Ep. 570: James Talarico, The Population Bomb, Evangelical Takedowns, and Mall Culture 2.0

Hello, everyone, I’m Christina Darnell, the managing editor of MinistryWatch. Welcome to the MinistryWatch podcast.

In today’s extra episode, I talk with Warren Smith about some news items that are slightly (even significantly) outside of our normal charity and philanthropy “beat.”

So, Warren, what’s up first?

 Warren

James Talarico, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, is using religious language to appeal to moderate voters. Conservative and Christian commentators have rightly called out Talarico for trying to make the Bible say what it clearly doesn’t say. I especially commend to you this article by my friends and former colleagues John Stonestreet and Tim Padgett.

Christina

We’ll have a link to that article in today’s show notes.

Warren

That’s great. I hope a lot of our listeners will read that piece.

The bad news, though, is that it is likely that Talarico will likely fool a lot of people whose faith has been poorly formed, or non-Christians who nonetheless want to appear faith friendly. It doesn’t help that the GOP has chosen prosperity gospel spokespeople such as Paula White to carry their banner. I think critiques of Talarico’s heresies would have more credibility if those critics had also been on record calling out prosperity gospel heresies. (Just for the record, Stonestreet has.

Christina

Again, we’ll link to an article he wrote, a critique of White and the prosperity gospel, in today’s show notes, here.)

Warren

Again, I’m glad, because I think both articles taken together are a good reminder that heresies pull us away from the gospel from all directions, not just from one or two.

Christina

Warren, the next item was of particular interest to us, since we work for one of the publishers the article talks about.

Warren

Axios published an article this saying “Smaller web publishers, with 1,000–10,000 daily page views, are experiencing the most precipitous traffic declines in the AI era, according to new Chartbeat data.” Artificial intelligence has meant that more people are getting answers to questions directly from AI and not by clicking on the results of Google searches.

Christina

My own experience confirms that. I’m using AI more and more.

Warren

Me, too. When I “google” something, I often don’t click on the links anymore, but just read the two or three sentence AI generated answer.

Christina

But that’s hurt the traffic of small publishers.

Warren

It has. Axios continues: Over the past two years, referral traffic from traditional search engines has declined by 60% for small publishers, compared with 47% for medium-sized publishers and 22% for large publishers, per Chartbeat. Medium-sized publishers are outlets with 10,000–100,000 daily page views, on average. Large publishers are those with more than 100,000 daily page views on average.”

Christina

For the record, MinistryWatch fits into the “medium” category, and we have seen our page views go up steadily over the past two years.

Warren

Last year, we had about 4-million-page views on our site. This year, we are on track for about 4.5 million.

Christina

We write a lot about the state of evangelicalism here at MinistryWatch, and there’s now a new book out that critiques evangelicalism as a movement consumed by conspiracy theories.

Warren

 

You’re right. We do write a lot about the overall state of evangelicalism. I have my own issues with evangelicalism. I even wrote a book about it! (A Lover’s Quarrel With The Evangelical Church.)

One of the reasons I wrote that book was my concern that most critiques of evangelicalism were from those who had no real interest in the church’s health and restoration. They were merely ham-fisted attempts to take down the church. Jared Stacy’s new book Reality In Ruins,unfortunately, fits into that category. That’s why I was delighted to read Bonnie Kristian’s lengthy and thoughtful review of the book at Christianity Today.

She does a fantastic job dismantling the exaggerated arguments of the book while, at the same time, acknowledging that what Jared Stacy describes is indeed true of some of the darker corners of the evangelical movement.

While We’re At It. Check out Bonnie Kristian’s Substack. It’s one of the few “blogs” (Is Substack a blog? Are blogs still a thing?) that I read from beginning to end.

Christina

We also note a passing this week.

Warren

You may have heard that Paul Ehrlich died last week. He was 93.  Ehrlich made news in the 1960s called The Population Bomb, which predicted widespread starvation and war as a result of overpopulation. Liberals used the book to promote abortion, contraception, and homosexuality as an “evolutionary adaptation” to procreative unions.

Christina

Ehrlich turned out to be spectacularly wrong about this and many other matters.

Warren

The real reason for population growth in the 20th century was the worldwide increase in living standards and lifespan. As population expert Steven Moshertold me, “The reason the population grew was not because we were breeding like rabbits, but because we were no longer dying like flies.” But we’ve likely reached the end of longevity increases, so if birthrates stay the same, look for population declines in most countries in the world in the decades ahead. That’s already happening in much of Europe.

Christina

You also note this week that shopping malls are making a comeback.

Warren

Shopping malls have been distressed for the past decade or more, with many of them closing down or being repurposed.

But my friends at Axis, a Christian ministry that helps parents keep an eye on youth culture and how it’s affecting kids, noted this week that “Gen Z is driving a resurgence in mall shopping, with many malls redesigning public spaces to be more “photogenic” and social-media friendly, as well as popular online stores like Edikted opening brick-and-mortar locations.”

Christina

Is this an anomaly or a new direction?

Warren

It may be too early to tell. But it could be the 2.0 version of the social media era, an era that provides an antidote to social media isolation with a dose of 80s and 90s mall culture.

Christina

Any final notes before we go?

Warren

 

I have some travel coming up in the next couple of months, and I would love to see you. I will be in Los Angeles in April and Nashville in May, where I’ll be speaking to the annual meeting of the Evangelical Press Association. And I’ll be speaking at Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado, in June. I will be doing reader lunches in all three cities. Let me know if you would like to join us. My email is wsmith@ministrywatch.com.

Christina

The producer for today’s program is Jeff McIntosh. I’m Christina Darnell, along with Warren Smith.

Until next time, may God bless you.