Hello, and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create, and the impact we could make. We longed to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Go to shifting culture podcast.com to interact and donate. And don't forget to hit the Follow button on your favorite podcast app to be notified when new episodes come out each Tuesday, and go leave a rating and review of the show.
It's really easy. Just go to the app that you are on right now and hit the five stars. It's really takes a second and it helps us find new listeners. So thank you very much. Previous guests on the show have included Sharon hottie Miller, Andrew root, and Amy Sherman. You could go back listen to those episodes and more. But today's guest is Sarah Billups. Sarah is a Seattle based writer and cultural commentator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Christianity today and
others. Sara writes bitter scroll, a monthly substack letter. She is completing her Doctor of Ministry in the sacred art of writing at the Peterson center for the Christian imagination at Western Theological Seminary. Sarah and I have a great conversation around her new book orphan believers, the culture of components of white evangelical culture of the 80s and 90s. How we were formed, whether it be by the culture around us or into the image of Jesus, and the importance of love as an
antidote. antidote to fear. Enjoy this one. It's really good. Here's my conversation with Sarah Phillips. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. So I'm excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thanks. I'm
so happy to be here.
Yeah, I'd love to start with your own story growing up and how your faith journey happens in childhood. And what was that like for you?
Yeah, so I've been in Seattle almost 20 years and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, northeast part of the states. My dad converted to Christianity from Judaism. He grew up in a reformed Jewish family convert it in the 70s pretty radically was cobbled into a Bible study
on the book of Daniel. And at one point, just, you know, got up and his he talks about every cinematically but he says he like literally left over the couch, ran to the parking lot, fell on his face on the concrete and like accepted Jesus, like a very radical transformation. So much so that when my mom saw him, they weren't together at the time, six months later, she said he looked like a different person, but his face had literally changed. So he had a radical conversion. But he was
also saved. And that was the time in the culture when, when, you know, some some kind of Christian skier movies were coming up, like feed them with
beef in the night. Or, you know, dad read late, great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey that was kind of next to his bedside table, the Bible and so he was also saved in an era where in larger culture, there was a kind of the Red Scare the threat of Russia or the Cold War, there was kind of apocalyptic language Reagan with using apocalyptic language from from the podium at
points. And so he was really raised, or he was he was converted into Christianity, but also very much into premillennial dispensationalism. And, and time sculpture. And so when I came along in the late 70s, it was not long before I began, I began hearing about Jesus, but also hearing about how I would most likely be raptured before I was able to get up, get up, have a career or be married or have kids or
whatever. So there was a lot of fear that was instilled in my childhood as well as as well as a real faith. Those things both happen together. So walking through that, that time in the Midwest, it really wasn't until high school that I started to become interested in literature and kind of counterculture. I started listening to college rock and began to try to understand if there was a place for me in the church if I felt a little outside of the church and also had to grapple with the
rapture. And what that meant to us. Those dynamics kind of came up as I got older.
Yeah, it's it's hard. I remember growing up, I think we're almost exactly the same age who was born in 40s. Yeah. And so, you know, as I was thinking, growing up, I was like, wow, I may never get married. And I remember praying and I was like, Jesus, don't come back yet. Don't come back yet. I want to live. I want to live my life. And so how does that start to affect the way that you start to interact with have Jesus in faith in the community around you?
Yeah, there was such a lack of certainty and anxiety about whether or not I was really in the book of life. So I think like a lot of evangelical kids, I would pray the sitters pair every night, hundreds or 1000s of times, just to make sure I was really a Christian, there was just a lot of a lot of sort of frenetic energy and, and worry that I would commit the unforgivable sin. There were certain things that stuck out to me and that I was really focused
on. The other thing about about my experience, I had a lot of some friends that were that grew up homeschooled are kind of outside of culture a little bit. But I certainly our family was very, very much an American family. So my spiritual formation was certainly an American formation. I met with culture, wars and politics, but also like going to the mall, like we were very our life looked very identical to other families. So I wasn't really
formed. So my, my formation was the mall and sitcoms and sugary cereal and church on Sunday. But the way that we really lived, the way that we thought about money we're typing was not there was not a central kind of differentiation. We just kind of went to church. But you know, honestly, it's it's complicated. Like my, my parents didn't teach me to love Jesus, we did read
the Bible together. I did see faith at the center of their life, but that kind of 70s kind of post conversion fervor that dad had, I mean, we were settled into the kind of opulent 80s. Right, we were at the the suburb near white middle class family.
Yeah. And so what does that look like? I think for for now, I think as you know, you were writing an orphan believers is this book that you wrote, and, you know, I resonated a lot with it. I really loved it. I think part of it is we're the exact same age. So you know, I'm like, Yes, I remember that. And that, and that. And it was, it was really
good. But what I love as you start to pull things back and pull in the threads of, of culture and evangelical culture, and specifically white evangelical culture of the 80s 90s, you do a lot of cultural anthropology and you start to look through what what was happening there? And what were the influences on that specific type of Christianity and church? And then how did
that impact you personally? How do we as people, and I think this is, this is my question is, like fish in, in the sea and water, they don't really understand and know what water is, they just know that it is all around them. It's just where they are, right? And so a lot of times, when we're have cultural things coming at us, we don't really analyze the culture. We're just immersed in it. And we don't know what is actually
forming us. We don't know what is being the thing that is guiding us a certain direction. How can we, like you did? How can we start to analyze different cultures? So we know, what is Jesus? And what is the place where we start to be formed into and what is other cultural influences that we have?
Yeah, I mean, I loved I love that question. You know, I approached writing orphaned leaves, journalistically, but then I really talked about the story to me and my dad's, there's this narrative piece. So I try to set my mind always snaps to generational trends, or
what is it? What did the boomer generation influence Gen X. And so that's sort of where my mind goes, but I tried to write with with a lot of tenderness and curiosity, and I hope, like a real human example of what it's like to kind of come up in this era and the complications of being someone our age and what that meant. So I think that for, for me, what, what really changed is that in my late 30s, I mean, it really took a little while I began so I'd been living in Seattle for 10 or 12 years.
We moved out here in the early 2000s, to start an intentional community to do a cohousing thing. That was kind of riding the wave of like Tim Keller's talk about returning to the city or Shane Claiborne's, new monasticism were really a part of that way. But when we landed in Seattle with several friends pretty quickly, the city we sensed a sense of sort of hostility or read there just was a little different than our Midwestern kind of cultural
Christian. Um, where we came from out of college, I went to Taylor and Lynn lived in Muncie,
Indiana for a while. So, pretty quickly, I went through 12 years of what I call wandering through spiritual desert where we were just like, when I was the kid in the ad, like we would go to church on Sunday, my husband and I would, but like I would walk downtown to my job at a independent press, I would write For all weeklies, I would like to drink really good coffee, like the way that I lived was kind of like a Seattle version of the way I've been living in
Indiana. It wasn't until I started working with a spiritual director named Debbie tacky, Smith started to explore contemplative practices sort of to really think about formation that everything began to change. And so the long answer to your question, I think, for me is that I began to be more aware of spiritual forces and culture and kind of spiritual forces, things that were divisive. Because I began to get quiet, I began to approach prayer to fit
differently. I began to welcome practices like the examiner Lectio Divina things that as a kid, I thought were all kind of like liturgy was a little weird and boring. Catholicism was dangerous, like I was I was sort of like, all of those practices Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, it was kind of like suspicious in
my family. So it took me a long time to realize there is such a beauty and I'm so grounded in this work that I began to realize, through through prayer and being formed i We can be changed from the inside out instead of the outside in, I think that we're able to have our eyes opened, when we get quiet, and we discern discern the spirit. So it's a little bit of a floaty answer. But that really is kind of what posture shifted for me.
I like the floaty answer, but that floaty answer came to a really important truth being formed from the inside out. And I think, you know, as I help lead the admissions agency, and we're going in, we're interacting with different cultures around the a lot of times people are like, okay, how can we go into a place and be countercultural, and impacts the culture from the outside in and the outside in and pack doesn't really work very well. Because the inside
doesn't change. And people go go back to the way that they were they were formed, it's just a natural thing, totally inside out is the only thing that really create some lasting change and can move us into a different direction to Jesus. And so as you said, you were being formed from the inside out, it actually helps bring us to a different place within culture, of saying, I'm actually following the way of Jesus. And I'm not going to be moved and shake in in different different
ways. So that requires a couple of things. One, it requires us to be face to face with Jesus. So the contemplative practices, let do examine the nation exercises, some of those things, bring us face to face with Jesus, and also requires us to be formed within a community that's doing the same, and is trying to encounter Jesus that
way. So with all these cultural things that are trying to impact us from the outside, and how can we then start to walk into the inside so that we can be transformed to the outside?
Yeah, I mean, that, especially with the complication of how that outside has in, in my experience, I think for a lot of us kind of infiltrate it, like, like the church, right? If we think about the connection between politics or single issue voting, or culture, war issues,
and the church. So it's, it's such a complication, because the trip should be a refuge, a place of flourishing, a place of, of service, but so often, for so many of us, it's a place that's been either a direct source of harm, or we've had an a certain estrangement. So like when I say orphan believers, this mean, any but any Christian looking around the American church and
wondering where Jesus is. And so for me, like in the Midwest, and in college, I was very much in more of a cultural Christian setting where everybody, most folks went to church. But when I looked around, it was hard for me to see how that was really transformational or like radical what that changed. And then coming to Seattle, I kind of have experienced the opposite, where if you go to church, it's probably not by accident. There's a lot of the social
capital to be gained. And it's actually really exhausting to explain to someone here while you're a Christian, and what does that mean? Like, you know, there's a lot of there's kind of like, an assumption that's made about what a Christian and specifically and Eve like very much what an evangelical is like, and so that's kind of
exhausting to navigate. But for me in health, I think the church is our best hope, our best hope for a kind of fulfillment or a full of sort of a fulfilled fortification from forces that shape us from the outside in because I mean, the church is really just the gathered body of believers, the church is what Jesus left us with. And, you know, we serve a Triune God like God and the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or relational. And we're relational. And so you know how I've been thinking about it
lately. And like, either I am building my life on a myth, like I believe I literally believe that there was a virgin birth, and that Jesus was resurrected, like, either I believe all of that, and it changes me and I take it seriously, or like, what are we doing? So there isn't, for me, there was an invitation to say, if I'm really going to believe this crazy, but true story, like I need to be all in.
And so I say that because one right now, it is very hard to be all in when there's a lot of cultural complications and different associations, Christianity, but also because that's usually when things get a little uncomfortable. You know, like, I don't think that we're not talking about a prosperity gospel situation here. Like I think going quote, unquote, all in usually means entering the upside down kingdom of empathy, empathy that's built through trial, which has certainly been my experience.
Yeah, that's important. And I think, you know, a lot of times when we're thinking about this, this crazy American Evangelical culture that, you know, some of it is really beautiful. Some of it has been influenced from, from the politics, the Moral Majority, and a lot of things. And a lot of people didn't recognize it, and really Intel, the Trump presidency, and a lot of them didn't recognize it until the insurrection in January sixth of
the Capitol. So how then, so I want to pull some of these threads that you you walk through. And what I love, what you do in your book is, you you pull in some cultural threads of like, this is the influence influence, and this is what happens. And here's a way that we could walk in this. And then there are some some things that we could take some things we need to reject. But we could walk in, in in a different way. So I'd love to figure out how do
we walk in a different way. But I want to know what what it is one of the things I want to do, let's start with Christian nationalism. Where did Christian nationalism come up from? What is it? How is it different from patriotism? And what does it look like?
Yeah, I mean, that's such a good question, especially now, because I think that if you would ask somebody if I think so here's the thing. My there are many folks in my family and direct circles that that voted for Trump, like my my parents, at least the first time that I mean, that that was certainly common, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
But no one I know, would have been like at the insurrection like, no one I know, would have necessarily shown up in the Capitol on January 6, but, and there's no one that I know that would have a couple of years ago, said, I'm a Christian nationalist, that would be that would have been a term to avoid.
But now, there's been popular synth pop a popular book that's been written, if you look on Twitter, the rhetoric has really changed, almost like Christian nationalism, is that a good thing or a positive thing, and there's actually a pride of association for some folks. So the term is you kind of like the term deconstruction, like the term is used in different ways
and in different meanings. But when I talk about Christian nationalism, I specifically mean, a conflation of God and country, like the belief that God has a special blessing for America. And that, because of that, America will will have will, will gain and will continue to keep dominance, right. And so, as opposed to page eight is patriotism, which is just love of country, yeah, I'm a patriot, like I love our country, there's that a need for
control and dominance. And specifically that manifests by kind of protecting the status quo. And, and typically, as we know, the demographics of America are changing with, with white folks being less dominant in culture, like there's a fear and I think, a real protectionism or a need to kind of kind of claim our ground, which I think is very dangerous
and totally anti biblical. So. So for me, Christian nationalism is such a clear call for the church to stand, like against the church being co opted by any
political party. So for me, the point of orphaned believers is anybody from if you identify as a Republican or a Democrat, or neither if you're progressive or conservative, that we can all agree that that transformational message of Jesus like spoke against the political corruption of the church that's pushed against the Pharisees and Sadducees and zealous of the of the day in the Bible, right, like Jesus did that and I think That's Article Two to be a place of, of welcome and change.
Yeah, and I love I love that. And I think that's an important distinction that is not really a political move in any way. We don't want Christina to be co opted by a political party, we want to actually follow the way of Jesus and save were going to be formed in a in a different way against that. A lot of the the political sides of what was happening in the culture in that day of what
Jesus was doing. Then another another thing that as far as influences go, as you know, especially when it came to Republicans, using abortion as a one, the one thing that can galvanize Christians to be able to vote for Republicans, I grew up like, Hey, that was our thing. Like if anybody has against abortion does, that's the first one we're gonna vote
for it right. Then as, as I started to go, and I've lived among refugee populations in the world, as I've, I'm working with people from all over the world, I realized that it's not just about protecting the the rights of the unborn, but it's about all of life care for people everywhere. So if you're a pro life, you should be pro all life. Right. And not just the unborn. What? How does one issue really caught up the way that we are? Be informed by Jesus? Yeah, I don't want I don't want to
debate abortion. I want to, because I want to say so this issue, how does it co opt that thing?
Yeah, that's, I mean, so researching that piece was was really fascinating. Because, you know, we're about that we're the same one in the same year, came up in the same kind of can evangelical culture and certainly single issue voting above any other issue was the
only issue that mattered. So when I write in the book, when I turned 18, my dad took me to the Ellen County Republican headquarters in Fort Wayne and registered me as the card carrying Republican and we had like a little car, I had a card I kept in my wallet. And then we went next door and had chili dogs, right. So it's like, a rite of passage at eight. And was important is because we were
pro life. And so my mom volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center, centers typically run by Christians offering expectant mothers services, besides abortion, or option sets abortion, which you know, every year, we would get a Christmas card in the mail, and it has to be put on the fridge with other cards, and it had the names of babies that were saved from abortion that year. And I remember as a kid, like loving When this card came and feeling so much pride that mom volunteered there and a lot of
joy statement. But, you know, every year when we took all the cards down, we just put it in the trash with everything else. And it's like I nobody in my family, I never thought about what would happen after a baby was born. Like I thought maybe there was a magic kind of storks slash government agency that just took care of all. And so. So for, for me coming up, you know, being a kid in the 80s. And then teen in the 90s. Abortion was clearly the single issue and the Moral Majority had
really just taken off. I mean, Jimmy Carter was a southern Democrat, evangelical, it wasn't until Reagan was elected. And the Moral Majority really found some residents that this narrative shifts it so you know, it felt like it was it was always that way. But it wasn't there was this political strategists named Paul Wyrick, who had been trying to find an issue for evangelical voters a huge block that would really stick. And it tried various
issues. And it really something you know, because there is a famous Christianity Today, op ed that was not in opposition to abortion, I can't remember the exact program. It was certainly a Catholic issue, but not necessarily an eventual ubiquitous belief. And it wasn't until the strategist tested abortion and really saw some resonance that it began to take turn like a flywheel faster. And now there's an inevitability about it. So I think that interestingly, now that row has
been overturned. I just I think there's a real curiosity. I mean, I when I wrote the book, it was before Roe is overturned, and then I was able to have an edit, go back and address a bit of that, like, will the church will be think about what it means to be all pro of all, all for all of life, we think about what it means to support refugees, immigrants, mothers
after the baby is born. Like there's such an invitation to change and to shift and I think in a lot of places, that's happening, so I think I do feel caught up stay optimistic that we're moving into a different era.
Yeah, I hope so I hope we're moving to something where, yeah, we want to make sure that we have care for the unborn. But we also want to make sure that we have care for the mothers, we want to make sure that we have care for all peoples were actually in service. And a lot of things I think, even you know, growing up that I didn't think about it, at that time, just because it was
the culture I was raised in. But thinking that we would be raptured quickly, kind of meant that we didn't have to take care of this world. You know, Jesus is on a, on a mission, to make all things new. And this world actually matters. And we want to I want to join him in that in like the redemption and reconciliation of the world and to make all things new. But a lot of times, so where does this this this thing? How is it
harmed? I think people who follow Jesus and Christians to, to say that really the eternal is all that matters, and that this life, because it's just temporary. It doesn't matter as
much. That's right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's a
great question. I think I'm thinking a couple of things like, first, the idea of creation care where the idea of the of Earth, Earth Day was sort of we growing up or kind of suspicious of or was that new agey or white matter if the world was going to end, let's focus on making sure our families, okay, and then talking about to other people about the rapture, like, there was this sentence of so I had fear about the rapture, but there was also this sense of exceptionalism.
Like when you know, what's going to happen, when you know how it's all gonna go. There's a certain different sort of posture, or a position of power, you're the information bearer, and you're granted information to others. And so that that dynamic there was almost as akin, and some points excitement or the risk, sort of a pace about it like it's going to happen soon. So I have this memory that I write in the book too, of being at this ice cream
shop with a friend. And we were in high school, we were in the back of booth, she had a banana split. And I talked to her like, I felt like it was my duty to talk about how it was gonna go down when the rapture came in. So we talked about the seven year tribulation period, and the 1000. When we got to like the battle of Gog and Magog, I remember for spoon being suspended in midair, and her
mouth was hanging open. So like through high school, I felt like it was my duty to talk about what's gonna happen to the end about the Rapture. Depends that you know, so Lutheran friend or a Catholic friend, and so other people in my family. Yeah. So it was not until I was much older that I began to question that premillennial dispensationalism, I'd been taught, which was really an idea popularized by John Nelson Darby in the mid
1800s. But it really caught on after the, the wars in the States when there was a lot of when, when there were more signs of the world kind of falling apart, as opposed to getting better. And then in the 70s, again, just picked it up with the Late Great Planet Earth, which, which is a book that people don't talk about as much now, but researching it, I mean, it was on the top of the New
York Times bestseller list. For many weeks, it sold more copies and the joy of sex like it was, it was ubiquitous, and it was in the water. And so for a long time, I avoided thinking about the book of Revelation, I didn't read it for a while, I just kind of threw my hands in the air, but as an adult has been able to reengage revelation and thinking about the AGF of Jesus making all things right and redemptive all things as being a beautiful prophetic picture of the future.
So I actually find great hope in what I can do now to bring full human flourishing, you know, and so, I think the value of the Christian view of the world is that all of history is heading somewhere. And I mean, I think that MLK quote, you know, the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. Like all of history is moving towards things being made that are sad being made untrue. I think my kids Bible says that all of the
sad things be made untrue. And so that's so beautiful and and that makes the show up here and do good work here. While we wait for that day.
As the head is beautiful, I'd love to get into this space where as you're seeing the these exiles that have have really been influenced by the the dominant culture of evangelicalism and the fear realizing that I don't know if that the church is the place I want to be. But I haven't lost all my my faith in Jesus. I want I want Jesus But they're wandering around in the desert, like you were wandering for a while? How can they start to make their way back into a place
where they can be? Have a community around them start to be formed like Jesus and find their way back home? When there's been? They were disillusioned from all the culture that was happening.
Yeah. I mean, that's such a 10. That's such a tender. And real question. You know, we've been at a church for, for the whole time we've been here, that's a healthy place for us. And yet, there were churches growing up, and other churches I went to that were, were difficult. So I've had a little bit of an experience, but I just, you know, I mean, I'm not writing from a, I'm not reading from a place of personal church
hurt. But I'm real concerned for the kind of macro level damage the church has done to the reputation of Jesus. I mean, again, that I think the church is pure, and will always remain because it's what Jesus left us with. So the church's ism is simply the guy again, the gathered body of believers, but it seems like folks have done a very fine job, again, and again,
over history, messing it up. And so and so it's, it's a really hard thing to talk about with nuance, and well, but I think that if we have the gift of life being long, like there can be dry seasons, I remember hearing a Christian talk on NPR, who was a writer, and I can't remember I mean, for the life of me, I've been I've looked for like hours to find the interview. But in the interview, he said, and it was so candid, he said, You know, I went through 10 years of, of not seeing God move in my
life. And I heard this in my late 20s. And I thought, That's wild, like, how could somebody go that long. But like, after coming through a season like that, myself there, there, there is some strange comfort in knowing like see, like, God's time is certainly different, that dry seasons are of loss or grief or difficulty, can certainly spend time that they're not forever, and that if we're pushing forward and have our eyes open to God, I think that that's a place to start.
The other thing I would say is if people can't engage in a faith community, right now, I think that when we're isolated, it only gets harder and we become more insular. And so even if that doesn't mean a traditional Sunday service to talk to someone that you trust, like to, to communicate, to be in some kind of community, even if that is somebody that you would meet in a group that felt safe online. Again, it's not the same as in person, but some kind of accountability is so
important. So those are some of the some of the things that I would say. And then the other. other thought is just if you can't pray right now, but just pray, just pray the Word help. I mean, there have been several times in my life, when I haven't known what to pray. So I've done one of two things, either read a psalm, which has been very comforting and giving, I've read some liturgy or Psalm, or I've prayed the word help. And, and every I mean, every time that helps us come through through
other people. So I just keep keep going back to community.
Yeah, I was just, I was just interviewing Pete Greg, he's found on on 24/7 prayer. And he said, he said this, he said that we don't have a problem with prayer, we have a problem with comfort. But when when the exile comes, and the suffering comes, right, people are gonna pray and it could just be the, the prayer of help, but we are going to, to go back and
say something to God. And the the one thing I really love about God is he's with us, like God is the manual, he is with us he's not some distant far off God that you know, the scary garden in the sky, which a lot of times we we have a reputation of God just being the scary God in the sky. And for some reason in America, we are so fear based, that everything is a counter. So that because we're scared that
that reminds me of like when it's so obvious that love is obviously an a counterbalance to fear and anecdotally fear Yeah, but like it is hard for many of us and then I did a two year prayer practice just around prompts of the love of God or believing and receiving that I am loved. I mean, just that foundational piece can take years to kind of get towards if if you've come up in a similar
space. So that just makes me think about how that foundational piece I strictly missed, or a lot of us miss, that we are actually intimately loved. Yeah, I think
that's as it is 100% key to know that we are our children of God like and that we are loved were made in His image that we he is somebody that loved us enough to become one of us. And to walk and to learn and to grow as a little seed and a baby in his mother's womb, and he's coming out as a toddler, and then growing up into all of life, and then suffer and die. And then have life and be raised
again in the resurrection. But the, the God who actually becomes one of us, because He loves us so much, and wants to be with us. I can't imagine, as somebody who would create something like you just created a book, he birthed it into this into the world. And I don't think it really ever. Yeah, I don't think you could ever imagine wanting to be the book like to actually go into the form of the book, because he love it so much, you know, because it was literally your
baby. But we have a God that did that, you know?
Yeah, it's so so wild. And then I mean, I think for many of us, the pandemic has been a very difficult time. I don't know anyone that hasn't had some relationship sever or fracture, or change because of politics, thoughts about the vaccine, the politics around COVID. I mean, there's just, there's something that's impacted or touch, we're disconnected. Any anyone I can think of that I know in my life,
and myself. And I think that last like last year, especially around this time, for, for many reasons, was an incredibly difficult season. But for the first time, through, through trial and grief, I was able to experience a near God being near in a way that I hadn't before in my life. And it's hard to
explain. I don't know, I think that there's some terminology for this within Catholicism, Kate Buller, the writer, on her podcast, everything happens has talked about this a few times when she had her cancer diagnosis, stage four terminal colon cancer, she experienced God being near in this intense way where like when my mother in law, had a quintuple bypass surgery, she talked about being under God's wings, so much so that she didn't want to get better because it was supposed
to. And to me hearing that years ago, I thought, that's crazy. Like, who would not want to get better from having hurt surgery? Like I didn't get it. And so last year in this very small in this small way, I did and so did my husband Drew, we were both driving across I five right on the bridge by the city. And I said, Drew, I really just sent the guy being nervous and this time, and he looked at me, and he said, I do too. And it was just this pregnant moment in the car where we felt like a
sweetness in trial. And so that's just that's just pure love. And goodness, that's just enough to go on for a while. So I'm kind of getting off course. But just thinking of ways that we can see God's love show up in our real life and surprisingly, is in demand.
I love that. I love that that moment that you were able to have to sense his love, that His nearness and so a lot of a lot of exiles that are talking about that have said I've been formed by this, this culture of fear through you know, a lot of different things are yearning to find God's love how can we help people in the space to find the love of God? In the every day?
Yeah, I think that I'm my mind is going back to spiritual formation for a few reasons. I mean, I write you know, we've talked a little bit about the rapture, and then times culture which was based in this fear of the world ending but I think formation is this anecdote that grounds us in love and lets us not be afraid to move into the world to be into the world as witnesses and to experience Christ and other people in other places to have empathy, grow and, and build.
And then with the culture, war stuff, thinking about single shoe voting or politics, I think that it's so easy to make a straw man were to kind of make an enemy of someone that's
different than us. And I think that formation opens us up to continue new ones or rounds us and the fact that we're all made in God's image, you know, and then I also in the book, talk about consumerism, or you know, we talked a little bit about being formed by the market and the kind of pressure to buy or maybe we're like one purchase or hashtag away from like a best life ever, kind of moment that I think that like we're so easily swept away by cultural forces if we're not grounded, again,
spiritually, again formed by that inside out, and there's this real invitation to sort of zoom out and take a minute. And so practically, I mean, that may just mean carving out a morning, and maybe doing spiritual retreat or some kind of guided prayer work. Or maybe it just means a walk. I mean, I went on a weekend long retreat for the first time, about five years ago was silent. And it was, it was
completely transformational. I mean, I think it may just mean, carving out some time to really reflect and kind of zoom out, kind of get to the balcony a little bit now.
Yeah, formation is really important. Because if you're not being formed into the image and likeness of Jesus, and if he's not forming you, you're gonna be formed by other things, you're gonna be formed by the forces of culture, you're good, whatever, if you're not intentional about it, you're gonna be formed into something else. Even though you're not even trying to be, you're going to be formed. And so I think that, yeah, carving time being intentional, taking those steps
to do that. Yeah, a lot of people I think, you know, for me, I am a, I don't know, I'm stubborn. You know, I get it from, you know, my family, or we're a little stubborn. But I, I don't often, I wouldn't take it from somebody saying, hey, Joshua, you need to be formed. You need some structure formation and realize the How
can we help me?
But I know it's true. And I know it's right. So how can we have conversations with other people around this topic of spiritual formation? And around Jesus in a way that they go? Yes, I want that. And I want to start to step into that.
Yeah, I mean, I think about the term liturgy. Liturgy just means work of the people, and you know, very irate about how we're all living out liturgies all the time. So I think, a way to open that conversation. I mean, I am certainly always noticing my own liturgies. For example, I released a book a week and a half ago, and my liturgy that I'm resisting is checking the phone to see if there's a
review. I mean, there, there are real statements that are forming me right now that I am praying and resisting and putting some kind of like, practices around or like guardrails on and so I think a way to start that conversation with other people is to say, Hey, I've really noticed if I think about my mind formation right now, I think I'm really struggling with, with looking at Amazon reviews. Yeah, work. So I think so. I mean, yeah, just starting with, what you've noticed, is just just
makes a lot of sense. And then, the other thing I've gotten a lot better at doing because I'm a very chatty, I'm an introvert, but a chatty one that can just kind of shut up and listen to people like them with a friend, I think that the gift of time and conversation and listening is like very powerful. And clarifying. And so I think I would just talk a little bit about something that I'm struggling with, and then sort of invite we're just asked with
open curiosity. If folks can relate to that, or kind of where they are, I think that that's just pretty organic. I mean, again, it's, you know, growing up in that glove compartment, we had like the four spiritual laws and tracks in case we met somebody I've done, like, you know, in college, I did like street ministry and like brightness, singing, I've done I've done all of it, you know, and it's just, that all just felt so awkward, especially with my introversion and not very
effective. And now it's like, again, because that postures like kind of like with the rapture, like I've got something to offer you. I mean, all you're gonna get your, for many of us is we're just broken people doing our best. And we just want to love each other well and in love Jesus Well, and that's really all there is. It's such quiet work. It's not like sexy, like my dad had that big change in this that sometimes there are
radical changes. I believe that God heals people, I believe there are big moves of the Spirit. But usually in the ordinary heart of life, God just moves in small ways that are almost in percent. And so that's just why I've been trying to listen more and keep my eyes open.
That's beautiful. Yeah, if you could go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give
that can that control isn't that great? Like stop trying to be in control control is a myth. You can't you can't will your way into an easy life I mean, I don't know what year is good as it gets came out. Have you seen that movie with Jack Nicholson, so I didn't love it. I love it. I haven't seen it in a minute. But there's this scene where he's driving to Baltimore with Helen Hunt and great commuter, and they're all kind of broken in different
ways. And Jack Nicholson said something like, a lot of people have, or some people have beautiful lives, they go on picnics, some people's lives are like picnics for the noodle salad. And then he looks around. And he says in that Jack Nicholson ways, like just nobody in this car. Did I like love that moment? Because I think that for an 21 year old me, like, one at noodle salad, I wanted the safety of noodle salad, I think, because I had a
lot of insecurity and fear. And we're still working through that with what that meant. I would have wanted belong straw to draw the easy way. But that that is a position of privilege, a position of middle class kind of optimism, there's a lot of problems with that. And in very big ways, it was a very American
perspective. But beyond that, I now see again, and again, how through grief or trial, just empathy and connection, like the real good, sweet stuff of life becoming more like Jesus, that doesn't happen through like Noodle Salad reality. So I would have told myself, don't try to control it. You can't anyways,
control isn't that great? And you can't pick like the long straw, you know, so just put that aside, and actually open your hands and trust that if Jesus is real and good that you're going to be put on a good path. And that path needs to be about serving other people and not worrying so much about yourself. Hmm.
Good advice. That was great advice. Anything you've been reading or watching you could recommend?
Yeah, well, I just happen to have a book right here. My friend Jenny booth cottage just wrote doing the thing is no longer an option. And it talks about her own work coming up in Chicago, around anti racism and just like what what it was like growing up in an Evangelical Church and going to an evangelical college and kind of reexamining some ways that she's approached, approached race, and it's just beautiful and challenging. I thought I would blow through it
in the weekend. But I've been reading parts out loud to my husband. It's really made me think, Oh, I very much appreciate that. That's that's been really really great. What I'd been watching so two things one super into like all things British here. So we love all creatures great and small. The James Herriot series have its own masterpiece. It just makes us have good dreams. We just
love it. And then the we've started the chosen season three, and like many people, and I think this is my like Gen X, cynicism, skepticism. People were pumped about the chosen they thought, I don't know, that seems like that's not is that really for us. But we watched it. And I literally felt like blessed. I mean, it was profound. So we're starting the third season. Have you? Have you watched it?
I've watched the first two seasons. I haven't started on the third yet, but my wife is saying, we need to watch the third season. We need to watch it. We need to watch it. So we're gonna get into a quiz with my kid. Yeah, it's so good. It's really good. How can people connect with you? And yeah, you got a new book out orphan believers, you go out and get that? And how else can they connect with you?
You know, the main places they hang out online are on substack. I read a newsletter called bitter scroll. And then I am on Instagram at Sarah Phillips.
Perfect. That's great. Anything else? What would you love to leave the listeners with today?
Well, I think that I would say to folks, if you're in a situation, kind of like mine, where you live in a city or in your more and more progressive space, if you can just talk to people in your life that don't identify as Christians and be honest about how you're compelled by Jesus. Because I think when we talk in that way, people will know and understand that not all Christians are aligned with this like checklist of ideologies, or social and political issues that brings in
nuance. And so I think that it brings a truer picture of Christianity. So I'd say one talk about it, if you can tell her focus and to speak up I mean, seek other people. It can be hard or triggering, but like Don't, don't give up. Talk, talk, talk to other people you trust about your faith, and just resist isolation.
Well, Sarah, this has been a great, great time with you. I've really loved the conversation, as we've talking about that. The different aspects of the culture, evangelical culture that we have been raised in, that have brought about really
fear. And I could probably pull on everything that you pulled in, and it could relate to fear itself, and then how then can we counter some of that and so that we could be formed into likeness of Jesus that we could actually experience the love of God in the midst of things and How can we be faithful people can walk in every day and in the small things to be open to what it means to follow Jesus to be formed and community. And so, thank you for this conversation was fantastic
as, as we were talking, I just thought of Psalm. I think 1819 He brought me into a spacious place. He rescued me because he delighted in me. That's just that just brings me hope of that of that real love. So this has been so much fun. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks.