Dr. David VanDrunen from Westminster Seminary California joins Mark and Rex to discuss his recent book, Politics after Christendom.

TRANSCRIPT

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Jessup thing podcast. I'm Taylor, the producer of the show. I'm here to let you know that these summer episodes are reruns of previous episodes from season two of the show. These were handpicked by Mark and Rex themselves.

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And here they are with a few thoughts. Everyone welcome into our summer of classic reruns. We're hand selected for episodes that kind of highlight guests we've had over this last year that really hit key topics that are important in this first one is Dr. David VanDrunen is professor of theology and ethics down in Southern California. And he's going to be talking about his book politics after Christendom.

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And we recorded this actually almost a year ago and it's still as pertinent today as it was on the day we recorded it.

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Yeah, hope you enjoy. Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host, Mark Moore, and your co host, Rex Gurney. And Rex we have on the show today, Dr. David VanDrunen. He's the Robert B. strippable, Associate Professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at Westminster Seminary in Southern California. And he's on the show to talk to us today about his new book, politics after Christendom. And

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I think we will all find this a fascinating conversation. He has a lot of really interesting things to say.

1:22

Yes, we hope you enjoy the show. Well, Dr. VanDrunen, and it really is a pleasure to have you on the episode. So excited to talk about this topic. I think it's so important, especially maybe for this year, being an election year. And just understanding politics and Christian life, understanding our role in as the church in politics. And and we're here to kind of talk about your new book politics after Christendom that was put out by Zondervan academic. So we want to give a shout out to Zondervan academic for connecting us and for sending us a copy to be able to dive into. And even with that title, it really caught my eye. And one of the reasons why I reached out to you is that idea of politics, after Christendom and so some people may have a little bit of question of what what do you mean by Christendom? So can we start maybe there by by defining Christendom, as we kind of move into what what it looks like to have to politics after that?

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Yeah, sure. That's a I think that is a good place to start. Because when when you hear the word, Christendom, people don't always use it in the same way. So when I use that, in the book, I'm referring to this, you might say this long experience or experiment, primarily in European countries that lasted really from the very early Middle Ages until really, a within the last few centuries, in which it was generally regarded that these companies societies were regarded as holistically integrated Christian communities. So just for some historical perspective, of course, when the gospel was first proclaimed, after after Christ's death and resurrection, in the Roman Empire, the the early Christian church was this tiny minority. They faced a lot of opposition and persecution from the authorities. The Roman Empire was officially pagan, you might say they had their gods that they worshipped. And it was not comfortable for those who didn't want to worship those gods. And yet, after a few centuries, you might say the tide began to turn the Roman emperors who were who began to profess the name of Christ, and the Roman Empire became officially Christian. And it wasn't as though church and state became indistinguishable or something. There were still distinctions between church and state and families and universities and trade associations since but at the same time, it was understood that all of these were united by a common Christian profession. And as part of that, the understanding was is that the civil authorities would be supporting i