In this episode, I engage with Reverend Dr. Sam Wells, vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, on the intricate meanings of 'progressive' and 'inclusive' in Christianity. Wells challenges the simplistic view of progress as a linear moral improvement, arguing it can perpetuate a patronizing mindset. He links these discussions to the theology of atonement, emphasizing the balance between grace and justice, particularly in contexts like LGBTQ inclusion. Highlighting the complexities of building inclusive church communities, Wells calls for genuine relationships rooted in respect and understanding.
Suggested Reading and Listening:
St. Martin in the Fields website
What Does It Mean to Be An Inclusive Church? By Sam Wells
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[0:12] Music. Hey everyone, welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Happy October, everyone! So, a few months ago, a pastor friend of mine shared an article that was in the Christian Century. It was written by pastor and theologian Sam Wells. Wells begins his essay with these words.
[0:27] For watching. Bye.
[1:17] Quote, I've never felt comfortable with the label progressive. It buys into the narrative that things are gradually getting better because of the activism of people like me. A narrative that seems under-theologized, to say nothing of narcissistic. But I seem to have found myself in a place among people who basically believe all of it. The virgin birth and the resurrection, shall we say, but see Jesus as a figure of liberation and radical recalibration rather than as a signpost pointing back to the secure 1950s. And I find myself at a church that likes to be challenged to explore the theological roots of its largely soft-left social and political convictions.".
[2:06] You know, we hear the word progressive in politics and in religion as well. We're hearing it a lot especially this year. If you are like me in the mainline Protestantism, you hear the word progressive a lot, progressive Christianity especially. But what does that word mean? And what does it mean in society? And what does it mean for us as Christians? So today on the podcast, I'm talking to Sam Wells about words like progressive and inclusive and what they mean in the context of the church. The Reverend Dr. Sam Wells has been the vicar of St. Martin's in the Fields in London since 2012, and he's served as a parish priest for 25 years, and 10 of those have been in urban areas. Now, before he came to St. Martin's in the Fields, he was the dean of Duke Seminary Chapel in North Carolina for seven years.
[3:09] So, with all of that, let's hear from Sam Wells.
[3:14] Music.
[3:50] Well, thank you for joining me for this conversation. I kind of want to start off by learning a little bit more about yourself and then also about St. Martin's in the Fields. I actually remember visiting that parish in the late 90s, so it's been a long time. But just to kind of get people to know a little bit about the parish and where it's located in London. Sure. Well, I guess I would give you five or six dates. 1222, there was first evidence of a church here.
[4:28] 1545, Henry VIII decided that St. Margaret's, next to the Palace of Westminster, now the House of Parliament, which used to be where the king lived, was too plague-ridden, and he wanted a parish church further away. So we're about half a mile away. He chose us. George Herbert used to attend that church at the end of the 16th century as a boy. New church was built in 1726 at the behest of George I, who was 50th in line to the throne, but the other 49 were all Catholics. So the architecture of the church which is sort of semi-gothic semi-classical is kind of a propaganda statement for the kind of combination of two traditions and bringing England and Scotland together in 1707 and England and Britain and Hanover together 1714 was a kind of, bringing together. Then fast forward to 1914, when my predecessor, Dick Shepherd, became vicar, and he created the tradition of the ever-opened door, the tradition of us working with those experiencing homelessness, which we still do and are famous for in this country.
[5:47] And then he also was responsible for the first ever live religious worship service broadcast cast in 1924. And then the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the other thing we're most famous for is our music, was created in 1958 and is still the most recorded orchestra in the world, mostly touring and recording. So they only play here probably six or 10 times a year.
[6:18] We founded our Chinese congregation in 1964. We founded our business business, commercial enterprise, which still functions in 1987. And we had a complete makeover of the site in 2006 to sort of bring us to a sort of state of the art institution alongside the National Gallery, Canadian High Commission, the South African High Commission, and Nelson's column the great sort of things in Trafalgar Square. And Trafalgar Square is the place from which road measurements are taken. And the place where those measurements are taken from is just 200 yards from where I'm talking to you right now. So we're right bang in the middle of London. And our mission statement is at the heart, on the edge, which is a multivalent statement as many of these things are that we like to feel we're at the cutting edge of many things social innovation. We were there at the beginning of Amnesty International and various other impressive social ideas, but we're also at the heart. We're in the middle of London, but we're also close to the heart of God. I've been here since 2012. I was previously dean of the chapel at Duke University in North Carolina.
[7:37] So one of the reasons I have you on is the article that you wrote back in July for Christian Century that's entitled, What Does It Mean to Be an Inclusive Church?
[7:48] And one of the things that you say, you start off that essay is your uneasiness with the word progressive. And um did you kind of unpack what is it that makes you uneasy about it well i think like a lot of terms um it sort of becomes such a familiar label and it you know and what labels do is they instantly tell you so you know something pretty significant i've had a lot of pretty significant things about somebody so uh shall we say let's take black lives matter if you say you're a progressive you may have question marks about how some of the funding was spent you may have question marks about some of the sloganeering around it but you basically think black lives matter is addressing a real very significant major social problem which you know from time to time and particularly with the death of George Floyd was highlighted.
[8:45] And you think we need social change around race, around policing, around how some crimes just don't seem to figure on the national consciousness in the way that they should is absolutely abhorrent. Progressive tells you all of those things in just one word. There's almost no one who would own the label progressive who would disagree with anything I've just said. So they're helpful, but... But like any simplistic labeling, they also, if you look more carefully at the word itself, it suggests that you think the world is getting better and better, or equally plausibly would do so if everybody did what you thought they should do.
[9:35] Um both of which i think are quite problematic statements i don't think there is much evidence say the world's getting better and better yes we've lifted quite a you know a billion or so children out of poverty in the last 40 years that's obviously an improvement but you know gaza i mean ukraine uh you know um sudan currently things are you know we're still also are pretty adept at killing each other so that's a dubious statement that doesn't mean that i'm not committed to the kinds of causes that uh progressive usually indicates but i think it's a slightly um you know not fully considered term um and you know if if all progressive means is you want things to get better well we all want things to get better i think even our profound political opponents i think want things to go better i guess what it indicates is that you think the real wisdom in life lies in the future whereas a word like conservative would suggest that the future of the world is involved in getting back to the things that were good a few generations ago you know well in in america a few generations ago it was a segregated society so i think anyone's It's got to be pretty careful about saying we got things right a few generations ago because that clearly is a terrible state of affairs. And obviously the truth is it's still a segregated society in lots of ways.
[11:03] So, you know, conservative is a problematic term for Christians.
[11:09] You know, I like if I'm trying to be friendly, I try to say, you know, liberal means generous. I'll take that. Conservative means I haven't moved on since Jesus. How about you? I'll take that too. But of course we know that conservative doesn't usually mean that. So I just wanted to problematize a word like progressive, which I accept is a useful label, but sometimes labels can inhibit thought as well as facilitate understanding. Do you think that it can also at times not take seriously the notion of.
[11:52] Human sin. You mentioned things like Gaza and Ukraine and all of that, that sometimes we don't always take that role of how humans are still sinful. We still do a lot of bad things. Yeah. That is the standard theological criticism of, if you like, the left. I mean, if you take two of the great theologians of the early church, Irenaeus and Augustine, And Augustine, let's start with Irenaeus, he came first, he basically thinks the human problem is that we are infantile, we haven't grown up, we haven't fully matured.
[12:36] And that tends to be the view of the left. If we just got the laws right, if we just didn't put people in prison for ages but we educated them better, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the world. It's the system um and if we got the system right and educated people properly and got the laws right and use the right vocabulary about different races and genders and so on uh things would be fine and whereas the right tends to be augustinian and that's to say it thinks there's such a thing as perversity and and things are just wrong so you do need laws you do need imprisonment it's the only language people understand, and don't be so sentimental about it. That is the great divide, and so the criticism of the left is that it doesn't have a sufficiently robust notion of sin. That's absolutely right.
[13:30] And probably some would also say that on the right they don't necessarily have a robust understanding of grace, probably. Yeah. Absolutely fair. Absolutely fair. Yeah. Or grace is simply an individualized quality of releasing people in their personal inner life. It doesn't have any social impact. I think that's a fair criticism. So in your essay, you kind of move from that uneasiness about the word or uncomfortableness about the word progressive to talking really about Good Friday and atonement and how does how we kind of deal with with with that concept, which is, I think, sometimes in Christianity, not always well. Well, how does that relate to your understanding or at least uncomfortableness with that word progressive? Yeah.
[14:32] Well, I see two central problems with atonement. The first is that it makes the story of everything a story in which human beings are the center of the story, and God stroke Jesus are brought into the story to fix a fundamental human problem. So the fundamental human problem is twofold. It's guilt and mortality, sin and death in more common language. And we find ourselves, you know, your classic sort of Billy Graham evangelistic address that he points out how, you know, we are sinful. He may not use that word, but how we continue to mess things up. And our bodies are fragile and we're prone to death and we cannot help ourselves, to use a scriptural term. And then he introduces, lo and behold, the figure of Jesus who's able to fix those two problems. So come forward and get the literature and be saved. I'm abbreviating, but you recognize the structure of the argument. But that's really using Jesus to fix our human problem. And a human problem that in narrative terms crystallizes in the fall.
[15:48] Now, how could... So the first thing is, this is a story that we're in the center of, not Jesus. The second problem is that the fall becomes the central moment of history. Despite the fact we have no historical evidence for it the bible actually you know old testament doesn't talk a lot about it um and but more importantly than any of those things how could the most important thing in the history of the universe that's say the incarnation of jesus, be dependent on an accident and something that should never have happened you know that that makes no sense at all so to me it's vital to believe that that jesus was coming anyway regardless of whether there's a fall or not.
[16:32] And then what I gain from that is this principle that's become very important to me theologically, which is that God's means and God's ends are identical. Now, when you say it out loud like that, it's kind of obvious. I mean, who could disagree with that? But, of course, the most atonement theories disagree with that violently, literally. Literally um you know god somehow is subject to some law some principle in history like justice or something and to to you know that's nothing to do with human beings and and that the god doesn't seem to be able to alter um and that then god has to do this dreadful thing to jesus it's a good sum um that somehow puts it right um now that doesn't subscribe you know that doesn't tick the box called god's means and god's ends are identical however attractive that idea sounds but but when you when you realize the consequences of not subscribing to the idea that god's means and God's ends are identical, you basically lose your trust in God because a God that can do something ghastly even to that God's own son, how can you ever permanently trust that God isn't going to do that to you or to anybody or that that God deep down is benevolent?
[17:59] You know, when we come to know and trust another person, it's to the extent that we understand that their means and ends are identical. If they are prone to fits of anger so strong that they become a different person, and that we don't know if they even relate to us or love us or take us seriously or respect us, we can't trust them.
[18:24] So you know for all those reasons i think conventional doctrines of the atonement are problematic i do think so the cross is the central moment in the christian story but that's because i believe that that's the moment we realize that god's will to be with us that brought about the incarnation in fact was the reason for the creation of the world is definitively shown in the fact that jesus on the cross does not let go of us even if it means um you know some kind of rupture in his relationship with the Father.
[18:53] My God, why have you forsaken me? And that is the central moment in the story in which we discover definitively, that God's will to be with us is unchangeable, and in the resurrection we discover that it's unthwartable.
[19:14] So how does all of that relate to progressivism? I guess I would say that I guess I think my men from a memory in the article I'm kind of slightly having a dig at the phrase inclusive which is a you know a sort of mantra of the progressive side of things and again my problem with the word inclusive is that rather like the doctrine atonement it centers us I mean. When you use the word inclusive, you always think of yourself as being inclusive, but inclusive operates as that I'm the together, sorted and normal person. And in my benevolence, I'm stretching out the hand to include the weird and excluded and somehow deficient person, perhaps in the eyes of the world, not, of course, in my eyes, because I'm so educated and righteous. But there's a sort of benevolent righteousness about the stretching out. To me we need a vocabulary uh hence i started with talking about the heart on the edge that that says that because of passages like matthew 25 31 and following in the scriptures.
[20:24] Um it's not that we the righteous include the needy and the poor and the excluded it's that those that the world often describes as needy and poor excluded homelessness that obviously the category most relevant to the life of St. Martins, are the center of God's life. And in fact, Jesus, in becoming incarnate, became many of those categories, many of those designations, identities.
[20:52] And if we want to meet Jesus, we have to hang out with people in those social
[20:57] categories because that is where we're taught Jesus is to be found. So what I'm resisting is that constant impulse of religion that Ludovic Feuerbach pointed out over and over again, that it ends up being just another strategy for bigging up ourselves, our ego, our control, our righteousness, rather than what it should be, which is an exercise in in humility that makes us appreciative that god is prepared to find a place in the story even for someone like us yeah you when you talk about inclusion i thought it was fascinating um especially on um how the congregation your congregation is dealing with lgbtq issues shoes, um, about inclusion. And it's, as someone who is also gay, it's, I've also see the importance of inclusion, but I also feel that there is a sense of including everyone, even if those are who don't agree.
[22:05] Um, and there's a years ago, the, um, the head of, of the communion that I'm a part of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, talked about the fact of, on this issue of trying to stay at the table. And she was trying to center the communion table as a kind of, because it's so important to our tradition, of how do we stay at that table, which is difficult.
[22:32] And I guess that's kind of a question that I would bring to you is about, you talk a lot about inclusion really meaning how do we also include those who may not always see eye to eye. And of course, you have to be careful. It's not in a situation where it's abusive or hurtful. But how do you do that? And how do you do that in a way that doesn't center yourself? Because I think that that's, as you're talking about, such a temptation. So you've hinted at one of these, but I think there are two perpetual problems with liberalism if liberalism and inclusion are equated in this sense. I'm not talking about liberalism as a view of tax policy or any of that kind of thing.
[23:20] So problem one is how do you include people who don't want to be included? So for a classic argument is about universalism and the you know the conviction that i hold that there's a place for everybody at god's heart eternally but what you then say to someone i don't want anything to do with your god or god or that god's heart or being with you for you know that that that is a serious if you believe in people's integrity and you respect their dignity and then when they say they want nothing to do with you then your attempts to include them are kind of thwarted so that's uh the problem one Problem two is what does the inclusive person do with the person that is happy to be included but won't include others? Those are problems, two questions. I don't have an answer to either of those questions. But what I do, I hope, do is recognize that those are major problems. Because a lot of people, I think, really stumble over those things. They find themselves being coercive in subtle ways to the first group. Oh, no, no, you're coming in too, whether you like it or not, because I've got to keep my notion of inclusion.
[24:39] And then it's almost impossible, you know, just like bringing up a child when you don't want to use corporal punishment or, you know, of course you don't want, I hope you don't. But then you you end up in terms of setting boundaries and rules you know either using language that is demeaning or kind of coercing in some other way i'm not saying you should resort to corporate management because some other way is almost always better than than hitting somebody but it but it's a fantasy that you can't be coercive in any way at all when you're bringing up a child i think it is you know however many videos you watch on parenting sometimes the child's behavior is so outrageous that you've got to somehow be.
[25:32] Very very clear you know and even raising your voice is coercive so um these are two things that progressive liberal whatever language you inclusive whatever language you want to use you know struggle with and have never found an answer to and and so you know and and there's also a humility for the church at this stage in our life and you know obviously your church location is like different from mine but i think we're struggling with the same issues and questions um which is um we're sort of humbled by the world because the world has more or less
[26:08] i know america's going through a bit of a rocky patch on this at the moment.
[26:11] But the world has more or less got to a place of live and let live.
[26:21] And that becomes extremely problematic when it comes to things like anti-marches about Gaza, because you're up against this secular ethic of live and let live, and when that is really pushed to its extreme. And, um, so, so I think the default, particularly for sort of what we might call soft progressives in the church is to take live and let live, which is to say on sexuality, you know, gay people shouldn't be allowed to be married. That shouldn't inhibit their progress in ministry, these kinds of things.
[27:03] But if a pastor feels in all conscience they can't take a wedding for a gay couple, nobody should force them. That is the classic live and let live position. And what progressives can't understand is why conservatives cannot live with that. Because there's a kind of live and let live logic that's in the water of our culture. You know and likewise you know on abortion I mean I know there's a bit of an irony about live and let live in in that issue but you know the the simple equation that a woman has a right to an abortion up to should we say you know 20 weeks or whatever it might be but no physician will be forced to perform an abortion you know that that's that is the live and let live kind of logic. And it's so forcible that it's very difficult to find somebody under the age of 35 or 40 in educated society in the United States or the UK for whom that's not a no-brainer.
[28:12] However, those same people can be found to be quite coercive when it comes to what you do with people who don't subscribe to live and let them and that's the you know that's the bit we're really struggling with with because you know what what's happened is that whereas in say the 70s the progressives you know behaved what they would say radically but you know acted out a bit you know unauthorized ordinations of women bishops or this kind of thing.
[28:45] Uh now now progressives do very seldom seem to do anything interesting uh it's the conservatives that um act out and and do outrageous things and the liberals are flawed i mean trump does it all the time but but verbally certainly but um but you know what was january the 6th if not an outrageous you know so outrageous the liberals don't know how to respond to it because it's it's just outside sign their vocabulary of constraining behavior and they're just completely outflanked by it um that's so much a part of the trump phenomenon is that i've just got no vocabulary to comprehend how you know how badly he's behaving um so so it's it's it's a real issue so i i yeah i i guess i i'm i'm as guilty of this as anybody i i on sexuality i i cannot you know a contraposition where i can't see what possible argument there could be for against same-sex marriage.
[29:48] But when, as is happening in the Church of England at the moment, people start withholding their contributions to the judicatories because they take a conservative position on this and start pulling away.
[30:04] I'm a little bit stuck about what I say to them, as in, I profoundly disagree with you, but I still want to remain in communion with you, and I'm not forcing you to do anything. I'm not diminishing your life by the position that I'm taking. Please don't force me to do anything or diminish my life by the position you're taking. Why can't we all just get along?" So those are the kinds of—I think I'm describing something you recognize as the basic, what I call the two problems of liberalism. Well, it seems like with inclusion, there has to to be a balance between both justice and grace. And that I think too often we, especially in more progressive circles, focus on the justice part, but not always on the grace part and understand that people aren't, not everyone is at the same point yet. And I think it was interesting in the essay you bring up something maybe from what you've heard from Africans that a century ago, you all and that guess you're referring to the church of England would say gay sex is wrong and now you're saying it's right the only difference is that in both cases you're saying that you're better than us and that's something to think about and something to really take into account that.
[31:32] Even if we are on the right side of an issue, there is still that issue of grace. And do we have that same grace towards someone who may have a different understanding? And.
[31:47] It's kind of dealing with all of the balances, and I don't think that we're always aware of that. Yeah. I mean, that African point I think is really, really timely. And what it tells us is that knowledge, wisdom, truth always have a social location. They always have a topicality about them. And right now, we're in a post-colonial era where someone who looks and sounds like me has to be jolly careful if I set foot in Ghana or Nigeria and start bossing everybody around. They're likely to tell me to get on the next plane back or possibly something a bit more robust than that. And it's completely understandable, given the history.
[32:29] Um so so yeah i think it's um but but there's a lot yeah so there's a lot of things we can say about about justice i mean i think the mistake again of the left is to forget well i think mistake the left is to forget the life is fundamentally about relationships and that to get well i wrote a little book called act justly basically making this point sometimes you can get justice, which is what you thought you wanted, but find you haven't got what you really wanted. You've got a decision in your favor, which is called justice by a law court or something or a judge or somebody, an arbitration process, but you're still left empty. You haven't got real vindication. And you've lost a whole lot of relationships on the way. And notoriously, community organizing and so on can tread on a lot of people on its way to get the right outcome. So I go back to my principle of means and ends being identical.
[33:39] I try in ethics as well as in theology to keep to that principle. If you've gone by such a roundabout, clumsy, uncomfortable, and disrespectful route to get to a very good place, sometimes that very good place isn't a great place to be because you've done so much damage on your way to get there.
[34:04] So So I guess that means I'm possibly more resigned to often not getting there because, you know, to use an old analogy, I'm a bit squeamish about breaking a lot of eggs in order to make the omelet because those shells don't, you know, you don't throw them away at life. You can't throw things away. They're still all around you.
[34:29] And, you know, I suppose that, Again, what I experience at the moment, I don't know how you feel about how things are with the state of politics in the United States with Kamala's surge, as it were. But in my experience, the right of both politics and the church has been more ruthless about the means it used to get to an end. And that has been very uncomfortable to behold. But I guess I've just visited Cuba. And in the developing world in the 1950s and so on, America's whole doctrine was the end justifies the means. America did ghastly things in Congo, Cuba, and those sort of places because it thought it was in the Cold War and it thought the end justified the means. But I think Christians have got to be very cautious before they use those kind of arguments.
[35:39] The kind of way it leads to, you talk in the essay about the three ways that people can seek justice, and the first is through legislation and then the second which i think is kind of really a popular one these days is protest, but the final one is to really foster a community of what justice might look like, um and i'm kind of curious what that might look like at a local congregation and you kind of lift up a little bit what could that what does that look like at saint martin's, yeah i mean i i i guess that's what i've dedicated the better part of my life to doing so i've you know i've got an interest in that you know i have friends who who um run non-profits who are you know basically given to protest and to um you know bringing miscarriages of justice to light and and resolving them obviously very important work um and i have friends who are members of department or, you know, those kinds of things who are, you know, very much part of the system, and trying to work within the system for good.
[36:50] I I suppose I feel that by doing what I'm doing, which is trying to build an institution that's an example and inspiration to others, I'm not deferring. I'm not saying I'm doing the spade work that others will one day capitalize on. I'm doing the capitalizing. And that reflects my own kind of impatience, I suppose. I don't want to endlessly defer and say, I'm going to get some legislation done and these other people are going to benefit from it. I want to be doing the benefit.
[37:31] So it is an institution that worships. Augustine says in The City of God, where there is no true worship, there can be no justice.
[37:42] Because if worship is giving the other their due, unless you're giving God's due, you can't have a right calibration of all relationships. That's the point that Augustine's making. So that's where it starts here at Saint Martin's.
[38:00] But around that, around a community of trust and imagination, it grows a lot of energies. I mean, some of the insights of the Christian faith, as I understand it, are that Israel discovered a truer face of God in exile than ever had in the Promised Land, and that the early church recognized the face of Jesus on the cross as the truest face of God it had ever met, despite the fact that he was in agony. And so from that, we derive the principle that paradoxically it's in adversity that we often discover that the true character of God and our own tree character more than we do in you know so that that's in a sense the heart of why we spend so much time at Saint Martin's in relationship with those experiencing homelessness because it's in their adversity and our solidarity with their adversity that we find the face of God so likewise in music I mean to take the two most obvious things about St. Martin's in terms of some music.
[39:07] That process of creativity by which we depict the life of heaven in song or in instrumental music, where we aspire together to create something beautiful that transcends our existence, these are some of the most important moments in our lives. And we try to do those things really, really well, and we try to make them participative so people can do them as volunteers, as well as do them professionally and enjoy them and pay to come to concerts and create a business plan that generates music and some people are prepared to pay for, which pays for the homeless work. You know, I mean, it's a virtuous circle, That to me is a model of a better society where everyone's creativity and everyone's relationship, everyone's dignity, everyone's joy becomes part of a virtuous circle.
[40:01] It's not justice in the way that justice is understood as passing good laws and vindicating people who have been wrongly accused and bringing criminals to the bar. It's not that kind of justice, but I think it's a much more textured substructure kind of justice without which any of the other kind of justice. It's the kind of playing field on which the football game takes place. That's what civil society is. That's what we're forming, and we're doing it in a way that hopefully speaks of the truth of Jesus. So I think that's a valid third kind of justice. And as I say in the article, I think I sort of frame it, I didn't make this up, it was all true, what I said in the article, that I got a message from someone. Actually, funnily enough, before we came to this conversation, I was replying to the same individual in an email as I was when I wrote that article.
[40:58] And I was basically saying, it's fine to dismiss the church and say how useless it is. But, you know, some of us are actually trying to build institutions that can embrace and inspire and imagine. And, you know, we need all help we can get. So rather than sitting and, you know, if you can tell me, you know, 12 more magnificent institutions that we should learn from and be humbled by, then by all means go and work for them. But if you can't, then come and work for me. Well, and I think that that reminds me a lot about the fact that the church is made up of imperfect people. So we're always kind of fumbling towards God's justice. It's not a, this, you know, and I think what was that Pope Francis once said that the church is a hospital, not a museum. And, you know, it's going to be made of a lot of imperfect people and we're
[42:02] going to mess up along the way. And I think that that's something that everyone at times forgets that we are not perfect. Yeah.
[42:12] Well um before we conclude is i would um ask is there if people want to learn more about you or about saint martin's in the fields uh where should they go well as martin feels west website smitf.org i've written 46 books so you just need to amazon me or google me or something and you'll find those books possibly the one to start with is called humbler faith a bigger god that I wrote during the pandemic, which is an apologetics book about why, given all the problems we've been talking about, I still believe in God and I think others might want to do so as well.
[42:50] And I've written a little trilogy, the first of which is called Walk Humbly, the second is called Love Mercy, and the third is called Act Justly. So that addresses some of the issues we've been talking about today as well. And yeah, there's a lot of me on the web. If you're on YouTube, videos of sermons and talks. There are probably, I don't know, 500 of those out there. So there's plenty for people to go on. And I constantly find people in different parts of the world who go on YouTube and have a look at those from time to time and feel they know me because they've seen me on those things. And I think I stand by all the things that are on those videos. So if people want more and they prefer a video to a written word, I'd write a column in the Christian Central, which is I think how you encountered me. And that's also another place you can go. And if you look on their website, you can find some back numbers of those articles. All right. Well, Sam Wells, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Great questions. It's been an absolute pleasure. All right. This was a great conversation. And just a reminder of the importance of the work and of faith and the importance of, I think, both of grace and working for the world that God intends. All right, thank you so much. My pleasure, and every blessing to you.
[44:17] Music.
[44:53] So I'd like to know what you thought of the conversation. What do you think about the words progressive and inclusive? What do they, what should they mean in the context of the church? As always, you can drop me a line. You could send an email to churchinmaine at substat.com. You can also go to our Facebook page to leave your response. And I'd really like to hear from people what you all think. You can also join us at our Substack page. I do post episodes there and also articles. And you can go to churchinmaine.substack.com to learn more. If you want to learn more about the podcast itself and listen to past episodes and donate, you can check us out at churchinmaine.org. That is it for this episode of Church in Maine. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Take care, everyone. Godspeed. And I will see you next time.
[45:57] Music.
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