This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about front-line

theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky. There are some things that we're quite certain that we know in terms of the patterns of the past.

There are certain eras that are simply etched in our historical consciousness in such a way that we think we have

a handle on them. We think we know what they mean. That's true of the Victorian age and as we shall see in this

conversation it's true in ways that are profoundly untrue. Timothy Larson has

been on the faculty of Wheaton College since 2002 where he holds the Carolyn and Fred McManus

professorship of Christian thought. That's one of the most esteemed endowed

chairs in the world of evangelical higher education. He earned both bachelor's

and master's degree from Wheaton College before earning his PhD in

history from the University of Stirling in Scotland. His intellectual interests and teaching

areas are in the fields of British history, historical theology, Christian thought, intellectual currents, and controversies.

He has been elected a visiting fellow for All Souls College at Oxford for the Trinity term of 2012.

He's the author of several books including most recently, a people of one book, The Bible and the Victorians,

published by Oxford University Press. Professor Larson, welcome to Thinking in Public.

I'm glad to be here.

Professor Larson, there are certain things we just know, those of us who have any historical consciousness at all.

For instance, we know that the Dark Ages were uniformly dark and we know that the Victorians lost their

faith.

Do we actually know these things?

Well, we don't have time to get too far into the Dark Ages, but that's wrong as well.

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