217: Os Guinness and Understanding Our Moment

Os Guinness is an English author and social critic and a previous guest on Halfway There. His work is largely responsible for this podcast and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to speak with him. Today, Os shares what it was like being at L’Abri with the Schaeffers, why we need to understand the cultural shifts of the 1960s, and the scandal of discipleship in the American church today. Os is a gifted writer and thinker who helped me understand our historical context. This conversation is sure to encourage you to engage differently.

Listen to Os now!

Stories Os shared:

• Visiting and working at L’Abri with Francis and Edith Schaeffer
• The kind of people who came by L’Abri
• How he became a writer
• How understanding the 1960s helps us understand today
• The difference between the American and French revolutions and their impacts today
• Why the Biblical view of freedom is unique
• How to engage on social media
• How to following your calling to make a change
• The collapse of transmission in the American church
• How to think about revival
• Why now is the time to reclaim our understanding of freedom

Great quotes from Os:

You can’t understand today’s crisis without understanding the 60s.

The challenge today is not just to say “injustice” but to say “Whose view of justice are you using to redress the problem?”

We who are called to be salt and light are clearly neither salty nor light-bearing if we’re the majority and uninfluential.

Resources we mentioned:

• Os Guinness’s website
• The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever (IVP Signature Collection) by Os Guinness
• Repressive Tolerance
• The Second Evangelical Awakening by J. Edwin Orr

Related episodes:

• Os Guinness and Carpe Diem Redeemed
• Laura Flanders and the Mentored Life
• Kyle Strobel and Integrating Spirituality and Theology

The post Os Guinness and Understanding Our Moment appeared first on Eric Nevins.