Andrew Wilson on How the Year 1776 Shaped the Post-Christian West

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Collin Hansen
There’s one big idea at the heart of Andrew Wilson’s remarkable book, remaking the world. How 1776 created the post Christian West, published by crossway. He argues that more than any other year in the last millennium the last 1000 years 1776 made us who we are today. In the West. I suppose many listeners, especially in the United States are thinking, of course, the Declaration of Independence. Ron Swanson said it best history began on July 4 1776. But wait, didn’t Andrew just say the post Christian West? Was he mean about that? Land your demonstrates a lot of courage reading about 1776 as the teaching pastor of King’s church, London. But one of the most important points of the of his book is that the American Revolution was just one of many world changing events and ideas crossing and recrossing the Atlantic in and around 1776. In fact, he argued the battles were less important than the words human rights, free trade, liberal democracy, religious pluralism, the preference for authenticity over authority choice over duty, self expression over self denial, Andrew traces it all back to 1776. Ron Swanson might not be right, that history began on July 14 1776. But Andrew does argue that 1776 separates us from the past, he writes this, the vast majority of people in human history have not shared our views of work, family, government, religion, sex, identity, or morality, no matter how universal or self evident, we may think they are. And Andrew is telling the West is full of Protestant pagans, and Christians are victims of our own success. So I can’t wait to ask him about his favorite stories and his fervent hopes. Andrew, thanks for joining me on gospel bound.

Andrew Wilson
Thank you so much. That’s a fantastic introduction. It’s a great joy to talk, maybe I will probably one of the first people who ever got excited about this project. So I feel like I owe you a huge debt of gratitude that it got published at all. So thank you.

Collin Hansen
Oh, that’s wonderful. Again, I’ve been looking forward to this this for a long time. And diving deep on this, I’ve read the book twice, and, and thought about it nonstop, in many ways, since since even my second reading of it appropriately, you will, of course, appreciate that it came when I was staying in Cambridge, only seemed fitting. But Andrew, how do you even begin to conceive of a book with this kind of scope? Mean? When did you start to connect the dots about 1776.

Andrew Wilson
So I was on holiday in France. About six years ago, when I was reading a book by Ian Morris called why the West rules for now it was really a sort of book about why the West has been a head of East for a long time and why that’s now changing. And it was a really interesting too. And in the course of it, he was talking about the fact that the steam engine was in what steam engine and the Wealth of Nations happened within the same weekend, in 1776, I thought hang on, that’s probably the key invention in industrial history. And the most important economics book ever written, happened in the same year as the Declaration of Independence. That’s really, I’ve never been told that I didn’t know that. And then use these things go, you start digging, and you think, oh my goodness, this is a really important year in the history of romanticism, and then navigation and God, sort of interconnecting a different parts of the world and the enlightenment. And I knew enough about the period because I studied a bit of it, when I was an undergrad in history, to sort of see the way that the build up to the French Revolution, the Enlightenment so on, and I thought, wow, this is a really significant year. That’s an interesting story. I wonder if I’ll ever talk about it. But that on its own doesn’t become a book. But at least it would be quite a weird one. I think, what then, that what join dots for me was then when I was also at the same kind of time getting into Jonathan heights work. And his idea of the West being weird or Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. And I know you’ve talked to height before, and I find it very helpful and interesting. And I think that somehow, somewhere a collision between these two concepts came together. And I thought, actually, the things that the transformations which made us Western or rich or romantic, or industrialize those things, there’s an example of a change that happened in this year that made all of those things happen. And I think if I brought the two of them together, I could tell a really interesting story about why we are like we are and what the church could do about

Collin Hansen
it. So give me based on that foundation. Give me your biggest surprise, when you’re researching where you’re thinking, Oh, wow, I didn’t realize that was also 1776

Andrew Wilson
Right. So I think The biggest surprise melee, maybe there’s not very quite as the biggest surprise I got was the thing that I think we are you and I’ve talked about before, which is the fact that the Edit to the Declaration of Independence, which I didn’t know. And I was the idea that Ben Franklin said, No, No, you shouldn’t say this is these truths are sacred and undeniable, you should say the self evident, and we might come back to that. But that to me was the big like, I might drop, you know, wow, that’s such a significant development, because that’s not just a political issue. Now, that’s a very important, I think, parable of the post Christian West. I think of the I think the events that I hadn’t placed in that year, I think there was a couple of really trivial ones that just blew me away, like I found, I put it in a footnote, but it wasn’t important enough to tell the story of the legs. But I found that in the same year, the Illuminati and the I think it’s the Phi Beta Kappa to the first secret society in America and the major secrets it in Europe, were also both founded in the same year unrelated to each other in 1776. And I just thought, why is things even at that random a level also happening in this year? What does this what’s going on in the West that’s causing those two, really, apparently quite unrelated things to happen? There’s a great many others. But I think, once you start with the the big industrial, economic and religious and political developments, like an awful lot of other things almost flow out of that, but that was those, it was almost like it this year, very odd details that I found really fascinating, but also taking place in the same year. They’re not very important. But that’s partly why I found them. So fascinating.

Collin Hansen
You already alluded to this, Andrew, that maybe I’m not the best interviewer on this book, because I share so much of your fascination with history. I mean, I majored in European history, no less. I’m wondering, why should other Christians maybe not the folks that spend a lot of time reading the kinds of things that you do for fun? Why should they care about your book, is it? I mean, it’s just because it tells engaging stories of the past, which it definitely does. But why should others care?

Andrew Wilson
Well, I think that’s the only feedback I’ve had from people who wouldn’t normally read Big History books, which has been encouraging and is what I hoped is that people have said, This just helps me, it helps me and it helps me connect and explain things that are going on in our current world. And it helps me see them in a way that makes sense of things that appear not to be connected to each other. That gives me a story that goes, Oh, okay. That’s why that and that of both part of the same wider phenomenon. And it’s back to the classic thing of it means I’m reading the newspaper, or I’m online, and I’m scrolling, seeing something that’s just happened. And it’s enabling me to join dots and make connections and connect them to the influence and role of Christianity in the world and the way the church can respond to it. So towards the end of the book, I try and equip people, this is how we can respond. But even in telling the story itself, I think you can give Christians some, some agency or some kind of power sounds a bit dramatic, but you can to some degree, because you say look, this is a name for that thing you’ve experienced. And this is not just a weird development that sprung out of nowhere. And it’s particularly writing that in light in light of what I think of as one of the most, you know, what are the another very intense period of cultural change between about 2014 and 2017. In the West, where a huge amount of dominoes seem to fall culturally at once. And a lot of Christians, probably even more in your country, the minute it’s just kind of thrown and like what on earth, these changes are all coming out of nowhere. And I think by putting them in the context of a bigger story, you can give people a sense of, I can name it, I can see the journey, I can understand why that does kind of follow from where we were, it’s not as shocking, it’s not as disorienting, and hopefully give people a sense of a coherent narrative to understand why it is and also how we might, we might respond to it without panicking or freaking out or whatever it is,

Collin Hansen
I thought this quote from your book was, was helpful on this point, he said, the rate of change in the last two centuries makes the past feel much further away than it actually is. Which inclines us to fawn over the future, and either patronize the past or ignore it altogether. That’s just an important concept about the significance of history and the way that we’re especially ill equipped in this place in time to be able to understand it. But which I think your book does a great job of helping us to see it significance of all the different wide ranging aspects of the book, and which of these threads, which of them is the most fun, your favorite to be able to pull on?

Andrew Wilson
That’s really That’s a good question. And I haven’t been asked that before. I think well, I’ll answer that two ways. I think the one that I most enjoyed learning about out was, is the sort of the economic and material changes in the world, because that’s probably the one where I had the least idea. At the start of the start of the story, where it was gonna go, I thought I just, I don’t think I’d ever seen before. If you draw a graph of the economic growth of the human race, GDP per person, or whatever it is, that it basically, it looks like a hockey stick, it just goes flat for 10,000 years and then shoots up. And the inflection point is somewhere around the mid of the mid 1770s. And that was just such an extraordinary thing to see. And such an important development. That was probably the most fun to understand or to see for the first time. But I think the one I probably most enjoyed writing about, in many ways was the one on romanticism. Because again, I just find these characters, some of them that are at work, and I talk a bit about the you know, the sort of German playwrights gathering around kurta and I talk about Jia como Casanova, who they’re known name that’s known to a lot of people, but most people don’t know very much about him. And then George Russo, who has just an extraordinarily aads, brilliant genius, but it’s very strange man. And I just found the characteristic, it’s almost that’s the probably the chapter where the storytelling is the easiest and the most fun because they’re just such extraordinary people. And at one point, I read it. And then I’m discovering Hang on a second, the plot of The Shawshank Redemption is based on the escape from jail of this 18th century, philanderer who breaks out of jail by hiding a spike inside a Bible hides behind a painting goes out through a hole in the wall. You’re like, how did this happen? I’ve never known it before. So there was so much fun in that chapter just to discover this stuff. And I. So I hope, as you say that it’s some of the book is this is just trying to tell a really interesting story. But obviously, with apologetic undertones, and I hope of application, which I hope emerges as well,

Collin Hansen
just trying to imagine Russo and Franklin hanging out.

Andrew Wilson
He says, I just imagine rezoned anybody hanging out Ben Franklin, I think is one of the most ordinary 21st century but he looks like if he parachuted into your town now he probably be okay. He just doesn’t seem like he belongs to another era in this quite the way that many characters do. And Rousseau is the opposite. He’s just a total weirdo. But a brilliant man who has shaped us all in all kinds of ways.

Collin Hansen
Now, the next question is a pretty big one. But it’s one of my hobby horses. So and it’s my show. So I get to talk about, explain why you don’t buy into the Enlightenment narrative, the triumph of freedom and reason over the dogmas of the Dark Ages. I really appreciate your comment that you don’t hear as much about this story when you’re touring Cambridge University or Notre Dame Cathedral

Andrew Wilson
in Paris. Yeah. And and by the way, great shout on notre DOM. That’s, that’s, I was actually waiting for the end of that sentence, wondering if he was going to Notre Dame on a podcast, European history major. I texted him,

Collin Hansen
we’re talking about Paris, not about football. So that’s why

Andrew Wilson
No, i i And that’s a that is a good example. So I have that because I live very near a I in fact, I just I drive past it regularly. 1000 year old castle near up near my house, which is sort of where the Normans landed. And when people see it, they’re like, Ah, it’s like the dark ages. It’s all sort of everyone’s eating turnips and dying of plague. And then you consider what medieval society in Europe developed, invented, understood. You look at it, particularly in that I mean, I think you’ve got to concede some some of the force of it, you got to say that after the Roman Empire collapsed, that the political instability and the military chaos that was unleashed on Europe Between the years say, 500, and around 900, were obviously disruptive for economic growth and literacy and many other things. But I think as soon as you see the term, certainly around the turn of the millennium, from about what year 1000 onwards, you see enormous creativity, industry growth, the rise of trade, the rise of guilds, and the building of cathedrals and the establishing of civil society and the burger towns and universities and clocks. And you just think and astronomy and you think actually that even just the university is a medieval European eventually. And you’ve just realized this is this is silliness. What’s happened is people have told a story with ourselves at the end of it in such a way as to amplify the difference between how brilliant we are and how dim they were, and in doing so have completely distorted the evidence. And I think it is, in a way it’s a propaganda tool. And it was originally theirs. The fun thing again, to get dig into this, of course, is it’s a Protestant property.

Collin Hansen
I was gonna be it was gonna be a question right? There is, I mean, are Protestants to blame for this?

Andrew Wilson
Yeah, basically, at least originally. So the first guy to use the language of the Middle Ages or the middle age, was some was writing in the same year as the Gunpowder Plot, which is a very big part of British slang cuz, you know, five Catholics showed up for the government. And if we still memorialize the fact that it didn’t blow up by fireworks and bonfires and all that jazz in Britain, and the but it that’s, that’s where the term middle age comes from. It’s a Protestant narratives and well there was this, obviously the early church and then there’s this dark middle age, and then there’s Protestantism. And all that happens where the transition over the next 150 years, Europeans begin to say, well, that’s not quite the story, but it’s very similar. There’s the world of antiquity, of brilliant Greek Roman thinkers and beautiful poetry and lovely buildings and togas and grapes. And then then it all goes quiet and weird and dark, and everyone eats turnips and dies of plague, and burns, witches, and then European enlightenment emerge in around Isaac Newton is often, you know, get credited with a lot of that. And then in the sort of 70 to 18th century Europeans switch the lights on and everyone gets knowledge. And so it’s really a Protestant story with some of the details changed. And the heroes now become Edward Gibbon or Voltaire rather than Luther and Calvin, but the story is basically the same shape. So yeah, I think Protestants are, in large part to blame. And, and of course, there are some details of that story that you can rescue and say, was a degree of truth. And as I touched on, but it’s a very, very distorted flattening of what really happened in Europe, let alone elsewhere, which, of course, is one of the worst things about those stories. It just totally centers are not even Europe as a whole, just a particular part of Northwestern Europe and says, This is where it’s at, and where the white guys responsible for Enlightening the World to which obviously many people who were enslaved or deported or colonized would say, seriously. So it’s a it’s not a good version of history.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I wonder if American listeners might not be as familiar with how that narrative has been undermined. Even in recent years. I was with our friend James Eglinton up in Edinburgh the summer and we were walking around. And sure enough, there’s the statue of David Hume. But look at all the problems because of David’s Hume David Humes views on race. All of a sudden, he’s getting canceled because he doesn’t fit anymore. We become enlightened on that topic. So let’s talk about that how you see racism, affecting that reception of the Enlightenment story today. And I just need to read this for the stairs, you’re gathering your thoughts. I just need to say this. This is a great line about the Phyllis offs. The Western world has been illuminated by their powerful blend of Sense and Sensibility and their laudable commitment to persuasion. But we have also been darkened by their Pride and Prejudice. You must had fun writing that one.

Andrew Wilson
I really did. And I’m so glad you’ve noticed it. Because I’m I’m honestly worried that lots of people are just beginning to see on about here. This is how flowery and then but um, obviously, Jane Austen right there, Austin Austin fancier. And, of course, I do think that, you know, I do think that she’s, at least in Sense and Sensibility, there is something deliberate there. I’m not an Austin scholar. But I think the idea that those are the that is very much of the period, Pride and Prejudice. Obviously, she’s not talking about enlightenment views of race. But I am. Yeah, I think I think it is obviously, we hugely overused the word problematic as modern society, but it is really, really bad when you read, particularly when you consider this is not these are not minority, the racial, stereotypes and outright bile really, that comes forth from some of these key writers are not from coming from minor figures. I think in a way, if you dig hard enough, you can badmouth almost any movement because you can everyone has every movement is going to have someone somewhere who says something bad. But this isn’t that this is David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Voltaire, who, the giants of the, you know, the French, Scottish and German enlightenment, and they just said terrible, appalling things. I don’t want to actually don’t, I can’t quote them from memory. But I wouldn’t want to, if I could, I mean, some of the things that are being said, you know, that’s not to say every enlightened I believed all of those things. And it’s not to say, I think you could have a very reasonable discussion about what is the right way to respond to statues of people who discovered very important things and said some great stuff and then said some absolutely terrible stuff, like what is the I think you can have that debate and obviously, many of us did in the 2020. But that aside, this what is being said and affirmed, based on a very Eurocentric narrative of history, mixed sometimes, interestingly, with a real hatred of biblical anthropology that sometimes what’s motivating it is, we’re certainly in Voltaire, the the anti semitism, a lot of the racism is actually partly coming from a place where they’re trying to distance themselves as much as possible from the idea that God created all humanity in Adam and Eve and his descent. So this idea of common descent is a huge problem. And then there’s a Eurocentric narrative, and there’s just good old fashioned bigotry in there as well. And the combination of those things produces these just vile racial, and not just epic. That’s an the sort of sneering laziness that you often get in, in, in a sort of garden variety racism. But actually, sometimes people quite explicit Hume does, he just explicitly goes, Okay, I’ve heard rumors of this, you know, black guy who’s meant to be quite clever, but actually, he’s just parroted all of that from some Easter’s to Paris, he’s heard it all somewhere else, think you know, enough educated black men in your area, they are mostly men in your day, to surely understand that what you’re saying is not a fair representation. So that is one of the big dark spots on the record of the Enlightenment. And it’s not something from which Christians are immune either, of course, and we know. But it’s, it’s I just think it’s important to say not to trash the entire enlightenment. But to say, this is not quite the darkness to light story you, you’ve been told.

Collin Hansen
Let’s jump to your chapter on skeptics, you observe this little bit of a longer quote here. Contingent religious beliefs now sound like self evident secular truths. The year of our Lord has been universalized, the rights of humanity have been standardized, the redistribution of wealth has been normalized. And all you need is love. Christianity, in that sense, became a victim of its own success. It baked its moral norms so deeply into Western culture, that people eventually forgotten where they came from, and quote, So Andrew, do you think we’re close to losing not just the memory, but also the norms themselves?

Andrew Wilson
Well, this is one of the interesting questions. And the answer is I don’t, I don’t know, I feel like we’re probably a lot further away from it than some of the more apocalyptic accounts would suggest we are. And I think that’s because moral norms of the kind that we’re talking about the human dignity are baked very deeply into the, the, what I would call the post Christian Western post Christendom. And I think in a strange way that has been ratified and made harder to eradicate, by the attempts in the 20th century, to get rid of them, to really redefine them or an odds, you think, particularly the Nazis, and you don’t want to be the guy who drops in the Nazis for the sake of it. But obviously, that was a particularly virulent attempt to add to anti Christianized values, really to say, you know, we’re not going to treat people as if they’re all created equal. And we’re going to explicitly oppose that version of morality and try and valorize strengthen them better. And that, of course, it was, has got its connections to Nietzsche, in thinking and even social Darwinism, although I don’t blame either Darwin or Nietzsche, for all the things that Nazis did, of course. And I think that that attempt was so when obviously was so vital in its outcomes, that I think it’s almost reinforced people’s desire to never let that happen again, even if they don’t have really a metaphysical ground for not doing it. And so I think what’s happened is the tastes of Western people have made it feel revolt revolting, to say not all human beings are created equal, even though people say I don’t even really believe in creation, let alone in created equality. So you end up in a strange position where people are saying, I definitely don’t want to go there, with the moral conclusion of rejecting Christianity on the human dignity. But at the same time, I definitely don’t want to go with the Christians on why we believe it. So I kind of going to preserve the fruit and hope no one will notice that I no longer hold to the roots, and trust that that will stay for as long as it for as long as it can. So I but I think the I think the overall if it doesn’t make logical sense as such to me, but I think it will probably last a good while longer, in part because of primarily the Nazi attempt and also in other areas, communism, and others. To eradicate it, I think people will still for a very long time have a memory of what happens when you don’t hold to that kind of view of human beings.

Collin Hansen
Later in the book, you describe this cognitive dissonance. you’ve alluded to it just there the moral fruit without the spiritual route, and say that the quote, post truth world is an unaffordable luxury, and quote to the oppressed and disfranchised. You clearly alluded to it there with the communists and the Nazis and the people who suffered their tyrannies. What else do you have in mind here?

Andrew Wilson
I think I think there’s all sorts of things about the way people conceive of, and by the way, some of them are more more at risk in our generation than others, I think. But I think in if you go back to your declaration of independence, okay, so just take a line, which is obviously very, very formative expression of Christian anthropology, for modern politics, and economics, as well as morality and the duty to your fellow humans. And to say, you know, it’s self evident to us or whatever, it’s sacred and undeniable to us, that all people are created equally and endured and endowed with certain inalienable rights. Now, those that statement contains a huge amount of Christian anthropology is obviously got a creator. It’s got people who are made effectively equal to one another, doesn’t quite say in the image of God, but that’s the gist of it. And that undergirds the UN Declaration on Human Rights and everything we believe about what you When humans owe one another obligations and duties to our fellow humans. And so I think, where I think there have been some, as I say, experiments to say, we are not going to go there. And we’re going to go harder the other direction, as we’ve talked about. But I think there are other things that do just get chipped away, when you take away those foundations. I think we could talk about more of Kenya, contemporary issues like abortion would be an example of an issue where that it’s a sort of you there’s a foot in the door, and even what some people have been able to say, and still remain in the public square with some degree of respectability. Think of somebody like Peter Singer on infanticide, where you think of the fact that that’s able to be said, you certainly at the other end of life, you have, you know, weighed the way that various nations that you think of the Dutch or the Canadians, on the way people talk about euthanasia, assisted dying, whatever people want to call it. And you realize, actually the combination of euphemism or lack of clarity in the public squat about what exactly is going on. And an erosion of Christian anthropology can lead to some pretty unpleasant causes even now. So I’m not saying we go from there straight to Nazism, or that we don’t go in that doing that at all. But what happens is that you do destabilize Christian anthropology. And over time, people will no longer take it for granted that the fact that someone is human, therefore they’re made in the image of God means you can’t kill them, no matter who they are, you might find rationales that might say, well, if people are very small, or very odd, or whatever. Now, that’s one example. I think there’s plenty of others as well. But to me, that feels like quite a pressing one in our day, and one that most people listen to this and probably aware of, and to some degree troubled by. But I think it’s part of that larger story of what’s happened to those norms in the West.

Collin Hansen
And what do you make of it, Andrew, that the difference between some of the most utilitarian approaches to death of the week, so they go back to the Nazi era, and the thought is they’re parasites on society, we don’t have the resources to take care of them. Today, it’s more like, Well, why would you want to stay alive if you don’t feel fulfilled? And happy? Because that’s the point of life? Is there a common thread between those two? Are they entirely different, just with the same result that the weak are the ones who suffer and ultimately die?

Andrew Wilson
Yeah, I think they can be closely aligned in as much as the the both ways of thinking regard human beings who don’t, are not perceived by others as contributing, particularly to public life and economic flourishing, as having less value. And in the end, the end, when a subsection of the population get taken out or get dehumanized, and then taken out in history, it’s often because they regarded as being economically unproductive that was what was behind the witch craze is, in large part is what’s behind, obviously, infanticide. In many parts of the world, you just don’t do that to people who are economically productive and able to fend for themselves. And similarly, if people who are either very old or very sick. And so I think there are commonalities, but I also think the rationale is fundamentally different in the sense that people argue is interesting people arguing for euthanasia, or abortion, are often using quite Christian sounding arguments for it, even though the arguments against it are also Christian, who are talking to use the language of compassion or the desire to protect the rights of the mother or to make sure that people don’t suffer too much, which is, of course, not the way that the Nazis were justifying what they did. So I think that the rationale has been very influenced by Christianity. I don’t think therefore, it’s a Christian thing to do, as I’ve said, but I think that you have this fascinating example where this is sort of Tom Holland ism, but we’re, the culture wars are often a civil war within Christianity, only one sided which realizes their thinking in a Christian way. And I think there is quite a lot to be said for that on a number of these particularly life issues that we’ve just talked about.

Collin Hansen
You argue that Christendom was hoisted by its own petard. And we look at increased wealth, power, sexual permissiveness, independence, individualism, they’ve all contributed to decrease church attendance, decreased size of families diminish religion overall. So let’s jump into another big question. What’s the response? I doubt you’d say we should go back to Christendom, even if we could. That’s a big movement today or a growing movement among some Christians today. I certainly struggled to see how we could reverse the effects of industrialization. Even if we wanted the old communities in the family structures. We wouldn’t put up with the medicine, or the lack of transportation or the lack of, of mobility, things like that. So what’s the response?

Andrew Wilson
Well, of course, in part, I’d say too soon to say, We’re fine. We’re feeling away, aren’t we? In part, I’d say that’s what I’m trying to do in chapters 10 and 11 of the book, and that’s what many of us are trying to do, isn’t it? I mean, you and I involved a lot in help trying to help the church think through the way to respond to a basically a new moments in the history of the church. I think it helps me to think this is not the first time it’s the first time this has happened. But it’s not the first time that significant economic and industrial and technological change has caused the church to completely rethink how it does evangelism, discipleship, church friendship, and so on. That’s obviously you, you’d think about that, in the late 15th. And 16th centuries would be a very obvious example of how that happened around the time of the Reformation and just before it, but I think you had to do the same in that you’d probably say, the fourth century be another one of those times, and some would say around the 12th, century, 11, to 12. And, and probably others to in smaller ways. And I’m just thinking for my part of the world. So the church has been there before the church has come to a crossroads and go, Wow, significant enough changes have happened now in this moment to make me think we have to re discover how to preach the gospel, make disciples, build churches, and reach the nations. And so I don’t panic, that’d be the first thing to say. But I think we are feeling our way a bit. And we’ve we’ve both you and I written a bunch of things about how we might do that. In the book, I try and zero in on issues of grace, freedom and truth, which I think are three helpful ways of thinking how the, the 18th century church responded to their moment, and how we can and talk about that at some length. So I probably won’t rehash all of that. But I think there’s a bunch of other smaller things my church needs to do. One of the things we’ve, you and I’ve chatted about the the need to do, the way we do discipleship information, in counting what I love the word counter cases, counter counter cases, rather, because you have to we have to sort of go, what is being taught and how does the church you have heard, it was said in your generation, but I say to you is it’s a really helpful, helpful way of thinking. And that’s true in the way we teach and preach. And it’s the way through the way we make disciples. I think something that helps me a lot is Jesus’s words, when he’s he begins the first speaks in John’s Gospel. And he says to the disciples following him, like, what do you seek? What do you what do you want? What are you after? And it’s a big theme, and John, the idea of, what is it that you are seeking? What’s the thing in your heart that you want? And I think helping think through the things that people can contemporary people seek or are desiring or are looking for often are very good things and things that in many ways, they’ve got a slightly Christianized way of trying to find them, but they just haven’t got Jesus in there and just trying to work out you actually won’t find that desire satisfied without Christ. And here’s some of the ways in which you’ll find a better fulfillment of that in Him than you would in what you’re looking for. And that’s a very good evangelistic question. And so I think there’s implications for our discipleship and for our evangelism. And many of them we sort of exploring in lots of different ways that you know, things books, you know, even friends of ours have written Chris Watkins biblical critical theory and Rebecca’s work, Rebecca McLaughlin, the secular creed, and things like that, which I think lots of people going, here’s some really good ways to try to do that. So there’s a lot of smart people on the case who are helping me and God willing, we are helping others as well think this through. But I do think we’ve got to acknowledge this is this is quite a significant change. i The only other thing I’d add is that it’s a change that is coming much more quickly on your side of the Atlantic than on mine in that a process that has taken 80 years in Britain, and France, and Germany, and so on, is taking about eight years in North America. And that that is causing it to be it’s more unsettling in some ways for many people in your community than probably in mine. And so I might, I probably feel a bit more breezy about it in some ways, because I think I’ve seen this happen slower. But it is obviously happening at quite a rate where you are, and it’s a it is a challenge that it requires the best minds we have to think this stuff through and all of us to engage with it creatively.

Collin Hansen
You’re really talking here, Andrew about a lot of this stuff of, of what we’re trying to do together at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. So we’re trying to do with the other fellows and the ideas were trying to think through in there, Ryan Berge has has a graph about the relationship between industrialization, GDP growth and religiosity. And the clear, the clear thesis is that they go hand in hand, the richer the country, the less religious it is, except for one country, which remains a significant outlines United States. And in a lot of ways, the United States was a bigger outlier before the last eight years, as you’re talking about right there. But what we see what we’re seeing with the book that birch contributed to the great the churching, with our friends, Mike Graham and Jim Davis, there’s potentially a lot of room to fall for the United States still, to catch up to Great Britain, France, Switzerland, different places like that. So that’s part of the urgency behind the work that we’re trying trying to do. And yet when we look back, it’s interesting that I don’t find many Christians today lamenting the fall of the Roman Empire. You know, sitting around saying, My goodness If only we still had the Roman Empire we’d be in great shape. And yet, what was that like, in the day for Christians when that did happen? But what did it produce? Well, now at least we don’t lament the fall of the Roman Empire. But we do celebrate the work of Augustine, which was produced in that milieu. You mentioned this earlier. But it’s interesting that the first, this very period that you’re talking about, was kind of a secular low in some ways. But certainly in the United States, it was between the two biggest periods of evangelical religiosity in American history. And so these developments that you’re talking about, produced, Jonathan Edwards, you know, first in his responses, and the first Great Awakening and Wesleyan Whitfield, and then it produced in the 18th century, the very aftermath of this 19th century, the largest expansion of religiosity in American history. So I just find the thing that’s so fascinating to me about history, I guess, it’s similar Andrea to why love sports. You don’t know where it’s gonna go. That’s what history teaches you that only God knows in his providence, what the next step is going to be. It’s always surprising you, if somebody knew from history, what was going to happen tomorrow, they’d be very rich and powerful people, but they don’t. So they that’s what makes it interesting. Just like if somebody always knew what was going to happen in sports, then they’d be very rich and powerful, but they don’t. That’s what makes it makes it really interesting here. We’re talking with Andrew Wilson here about his book remaking the world how 1776 created the post Christian West, published by crossway. I just got a kick out of this Andrew imagining Voltaire being described as a Protestant, pagan, I have not really appreciate that. What is a Protestant, pagan?

Andrew Wilson
So I, my argument in the book is that one of them is that the post Christian the weight the shape of post Christendom today is a product of two forces working together, one of which has been in has always been present in human societies, which is paganism understood in a sort of fairly, not in a pejorative way, by pagan I don’t mean, you know, stupid people or whatever, who worship the sun of the moon. I mean, people who believe that the transcendent, is located, which all all humans feel a sense of the transcendent. But it’s a question of where are we located, we located in this world, like paganism does or do but beyond the world, which is what monotheism does. And that paganism, in essence, is part of the explanation for what’s happening in the west today. And it’s clearly it’s not atheism, what we most of what we experienced in the west today. I think about 15 years ago, we thought it might be, but it doesn’t, that’s not the main, the main thing that’s going on here, it’s mostly a sort of spirituality is located within this world and self improvement. But mingled with that you have Protestantism, which is responsible for a lot of what the divisions in the 16th 17th and 18th centuries, which lead and it’s combination of Protestantism, and it’s the divisions that it kind of triggers all kind of confirms and amplifies. And the doubts that it weaponized and I’m an average person has anybody, right? So this is not like, I don’t like Protestant theology. This is just what historically what something that happens to Christendom, and it’s the fusion of Protestantism and paganism together that creates the kind of post Christian landscape we’re in. So when I call Voltaire or anyone else, a Protestant, pagan, what I mean is, they are someone who for whom a spirituality is located, or the Transcendent is located within this world. And Voltaire believed in God and was quite animated that people should, but spirituality meaning transcendent, the other, and the sense of heightened worship effectively is located within the world. But at the same time, a very Protestant iconoclastic, tearing down the sort of the statues in the old, we’ve got a new kind of world here. And we need to doubt the religious traditions that our fathers have handed down to us and run it all through the filter of for a Protestant scripture, and for an enlightenment reason. And Voltaire in that sense, is a very Protestant pagan figure. And so a lot of people around us. And so when I go into my coffee shop, and I see simultaneously invitations to a spiritual class of something or yogic exploring of this, whatever mingled with in this house, we believe that, you know, no creedal statement, Black Lives Matter lovers love kindness is everything. I think, wow. That’s a very Protestant statement alongside a very pagan vision of worship. And I think that’s, to me a pretty good two word summary of the kind of spiritual landscape of the west today.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, you talk in the book about this worldly sense of ultimacy happiness and meaning, where forms zeal, moral certainty, commitment to progress, a generally Christian moral framework, all those things are part of that process and pagan sense as well. Now, the Great Divergence. you’ve alluded to it before, but not my name has to be one of the most important transfer nations that I don’t think we can talk enough about. And I love this section that you wrote another little bit of a longer quote here, quote, if you put control oriented, analytic people in an individualistic urban environment, give them a sense that the world will one day be better than it is now. And suffuse them with a deep conviction that there is an intelligence behind all things whose secrets are just waiting to be unveiled, then you would expect such a society to value novelty and discovery, even if most of them remain religiously devout farmers. Give them a few centuries. And you might even expect them to produce Ben Franklin and quote, because little bit of the context here, Andrew, how you reach this conclusion amid endless academic debates over the nature of this economic explosion that began in the latter half of the 18th century?

Andrew Wilson
Yeah, so summarize, summarize why the West suddenly got richer and at

Collin Hansen
the age why you settled on this explanation? Yeah. Well, the other one that was that was out there.

Andrew Wilson
I basically think there are four main types of explanation. I read a bunch about it, and there’ll be people who are far more than me, but I think there are, there are explanations of the in great enrichments is generally the language I use, but you’re right, the Great Divergence, which are based on institutions, those people so this is because of, you know, free trade and governments having the right amount of laws, but not too much, and institutional explanations of the kind of things that people that the way that the economy works internally, and how governments function. There’s explanations based on basically Western greed, colonialism, slavery, resource extraction, killing, everybody’s stealing all their stuff, that kind of explanation. There’s explanations, which are then based on culture, which is what you’re describing the sort of sense that Western people over time, but partly through the instruments of Christianity, I think that’s a big reason, become sort of interested in novelty and discovery of new ideas, and start doubting, and eventually rejecting things that they’ve left behind. And then there’s explanations based on geography, which I in a way, I think, are the most foundational causes. And I think all four of those are important to factor in. I think that geography is a big part of it. But I think the reason why I the quote, you read out, I find a really compelling part of the story is because if you just one way to do this is to just look at all of the things that are invented would be a good little way into this in and he’s looking at, okay, so in the just the period, I’m talking about just the two or three years either side of 1776, you look at which the submarine the Astrup toilets, the micrometer, the steam engine, and then eventually on into railways and all of these other you just think these are huge, the vaccine, and you just massively important and influential that many, many of which we still use today, you’ve probably been vaccinated, you’ve probably got an extract toilet within a few yards of you right now. Anything. So why is it that almost all of those things were not just in, invented in northwestern Europe, actually almost all invented by English speaking people in either England, Wales, Scotland or North America. So what’s going on. And I try and dig into that say that actually, the threads behind that, in part is Protestantism, which produces all sorts of things like a desire for some of the sort of nebulous things like a belief that was gonna be better tomorrow than it is today, belief and provenance of a Creator God ordered laws, scientific understanding and research, but also produces literacy. And people were saying, God’s revealed himself in a book. So we better read, and you put a lot of those factors together and mix them in with, you know, Francis Bacon and some other other key thinkers there as well. You end up with a very Protestant heavy emphasis on Discovery. Now, that’s just one slice of it. But I think it’s a good example of how of the connection between Protestantism, discovery, novelty curiosity, and the economic miracle that we now all live in the good offers. We’re having this conversation I take

Collin Hansen
for granted. Yeah, completely take for granted. Yeah. So

Andrew Wilson
it’s a big complicated story. But I, I think it’s this is a very much a big part of it. I think alongside it, there are some very contingent material things about where the water and the wood and the coal and the minerals and all that stuff are, which we really need to talk about a lot as well. But I think there’s the fusion of those two, the ideas and the material realities, which create what we have today.

Collin Hansen
He calls the book Andrew with 18th century Christian responses to 1776. Which of them do you love the most?

Andrew Wilson
I think, I mean, I love them all, obviously, and talk about grace, freedom and truth talk about abolitionism religious liberty, the emphasis on the person experience of grace, particularly in hymns and personal testimonies. I think the two individuals who I find feel the most effective For all owed Equiano and Johann Georg Harman Equiano fee is just astonishing is it is an enslaved person who gets liberated it gets converted, and then becomes an abolitionist and just an extraordinary man really his testimony of God’s grace in his life. I think the person who I found the most intellectually stimulating though to me was Harmon, who is this genius of a philosopher who gets almost everybody who has ever written anything influential in philosophy at the time. Kant, Hegel, eventually Kierkegaard Gert? Oh, we all say this guy is a genius, you must be what he’s saying is brilliant. And he’s just a prankster. He’s got an incredible sense of humor. And he’s this sort of German philosopher who is a brilliant Christian thinker, who basically outflank the enlightenment on its own terms, and I think he and the way he conceptualizes Christian truth, and what it has to say to the Enlightenment is probably my favorite Christian response. I also think he’s the hardest to understand that most people don’t realize it right in German, all of his stuff hasn’t been translated yet. So he’s not an easy person to just jump in and go right, where should I start my devotions? He’s not that guy. But such a compelling, funny, whimsical and brilliant thinker. So he’s probably the person that I kind of feel like if someone read my book, and then went, What’s the what’s the 18th century source? I’d now most like to read next. I hope it would either be hollowed Equiano is interesting narrative, or some of Harmons work. I just think they’re amazing.

Collin Hansen
Got two questions here with Andrew Wilson, talking about his book remaking the world. How 1776 created the post Christian West published by crossway. All right, very, very important question here, Andrew. I visited Oliver Cromwell’s house in Ely, during my summers visit to England. I don’t ask you the same question. The museum asks everyone at the end, Hero or villain?

Andrew Wilson
Depends if you’re Irish. I think it would be a village of many. It is that there’s a lovely quote. I don’t remember who said it. But I heard it through the rest of History podcast where they said, you can tell everything you need to know about a man’s politics by which side he would have fought on at the Battle of master as in would, you know, Cavaliers and Roundheads? And actually, I think it’s a great question. I have got quite Cromwellian instincts on a whole bunch of things. I’m probably more sectarian. I’m probably more of a round head than a Cavalier, although as a kid, I always wanted to be a cabinet. And they sounded cool. But I think in the end, I’m not I’m I but I think it’s still maps through to debates and in Britain today about Brexit, you know, leave and remain. And there’s even maps, you can see about where the where people were pro Cromwell and where they were pro Qing, and mapping that on to today, who votes to leave and who votes to remain in the Brexit referendum? So it’s the debate in many ways that’s still being played out. I would always lean more on the Cromwellian side. But I think certainly, if you had any Irish brothers or sisters listening, they would definitely save it. And I’m sure I think

Collin Hansen
as a as a Protestant, non Catholic, non Irish American, I got to the end, and I, I, you know, dropped my coin or whatever, in the hero side of things. And hard not to do that when you’re thinking about the connection to the Puritans and America’s founding things like that. But I was there with, with a man from Canada, a student there a PhD student at Cambridge, he was just appalled. Looks like how could you possibly think that? How could you do that like, Well, I think we also have the differences between Canada and the United States. Yes,

Andrew Wilson
yeah. Yeah, totally.

Collin Hansen
Well, like, give me one last one last question here. Andrew, tell us about your new podcast. Tell us about your new podcast with the gospel coalition, the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. Post Christianity question, Mark. Tell us a little bit about this. Yeah,

Andrew Wilson
it’s it’s, it’s really exciting. So Glenn Scrivener, and I had both written I think, very, really quite different kinds of book written at different levels with different focuses, but both really trying to do the same thing. So his book, The air, we breathe in my book remake, and one, both attempts, I think, to say, to the church, here’s the story of how you got here. And here’s how you can learn from that to understand the world around you and to serve it better with the gospel. And so we thought the idea of doing a podcast together and exploring post Christianity as a topic, so both telling the story about how we got here, and then how the church can respond would be a really fun idea. But particularly because God and I pretty much neighbors, he lives 100 yards away from me, we could just go down the road and record in a studio and have a live conversation, which was really, really fun. And then we’ve got some guests who are just brilliant. And so we got Kyle Harper, who’s is not a believer, but he’s a very interesting historian of the ancient world, particularly until fascinating books recently on disease and in particularly, we looked at his book on sex and the transformation of that in through Christianity. And we’ve got cold Truman, whose book The rising trend for the modern self will be familiar to some listeners. And he came and join us on the podcast. And then Rebecca McLaughlin, who I mentioned earlier. And Colin, and particularly Rebecca talked a lot about the more practical AI, how do we reach people in post Christianity? And so we have eight episodes. And there’s a, I just found them. I mean, of course, I would say this, but they were really, they were just really stimulating, Glenn is just so clever, and hides his learning so well. So he just asked such insightful things. But as if he’s just thought of them. Without sounding like a nerd. It’s really compelling. And so the two of us just sort of chatting away about all the different dynamics. But he’s Glenn is also an evangelist by I’m a pastor, he’s an evangelist, we both have to do the other. The other thing as well, of course, but it was really interesting. So we both spent a lot of time preaching and acting this out in local church live. So I hope it’s also got some, some pasta really evangelistically helpful application as well as I trust some interesting history and cultural reflection. So I guess they’re brilliant. So yeah, I’m, I’m really excited to have that coming out. I think it’s coming out somewhere, you might not know actually mid October, I think,

Collin Hansen
either. We’re recording this in mid September. But it’ll either be out, or it’ll be out enough where you can go find it on Apple podcasts and go ahead and subscribe. I’m just gonna say this is not very complicated. If you’re watching on YouTube, or you’re listening on your favorite podcast app, and you like this conversation, or you listened to anything that I do in Gospel bound, I guarantee you’re gonna love this podcast. It’s not a complicated, asked there. These themes that we’re talking about here come up frequently, but a lot of the things that we’re working on, that we’re working through with different authors on gospel bound, come through in there. And it’s just a very high priority for the gospel Coalition for the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. That sense in which as they talked about the ambiguity of post Christianity, then in some ways we remain these Protestant pagans, these, the you know, our culture of being very obviously and exclusively Christian, in ways that very few people recognize as they reject the confession of the faith in favor of a more pagan, this worldly application. So you’ll see them work through those tensions. I think you’ll find it fascinating, just like Andrew is saying here. So go subscribe to post Christianity. Question mark from Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson, pick up the book remaking the world how 1776 created the post Christian West. And Andrew I want to close with with this quote, it’s good one from you. comes from the comes from your conclusion, he writes this fidelity score is higher than novelty. Loss of influence is not a cause for panic. The doctrines, experiences and practices that the church needs today are much the same as the ones she needed in the 18th century and the 10th. And the second, we are responsible for obedience, not outcomes. Faithfulness, not fruit. If we do not see the results we used to by praying, worshiping reading scripture, serving the poor, preaching the gospel, sharing the sacraments and loving one another. We carry on with those things regardless, and walk by faith not by sight, genuine revival when it comes is that God’s initiative rather than ours. In the meantime, we wait rejoicing always praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances, and resolving not to be anxious about tomorrow, for we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Andrew Wilson, thanks for joining me on gospel bound.

Andrew Wilson
Thank you so much for having me. I really really enjoyed this conversation.