Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

Can pastors endorse political candidates? Troy Miller, president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters, explains NRB’s Johnson Amendment lawsuit against the IRS. The Johnson Amendment was added to the tax code in 1954 by then Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. It bars 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Miller explains why NRB went to court in 2024 and why the case was narrowed to pastors speaking to their congregations. He also explains how a consent decree with the Justice Department now depends on an appeal to the Fifth Circuit over the Anti-Injunction Act. He and James clarify what the case would and would not change for churches, broadcasters, and podcasters. The conversation questions the assumption that keeping faith out of public life produces neutrality. Miller argues that someone’s worldview always guides law and policy. He traces a long history of pastors speaking to moral questions, from the Black Robe Regiment to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms. James weighs the risks of pastors speaking about candidates and why the case may matter most for local politics. He also notes the irony that for-profit corporations face fewer limits on political activity than nonprofits. In this episode: What is the Johnson Amendment, and how did Lyndon B. Johnson add it to the tax code in 1954? Why National Religious Broadcasters sued the IRS, and what the consent decree with the Justice Department would protect The Anti-Injunction Act and NRB’s appeal to the Fifth Circuit Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, and the separation of church and state Why the case covers pastors and their broadcasts but not other Christian broadcasters or podcasters Guest: Troy Miller, president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters. Go deeper: Christians and PoliticsAbout Troy Miller: thinkingchristian.org/guests/troy-miller Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don’t settle for a narrower vision than God’s word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Subscribe: YouTube · Apple Podcasts · SpotifyAdvertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Why should Christians engage politics? Vincent Bacote of Wheaton College argues that political engagement needs a theological foundation, not an ad hoc approach. Vincent Bacote, professor of theology and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College, joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma to ground political life in stewardship and common grace. Politics, he argues, is one part of humanity's larger calling to manage the world God gave us, and Americans hold more political agency than most people in history. That agency changes how we read Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2. Many evangelicals can say they should care about politics but cannot say why from what they believe. Bacote and Spencer trace how issues get handed to Christians by trusted leaders rather than formed by theology, and how that has let evangelicals be defined as a voting bloc. Bacote also presses on James Davison Hunter's faithful presence: start small, because you are not the Messiah, but keep dreaming of a better common good. In this episode: Why Christians need a theological foundation, not an ad hoc approach, for political engagement Common grace, Abraham Kuyper, Psalm 8, and the stewardship of public life Romans 13:1–4, 1 Peter 2, and what changes when citizens have political agency Voting as public witness, evangelical identity, and how race and abortion became political issues James Davison Hunter's faithful presence, small steps, and how to keep politicians from drawing our lines Guest: Vincent Bacote, professor of theology and director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College. Go deeper: Christians and Politics About Vincent Bacote: thinkingchristian.org/guests/vincent-bacote Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction. Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.org About James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/james The Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/framework Order Digital Discernment: amazon.com Subscribe: YouTube · Apple Podcasts · Spotify Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Michael Rhodes — lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand, former pastor, and author of Practicing the King's Economy and Just Discipleship — returns to discuss his new book, Reimagining Biblical Politics: What Scripture Says About Public Life and Why It Matters. Rhodes wrote the book deliberately without addressing contemporary American political issues, hoping to give a partisan-divided church something it could use together. His argument is that Scripture speaks about politics constantly, and in many voices: John says get out of Babylon, Jeremiah says seek its welfare, Paul says submit and also flees a trial he considers unjust, and the Hebrew midwives lie to Pharaoh and are blessed for it. Underneath the diversity, one claim holds everything together — the Lord reigns. He distinguishes outpost politics, the public life of a people living under God's reign, from pilgrim politics, how that people engages nations that don't recognize it. Both are political; only one usually gets called that. The conversation turns to why churches gather less diversity than their neighborhoods, what Rhodes learned from a conversation after Trayvon Martin's death, and why Daniel worked for Nebuchadnezzar and criticized him anyway. Go deeper: Christians & Politics Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Find more from Michael at https://michaeljrhodes.substack.com Chapters: 00:00 The book, the podcast, the Substack 02:12 A choir of political voices 06:25 Faithful action that doesn't look alike 09:38 Outpost politics and pilgrim politics 14:04 Why blurred lines are a gift 18:34 What Scripture demands and what it leaves open 22:33 Rounding up at the checkout 25:07 Where local political action actually happens 29:09 Is justice the church's job or the state's? 32:33 The house church in China 34:19 The lines churches inherit 38:13 Who arranges the chairs 42:00 Same footage, different verdict 46:13 Who sets the table 51:30 Daniel worked for Nebuchadnezzar and criticized him 52:20 Learning to see what you're not seeing 59:49 When presidents quote Scripture about America 1:03:12 Designed poor: a Memphis neighborhood Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Continuing the faith and politics series, James Spencer and Ashish Varma turn to artificial intelligence — starting with the data centers going up across the country, which consume enormous land, power, and water while generating far fewer local jobs than the factories and mills they're often compared to. From there the conversation widens. Both push on the promise of efficiency: whether a technology that lets you work faster has actually given anyone time back, what gets lost when a middle schooler reaches for the calculator instead of the long-form work, and why the steps toward a goal may matter as much as the goal. James introduces the idea of the tyranny of small decisions — that we adopt technologies one at a time, with clear near-term benefits and no view of where the accumulation leads — and argues that Christians at least have a telos against which to measure the trade. They also discuss what a soft transhumanism looks like when it becomes ambient, why converging interests don't require a conspiracy, and where ordinary practices of resistance are still available. Chapters (approximate, from speaker turns — verify against the final cut): 00:00 Data centers: land, power, water, and jobs that don't come 02:25 Does theology touch everyday life at all? 06:39 The efficiency promise, and what it actually delivered 12:49 Efficiency for whom? Paper, batteries, and hidden costs 15:00 The calculator, the long way, and what process builds 16:30 Phil Jackson and trusting the steps 18:33 The tyranny of small decisions 22:45 No telos, no way to weigh a trade-off 25:06 What would you give up to not have the data center? 26:00 Sealed devices and the compromises we already made 32:17 Vinyl, print books, flip phones: the analog return 36:29 Practices of resistance: skip the summary, read the page 43:10 Local action and Hauerwas on assimilation 45:27 Converging interests aren't a conspiracy 51:00 Soft transhumanism and the limits we can't engineer away 58:20 Bodies that need to move, creation that has limits 1:02:00 Atrophy: what we lose the capacity to do Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Horror is one of the few genres that refuses to let you look away, and it is one of the few that got people back into theaters after COVID. Dr. Kutter Callaway of Fuller Theological Seminary joins Dr. James Spencer to talk about his new book, Be Afraid: What Horror Reveals About Facing the Darkness, and what happens when a self-described scaredy cat decides to study the genre like an anthropologist instead of writing it off. The conversation moves from the difference between the best of horror and the tenth sequel, to the common Christian worry that watching a film exposes you to something spiritually dangerous, to the argument that fear itself is not the problem since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Callaway makes the case that the real question is where our fears are pointed and which systems are training them. Along the way they discuss Stranger Things and the institutions that manufacture the monsters, the shift from defeating the monster to living with it as a picture of trauma, Albert Borgmann on the inconspicuous patterns that reshape a life, and why the slasher genre only works if we already believe bodies are sacred. The episode closes where horror and artificial intelligence meet, on embodiment, and why a disembodied future should trouble Christians more than anything on the screen. Go deeper: Dorothy Sayers, Film, and Christian Art Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Find the book at beafraidbook.com. Find more from Kutter at https://www.kuttercallaway.com. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

American Christians with his answer: the church’s task is to preach the word of God. Asked whether churches should urge members to enlist, buy war bonds, and preach the issues of the war, Barth answers with a counter-question: does the church know its mission is to preach the word of God according to Scripture? From there he supports the fight against Hitler while refusing to let the church become an instrument of the state, rejecting both identification with any political party and a “timeless” spiritual ministry cut off from the present. James and Ashish connect this to the Barmen Declaration, Stanley Hauerwas, and the German Christians’ surrender to Nazism. Barth challenged 93 American Protestant leaders who claimed that Christian principles depended on winning the war, and the same reasoning returns in every “most crucial election.” James and Ashish argue that the church must speak its own language rather than a party’s talking points, loving the world on God’s terms rather than its own. Being in the world but not of it, they suggest, is a matter of allegiance, not only personal morality. In this episode: What is the true function of the church in wartime, according to Karl Barth? Should the church identify with any political party? Why Barth rejects a “timeless” spirituality and calls the present God’s time The Barmen Declaration and the German Christians’ capitulation to Nazism Speaking the church’s own language instead of a political party’s talking points Go deeper: Christians and Politics Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don’t settle for a narrower vision than God’s word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Subscribe: YouTube · Apple Podcasts · SpotifyAdvertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Is war the judgment of God? James Spencer and Ashish Varma take up the second question in Karl Barth’s wartime letter to American Christians, and whether some are more guilty than others. Barth answers yes, and James argues that judgment is part of how humans, as God’s image, reflect God after the fall. The conversation separates recognizing evil as evil from deciding how to carry out judgment, works through Hosea’s picture of wrath giving way to mercy, and asks why Barth saw World War II as a fight that had to be fought. Restraining evil before it spreads, they suggest, is part of what judgment is for. Many Christians remember World War II as a clean contest between good and evil. James and Ashish question that framing, and the language of more and less guilt behind it, pointing to Churchill’s policies in India, the Allies’ tolerance of Jim Crow, and the early indifference to Hitler documented at Nuremberg’s Documentation Center. By placing Romans 3:23 beside Romans 13:1–7, Barth leaves no one off the hook while still insisting that evil must be resisted. In this episode: Is war the judgment of God on humankind, and is anyone less guilty? Romans 13:1–7 and Romans 3:23 in Karl Barth’s answer Judgment and mercy in Hosea, and whether God’s judgment is delayed or suspended Why “more guilty” and “less guilty” can excuse the side we favor Oliver O’Donovan’s The Ways of Judgment and earthly authorities as “secondary theaters” of God’s judgment Go deeper: Christians and Politics Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don’t settle for a narrower vision than God’s word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Subscribe: YouTube · Apple Podcasts · SpotifyAdvertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Shane J. Wood, professor of New Testament and its origins at Ozark Christian College and author of Thinning the Veil, returns for the eighth episode in the faith and politics series — this time on Revelation. Wood argues that the question the series has been circling is the question Revelation opens with. Christians in Asia Minor were living under an emperor in decline, caught in a conflict they hadn't chosen, and the book was written to tell them how to stand. Much of the conversation is about definitions. When the crucified king is at the center, what counts as victory changes — which is why Smyrna's reward for faithfulness is that things will get worse. Wood reads Pliny's letter to Trajan as a Roman governor's genuine confusion at a group whose stubbornness took the form of being better citizens than his citizens. They also discuss why worship was a national security matter in Rome, the iconography of Washington, why obedience and subversion both have textual warrant, and Wood's closing claim: that the early church regarded the emperor as a figure to be pitied rather than feared. Go deeper: Christians & Politics Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Find more from Shane at hsi website https://www.shanejwood.com Chapters: 00:00 Welcome back 02:13 The situation Revelation was written into 04:05 Paul, household codes, and relocating structures 06:09 Obedience and subversion: holding the spectrum 07:08 Rome is too small a target 10:56 Smyrna: victory that looks like more suffering 13:34 Pliny, Trajan, and a governor's confusion 16:40 Sacred order and why Christians couldn't comply 17:58 Worship as national security in Rome 20:22 Civil religion, grammar, and iconography 23:36 A Roman historian walks into the Lincoln Memorial 26:19 The slow descent, not the sudden conversion 29:10 The verses we carve and the ones we don't 31:19 Matthew 28: discipleship as political 34:40 Matthew retelling Israel's story 38:05 When governing authority overreaches 40:52 Nero, Domitian, and emperors in decline 45:23 Pharaoh who knew not Joseph 46:44 The church as guide, not political strategist 48:05 The true enemy behind the empire 50:30 Pity, not fear Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

In 1942, Karl Barth was asked to write to Christians in the United States. He didn't know the American context well, so he asked his hosts to send him the questions they were actually wrestling with. James Spencer and Ashish Varma work through the first of them: how can a Christian be a loyal citizen of a national state and a loyal member of a church that transcends national interests? Barth's answer turns on a distinction between the national state and what he calls the righteous state — the God-instituted order the church prays toward when it prays for God's will on earth. James and Ashish trace what that means in practice: that a state serving only its own interests forfeits any claim to righteousness, that the church is not identical with the kingdom it hopes for, and that protest and resistance are forms of loyalty rather than betrayals of it. The conversation sets Barth against the German Christian church of his day, the Augustinian figure of the pilgrim, Jeremiah's shock that God would use Babylon, and the question of what any of it means at a ballot box. First of a series on the letter. Chapters (approximate, from speaker turns — verify against the final cut): 00:00 The backstory: why Barth wrote this letter 02:19 Question one: loyal citizen, loyal to the church universal 03:25 Is the nation state a recent invention? 04:55 The righteous state and the kingdom of God 08:13 The church hopes for the kingdom but isn't identical with it 13:31 Volk, blood, and the purity of the land 19:32 Reading Barth: resist everything incompatible 24:37 Why resistance is loyalty, not betrayal 26:26 The state that serves only itself ceases to be righteous 28:16 Empire, India, and the limits of the good-guy story 34:07 No white hats and black hats 39:26 "Righteous" in scare quotes 41:45 "We shall have our hands full" 43:57 Jeremiah, Babylon, and God using pagan nations 47:18 Augustine's pilgrim: belonging to a place without being owned by it 51:37 Narrowing, and what the church broadens 54:49 Single-issue voting and playing by the world's rules Tags/keywords: Karl Barth, Letter to American Christians, Barth 1942, Christian nationalism, church and state, kingdom of God, German Christian church, Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer, Augustine pilgrim, political theology, Christian citizenship, single-issue voting, Christians and politics Follow and subscribe Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org Website: www.thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Michael McDuffee — formerly professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute, now living in Germany — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the seventh episode in the faith and politics series. The conversation starts with an essay by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas, a lifelong child of the Enlightenment, found himself after 2001 asking whether reason alone could carry the weight of a public ethics, and began describing modern societies as post-secular. McDuffie uses that as a way into the collapse of secularization theory: the assumption that modernization would inevitably shrink religion turned out to describe Europe, not the world. His sharper claim is that the secular was never a neutral condition but a strategy — a way of categorizing peoples and ideas that maintained a particular hegemony, and one whose vulnerability has opened room for voices it had kept out. They apply this to America, which McDuffee argues was post-secular before the term existed. The last stretch takes on 1776 and 1619 together, arguing both frameworks share a blind spot, and ends on coveting, idolatry, and Francis of Assisi as a model for finding a voice. Go deeper: Christians & Politics Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers. Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.Episodes, articles, and questions: thinkingchristian.orgAbout James Spencer: thinkingchristian.org/jamesThe Thinking Christian Framework: thinkingchristian.org/frameworkOrder Digital Discernment: amazon.com Advertising and partnership inquiries: info@thinkingchristian.org Chapters: 00:00 Introductions 01:19 Habermas and an awareness of what is missing 06:21 Durkheim, France, and the durability of religion 08:38 Why secularization theory described Europe, not the world 11:43 Liberalism, neoliberalism, and the sovereign individual 17:47 Post-secular doesn't mean the secular is over 21:28 The secular as a deliberate strategy 25:00 From Hellenized being to deism to history to ideology 31:44 What post-secular opens up 37:31 Postmodernism gave voices the chops 45:50 A nation with the soul of a church 51:20 1776 and 1619 share a blind spot 57:17 Creation, not nature 1:00:27 Coveting, idolatry, and the inclusio of the Decalogue Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.