May 12, 2025 • 50 mins
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Why does everything feel so fractured—and has it always been this way?
In this solo episode, Dr. Bradley Melle dives deep into the 500-year story of fragmentation in the Western world, from the shattering of medieval consensus in the Reformation to today’s tribalism, polarization, and nostalgia-fueled politics. But this isn’t just a history lesson—it’s a challenge to embrace the disorientation of modern life as an opportunity for truth, empathy, and a new kind of unity.
Today we'll explore:
- Why modern life feels so fragmented—and why that’s not all bad
- How nostalgia fuels dangerous political and religious movements
- What we lost after the medieval world—and what we gained in return
- Why the longing for “simpler times” can be a trap
- How fragmentation may actually help us love our neighbour better
Whether you're wrestling with Christian nationalism, deconstructing your faith, or just trying to make sense of our chaotic world, this episode offers historical insight with real-world relevance. It's an invitation to face reality as it is—and build something new in the cracks.
🎧 Listen now and join the conversation.
📬 Got thoughts? Email Brad at freestyletheology [at] gmail.com or DM @freestyletheology on Instagram.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brad (00:00):
Hey everybody, this is Dr.
Bradley Melle, historian ofglobal Christianity and culture.
And yeah, this week, it's justme here.
It's got a lot of thoughtsrunning through my mind.
(00:22):
I find that I've been takingall kinds of notes.
And if I don't, Get them out.
Get them off the page and outinto the world somehow.
I tend to just move on andstart thinking about something
else before eventually comingback to some of the same
thoughts.
And so I thought I would justturn on my microphone and get
(00:43):
some of these thoughts down,share them with you, maybe hear
from you some of your ideas ofsome of the stuff I'm talking
about.
But I would love it if you...
contacted me with some of yourideas.
If you want to get in touchwith me over email, you can just
email freestyletheology atgmail.com or of course message
me on Instagram, which I checkdaily.
(01:04):
And yeah, any chance, any timeI receive any kind of message,
I'm just so excited to beengaging beyond just my own
thoughts.
So I would love to hear fromyou and would welcome any
message if you would be up forthat.
So what I'm thinking aboutlately, just over the last few
days, just has really, haven'tbeen able to get it out of my
(01:25):
mind, is something fairly broad,but something that we're
experiencing collectively everyday across the Western world.
I'm sure beyond that, but I canonly really speak to the
Western world since I'm sodeeply rooted in it and living
in its midst.
And that is this experience offragmentation, of fracture, of
(01:49):
divisiveness.
It's a really...
tense time, politically,religiously, spiritually,
economically.
I'm talking about this.
This is May 2025, if anyone'sever listening in the future.
And it's just this age of thispowerful experience of constant
fragmentation.
(02:10):
And that is being experiencedin all kinds of different ways.
The most obvious way, the mostcommon term being thrown around
these days is polarization.
You know, we usually talk aboutthat in the political sphere.
There is an increasing movetowards polarization, you know,
towards a tribalistic way ofliving, where the goal is sort
(02:33):
of to, no, not even the goal,where we are increasingly
homogenous and seeking to bearound people who think the same
way, sort of have the sameposture towards life and
politics and government and theworld.
And so we're polarized.
Well, that does tend to reducewho we are to political
(02:53):
identities, which is animportant part of who we are,
for sure.
People are experiencingfragmentation in how they engage
on social media, algorithms,fine-tuning and curating feeds
to play on, A, the things wealready think and agree with,
and B, the things that enrage usand cause these intense
emotional reactions.
(03:14):
That's this form offragmentation.
We're living in thishyper-accelerated infosphere,
and that's in some ways pullingus apart from one another, in
some ways.
Movements that are fueled bynostalgia for sort of a
fantasizing memory, afantastical distorted memory of
(03:35):
the past as better, whetherthat's a past that we actually
experienced, like for me, the1990s, or whether it's even more
artificial, like a nostalgiafor another time period.
before we existed.
Something vague, somethingabout a time when things were
simpler, people knew theirneighbors, et cetera, et cetera.
And those kinds of nostalgicmovements are pretty dangerous
(03:58):
because in many ways they arefantasy.
They are not reality.
They're not good history.
Our nostalgic longings andmemories do not construct a
nuanced and textured and complexpicture of the past they do the
opposite they it's like this aphotograph that has its
contrasts all way off and itdoesn't look real because you
(04:20):
have taken you know good thingsfrom the past and oversaturated
them in the image it's not realit's it's stylized and but
nostalgia is very powerfulemotionally And it can drive
entire political movements.
I mean, fascist movements arenostalgic in nature, remembering
(04:40):
a fantasy, a mythic past thatnever really existed and trying
to get back to something thatnever really existed in the
first place.
And it can make people do crazythings.
It can make people do cruelthings in this desperation to
return to a place they neverwere.
So fragmentation happens.
I guess what I've come torealize, this experience of
(05:03):
fragmentation across the variousaspects of life is really the
deep context that we live in inthe 21st century.
Fracture and fragmentation isour underlying deep context.
And it's a lot older than wemight think.
Again, nostalgic views of thepast tend to not acknowledge
(05:29):
just how long our society hasbeen living and experiencing
this paradigm of fracture.
I really think that since theyear 1500, the Western world has
been existing and experiencing,moving through a time of
fracture and fragmenting.
But I also want to be clearabout something, that this is
(05:51):
not all bad.
It shouldn't be seen as just anegative thing.
Because fragmentation is also,just another name for that is
diversification,differentiation,
complexification, being mademore complex.
There's all kinds of talk inthe modern Western world of sort
(06:12):
of an unending critique, acritique of our individualism,
of our consumerism, of ourcapitalistic greed, and the list
goes on and on.
The modern Western world is nostranger to self-critique.
In fact, it's almost as much ofa feature of modern life, as is
the various aspects of modernlife.
Not everyone shares this, ofcourse, but our belief in
(06:36):
progress, our belief in scienceand technology.
Just as one example, ouraddiction to self-critique,
almost bordering on aself-loathing, it has been
constant.
It's been a feature of themodern world ever since it was
sort of initiated.
So there's been a lot of talkfor a long time, many decades,
(06:57):
even centuries, critiquing theWestern world's fragmentation
and its lack of unity and itskind of breakdown.
It's almost part of thetradition itself now.
Part of the Western traditionitself is critique of the
Western tradition.
Critique, almost a feature ofmodernity is critiquing
modernity.
This makes me think of, youknow, I've had this thought a
(07:18):
lot watching Christmas moviesand Christmas specials.
I'll try to explain this and Ihope it makes sense.
But I think that as acollective experience, the
holiday of Christmas, not whatit should be about, not what it
could be about, not how itshould be or ought to be
celebrated, but what it actuallyis.
(07:39):
And I think the meaning ofChristmas is the conversation
about the meaning of Christmas.
I think that's actually what wedo.
That's what every Christmasmovie and special and story is
about.
It's about critiquing Christmasand attempting to articulate
(07:59):
what it's really about.
Whether that's it's reallyabout the birth of Christ or
it's really about being withfamily.
It's like the purpose, theactual practice, the ritual, the
discourse around the festivalevery year is about how the
festival is not being celebratedthe way it should be.
And it ends up being this sortof strange time of moral
(08:22):
reflection and self-critiquethat once we put away the
Christmas tree, when we pull itout again next year, we're going
to have the same conversations.
And we even pass this traditionon to our children because this
is what they absorb aboutChristmas.
It is this dissonant experienceof there's all these presents
(08:45):
and Christmas isn't about that,but let's enjoy these presents.
It's this strange thing.
Why am I talking about this?
It's because it reminds me alot of what it's like to live in
the modern Western world.
We both believe in certainaspects of modernity, and we
also are in a never-ending stateof critique of modernity.
(09:06):
And I just find that to beinteresting, that part of the
tradition of the Western worldis to critique the Western
world.
And there's people that opposethat, who want to say, you know,
we need to stop with this And,you know, don't you realize how
good you have it?
That itself is also part of thetradition, is that reminder.
(09:27):
You wouldn't really want tolive somewhere else.
Trust me.
That's part of the tradition.
These are all just pieces ofit.
So kind of where I'm going withthis is I think that
fragmentation has been thedominant motif of the last 500
years.
I don't think that that's allbad.
(09:48):
but I do think it has generateda lot of pain and that we still
haven't figured outcollectively what to do, how to
manage it.
Now, people who talk about thefragmentation of life in the
modern world, which again,they've been doing for 500 years
in various ways, is there'sthis sort of underlying
(10:12):
operating assumption that beforethe modern world, or before X,
there was Y.
And Y was when things weregood, when people knew each
other, when people believed insomething, when people trusted
each other.
Insert any vague notion.
Again, this is nostalgia,nostalgia speaking.
(10:35):
So if X is the fragmentation ofsociety, then Y is that society
prior to fragmentation.
And I think that This is whereit's really interesting because
my argument that I make invarious ways in different
platforms is that I really thinkthat the Western world has not
(10:59):
actually moved on from its oldmedieval consensus.
Fragmentation destroys oldunities.
It destroys old assumptions.
It destroys old stability.
And that experience can bepainful and disorienting.
And yet it also invites us intoopportunities to establish new,
(11:24):
potentially different orhealthier unities.
So yeah, I think there's thisunderlying assumption that we
don't often critique or thinkabout too clearly.
But when we are criticizingour, quote, fragmented
contemporary existence, what isit that we're saying is we want
(11:45):
things to be like.
If the modern world is like A,B, and C, people don't know
their neighbors, they spend toomuch time addicted to their
phones, they're isolated fromeach other, they're just hooked
on technology.
What is it that we're thinkingis the better option?
And I don't think people thinkexplicitly that what we need is
(12:05):
to return to the old medievalways of doing things, medieval
Western Europe.
But I think that in some waysthat's built in.
to this critique.
But the answer to our modernsort of existential ongoing
crises and fragmentation is notto go back to a medieval way, a
(12:28):
medieval solidity and consensus.
Because while the WesternEuropean medieval world had its
benefits, had its pluses andminuses, its pros and cons, Yes,
it was unified.
Absolutely.
It was a much more unified andcohesive society than we live in
(12:51):
now.
It was much clearer what yourpurpose was and your place.
Life was slower and quieter andcalmer.
Village life was simpler.
That is true.
There was one church, the RomanCatholic Church, that everyone
belonged to.
And if you didn't belong to it,you were a heretic.
(13:13):
You were outside the church,outside salvation.
And you, in a way, sort of werea non-entity.
It was very unified, especiallyreligiously and economically.
But the fact is, it was unifiedbecause it was held together by
(13:33):
strict patriarchal power andhierarchy.
There was a theologicalmonopoly.
People in the medieval Westdidn't know that there was other
Christian traditions that weredifferent, that were not under
the authority of the Romanchurch.
Maybe in theory, they knew thatthough there were other
Christians out there who were,you know, in many ways
(13:55):
disobedient because they werenot under the authority of the
Pope.
But for the average personliving in medieval Western
Europe, this was a 100% totaltheological monopoly where
dissent was suppressed invarious ways.
And all of this backed up byvery strong imperial or kingdom
(14:19):
political power.
So yes, people who lived in themedieval West did feel a
certain kind of safety andsecurity.
They didn't ask, how do we knowthat the church is telling the
truth?
How do we know that ourinterpretation of scripture is
right?
They didn't ask that question.
(14:39):
They knew.
that if they were in communionwith the Roman church and they
were engaging in its rituals andits processes, that they were
good.
They may have to do a long timein purgatory after death.
That might just be what has tohappen to cleanse them, purify
(15:00):
them of all their roles of sin.
But they knew that if they werein communion with the church
and were not heretics and werenot excommunicated, that they
would die and go to purgatoryand eventually reach God.
It might be painful.
It might be long.
Maybe there were things youcould do to shorten that time.
But for the most part, if youstepped back and looked at it
(15:23):
from a cosmic bird's eye view,these people were on their way
to God.
They didn't have to worry asmuch about questions of
authority and truth becauseauthority was inherited.
They looked...
and they saw the churchhierarchy, they saw the bishop
(15:43):
of Rome, they heard how this wasconnected all the way back to
the apostles, there was noreason to doubt it.
And so for the average person,at a deep existential level,
they felt some kind of safetyand security.
Their role was pretty muchdefined at birth, like where
they fit in the hierarchy ofsociety and what they were
(16:06):
supposed to do, what they werecalled to do.
Their contributions, mostpeople's contribution by far,
90% of people's contribution wascalled to farm to provide food
and stability for theirkingdoms, for their lords, and
by extension for the kingdom.
The lord whose land they farmedhad the responsibility to
(16:29):
protect them from invasion.
And life was sort of just aboutthat.
It was about doing that thingthrough the proper channels, in
the proper way, with this stricthierarchy.
So if you ask, if you look atthe modern world, everything
after the Reformation, and youask, is that kind of safety and
(16:50):
security gone?
The answer is yes.
That security, that safety,that sort of cosmic sense of, I
know my place, I know what Ihave to do, I know who's in
charge, and I'm kind of just, Iaccept that, that is gone.
that will never return again.
That was just a time in historythat is now over.
(17:13):
I think in many ways, and for alot of reasons, which I'll talk
about a little bit, thatmedieval consensus, that
medieval solidity was temporary.
It was not sustainable.
It was not possible to holdtogether forever.
And so whenever there's thesethoughts about There's a lot of
(17:36):
romanticizing of the medievalperiod, especially among more
conservative Christians, but notonly limited to that.
This doesn't mean that youcan't find anything to admire or
even long for about themedieval world.
For example, the simple longingfor a time before modern
technology.
Yeah, there are times in ourlife, even moments, where we
(17:57):
long for that.
Usually when we are beingbombarded with messages and
emails and inputs from with ourdopamine addictions and seeking
the highs and the hits from newmessages and new texts and
videos, flashy videos.
Of course, that's going tostart to feel exhausting at
(18:18):
times.
And we let our minds drift to asimpler time.
Ultimately, I would find itdifficult to actually find
someone who really did want togo back to the medieval period
for various reasons.
So I don't think it's an actualactive desire, explicit desire
to return to the medievalconsensus.
(18:41):
But I think we carry this, someof the nostalgia with us.
And again, that's what it is.
It's nostalgia.
It's not reality, complextextured reality.
We are just thinking it wouldbe nice to live in a village
where everyone knew each other,to have a simple job.
(19:01):
That required maybe hard worksometimes, rest other times,
eat, drink, be merry, work hard,no fresh air, no stresses of
modern life.
So yeah, there's things that wecan admire and even, again,
long for.
It makes sense to long to beaway from a screen and instead
(19:21):
in the fresh air looking at theblue sky or listening to the
singing birds, taking a walk anda hike.
That's not all medieval lifewas, of course.
But medieval unity...
was also suffocating.
Because as you probably know,people are pretty different from
one another, especially whenthey're given the chance to flex
(19:42):
their own muscles and exercisesome freedom.
People are pretty differentfrom one another.
People want very differentthings.
We inhabit very differentpersonalities and postures
towards the world.
We are motivated by differentthings.
Humans are just not aone-size-fits-all kind of
creature, which I think makessense being made in the image of
(20:06):
God.
God is obviously more diverse,the source of all different
things, and we reflect some ofthose aspects.
And so the medieval world'ssort of simplified hierarchy and
chain of being is in many waystoo simple.
(20:26):
It doesn't capture...
complexity of of the totalityof life so in that way the
medieval consensus which is whati keep calling it the medieval
unity was destined to breakapart it just wasn't possible to
stay like that foreverespecially once europeans
(20:50):
started venturing across theocean and encountering
Populations and languages andcultures and products and
traditions and histories thatwere so radically different and
unknown to them to what peoplehad known about, you know, in
say the 1200s.
By the time you get to the1500s, the world has just opened
(21:13):
up and exploded.
And there's so much differencethat it was overwhelming and
dizzying.
just how many different kindsof lifestyles and peoples and
histories there were out there.
And in many ways, that begins aprocess of fragmentation.
Because the old certaintiesabout the way the world was,
(21:36):
which would have been clarifiedand explicated on by religious
authorities, turned out to beway too small.
Not that everything they saidwas wrong, it just was
provincial.
It was parochial.
It was regional, local, ratherthan global.
I think one of the reasonsEuropean imperialism and
(22:00):
colonization was so violent andso destructive to so many people
was it was this attempt toimpose a local regionalness on a
global world, taking what hadthe tradition's and the
knowledge that had grown upregionally in Western Europe,
(22:21):
the assumptions that haddeveloped over time locally,
indigenously.
The imperial way and thecolonial extension was an
attempt to sort of enforce thatEuropean knowledge and lifestyle
on very different parts andpeoples of the world.
And that could be a veryfrustrating thing to do because
(22:44):
people resist that.
Because they do not see theworld the same way.
And they don't want someonefrom another place to come in
and tell them everything aboutyou and your traditions is
wrong.
We have it all figured out.
And we're going to take over.
And you either comply orthere's no place for you.
We'll make life difficult foryou.
(23:06):
You will be pushed to thesidelines.
Marginalized.
Literally.
But you can't encounter...
I think the European...
modern experience, it cannot bedisconnected from colonialism.
Sometimes we can do a Europeanhistory where the colonial
aspect, like the overseasventures and the colonizing of
(23:27):
other parts of the world is sortof this side history, like a
peripheral history, an extraalmost, an appendix.
But in reality, modern Europedoesn't exist without the
colonial period.
And that's in terms of what itknows.
So that's in terms of itsknowledge.
That's in terms of its economy,its trade, its religious
(23:50):
experience.
So much of what we think of asEuropean, modern European or
Western, is forged in thecolonial period, in this
interaction between Westernpeoples and non-Western peoples.
So when I say fragmentation wasinevitable, the encounter,
(24:11):
encountering other people'sworldviews and lifestyles
couldn't not fragment themedieval European simplicity and
unity.
It just was impossible to do.
Why am I saying all this?
So yes, I do think since 1500,fragmentation has been the name
of the game at a deep, deeplevel in Western society.
(24:33):
I think that meant the loss,the destruction of the old
medieval culture safety andsecurity, the old medieval
hierarchy and way of life andworldview, because it was too
small, too regional.
I think that that fragmentationgenerated a lot of pain that we
are still experiencing andchanneling and feeling right
(24:55):
now.
And that has brought about someemotionally mature responses
and a whole lot of emotionallyimmature responses that have
really harmed people.
But I don't think it's all thisfragmentation is just bad.
I think the fractures that kindof broke apart the medieval
world were necessary and in away necessary experiences of
(25:18):
growing up and maturing,necessary experiences of
reality.
The fractures that wereexperienced in the post-medieval
and early modern world broughtabout new opportunities for
freedom of conscience andthought.
It brought about new culturalplurality, whether people liked
that or not.
New art, new theology, newexpressions of faith, new space
(25:41):
for people to speak honestly andgrapple with pain and trauma
and come to differentconclusions that were distinct
from what the religious andpolitical authorities had sort
of sanctioned as the answers.
The end of a uniformity thatwas sometimes experienced
positively and other times,especially by dissenters, was
(26:04):
experienced as violent andoppressive.
The answer is not to return tosome kind of medieval unity.
That is nostalgia.
That is not how a societyflourishes.
That's not where we need to goto move on.
It's not exactly like this, butit is similar.
The medieval period from achurchly or Christian
(26:24):
perspective is kind of similarto a childhood for a society
where there is kind of a strict,rigid hierarchy of of
authority, like parent andchild, where the norms are laid
out crystal clear by theauthorities, and you have to
(26:46):
obey and comply, that's justwhat has to happen.
Or else, and if you don't,you'll be punished pretty
severely in order to preventthat from happening again.
But to anyone who has kids or afamily, you know that at some
point, you move out of thechildhood-like paradigm.
And members of the family startflexing their own muscles and
(27:08):
expressing themselves and goingin different directions and
being interested in differentthings.
And this can be experienced asa drifting apart, can be
experienced as a fracturing, butit's also, it doesn't have to
be experienced like that.
Especially if, you know, yourchildren developing in different
(27:29):
ways with different interests,if you approach with curiosity
and openness, instead of sort oflooking for why what they're
doing is wrong, just because itbreaks with what has always been
done, it doesn't have to be atime of drifting apart, but it
does have to be a time ofexpansion.
It does have to be a time oflistening and curious learning
(27:51):
about one another and not justbeing on the defensive and not
just attempting to shiftstrategies so that you can
control.
Children grow up.
And they go in differentdirections.
And in some ways, that's whatthe fragmentation that began
with the Reformation and withthe scientific revolution and
with the Enlightenment and withall the various eras of change
(28:17):
that were experienced over thelast 500 years.
In some ways, whether you likeit or not, it's just people
going different directions.
And that's not something...
When that kind of directionalmovement is met with judgment is
met with you know again newstrategies of how to ensure
(28:39):
compliance or go back in time tothe way things used to be it's
that's always that alwaysgenerates more and more painful
fractures so it doesn't have tobe painful or sorry it's going
to be painful at some level butit doesn't have to be
experienced as destructive it'soften in our stubborn resistance
(29:01):
of change, that things actuallyget damaged and destroyed and
harmed.
Like I said before,fragmentation destroys old
unities and old certainties.
And that's painful.
But it also fosters thepossibility of establishing new,
healthier unities.
The loss of these oldcertainties, which yes, I'm
(29:26):
placing at, again from thisperspective, historical bird's
eye view around the year 1500 atthe beginning of the
Reformation.
But then it's experienced innumerous other ways throughout
the last 500 years.
It's a common experience ofestablishing some kind of new
(29:46):
reality and then that also beingchallenged and losing that.
And so yes, there's paininvolved in change.
But I remember someone sayingthat Often with change, it's not
change that we fear, first andforemost, it's loss.
And it might be important.
(30:08):
I'm convinced at somefundamental level for a Western
person, whether we feelemotionally connected to the
medieval period at all or not,whether it's just romanticism or
whether you look back on themedieval period as a barbaric
era, I can imagine, especiallyfor women, when people talk
(30:32):
about where would you go, if youcould go back in time, often
men have all these differentanswers of where they would go
and what they would like toexperience.
But for women, it's often, Iwouldn't go to any of those
places.
This right now is probably thesafest period for me.
So there's people who look atthe medieval period like that,
like it's not something to everwant to be experienced, which
(30:54):
makes sense, which is totallyfair.
But I just think that since1500, I think we're still in
continuity with the era of theReformation, with the fractures
that it introduced.
I think we are continuing toexperience fragmentation.
It's almost, again, like I saidat the beginning, it's almost
like a necessary aspect ofmodern life.
(31:16):
Because the modern periodfundamentally identifies itself
in contrast to the medievalperiod.
That wasn't just anenlightenment thing.
That's still kind of in ourbones.
And so, you know, maybe it'simportant just to look for a
second at some of the, what waslost after the medieval period
(31:40):
sort of crumbled apart, orsorry, not crumbled, fractured
apart, fractured apart intopieces that would grow into the
modern world.
So, you know, beginning withthe reformation, In the early
1500s, the Western worldexperienced a severe loss of
(32:00):
consensus around who was incharge, what was trustworthy,
what wasn't.
It lost a spiritual sense ofsecurity.
So even as people, reformersand Protestants, were
rediscovering Scripture in newways and expressing a new kind
(32:22):
of security, You cannot denythat people also experienced
this with anxiety because theold authorities, how you knew
something was true, again, bybeing in communion with the
church at Rome, was gone.
People were standing on theirown feet.
And this wasn't just aProtestant experience because
Catholics, too, even those whoremained connected and in that
(32:46):
way still had their feet plantedin the medieval way, looked
around and saw, you know,millions of people moving away
from it, and a new world formingwith new communities and nation
states being established, andof course war.
So even the Catholic experienceof just the obvious voice of
(33:08):
moral authority found in thechurch hierarchy wasn't as
simple as it had been earlierthan that.
I think there was a loss ofestablished communal rhythms And
I'm not just talking, again,this is difficult to express.
I'm not just talking about theloss of communal rhythms from
medieval to reformation.
I'm talking about the fact thatthis idea that we used to have
(33:32):
communal rhythms and now wedon't is a feature of modern
Western life.
We are constantly looking backand looking forward.
There was a loss of inheritedbelonging, a loss of a shared
baseline reality.
And so I think that followedthe Reformation, that was
experienced in theEnlightenment.
(33:53):
But I think our contemporary21st century experience stands
in direct continuity with thosesame losses.
I think we repeat them almost.
And maybe in using morecontemporary psychological
language, we repeat these thingsbecause there's something
unresolved.
There's something unresolvedand has been unresolved.
(34:13):
in the Western experience eversince the fractures of the
Reformation.
So that's why perhaps we keepreliving this experience of
losing security of what once wasand experiencing the
disorientation of now.
(34:33):
So right now we're experiencingthis through, we're trying to
appease These feelings ofdissonance that like the world
really is more complicated andbigger than we can imagine and
understand.
It's not, it's not, doesn'talways feel like a safe and
secure place.
Things don't feel certain.
(34:54):
It's not always clear who's incharge and who should be and who
shouldn't be.
So I think right now, the waywe're experiencing this loss is,
you know, we're stuck in echochambers.
We're moving in tribalisticdirections because that makes us
feel safer and more secure.
So we're like manufacturingartificial homogeneity, ignoring
(35:14):
the complexity that is ourneighborhoods and all the people
who live in our neighborhoodsfrom all kinds of different
parts of the world withdifferent religious beliefs and
cultures and languages, ignoringthe complexity under our nose
and next door, and insteadretreating into spaces that feel
safe, again, by manufacturinghomogeneity.
(35:35):
Sometimes that's physicalspaces, like we actually go to
places where people are all likeus and look like us.
Or we more easily and morecommonly, we gravitate towards
them online.
Living this virtual, kind ofexisting virtually, finding our
identity there rather thanengaging with the disorienting
(35:57):
diversity around us, which isactually the real calling.
of the person who claims tofollow Christ or listen to
Jesus.
Love your neighbor, the peoplearound you, the normal, diverse
people around you who you mightnot like or agree with or be the
(36:18):
same as.
And the pain that comes fromfragmentation, which I think is
what fuels nostalgia, andnostalgia is what fuels love.
the really destructivemovements of fascism and
authoritarianism and turning toextreme and violent measures to
(36:39):
manufacture this homogeneity.
That's really what fascism is.
That's what it's doing when ittargets scapegoats and
immigrants and refugees.
It's an attempt to forcefullyand coercively recreate, quote
unquote, recreate a fantasyhomogeneity.
So because there's pain, inthis fragmentation experience.
(37:01):
Some people just feel the painand kind of accept the
fragmenting.
Some people lean into thefracturing and just say, this is
just the way things are.
And they move almost in what wemight think of as like a
postmodern or relativisticdirection, an agnostic direction
where it's like thesefragmentations are happening.
(37:22):
There's nothing we can reallydo.
And there's a little bit ofresigning to it.
But there's also groups thatwho feel this pain of
fragmenting and the fear thatcomes along with it.
And what they really try to dois, quote, reclaim or again,
quote, restore the past.
And these usually end up movingin bad directions that hurt
(37:44):
people.
Because at some level, theseefforts to restore a past that
never existed in the firstplace, a past that only seemed
to exist, what they're engagingwith is unreality.
And Christian nationalism,especially as we're seeing it
play out in the United States,but it's also across the Western
world.
(38:04):
It's not just an Americanphenomenon.
Christian nationalism is one ofthese nostalgic projects.
It is aimed at restoring an oldform of order and compliance
that ignores the reality of yourneighbor, ignores the reality
on the ground.
It's a fantasy.
the idea that society needs tobe Christian again.
(38:26):
That's what I mean about sortof living into, even if it's not
acknowledged, some kind ofmedieval romanticism.
Back when there was one church,back when it was clear who was
in authority and who wasn't,which ideas were right and which
ones weren't.
I think that this is still incontinuity with the
fragmentation that all Westernpeoples and those who have come
(38:49):
into the Western orbit have havebeen collectively experiencing
since the 1500s.
But like I said at thebeginning, it can be really easy
to fall into a trap where it'saddictive, where it's easy to
just kind of stand and look outat society and wake up
critiquing it, critique it allthe day long and then go to bed
and wake up and do it again thenext day.
(39:10):
It can feel good.
It is the feeling ofself-righteousness, which has
its own sort of form ofpleasure.
to be right when the rest ofthe world is wrong.
And I know this feeling wellbecause I occupied a space like
that for many years until I justgot tired of the constant
(39:32):
critiquing because it started tofeel like romanticism and not
productive and not moving us ina new direction with a new
vision.
So that's why I want tohighlight that this experience
of fragmentation is not just anegative thing, as if we had
some kind of unity That wasgood, and we've slowly been
losing it as it erodes.
(39:52):
That's not accurate either.
This fragmentation initiatedwith the Reformation, and again,
continued on with all theimportant larger historical
movements of the modern age.
It also brought about anexpansion, new understandings,
new opportunities to learn aboutother people and other ways of
(40:13):
life that were disorienting, butalso if you approached it with
curiosity, hopefully your visionof of people and culture and
truth grew and expanded.
It had to be more elastic.
There were more things inheaven and earth than in our
imaginings.
New opportunities to showempathy, to hear stories of
(40:33):
people who were not like you.
This fracturing of society andold certainties also brought
about rejection ofauthoritarianism, challenging
assumed and inherited religiousauthority.
That's good.
That's more honest.
This fragmentation in many waysis more honest than the old
(40:54):
medieval certainty.
New impetus to seek truth andto do so without coercion.
New space for spirituality andfor trauma healing to occur by
honest grappling.
And this fragmentation also hasled to the emergence of new
communities, new connectedpeoples who would not have
(41:15):
connected otherwise.
It has...
provided new spaces formarginalized voices to find
platforms, to express theirexperiences, to express and make
open hidden and invisible orignored aspects of reality.
You know, when you think aboutthe American experience and
people talk about, you know, weneed to get back to something
(41:38):
and why that's so often deeplyconnected with white supremacy
is because usually it iscommunities of Euro-Americans or
white Americans longing forsome earlier era, often the
1950s or maybe earlier thanthat.
And those eras were notactually less diverse.
(41:59):
Marginalized peoples were justmore marginalized then, more
hidden, more buried.
They're there.
And so this longing to go backto a simpler time in many ways
is more, let's go back to whenreality was being hidden more
explicitly and more proudly.
So the fragmentation of thatpast has led to new connections
(42:24):
between people, and that's good.
So while on the one hand, therehas been, we can attest to some
kind of collectivedisconnection from our
neighbors, a rootlessness, aloneliness, partially the reason
for that is becauseneighborhoods are less
homogenous, and that is going torequire, it's much harder to
love your neighbor who is verydifferent from you speaks a
(42:46):
different language or from adifferent religious tradition,
it's much easier to love yourneighbor when you have an
experience of homogeneity.
It's hard enough to do it then.
So yes, the fragmentation ofmodern life has led to some kind
of disconnection fromneighbors, rootlessness,
loneliness, but it's alsoexposed us to new diversities or
the diversities that were thereall along.
(43:08):
And this gives us opportunitiesto reinvent and create
possibilities.
We have a chance to ask thequestion, What kind of coming
together do we actually want todo?
Do we want to engage with ourneighborhoods as they are?
This is what I mean by reality,to deal with what exists.
Or do we want to manufactureartificially something that's
(43:31):
more palatable, somethingeasier?
We are called to love ourneighbor as they are, our
neighborhoods as they are.
I know this is complicatedbecause it is at an economic
level It is we constructneighborhoods that are more
homogenous.
So we do many actions.
(43:52):
We take a lot of action.
We put a lot of energy intopreventing reality, the reality
of diversity from existing inour communities.
But no matter how much we try,it's still there.
Your neighborhood is probably alot less homogenous than your
church is.
And that's concerning.
(44:13):
You know, modern life, you cansay we have, families have been
experiencing in recent years,but they've been saying this for
centuries.
This isn't just brand new, aloss of stability or new
estrangement between parents andchildren, displacement.
And that is true.
That's part of the fragmenting.
And that has a lot of negativeside effects to it.
(44:36):
But this family fragmentationhas also had the chance for, has
also opened up opportunitiesfor therapeutic growth, for
people to stand on their own twofeet autonomously and to say
what they need to say.
It's led to whistleblowingwithin families about abuse and
(44:59):
about just things that have gonehidden that need to stop being
hidden.
So there has been, thisfragmentation has allowed for
spaces, cracks between familiescracks in the family's public
image and reputation to do someserious truth-telling, some new
boundary setting, to establishnew ways of how are we going to
(45:19):
be family.
That's also a result offragmentation.
So I don't really know fullywhat my takeaway is.
What I'm trying to communicateis that the simple fact is for
the last 500 years, and itcontinues right into this
moment, fragmentation is ourdeep context.
It undergirds Everything.
And it has for 500 years.
(45:41):
I am led to believe thatchoosing to actually love the
neighbor as they are in front ofyou is the way forward, which I
guess if you follow Jesus,shouldn't be a surprise that
that's the way forward.
But I think we also need tograpple with the reality that we
don't really know how to loveour neighbor who is different
(46:01):
than us.
Like we know that Jesuscommands it, but we need to
really seriously examine the Becurious and ask for the real
results of, hey, how do I lovemy neighbor who is very
different than I?
Here are some of the obstaclesI face.
These are some of the emotionsI'm dealing with.
(46:22):
I have a low desire to seek outand build relationship with my
neighbor.
I can do the thing that wealways do in Western society,
which is I can shame myself atchurch or at home or with my
friends for not loving myneighbor.
People feel satisfied thatthat's enough.
But that is pointless if itleads to no new action.
(46:44):
Guilt is just an alarm thatsomething is wrong and needs to
change.
But in Western Christianity,guilt is a way of life.
It's our way of atoning for...
I think at some level we thinkfeeling guilt is our way to
atone for our sins.
what God asks of us, and we cansay, well, he said, you know,
(47:05):
it's called to repent.
And that's because we haveconfused repentance with the
word means to turn away, right?
To turn and move in a newdirection.
But for us, you need to repentmeans you need to feel bad about
what you've done and sort ofconfess it, make it public.
And often that's where we stopwith repentance, just continue
(47:26):
to feel bad.
Instead of asking the honestquestion, like, I don't love my
neighbor.
I really don't.
So what do I do with that?
I'm not going to sit andpretend and tell you and just
promise you I'm going to trymore.
I keep struggling and fallinginto the same traps as always.
I don't love my neighbor.
So what do I do?
What works?
What are some examples of aperson moving from apathy
(47:51):
towards their neighbor towardstrue love?
Those are the kind of storiesthat I want to know.
That's the kind of evidencethat we need to explore.
Jesus tells us, commands us tolove our neighbor.
It's up to us to ask how, whatworks and what doesn't.
So I think just moving forward,I want to start engaging with
sort of just acknowledging thetruth that fragmenting is sort
(48:15):
of, like I keep saying, it's ourdeep context.
It's the way things really are.
And I think once we acknowledgethat that is just true, we can
start to ask new questions thatcould lead us in a better
direction, especially, okay, sothe old ways are continuously
fragmenting apart.
what kind of coming togethershould we engage in and how do
(48:36):
we start to do that?
So instead of just lookingnostalgically back on the past,
again, which rarely existed inthe way that we are imagining,
fragmentation gives us newopportunities, new cracks and
spaces where we can maybeexperiment with something new,
try new things.
And we're not the first to dothat.
New forms of community havecome into existence because of
(49:01):
the fracturing apart in Westernsociety.
So that's just what's been onmy mind today.
And I hope if anything hereresonated or you have any ideas
to add to this, this is by nomeans the definitive talk on
fragmentation.
This is just inviting you intosome of the realizations I've
had lately.
But I think I know at a deepfundamental level that honesty
(49:25):
is always better.
than hiding things.
Honest grappling, whether youhave everything accurate or not,
is always better than keepingsilent until you have everything
perfectly figured out.
Honest grappling leadssomewhere.
And so I think we need tohonestly acknowledge that
(49:46):
fragmentation is what we know.
That's what we've lived in forcenturies.
And stop pretending that that'strue.
Stop longing to go back to atime when it wasn't And channel
that longing energy intosomething more productive,
something that leads to bondsbeing formed between people,
that deals with the peoplearound you as they are, not as
(50:09):
you wish things were.
Hey everybody, this is Dr.
Bradley Melle, historian ofglobal Christianity and culture.
And yeah, this week, it's justme here.
It's got a lot of thoughtsrunning through my mind.
(00:22):
I find that I've been takingall kinds of notes.
And if I don't, Get them out.
Get them off the page and outinto the world somehow.
I tend to just move on andstart thinking about something
else before eventually comingback to some of the same
thoughts.
And so I thought I would justturn on my microphone and get
(00:43):
some of these thoughts down,share them with you, maybe hear
from you some of your ideas ofsome of the stuff I'm talking
about.
But I would love it if you...
contacted me with some of yourideas.
If you want to get in touchwith me over email, you can just
email freestyletheology atgmail.com or of course message
me on Instagram, which I checkdaily.
(01:04):
And yeah, any chance, any timeI receive any kind of message,
I'm just so excited to beengaging beyond just my own
thoughts.
So I would love to hear fromyou and would welcome any
message if you would be up forthat.
So what I'm thinking aboutlately, just over the last few
days, just has really, haven'tbeen able to get it out of my
(01:25):
mind, is something fairly broad,but something that we're
experiencing collectively everyday across the Western world.
I'm sure beyond that, but I canonly really speak to the
Western world since I'm sodeeply rooted in it and living
in its midst.
And that is this experience offragmentation, of fracture, of
(01:49):
divisiveness.
It's a really...
tense time, politically,religiously, spiritually,
economically.
I'm talking about this.
This is May 2025, if anyone'sever listening in the future.
And it's just this age of thispowerful experience of constant
fragmentation.
(02:10):
And that is being experiencedin all kinds of different ways.
The most obvious way, the mostcommon term being thrown around
these days is polarization.
You know, we usually talk aboutthat in the political sphere.
There is an increasing movetowards polarization, you know,
towards a tribalistic way ofliving, where the goal is sort
(02:33):
of to, no, not even the goal,where we are increasingly
homogenous and seeking to bearound people who think the same
way, sort of have the sameposture towards life and
politics and government and theworld.
And so we're polarized.
Well, that does tend to reducewho we are to political
(02:53):
identities, which is animportant part of who we are,
for sure.
People are experiencingfragmentation in how they engage
on social media, algorithms,fine-tuning and curating feeds
to play on, A, the things wealready think and agree with,
and B, the things that enrage usand cause these intense
emotional reactions.
(03:14):
That's this form offragmentation.
We're living in thishyper-accelerated infosphere,
and that's in some ways pullingus apart from one another, in
some ways.
Movements that are fueled bynostalgia for sort of a
fantasizing memory, afantastical distorted memory of
(03:35):
the past as better, whetherthat's a past that we actually
experienced, like for me, the1990s, or whether it's even more
artificial, like a nostalgiafor another time period.
before we existed.
Something vague, somethingabout a time when things were
simpler, people knew theirneighbors, et cetera, et cetera.
And those kinds of nostalgicmovements are pretty dangerous
(03:58):
because in many ways they arefantasy.
They are not reality.
They're not good history.
Our nostalgic longings andmemories do not construct a
nuanced and textured and complexpicture of the past they do the
opposite they it's like this aphotograph that has its
contrasts all way off and itdoesn't look real because you
(04:20):
have taken you know good thingsfrom the past and oversaturated
them in the image it's not realit's it's stylized and but
nostalgia is very powerfulemotionally And it can drive
entire political movements.
I mean, fascist movements arenostalgic in nature, remembering
(04:40):
a fantasy, a mythic past thatnever really existed and trying
to get back to something thatnever really existed in the
first place.
And it can make people do crazythings.
It can make people do cruelthings in this desperation to
return to a place they neverwere.
So fragmentation happens.
I guess what I've come torealize, this experience of
(05:03):
fragmentation across the variousaspects of life is really the
deep context that we live in inthe 21st century.
Fracture and fragmentation isour underlying deep context.
And it's a lot older than wemight think.
Again, nostalgic views of thepast tend to not acknowledge
(05:29):
just how long our society hasbeen living and experiencing
this paradigm of fracture.
I really think that since theyear 1500, the Western world has
been existing and experiencing,moving through a time of
fracture and fragmenting.
But I also want to be clearabout something, that this is
(05:51):
not all bad.
It shouldn't be seen as just anegative thing.
Because fragmentation is also,just another name for that is
diversification,differentiation,
complexification, being mademore complex.
There's all kinds of talk inthe modern Western world of sort
(06:12):
of an unending critique, acritique of our individualism,
of our consumerism, of ourcapitalistic greed, and the list
goes on and on.
The modern Western world is nostranger to self-critique.
In fact, it's almost as much ofa feature of modern life, as is
the various aspects of modernlife.
Not everyone shares this, ofcourse, but our belief in
(06:36):
progress, our belief in scienceand technology.
Just as one example, ouraddiction to self-critique,
almost bordering on aself-loathing, it has been
constant.
It's been a feature of themodern world ever since it was
sort of initiated.
So there's been a lot of talkfor a long time, many decades,
(06:57):
even centuries, critiquing theWestern world's fragmentation
and its lack of unity and itskind of breakdown.
It's almost part of thetradition itself now.
Part of the Western traditionitself is critique of the
Western tradition.
Critique, almost a feature ofmodernity is critiquing
modernity.
This makes me think of, youknow, I've had this thought a
(07:18):
lot watching Christmas moviesand Christmas specials.
I'll try to explain this and Ihope it makes sense.
But I think that as acollective experience, the
holiday of Christmas, not whatit should be about, not what it
could be about, not how itshould be or ought to be
celebrated, but what it actuallyis.
(07:39):
And I think the meaning ofChristmas is the conversation
about the meaning of Christmas.
I think that's actually what wedo.
That's what every Christmasmovie and special and story is
about.
It's about critiquing Christmasand attempting to articulate
(07:59):
what it's really about.
Whether that's it's reallyabout the birth of Christ or
it's really about being withfamily.
It's like the purpose, theactual practice, the ritual, the
discourse around the festivalevery year is about how the
festival is not being celebratedthe way it should be.
And it ends up being this sortof strange time of moral
(08:22):
reflection and self-critiquethat once we put away the
Christmas tree, when we pull itout again next year, we're going
to have the same conversations.
And we even pass this traditionon to our children because this
is what they absorb aboutChristmas.
It is this dissonant experienceof there's all these presents
(08:45):
and Christmas isn't about that,but let's enjoy these presents.
It's this strange thing.
Why am I talking about this?
It's because it reminds me alot of what it's like to live in
the modern Western world.
We both believe in certainaspects of modernity, and we
also are in a never-ending stateof critique of modernity.
(09:06):
And I just find that to beinteresting, that part of the
tradition of the Western worldis to critique the Western
world.
And there's people that opposethat, who want to say, you know,
we need to stop with this And,you know, don't you realize how
good you have it?
That itself is also part of thetradition, is that reminder.
(09:27):
You wouldn't really want tolive somewhere else.
Trust me.
That's part of the tradition.
These are all just pieces ofit.
So kind of where I'm going withthis is I think that
fragmentation has been thedominant motif of the last 500
years.
I don't think that that's allbad.
(09:48):
but I do think it has generateda lot of pain and that we still
haven't figured outcollectively what to do, how to
manage it.
Now, people who talk about thefragmentation of life in the
modern world, which again,they've been doing for 500 years
in various ways, is there'sthis sort of underlying
(10:12):
operating assumption that beforethe modern world, or before X,
there was Y.
And Y was when things weregood, when people knew each
other, when people believed insomething, when people trusted
each other.
Insert any vague notion.
Again, this is nostalgia,nostalgia speaking.
(10:35):
So if X is the fragmentation ofsociety, then Y is that society
prior to fragmentation.
And I think that This is whereit's really interesting because
my argument that I make invarious ways in different
platforms is that I really thinkthat the Western world has not
(10:59):
actually moved on from its oldmedieval consensus.
Fragmentation destroys oldunities.
It destroys old assumptions.
It destroys old stability.
And that experience can bepainful and disorienting.
And yet it also invites us intoopportunities to establish new,
(11:24):
potentially different orhealthier unities.
So yeah, I think there's thisunderlying assumption that we
don't often critique or thinkabout too clearly.
But when we are criticizingour, quote, fragmented
contemporary existence, what isit that we're saying is we want
(11:45):
things to be like.
If the modern world is like A,B, and C, people don't know
their neighbors, they spend toomuch time addicted to their
phones, they're isolated fromeach other, they're just hooked
on technology.
What is it that we're thinkingis the better option?
And I don't think people thinkexplicitly that what we need is
(12:05):
to return to the old medievalways of doing things, medieval
Western Europe.
But I think that in some waysthat's built in.
to this critique.
But the answer to our modernsort of existential ongoing
crises and fragmentation is notto go back to a medieval way, a
(12:28):
medieval solidity and consensus.
Because while the WesternEuropean medieval world had its
benefits, had its pluses andminuses, its pros and cons, Yes,
it was unified.
Absolutely.
It was a much more unified andcohesive society than we live in
(12:51):
now.
It was much clearer what yourpurpose was and your place.
Life was slower and quieter andcalmer.
Village life was simpler.
That is true.
There was one church, the RomanCatholic Church, that everyone
belonged to.
And if you didn't belong to it,you were a heretic.
(13:13):
You were outside the church,outside salvation.
And you, in a way, sort of werea non-entity.
It was very unified, especiallyreligiously and economically.
But the fact is, it was unifiedbecause it was held together by
(13:33):
strict patriarchal power andhierarchy.
There was a theologicalmonopoly.
People in the medieval Westdidn't know that there was other
Christian traditions that weredifferent, that were not under
the authority of the Romanchurch.
Maybe in theory, they knew thatthough there were other
Christians out there who were,you know, in many ways
(13:55):
disobedient because they werenot under the authority of the
Pope.
But for the average personliving in medieval Western
Europe, this was a 100% totaltheological monopoly where
dissent was suppressed invarious ways.
And all of this backed up byvery strong imperial or kingdom
(14:19):
political power.
So yes, people who lived in themedieval West did feel a
certain kind of safety andsecurity.
They didn't ask, how do we knowthat the church is telling the
truth?
How do we know that ourinterpretation of scripture is
right?
They didn't ask that question.
(14:39):
They knew.
that if they were in communionwith the Roman church and they
were engaging in its rituals andits processes, that they were
good.
They may have to do a long timein purgatory after death.
That might just be what has tohappen to cleanse them, purify
(15:00):
them of all their roles of sin.
But they knew that if they werein communion with the church
and were not heretics and werenot excommunicated, that they
would die and go to purgatoryand eventually reach God.
It might be painful.
It might be long.
Maybe there were things youcould do to shorten that time.
But for the most part, if youstepped back and looked at it
(15:23):
from a cosmic bird's eye view,these people were on their way
to God.
They didn't have to worry asmuch about questions of
authority and truth becauseauthority was inherited.
They looked...
and they saw the churchhierarchy, they saw the bishop
(15:43):
of Rome, they heard how this wasconnected all the way back to
the apostles, there was noreason to doubt it.
And so for the average person,at a deep existential level,
they felt some kind of safetyand security.
Their role was pretty muchdefined at birth, like where
they fit in the hierarchy ofsociety and what they were
(16:06):
supposed to do, what they werecalled to do.
Their contributions, mostpeople's contribution by far,
90% of people's contribution wascalled to farm to provide food
and stability for theirkingdoms, for their lords, and
by extension for the kingdom.
The lord whose land they farmedhad the responsibility to
(16:29):
protect them from invasion.
And life was sort of just aboutthat.
It was about doing that thingthrough the proper channels, in
the proper way, with this stricthierarchy.
So if you ask, if you look atthe modern world, everything
after the Reformation, and youask, is that kind of safety and
(16:50):
security gone?
The answer is yes.
That security, that safety,that sort of cosmic sense of, I
know my place, I know what Ihave to do, I know who's in
charge, and I'm kind of just, Iaccept that, that is gone.
that will never return again.
That was just a time in historythat is now over.
(17:13):
I think in many ways, and for alot of reasons, which I'll talk
about a little bit, thatmedieval consensus, that
medieval solidity was temporary.
It was not sustainable.
It was not possible to holdtogether forever.
And so whenever there's thesethoughts about There's a lot of
(17:36):
romanticizing of the medievalperiod, especially among more
conservative Christians, but notonly limited to that.
This doesn't mean that youcan't find anything to admire or
even long for about themedieval world.
For example, the simple longingfor a time before modern
technology.
Yeah, there are times in ourlife, even moments, where we
(17:57):
long for that.
Usually when we are beingbombarded with messages and
emails and inputs from with ourdopamine addictions and seeking
the highs and the hits from newmessages and new texts and
videos, flashy videos.
Of course, that's going tostart to feel exhausting at
(18:18):
times.
And we let our minds drift to asimpler time.
Ultimately, I would find itdifficult to actually find
someone who really did want togo back to the medieval period
for various reasons.
So I don't think it's an actualactive desire, explicit desire
to return to the medievalconsensus.
(18:41):
But I think we carry this, someof the nostalgia with us.
And again, that's what it is.
It's nostalgia.
It's not reality, complextextured reality.
We are just thinking it wouldbe nice to live in a village
where everyone knew each other,to have a simple job.
(19:01):
That required maybe hard worksometimes, rest other times,
eat, drink, be merry, work hard,no fresh air, no stresses of
modern life.
So yeah, there's things that wecan admire and even, again,
long for.
It makes sense to long to beaway from a screen and instead
(19:21):
in the fresh air looking at theblue sky or listening to the
singing birds, taking a walk anda hike.
That's not all medieval lifewas, of course.
But medieval unity...
was also suffocating.
Because as you probably know,people are pretty different from
one another, especially whenthey're given the chance to flex
(19:42):
their own muscles and exercisesome freedom.
People are pretty differentfrom one another.
People want very differentthings.
We inhabit very differentpersonalities and postures
towards the world.
We are motivated by differentthings.
Humans are just not aone-size-fits-all kind of
creature, which I think makessense being made in the image of
(20:06):
God.
God is obviously more diverse,the source of all different
things, and we reflect some ofthose aspects.
And so the medieval world'ssort of simplified hierarchy and
chain of being is in many waystoo simple.
(20:26):
It doesn't capture...
complexity of of the totalityof life so in that way the
medieval consensus which is whati keep calling it the medieval
unity was destined to breakapart it just wasn't possible to
stay like that foreverespecially once europeans
(20:50):
started venturing across theocean and encountering
Populations and languages andcultures and products and
traditions and histories thatwere so radically different and
unknown to them to what peoplehad known about, you know, in
say the 1200s.
By the time you get to the1500s, the world has just opened
(21:13):
up and exploded.
And there's so much differencethat it was overwhelming and
dizzying.
just how many different kindsof lifestyles and peoples and
histories there were out there.
And in many ways, that begins aprocess of fragmentation.
Because the old certaintiesabout the way the world was,
(21:36):
which would have been clarifiedand explicated on by religious
authorities, turned out to beway too small.
Not that everything they saidwas wrong, it just was
provincial.
It was parochial.
It was regional, local, ratherthan global.
I think one of the reasonsEuropean imperialism and
(22:00):
colonization was so violent andso destructive to so many people
was it was this attempt toimpose a local regionalness on a
global world, taking what hadthe tradition's and the
knowledge that had grown upregionally in Western Europe,
(22:21):
the assumptions that haddeveloped over time locally,
indigenously.
The imperial way and thecolonial extension was an
attempt to sort of enforce thatEuropean knowledge and lifestyle
on very different parts andpeoples of the world.
And that could be a veryfrustrating thing to do because
(22:44):
people resist that.
Because they do not see theworld the same way.
And they don't want someonefrom another place to come in
and tell them everything aboutyou and your traditions is
wrong.
We have it all figured out.
And we're going to take over.
And you either comply orthere's no place for you.
We'll make life difficult foryou.
(23:06):
You will be pushed to thesidelines.
Marginalized.
Literally.
But you can't encounter...
I think the European...
modern experience, it cannot bedisconnected from colonialism.
Sometimes we can do a Europeanhistory where the colonial
aspect, like the overseasventures and the colonizing of
(23:27):
other parts of the world is sortof this side history, like a
peripheral history, an extraalmost, an appendix.
But in reality, modern Europedoesn't exist without the
colonial period.
And that's in terms of what itknows.
So that's in terms of itsknowledge.
That's in terms of its economy,its trade, its religious
(23:50):
experience.
So much of what we think of asEuropean, modern European or
Western, is forged in thecolonial period, in this
interaction between Westernpeoples and non-Western peoples.
So when I say fragmentation wasinevitable, the encounter,
(24:11):
encountering other people'sworldviews and lifestyles
couldn't not fragment themedieval European simplicity and
unity.
It just was impossible to do.
Why am I saying all this?
So yes, I do think since 1500,fragmentation has been the name
of the game at a deep, deeplevel in Western society.
(24:33):
I think that meant the loss,the destruction of the old
medieval culture safety andsecurity, the old medieval
hierarchy and way of life andworldview, because it was too
small, too regional.
I think that that fragmentationgenerated a lot of pain that we
are still experiencing andchanneling and feeling right
(24:55):
now.
And that has brought about someemotionally mature responses
and a whole lot of emotionallyimmature responses that have
really harmed people.
But I don't think it's all thisfragmentation is just bad.
I think the fractures that kindof broke apart the medieval
world were necessary and in away necessary experiences of
(25:18):
growing up and maturing,necessary experiences of
reality.
The fractures that wereexperienced in the post-medieval
and early modern world broughtabout new opportunities for
freedom of conscience andthought.
It brought about new culturalplurality, whether people liked
that or not.
New art, new theology, newexpressions of faith, new space
(25:41):
for people to speak honestly andgrapple with pain and trauma
and come to differentconclusions that were distinct
from what the religious andpolitical authorities had sort
of sanctioned as the answers.
The end of a uniformity thatwas sometimes experienced
positively and other times,especially by dissenters, was
(26:04):
experienced as violent andoppressive.
The answer is not to return tosome kind of medieval unity.
That is nostalgia.
That is not how a societyflourishes.
That's not where we need to goto move on.
It's not exactly like this, butit is similar.
The medieval period from achurchly or Christian
(26:24):
perspective is kind of similarto a childhood for a society
where there is kind of a strict,rigid hierarchy of of
authority, like parent andchild, where the norms are laid
out crystal clear by theauthorities, and you have to
(26:46):
obey and comply, that's justwhat has to happen.
Or else, and if you don't,you'll be punished pretty
severely in order to preventthat from happening again.
But to anyone who has kids or afamily, you know that at some
point, you move out of thechildhood-like paradigm.
And members of the family startflexing their own muscles and
(27:08):
expressing themselves and goingin different directions and
being interested in differentthings.
And this can be experienced asa drifting apart, can be
experienced as a fracturing, butit's also, it doesn't have to
be experienced like that.
Especially if, you know, yourchildren developing in different
(27:29):
ways with different interests,if you approach with curiosity
and openness, instead of sort oflooking for why what they're
doing is wrong, just because itbreaks with what has always been
done, it doesn't have to be atime of drifting apart, but it
does have to be a time ofexpansion.
It does have to be a time oflistening and curious learning
(27:51):
about one another and not justbeing on the defensive and not
just attempting to shiftstrategies so that you can
control.
Children grow up.
And they go in differentdirections.
And in some ways, that's whatthe fragmentation that began
with the Reformation and withthe scientific revolution and
with the Enlightenment and withall the various eras of change
(28:17):
that were experienced over thelast 500 years.
In some ways, whether you likeit or not, it's just people
going different directions.
And that's not something...
When that kind of directionalmovement is met with judgment is
met with you know again newstrategies of how to ensure
(28:39):
compliance or go back in time tothe way things used to be it's
that's always that alwaysgenerates more and more painful
fractures so it doesn't have tobe painful or sorry it's going
to be painful at some level butit doesn't have to be
experienced as destructive it'soften in our stubborn resistance
(29:01):
of change, that things actuallyget damaged and destroyed and
harmed.
Like I said before,fragmentation destroys old
unities and old certainties.
And that's painful.
But it also fosters thepossibility of establishing new,
healthier unities.
The loss of these oldcertainties, which yes, I'm
(29:26):
placing at, again from thisperspective, historical bird's
eye view around the year 1500 atthe beginning of the
Reformation.
But then it's experienced innumerous other ways throughout
the last 500 years.
It's a common experience ofestablishing some kind of new
(29:46):
reality and then that also beingchallenged and losing that.
And so yes, there's paininvolved in change.
But I remember someone sayingthat Often with change, it's not
change that we fear, first andforemost, it's loss.
And it might be important.
(30:08):
I'm convinced at somefundamental level for a Western
person, whether we feelemotionally connected to the
medieval period at all or not,whether it's just romanticism or
whether you look back on themedieval period as a barbaric
era, I can imagine, especiallyfor women, when people talk
(30:32):
about where would you go, if youcould go back in time, often
men have all these differentanswers of where they would go
and what they would like toexperience.
But for women, it's often, Iwouldn't go to any of those
places.
This right now is probably thesafest period for me.
So there's people who look atthe medieval period like that,
like it's not something to everwant to be experienced, which
(30:54):
makes sense, which is totallyfair.
But I just think that since1500, I think we're still in
continuity with the era of theReformation, with the fractures
that it introduced.
I think we are continuing toexperience fragmentation.
It's almost, again, like I saidat the beginning, it's almost
like a necessary aspect ofmodern life.
(31:16):
Because the modern periodfundamentally identifies itself
in contrast to the medievalperiod.
That wasn't just anenlightenment thing.
That's still kind of in ourbones.
And so, you know, maybe it'simportant just to look for a
second at some of the, what waslost after the medieval period
(31:40):
sort of crumbled apart, orsorry, not crumbled, fractured
apart, fractured apart intopieces that would grow into the
modern world.
So, you know, beginning withthe reformation, In the early
1500s, the Western worldexperienced a severe loss of
(32:00):
consensus around who was incharge, what was trustworthy,
what wasn't.
It lost a spiritual sense ofsecurity.
So even as people, reformersand Protestants, were
rediscovering Scripture in newways and expressing a new kind
(32:22):
of security, You cannot denythat people also experienced
this with anxiety because theold authorities, how you knew
something was true, again, bybeing in communion with the
church at Rome, was gone.
People were standing on theirown feet.
And this wasn't just aProtestant experience because
Catholics, too, even those whoremained connected and in that
(32:46):
way still had their feet plantedin the medieval way, looked
around and saw, you know,millions of people moving away
from it, and a new world formingwith new communities and nation
states being established, andof course war.
So even the Catholic experienceof just the obvious voice of
(33:08):
moral authority found in thechurch hierarchy wasn't as
simple as it had been earlierthan that.
I think there was a loss ofestablished communal rhythms And
I'm not just talking, again,this is difficult to express.
I'm not just talking about theloss of communal rhythms from
medieval to reformation.
I'm talking about the fact thatthis idea that we used to have
(33:32):
communal rhythms and now wedon't is a feature of modern
Western life.
We are constantly looking backand looking forward.
There was a loss of inheritedbelonging, a loss of a shared
baseline reality.
And so I think that followedthe Reformation, that was
experienced in theEnlightenment.
(33:53):
But I think our contemporary21st century experience stands
in direct continuity with thosesame losses.
I think we repeat them almost.
And maybe in using morecontemporary psychological
language, we repeat these thingsbecause there's something
unresolved.
There's something unresolvedand has been unresolved.
(34:13):
in the Western experience eversince the fractures of the
Reformation.
So that's why perhaps we keepreliving this experience of
losing security of what once wasand experiencing the
disorientation of now.
(34:33):
So right now we're experiencingthis through, we're trying to
appease These feelings ofdissonance that like the world
really is more complicated andbigger than we can imagine and
understand.
It's not, it's not, doesn'talways feel like a safe and
secure place.
Things don't feel certain.
(34:54):
It's not always clear who's incharge and who should be and who
shouldn't be.
So I think right now, the waywe're experiencing this loss is,
you know, we're stuck in echochambers.
We're moving in tribalisticdirections because that makes us
feel safer and more secure.
So we're like manufacturingartificial homogeneity, ignoring
(35:14):
the complexity that is ourneighborhoods and all the people
who live in our neighborhoodsfrom all kinds of different
parts of the world withdifferent religious beliefs and
cultures and languages, ignoringthe complexity under our nose
and next door, and insteadretreating into spaces that feel
safe, again, by manufacturinghomogeneity.
(35:35):
Sometimes that's physicalspaces, like we actually go to
places where people are all likeus and look like us.
Or we more easily and morecommonly, we gravitate towards
them online.
Living this virtual, kind ofexisting virtually, finding our
identity there rather thanengaging with the disorienting
(35:57):
diversity around us, which isactually the real calling.
of the person who claims tofollow Christ or listen to
Jesus.
Love your neighbor, the peoplearound you, the normal, diverse
people around you who you mightnot like or agree with or be the
(36:18):
same as.
And the pain that comes fromfragmentation, which I think is
what fuels nostalgia, andnostalgia is what fuels love.
the really destructivemovements of fascism and
authoritarianism and turning toextreme and violent measures to
(36:39):
manufacture this homogeneity.
That's really what fascism is.
That's what it's doing when ittargets scapegoats and
immigrants and refugees.
It's an attempt to forcefullyand coercively recreate, quote
unquote, recreate a fantasyhomogeneity.
So because there's pain, inthis fragmentation experience.
(37:01):
Some people just feel the painand kind of accept the
fragmenting.
Some people lean into thefracturing and just say, this is
just the way things are.
And they move almost in what wemight think of as like a
postmodern or relativisticdirection, an agnostic direction
where it's like thesefragmentations are happening.
(37:22):
There's nothing we can reallydo.
And there's a little bit ofresigning to it.
But there's also groups thatwho feel this pain of
fragmenting and the fear thatcomes along with it.
And what they really try to dois, quote, reclaim or again,
quote, restore the past.
And these usually end up movingin bad directions that hurt
(37:44):
people.
Because at some level, theseefforts to restore a past that
never existed in the firstplace, a past that only seemed
to exist, what they're engagingwith is unreality.
And Christian nationalism,especially as we're seeing it
play out in the United States,but it's also across the Western
world.
(38:04):
It's not just an Americanphenomenon.
Christian nationalism is one ofthese nostalgic projects.
It is aimed at restoring an oldform of order and compliance
that ignores the reality of yourneighbor, ignores the reality
on the ground.
It's a fantasy.
the idea that society needs tobe Christian again.
(38:26):
That's what I mean about sortof living into, even if it's not
acknowledged, some kind ofmedieval romanticism.
Back when there was one church,back when it was clear who was
in authority and who wasn't,which ideas were right and which
ones weren't.
I think that this is still incontinuity with the
fragmentation that all Westernpeoples and those who have come
(38:49):
into the Western orbit have havebeen collectively experiencing
since the 1500s.
But like I said at thebeginning, it can be really easy
to fall into a trap where it'saddictive, where it's easy to
just kind of stand and look outat society and wake up
critiquing it, critique it allthe day long and then go to bed
and wake up and do it again thenext day.
(39:10):
It can feel good.
It is the feeling ofself-righteousness, which has
its own sort of form ofpleasure.
to be right when the rest ofthe world is wrong.
And I know this feeling wellbecause I occupied a space like
that for many years until I justgot tired of the constant
(39:32):
critiquing because it started tofeel like romanticism and not
productive and not moving us ina new direction with a new
vision.
So that's why I want tohighlight that this experience
of fragmentation is not just anegative thing, as if we had
some kind of unity That wasgood, and we've slowly been
losing it as it erodes.
(39:52):
That's not accurate either.
This fragmentation initiatedwith the Reformation, and again,
continued on with all theimportant larger historical
movements of the modern age.
It also brought about anexpansion, new understandings,
new opportunities to learn aboutother people and other ways of
(40:13):
life that were disorienting, butalso if you approached it with
curiosity, hopefully your visionof of people and culture and
truth grew and expanded.
It had to be more elastic.
There were more things inheaven and earth than in our
imaginings.
New opportunities to showempathy, to hear stories of
(40:33):
people who were not like you.
This fracturing of society andold certainties also brought
about rejection ofauthoritarianism, challenging
assumed and inherited religiousauthority.
That's good.
That's more honest.
This fragmentation in many waysis more honest than the old
(40:54):
medieval certainty.
New impetus to seek truth andto do so without coercion.
New space for spirituality andfor trauma healing to occur by
honest grappling.
And this fragmentation also hasled to the emergence of new
communities, new connectedpeoples who would not have
(41:15):
connected otherwise.
It has...
provided new spaces formarginalized voices to find
platforms, to express theirexperiences, to express and make
open hidden and invisible orignored aspects of reality.
You know, when you think aboutthe American experience and
people talk about, you know, weneed to get back to something
(41:38):
and why that's so often deeplyconnected with white supremacy
is because usually it iscommunities of Euro-Americans or
white Americans longing forsome earlier era, often the
1950s or maybe earlier thanthat.
And those eras were notactually less diverse.
(41:59):
Marginalized peoples were justmore marginalized then, more
hidden, more buried.
They're there.
And so this longing to go backto a simpler time in many ways
is more, let's go back to whenreality was being hidden more
explicitly and more proudly.
So the fragmentation of thatpast has led to new connections
(42:24):
between people, and that's good.
So while on the one hand, therehas been, we can attest to some
kind of collectivedisconnection from our
neighbors, a rootlessness, aloneliness, partially the reason
for that is becauseneighborhoods are less
homogenous, and that is going torequire, it's much harder to
love your neighbor who is verydifferent from you speaks a
(42:46):
different language or from adifferent religious tradition,
it's much easier to love yourneighbor when you have an
experience of homogeneity.
It's hard enough to do it then.
So yes, the fragmentation ofmodern life has led to some kind
of disconnection fromneighbors, rootlessness,
loneliness, but it's alsoexposed us to new diversities or
the diversities that were thereall along.
(43:08):
And this gives us opportunitiesto reinvent and create
possibilities.
We have a chance to ask thequestion, What kind of coming
together do we actually want todo?
Do we want to engage with ourneighborhoods as they are?
This is what I mean by reality,to deal with what exists.
Or do we want to manufactureartificially something that's
(43:31):
more palatable, somethingeasier?
We are called to love ourneighbor as they are, our
neighborhoods as they are.
I know this is complicatedbecause it is at an economic
level It is we constructneighborhoods that are more
homogenous.
So we do many actions.
(43:52):
We take a lot of action.
We put a lot of energy intopreventing reality, the reality
of diversity from existing inour communities.
But no matter how much we try,it's still there.
Your neighborhood is probably alot less homogenous than your
church is.
And that's concerning.
(44:13):
You know, modern life, you cansay we have, families have been
experiencing in recent years,but they've been saying this for
centuries.
This isn't just brand new, aloss of stability or new
estrangement between parents andchildren, displacement.
And that is true.
That's part of the fragmenting.
And that has a lot of negativeside effects to it.
(44:36):
But this family fragmentationhas also had the chance for, has
also opened up opportunitiesfor therapeutic growth, for
people to stand on their own twofeet autonomously and to say
what they need to say.
It's led to whistleblowingwithin families about abuse and
(44:59):
about just things that have gonehidden that need to stop being
hidden.
So there has been, thisfragmentation has allowed for
spaces, cracks between familiescracks in the family's public
image and reputation to do someserious truth-telling, some new
boundary setting, to establishnew ways of how are we going to
(45:19):
be family.
That's also a result offragmentation.
So I don't really know fullywhat my takeaway is.
What I'm trying to communicateis that the simple fact is for
the last 500 years, and itcontinues right into this
moment, fragmentation is ourdeep context.
It undergirds Everything.
And it has for 500 years.
(45:41):
I am led to believe thatchoosing to actually love the
neighbor as they are in front ofyou is the way forward, which I
guess if you follow Jesus,shouldn't be a surprise that
that's the way forward.
But I think we also need tograpple with the reality that we
don't really know how to loveour neighbor who is different
(46:01):
than us.
Like we know that Jesuscommands it, but we need to
really seriously examine the Becurious and ask for the real
results of, hey, how do I lovemy neighbor who is very
different than I?
Here are some of the obstaclesI face.
These are some of the emotionsI'm dealing with.
(46:22):
I have a low desire to seek outand build relationship with my
neighbor.
I can do the thing that wealways do in Western society,
which is I can shame myself atchurch or at home or with my
friends for not loving myneighbor.
People feel satisfied thatthat's enough.
But that is pointless if itleads to no new action.
(46:44):
Guilt is just an alarm thatsomething is wrong and needs to
change.
But in Western Christianity,guilt is a way of life.
It's our way of atoning for...
I think at some level we thinkfeeling guilt is our way to
atone for our sins.
what God asks of us, and we cansay, well, he said, you know,
(47:05):
it's called to repent.
And that's because we haveconfused repentance with the
word means to turn away, right?
To turn and move in a newdirection.
But for us, you need to repentmeans you need to feel bad about
what you've done and sort ofconfess it, make it public.
And often that's where we stopwith repentance, just continue
(47:26):
to feel bad.
Instead of asking the honestquestion, like, I don't love my
neighbor.
I really don't.
So what do I do with that?
I'm not going to sit andpretend and tell you and just
promise you I'm going to trymore.
I keep struggling and fallinginto the same traps as always.
I don't love my neighbor.
So what do I do?
What works?
What are some examples of aperson moving from apathy
(47:51):
towards their neighbor towardstrue love?
Those are the kind of storiesthat I want to know.
That's the kind of evidencethat we need to explore.
Jesus tells us, commands us tolove our neighbor.
It's up to us to ask how, whatworks and what doesn't.
So I think just moving forward,I want to start engaging with
sort of just acknowledging thetruth that fragmenting is sort
(48:15):
of, like I keep saying, it's ourdeep context.
It's the way things really are.
And I think once we acknowledgethat that is just true, we can
start to ask new questions thatcould lead us in a better
direction, especially, okay, sothe old ways are continuously
fragmenting apart.
what kind of coming togethershould we engage in and how do
(48:36):
we start to do that?
So instead of just lookingnostalgically back on the past,
again, which rarely existed inthe way that we are imagining,
fragmentation gives us newopportunities, new cracks and
spaces where we can maybeexperiment with something new,
try new things.
And we're not the first to dothat.
New forms of community havecome into existence because of
(49:01):
the fracturing apart in Westernsociety.
So that's just what's been onmy mind today.
And I hope if anything hereresonated or you have any ideas
to add to this, this is by nomeans the definitive talk on
fragmentation.
This is just inviting you intosome of the realizations I've
had lately.
But I think I know at a deepfundamental level that honesty
(49:25):
is always better.
than hiding things.
Honest grappling, whether youhave everything accurate or not,
is always better than keepingsilent until you have everything
perfectly figured out.
Honest grappling leadssomewhere.
And so I think we need tohonestly acknowledge that
(49:46):
fragmentation is what we know.
That's what we've lived in forcenturies.
And stop pretending that that'strue.
Stop longing to go back to atime when it wasn't And channel
that longing energy intosomething more productive,
something that leads to bondsbeing formed between people,
that deals with the peoplearound you as they are, not as
(50:09):
you wish things were.
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