The Roots of the Crisis of Community in the West

About this episode

The episode explores the historical roots of the loneliness epidemic and discipleship crisis in Christian communities, featuring insights from church historians.

Cultivating Christian community can feel really hard today, but the reasons run deeper than most church leaders realize. In part one of this two-part conversation, Luther Seminary professor Dwight Zscheile sits down with church historian Dr. Jennifer Wojciechowski to trace the roots of today's loneliness epidemic and discipleship crisis from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and into our present moment. Along the way, they explore how thinkers like Locke, Rousseau, Mill, and Nietzsche quietly reshaped the West's story about what it means to be human, and how that story is now shaping the people sitting in your pews. This conversation won't offer a quick fix for church community building, but it will give you something more valuable: clarity about the cultural forces you're actually working against, and a renewed sense of why the church's vision of human life together is more countercultural and more needed than ever. Part two will pick up with the 20th century and explore what all of this means for faithful church leadership today. Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth: 9780593850633 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books Common Sense by Thomas Paine The Confessions of Jean…

People in this episode

Guests: Dwight Zscheile, Dr. Jennifer Wojciechowski

Topics covered

• Christian community
• loneliness epidemic
• discipleship crisis
• cultural forces
• church leadership
• historical context

Keywords

• Christian community
• loneliness
• discipleship
• Renaissance
• Enlightenment
• cultural forces
• church leadership

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Against the Machine, Common Sense, The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions of Saint Augustine

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