Dr. Lauren Turek
Appearances
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
So the pursuit church is not explicitly Pentecostal in terms of denomination. It's not a member of the, you know, assemblies of God or anything, but they have a lot of the language. So I think they're influenced by it. What's very interesting about Pentecostalism is that, first of all, this is something that emerges.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
This is a faith tradition that comes in the United States in the early 20th century. It starts as an interracial movement. It does not stay that way. In the 20s, it splits into a black and white Pentecostal church, and there's a sort of lot going on there. But it starts that way.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
And what's very interesting is in those really early days of Pentecostalism, many of the people who received this sort of Holy Spirit began speaking in tongues. They believed that they were actually speaking foreign languages that meant they should go out to the place that they thought had the language that they were speaking to evangelize. So they were like, I think I'm speaking Chinese.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
God is calling me to go to China. And so they would go to China. They'd show up and they would, of course, then realize that they were not speaking Chinese. But that didn't matter. They would stay and they would evangelize there. And this is one of the reasons why Pentecostalism ended up spreading really rapidly through Africa, through Latin America, in Asia.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
One of the largest churches in the world is a Pentecostal church in South Korea that has something like 800,000 congregants. in one church, right? And some of the reason it spreads is because there's all this evangelistic work and some of it's because it's this very ecstatic, emotional experience. You feel a really deep personal connection. There isn't this separation between you and the gospel.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
So it's really emotional. These are really emotional services. And so I see some of that in the language that this church uses, that they use a language of the Holy Spirit. They're very conservative politically. They are opposed to gay marriage. They're certainly anti-abortion. They're very pro-Israel. They, again, I mentioned they have this really anti-trans. Yeah, they have this sort of
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep04: When the Cameras are On
statement again of inclusivity, but it's one that really kind of belies that longer history of kind of white evangelical racism and the split in Pentecostalism.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep08: They Saw You
She's at this live life church, which is also a non-denominational church, also evangelical, really focused on a born again experience, focused on evangelism, but it's a black evangelical church.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep08: They Saw You
They're really focused on this vision of diversity, right? You see the pictures of a diverse group of leadership in the church and diverse worshipers. The live life church had much less information about their statement of belief. They had very kind of broad messaging. Again, I think meant to be really inclusive to invite people in. Their vision for their faith was not as spelled out in terms of
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep08: They Saw You
Here are the creeds we believe in, or here are the sort of specific scriptures that are animating our worship. They have a lot on their sort of site about the work that they're doing in the community, that sort of thing. So they seem to be more in line with what we might think of as a social action focused church.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep08: They Saw You
Not necessarily, it wouldn't necessarily mean that she didn't feel welcome there politically. Although I just, I find it very interesting that she moved from what's very clearly a very, very conservative church to one that looks quite different.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep08: They Saw You
But it was interesting because I watched her doing her service at that church, and she was still using a lot of the same language from earlier. So I don't know how much she has changed in that different environment because she's still talking about, like, partnering with God. She's asking for donations. She's talking about what she's doing for the kids and about how God has –
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep08: They Saw You
kind of infused her journey and all of that, which, again, not that it wouldn't, like, it certainly resonates, but it's not clear to me that she has broken from that model.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
So the other thing that came from that for me is that she's somebody who really embraces this idea of spiritual warfare, which is something where there's a sense that Satan is a real entity. This isn't just like a metaphorical evil. It's somebody real who is trying to stop God's mission on earth and needs to be fought.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
My sense is that many of these evangelicals are in fact true believers, that this isn't necessarily a kind of cynical ploy for their own ends, although I'm sure people can make arguments about that, but there's a sense of true belief that they have had this incredible, emotional, ecstatic experience through their salvation, and that they now are on a walk with Christ, that they are literally
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
together that he is with them and guiding them and it does feel and sometimes that is it does come with this romantic language or this really it's often i often think of it just being very emotional language this isn't like imaginary it is a genuine deep feeling that christ is with them that he's somebody that they can talk to for guidance that he'll pick them up when they have a problem
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
So different evangelicals and different Protestant groups, there are a few different types in terms of their beliefs about the end of the world that we think of as eschatology.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
There are some that believe that there's going to be a period of trial and tribulation and things are going to be very bad, and then there will be the second coming of Christ, and then everybody will be in the kingdom of heaven on earth. And so some believe that that sort of trial and tribulation has to come first. And some of them think that world evangelization has to precede that.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
And so some of them will read like the book of Matthew, like Matthew 24, 14. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come. And so it's like, is there a sequence there that we have to do this and then this, you know, they read the book of Mark and the good news must first speak, proclaim to all nations.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
And so there's that sense that we have to evangelize everybody and then the second coming will happen.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
Yeah, and they'll be damned to hell. And so this is a very, I mean, this is a horrible thought to someone who believes this, that there are all of these innocent people who've never had the chance to hear the gospel. And, you know, it's billions of people, right? They've never had the chance to hear the gospel and have the opportunity to experience salvation through Christ.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
And so they're just going to... die and go to hell and live in eternal suffering because Christians have not been able to reach them. Whereas if you can reach them, not that you would convert everybody, but that you would at least give everybody the opportunity to be saved and then have the possibility for eternal life and salvation with Jesus. What a beautiful gift to offer them.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
I'm Dr. Lauren Turek. I am an associate professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. My expertise is in U.S. foreign relations, and I particularly look at the role of religious groups and especially conservative religious groups in shaping U.S. foreign policy.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
a great place to start and a place that is often fraught because, of course, scholars of religion have debates about this. In my own work, because I'm a historian of U.S. foreign relations, I have tended to look for really what is a practical definition of this, something useful. So I'm really interested in what are their beliefs and what do they do with those beliefs? So beliefs and actions.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
So generally, when we're looking at those things, we think of evangelicals as being Protestant Christians who believe that the Bible is authoritative, that it's the inerrant word of God. Now, some subgroups, like fundamentalists, believe that the Bible is literal, that it's in every way sort of literal exactly as it was.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
Not all evangelicals share that belief, but all evangelicals do believe that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. Evangelicals also believe that in order to be saved and to have eternal life in heaven, they have to have a salvation experience where they are saved through their faith in Jesus Christ.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
And it's typically a very personal experience where they have a personal relationship with Jesus. And then they also believe, in addition to that, that they have a responsibility from God, a biblical responsibility, to go out and spread the gospel to the entire world, to evangelize everyone everywhere.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
We sometimes think of there being a distinction between maybe mainline Protestant churches, and that's often Lutherans, Methodists, Congregationalists. Although there of course are Evangelical Lutherans and others, so it's a little bit fuzzier than we sometimes think. But there are these mainline Protestant churches, and then there are Evangelicals who are also Protestants, of course.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
Some of them are in denominations, right? Some of them are Baptists. Sometimes we count Seventh-day Adventists as evangelicals. So there's always some debate over who fits in. And then there's this huge group of what we call non-denominational Christians. And non-denominational just means they don't belong to a specific denomination, but many of them are still evangelical.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
And so they share beliefs. And what's very interesting is that they will borrow certain beliefs from certain denominations, but they're kind of a patchwork that they're putting together themselves.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
And what I thought was very interesting about Sophie is that the progress in the churches that she went to, they go from being something that started as a somewhat mainline church, and then one that is a non-denominational that's very Pentecostal, and then to a non-denominational church that is
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
maybe having some flavor of that, but is perhaps less specific about where it's borrowing its beliefs from.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
So Haven Church was originally part of the Reformed Church in America. And what's interesting about her church is her church is now part of a group of those Reformed churches that actually split off from the Reformed Church in America to form a new umbrella organization. So they're now part of something called the Alliance of Reformed Churches.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
many of the churches in the Alliance of Reformed Churches, so the ones that Haven belongs to now, they were much more politically conservative, and so they are really uncomfortable with the changes happening in the RCA, and they broke off. So they make their own more conservative Reformed church organization.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
Very interestingly, their organization, in addition to being opposed to same-sex marriage and opposed to abortion and being very supportive of Israel, they also They don't disallow women from being pastors, but they leave it up to the individual churches to decide if they want to allow it. And the majority of the churches in the Alliance of Reformed Churches do not accept women as pastors.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
It really emphasizes evangelism. You shared with me a sermon that she gave when she went back to Haven, and I was listening to what she was saying, and she was using a lot of language that speaks to that evangelicalism.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S05 Ep02: Spiritual Warfare
He talks a lot about how, you know, God was going to do something in my life is something she said, which suggests that God is speaking to her, maybe not speaking to her, but it has a message for her specifically that she has this personal relationship that she has a task to do. And she also uses the phrase, a waging war on the kingdom of evil.