Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by Dr. Richard Mouw, philosopher, theologian, and former President of Fuller Theological Seminary. Together they discuss faith in the public square, and the importance of understanding and engaging those with different perspectives. Dr. Mouw shares insights from his conversations with Mormons and Catholics, emphasizing the need to listen and learn from others. He also highlights the value of nuance in theological and political discussions, encouraging a posture of understanding rather than trying to win arguments. He ends by reflecting on pivotal moments from his career, including teaching ethics to a diverse student body.
Episode Resources:
Film with George C. Scott: Hardcore: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079271/
He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdmans): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802821111/
Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (IVP Books): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0830833099/
The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship (Eerdmans): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802866980/
Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802868584/
Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections in Today’s World: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310231973
“The Dialogue Decalogue,” a set of guiding principles for effective interfaith engagement: https://dialogueinstitute.org/dialogue-principles/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://collaborativeorlando.com/
Get to know Case: https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
In the heart of a quaint Canadian town, the public square is lined with charming rustic buildings that reflect the town’s historical roots. Red brick facades, wooden shutters, and hanging flower baskets add a touch of color and warmth to the surroundings. Farmers, clad in simple yet sturdy attire, woolen caps, plaid shirts, and weathered boots, move about with a purposeful air.
Their faces are tanned and lined from years of working under the sun and their eyes reflect a deep sense of community and faith. They exchange hearty greetings and handshakes. Their conversations filled with news of the day’s work, weather and family. The livestock, mostly chickens, gobbling about are a central feature of the square. They make their noise. They jump on ledges and they pick at the weeds growing through the cobblestone pathways. Some farmers tend to their flocks ensuring the animals are staying out of trouble, staying away from the flowers where they shouldn’t be. And they seek that they’re healthy and they’re well fed. At the edge of the square, a modest yet welcoming church stands as a testament to the community’s Calvinist faith. Its steeple rises gracefully and the sound of its bell marks the passage of time and calls the faithful to gather. The church’s simple, elegant architecture mirrors the values of the community, humble, steadfast, and enduring. Friends, this is a scene, nostalgic, idyllic scene, and one that our guest today often writes about and talks about as he seeks to help us understand faith in todays society, faith in the public square. I am honored today to have Dr. Richard Mouw. Rich, thank you so much for being here.
Richard Mouw
Thank you, it’s great to be with you, Case. And that’s a wonderful description of simple Canadian life.
Case Thorp
Well, I see here in sunny California.
Case Thorp
Well, you know, we always open with a bit of an illustration on the public square. And I thought how appropriate given what you often refer to. Well, I appreciate you being with me. You were last here in Orlando with me a few years ago with Michael Allen of Reform Seminary. You all did a dialogue on eschatology and the beatific vision. That was a great, great time. I appreciate you being available for such things. Now you’re going to have to excuse my office.
Today is actually book day. I take one day a year usually in the summer and I take all the books that have piled up around my desk and try to get them all back in place. So usually it’s a little bit more neat. Well to our viewers and friends welcome to Nuance where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Case Thorp and I want to encourage you please like, subscribe, share these episodes. It really helps us to grow our audience. Well let me tell you a bit about our guest.
Richard Mouw is a premier American philosopher, theologian, and scholar, and I’m grateful, a friend. He currently serves as a senior research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Religion and Politics at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Prior to this, Rich served for 20 years as president of Fuller Theological Seminary and directed their Institute of Faith and Public Life. He’s the author of more than 20 books and been the editor of the Reform Journal. His books include, He Shines in All That’s Fair, Culture and Common Grace, which by the way, Dr. Mouw is one that we use quite often with our Gotham fellows, our Orlando fellows.
He’s written Uncommon Decency, Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, and then The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship, and finally Talking with Mormons and Invitation to Evangelicals. Now Rich received the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reform Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, my alma mater. And Rich, I’m sorry I forgot to mention another alma mater of mine is your fine school at Fuller.
Friends, he was president of the Association of Theological Schools, co -chaired the official Reformed Catholic Dialogue, and is known as a leader in interfaith theological conversations, particularly with Mormons and Jewish groups. And, you know, I imagine you would agree, best of all, you’re a husband, a father, and grandfather of two.
That’s some of the best roles that we can have. Now you were telling me about a son who’s off to do Kuyperian studies. Tell us about that.
Richard Mouw
A grandson, yeah. Yeah, he just graduated from Calvin University and then got married to Natalie, who was a classics major at Calvin and teaches in a Christian classical academy. But they just moved to the Netherlands. Peter Mouw was a dual major in history and philosophy at Calvin University.
He did a minor in Dutch and he’s become very fluent in speaking Dutch. And he’s very interested in the theology of Abraham Kuyper. And even though eventually he wants to do a PhD in history, he wants to spend a year studying reformed theology and the tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Baalwink and people like that. So he’s in Utrecht in the Netherlands now.
Case Thorp
Wow.
Richard Mouw
Actually, he’s living in a little town where they have a community that’s sort of based on the LaBrie model. And he and his wife are living in the C .S. Lewis suite. Yeah, it’s just great. We’re very proud of them and very, very, very grateful for how God has worked in their lives.
Case Thorp
Well, I’m just glad for me and much of our audience, we’ll have another Mouw to be reading in years to come. That’s wonderful. Okay, so I opened with these chickens in the public square. Tell us that great illustration you often use and how it can help us understand our faith in today’s culture.
Richard Mouw
Yeah. There’s a group in Alberta, Canada, the province of Alberta, they’re all centered close to Edmonton, of farmers who have a group called the Christian Farmers Federation of Alberta. And I was in a church service one Sunday and I noticed they were going to have a meeting on a Wednesday night honoring God and raising chickens in Canada. And these are Dutch reformed, many of them immigrants, but they’ve attracted a few Mennonites into their midst to talk about these kinds of issues, which is wonderful. So I decided to go and just listen. And they talked a lot about how can we, is there any way in which in raising chickens we can serve the two -thirds world, the southern hemisphere. What do we do given the fact that God wants us to be concerned about the poor and the hungry and the needy and like and all the rest? But they also got into the actual raising of chickens. And at one point this old Dutch farmer stood up with a Dutch accent, not well -educated, I’m sure, but he said, you know, Colonel Sanders, he wants us to sell chickens as pieces of meat to be bought and sold. But he said, chickens aren’t just meat. They aren’t human either. He said, we’ve got to be careful about those people who want us to turn chickens into our brothers and sisters. But he says, chickens are chickens and God has created each species of its own kind, and God wants us to honor chickens as chickens. And that means that we have to give them room in raising them. He said, God wants every rooster to be able to strut his stuff in front of other chickens.
And that hit me as just a wonderful illustration. So I wrote about that. Interestingly, I got a call from the Faith, the Religious Relations desk at the Humane Society. And the woman there had a PhD in ethics.
She said, you know, I’m a liberal Protestant. She said, and I expected when I took this job as faith relations at the Humane Society, that I’d get all my support, you know, from Episcopalians and Mainline Presbyterians and all the rest. She said, actually, the groups that have been most supportive of me are the Southern Baptists and the broader evangelical community. And she said, do you know that we have two faith -based things for Christians. One is a wonderful sermon by Charles Spurgeon about how God wants us to honor animals in accordance with his will.
Isn’t that amazing? And she said, the Southern Baptists circulate this Spurgeon Sermon on how to treat animals in accordance with the will of God. And she said, the other thing that we pass around is your little column on raising chickens. So, you know, and in fact, she called me about a year ago and she said, you know, we have a campaign going with fast food sellers of chicken. And she said, you know, we’ve gotten support from McDonald’s, Burger King, Chick -fil -A, no, I’m sorry, not Chick -fil -A, from eight fast food places.
The one place that we haven’t gotten support from is Chick -fil -A. She said, so we just send them a copy of your column and said, you folks must be the most strong, the strongest supporters of this, you know? So get with it. I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t be naming names, but that’s the…
Case Thorp
Well, for those that listen to the podcast or read my writings, they’ll know I am not a big fan of chickens primarily because I have nine of them in my backyard. Now I completely affirm dignity and good things, but they make a big mess. My wife loves them and I love my wife, therefore I grow up. I’ve learned to cohabitate with chickens.
Richard Mouw
It’s good. It’s good.
Richard Mouw
Yeah, we’ll just make sure that they get to strut their stuff in front of other chickens.
Case Thorp
Well, yeah, there’s a lot of strutting going on in my yard. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. I hear in those farmers just grace in everyday life, grace in not just their interactions with one another, but in their work and in their industry with the land and with whatever’s there, the work of their hands.
Richard Mouw
Yes, that’s right.
Case Thorp
Now you’ve got a very interesting book, the title of which just slays me, Calvinism in the Las Vegas airport. I love that title. Now in that you talk a lot about grace and everyday life. So first I’d like to know how you got that title. And then second, what could we better understand about grace in our ethical decisions and even in this political tension in context?
Richard Mouw
Yeah. Well, when I first started, my first big teaching job was at Calvin, what was then Calvin College, now Calvin University. And there were a couple of rebel students there who kind of forsook their Calvinist upbringing. And one, this guy named Paul Schrader, who went on to become director of film. He did Taxi Driver and a lot of big films. And he also did one on his upbringing in Grand Rapids, Michigan at Calvin College. And he had a scene there. It was an elder in a Dutch Reformed church from Grand Rapids whose daughter ran away to California and got into some really bad stuff, including pornography, working in that industry. And the elder, played by George C. Scott, went out looking for his daughter to bring her home. And finally, he realized the only way he could make contact with her was to pretend to be a producer of pornographic films. So he advertised and he found out where, you know, where she was. But wherever he went to find her, it went on, she had moved on to some other place. But he did find a young woman who was a pagan valley girl from California with no scruples at all, and she agreed to help him find his daughter. So they would go places and they found out she was in Las Vegas. So they went to Las Vegas, but she had moved on to San Francisco. So they’re sitting in the Las Vegas airport and this pagan valley girl says to this Dutch Reformed elder, very stern, Why are you trying to do this? Why do you care about your daughter that much? My father would never come looking for me. And he said, it’s complicated. And she said, well, it’s about religion though, isn’t it? And he said, yes. And she said, well, what religion are you? And he said, I’m a Calvinist. Calvinist, what’s that?
And so he explained to her, George C. Scott explained to her, sitting in the Las Vegas airport, the five points of Calvinism, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. And when he was done, she said, and I won’t use the exact words, she said, gee, and I thought I was screwed.
And it hit me that he probably could have given a different answer because in that Dutch reform tradition and in your own Presbyterian tradition, one of the two catechisms is the Hadeberg catechism. And the very first question and answer of the Hadeberg catechism, which is very loved, what is your only comfort in life and death? And the answer, that I am not my own, but I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ in life and in death, and that He has fully paid for all of my sins, et cetera, et cetera, you know? And so I got the idea that I was gonna write about that and kind of use as my basic theme that he ought to have emphasized the love and the grace of God as a faithful Savior, you know, in Jesus Christ. But I talked about a lot of other things, and emphasizing Calvinism as a warm religion, you know, Calvinism is often viewed as very harsh, and you know, God chooses some to salvation and damn some others. But that’s not really what you find in places like that Arbor Catechism or even in the writings of John Calvin, you know, that it’s just a wonderful theology that we’re saved by grace alone.
Case Thorp
I am not my own. It’s a humbling disposition. So then when it comes to dialogue and engage with the political other, what does Calvinism have to say or how does it help?
Richard Mouw
That’s right. All right. Yeah. Well, you know, Calvinism, in emphasizing how we get saved, has a kind of…makes us passive. God reaches out to us, God seeks us, God gives grace to us.
But also, once we receive that grace, Calvinism becomes a very active religion that we’re called to serve God, we’re called to reach out to others with that message of grace. And so there are lots of things that we need to do, that taking care of chickens and obedience to the will of God is also a part of that Calvinist message.
But we also need to relate to unbelievers or to people of different religious perspectives. And in doing that, we need to present a kind face, a face of a God who is a gracious God. And very often, it’s the wrong kind of face, you know? So I’ve always been interested in Mormonism.
From my teenage years, I was raised in New Jersey. I went to a public high school, a large one, and we had a small group of evangelical Christians who would get together to encourage each other in the faith. And a lot of my friends went to a local Bible church, and they were very excited about the fact that there was gonna be a four -part series at their church, four Sunday nights in a row with guest lectures by Walter Martin, who had written a lot of anti -cult stuff. And he emphasized the four major cults and how bad they are. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventists, although later he decided they were not a non -Christian cult, they were just confused evangelical Christians. And then Mormonism, and he was especially tough on Mormonism, although he was, so he gave these four lectures, four Sunday nights in a row, one call to each Sunday night, and the local church there invited people from those groups to come and attend, and we think that there were always, you know, the first Sunday night, there were Jehovah’s Witnesses there, and there were, Christian science there and there were some of the Adventists, but they didn’t really challenge him on it. They just listened. And he had some very clever lines. He said, Christian science is like grape nuts. It’s neither grapes nor nuts. neither Christian nor science. He had that clever thing. He was a gifted rhetorician.
But the night that he talks about Mormonism, there were two rows of Mormons right in the front row, right in front of the congregation, and a number of them wearing their elder badges. And he just went through and denounced Mormonism at every point. But at the end, they had questions and answers, and there was one young Mormon man, had obviously been designated as the spokesperson for the evening. He stood up and he challenged Walter Martin. And Walter Martin said, you know, one of his lines was, Mormons hate the cross. You don’t see the cross on any of their churches. They don’t talk about the cross. It’s all about good works. And this young man said, we don’t hate the cross.
We love the cross. We love the work of Christ on the cross. And we don’t just get saved by our good works. We have to put our faith in Christ. And Martin argued back. And then finally, this young man right at the end said, Dr. Martin, I just need to say this. And he was all choked up, this young man. And he said, I am saved solely by the grace of God that led Jesus Christ to die on the cross to save me from my sins and nothing that you say about that can take that confidence away from me. And Walter Martin looked at the audience and he said, see how they lie?
And the young man said, and these were the memorable words that stuck with me all these years. He said, you’re not even trying to understand. And so I made a vow that someday I was going to try to understand. And I had an opportunity in the year 2000 to initiate. I was invited by people from Brigham Young University.
Could we have a dialogue to clarify what are, to many people, are very controversial teachings?
Case Thorp
Now prior to that point, had you already done some writing on evangelicalism and Mormonism?
Richard Mouw
Not really, maybe, no, not really. And a dean at Brigham Young University became and is one of my dearest friends. And I want to say one of my dearest Christian friends. His name is Robert Millett. And we put together 12 Mormons and 12 evangelical scholars.
Case Thorp
Okay. This was the impetus.
Richard Mouw
And we decided we weren’t gonna get into useless conversations. Did Joseph Smith write the Book of Mormon himself or did he borrow it from someplace? Because that doesn’t go any place. And why don’t Mormons believe in the omnipotence of God or this kind of thing? So we decided on a very central question. How does a human being get right with God?
And that became our primary focus. We weren’t going to try to convert each other. We were just going to try to understand each other. And we both read a lot about dialogue.
And the writings on dialogue, the best writings on dialogue emphasize this kind of thing. Listeners may be interested in this, but you can find it on Google. The Dialogue Dicologue, 10 Commandments for People Engaging in Interfaith Dialogue.
Case Thorp
We’ll put that in our show notes.
Richard Mouw
Yeah, yeah, it’s a really good piece and very, very widely used. People engage in Muslim dialogue, know, Jewish dialogue and the like. And I won’t go through the commandments, but some of the key emphases of these, if you’re really going to do dialogue, you got to be willing to learn. You got to be more…
You got to really be interested in what these people believe. And that means you’re not trying to win an argument, you’re trying to understand. And so a key thing is to work at trying to understand their views, like on faith in works, for example.
What they really say so that you have to be able to ask questions like this, Is this the way I put it or you put it? Am I understanding you correctly? Is this the way you would say your view goes? Because you’re asking for clarification, you really want to come up with an understanding of what they believe that fits what they say they believe and not what you tell them.
Walter Martin was telling that guy what he believed, and he wasn’t listening, and he wasn’t showing an interest in all of that. And I have to say on the cross, Mormons are very strong on the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. I I’ve talked to apostles of the Mormon church about this, and I’m convinced on it.
And since the year 2000, I won’t credit our dialogue with this, although I think we’ve had an influence. There’ve been three things, and Robert Millett has said, I’ve heard Robert, people will say to me, well, they’re just telling you what they want you to hear. But we were invited, Phyllis and I, my wife and I were invited to a gathering that Bob Millett was gonna do out here in Southern California for Mormon leaders, bishops and stake presidents. And we were the only non -Mormons in the room. And he said, since the year 2000, three things have happened in Mormonism. And he said, we’ve documented this, we’ve done research on this. First of all, much stronger emphasis on the Bible. When young people are educated in Mormon thought, the first year, they do nothing but study the Bible. The second year they studied the Book of Mormon and the third year they study some of the other stuff. But there’s a very strong emphasis that however we understand Mormon teachings, they have to fit what’s taught in the Bible. And he said 95 % of all Mormon sermons are based on the New Testament. So there’s a very strong emphasis on the New Testament.
And within the New Testament, there’s a very strong emphasis on the person and work of Jesus Christ that brought him to the cross of Calvary. That’s all new stuff. so I saw there was going to be a lecture someplace else in Southern California by a countercult, Walter Martin type person. And I decided to go here.
He used that line, he said, Mormons hate the cross, they don’t believe in the work of Christ on the cross. So I went up to him afterward, and unfortunately I told him who I was and then he didn’t like me. And I said, you know, you really need to understand better because there’s a very strong emphasis. I said that recently a Mormon apostle gave a lecture to 12 million
around the world in the line in which he said, only hope is the completed atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.
And the guy said, well, you can have your opinions, but our job is to tell the truth. We’ve got to define the truth and we’ve got to condemn error. And I thought it really struck me, isn’t it odd that the best way to tell the truth is to misrepresent? You know, we’ve got to win the argument and not tell the truth, you know.
So we’ve had discussions with Jews. It’s not where we want it to be, but there’s a younger generation of rabbis who have been running what they call Torah studies. They do weekend retreats where they work on prayer and Bible study, I mean Jewish Bible study. And what they’ve said to us is, we need to talk to you. Don’t be freaked out on this. But we want to know what do you people mean when you talk about having a personal relationship with Christ? Because we want Jewish young people to have a personal relationship with the God of Abraham and Sarah.
So we need to be open to this.
Case Thorp
I really appreciate that phrase where that individual said we’ve got to defend the truth and condemn error. That I find is so deeply rooted in people in the political conversation between progressive, conservative, Democrat, Republican. I started this podcast actually, and that’s why it’s called Nuance, because during COVID, I was so disappointed in a number of leading Christians, both nationally and here in my own community, that didn’t have much nuance in their Christian reaction and opinion on things. And there’s just that spirit of defending truth, condemning error. What could we learn in politics from your work?
Richard Mouw
Well, you know, just interesting you would ask that because just this morning I read a column by Russell Moore of Christianity Today.
Case Thorp
We’ve had him on our show.
Richard Mouw
…who has said that we need to really work at not misrepresenting other people.
He said, you know, I’ve been critical of JD Vance, the Republican candidate for, Vice President. But he said, he never said he had sex with a couch.
Case Thorp
Can you believe?
Richard Mouw
But he said, people say that over and over again, including the most recent candidates for Democratic president and Vice President.
And he said, we’ve got to stop saying that. And Republicans need to stop saying things about what Democratic candidates have said which aren’t true.
And so he said, this is a clear case where people want to get elected and they say whatever they need to and they misrepresent. And he said, we need to be speaking out for the truth. And I think there too, you know, I have very strong political views.
A lot of my fellow Christians in my local congregation would disagree strongly with my political views, you know. But when we talk together, one of the things that’s really, it’s kind of a weird thing, but I get a lot of my theology from clues from hymns and Christmas carols. And there’s a wonderful line in O Little Town of Bethlehem, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight, you know? And that people who love Trump or people who love Kamala Harris, they’re not just ideologues, but they’re human beings with hopes and fears. I think a lot of people, I’m not a Trump fan, but a lot of people who vote for Trump do it out of fear of what’s happening in the world, fear of what’s happening to their children and how their children are being taught in public schools about gender and sexuality, fears about losing jobs. And, you know, we can argue about those things. I agree with some of them and some of them I disagree with. But I need to approach that person as created in the image of God, deserving as much dignity certainly as chickens deserve.
Case Thorp
Hmm. You know, some people are listening to this and go, I don’t know if I can give dignity to a Democrat or Republican as much as I give a chicken, but that’s what’s wrong.
Richard Mouw
But we need to see people and want to learn from them. And sometimes the best way you can do it is by not addressing them directly. You don’t say, why do you believe in or why did you vote for him? But it might be better to say to that person, Why do you think your friends are so attractive to this candidate? There’s a wonderful lesson that I learned from YoungLife. They say, if you want to know what a 15 -year -old girl believes about God, don’t say to her, what do you believe about God? Because she’ll get all nervous and kind of not wanting to embarrass herself and maybe get on the defensive.
The best thing you can do is say, do your friends believe in God? And then suddenly the pressure is off her to have to defend everything she says. And you’re actually gonna learn a lot more about her belief in God from what she sees in her friends. S need to find conversations where we’re not trying to win the argument, but we’re trying to understand the other person. And so that learning posture, and we ought to want to learn about what our fellow Christians think about politics, because they’re our fellow Christians.
And we know that they’re not just ideologues. They may come across that way, both on the left and on the right. But anyway, so that learning posture, I say, well, you know, I don’t agree with you, but is this the way you would put it? Have I got it right when you say you vote for him because of this?
Case Thorp
And we’ve just lost it. We’ve lost that muscle, that ability to do that. Social media doesn’t help. The media, which I’m not a big fan of, certainly doesn’t help. Well, if I could in our remaining moments, I’d love to reflect a bit and to have you reflect on your long and glorious career, your contribution to the theological conversation, and Calvinistic work in our world is tremendous. Could you share, what were some pivotal moments through your career where your faith journey and your insights really took a turn?
Richard Mouw
Well, I think, again, that thing that happened in the year 2000 that got me into 20 years of, I think, very productive, clarifying conversations with our LDS friends. I think our conversation, I think what’s happened in the broader evangelical world is that we were not as condemning of Catholicism as we used to be, you know? And I think that has been motivated for me by not anything that I’ve done, but by having my Catholic friends explain their love of Christ, and learning some things about them. I remember hearing a lecture at Fuller by a person who’d been a missionary for 25 years in Latin America. And he said, you know, when we think about why Catholics pray to Mary, which we don’t do, what I learned in Latin America is that it’s a very male -dominated culture.
And that if a kid wants something from his dad, the best thing he’d do is go to his mother. And he said, and in families where that’s the common pattern, that mom will take up your cause with dad because he won’t listen to you directly as a kid. Asking Mary to advocate for you with her son makes a little more sense, you know, and again I disagree with Marian devotion and things of that sort but it’s really helped me to have insights like that I once debated a Catholic theologian on prayers to the Saints, you know and I gave my my critique and then he said, you know how when you’re concerned about health for some person in your family or a friend, you ask your friends to pray for them.
It’s the communion of the saints. And for us, that includes the saints in heaven. And he said, so when we pray to St. Anthony or somebody else, or we pray to a saint about a child that’s sick, we’re not asking that saint to heal the person, we’re asking that saint to advocate on our behalf, just like you would ask your cousin to pray for someone in the family. And now again, I think there are dangers in that, you know, but it makes more sense to me than it had before. And I think for me, it just helps to listen to people that you disagree with.
Case Thorp
It does.
Richard Mouw
You know, obviously one of the pivotal moments in my life was I, for 17 years I taught philosophy to undergraduates at Calvin College. And then I was asked to become a professor at Fuller, to teach ethics at Fuller. And that was a big difference because suddenly I was teaching ethics to people who didn’t have the same theological reformed the background as me. I had Pentecostals and I had Mennonites and was kind of baptism -like. And then I became president of this school with 110 denominations represented in the student body. Now that includes a dozen African Presbyterian denominations, you know.
Case Thorp
Wesleyans.
Yeah.
Richard Mouw
And so I couldn’t take things for granted that I was like, but I had to find commonalities. And so it really influenced me to try to understand what Pentecostals were really all about. That’s just an argument about can we still speak in tongues, you know. But to get deeper than that and try to understand some of the gifts of Pentecostalism. Even for me as a Calvinist, the gifts of the Mennonite movements and the like. And that was a big, big help for me because I couldn’t try to turn Fuller into a Calvinist seminary. The largest theological, graduate theological school in the world.
And I wasn’t gonna, I had to emphasize that diversity. And I’ve got to say that really changed my outlook.
Case Thorp
Well, you are a gift, a gift to global Christianity and to me. So thank you, Rich. I really appreciate what you had to share.
Richard Mouw
Well, you’re a gift too, and I really appreciate you having these conversations. I think it’s so important to introduce nuance.
Case Thorp
Well, it matters because we have a complex, but simple faith all at the same time. Well, Rich, thank you so very much. For our viewers and listeners, you can go to our show notes where a couple of the things we’ve discussed will be there as well as links to a number of Dr. Mouw’s books. Well, I want to thank you for joining us. Remember, like, share, subscribe. It really helps us to get the word out.
You can leave a review wherever you get your podcast. Go to collaborativeorlando.com for all sorts of additional content. If you give us your email, we’ll mail you, snail mail you a 31 day faith and work prompt journal, a way you can move through the basic ideas of faith and work theology over the course of a month. Also, you can find us across the social media platforms. Don’t forget nuance formed for faithfulness, a weekly 10 minute devotional for the working Christian that follows the Christian liturgical calendar. I want to thank our sponsor for today, Craig and Becky Rohde. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
