Gospelbound

At the end of the class on cultural apologetics I teach at Beeson Divinity School, I assign a group exercise. The students need to compose 10 questions and answers from a modern-day catechism. Historically catechisms have emerged during times of cultural transition and confrontation—such as our own, in the aftermath of Christendom and the Enlightenment, awaiting whatever develops in post-liberalism.
So catechisms are not merely a relic of our past but a vital resource for the present that prepares us for the future. I’m delighted with how The New City Catechism, especially our devotional, still serves readers. And I’m delighted by a new volume, The Gospel Way Catechism: 50 Truths that Take on the World, published by Harvest House and written by my friends Trevin Wax and Thomas West.
Tim Keller said, “We need a counter-catechism that explains, refutes, and re-narrates the world’s catechisms to Christians.” And what’s what Trevin and Thomas have done in The Gospel Way Catechism. Trevin is vice president of research and resource development at the North American Mission Board. Thomas is the pastor of Nashville First Baptist Church.
In This Episode
00:00 – What’s wrong with the world: deeper than ignorance or injustice
00:34 – Collin’s “modern catechism” assignment and why catechisms return in transitions
01:03 – Introducing The Gospel Way Catechism and Keller’s “counter catechism” vision
01:36 – Welcoming Trevin Wax and Thomas West
01:54 – “Can Baptists write a catechism?” and Baptist catechesis history
02:57 – Influential catechisms: Keach, Spurgeon, Heidelberg, Luther, Calvin, Westminster
03:23 – Most controversial truths today: sexuality and deeper “me-first” narratives
04:51 – “What has gone wrong?”: ignorance, injustice, expressive individualism
07:14 – Moving beyond whack-a-mole to the Bible’s deeper diagnosis
09:37 – Western self-centeredness and sin as being “curved in on ourselves”
12:24 – Writing process and Keller’s influence: every catechism is counter-catechesis
13:48 – Origin story at The Kilns (C. S. Lewis’s home) and testing in a London church
15:45 – Objections: “we don’t need this” and why cultural frames change catechesis needs
20:18 – Returning from London: seeing American wealth, waste, and politics differently
24:13 – Why Leviticus gets a chapter: sacrifice, scapegoating, and modern idols
27:59 – Catechesis and spiritual formation: tools, Word-centeredness, and Gen Z hunger
31:38 – Encouragement from readers: cultural narratives filtered, doctrine re-centered
33:09 – In 20 years: transhumanism, bioethics, reproductive tech, assisted dying
36:06 – “What is human?” and “What is truth?”—new iterations of old questions
36:39 – Closing thanks and sign-off
Resources Mentioned
The Gospel Way Catechism by Trevin Wax & Thomas West
New City Catechism by Kathy Keller
A Heart Aflame for God by Matthew Bingham
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Here in Birmingham, Alabama, I often teach about the civil-rights movement as the most effective faith-based movement for social change in American history. We have a bitter heritage of violent segregation. But the same city produced the heroes of the struggle, the ordinary men and women (especially children) who stared down the police dogs and fire hoses in the march for their freedom. 
Justin Giboney honors such heroes as pastor Fred Shuttlesworth and commends their example for today in an informative, provocative book, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around: How the Black Church’s Public Witness Leads Us Out of the Culture War, published by IVP. Justin is the cofounder and president of the AND Campaign. The endorsement of this book by Bob Roberts calls Justin a “strange mix of Tim Keller and Martin Luther King Jr. wrapped up in his own personality and voice.” High praise!
In This Episode
00:00 – Jesus, truth, and critiquing our own side 
00:33 – Birmingham, civil rights, and faith-based social change 
01:00 – Introducing Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around 
01:40 – The burden behind writing the book 
03:07 – Family history and the Black church tradition 
04:05 – Why Fred Shuttlesworth matters 
05:14 – “Biblicist and actionist”: faith and public courage 
06:05 – Nonviolence, moral discipline, and leadership 
07:11 – Shuttlesworth and King: contrasts and complements 
09:23 – Why moral progress isn’t inevitable 
12:10 – Moral imagination and Christian hope 
15:57 – What is the culture war? 18:44 – Humility, self-critique, and redeemable opponents 
21:29 – Justice, moral order, and refusing false binaries 
22:51 – King, the late 1960s, and the cost of a “third way” 
25:26 – Militancy, frustration, and historical context 
28:01 – Why Christians can’t abandon character 
31:12 – Tyranny, violence, and ending debate by force 
33:18 – Advice for young activists 
35:19 – Frederick Douglass and critiquing your own movement 
38:37 – Accountability, power, and political humility 
43:36 – Christian nationalism and historical amnesia 
47:24 – Final encouragement: civility, faithfulness, and hope 
Resources Mentioned
Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around: How the Black Church's Public Witness Leads Us out of the Culture War by Justin Giboney
— — —
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🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen
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Work is the meaning of life.
Got your attention?
Your identity is tied to what you do.
I bet I have it now.
So argues David Bahnsen in his book Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life. Bahnsen is the founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, a national private wealth management firm. He’s also the author of several books, including Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It.
In This Episode
00:00 – Why Christians shouldn’t pit work against family or church
01:10 – Why Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life matters so deeply to Bahnsen
02:11 – Losing his father and discovering purpose through work
03:56 – The church’s discomfort with ambition and vocation
06:00 – Identity, salvation, and what our work says about us
09:06 – “Work is the meaning of life?” A biblical case from Genesis
12:55 – The crisis of men not working and its social consequences
16:12 – How Reformed theology shapes Bahnsen’s view of vocation
19:41 – The influence of Tim Keller and Every Good Endeavor
23:14 – Rejecting the zero-sum view of family vs. career
31:41 – Productivity, early mornings, and modeling joyful work
36:10 – Why in-person work still matters after COVID
44:39 – Conviction, politics, and resisting tribal thinking
54:21 – Overcoming resentment by telling the truth
Resources Mentioned
Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life by David Bahnsen
Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It by David Bahnsen
Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Tim Keller
— — —
📫 SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound
🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://www.tgc.org/together
🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen
▫ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gospelbound/id1499898207
▫ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br
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Join Collin Hansen and Melissa Kruger for their annual discussion as they look back on the top theology stories of 2025 and look towards the year to come. They also share their favorite interviews and books from 2025, updates on personal projects, and what they’re each looking forward to in life and ministry in 2026.
Resources Mentioned
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
Believe by Ross Douthat
Superbloom by Nicholas Carr
Everything Is Never Enough by Bobby Jamieson
Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World by Graham Tomlin
Future Tenses of the Blessed Life by F. B. Meyer
A Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry
I Seek a Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children, and the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust by Julian Borger
The Deep Dish Podcast
The Rest Is History
TGC Church Directory
The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
Making Sense of Us
TGCW26 — National Women’s Conference
RTS Women’s Bible Study
— — —
📫 SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound
🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://www.tgc.org/together
🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen
▫ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gospelbound/id1499898207
▫ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br
✅ SUBSCRIBE: 
▫ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thegospelcoalition
▫ TGC Updates: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/newsletters

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For many, apologetics is associated with arguments over rational, philosophical proofs. It’s a matter of the head instead of the heart, a debate over facts instead of feelings. But no matter what kind of apologetics you practice, you’re arguing according to a certain set of rules, in a particular language, attuned to what you expect to resonate in your time and place. In other words, it’s always cultural, never purely timeless. And it’s never purely rational.
We need to recover apologetics as a matter of the heart and hands as well as the head. We need to recover apologetics as a project for the whole church and not just for those who enjoy arguing. What we call cultural apologetics is not a new academic discipline. It’s a means to reconnect the church to the best biblical and historical resources for presenting and defending the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). 
That’s the vision behind a new book, The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics, which I edited for Zondervan Reflective and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I’m joined now by two of the contributors, both fellows for The Keller Center. Josh Chatraw is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement here at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Visiting us here at Beeson this week is Christopher Watkin, associate professor of French and Francophone studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
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In This Episode
02:00 — Apologetics as Cultural: Head, Heart, and Hands
03:00 — Biblical Models for Cultural Apologetics
05:10 — Retrieval: Learning from Church History
09:16 — Augustine, Rome, and Biblical Critical Theory
13:00 — Diagonal Thinking, Third-Way Debates, and Politics
16:00 — Confrontational vs. Winsome Apologetics
20:00 — How Jesus Engaged Different People
26:00 — Apologetics for the Whole Church and for Pastors
34:00 — Retrieval Models: Pascal, Montaigne, and Modern Idols
41:00 — Audience Q&A: Out-Narrating, Doubt, Catholicism, Facts vs. Heart Issues
51:46 — Closing Reflections
Resources Mentioned
The Gospel After Christendom by Collin Hansen, Ivan Mesa, & Skyler Flowers
Telling a Better Story by Josh Chatraw
Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin
City of God by Augustine
Confronting Christianity Podcast with Rebecca McLaughlin
The Speak Life Podcast with Glen Scrivener
Truth Unites Podcast with Gavin Ortlund
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