Vinh was born in South Vietnam, just eight months after it fell to the communists in 1975. His family lost everything and fled the country when he was three and a half years old. They joined the legendary “boat people” and sailed into the South China Sea, even though they had no destination in mind. ...

Many of us are stunned by harsh and mean-spirited comments from both sides of the political aisle — whether from presidential candidates or our own Facebook friends. In Today’s Conversation, Leith Anderson talks with Richard Mouw on incivility in the public square and how to address it.

In this podcast, you’ll hear from a distinguished evangelical statesman, who has spent much of his life and career addressing civility, on:

How to bring "conviction" and "civility" together;

The differences between the tenor of today's public discourse and that of past decades;

Which Bible passages challenge our own rhetoric; and

How the cultural marginalization of evangelicals impacts the way we interact with others.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: So let’s begin by making sure we agree on terms. So how do you define “civility”? What does it look like? What does it sound like?

Richard: Civility is — to put in kind of more basic terms — it’s just being a respectful person in public life. The word comes from the word “civitas” for “city” and in the ancient Greek state — city state — civility was learning how to get along after you’ve learned how to get along with kinfolk — later on with friends — learning how to treat people in the public square from different nations, lifestyles, different races, religions, with a genuine respect that took their fundamental shared humanness with you seriously.

Leith: Well today, in the USA, it is a topic of frequent conversation, because it sort of feels like American public life is unusually divided — political attack ads; people forward emails with inaccurate messages; there are all these social media posts, many of which are just intended to provoke incivility. So it’s certainly not difficult to find it, and there are real policy changes and differences along the way, but there’s a question that many of us are asking, “Is that the way we have to be? Does it really need to be so mean-spirited in today’s political world?”

Richard: As a Christian I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the way we have to be. It’s certainly not the way Christians have to be. But I think given our created humanness, it’s not the way we’re made to be. We’re made to respect people, to acknowledge that people with whom we disagree are created in God’s image and that they deserve a civility from us. So I think it’s a very important time to be saying, “This is not the way it’s supposed to be.”

Leith: It begs the question of whether or not things are different now than they’ve been in the past. CNN has recently run a series about previous presidential elections, and I’ve seen only a few of them but I’m kind of stunned to find out about some of the uncivil things that have been done in the past. But what’s different today in public discourse? Or is it just the same way it’s always been, and we’ve just sort of idealized the past and demonized the present?

Richard: I think there are really two different answers to that. And the one is, even if it’s not brand new, we’re surrounded by it much more. I mean in the old days, when I was being raised on television, you watched the Camel News Caravan for 15 minutes at night and a little bit of Walter Cronkite or something, but today, it’s 24/7 — you can tune in any time. And the coverage that’s given — I mean the tremendous media coverage — and then furthermore, just the ways in which people interact with each other on the web. I was a columnist for something called Beliefnet for awhile. I would write something, and somebody in the comments section would say something to disagree with me and somebody else would disagree with them, and there may be 143 comments, but only the first couple have anything to do with me. People are shouting at each other — as it were — on the internet, and I think we’re just seeing it a lot more.

In this podcast, you’ll hear from a distinguished evangelical statesman, who has spent much of his life and career addressing civility, on: How to bring “conviction” and “civility” together; The differences between the tenor of today’s public discourse and that of past decades; Which Bible passages challenge our own rhetoric; and How the cultural marginalization of evangelicals impacts the way ...

In Today’s Conversation, Leith Anderson and Nick Hall talk about evangelism among young people and the spirituality of young adults in America.

In his junior year of college, Nick wrote a paper about how to reach his generation with the gospel. The paper went viral and turned into a student-led movement of over 1,000 students responding to the gospel, and then spread out to other campuses, reaching more than 50,000 in just a couple years. Nick has now shared the gospel at hundreds of events to millions of students and is regularly featured as a speaker for pastors gatherings, training events and festivals around the world.

In this podcast, you’ll hear Leith and Nick discuss:

The state of evangelism in the United States today;

Nick's personal calling as an evangelist;

What young people want in a local church;

Messages that help reach the younger generation for Christ; and

How evangelism and discipleship work together.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Let’s talk about you. And let’s talk about young evangelists. It seems to me that there were more evangelists a generation ago then there are today. So, are there many of you out there?

Nick: You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know if there’d be many who want to claim to be like me. I don’t know I’m the cool kid, so I’m not sure if there’d be many that would want that reputation. But it is an interesting time. As you said, it seems like a generation before maybe the word “evangelist” — or being in that vocation — was a more prominent field. And I would say it’s certainly true that fewer and fewer people seem to be grabbing onto that vocation, or mantle, or whatever you want to call it. There are a few people out there certainly that we know of, but we really feel like it’s a church kind of dynamic where the church has kind of stopped talking about the evangelist as a vocation. And so I believe that there are just as many evangelists as there always was, because God hasn’t stopped calling these different offices and different people in the Church. But I think that the Church has maybe stopped making as much of an emphasis on that vocation, largely probably in reaction to some of the negative things that happened in previous generations — whether it be prosperity or scandal or whatever else. But it seems to be not exactly the most popular word when you say “evangelist” today.

Leith: Well, let’s trace your journey. So you start out writing a college paper — I wonder when you were writing it if you ever imagined the impact that it would have — and then from that college paper to full-time evangelism and worldwide ministry. How did this work? What’s the trajectory here?

Nick: Yeah, well, at the end of the day — I think as in so many things — as God calls, and God enables, and God opens doors. You know, for me I was 19 years old, I was a freshman in college, and God really was rearranging my life around this calling towards evangelism and being an evangelist. And the only guy I knew of who was an evangelist was Billy Graham. And you know, you talk to young people today they don’t know who Billy Graham is. But for me, I knew that his book was on my grandparents’ coffee table, and I knew my parents used to have Billy Graham crusades on the television at home. And so I read his biography cover to cover and started praying, and God really gave me this statement of “My life exists to put Christ at the pulse of a generation.” Hence, where the word “pulse” came in, was really from this statement.

And so, as you said, I really wrote this paper in my English class. I was a junior when that happened — a secular university back in North Dakota — and really from there, God just began opening doors. I was traveling with the Billy Graham and Luis Palau teams, and really learning under these individuals that had been my heroes — travelin...

In his junior year of college, Nick wrote a paper about how to reach his generation with the gospel. The paper went viral and turned into a student-led movement of over 1,000 students responding to the gospel, and then spread out to other campuses, reaching more than 50,000 in just a couple years. Nick has ...

In Today’s Conversation, Leith Anderson and Walter Kim discuss race and the Bible.

We talk about race a lot in the United States. Whether it's the growing population of Asian Americans, trends in Latino immigration, or racial unrest in metropolitan cities, race plays a major role in the American experience. As evangelicals, we want to start with the Bible.

In this podcast, you’ll hear from a respected pastor and theologian on:

What — if anything — the Bible says about race;

How the Tower of Babel and Pentecost relate to diversity;

The racial situation among first century Christians; and

How Christians today ought to respond to racism and racialization.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Events of the last couple of years in Ferguson, Baltimore, South Carolina, and other places in our country have exposed long-standing injustices and misunderstandings between those in black and white communities and have brought the issue of race to the forefront of many discussions. As evangelicals we want to start with the Bible. What does the Bible have to say about race? That’s the focus of our conversation today, so thanks for joining us, Walter. First, let’s just get right to a basic question — making sure we’re on the same page. What are we talking about when we use the word “race”? What does that mean?

Walter: Well, it depends who you ask. If you ask a biologist or sociologist, they would give different answers, but I think functionally when most people consider the issue of race, they associate it with perceptions of physical or genetic characteristics. Characteristics like skin color or facial features, black or white skin tone, Latino or Asian facial features. And it’s this particular access and definition of race that is probably most present on the consciousness of people as they raise this issue to address.

Leith: And I’m assuming that most people notice. I’m sensing that in some cultures this is a bigger deal than it is in others. I had sort of an embarrassing moment recently. I was at a conference with an African American friend, and the topic was race. And a few months later, we were talking about one of the speakers there. And the race of the speaker came up, and I said the person was Caucasian. My friend said the speaker was African American. I looked it up, and I was wrong and he was right. So is our culture more or less addressing and sensitive to this than others in history and around the world?

Walter: I think this really gets at the issue of categorization. As humans we have a finite ability to organize all the information that comes through our senses, and so of course we’re going to try to come up with ways of categorizing the information. And when it comes to people, one of the ways we attempt to categorize is by the features that we see with our eyes and associate with a certain set of meanings — a person’s origin or value or so-forth. This really isn’t a problem just for North Americans; this is really a function of being human —the need to categorize. The real question is: Are the categories that we use appropriate, or can they be misused? And this is where we in America have gotten ourselves into a very complex and challenging situation.

Leith: Let’s tie that back to the Bible. Does the word “race” even appear in the Bible?

Walter: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. The Bible is completely comfortable with this notion of categorization. In fact if you go to the Old Testament in Genesis Chapter 10, categories are in fact used to divide humans. And so you have these table of nations. So you read about the sons of Japheth. “And from these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each within its own language.” The categories that exist — at least in this passage — are territories (geographical categories...

We talk about race a lot in the United States. Whether it’s the growing population of Asian Americans, trends in Latino immigration, or racial unrest in metropolitan cities, race plays a major role in the American experience. As evangelicals, we want to start with the Bible. In this podcast, you’ll hear from a respected pastor ...

Evangelicals are good news people who want to bless others. There are many ways to do this including politics and voting. But sometimes it’s hard to know what is actually going on inside elections.

Nathan Gonzales regularly appears on Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News, the Newshour on PBS, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, Fox News and others as an expert on political races. And his political analysis has been published in USA TODAY, Roll Call, The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, among others.

Congressional candidates come to Washington, D.C., to be interviewed by Nathan as his critique can make the difference in getting financial and political support when running for office.

In Today's Conversation, you'll hear Leith and Nathan discuss:

The impact of local and state elections in federal governing;

How analysts predict election outcomes;

The importance of the Iowa Caucus and other early turnouts for the presidential race;

How congressional districts are set; and

Tips for researching a candidate.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: So it’s probably an understatement, Nathan, to say that you are very busy these days as you engage in the next election.

Nathan: Yeah, it seems like there used to be an off year, but there’s no such thing as an off year anymore, so it keeps us — it keeps me — on my toes.

Leith: It keeps us on our toes with the continued political news. Well, evangelicals are good news people, so we want to bless others. There are lots of ways of doing this, including through politics and voting. But sometimes, with all the media going on it’s hard to know what’s actually going on. And it might be — I don’t know — the sociologist in me, but I’m always fascinated by how elections work and how do analysts predict election outcomes. So, you’re the expert on this, thanks for the opportunity to look inside of elections and politics. And I wanted to start out by asking, how did you get into this most unusual occupation that is yours?

Nathan: Well, I know that God has a plan, but I really kind of stumbled into it. I’d always been interested in writing. When I was a kid, my friend, we’d sell lemonade at the lemonade stand, and I would sell my star wars stories that I had written. And so I’d always been interested in writing, but my senior year when I was an undergrad at Vanguard University in California, I came to Washington D.C. through something called the American Studies Program and I really caught the political bug. I spent half my time that semester in classes and actually meeting, getting to know Heather, which was a very important part of my life, but also I interned in the White House Press office. Now this was a few presidents ago, but I think just being there and seeing the reporters, the White House Press Corps really struck a chord with me, and so I figured out that politics is what I want to write about. And it started giving me a focus. My first job out of college was at CNN. It was fantastic. I was working for the political section of the website. But then there was a merger between AOL and Time Warner, and things got messy. I got moved over to the television side, and I figured out that I wanted to get back to writing longer pieces. So my first boss at CNN used to work for a gentleman named Stuart Rothenberg. She knew that he was looking for someone new. She knew that I was looking for a new position. She said “the two of you should talk” and really the rest is history. That was over 14 – almost 15 – years ago. And I’m so grateful to find something that I enjoy, get paid to do something that I love to do, but also have the flexibility to carve out time for family as well. But the bottom line is I really didn’t grow up as a political junky. I didn’t come from a particularly political family,

Nathan Gonzales regularly appears on Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News, the Newshour on PBS, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, Fox News and others as an expert on political races. And his political analysis has been published in USA TODAY, Roll Call, The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, among others. Congressional candidates ...

Everyone wants to know what evangelicals think — particularly in the election season. But who are researchers talking about when they refer to evangelicals? In Today’s Conversation with Leith Anderson, Ed Stetzer talks about the challenges and opportunities in defining and researching evangelicals.

In this podcast, you’ll hear insight from a leading Christian researcher on:

The different ways researchers identify evangelicals;

How to define evangelicals by their beliefs;

The statistical realities of how evangelicals vote; and

What the future looks like for evangelicalism in the United States.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: You are a professional researcher and know this extremely well. Why is this important to clarify this definition of evangelicals?

Ed: Well, I think the reality is that you can look at this definition in multiple ways. You could come at this from, there’s a thing called the RELTRAD, which is a tool that sits on top of the General Social Survey that actually uses what you belong to. You fill out a form, you say that you’re PCA, or Assemblies of God, Presbyterian Church in America, you will be counted as evangelicals. So that’s by belonging. We think that’s helpful. And there’s another by self-identification, this is what Pew does. So Pew identifies you as evangelical if you say that you are an evangelical or you are born again, and so that’s how Pew uses that. What we’re trying to do here in this project – two years we’ve worked together with the NAE and with LifeWay Research – is to really look at it from a perspective of beliefs. Too often it get’s categorized – particularly in political season – by politics, or it gets categorized by some other factor. So by looking at beliefs we can let people and what they believe place them in the evangelical bucket for research. And it gives us another tool, another helpful tool – and I would say a better tool – than simply saying, “Well, they attend this church. They might not have evangelical beliefs. Or they might attend a church that has non-evangelical beliefs but they themselves are evangelical.” So this gives us that tool. And I think it will be widely received to help people to use this for researchers and analysts to say,“Alright, who are evangelicals?” – particularly because it’s the NAE LifeWay research definition of evangelical belief. And in doing so, it sort of helps define for researchers what the most well-known association of evangelicals thinks defines the belief of the movement statistically.

Leith: So evangelicals actually get to define who are evangelicals, instead of somebody externally doing it for us.

Ed: Which would be I think a helpful thing. Considering that sometimes when you read things – you know, in the media or elsewhere – people don’t know the difference between an evangelical or five other things. So I think getting a key read from a key organization with a statistically validated process will really help answer some of these questions.

Leith: I’d like you to talk about what the method has been for the NAE LifeWay process. And I’ve got to put this in here, you know all the technical language, so you need to say this in terms that I and others will understand. Explain how you do this. What’s the process through which you go?

Ed: What you try to ask is: Are there certain questions that you can ask that people who hold evangelical beliefs will answer, and people who don’t hold evangelical beliefs will answer differently. And so that’s what we sought to determine. Even before we did that, we went through and we started with some theologians. And we asked the theologians to help us come up with some questions. And so these theologians worked with Ron Sellers and Grey Matter Research and came up with a series of questions. When we kind of started the conversation,