These days, you’ll see many Christians defend the faith by pointing out the problems with others. But owning up to ways the church has fallen short of its own ideals may be the more appropriate path. In his new book, Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History (Zondervan), John Dickson takes an honest look at the church’s successes and failures. Dickson sums up history by observing, “Bullies are common. Saints are not.” So on Gospelbound, I dug in on his survey a...
May 04, 2021•35 min•Ep. 49
Maybe you imagine the biggest problem facing Christians in the West today is hostility, whether from media or government or schools. You wouldn’t be wrong to notice how these venues don’t usually look kindly on orthodox, observant Christians these days. But what if we actually face a bigger problem? What if the problem isn’t that our unbelieving friends and family care too much about what we believe—it’s that they don’t care at all what we believe? That’s not a challenge we’re typically prepared...
Apr 27, 2021•33 min•Ep. 48
Has anyone ever confided in you, “I’m deconstructing”? Maybe you don’t know the phrase, but you know the phenomenon. Yet another social-media post announces departure from the Christian faith. The cause could be sex, race, politics, social justice, science, hell, or all of the above. For many, Christianity is becoming implausible, even impossible to believe. It might be tempting to leave the church in order to find answers, but the new book Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the...
Apr 20, 2021•47 min•Ep. 47
In this episode of Gospelbound, Collin Hansen is joined by Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, authors of Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us (Princeton University Press). Schapiro and Morson describe fundamentalism as “radical simplification of complex questions and the inability to learn either from experience or from opposing views.” Among their proposed solutions is a recovery of casuistry, or employing case studies especially from great literature for experience-based l...
Apr 13, 2021•36 min•Ep. 46
Politicians, advertisers, talk radio hosts, social media engineers—you name it, they want your attention. They want you to be angry and afraid. But as Christians, we’re called to faith and love—even when we’re scared, even with people who don’t like us. We need to get back to the gospel so we can move forward—together. That’s why we wrote the new book Gospelbound (Multnomah), to help Christians live with resolute hope in an anxious age. My co-author and guest on this episode is Sarah Zylstra, on...
Apr 06, 2021•41 min•Ep. 45
When church leaders assume that they can only scan for attacks in one direction, they leave Christians vulnerable to different dangers. What the church needs, then, is what Trevin Wax calls multi-directional leadership—leaders who combine dexterity and discipline. Leaders today must demonstrate faithful versatility. And that’s what Trevin Wax commends in his new book, The Multi-Directional Leader: Responding Wisely to Challenges from Every Side , published by The Gospel Coalition. Wax applies mu...
Mar 30, 2021•38 min•Ep. 44
Maybe you’ve seen a sign in your neighbor’s yard that reads something like this: "In this house we believe that: Black Lives Matter Love Is Love Gay Rights Are Civil Rights Women’s Rights Are Human Rights Transgender Women Are Women" If the “we believe” format and propositions sound familiar, that’s because they are. It’s a creed, albeit a secular one, without reference to transcendent moral authority, whether divine or historical. Rebecca McLaughlin’s provocative new book, The Secular Creed: En...
Mar 23, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 43
Joseph Henrich is chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and author of many important works. His latest is The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous . In it, you’ll get pretty everything you want: theology, history, neuroscience, biology, social science, economics, and more. Henrich weaves everything together to explain what separated the West from world history. But his story is neither inevita...
Mar 16, 2021•45 min•Ep. 42
Andy Crouch and his colleagues at The Praxis Journal wrote an article titled, “ Leading Beyond the Blizzard ” on March 20, 2020, just one week after the national COVID-19 shutdown began in the United States. Crouch and his team warned us that this crisis would not be a blizzard that rages for a few weeks or a winter that lasted a few months, but an “ice age” of 12 to 18 months that would change our way of life for good, and they were right. Crouch joined Collin Hansen on Gospelbound to lament th...
Mar 09, 2021•58 min•Ep. 41
You know an author is worth reading if he can make stones interesting. But after reading Andrew Wilson’s God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World (Zondervan), you’ll be seeing stones everywhere in the Bible, and you’ll understand their significance in ways you never imagined before. Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and has theology degrees from Cambridge, London School of Theology, and King’s College London. He is a columnist for Christianity Today...
Mar 02, 2021•31 min•Ep. 40
Veneetha Rendall Risner has dealt with more than her share of trials, which she recounts in her new book, " Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption ", published by Nelson Books. She opens up her thought process for a raw look at the emotional and spiritual wrestling of suffering, anger toward God, and the reason for suffering. This episode of Gospelbound is sponsored by The Good Book Company, publisher of Being the Bad Guy by Stephen McAlpine. The church used to be recognized as a ...
Feb 23, 2021•30 min•Ep. 39
At some point, Christians were viewed by many in the West as annoying, perhaps prudish, even self-righteous. Sometimes Christians set themselves as an example of holiness that the world could not or did not want to attain. To be called “holier than thou” was common. But those days are long gone, says Stephen McAlpine, author of the new book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t , published by The Good Book Company. McAlpine is a pastor, blogger, and ex-jour...
Feb 16, 2021•40 min•Ep. 38
Solomon prayed for wisdom, and the Lord granted his request. Oh, how we need more Solomons in our day! At least the early Solomon, before all the foreign wives. Brett McCracken is here to help with his new book, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World , published by Crossway. Brett works as director of communications and senior editor for arts and culture with The Gospel Coalition. You may also know him from his excellent earlier books, especially Uncomfortable: The Awkward a...
Feb 09, 2021•42 min•Ep. 37
By this point I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying the debate over social justice in the church will not progress through Twitter accounts and YouTube rants. Events and face-to-face conversations have been hindered by COVID-19. But at least we have books. We’d be in much better shape inside the church if the debate were informed by books like Confronting Justice Without Compromising Truth , published by Zondervan. The author, Thaddeus Williams, is an associate professor of systematic ...
Feb 02, 2021•59 min•Ep. 36
If I want to read anyone’s reflections on recent years, it’s Russell Moore. The president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC hasn’t been as visible or vocal as he was before 2017, at least until the last week following the attack on the U.S. Capitol. But his newest book, The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul , published by B&H, is even better than a tell-all memoir. It’s a grace-infused reflection on where and how to stand tall when it feels l...
Jan 14, 2021•50 min•Ep. 35
As 2020 finally ends, it feels appropriate to look back on what we've learned and ultimately celebrate what God has done, even in the midst of one of the most difficult years ever collectively experienced. In this special bonus episode of Gospelbound, host Collin Hansen is joined by TGC colleague Melissa Kruger, who co-hosts the Let's Talk podcast. They discuss big trends and stories from 2020, share their hopes for 2021, and reflect on God's faithfulness displayed through TGC and many other are...
Dec 15, 2020•1 hr 5 min
A recent article in New York Magazine included this bombshell, "Roughly 30% of American women under 25 identify as LGBT. For women over 60, that figure is less than 5%." Now, I can't find anyone who believes this number can really be that high. To acknowledge such a dramatic shift in such a short period of time would be nothing short of a world changing revolution. But, we know about rapid onset gender dysphoria among adolescents and teens. We've seen the prevalence of social contagion in our In...
Nov 17, 2020•57 min•Ep. 34
Why would anyone think a preacher from 2,000 years ago would be relevant today? Assume for a second you don’t believe in the resurrection. What did his age know of nuclear weapons, space exploration, and microchip computers? Many would say that if that preacher wants to speak for today, his followers will need to translate and update. But that’s not Becky Pippert’s view. Her new book, Stay Salt , argues that while the world has changed, our message must not. Pippert, author of the bestselling 19...
Nov 10, 2020•35 min•Ep. 33
On Gospelbound I typically interview authors whose ideas intrigue and encourage me. And today is no different with my guest Brad Vermurlen, author of the new book Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle Over American Evangelicalism , published by Oxford University Press. Vermurlen works as a research associate in the sociology department at the University of Texas at Austin. His book is revised and expanded from his PhD dissertation at the University of Notre Dame, working...
Nov 03, 2020•42 min•Ep. 32
The year 1976 marked a turning point in American and evangelical history. It was the year of the evangelical, with a born-again Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter, capturing the Democratic nomination and narrowly defeating the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford. And it was the end of the New Deal elections, when factions had been divided along class and regional lines. From then until now, American elections would be engulfed in ideological culture war between right and left. Daniel K. Williams is on...
Oct 27, 2020•53 min•Ep. 31
Imagine you spent countless hours studying scientific and philosophical objections to Christianity. You enrolled in the classes. You read the books. You practiced the arguments. And you found out that no one really cared. That’s the post-Christian world described by Sam Chan in his new book, How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being That Guy): Personal Evangelism in a Skeptical World , published by Zondervan. Chan is a public speaker for City Bible Forum in Australia and the award-winning author of...
Oct 20, 2020•36 min•Ep. 30
“Time for another Reformation” has been a rallying cry of many Protestants since, well, the original Protestant Reformation. And in the last 20 years you’ve heard this cry from a particular group that wants a new kind of Christianity more attuned to our times. Alisa Childers wants another Reformation, too. But not one that leaves behind historic Christianity. As she writes in her new book, Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity , published by Tyn...
Oct 13, 2020•42 min•Ep. 29
It’s not that Africa needs a different kind of Christianity. But many common challenges for ministry in Africa simply don’t arise in books published in the West. That’s why Conrad Mbewe wrote God’s Design for the Church: A Guide for African Pastors and Ministry Leaders , published by TGC and 9Marks with Crossway. The need for such a resource is tremendous: while about 9 million Christians lived in Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, that number reached 380 million by the year 2000. And ...
Oct 06, 2020•27 min•Ep. 28
Elections have consequences, but not nearly as much as we probably think. That's what I concluded after reading David Platt's new book, Before You Vote: Seven Questions Every Christian Should Ask , published by Radical. Here's a sober dose of biblical reality from Platt in the book: "Even if we lose every freedom and protection we have as followers of Jesus in the United States, and even if our government were to become a completely totalitarian regime, we could still live in abundant life as lo...
Sep 29, 2020•37 min•Ep. 27
It happened before. Can it happen again? I’m talking about secession. That’s the question that animates David French’s new book, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation , published by St. Martin’s Press. I’m pretty skeptical about books that seem to oversell such catastrophic outcomes. It seems like scare tactics to sell books. But the way French sets up the book I hadn’t quite realized the scenarios that would make secession politically advantageous for both pa...
Sep 22, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 26
Before the coronavirus pandemic, American religiosity had been in steady decline. When American religiosity peaked in 1960, one in two adults in the United States attended any religious service in a given week. Now it’s a little more than one in three. Membership in religious bodies has declined from more than 75 percent to 62 percent. And the number that gets all the attention is the “nones,” the Americans who claim no religion. That’s now 25 percent, compared to just 5 percent in 1960. It’s ha...
Sep 15, 2020•26 min•Ep. 25
A number of years ago, I grew distressed with the number of friends and colleagues who had left ministry amid controversy and scandal. I tried to learn what had gone wrong and how to keep it from repeating. From that study came several books devoted to helping pastors endure, especially as they learn from historical and present-day mentors who have fought the good fight. I’m grateful for Paul Tripp’s latest contribution to this cause with his new book, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership i...
Sep 08, 2020•38 min•Ep. 24
What's most important about humanity never changes. We're made in the image of God and separated from our creator by our sin. We need a savior lest we fall under God's judgment. It doesn't matter where you travel or what time period you study, this story doesn't change. But every culture around the world and across the ages highlights some aspects of this story and ignores others. It's the work of cultural apologetics to discern and explain these changes for Christians seeking to walk faithfully...
Sep 01, 2020•43 min•Ep. 23
Everyone loves a good story. Especially in these hard times. Or maybe not. Should we be swapping yarns while the world burns? Maybe we need less levity, more solemnity, when we see so much wrong in the world. As a professional storyteller, Sean Dietrich brings together the levity and solemnity in his new book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? published by Zondervan. Also known as Sean of the South, Dietrich regales readers with stories of family, faith, and food. But this memoir of learning to belie...
Aug 25, 2020•25 min•Ep. 22
You’ve probably noticed that the views toward and practices of marriage have changed. But how? And how do Christian views and practices differ? That’s what Mark Regnerus set out to discover in a global study of Christians from across denominations. You’ll find the results in his new book, The Future of Christian Marriage , published by Oxford University Press. Mark is a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of many important books, including Cheap Sex and the Tra...
Aug 18, 2020•42 min•Ep. 21
