Uh, he's author of the book, reviving New England, the key to revitalizing post -Christian America available

Reviving New England, the Key to Revitalizing Post -Christian America, which is the first book by our

A book at the moment titled Reviving New England, is that what made you think about New England? Your love for the people, your love of God�s glory here, what it used to be like, what it could be like?

In fact, obviously, reviving New England is sort of your book. Reviving New England is a lot to do with what we're going to discuss today, I'm assuming. But one of the things that has always one of the things that has always amazed me is how New England went from being a central hub in the United States or should I say America, because this began before we were these United States.

You had the Puritans flourishing in this area and other very solid, biblically faithful heirs of the Protestant Reformation. And the Northeast is now known as a theologically barren place. Of course, there are faithful churches still there, but many of the very same churches that were pastored by Puritans, even the one pastored by Jonathan Edwards himself, they have become apostate.

And God knows what's coming up. It seems from our limited vantage point that we are either on the verge of a genuine revival, which I sincerely hope and pray is the case, or we are approaching a form of Christianity that may offer a sense of national identity while lacking the transformative power of the gospel and the fullness of the Christian ethic.

Revival starts out when Individuals get right with the Lord. We need to purify.

Look New England is a derivative of Puritan culture in many ways sort of a secularized Puritan culture and Most people think that this is the centerpiece of American history. And it's a wonderful part of American history in many ways.

The civil religion was a factory of American civil religion, America's redemptive identity, messianic America. That's where so much of it came from. But I think we can find it. You're right, that there's an element of this in the second Great Awakening.

It's about moral transformation. It's about personal improvement and change, and it is also about this conversion moment. We need people to make decisions for Christ, and so as the American church is becoming a thing, those two theological movements, pietism and revivalism, form and shape the American church, broadly speaking.

First in New England, then throughout America, the values, ethics, and worldview of Puritanism, which sometime in its growth can be called Evangelicalism, was the dominant cultural force. The skeptical, deistic flavor of the European Enlightenment was overwhelmed in America by the 1620 Project.

Do you think this individual? Individualistic and egalitarian American mindset born on a rugged frontier has created the type of Christianity America that has lost.

It's about the revitalization. It's about taking, even a healthy church can go through a period where they need to sort of revitalize themselves and remind themselves why they're there. But for a dying church specifically, you need revitalization.

We need revival. And cultural Christianity is ultimately a net loss. It's only just gonna return a pig back to the muck without divine intervention.

Anyway, Jonathan Edwards on Revival.

There wouldn't be a United States of America if it were not for Protestant Christianity. And so we're gonna talk about different traditions and denominations, what did the Puritans and the Congregationalists bring to the table?

What's happening on the ground across this country with churches? The deck is being reshuffled. The dust hasn't settled. What's going on? Big picture in American quote -unquote evangelicalism, but also from the ground up.

They still read Christian books, but just not books about real revival. So they were recovered from neglect, they were republished by the denomination, and they were encouraged in the church. So the pastor said, if you haven't read Jonathan Edwards over here, his book on, you know, the nature of a narrative of surprising conversions, where he talks about young people especially being wonderfully saved in the midst of that revival, if you haven't read that, well, there is a new edition.

As the title of the sermon is, The Religious Condition of a Post -9 -11 America, I want us to see that the world which we now live, which has been reshaped by the concepts of terror and religious terrorism, may make living a consistent life for Christ in the United States more and more difficult in the coming future, but that we must remain steadfast in our commitment to Christ and not falter in our resolve.

Are we talking about the revival? Well, both of those movements have significantly impacted our country as well as England, Scotland, Wales and others but and they've impacted us in in really beneficial ways which I think if we can get to the heart of the movement so we're not just interested in what happened that you know in the year 1662 or you know what did George Whitfield do when he preached, what were his methods but if we get kind of beneath that initial layer to talk about the heart of Puritanism and the heart of the evangelical revival or the Great Awakening which is what we call it in our country, I think then that there are so many significant lessons for us and one of the lessons that we're going to be looking at is the fact that Puritanism is not just a group that you know it's not a movement that was merely interested in being really really really precise and then you get this kind of impression that that's a bit of a dry academic armchair kind of you know theologian kind of thing but actually the Puritans were very activistic they wanted to bring the doctrines that they were learning from the Reformation and apply it in their day in a way that would revolutionize or revitalize or reform the the British Church and so that that has a lot to say to us today.