Linguistics, Sacred Words, and Donald Trump with Jonathan Merritt
Jonathan Merritt, an award-winning writer on religion, culture, and politics. He currently serves as a contributing writer for The Atlantic and contributing editor for The Week. He has published over 3,500 articles in respected outlets and is an author of several critically-acclaimed books. Jonathan shares his move from the deep south, the Bible belt, to New York City. He was whiplashed by the use and meaning of sacred words. It lead Jonathan to question his own interpretation of sacred words, and further explore how this manifests across the country in collaboration with the Barna Group. We discuss tough questions like, “what it means to be a Christian?” Furthermore, where must come together in baseline? What are secondary or tertiary elements of faith? How do linguistics play into sacred words? We explore more about his book, “Learning to Speak God from Scratch” The less we speak about faith, the less we think about, the less we experience it, and the less our culture welcomes it! In this podcast you’ll hear more about evangelism, linguistics, Christianese, the background story of Jonathan. Jonathan encourages us to wrestle with the right questions, that allows us to take the pressure off, and enter into what we may find as truth. Finally, what has Jonathan learned over the past year and a half since the inauguration of Donald Trump? Tune in for the full story.