Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology Neuron. My guest is Andrew Wilson, who is a teaching pastor at King's Church London and a columnist for Christianity today.

He has degrees in history and theology from Cambridge University and King's College in London.

He's the author of several books, including this most recent one called Remaking the World, how 1776 created the post-Christian West and this forms the topic for our conversation together.

And I really, really enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Andrew Wilson.

Andrew, was it in 2016 when I was in Eastbourne when we recorded, when you were on the podcast last or have you been on since then? Do you remember?

Oh, no, I've been, I have been on the podcast. I think we spoke about spiritual gifts in the church. Can I ask about the gifts? And we had a decent conversation about race and diversity in the church as well. But I don't know if that was the same conversation. We maybe we spoke amongst the twice.

So maybe once in, but I think I told the story before, but my first time coming across your work was in that, probably a lot of people say this, right?

That debate you had with Rob Bell. Yeah, 12 years ago. And it kind of, I don't didn't go viral might be a little too strong, but I feel like a lot of people saw that video.

Yeah, it's the thing I've done most people have seen. Yeah.

Okay.

And I remember he, he, he did, he was not on his game. And I, I was like, who's this Andrew Wilson guy? He's really sharp.

And anyway, we've connected and been friends ever since. So your, your new book caught me by surprise, remaking the world, how 1776 created the post Christian West.

Now, first, I already have somebody questions. One is, what's the biblical scholar doing writing on what I thought was American history.

And then number two, I love the audacity of you writing on 1776. And then in the first few pages saying this book actually is very little to do with the founding of the United States.

Part of it, but it's not.

So the first question, have you, I know you have history as kind of part of your degrees, but I always think of you as just like a biblical scholar.

Where did that, where did your, where did you want to write on history come from?

So, also, primarily I'm, I think of myself as a pastor. So I, which is not just an out like I know academically, I've done a did a PhD in theology.

Then my undergrad degree was history and theology, but really I come to it as a, as a pastor and as a preacher in a way, thinking I, I do, I have to do cultural apologetics.

So that's the language I would often use now to describe it all the time.

And so I think I'm coming to this much more as I'm trying to understand the culture we're in.

And I found that history can be a really good way of introducing it to people and it can be a, I hope a really compelling story to help people get their, you know, categories which would sound a little bit dull if you said, well, we believe the following seven things are all work of ones.

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