which involved a lot of how you can know [00:12:00] Jesus Christ, let's just put it that way. And then at the end of the lecture.

We, there were eight of us on a team. Each of us would take about 20 or so students who wanted to practice their English, and then at the end of that, we as a team would debrief about what had happened. So in my 20 people, there was clearly a young woman who, a weaker young woman who was really drawn and bursting to ask questions, but just not doing it.

You know, you could tell, but she was too afraid and we, we didn't make the connection that I really wanted to make. So afterwards, in the debrief, uh, my friend, he's called Miles, he's sharing about what had happened in his group. He said, my greet was amazing. Question number one came from a weaker young man who said two imams from our village did the had last year.

That means they went to Mecca, which is one of the things you must do as a Muslim on the way to Mecca these two imams together. Saw a [00:13:00] vision of a man dressed in white, appearing to them and saying, Jesus is going to return soon. You need to get ready. The opening question in his group was, can you tell us what that means?

So for an hour, my friend had the opportunity to share the gospel. So as we're in this team briefing, I'm thinking, well, my story is far less encouraging than that. There was a girl who wanted to ask a question but didn't, and I totally failed to connect with her. So we prayed for that girl that evening, we went for dinner with, um, long-term missionaries who were based there in that city.

And, um, there's a lot of bible smuggling, particularly in the nineties that had happened there. It was really hard to get the scriptures into particularly more remote parts of China, and particularly in those dialects, not, not the Mandarin Chinese. And he, the missionary, the male missionary looked at me and he said, Amy, I feel the Lord is saying that I should give you these.

And [00:14:00] under his hand, he just went like that across the table and under his hand were two weaker John's Gospels. And I looked at them and I passed them back and I said, we are going home tomorrow. You keep them. I'm not gonna see anyone else. I know how valuable these are. He pushed them back over the table.

He said, no, you keep them. So I put 'em in my bag, thought fine. Okay. Went back to the hotel room. We slept that night. We were packing to get ready. The phone in our room rings in the girls' room, the receptionist says. There's a young woman here who's asking to, to see you. This girl had rung every hotel in the city asking, are there some white Oxford students staying in your hotel?

And tracked us down. She said, can I come up and speak to you? And I've brought my friend with me. She comes into the room, she says, last night I had a dream. And in that dream, a man dressed in white said to me, do not let those people leave until they have given you the Book [00:15:00] of life. And there on my bedside table were two weaker John's Gospels.

That's how my husband and I met. Um, prayer meeting is a great place to meet your spouse. Mission is a great context to work out whether you are compatible with someone. And, um, we, we dated through our Oxford years and then we got married, um, three weeks after our final exams. Wow. So you guys met in a prayer meeting.

I thought you were gonna say online or something like that, you know, no. A lot of people are meeting that way these days. Yeah. Alright, you have kids. Tell us about your children. I have three sons. Um, I have twins who are 18 and another one, my little one, as I call him. He's now nearly six foot and not little at all, who's 15 and they are the absolute delight of, of our lives.

Yeah, they're wonderful. Now, the two [00:16:00] twins. Can you tell 'em apart? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're fraternal. You. They're fraternal. And you can pray for me because last week I took this, so, uh, three weeks ago I took one of them to college. My husband and I took one of them to university up in Scotland. So really seven hour drive away from us.

And then last week we settled the second one in college. And so I spent, I've spent the last week in tears. Yeah. Just, you know. Thrilled at this new adventure for them and the right stage for them. But of course for us as parents, it's hard. Well it's It's a very different time, isn't it? Yeah, right. I'm thrilled for them.

And yet, gosh, you missed them. Yeah. Missed them a lot. Alright, so you and your husband met in college and university. Um, you got your undergraduate degree at Oxford and what subject? In theology. In Theology. What about a master's? You went on to get a master's too. Yeah, so, um, I got my undergrad theology.

Can I tell you a [00:17:00] story about that? Yeah. Yeah. So, um. In my first year I was summoned to have a meeting with the professor of Old Testament and he sat me down one to one, very, very senior guy, quite old man, and you know, 19-year-old me kind of walking into the room and he said, listen, um. I think you've got real potential as as a theologian, and you could do really well.

You could go on to have a career in theology, but it's not gonna happen unless you give up your evangelical views of the Bible. You have a decision to make. So that was very confronting and I was massively helped by, um. T Wright and Alistair McGrath. Alistair was teaching. I went to all his lectures, even ones that had nothing to do with what I was being taught, um, at that time.

And, um, really helped by Tindale [00:18:00] house as well and, and able to process those questions, theological questions, the questions that were being thrown, thrown at me. But, um, so in Oxford, what, for your undergraduate, you take your whole degree, all your exams in two weeks at the end. So everything you learned, your whole final grade hangs on those two weeks of very intense exams.

So we'd done that. That was all done. I was getting ready for my wedding and four days before my wedding, I get a call. And my, um, my tutor at Christchurch said, um, listen, Amy, don't worry, which is always a terrible way to begin a phone call. Mm. He said, the thing is, um, you need to come back on Friday. Uh, there's gonna be a a viva.

I said, what do you mean? He said, I know, don't worry. But there hasn't been a viva in undergraduate theology in my. Living memory, you know, not, not at least in the last [00:19:00] 20 years, but they are calling you for rev Viva. So what that meant is that, um, I had to go back and sit in front of 14 top professors of the university and answer questions.

And the background to it was that one of the New Testament professors had so hated what I had written about the historical Jesus. All derived from Tom Wright. From NT Wright. So hated it that he'd given me zero for my essays, and that paper had 50% Greek, which I'd done quite well on, but I got zero. So the external moderators had picked up this grade anomaly and they said, this isn't fair.

Send it back for a remark. And he'd insisted, no, I demand to meet this student in person. So. On the day when you really want to be doing your hair and organizing flowers. I was in the examination schools at Oxford defending, [00:20:00] um, an orthodox view of the historical Jesus, and it ended up being a tremendous, uh, preparation for what I've, I've continued to do, which is to, to have a, a career in apologetics and evangelism.

And what I now like to call, um, public advocacy for the Christian faith. 'cause people don't really know what apologetics is. So speaking about the Christian faith to people who don't believe and trying to engage with their questions. So after that I went to King's College to do a master's and then I ended up doing my de fill back at Oxford.

And you worked a, in primarily with Dorothy Sayers. A lot of folks here don't know much about her. Give us a kind of a thumbnail sketch of her relationships, kind of in and around that, what she's written, the kinds of ideas that she fostered through her. Her novels. Yeah, her fiction. [00:21:00] Okay. So Dorothy El say, um, was a friend of CS Lewis.

Um, so that. That's why lots of people know her. Um, she was one of the, she was in the first cohort of women to be allowed to have a degree conferred on them by Oxford. So women were allowed before that in the before 1920. They were allowed to go to Oxford, sit all the exams, but they didn't actually get the honors degree and she got a top degree.

She'd won a scholarship. She was very smart. She went on to work in an advertising agency. Where, um, she came up with a phrase, it pays to advertise and she ran, sorry if you're Baptist. She ran the campaign for Guinness, but also for mustard and, um, those campaigns. Gold mustard. Yeah, exactly. Those campaigns are still looked at, um, in the advertising world as you know, really important and really interesting.

During that time, she began to write detective fiction, which [00:22:00] became stratospheric successful. Um, her. Her sort of lead hero is a guy called Lord Peter Whimsy, and she and Agatha Christie were the bestselling detective fiction writers. And, uh, that made her kind of financially independent in that detective fiction as a Christian author, it's very interesting, she's not writing about Jesus, but her methodology is essentially using story and narrative to explore the idea that.

Um, that truth is real and that it matters within a narrative framework, and that in anything in life, but particularly where there's a crime, there are what she thought of as imposter narratives. Narratives that pretend to be able to tell you what has actually happened, what truth and reality actually are, but that aren't true.

And, and the job of the detective is to uncover. [00:23:00] By piecing together evidence what actually occurred, what the truth is. So you can see the parallels with Christian apologetics working out what the imposter narratives that try to give our lives meaning, or that try to take captive a generation, and instead by contrast revealing the true story.

So that was the beginning of her career. Um, she then was invited to write and she became friends with Charles Williams and she was invited to write a play for, um, the Canterbury Cathedral, um, festival. And she ended up writing quite a few of these religious plays, which were so popular that the British Rail transport system had to lay on more trains because thousands of people wanted to go and see these plays.

And that was really where, um. Her gift to bring narrative alive. Which was inspired actually by the incarnation. She envisaged the [00:24:00] story of the gospel, the heart of the gospel, that God becomes flesh and dwells among us in Jesus as not just a theoretical abstract story, but as a reality enacted, embodied that God is living in flesh among us, and so for her drama kind of brought that alive.

Then as a result of that, the BBC asked her. Um, to write a cycle of plays to bring the life of Jesus alive on the radio. And so she wrote something called The Man Born to Be King, and CS Lewis loved this. He, he used to read it every year as part of his kind of pattern of devotion. But, but that sparked massive controversy.

The Lord's Day, observant Society absolutely hated it. And there were headlines in the Daily Mail and you know, blasphemy, as you know, the Lord speaks in us slang. That's what they said. It wasn't a tall American. [00:25:00] But it was the idea that that Jesus and the disciples, the stories of the gospels are brought into the vernacular, not just the King James version, but in a way that ordinary people could connect with.

And millions and millions of people listened to those plays and were drawn to Jesus. And there was a, a marked impact on church attendance at the time. She also wrote really interesting theological essays about a variety of things, about education, about work and vocation, about women, and how Jesus treated women.

About drama, about literature, all kinds of things. She had, um, the opportunity to broadcast during the Second World War on the BBC, and I think that's some of her best work. And you can read that in a, um, collection called Begin Here and then, um, as if all of that as she wrote a book called The Mind of the Maker, which is bringing the trinity, the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity.

Um, to the [00:26:00] attention of the public and using an analogy to bring that doctrine alive and show why it makes sense that God is Trinity. And then she fell in love with Dante and she thought, um. I love this poem, but it's not very accessible to people, and so she did the penguin translation of Dante from the Italian into English, and more people read Dante because of her in English than all the previous translations put together.

Impressive person. She was an impressive person. Wow. Yeah. Wow. It strikes me that, and I don't know what detective fiction was like earlier, but it seems like everything that I watch about. Detectives murder mysteries now have multiple imposter opportunities. So you could say it, could it be that person?

Yeah. That person. And then, but the detective continues, or detectives continue to find the truth. Mm-hmm. After truly searching. Yeah. Mark heard you for the first time at the [00:27:00] parliamentary prayer breakfast. Was it 2023? Or 20 year in now. When was that? Remember? Yes. Yes. It was 23. 2023. He had, he and some friends were over there.

Went to it. What is it like to stand before a room of, of people who are, um, reprobates? Rep, rep? No, I'm thinking about our politicians. I'm sorry. Um, reprobates. Rasco. No. Um, what's it like to be in front of such a large group of, of important. People who are so influential. I have to say, I think that was probably the most daunting, um, thing I've ever done.

And I have smuggled Bibles into the Taliban military headquarters, and this felt more daunting, partly because her Majesty, the queen, had. Um, passed away and I dunno if you saw on television, you know, where her, her coffin lay in state in that hall and millions of people sort of passed by and the royal [00:28:00] family kind of stood vigil around it.

So the prayer breakfast happens in that hall. Um, which Henry VII used to use as a tennis court and various other things, but it's in, it's in the Palace of Westminster, so it's right there in parliament. And, um, you know, there's 700 people, there's hundreds of mps. The Prime minister comes and there are lords.

And then there are also ambassadors to London from all over the world, including from countries where. It would be extremely difficult to ever hear the gospel and you have all of the political, um, divides. So it's very much cross party and people who really, really are definitely not Christians and who think Christianity is a bit, you know, either cringe or totally outdated or oppressive or in some way [00:29:00] harmful.

So. A real cross section and very, very daunting and a huge, um, a huge honor and actually responsibility to have 19 minutes, which has to be vetted by parliamentary committee to put forward, um, something relevant to them, connected to the Christian faith. And obviously, 'cause I'm an evangelist, I wanted to call people to make a response to Jesus as well, so.

Um, I was extremely daunted and, um, just really, really also grateful for the opportunity. And I spoke on, um, on something that I had been thinking about a lot, which is, I guess hopefully relevant to all of you here in the US as well. I wrote a piece in the Times, um, in the London Times, sorry, on um, cancel Culture and how.

Cancel culture [00:30:00] is, is in a way doing two things that are interesting. One of the things cancel culture is doing and saying is it's saying there needs to be death for transgression. If somebody crosses a line that the arbiters of cancel culture deemed to be a moral line, that must not be crossed. That person who has crossed that line must die.

They must die a social death. They must die a professional death, and there is absolutely no possibility of redemption or forgiveness. So that's one of the things that HA is happening. Underpinning this of course, is identity politics and all that we are seeing going on in culture, but underpinning identity politics is this idea that sociologists call intersectionality, which is.

The idea that you define what it means to be human. You [00:31:00] define your personhood by the way that different layers of social injustice intersect for you. Or the group that you are part of. So if you've suffered homophobia, you've suffered social injustice, if you've suffered racism or sexism or any of the other isms, if you've suffered poverty or any kind of disadvantage, you lay claim to more and more and more layers of social injustice.

And it is those injustice experiences that define your humanity and that propel, I guess, your work and agency in this world. And that's why this movement is so grievance driven, right? So as, as Christians, we, we have the responsibility in our cultural moment to respond to this. One of the possible responses is that that grievance, which often leads then to rage and outrage and think about all the protests [00:32:00] and all the anger in culture, all those young people just fired up and angry.

You know, every university I've been to, all the gza protests, you know, you can sort of see it or any of the other marches or protests you see. You think of all of that anger and one response that you actually see in the church is we meet the rage in the culture with our own rage because you know, we need to, we need to kind of defy and be very angry about what's happening and the erosion of Christian values or whatever.

But there's actually another opportunity, I think, an apologetic evangelistic opportunity for reaching people in this kind of mindset, and that is to listen to their rage. And ask some questions. And here's the question that I found myself asking. If God does not exist, if you are a materialist, which many people who are pushing identity politics are they, they're certainly not believers [00:33:00] in the Christian God of the Bible.

You are account of what it means to be human. Other than the layers of intersectional social injustice, the other account of what it means to be human is that all you are is the biochemistry of your body. You are just the atoms of you hereby chance with no purpose can that account of humanity. Warrant the rage you feel when you perceive injustice or harm or evil or wrongdoing being done to another human being?

I don't think it can. Why would you feel anger about another blob of Adam suffering? It doesn't make sense. So as we listen to the anger, can we begin to say. The harm that you care about and your passion about harm, even if we think you're misconstruing that harm. [00:34:00] Can be accounted for by all human beings being created in the image of God.

But the Christian Gospel doesn't stop there. I had 19 minutes to try and make this case. The Christian Gospel doesn't stop there. You see, God doesn't just, the Bible doesn't just say, we are made in the image of God. Jesus actually enters space, time, and history and redeems the world. So where cancel culture says You must die a death for transgression, and there is no possibility of forgiveness.

In fact, identity politics says forgiveness is moral weakness. Forgiveness is moral weakness because you are saying someone should be let off the harm and that minimizes harm. That minimizes the abuse or oppression or injustice. So the crusaders of cancel culture will say. Christianity is dangerous in promoting forgiveness.

So in this talk I was trying to say the greatest [00:35:00] gift the Christian faith can offer our angry age is the possibility of forgiveness that does not minimize harm or moral wrongdoing. You see, Christian forgiveness is not saying the harm or sin or injustice didn't hurt. It didn't matter, and it wasn't wrong.

Only in Christ we have the possibility of forgiveness that says harm was wrong. It did hurt, and it does matter. And to forgive it is gonna cost something truly huge, something actually cosmic. And the only thing that could be possibly big enough to achieve that would be the death of the son of God in history.

And that's the heart of the Christian faith. That Jesus' death in history is not just a nice idea. It's in actuality, it's a reality. It's evidence-based. It's true. And so in our cultural moment where [00:36:00] people care about moral wrongdoing and harm, we have a gospel that connect both with the cry for justice, but also subverts the hopelessness of council culture and says, redemption and forgiveness are possible.

I tried to do it in 19 minutes, but you can watch it online. Actually. They can watch. Okay, so, so you can watch this online? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's on YouTube if you wanna watch it. So if they, if they, they just search your name and Parliament. Yeah, parliament Pre breakfast as a result of that. Actually, I don't need, do you guys know who Jordan Peterson?

Anybody heard of Jordan Peterson number? So he asked me to come and speak at his conference, which is called the arc, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. And I gave the same message, which had not then gone through the vets. So I was able to be a bit even more direct at that conference. And that one's up online as well.

Hmm. So sorry, I was getting my No, no, no, I'm, that's one of the best [00:37:00] definitions I've heard of intersectionality. Because sometimes that's a difficult concept to get, but to sort of define yourself by the different grievances that you have. And that's really my life. And define it like the way I have a friend who's a faculty member at another school and um, he, he raised some children and his and his last child has come along now a little bit later in life.

And he is, the last child has disavowed the Christian faith. And part of that has been out of the anger and rage Yeah. Of, of this. You probably meet a lot of people like that. There's a good chance that there are people watching right now or will watch, or who are here, whose children or grandchildren are facing some of that.

A lot of questions, a lot of doubts. Mm-hmm. A lot of finger pointing at Christianity for being the problem, part of the problem, part of the oppression, part of the injustice. How do you [00:38:00] answer the, to a parent? Yeah. A parent's sitting with you. Is there something, what would you say to them? What, what would they.

Um, I, I think I would like to say a few things. One of the things that I think has caused great anguish to Christian parents was a whole movement of sort of Christian parenting books that said, if you follow all of these steps, your child will definitely be a Christian. And so if they end up not being a Christian, as an adult or an adolescent, um, basically it's your fault.

And that's actually even within evangelical circles where we believe in grace and actually more responsibility of a person who needs to make a decision and, and, and encounter God for themselves. So the first thing that I would probably wanna do is minister to that parent and try and encourage [00:39:00] them to give that burden of guilt to the Lord, because the Lord has not laid that on them.

That's been laid on them by, by culture and perhaps by books they've read. The second thing that I would encourage anyone in this situation to do is first be before speaking, to really listen. And this is, this is something I shared last night. If you were at at, at the lecture, I, I had an experience of being surrounded by a mob of very angry, angry students.

I've actually had a number of experiences like this, um, on campuses around the world, and it can feel very, a intimidating and, and frightening to feel attacked or to feel like Jesus is being attacked or the name of the Lord, or things that we really value and believe to be unbelievably precious. Um, but to allow ourselves to [00:40:00] actually listen and listen to the driver behind the articulation, behind the question, behind the movement away from God, and really get to the bottom of, of what is it this person is rejecting or struggling with?

Because often we jump in too quickly with our apologetic answers, and we completely miss. The, the reason. So rather than, um, by, by learning to listen in this way, I began to, to realize, um, that this, this rage and anger was propelled, at least by a sense that injustice and harm against people really matters.

I think that's something Christians can get on board with. We may have disagreements about what causes harm or what harm is, but we can, we can [00:41:00] empathize at least with that motive. And, um, and, you know, begin, begin the conversation from, from where the person is. And then I think the, the, the third thing I would say is that it's very hard with your own relatives, isn't it?

I mean. Lemme give you an example. So I mentioned Jordan Peterson earlier. My, my lovely twins have had a group of friends since they were very small, since they were five years old, and they were all kind of in and out of each other's houses and. Um, one of the things that happens in our house is that I often now find a six foot man in my fridge who doesn't belong to me.

And that the, the quid pro quo of that is that I can ask them questions about what they believe, how they're thinking, what they're thinking. And so I remember having a conversation with two of these young guys, aged sort of 14, 15, who were avidly listening to, to [00:42:00] Jordan Peterson. Absolutely love him. And I, I, I remember saying to them.

What is it that you, that you love so much about these YouTube videos and you know, what, what are you liking so much? And they said, well, I really like that he says that we should do hard things in order to become substantial people. I said, what sort of hard things he says, they said, well, things like, you know, you should, when you grow up, you should aspire to get married and settle down and have children and be there for your own children and be faithful and things like, you know, you should clean your room.

I said, well, doesn't your mom say that? And they were like, well, yes she does. But when Jordan Peterson says it, it's kind of more meaningful. So. Sometimes it may be that we are not the people to have that conversation that wins our child back. So it might be that our role needs to be consistent persistent prayer where [00:43:00] we are crying out to God for, for the Lord to move.

It may be that we need to be and demonstrate self-giving, self-sacrificial love, even when that's really hard. And not, and practice not being defensive, but keep those channels of, of communication open. And it is often the case in my experience, where children in this category do refined faith or actually find their own, um, relationship with the Lord, that God brings someone else across their path.

Mm. You certainly can. One plants, one waters, God makes it grow. Mm-hmm. So we mentioned, um, earlier you mentioned Jordan Peterson. Last year we had Justin Briley. Mm-hmm. Here at the, at to lecture at the library. I did podcast with him and it was a lot of fun to, to get to know him, but he, he'd written a book and I'm trying to remember the name of [00:44:00] Surprising Return of Belief.

Yeah. Rebirth of Belief in God, the rebirth of belief in God. And, um, he's, he's a public intellectual I suppose. But he is also a great presenter. Mm-hmm.

You've had some similar experiences. You, you were mentioning that there seems to be a return among some public elite people, influencers, but also among college, university age students. Tell us about that. Yeah, so we were living in a really interesting time where, um, leading public intellectuals, people like Anne Ey, who um, was one of Richard Dawkins proteges, she had escaped from Somalia.

Ended up in, in Holland. Um, and she wrote the book Infidel New York Times Bestseller, rejecting Islam, embracing, um, atheism and was kind of like a daughter to Dawkins, you know, very much mentored by him. And just in the last 18 [00:45:00] months, she's come out professing Christian faith again. You can watch, they, they have a.

An interaction that you can watch where he's saying, oh, you are just interested in like the cultural benefit of the Christian faith for the western world. You don't actually believe the superstitious nonsense. And she's like, no, no. I'm a real Christian. I believe, actually believe, um, that these things are true.

But even he's come out as a cultural Christian. He has, he's come out and said, um, I'm a, I'm a Church of England Christian, who doesn't believe in God? Which, uh, yeah, there's a history of those, right? Yeah. Right. Um, but fascinating that, um, the historian Tom Holland, uh, in his Dominion thesis, looking at how pretty much everything we value.

In Western culture is a legacy of our Christian faith. He described how when the Me Too movement kicked off and you know, the Harvey Weinstein story and all of that, he [00:46:00] found it. He was a, he's a classist and classical historian. He found himself realizing, hold on a minute, you know? If we were Greek or Roman, we would have absolutely no problem with a powerful man in, in Hollywood, raping and sexually abusing women, if that was possible for him to do.

Why this moral scrupulosity in Western culture? It's the moral intuition of the value of a human being and their dignity. Is a, is a legacy of our Christian faith. Actually, the status of women was completely transformed by the introduction of the Christian faith and, um, you know, turned how the Greek Roman world viewed women and children and slaves upside down on its heads on its head.

And so that got him interested and, um, kind of kicked off this, his, his whole thing with Dominion had the opportunity to interview Tom Holland. In London at a [00:47:00] conference in the Royal Albert Hall and um, he gave this sort of extraordinary. It was to a group of church leaders and he, he would describe himself as agnostic.

Sometimes he, he feels more Christian than, than other times. He's still got a lot of doubts, but he gave this extraordinary call to Christian leaders to be bolder. And to be braver about proclaiming the truth of the incarnation of God and you know, the truth of the scriptures, and to stop sort of being namby-pamby about it and to be more on the front footing culture because there's such a, a strength in, in the position of the Christian faith and what we have to offer.

Yeah, I don't think that was happening seven years ago. Something really, really interesting is happening. And you're a part of that. So if people want more of Amy or Ewing, you have a website? I do. You [00:48:00] have some books? Let's talk a little bit about those. Okay. You've written several books. First bun one is about suffering as I recall.

Um, the first one is Why trust the Bible? Oh, well, I trust the Bible. Okay, so why trust the Bible? Um, I first wrote in 2004 and then I did an update in, um, 2020 that came out in 2021. And that really came out of, uh, the experience of trying to do evangelism with, with postmodern people and with young people who the minute you kind of got onto got.

Away from all philosophical questions and onto more specific issues about the Christian faith. And Jesus in particular, they just didn't buy the Bible at all and they had loads of questions about the Bible, and I found that, you know, the brilliant things that had been done on Bible apologetics like Josh McDowell or FF Bruce were really focused on the manuscripts.

But actually there were all sorts of other questions about [00:49:00] the Bible. Isn't it just a matter of interpretation? Don't you all just make the Bible mean what you want it to mean and then weaponize it isn't. The Bible just wasn't it just decided on by a group of men. You know, why should we trust it? Um, isn't the Bible sexist?

Isn't the Bible outta date on sex? Isn't the Bible just like any other Holy book? So those kinds of questions. So that book is, um, 10 tough questions about the Bible and uh, yeah, it's, that's been, um, that's been my bestselling book actually. Has it. Really? Okay. Yeah. Alright. Yeah, I got to know you first of all through Mary's voice.

Yes. Which is a Kathy and I, my wife sitting over there. Uh, we read it last, uh, December for our kind of reflections moving into Advent Beautiful kind of wedding of, of both art. Yes. And, and beautiful historic art and reflections on art, but also. Uh, scripture and some [00:50:00] theologizing that you do through it.

Really recommend that you can find it on our website as well. Yeah, you've written about suffering and your most recent book is, my most recent book is called Lead Like the Real You, and it's a book for women, and it's a book of letters. And the, the, um, the heart behind the book really came, I'm, um, a woman in midlife now having had 25 years in, um, Christian ministry and public theology.

And the book is a book of letters. Written to, to, um, other women based on what would it have been helpful to know five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago? And what are the things that no one really talks about, both in our faith, but also in our callings as leadership? So it's, there's some things on motherhood and vocation, um, how to grow.

To use the voices that we have, whether just speaking up in the kind of [00:51:00] meetings that we find ourselves in or growing in public speaking. Um, I tell the story in that as well in in detail of smuggling Bibles. Into Afghanistan and meeting the top brass of the Taliban and how that all happened and what that really meant.

Yeah, and the Mary book is out again this year for Advent, so please do check that out. The heart behind that book was, um, could we recenter the voice of the Christian Faith's most significant female witness, and listen to her voice. Which is actually recorded for us in Luke's gospel. And then other perspectives that we see from Mary and really think about what the incarnation means of reflecting on art and other things each day in December.

So it starts on December the first, and goes through to Christmas day. And of course, Mary's voice actually points us always to Jesus. [00:52:00] It's never actually about her, but I found it a fascinating study. 'cause often as Protestants, we're a bit scared of Mary in case we end up worshiping her and overdoing her.

And that means that her role as a witness to really important aspects of the Christian faith has kind of been a bit neglected. Alright, we're just about outta time. You're going to Lubbock? Yes. Going to Lubbock. Pray for me. How do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you pronounce it? Is it Lubbock?

How do you pronounce it? Lubbock? I don't know. Lubbock. Lubbock, okay. Thank you. I love to hear people try to pronounce that term. Uh, it's, it's, yeah. It's a wonderful city. It's a wonderful college. Uh, you're gonna be speaking at Lubbock Christian University. Uh, Charles Mickey, uh, is going to be nk, are gonna be taking, we're going with you out there and everything.

Thank you. Would you thank our, our Amy or Ewing today? Thank you.

Let's all stand together and let's pray. I wanna [00:53:00] pray for Amy and her work and, uh, what she's going to be doing. Mm-hmm. As she, uh, leaves, leaves, uh, for Lubbock On Tuesday. No, no, tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Alright, let's pray. Father, thank you for Amy. Thank you for her witness. Thank you for her life and, and all that she shared today.

Help us to hear and to hear well, and to hear by your spirit. I I pray that you'll go with her and Charles. And, and with Kay as they, they go there, that she'll speak well to the students, that they'll hear, that they'll listen, that they'll be receptive, that they'll be changed, they'll be transformed. We pray that through Christ our Lord.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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