Christian Worldview and Apologetics Training

The cultural situation

A culture in trouble — and a church that’s lost its prophetic calling.

If you make your home in the Anglosphere, you likely won’t think it an exaggeration to say that we live in a culture in trouble. Within a few generations we have witnessed what is proving to be a suicidal effort to dismantle the Judeo-Christian society and replace it with a multicultural society established upon moral and cultural relativism. Troubling symptoms vary from nation to nation, but common ones include the decline of trust and national cohesion, ancient freedoms being eroded by state power, the breakup of the family, a war on the unborn, falling birth rates, concerns over immigration, the accumulation of vast national debt, crime going unchallenged and addictions to consumerism and cheap entertainment. Unsurprisingly, we find lives characterised by emptiness, focused on the trivial, looking for the next purchase or experience to provide some momentary meaning. Sadly, and tragically, much of the church has opted for cowardice, made friends with the culture and abandoned the prophetic, fearless diagnosis and remedy that is required for such a time as this.

A century of mental and moral destruction

One hundred years ago Christian apologist GK Chesterton spoke of the great march of mental destruction. His phrase perfectly captures the corruption in thought that has followed the abandoning of the Infinite-Personal God – revealed in history and Scripture – and the prostration of ourselves before men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault. At first, Chesterton’s mental destruction was largely confined to self-confessed Bohemians, but in time their ideas were picked up by the hippies of the 1960s and later spread into our universities. But it is in the present generation that the destruction has entered the mainstream as never before. The binaries that kept us sane and held us together are disintegrating: male and female; truth and error; good and evil; normal and abnormal; fact and fiction; human and animal; sense and non-sense.

The call to engage

The decline of nations that were once grounded in Biblical principles of human value, justice, righteousness and personal liberty should be of concern to all Christians. Around us rages a battle for the mind: mental destruction versus truth. Called to be salt and light, Christians are not given the luxury of settling into holy huddles, waiting for a Saviour from heaven to whisk them away. Certainly, Christians are called to pray. But we are also called to engage: to think, speak and act wisely and purposefully. Anything less is not an option. We are sent out into the world and not permitted to retreat from it. Our parenting must be intentional. Our sermons must challenge rival narratives. And we must learn to engage better in the public square. We can survive the collapse of our Judeo-Christian heritage but must prepare now to one day rebuild from the ruins.

Who and I and why this course?

I am an evangelical pastor from the United Kingdom who seeks to play a part in raising up a generation of people who recover a Biblical mind. To establish an online community of faith and learning. I currently serve as a pastor at a large international church in Southeast Asia. Previously, I pastored a church near Cambridge, England. I hold a PhD from the University of Durham and possess considerable teaching and cross-cultural experience from living on three continents (Europe, Africa and now Asia). For over twenty years I have been teaching the Bible and worldview for churches, Christian schools, universities and more recently online. My aim is to help believers understand and challenge secular narratives and encourage them to think biblically about all of life.

I am an evangelical pastor from the United Kingdom who seeks to play a part in raising up a generation of people who recover a Biblical mind. To establish an online community of faith and learning. I currently serve as a pastor at a large international church in Southeast Asia. Previously, I pastored a church near Cambridge, England. I hold a PhD from the University of Durham and possess considerable teaching and cross-cultural experience from living on three continents (Europe, Africa and now Asia). For over twenty years I have been teaching the Bible and worldview for churches, Christian schools, universities and more recently online. My aim is to help believers understand and challenge secular narratives and encourage them to think biblically about all of life.

Andrew Carter PhD.