History Professor and Theology award winner Julius Rex Gurney III sits down with Mark to discuss the reason for two different kinds of Protestants today. In North America, Protestants can be broken down into two major groups: Mainline and Evangelical. Mark and Rex discover that this division does not always follow strict denominational lines. Tracing the history of this division provides fascinating insight into today’s religious landscape.

TRANSCRIPT

0:08

Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore. And today on the show, I'm delighted to be joined by the esteemed Chair of the history department and award winning theologian. A little known fact about Julius Rex Gurney the third. So Rex excited to have you on the show. And just for our listeners, maybe tell us how long you've been teaching here at Jessup?

0:30

Well, first of all, I have to talk about that award. Yeah, award and $3 wanting to give me a cup of coffee. I don't I don't actually even put that on my resume. Hey, you can claim your award winning payload. That'd be on your book byline. Right. Right. Right. So I've been teaching. I'm here at Jessup for about 14 years. Wow. And so I'm actually came over with the school from San Jose. Oh, Graham, although I still sort of feel like a newbie because I was only teaching one year when we left San Jose. But every graduation I guess I creep further further up to the beginning of the line right now, which is kind of strange and and sort of depressing for

1:12

Yeah, you realize especially Yeah, when they line up you realize, Hey, I'm yeah, I've been around here a long time. Yeah, exactly. I know. When I first started teaching them about eight years ago, here, I used to be able to say to the students, we like kind of a communal we like we think this and and now eight years removed, I can no longer say we say you, your generation. Right? Right. My generation

1:38

clearly distinct at this point, I have to be very, very careful with my cultural references and my history classes because no one else gets them. I'm old. Right? There you go.

1:46

Yeah, that's the marker when you know, movie references. Okay, got it. gotta come up with some nobody's ever heard of any rock groups from the 70s? a, you know, there's a little bit of a revival of that. So we can always hope, you know, that's where Netflix is really helped me because they bring all these old shows back. And so okay, what's your keep anything long enough? It'll come around. Right? Yeah. And it'll be and actually one of my, one of my rules of fashion is, if you wore it when it first came out, you probably shouldn't wear it when it comes back around.

2:21

It's probably right. Yeah. My plaid, blue and yellow bell bottom pants with cuffs on them with my suit probably should have been retired. Right now. never come back.

2:34

Yeah, that comes back that you might be able to wear that again, because that would be amazing. And we have to, we have to see pictures of that will post pictures on Twitter that a long time ago? Well, I'm excited to have you on the show and one for the fact that I love history. And I think history helps us answer how we've arrived at a certain place, and covers the steps that have been taken events that have occurred, that lead us to where we are now. Right. And I love to, to look at that. And we neglect history to our own peril, right. Like if we don't learn from that, I think specifically with the church history is fascinating. I mean, there's concerned, yeah, there's been so many twists and turns, right. And you know, for just a little over 500 years now just celebrated the 500 anniversary. Last year, we've kind of in the West had this standard binary of Catholic and Protestant and, and then for maybe 200 years or so. And we can kind of talk about that kind of date. We've also had kind of another division amongst Protestants. Right. And and kind of a division into two camps, mainline Protestant and ev