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My guest is Alan Noble. His new book is Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age.

These two trends define life in Western society today. We are increasingly addicted to habits\u2015and devices\u2015that distract and "buffer" us from substantive reflection and deep engagement with the world. And we live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a secular age"\u2015an age in which all beliefs are equally viable and real transcendence is less and less plausible. Drawing on Taylor's work, Alan Noble describes how these realities shape our thinking and affect our daily lives. Too often Christians have acquiesced to these trends, and the result has been a church that struggles to disrupt the ingrained patterns of people's lives. But the gospel of Jesus is inherently disruptive: like a plow, it breaks up the hardened surface to expose the fertile earth below. In this book Noble lays out individual, ecclesial, and cultural practices that disrupt our society's deep-rooted assumptions and point beyond them to the transcendent grace and beauty of Jesus. Disruptive Witness casts a new vision for the evangelical imagination, calling us away from abstraction and clich\xe9 to a more faithful embodiment of the gospel for our day.

Alan Noble (PhD, Baylor University) is assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and cofounder and editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture.

Special Guest: Alan Noble.