Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Bannister and I'm joined by my co -host, Christy Mayer. Christy, how are you doing today? Doing well, thank you. And yourself, Andy? Pretty good up here in Scotland. Well, I'm excited by the guest we have with us today. Christy, we are joined, aren't we, on the show today by Mike Pierce.
Speaker: who's joining us across the Atlantic by the wonders of technology. Mike, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much indeed. Still bleary eyed over here at nine in the morning. Looking forward to this conversation immensely, not least because Christian, I was just chatting before the show and I was sort of filling here on a mic. You and I go a long way back actually, don't we? I try not to think about it. Back to a previous existence, yes. 2000 I think was when
Speaker: met when I was studying at London School of Theology, London Bible College as it was then, and you had the unenviable task, I think, of teaching combination church history, ethics and generally being belligerent, I think, was the combination. With a major on the last of those, yes. Very much so. So on my slightly sarcastic view of the world, I do sort of a trace to you. I know, it's my fault. I know, exactly. Well, kind of introductions aside, I mean, one of the things that I
Speaker: really admire about you, Mike, is you've written very widely, got a whole wide range of interests, and that's reflected in what you've written. And one of the most, I think it is actually your most recent book, isn't it? Gods of War is where I'd love to begin our conversation today. So one of the things we often hear in our culture, perhaps from the, something from some of the big atheist names, like Dawkins and others, but now it's kind of trickled down into the everyday level, is this idea that religion, in general, perhaps Christianity in particular,
Speaker: is inherently bad, inherently evil because it causes war, it causes violence, the world would be better off without it. And I know many Christians, Mike, who I think not so much engaging at that very high level, but they just wanted to share their faith with their friend at work, at school, down the pub. And their friend has just heard this online, read it somewhere, throws it back at them. And I think Christians often feel quite wrong -footed. I mean, nobody wants to apologize for violence. Don't know what to say. They're not skilled and equipped. He wrote a whole book on this. Help us get this through. Is religion inherently violent? Do Christians have a problem here?
Speaker: How can we perhaps find our way into this conversation when friends raise this? I don't think this issue began with the new atheists. In fact, I remember, and goodness, I'm hundreds of years old now, I remember this
Speaker: kind of idea being waved around even when I was a child or a teenager before I was a Christian actually, you know, religion causes all the wars in the world and the world. That's rather strange because at that time the most recent conflict, a big one, was the Second World War which had not been caused by religion. So it is nevertheless a very long -standing idea and has just been kind of revivified as it were.
Speaker: And there's certainly something in it, certainly it's not the cause of all the wars in the world, but the trouble is that all civilizations, all cultures generally have a religious background, they're built upon a religious framework and we don't have to look any further than the postmodern West and it's dismal failure in this area.
Speaker: you know, the attempt to build something on non -religion or irreligion to see that the historic cultures that humanities created are built on some kind of religious framework.
Speaker: And people will fight for their culture, the kind of world that they feel comfortable in if those are threatened. And when that happens, they will reach for what seems like the highest moral port of call, so to speak, to defend themselves to say, this is why I am doing this. Take, for example, you and I, supposing we had a really serious
Speaker: argument or a row, let's say a personalized row about something, then we would reach for some kind of moral justification, each of us. And what lies at the back of that? Well, some understanding of the will of God and instantly God gets weaponized in our own disputes. Now, if that happens at a perfectly trivial level,
Speaker: we can all see how that can happen at a much bigger level. I'd want to make a couple of important points about that. Firstly, that although we're all familiar with the idea of Christendom, the idea of Christian countries, that's not what Christianity is set up to be at all. And for the first
Speaker: Rather more than 300 years of its existence. It wasn't that It was in sociological terms the sect it was persecuted by the Roman Empire It was deliberately set up and you don't have to look any further than the Sermon on the Mount Set up a Jesus To be something that's not capable of running a wider political community so we'd have to say that
Speaker: the what we call Christendom, Catholic Orthodox and in more recent centuries Protestant countries, that's not actually what Christianity was in the first place. The second thing I'd want to say is that whilst religion can trigger conflict, and there are a number of instances of that, and I outline them in my book and look into them and how this happened, it's at least as true to say that war generates religion.
Speaker: Now, if that sounds rather strange, we just need to look at what actually happens in some of these conflicts. I think you want to talk to me in a few minutes about my experience in Central and Eastern Europe. And I first started getting very seriously involved in that part of the world. In the 1990s, when Yugoslavia was breaking up, a lot of people would point to that and say, well, there he was, a prime instance.
Speaker: Croats are Catholics, Serbs are Orthodox, and the language differences between them are trivial. Really, this is a battle about religion. Well, yes, except that most of the people concerned were not personally religious at all.
Speaker: what they were fighting about was a form of identity and a culture that they felt comfortable with. One of the things that I noticed when I was there was the way in which the churches during and in the aftermath of the war were absolutely jam -packed. And that was because people were suffering, dying, they were living extremely hard lives because of the war, and they needed the spiritual consolation
Speaker: and wanting to know why are we doing this? Why are we suffering all of this? I walked past churches on a Sunday morning and the mass was going on completely full and dozens and dozens of people outside on the doorstep listening in through the open doorways. You go back to Croatia now, it's not like that.
Speaker: Why? Because the country has now been at peace for 20 years. People are more comfortable. Many of them have reverted to their rather more secular lives. Now, as Christians, we might lament that fact, but it is a fact. We've seen this in countless conflicts where conditions of war actually make people more religious. It may be in a very superficial sense,
Speaker: we might jearingly say all its people cramming for their finals, as it were, if they don't know that they're going to die at any moment. But it's also people looking for consolation and direction in frightening circumstances. That's really helpful. Christy, what's your kind of perspective on some of that? I think that's such a helpful way in which to kind of think about the role of religion in this dialogue, Mike. I was just thinking, what would
Speaker: What would be, how would you kind of synthesize some of those things so that for us in the workplace, if somebody wants to say, well, you know, religion is bad because of war or even worse, you know, that means that therefore God himself is unjust, tyrannical kind of despot. What kind of pointers would you give us as to what kind of questions we could ask? How could we steer that conversation just to try and synthesize some of these great things that you've been sharing?
Speaker: Well, I think sometimes rather than come back maybe with a kind of long spiel that I just gave, counter questions are always good. Perhaps people asking, well, are all religions the same in this respect? Are some more belligerent than others? Can we think of one that constantly directs people towards peace?
Speaker: Of course, that's a little tricky because we can all think of a number of Christians, both in the past and the present, who do far less than living up to where Jesus points us to in terms of that ideal. But that kind of question, I think, can be useful.
Speaker: If we look at something like the Northern Ireland conflict in the fairly recent past, it's worth asking how many of those people involved at the actual level of the conflict were devout, because of course, almost none of the terrorists were. The IRA terrorists tended to be Marxists.
Speaker: and the the loyalist terrorists also tended not exactly to be devout Presbyterians, even if they came from that general culture. So I think those kinds of questions are worth asking in that context. Yeah, I think that's that's helpful advice. On that last point, Mike, I remember a lovely story that the the late atheist Christopher Hitchens
Speaker: shared not I think fully realizing how it didn't actually help his case he uh you know told the story of a friend of his who was who was driving somewhere in uh in uh in Ireland during the troubles and got uh pulled over at a paramilitary checkpoint and sort of scared a gentleman with a balaclava you know pointed the gun through the window and demanded to know whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant to which Christopher's friend went well no no I'm an atheist I'm an atheist just like Paul's and then the question came back Catholic atheist or Protestant atheist yes yes and
Speaker: And I thought that actually, I don't think Chris realized how much that helped our case, because to go as exactly as you say, that's not that's not religion there rather than the bigger identity marker. Yes, yes. I mean, we could talk so long on on this one, but I did want to you hinted at it a moment ago, one of your answers wanted to get into another part of your your story, because I think, as I said, you've written quite widely and quite different topics, have some quite different life experiences. And one of the things that you've been involved in for a while, certainly for a good chunk of the time that I've known you has been
Speaker: You know, these regular trips that you've made to out to Eastern Europe, very much getting involved in sort of the life of the church there and teaching, taking Western students out to experience that. And one of the things I find fascinating, we often think about, you know, those, those, perhaps those churches in some of like Eastern Europe as, gosh, they haven't got the resources that we have and life must be tough and so on and so forth. And that's probably true.
Speaker: I'm quite intrigued, I suppose, to pitch the question to you. Are there things that you've seen in those churches and those codes of context that perhaps we can learn from the other way around? Because one of the beauties, the diversity of the body of Christ, is that actually we can learn a lot from each other. I'm intrigued to know whether there is anything that you've learned from your experience there that's perhaps shaped how you thought about the gospel back here in the West.
Speaker: Well, yes, I've certainly been involved there a long time. Actually, since just a few years before we got to know each other, Andy, I've been involved there for very nearly a quarter of a century now. And yeah, I've learned, I like to say that most of the important things I've ever learned in my life have been taught me by the Balkans.
Speaker: in terms of the the interactions of very different kinds of people about different civilizations bumping up against one another the the catholic and protestant west meeting the Orthodox east meeting the muslim world and they kind of clang there often interacting very very wonderfully and creatively but sometimes as we saw in the 1990s going off bang in all kinds of ways um
Speaker: I've mostly been involved with the generally very small evangelical churches there. And they, like the larger Catholic and Orthodox churches, faced a lot of pressure during the communist years, rather less in Tito's Yugoslavia, it has to be said, than in the Soviet bloc countries, but nevertheless, quite often a hard time.
Speaker: And I think what tended to happen during those years for many of them, particularly in Croatia and Serbia, is that they got stuck in a kind of a time warp that they have not easily managed to break out of. I'm much more encouraged by what's been going on in North Macedonia, as we must call it, over the last few months. It was Macedonia into its name agreement with Greece a few months ago.
Speaker: where the church, if anything, was the evangelical churches were even tinier but have grown. I don't want to overstate this, but they have much more than doubled in size over the last 20 years or so just because of finding creative ways of evangelism and breaking out of the cultural boxes that they were in danger of
Speaker: pasting themselves into and which in Croatia and Serbia, I'm afraid, they largely did. So that's been pretty exciting.
Speaker: I think one of the problems for those kinds of churches is that whether they are particularly small, if they remain that way for a long time, then it tends to be a kind of a family of families, and it then becomes particularly hard for outsiders to come in even if they wanted to, you know, even if they do make a convert, they come in and find, wait a minute, all these people have known one another for generations back, and I'm never going to fit in.
Speaker: So that's the kind of sort of stagnant pool effect and that needs to be avoided and offended at all costs. But leaving aside some of those rather painful issues quite often, I mean these are people who very often have suffered an awful lot for their faith over years and have often been refined by it.
Speaker: And it can be a real inspiration to many of us who, comparatively speaking, have much, much easier lives. One particular individual that a number of people will have heard of, because he's quite famous, is Miroslav V. He's one of the leading theologians in the world now. And his father was one of the leaders of the Pentecostal movement in Communist Yugoslavia. And he and the whole family
Speaker: really did have a very hard time under the communist authorities. And it's kind of refined him, caused him to think through so many issues of his faith. His amazing book back in the 1990s, Exclusion and Embrace, it's a very, very weighty
Speaker: theological tome, it's not for the intellectually faint of heart, but nevertheless is a wonderful reflection in a way on that experience and on the pain of the breakup of Yugoslavia and thinking through theologically how we relate to one another, how our identities are bound up with one another, how God interacts with each person
Speaker: So, yeah, it's it has I found it a huge inspiration really over many, many years. It's hilarious. It's just utterly fascinating, Mike. I mean, as a as a Hungarian, I can completely resonate with much of what you're saying from that central European experience. We're running out of time. Just one final question for you, Mike. I mean, Christians sometimes despair when they look at the church in the West or where culture is going.
Speaker: But as a historian, you have the benefit of a long view. Does that help give a perspective on sharing the gospel as a Christian during the troubled times that we're in today, do you think? Yes, I suffer from war.
Speaker: could be looked at as a besetting sin of academics, but I find it a huge benefit actually that it becomes almost impossible for me not to take the long view of whatever it is that's in front of my eyes at that moment. And that is an advantage because it means you don't simply get obsessed by some local difficulty or local problem
Speaker: however overwhelming it may seem in this time and place. So if one is, for example, a rather besieged Christian in work in Britain in 2019, it may look as though Christianity is collapsing, everything's going to hell in a hand basket, aggressive secularists are taking over and what have you. But that's not the global picture, even right now.
Speaker: let alone the sort of nadir of human experience across thousands of years. So I do find that not simply a consolation, but Boethius' consolation of philosophy idea ringing in my ears there, but actually a real encouragement, a real motivation. No, something can be done here, even if present circumstances don't look good. Yes.
Speaker: It's funny, you mentioned the motivation piece. I remember that really striking me in my 20s as I first began to think of it more historically and suddenly realized that there was this line of 2000 years worth of Christians before me. And I remember getting a sense occasionally of 2000 years worth of Christians looking over my shoulder going, Banister, we have passed this torch on down all these centuries.
Speaker: Let's make sure your generation aren't the one who drop it. But that's exactly what is happening. And I think if we, I mean, we all know that we're supposed to look at our lives, you know, sub -spece eternitatis in the light of eternity. And that's good. We do need to do that, though most of us don't. But just looking at our lives in the light of the last 2000 years would also simply revolutionize our thinking. Yes. Mike, there's a
Speaker: We've covered so much in this 20 minutes. It feels like we could have done at least four to four podcasts off different tangents from what you've raised. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and blessings on your travels. And I hope listeners have enjoyed this and there'll be links with the podcasts, some of the things you've written. So I really encourage people who've been listening to this, who've been intrigued by some of what you said to dig deeper in some of this stuff. Thank you very much, Andy. Thank you, Christie. It was a real joy to be with you.
Speaker: Thanks so much. And we'll see you on the podcast next time. Thanks for listening.
Speaker: Thank you for
Speaker: knowing that you're helping us make more episodes of PepTalk.
