The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
How did we get here? How 1776 culturally and intellectually shaped the post-Christian West - with Archie Poulos
Wisdom for pastors seeking to preach and lead well in a post-Christian age.
So much of our culture judges events in isolation — a single moment, a single failure, a single decision — detached from what led to it and what flows from it. But history doesn’t work like that. Events emerge from long trajectories, and they reshape the future in ways no one fully controls or intends.
We’re joined by Archie Poulos, Head of the Ministry Department at Moore Theological College, to reflect on Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West by Andrew Wilson.
Wilson’s argument isn’t that everything changed overnight in 1776, but that the events clustered around that year give us a window into the forces that have shaped the WEIRDER world we now inhabit — Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic.
We explore why reading history as an ecosystem rather than isolated episodes matters, why Romanticism isn’t just a past movement but our present operating system, and how Christian faith — offers a deeper, more hopeful way to understand our moment.
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How did we get here? How 1776 created the post-Christian West. It is the pastor's heart. It's Dominic Steele and Wisdom for Pastors Seeking to Preach and Lead Win a P-Christian age. Today we're learning from history and the window given us by the year 1776. Andrew Wilson's book, Remaking the World, How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West is much discussed at the moment. Wilson's thesis, not that history turned on a single calendar date, but that the events clustered around the year 1776 help us understand and explain our world today. He has the seven-letter acronym, Weirda. W. Western. James Cook led the way in mapping the world. E. Educated. Immanuel Kant's early critical project and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire were released. I industrialized. James Watts' improved steam engine became commercially viable and deployable. R. Rich. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations articulates the logic of markets, productivity and growth, and D. Democratic. With the War of Independence in America and the Declaration of Independence, for the first time, a modern nation explicitly grounds political authority in the people rather than in monarchy or divine right. And E ex-Christian, Enlightenment deism and skepticism crystallize, symbolized by Benjamin Franklin's edit of the Declaration's language, the Declaration of Independence language, from sacred and undeniable to self-evident. And finally, R, romantic. Truth and meaning are increasingly sought within the self. And Russo's Reveries of the Solitary Walker is the example there. We are joined by the head of the Center for Ministry Development at Sydney's Moore Theological College, Archie Poulos. Archie told me that I should read this book over summer. Archie, uh let's start with your pastor's heart. And uh while I'm imagining that reading this book for you intellectually was as stimulating for you as it was for me, I'm I'm actually interested in what it did for your pastor's heart.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thanks, Dominic. Yeah, I uh I read books not just to get information or to know more stuff because that's that's pretty much a waste of time. Uh the reason for doing it is so that we can understand what God might be doing in his world, how he might help his people to live in the world, and how he might see more people saved. And so we you know, we're in an age now where so much is viewed as an episode or as an event. So something happens in our world, and people sit back and they assess, is this a good or a bad thing? How do I respond to that? And so everything is based on an event. But we're Christian people, and we know that God started history in Genesis, He's going to bring it to an end in Revelation, and He's also told us why things are happening. And so things can't be just seen as events, they're part of a trajectory. Things start because other things have happened before, the event occurs, and then that event has repercussions. And so I think it's incumbent upon us as God's people to help people to understand how we fit into this world that God is taking from creation to recreation. And there's lots of good evidence and lots of good work that's been done by Christians and non-Christians. And so I read books like this so that I can understand the world that we are in, helps me to understand what God is doing. And so Andrew Wilson is a uh great theologian and a great historian. He's brought the two together in this book. So in the circles I move in, a lot of people have been reading it and we've been discussing it, and a lot of people haven't even seen it yet.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I'm just thinking, um, that's really helpful. I'm I remember sitting down with somebody, and and I would now describe them as an archetypal expressive individualist. And uh, but I was just trying to understand their worldview, and I mean it it felt like nailing jelly to the wall, you know. And then as I started to read, I thought, ah, okay. I can see looking back how over centuries we've got from there to here, and you didn't just think all this stuff up, you are a child of your generation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, everybody uh thinks that they're an individual, everybody thinks that they're the first to have thought these thoughts, and they're not. We're actually, it's part of the air that we breathe. And so understanding what's going on in the course of history helps us to understand other people so we can help them to understand themselves, and so they might be introduced to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00:And a book like this is also, I think, a warning against some kind of naive nostalgia, you know, just kind of thinking, if only we could get back to because I'm reading back there, and I mean there's a whole lot of people who as are as sexually proliferate as any of the people on OnlyFans today. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I I think that that's absolutely right. That that's what we've got to do. We've got to help people to understand that it's not going back to the old days. I I'm getting older now and I dream of the old days, but God is in control of every event of history and he's bringing about his purposes for the glorious day when Jesus will return. And so let's let's look forward as well as let's understand the past so we can look forward.
SPEAKER_00:Let's push into this acronym um Weirder. Um what about we jump to educated and the enlightenment's confidence uh in human reason? The the key 1776 developments, um, Emmanuel Kant, Edward Given, but a whole lot of other stuff as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, educate I think uh the W in Weirda the Western just explain it just explains all the other ones. But educated, I think, uh creates this world that we are in now where things become inside me. Uh I have authority, I have power, I have knowledge, I am the one who determines the future. And education has certainly done that, I think.
SPEAKER_00:The two that uh I mean uh Wilson picked up the first five letters from others, but the two that he added particularly were the um uh the post-Christian one and then the romantic one, and I think that's probably worth spending most of our time there. So, how did post-Christianity start in 1776? Because that's a bold claim.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Um I I'm more interested in the romantic one, so we'll move on to that. Uh, but I think that you've got Darwin and the origin of the species, you've got a whole lot of stuff that comes out of the others. So the educated, the rich, uh people I think felt they didn't need God, even though Christianity was part of the air that they breathed. But I'm educated, so I know things, I'm rich, so I don't need to worry about the afterlife. I I'm in control of things because money gives you power. There's all of those sorts of things, and so uh you don't need God as much. It doesn't mean that God's any less there, of course, because he is always there. But I don't feel the need for God. And I think that what we are seeing now a couple of centuries on is that we they in 1776 uh didn't need God. Now we are reaping the dangers of completely having jettisoned God. And so we live in a world that is this sad world that we're in now, but it's a great day of opportunity too, which I assume we'll talk about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. Well, let's talk romantic because you, when you um told me to read this book, you said the ch the chapter on lover was the one that really had uh sparked your interest and lover and romantic. Yeah, tell me about that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, the romantic movement, uh my my little brush with history before this was it was around you know 1776 through for the next 30, 40 years, those those few decades around the turn of the century, the whole romantic era of of people like uh Wordsworth Keats, Coleridge, uh Jane Austen, um the artists like Turner and Constable, uh people like Beethoven, all that that romantic era I thought only lasted 40 years or so. But I've been convinced that romanticism actually comes out of those other elements of weirder and it explains the world that we're in today.
SPEAKER_00:Go on, tell me more.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I mean, he uses uh a whole lot of I words that explain romanticism.
SPEAKER_00:I'll I'll bowl them up. Yeah, inwardness, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so inwardness, that is that whole thing that true authenticity comes from me. I noticed that uh in in your work in introducing God, you use that word autonomy, and you've been doing it for many years.
SPEAKER_00:But that's the inwardness idea that auto nomos, self-law, you know, that uh the the auto, the me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, and so that's what inwardness is. And um, and if you read a whole lot of people these days, it it tends to revolve around this same thing. And and I think it does come from romanticism. So Carl Truman, for example, you know, he talks about the uh the whole triumph of the modern self, the way that it turns in on itself. It's inwardness.
SPEAKER_00:And uh and I think next I word infinity.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, infinity is search for something bigger than you. I actually think here is our gospel opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:Well, but but you're saying that's a that's an idea that comes from the romantic picture.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's what that's what he says.
SPEAKER_00:Um so how do you think that where do you think he's right?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I I think that uh what what happens is the idea of autonomy, the idea of inwardness says I look inside myself, and that was the great project of where I meant it as a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00:I get that with the auto the autonomy and the inwardness, but what about the infinity?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well that's what I want to say. That um the uh uh you look inside yourself for true meaning, but then when you do that, it's not enough. It's not enough. So there's there's that search for something that is bigger than me. Uh, and it shows up in a few of the other I words that come.
SPEAKER_00:Well, one of the lines from the book is art. This is a quote from List, art for us, art is for us, none other than the mystic ladder from earth to heaven. Yeah, um, from the finite to the infinite, from mankind to God.
SPEAKER_01:Isn't that interesting that they there's not enough to just be inward? And so you've got to find a way to the infinite. And of course, that's where romanticism is. It comes in the art, it comes in the poetry, it comes in the music, of clawing your way into something else bigger because just looking inward might be.
SPEAKER_00:I'm thinking walking the art gallery and feeling that, do you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yes, well, what one of the other eyes that you can talk about later on is intensity that he speaks about.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Um tell so intensity, passionately exploring my feelings, my emotions. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it's because again, if it's inward, it's my emotions, and uh so it's all about me, and so it's this whole idea of the need for vividness and intense feelings. Whereas if you know something is true, you can still have feelings, but there's something valuable in what's true. If it's just me, then there's no idea of truth out there. So what do you do? You exchange truth for intensity. I was watching a television show the other day where there is a man who very sadly is dying. Do you mind if I talk about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. He's dying, and because he doesn't know the truth of eternity and of God, all he has to do is to say, I want to experience things vividly, so I want all these bright colours around me, I want all of these intense experiences. Well, as Christian people, we know there is something better in the future. And uh, and so I think that if you lose God, you what are you left with? Just you're left with intense emotions.
SPEAKER_00:Especially that's why people talk about having a bucket list of things to do. They want to have those experiences before they die.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean it's nice to experience. I've got nothing wrong with people enjoying life. I think it's a great blessing from God. But I'll tell you what, I'm gonna see it all in heaven anyway.
SPEAKER_00:But I mean, I'm just I just this is where I I think I need to kind of correct myself. I mean, when we read these words inwardness, infinity, imagination, individuality, inspiration, intensity, innocence, ineffability, I we kind of think, well, that's the air we breathed. You know, that's that's that's our life, you know, that's the stuff around us, that's the art galleries, that's the culture. But his point is that's not always been the air that has been breathed. There was a moment, and you're and he are saying, I think just a little bit before 1776, but kind of blossoming at that time when that became the air that we breathed.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yes, and uh he he tracks it that in his chapter, which is very helpful, he can actually point to things, but it wasn't always like that. So um in some ways, Romanticism was a push against the aridness of what some people call Puritanism, sometimes just of the whole Germanic uh way of viewing reality. And so it was just content, just data and information, and that's what romanticism pushed against. Well, I don't think Puritans were ever like that, but uh you can see that there was a day before the Romantic period where people trusted truth and you just lived in the light of that truth, and romanticism changed that, and we are still breathing that air of romanticism. So, just on that, one of the eyes they speak about is imagination. Uh, the Puritans were big on imagination. Imagine what God is doing, imagine what God can do, but I think it has devolved a little bit, and I think we're that's a corrective for us.
SPEAKER_00:Um one of the things that I had not reflected on was the massive change in attitude towards sexuality and sexual expression. Um so in the um well, in 1660 kind of time, prostitutes were regularly flogged. There was a strong kind of anti sexual immorality tone in Great Britain, but by 1770, that's a distant memory, and um and there's sexual immorality everywhere. And I hadn't I mean, obviously I'd heard of Jeremy Bentham and London School of Economics and that kind of thing, but I hadn't twigged that back in 1770 he was somebody arguing for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It's uh and in fact, uh I think Wilson presents a strong argument that it was romanticism that actually freed up this whole sexuality uh sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00:Um let's turn for a moment to what were the gospel people doing in 1776? Because one of the things that jumped out to me that I just I mean, I I'd obvious I mean, this is the moment of of Wilberforce, this is the moment of John Newton, of Augustus Top Lady, of um John Wesley, um, all of these kind of guys, and uh and the Clapham sect. Um and I I I've read Newton's biography, Wesley's biography. Well, I mean, I've read one of them, and zillions of them have been written, but um I hadn't picked up the fights between some of these guys, and um there was some real messy moments between I mean, between Top Lady and Wesley and Yeah, yeah, I mean there there was uh because what it's the same today, but we don't realise as much. We have these guys had feet of clay as well.
SPEAKER_01:But and also we are fighting for the heart and souls of people.
SPEAKER_00:So there was a day, you know, if you pick up um so just for Top Lady was the guy who wrote Rock of Ages. Yes. Yes, sorry, yes. And and we want to say hero, that's brilliant.
SPEAKER_01:They're all our heroes. I mean, um you've got uh you know Wesley fighting with so many one of my friends has a Christian band called the Top Lady. Sorry, keep going, that's that's I mean, you've uh uh you you've got fights amongst uh evangelicals just uh over different ways of doing things and all that, that because you are you are warring for the souls of people. So it looks like Top Lady was a very contentious person, not because he wanted to be as a personality he may have been, but because he saw that the fights were really for the eternal destiny of people, and so wanted to make sure that the gospel was going forward. And you're in a world that if it's true that Weirda is being created in 1776, these things they they could see that they were important issues, they could see that people's uh that where they're going to end up eternally was up for grabs, and so it was take no prisoners and even fight amongst your own. Now we'd want to say, remember, you're they're your friends, but there's big issues going on there, and I think it wouldn't hurt us to see a little bit of that as well, that just going with the flow is not good enough because the the air that we breathe. The cultural flow. Yeah, I guess going with the cultural flow because the air that we breathe is taking you to perdition, it's taking you away from God. So, you know, uh amazing grace, you know, uh how sweet the sound, uh uh Rock of Ages, all of those sorts of things are about our finding our rest in God, and the world is taking you away from that. Uh, these people, even our our great heroes, they were the people who understood grace. All of the weirder were taking you away from grace. So rich was taking you to my affluence rather than caring for other people. We live in a world where there is no forgiveness anymore. Something you publish in social media as a 15-year-old will be forever remembered and held against you. We have the gospel of grace that goes alongside that. So you can see why they were so contentious.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I mean, here's a pretty out there quote from John Wesley. Um uh uh he launched this uh collection of hymns for the use of the people called Methodists, and he wrote in the uh preface in these hymns, there is no doggerel, no botchers, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives. Here there is nothing turgid or bombastic on the one hand, or low and creeping on the other. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I guess you've got to stand up for what you've you're convinced it's true.
SPEAKER_00:Um I've written this great awesome book.
SPEAKER_01:There's um, I mean, you've got uh I mean Whitfield and Wesley, they uh they were great evangelical people, but they they had their contentious times.
SPEAKER_00:Um now in terms of learning for I mean learning for us and takeaways for us for Christian ministry today, what things have jumped out at you? I'll I'll take you to his chapter at the end in a moment, but you go first.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thank you. Uh I think don't fret. Um Yeah, so we talked about even God's got it. Yeah, God is in control. I think that as I read the book, while it focuses in on one year on 1776, that longer-term view that God is bringing about his purposes from creation to recreation, and even the changes of 1776, God is in control and bringing about his good purposes. I think that in that period, along with all of the weirder things that were occurring, the work of the evangelicals kept reinforcing the grace of God. The Clapham sect, the way that you cared for other people, the way that, you know, the Moravians, for example, and the uh Wilberforce work with the anti-slave trading, that is true freedom for the people in Weirda. It's all about me. I need to have the environment where I am most able to flourish. What the Christian gospel showed us was that you could have true freedom even when you're enslaved. And so, you know, it has the story of those people that sold themselves into slavery so that they could take the gospel. That is true freedom. You know, the old me and Bobby McGee, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. If you know you've got Jesus, you've got nothing left to lose. You don't have to create your beautiful world. You can serve the Lord with true freedom and grace, you know, top lady, or you know, those hymns of uh you know Wesley's hymns, uh just to the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00:Let me give you a couple of lines from the final chapter. The West is not as post-Christian as it seems. Um despite it, the world is, despite itself, irreducibly Christian. Um many Christians feel like they're losing. In some countries, it's a question of sheer numbers. Um but he says in the end, we're not reading it right if we feel like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like you said, God has got it. Uh these things come and go. Uh he doesn't talk about one of the things of our 21st century, but I think there is certainly a tribalism that is uh going on now, and there is a movement where people have causes rather than virtues and values, and they are still anchored in something Christian.
SPEAKER_00:Uh so people all of those um acronyms are rebellions against the rock of Christianity in one way or another.
SPEAKER_01:Uh and I think that because they still have an anchor in Christian faith, the challenge is out there and it's an opportunity for us today. That is, that as people want to defend their causes, you want to be able to say, why this cause? What is the virtue that stands behind that? And the virtues that still resonate with people still are grace, still are truth, still are freedom. They're they're things, and they're they're only to be found in the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks so much for coming in, my guest on The Pastor's Heart, Archie Poulos, the uh head of the Centre for Ministry Development at Sydney's Moore Theological College. And uh we've been talking about uh this book, uh Andrew Wilson's Remaking of the World, how 1776 created the post Christian West. My name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on The Pastor's Heart, and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
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