The Equip Project Podcast The Equip Project

A new five episode series on Church History from the Equip Project Podcast! The first three episodes will take history in 500-year blocks, so we’ll think about the period up to the fall of Rome in 476AD, then the so-called Dark Ages up to the year 1000AD, and then we'll talk about the High Middle Ages which takes us up to the story of Columbus landing in America at the end of the 15th Century. In the final two episodes, we’ll think about the reformation and the rise of evangelicalism.

In this, the last episode of season 3, we discuss the role of education in society. Education has unfortunately moved centre stage in the various culture wars that rage in society just now. Christian parents are worried that schools are becoming hostile to Christianity. There is an increasing concern about indoctrination of even very young children. And the cancel culture in universities is creating a climate of fear for anyone who doesn’t conform to fashionable ideologies.

In this episode we think about a hugely controversial topic called conversion therapy. There has been so much in the media in recent weeks about the campaign to ban this practice. We consider what conversion therapy is, and discuss how christians should think about it.

We live in a society that has turned history into a battleground. And that should set alarm bells off in the minds of Christians, because we hold to an historical faith. Christianity is not a philosophy. It isn’t just a set of speculative ideas. It claims to be truth revealed in history. We claim that the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are real, historical facts. The Bible itself is packed full of historical narrative. 

In this episode we discusshow society’s view of history has changed over time, and think about how the current cultural view of history has infected evangelicalism.

We are continuing to think about the big elements that make up our society. And one really important element in modern culture is Islam. There are about 3.5 million Muslims living in the UK. That’s about 5.5% if the population, and that percentage is growing fast because of a disparity in birth rates. In some London boroughs, over 30% of the population is Muslim. So there is no doubt that the face of modern Britain is changing very fast. The rise of Islam in Europe is perhaps the most important factor in social change for countries like France and the UK. 

How can we best share the Gospel with Muslim friends and colleagues? And how should we think about Western society's approach to Islam?

Language, and how we use it, has become an immensely powerful factor in how we engage with this culture. It’s as if society no longer has a shared, stable, language. There is this increasing pressure to learn a new language, because this new language is the passport we need to engage in the modern world. To refuse to learn the new language is a decision to be iced out of your social network.  We should be curious about how we have ended up here...