March 24, 2026

Top 10 Theology Stories Since 2000: Part 2

1 hour 14 minutes

Join Collin Hansen, Michael Graham, and Sarah Zylstra as they continue to look back on the top theology stories from the last 25 years. In part 1, they counted down stories #10 to #6. Now in part 2, Graham and Zylstra walk with Hansen through his stories #5 down to #1.

In This Episode:

00:00:00 – Why homosexuality became a presenting issue dividing the church

00:00:41 – Sarah Zylstra introduces the second half of the top 10 list

00:01:34 – Recap of stories 10 through 6 from the previous episode

00:03:06 – Number 5: COVID-19 shuts the world down

00:04:57 – COVID, institutional mistrust, and the authority of scientists

00:06:25 – A decade of digital change compressed into one year

00:09:22 – What COVID did to church attendance and online ministry

00:11:38 – Rediscovering embodied worship after metaverse-era predictions

00:14:11 – Number 4: The Trump era and its theological consequences

00:15:41 – Supreme Court appointments, religious liberty, and legal change

00:18:50 – Dobbs, abortion, and evangelical disengagement from the pro-life cause

00:19:54 – Immigration as a leading social and theological issue

00:22:13 – Executive power, post-liberalism, and Christian nationalism

00:24:05 – Number 3: Obergefell and the moral transformation of marriage

00:25:20 – Sexuality, family, and the collapse of shared moral norms

00:27:48 – Don Carson’s 2005 warning about homosexuality as a presenting issue

00:29:22 – Mainline denominational splits and the global Methodist divide

00:32:11 – Why many evangelicals held to historic sexual ethics

00:33:17 – How race and sexuality became bundled in public discourse

00:36:56 – Rebecca McLaughlin and navigating race and sexuality faithfully

00:37:21 – Number 2: The iPhone and the shift to digital life

00:38:05 – Smartphones, fertility decline, and changing social habits

00:39:13 – Social contagion, gender identity, and online plausibility structures

00:40:08 – Podcasts, YouTube, AI, and the reshaping of knowledge

00:43:44 – Mike Graham on screens, AI, and the future of epistemology

00:48:00 – Individualized media diets, institutional decline, and gender divergence

00:50:06 – AI sycophancy, abuse scandals, and algorithm-shaped reality

00:53:51 – Why digital life felt like it could have been number one

00:54:26 – Number 1: Why 9/11 tops the list

00:56:23 – Christianity, Islam, and civilizational conflict

01:00:07 – 9/11, the new atheism, and the category of “fundamentalism”

01:02:01 – Theodicy, suffering, and major disasters after 9/11

01:03:12 – Mike Graham on why 9/11 is civilizationally decisive

01:06:17 – Middle Eastern Christians, Iraq, Syria, and migration into Europe

01:07:11 – Signs of God’s providence and good emerging from tragedy

01:09:18 – Tim Keller, New York church planting, and the young, restless, and Reformed movement

01:12:58 – Closing reflections on God’s providence over the last 25 years

Resources Mentioned:

Rediscover Church by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman

The Secular Creed by Rebecca McLaughlin

The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich

Generations by Jean M. Twenge

Timothy Keller by Collin Hansen

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By The Gospel Coalition, Collin Hansen

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