Andrew Wilson first rose to prominence through his Christianity Today column Spirited Life, which he has written regularly since 2014. He has written many compelling articles in defense of the orthodox Christian position. He does not back down from the challenges the Bible presents us with, such as why the Bible gives us two genealogies for Jesus.
During this time, he began hosting a podcast called Mere Fidelity, which gained popularity among many evangelicals. The podcast tackles challenging questions the hosts are wrestling with and may not agree on. The late Tim Keller said, “I listen to Mere Fidelity regularly… There is no better theological podcast.”
Wilson also writes books at a breakneck pace, considering his pastoral work. His work has embraced surprising topics, from raising children with disabilities to literary symbols in the Book of Ruth.
Today, Wilson works as a teaching pastor at a Reformed Charismatic church in London and continues to intellectually engage with and chronicle our modern culture. So what can we learn from his unique approach to ministry?
What Makes Andrew Wilson an Unusual Pastor?
Andrew Wilson has been noted for many reasons.
His capacity is notable. He released his first book in 2007, a response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion titled Deluded by Dawkins? Since then, he has written over a dozen more books, completed a doctorate, and written regular articles for Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition, all while working at various churches. Even today, he writes regularly.
However, Wilson would be the first to note that there are limits to his capacity and that his family has grown and shaped him in powerful ways. In a profile by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, he discusses how two of his children have regressive autism, meaning that they would learn skills but then lose them. The situation made ministry challenging, so he and his wife stepped back from his large public pastoral role to find work that gave him more time to reflect and write. The shift informed God of All Things, his book on experiencing God daily. It also led to him becoming a teaching pastor at King’s Church in London and a new approach requiring fewer family sacrifices.
Wilson is unique because he doesn’t always aim to fit in one end of the theological spectrum. Sometimes, he takes unique middle positions. For example, his book Spirit and Sacrament emphasizes an approach he calls eucharismatic, which combines charismatics’ interest in spiritual gifts and high-church Christians’ interest in sacraments.
He has also been willing to explore topics outside his specialty. After becoming a teaching pastor at King’s Church, he wrote a book on history and culture, Remaking the World, showing how the present age is WEIRDER than ever before. The acronym stands for the following:
Western: Western Europe’s geography forced people to be more efficient and dynamic than people from more naturally fertile areas. This has caused technology to play an integral role in how the West approaches problems.
Educated: This cultural moment is more educated than any before us. Our literacy rates are higher, changing how we interact with the world.
Individualized: Individualism is an integral part of modern society. For many people, it goes without thinking that the smallest unit of community that matters is the individual. The family or community played a much more central role in the past.
Rich: The improvements in technology and the rise of the free market, which Wilson chronicles in Remaking the World, have made the average person in the modern West much wealthier than people in the past. This wealth also comes with the greed assumed in the modern West.
Democratic: Democracy is an integral part of the modern world, and many see it as integral to the West’s success against tyranny.
Ex-Christian: Here, Wilson expands upon the category of WEIRD, developed by J.J. Arnett to identify bias within psychological studies and adapted by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind. He includes two additional categories: Ex-Christian and Romantic. Ex-Christian means that people in the modern West no longer see faith as a prerequisite to living a full life.
Romantic: Here, Wilson suggests that the artistic group known as the Romantics was fundamental in bringing about the inward bent of the present age. In an interview with Gavin Matthew, Wilson said that the Romantic view is that “what is within you is ultimately the truest and most meaningful thing about you.” Wilson calls this view a kind of Gnosticism.
Andrew Wilson Quotes about Faith and Our Culture
“Before you search for happiness—let alone codify the quest for it as an inalienable right—it’s a good idea to work out what kind of happiness is worth pursuing.” — “The Pursuit of (Which) Happiness?” The Gospel Coalition
“The vast majority of people in human history have not shared our views of work, family, government, religion, sex, identity, or morality, no matter how universal or self-evident we may think they are.” — Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West
“[Jesus tempted by Satan is] a great story, and there’s much we can learn from it, but for now, just consider the way Jesus fights. He has the resources of heaven available, yet he fights by using the authority of the Scriptures. Not as a one-off, or as a change of tactics, but each and every time. ‘It is written . . . it is written . . . it is written’ he repeatedly emphasizes. His position is unequivocal: ‘You’re trying to tempt me, but the Scriptures have spoken. That’s the end of the conversation.’” — “The Art of War,” The Gospel Coalition (adapted from Unbreakable: What the Son of God Said About the Word of God)
“It was the harbinger of a permanent change in the moral imagination of WEIRDER people. In the late eighteenth century, concepts like rights, consent, choice, and equality were used to discuss questions of government. But their influence quickly spread far beyond that. By the late twentieth century, they were being used to settle questions of morality in general: my right to x, your freedom to choose y, equality for z, and so forth. In many debates, they now serve as conversation stoppers, axioms with unimpeachable moral authority, unencumbered by other categories like duties, obligations, virtue, or wisdom (let alone providence).” — Remaking the World
“... the rate of change in the last two centuries makes the past feel much further away than it actually is. Which inclines us to fawn over the future, and either patronize the past or ignore it altogether.” — “We Forget Just Why We Live in a WEIRDER World,” Crossway (adapted from Remaking the World)
What Can Christians Learn from Andrew Wilson?
Wilson provides a variety of lessons that we can learn from. Three particular ones are worth noting:
First, Wilson models how to love God with our minds. His intellectual curiosity, his willingness to consider many topics from a Christian perspective, models what Harry Blamires would call a well-developed Christian mind: bravely exploring many questions, trusting that God is big enough for His followers to explore complex and rigorous topics.
Second, Wilson does not shy away from difficult questions about the Christian faith. In 2019, he won an Evangelical Press Association award for writing about the Bible’s weirdness. He doesn’t shy away from questions like why bears killed “boys” at Elisha’s command in 2 Kings.
Third, Wilson has never missed the fact that loving God with our hearts as well as our minds is important. While his books range from devotionals to children’s books, they have at least one common theme: worshipping God more wholeheartedly. His willingness to embrace spiritual gifts (often associated with improvisation and emotion) as well as Anglican sacraments (often associated with liturgy and following the same script every time) show how he balances passion with tradition, the mind with the heart.
Best Books by Andrew Wilson
Wilson has written many excellent books on religious topics. His book God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in the Everyday World is a good starting place. Incomparable: Explorations in the Character of God is one of his deeper Bible studies, a look at 60 names that the Bible gives for God.
Some of Wilson’s books delve into personal topics: he has discussed the challenges and blessings of raising autistic children—individually in The Life You Never Expected and with his wife Rachel in The Life We Never Expected.
Wilson has also authored several children’s books, such as The Boy from the House of Bread. These books deal with some deep theological topics while relating these ideas to children in a fun way.
Photo Credit:©GettyImages/Wirestock
Ben Reichert works with college students in New Zealand. He graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and agronomy. He is passionate about church history, theology, and having people walk with Jesus. When not working or writing you can find him running or hiking in the beautiful New Zealand Bush.
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