Why Human Rights Might Be Impossible Without Christianity | Political Theory & Dr. Logan Gates
Nathan (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm Nathan Rittenhouse and today I am delighted to be joined by Logan Gates. Logan is somebody who I've, think years ago I was trying to get Logan to join us on Thinking Out Loud. And I'm going to tell a story that summarizes my relationship with Logan and then let him take it from there. But Logan, do you remember years ago, we're riding around Toronto in a Prius that you had just imported from the U S.
And you had an opportunity to do a doctoral program at the university of Toronto and you are not about this. You're like, I don't know if I should do this. Is this a good thing? And I was like banging on the dash of your previous like, come on, Logan, you got to do it. And just a few years, like you'll be so thankful that you did. This is a wonderful opportunity. The Lord can really use this in your life. And then I flew out of the country and what happened.
Logan Gates (00:48)
Wow, I do not remember that. ⁓ But I did have a sense that God opened the door for a PhD and I just am now realizing, Nathan, that it was through you and your insistent prophecy.
Nathan (00:50)
You
you
No, I don't want credit for that. I was just having a
lot of fun remembering back to something that you did that was obviously good and remembering a time where you're like, ⁓ don't. Yeah.
Logan Gates (01:08)
Yes,
yes, no that's good. I don't think I realized then how long a journey I was starting on, but I'm glad I made the journey.
Nathan (01:14)
So what was that actual degree then? What did you end up specializing?
Logan Gates (01:18)
Yes, it was a PhD in political science, but with a focus on political theory and in particular the history of political thought.
Nathan (01:26)
And you, if I remember right, early on had an interest in the idea of political humility? Am I remembering that correctly?
Logan Gates (01:33)
That's right.
Yes. Initially, I was thinking of writing on Augustine and what does it look like to be a political leader and a Christian? And what is the role of humility in political leadership? Is that a virtue that should not characterize just Christians, but our leaders especially? I ended up not writing on that. Interestingly, I had a friend who wrote on that very, very similar topic on Augustine in my department, but I ended up not feeling that was for me.
Nathan (02:01)
Well,
what was interesting to me about this, what year did you start? When would we have?
Logan Gates (02:04)
I started in
2019.
Nathan (02:08)
Okay, yeah. the, was definitely an interesting time. ⁓ and we, we could do a whole nother episode on how the idea of, of political humility has aged. ⁓ but what did you end up writing on then?
Logan Gates (02:18)
Mm.
So I ended up writing on the history of the idea of human rights and noticing how in the English-speaking world we trace that tradition to this idea of rights, which we tend to look as to John Locke as like one of these key forerunners in bringing that terminology into our discourse. But I was realizing that in the Spanish-speaking world, no one really reads Locke. Instead, they read this other guy, Bartolomé de las Casas, and look to him as really a forerunner of this notion of human rights.
And I had noticed that no one really had compared these two thinkers. And so I was comparing their two theories of rights. But I'll just say behind the project was this sense that ⁓ human rights, even though some, there are arguments that it's really a secular idea, when you go back to these original formulators, you really see there are deeply Christian roots to the idea. And so I was writing in a way to draw that out. That's something Locke and Lascaz shared in their own ways, this Christian influence.
Nathan (03:18)
So what can you,
yeah, I've been in a number of conversations recently about the idea of, actually got started on, I did a dive into this coming from the animal rights direction and then thinking about rights and pushing further back into that. And I've always been struck by Simone Weil's statement that obligations precede and getting back into this idea of what is a right and trying to work through that of saying, you know, from a...
from ⁓ a modern materialist perspective, I'm on thin ice here to try to build this argument. What would be, ⁓ I don't even remember, De Casas, what was the guy, Las Casas, what would you say would be, can you give us a quick, how would he be differentiated from Locke? Or where does he ground some of the, this is like a quiz, you need to defend your dissertation here. just for the Christian listener who may be familiar with Locke, but not the ⁓ Spanish speaking equivalent.
Logan Gates (03:56)
Las Casas.
that's great.
Mm.
Nathan (04:16)
Help us out here.
Logan Gates (04:17)
Right, so in general, one of the differences that's been pointed out between ancient and modern political thought is related to this notion of duty. And ancient political thought, know, so think Plato or Aristotle or in my field, people read someone like Augustine as an ancient political thinker, have some notion of duty that's at the heart, right? So for Augustine, this would be some version of duty to God. ⁓ And that's really the primary
moral truth that you need to bear in mind as you think about ethics. When you come to the modern world, ⁓ generally you're thinking more in terms of rights instead of duty. And we can see down river some of the unhealthiness that comes from this of what am I entitled to as opposed to what is asked of me. So Lascazas and Locke sort of straddle that divide. So I would say in my reading of Locke that here is someone who is more emphasizing rights.
⁓ and doing it in a way where duty is in the shadows. ⁓ Some have argued there's a sense of duty in Locke, but really it's more, you know, in order for us to build a society that works, and that's often more the more modern question. How does society work? Not just what's right, but what's going to work in the real world, right? Locke is focused on rights being a great way to set up a stable political system. Whereas Las Casas has this notion of duty, but what's beautiful about Las Casas is it's not just duty to God and
rights come out of that. He had this interesting focus on evangelism of all things. Las Casas, 16th century Dominican friar, he was later a bishop of Chiapas in Mexico. He's known as one of these early defenders of indigenous peoples against the atrocities that the Spanish were committing in the New World. But what's so interesting is that when he speaks about the rights of indigenous peoples, it's not just that it's not right to take their land because
you know, through this ancient moral principle, you know, they have right to the land they occupy, therefore it's wrong. There is some of that in Las Casas, and that's sort of like a Thomistic foundation that, you know, is not surprising to find in a late medieval thinker. But there's also this notion that for Las Casas, the most awful thing about Spanish people taking the lands of indigenous peoples was the terrible way it colored Christianity in the eyes of indigenous peoples and how negative an impression it gave them of the gospel. And so for Las Casas, that was always his orienting point is
What will indigenous peoples think of Christ? And I argue that out of Las Casas comes a whole theory of human rights based on evangelism, which is very surprising.
Nathan (06:51)
Yeah, so is this, ⁓ can you work this back the other way and say, this sort of like saying that there's a, form of justice that parallels not being a stumbling block to the articulation of the gospel? Okay.
Logan Gates (07:05)
That's right. Yes, it's amazing
how much can be built on that. And in a sense, this is not an entirely novel idea. You some people, for instance, say religious freedom is the central freedom of all freedoms, because if you protect that, you'll find all these other freedoms get protected. And there's something similar like that in Las Casas. What it looks like to give someone the chance to have a free, uncoerced hearing of the gospel requires caring about lots of things. It requires you not oppressing them, not taking things from them.
requires them having, in a sense, a stable sense of health and of working life and a number of other things. we actually, you sometimes in rights discourse, they speak about negative rights and positive rights, right? So negative rights, like what am I, I'm free from, I have a right to be free from violence, but positive rights, you know, people talk about healthcare or that kind of thing as a positive right, something I'm entitled to. And in a strange way, unless Casas, you know, 400 years before we started talking about...
Nathan (07:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Logan Gates (07:59)
negative and positive rights in a way provides the system that actually has us caring about both of those categories, albeit in different ways.
Nathan (08:07)
Yeah, that's really helpful.
I can hear some people listening, maybe with some little alarm bells in the back of their mind, saying, how does that tradition maintain its actual gospel focus? Because there have been so many, what have developed into more progressive ⁓ social causes that I think have been born out of a sense of that, but haven't really hung onto the end game there, or the end goal that have just kind of got stuck at... ⁓
agricultural missions and healthcare and yeah, does somebody maintain sort of the teleology there of that heart and mission?
Logan Gates (08:49)
Right. I think I would say, remember in Las Casas' day, the state and the church very much overlapped. So when Las Casas cares about something like, you know, and this is anachronistic, but to say like healthcare, you know, caring that indigenous peoples are being looked after, right? At this time, he was campaigning against this thing called the encomienda, where basically they were
Nathan (08:57)
Right.
Logan Gates (09:12)
Distribute indigenous peoples were distributed to certain Spanish landlords to essentially work as slaves The idea was that they would be Christianized during that time, but they didn't have a lot of freedom And so Las Casas in part is concerned about the health impact of this on indigenous people So that is I think I would say though that Las Casas isn't saying that the government should necessarily take on all of these positive rights I think he's saying that here's the notion of a flourishing life Involves different things it involves health it involves, you know a meaningful sense of labor and so forth
And I think he's just trying to say that these healthy things should be in place, whether that's through the church, you know, helping in those ways, or some things through the government, such that people can really encounter what is the most important thing about life, which is hearing the gospel. when I think about this, you so a modern version that comes up sometimes is, can we just make sure in our political discourse today, we leave room for people to be persuaded, right? So,
Nathan (10:07)
Okay.
Logan Gates (10:08)
I
think when you put it that way, I think a lot more people get on board that, okay, we need to keep people from oppression in that sense. But I think then the question becomes, persuaded of what? Like, why is there something out there so important worth being persuaded of? And I would say that's where the gospel comes in.
Nathan (10:19)
There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm thinking of Alan Noble's book, Disruptive Witness, where he talks about the, you know, the sower goes out to sow and the seed falls on the various soils. And he says, well, what's, what's happening before the seed is sown? The tillage work, so to speak, that prepares the soil to become good soil to receive the seed. And so there's a little bit of a sense in which there's this, rights or justice language being using that as a metric of what, what provide, what produces the best, ⁓
Logan Gates (10:37)
Mm.
Nathan (10:50)
Yeah, habitat or ecosystem, I guess, for that to flourish. Really interesting.
Logan Gates (10:54)
Yes,
and part of it too is just that Christians need to be modeling our faith. And when we don't, know, God can still work through a broken church, but a Christian who lives out their faith well makes the gospel attractive, right? It's sort of that same idea.
Nathan (11:07)
Yeah.
Is the shift, so let's go back, like you're talking about the trend from the ancients to the modern and the shift in and from duty to rights. Is it as simplistic as saying going from a collective way of envisioning reality, you think of maybe Plato and his, you know, the Republic and the idea of the state and this large tent, a we or the Catholic church with a large or the historical church with a large sense of we.
Logan Gates (11:14)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (11:34)
And then transitioning from something that you see yourself as part of the bigger story that gives you a sense of duty into a more individualized concept. Is that too simplistic of a shift? I mean, it seems like it's there, but is there, is there something more that has gone from, ⁓ you know, Aristotle to the 21st century Toronto and it's envisioning of rights and duty.
Logan Gates (11:56)
Right. I think I would first say there's a lot of disagreements on even what is meant by ancient and modern and where do we draw the line. But I definitely think what you're noticing, the shift to the individual is certainly a feature of modernity compared to the ancient world. I think for me, a big figure in this is someone like Thomas Hobbes, right? Hobbes, you know, has this idea of the state of nature, right? He's, you know, writing time of the English Civil War. You know, this is 1600s, but he's looking out at a society that's in chaos.
And he's trying to seek where does political stability come from, realizing how good political stability is for all these other things in life. ⁓ And so he basically reasons up from the ground. At least that's how he thinks about it. He says, all right, our natural condition is we're in the state of nature where we basically are killing one another. And therefore, what do we need to get out of that state of nature? Well, we need a sovereign who has all this power and through their fear and holds us in line. So therefore, he gets to this notion of a strong government that wields all this power.
And out of that, he builds a whole system of political theory. And so I think what we notice there is there's this shift, I would say it's sort of like a pragmatism that really characterizes the modern world. It's the idea of what works. And I think when you start thinking atomistically of like, are the different pieces? Remember the scientific revolution is happening at the same time as this, right? So people are thinking about what works and what are the pieces all putting together? And I think these collective views are not quite as mechanistic, or at least they didn't feel that way to the early modern.
And so they sort of built from the ground up the system that ended up being more individualistic, but that's because it was focused on what's going to really work. And I think there was this sense that Christian morality in the past has failed because look, there are all these religious wars and so forth.
Nathan (13:23)
Yeah, interesting.
Sure. I help me with this one. ⁓ Man, I could talk to you for hours about this because you can sort out some of my, so if I think of a more, a more ancient vision of like a virtue ethics that would have a sense of duty built into it, but there, there, there wasn't a high degree of pragmatism built into the concept of being virtuous because it's going to make me a lot of money or something. Does the, does the, the, the slide from the collective
Logan Gates (13:49)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (14:06)
parallel the slide from virtue ethics to pragmatism ⁓ throughout history. I'm not even sure if I'm clearly forming this yet. I'm just thinking about the idea of a virtue ethics based concept of action within a duty bound subconscious historically that actually there are two things that have been lost. Not just the slide to the individual, but also the slide to the pragmatic. ⁓
Logan Gates (14:22)
Yeah.
Yes, so what you're bringing up is really great because it's one of the criticisms that's been made of this simplistic ancient modern divide because someone like Aristotle, he is also concerned about what's going to work in a sense. It's just that Aristotle thinks that when you do your duty and when you live up to your telos, it will lead to a good life and flourishing. And I think maybe a key difference between someone like Aristotle and someone like Hobbes is they're both thinking about what's going to work in a sense.
Nathan (14:49)
Mm-hmm.
Logan Gates (14:57)
But it's just that Aristotle has a richer sense of what human flourishing involves, right? And so he sees us as communal beings and he sees us as moral beings. Whereas it's sort of like Hobbes has lowered the stakes or just sort of it's about survival for Hobbes. He's like, let's just make sure we like don't kill each other. And so in a sense, you see how that comes with a loss of the importance of community ⁓ and a kind of pragmatism that has a different end. It's no longer just a tell us of human flourishing or it's not that at all.
Instead, it's the telos of survival. And I think that can lead to the sense of loss of meaning in the modern world, where we just see that as less important and we can just get through life. ⁓ But I think that explains part of our struggle today about people just feel, I can get through life without a sense of meaning. ⁓ But for most of human history, most cultures, most philosophies have actually said, actually, is central. Knowing your purpose in life is huge for a full, meaningful life.
Nathan (15:50)
Yeah.
Okay. One more thing. I want to move on to some other stuff, but you've got me thinking here. So when somebody who has kind of your expansive view here and has thought deeply about rights, freedom, political theory, what works as a Christian, then when you read, ⁓ Jesus and Matthew, the kingdom of heaven is, you know, has come near and then starts in on the Beatitudes blessed are, and you have this, this kind of interesting, fascinating articulation of, who really is blessed.
⁓ Give us the three minute version of Logan Gates reading Jesus's words in light of this continued academic world that you live in.
Logan Gates (16:32)
Rights, rights, man.
Nathan (16:32)
I mean, is Jesus
a political theorist, guess is the corny way to ask this, what's he doing? I mean, he has to know the context and the cultural discourse around him, and he's poking the bear with some of these things for sure, it seems.
Logan Gates (16:48)
Right. Well, as you know, Nathan, there is great history in the church on disagreeing about how we interpret Jesus's words in a political sense. ⁓ You know, I would be of the school that that just takes seriously when Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. And I think that I tend to think through the lens of someone like Augustine, who wants to lower the temperature of political discourse to really get us thinking not how can we bring heaven on earth, ⁓ but
Nathan (16:52)
You
Logan Gates (17:18)
what does it look like in this world, ⁓ knowing that the city of God is really in heaven, it's not here, but nonetheless we live in its awareness and on our way to it. ⁓ What does it look like, I think, to create the kind of institutions and structures such that there can be flourishing in a fallen world? And so I think that I read a lot of Jesus's teachings as absolutely things that every Christian is called to follow in the course of our costly discipleship of following him.
And I think if Christians lived them out, what a different world it would be. However, I think that I am more of a realist in my political thinking. And I just think that we are fallen creatures, and even Christians sin, and sometimes sin terribly. And I think the role of the government in God's providence is to restrain evil in this world. And so I know that may not be as aspirational as it could be, but I think that's my down to earth sin.
Nathan (18:06)
⁓ No,
I
think that's where most people are largely finding themselves these days ⁓ with a few interesting exceptions. But then I also was thinking that in terms that Jesus does kind of recalibrate what the ⁓ basic needs are. So, you you're worried about what will you eat? What will you wear? Hey, I've got ⁓ this. There is sort of a way in which he would be poking back against a Hobbesian kind of, ⁓ well, a reality of the brokenness of the world and of sin, but also saying it's an open system.
There is help from the outside that interjects and intervenes in this reality. We're not totally left to our own devices and our institutions. And like you said.
Logan Gates (18:48)
You are right. And I think this is a key point that we need to think about today is, and it's under debate on so many different levels. Like, should the telos of our government primarily be about maintaining mere survival, or is there some responsibility for the government to direct us in the direction of virtue? I think that that continues to be a point of disagreement and Christians are reading it differently. ⁓ On the one side, those who want it to be more virtuous, right? They risk this problem of coercion.
right, and the kind of heavy-handed Christian leadership that, you know, turns many people away from the gospel. On the other hand, right, there are those who maybe are naive about cultural forces and the direction we are going as a society and, you know, just, you know, wondering, just thinking everything's going to be fine as we drift away from a Christian history. And I think I hear the criticism that they're making that maybe we are being naive. I think personally, I just have a little bit more fear for
for the collapse of liberal democracy than I have for living with good democratic institutions in a society that's more more pagan. My hope is that this ability to share the gospel and live out a full Christian life can be maintained even in that kind of structure.
Nathan (19:58)
May your tribe flourish. with you. ⁓ Okay.
Setting aside a thousand rabbit trails that I would love to go down in that direction with you. Talk to us a little bit. So some people are now thinking, you know, how do we have a Spanish speaking guy in Toronto? You know, that's tell me a little bit about just like ministry in, in Canada. think, ⁓ Canadians make up. Yeah. The second or third demographic of people who listen to thinking out loud. So, but it's, it's a, it's a single digit percentage. So
Talk to the Americans here a little bit or the rest of the world listeners. what's vibes, not the right word, but what's the sense of, you're, thinking all these ideas out and then you're living in Toronto. Bring us up to, up to 2026.
Logan Gates (20:41)
Great. Well, I need to have my disclaimer that I'm originally from the U.S. I grew up in Virginia and I came to Canada.
Nathan (20:45)
Yeah, no, we're looking
for you to all for you for all the answers on Analyzing Canada.
Logan Gates (20:49)
I know, right? On Canada. I did
move there about 10 years ago. ⁓ lived there for 10 years. I did become a citizen. I married a Canadian and I feel like I have been learning and loving, loving Canada the more time I spent there. But I think first to say, right, as with the U.S., I imagine there's lots of Canada's, you know, someone who's from downtown Toronto is going to have a very different experience of what it means to be Canadian and someone from the prairies, Saskatchewan or something like that. But I think I would say
Nathan (21:09)
Mm-hmm.
Logan Gates (21:18)
⁓ Definitely, at least I'll speak here from my Toronto context, that multiculturalism is huge in the thinking of what it means to be Canadian. You often you ask someone, what does it mean to be Canadian? And the answer is there is no stereotypical Canadian. ⁓ The wonderful thing about Canada is we are a country of diversity. And so that, you know, we can talk about how that, you know, there's something very beautiful about that. I think it also has led to a weaker sense of
What does it mean to be Canadian in terms of what morals do we aspire to as a culture? Though I think the moral would be inclusivity. And this has had an impact spiritually. In Toronto, I find the biggest objection people have is, I just can't accept that this is the only one religion that's true. Because that feels like saying only one culture is like the right culture. And that's deeply offensive, right? So I think that multiculturalism is still huge in people's minds and...
And that's something to celebrate in many ways, but also comes with its challenges.
Nathan (22:19)
So I would say that, I don't know how far back I want to put this, but yeah, I would say there's a broad American sense of that walk down New York City or pick your other metropolitan areas in the U.S. that that wouldn't be that different. ⁓ There does seem to be in the last years though, in the United States, a bit of a cultural contraction on the globalized vision. there elements that...
Has, has, do you think there's a sense, man, this is too broad of a question to make, be helpful. I'm just wondering, ⁓ you ever run into people who say, well, maybe we can't be open to everything. Are there points at which we've run this to as logical conclusion and start to pull back and say, no, maybe there are some foundational things that we do want to hold onto underneath all of this diversity that are necessary, even in order for us to maintain this diversity.
Logan Gates (23:14)
Yes, there definitely is something happening.
Nathan (23:16)
or healthy versions
of that, guess, would maybe be the question.
Logan Gates (23:19)
Healthy versions of that. Yeah, yeah, I think a kind of humorous example of this is when they redid the passport design of Canadian passports a couple years ago. Like it used to have lots of historic images of monuments in Canada and things like that. And they replaced them with like snowflakes and ⁓ polar bears and things like that. And I think a lot of Canadians began to feel, know, just got them thinking about, wait, hang on a minute. You is there something about our heritage as broken as it is? You know, there's obviously.
things that have been done, especially in relation to Indigenous peoples in Canada, that we've become more more sensitive about failures as a country. But there is nonetheless something of, you know, the values, for instance, of freedom, you know, that I think many Americans will say, well, you freedom is something that makes us American. And I think that Canadians will be less quick to come to that. And I think that nonetheless, it is part of our heritage. And certainly, when you look at some of these founding documents of Canada, you see that a lot of those values are similar and I think worth recapturing. So I do think that
Nathan (24:06)
Hmm.
Logan Gates (24:17)
There's a kind of wake up call of are we just snowflakes, no pun intended, and polar bears, or is there more to us? ⁓
Nathan (24:22)
Right? Yeah.
I saw actually this morning, the Wall Street Journal had an article talking about how the Bank of England is going to remove Winston Churchill, Turing, ⁓ Jane Austen, there's another, there's a fourth one, from its notes and replace them with animals. so the question being, so if you can replace Winston Churchill with a squirrel on your bank notes, what does that say culturally? ⁓ neither here nor there, but yeah, a similar parallel there of ⁓
Logan Gates (24:41)
Is that right? Very similar.
That's right. That's
right.
Nathan (24:55)
degree
we want to hold into that. basically the answer you gave us is that, ⁓ it's pretty much like it is everywhere else. ⁓ This is just a function of our time and we don't really have a sense of like, here's a uniquely Toronto vision of something. It's like, it's a pretty Western globalized perspective. ⁓
Logan Gates (25:17)
Yes, I think I would say spiritually, so that's the case. mean, another big thing about being Canadian is not being American. I think that's a lot of what it means to be Canadian. ⁓ yes, so you can think about how maybe that might map out ⁓ spiritually on the country. think, yes, there is this sense in Canada, as you'd find probably in the New England area in the US, right? That there are these religious people out there, ⁓ but we are different from them.
Nathan (25:25)
You're afraid.
Logan Gates (25:46)
And so there definitely are pockets that are kind of Bible Belt-like in Canada, but I would say ⁓ there is this sense that as Canadians look south of the border that religious identity is something that they see south of the border and are nervous about. So that also plays a role.
Nathan (26:03)
So
before we move a couple thousand miles south in this conversation, ⁓
Who do you see then? mean, you're out there. mean, so you have the academic life, but you also have a little clandestine Christian preacher, apologist, you know, on the side on the weekends out there, ⁓ in your interactions and talking about Christianity and who do you see being interested? Who's who's coming? What are the, mean, surely there has to be a little bit of a hunger and thirst, ⁓ for something in that, because I would say that while everything that you've said, I see to be true in the U S there is an undercurrent there.
of people who are starting to become more curious and maybe leaning back into thinking about some of the big questions of life. So is that, I'm not calling it a revival, but a pretty steady stream of interest there as well.
Logan Gates (26:53)
Yes, that is happening. And I was speaking at a university ⁓ a little bit east of Toronto. ⁓ yeah, I think that the topic, it was described as something like a political theorist discovers God or something like that. And, you know, I was sharing about my thinking as political theorist, things that inclined me to believe in the truth and beauty of the Christian faith. And I got an email from a political science PhD student on that campus who ⁓
has no Christian background, but has been on this journey as, you I imagine, you know, this trend, you know, this Justin Briarly trend of charting people who are making their way towards this sense of we need, we need some orienting, tell us around our society and in our each of our lives. And anyhow, he was on a journey towards Christianity and wrote out, wrote to me, you know, that where he was at and telling me some of his stories. So there is some of that draw that's happening even in academic circles of just realizing this need to go deeper. ⁓ So that
is exciting. And I think also just international students, ⁓ second generation Canadians. I think that's where we especially are seeing a lot of them, know, their parents are religious of some kind, but there's this more openness to what was really about that. I've never really looked into it for myself or, you know, I've heard that Canada is a Christian country. What does that mean? ⁓ I think actually I find the group that's hardest to reach are Caucasian multi-generational Canadians. ⁓
Often they are the ones who are more inoculated and not as interested. ⁓ But it's amazing to see these international students coming to faith and it makes us think about maybe we've taken for granted the riches of the gospel we have, so accessible to us.
Nathan (28:20)
Hmm.
Well, you certainly get this in the Revelation seven, men and women from every tribe and tongue and nation worshiping. So heaven definitely gives us, the, the, the vision of perfection and the fullness of things is a very multi-ethnic. And so there's a sense in which the church believes this also, ⁓ it's just a bigger vision, that, calls into it. So yeah, that's, that's, yeah, that's, that's not really a threat to the division of the gospel at all. So that's exciting. Well,
Logan Gates (28:53)
Yeah.
Nathan (29:03)
Okay. So one of the things that's been fascinating in knowing you is that Spanish is an important part of your education and life and interest. And you having spent time in Canada are now moving to the other great country that begins with a C, Chile. So tell us about like, all right, here's the next adventure. Where will Logan Gates ⁓ faithfully steward his blessings next?
Logan Gates (29:28)
Right. I, you know, growing up in Virginia, Spanish was a required class. And so I took it, but I just fell in love with languages. I just love how it was a way to show your care about another person's culture to the point that you like are stumbling through their language, trying to learn. And so I just always have loved Spanish and started to do some mission work when I was in college in Nicaragua. ⁓ I had gone on a high school mission trip that I would say.
had a profound impact on my life. I would say as an adult, I became a mature Christian believer on one of those trips, feeling that the Lord used the witness of the Nicaraguan church in my own life. And then just was trying to discern, Lord, it's one thing to love Latin America, but are you calling me to go there or to be a missionary? And what would I have to offer? And ⁓ basically I have wondered about that for 15 years since I was in high school. And God ended up leading me to Canada, the opposite direction of I thought where he was leading.
Nathan (30:17)
Yeah.
Logan Gates (30:25)
But wonderfully, maybe about eight years ago, I started getting the opportunity to start working with university students in Peru. ⁓ There was a push down there to put on a number of events with groups like InterVarsity in Peru ⁓ that were sort of open forum outreach events oriented on objections and questions to the Christian faith, but offering a thoughtful Christian response. And I just was blown away at the hunger that we were finding there. You had on the one hand, some people who were sort of coming out of
Christian backgrounds that were quite shallow and they were discouraged from going to college, discouraged from asking their questions. And so to see these kind of big questions being talked about so publicly, I think was just striking and it brought them out. And then we had a number of people who maybe were from a nominal Catholic background who just felt that faith was something that maybe didn't really seem to connect with life. And so that these questions were articulated in such a way as to actually say like, actually, the gospel is everything. It changes everything if it's true.
⁓ And so I just felt suddenly that the Lord could use my Spanish in a way to meet a felt need down there working with these university students. ⁓ But even so was wondering, okay, Lord, what would you have for me in that? it's just in the last year or so we got this invitation to serve in a church in Santiago, Chile, the capital city in Chile. And the church is located in a very well-educated, professional and very secular neighborhood, a neighborhood called Vita Cura. ⁓ And I...
from an Anglican background, so it's an Anglican church there. And it just felt that this opportunity fell into our laps, but it just seemed to connect a lot of the dots of, know, hang on a minute, this is quite in line with something that the Lord's had on my heart for many years. And that's been so exciting to step into and prepare for.
Nathan (32:09)
Well, I'm thrilled that you're doing that. First of all, people with some frequency reach out and ask like, what are, you know, what are good Spanish language apologetics, resources or tools? And I feel ill prepared to evaluate anything in Spanish. I like how you characterized your Spanish is bumbling through somebody else's language. You and I were speaking in the Dominican Republic one time and I'm pretty sure I was the only one using a translator. So I think you've got that, I'm sure there'll be some sub
Logan Gates (32:18)
Mm.
Nathan (32:38)
pieces of the dialect and regional differences there for you to learn. But, ⁓ yeah, thrilled to have you, you working on that as I mean, there are other people out there. It's just, I don't have the handholds on that that you do. So, ⁓ really excited for you to take your knowledge, your studies, ⁓ kind of your academic rigorous mind, and then your, your departing compassion and, and, go and do that. So I, know, maybe, maybe in the future you'll come back and we can compare and contrast Toronto and Chile as far as,
Logan Gates (33:07)
Yeah.
Nathan (33:08)
spiritual atmospheres and regions and cities to work in.
Logan Gates (33:13)
Yes, yeah. Right now my knowledge
is, you know, we've spent a little bit of time down there, but it's mostly statistical. And I'll just share maybe one quick statistic that I was struck by, that the number of people who identify as non-religious in Chile has quintupled in the last 30 years. So if you take a comparative point with like Canada, which is also quite a secular place, a similar figure would be it's doubled in Canada, the number of non-religious people. So Canada remains more secular than Chile, but the rate it's secularizing is very
Nathan (33:35)
Mm-hmm.
Logan Gates (33:40)
And it's many times it's young people who are walking away from the church. don't feel their questions are being cared about or taken seriously. so, and of course there's less material available in Spanish. And so it really is, I think there is a need in Latin America for more apologetics content to be put into Spanish, but also for more authentic Christian lives to be, you know, to be witnesses in themselves. And so we're really excited just to come alongside and learn, learn from what the Lord is already doing there and to seek to serve.
in the ways we can.
Nathan (34:12)
I think it's fascinating to bring this back around to where we started. you, you said that one of your initial impulses was to write on political humility. and, ⁓ all throughout the years that we've known each other, that has been an attribute that I would attribute to you as somebody who, who does have a very confident but humble approach to things. so, ⁓ although you didn't, didn't end up doing your dissertation on that, it may very well be that you do your life in that way of,
Logan Gates (34:21)
Hmm.
Nathan (34:41)
I think I just appreciate the tone, the rigor, um, and the posture that you bring in your, in your treatment of other people, your care and your concern, your love for the Lord and for other people. So thanks for being faithful and using, um, the mind and the opportunity and the resources that God has given you to, be faithful. So, um, you're a blessing to me. And for those of you who are listening along and don't know Logan and want to find out more about who he is, uh, he does have a page with apologetics, Canada. You can look him up there.
Logan Gates (35:01)
Mm.
Nathan (35:09)
⁓ and if you have a real heart and passion for, ⁓ Latin South America and Spanish, ⁓ apologetics and want to encourage him and support him in some of work he's doing, we'll provide some resource links there as well. But, Logan, thank you so much for your time. This has been a pile of fun. am disappointed. There just a number of things that you worded in specific ways that I'm like, ⁓ man, I would love to chase, chase that down and learn a little more in that category. But in the meantime, thank you so much for this time together.
Logan Gates (35:36)
Thank you, Nathan. A joy to be with you. Thankful for you and thinking out loud.
Nathan (35:41)
You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, the podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.
https://apologeticscanada.com/logan-gates/
https://give.samsusa.org/missionary/logan-and-samantha-gates