The Eric Metaxas Show - Arlin Migliazzo

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Arlin Migliazzo, author of "Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears" has a lot of fascinating stories to share about the woman who jump-started an entire spiritual movement.

the program. As you know, I'm a fan of biographies. It's not only because I've written three biographies, it's because I think it's an amazing way to communicate all kinds of things through the life of someone. I'm holding in my hand a book. It's called Mother of Modern Evangelicalism, the life and legacy of Henrietta Mears. Have you heard of Henrietta Mears? I can hear you. I'll take that as a, maybe you've heard of her, but you don't know about her. Henriette Amirs is a name that I have heard. I know almost nothing about her. So when I got a copy of this book, Mother of Modern Evangelism,

The Life and Legacy of Henry Ademirs, I was really excited. It's by Erdman's. Erdman's always publishes the best books. You can tell they're Dutch, very fast, tedious. And the author, Arlen Migliazzo, is coming to us from Milan, Italy. Arlen, Bonitale. You're really coming to us from Spokane, Washington, aren't you? Yes, indeed.

That's the home of Bing Crosby, is it not? It is. His childhood home is right near Gonzagny University. Well, I've been to Spokane, and I hope to get there again. Beautiful theater there, the Bing Crosby Theater, this wonderful restored old theater. Well, so you're at Whitworth. The reason I know Whitworth University is because of our friend Dr. Stephen Meyer. He's with the Discovery Institute.

He's written all these wonderful books. We just had him on this program. But you have taught many different things, the history of evangelicalism among them. I assume that's how you came to write the book on Henrietta Mears. Well, actually, I'm an old broken down youth director from years ago and had been involved in a kind of youth ministry. And I read one of the earlier biographies of her way. back when. And so I somehow that was in the back of my mind for a long time. And then I'd finished

another book, actually on a completely different topic and said, no, I want to, I'm going to find out more about her because I'd never met her. I grew up in Southern California and actually even went to the Hollywood First Presbyterian Church a couple of times for various things. But I'd never met her. She had died before I'd ever gotten to that church. So anyway, I think a good reason for not meeting her, though. That would be. Yeah. All right, now, listen, no less than George Marsden. Holy cow. George Marsden has praised the book.

He says, we've long needed a first-rate biography of Henrietta Mears. Alas, this does not do the trick. That's a joke. I just made that up. No, he actually is on the back of your book praising your book. George Marsden, of course, a very famous biographer and academic himself. but for somebody who knows absolutely nothing about Henriette Amir's, give us, you know, the 60-second version. Who's Henrietta Mears? When did she live? What did she do? Why do you call her the mother of modern evangelicalism?

Yeah, so she was born in 1890 in Fargo, North Dakota, and essentially grew up in a pretty strong Baptist family. Both her mother and father were very involved in Baptist churches. In fact, in the, in the, the Dakota's, before they were even separate states, they helped found a couple different Baptist churches, one in South Dakota, one in what becomes North Dakota. Wait a minute. The Dakotas didn't split until after 1890? Well, no, this is in the 1880s before she was even born. Yeah. Okay. So they were really quite involved in the early, early mid-1880s in church planning, if you will, even though they, again, they weren't ministers. He was a financier and she was a stay-at-home mom.

But anyway, she grew up in that kind of involvement. And then the family moved to Minneapolis and got involved in William Bell Riley's First Baptist Church of Minneapolis, which of course is one of the really central locations for the fundamentalist movement in the teens in the 20s of the 20th century. So she grew up in that environment, made a commitment to a faith in before she was 10 years old and trained at the University of Minnesota, became a school teacher. And it was in her teaching that we really began to see. the connection between her faith and, again, wider important issues in faith development of folks. So she got involved. She was a teacher in high school. She taught in a couple rural school districts before she moved back to Minneapolis, taught there for 10 years, chemistry, but was involved in Riley's church. She took a Sunday school class that actually when she took it over from her sister had about one person in it. And she built that into the largest class. It was a class of young women in the entire church. When she started the class, or when she took over the

class, again, it had one person. Within a year, there were 44 young women in it. Another year, 151. By 1927, there were over 440 students in that class. And a lot of them went into the mission field, number of them became missionaries and active lay people. But these are these are women who again were at that time had a kind of a limited set of opportunities. Well, by 1926 or so, she had been developing such a reputation as a Christian educator in the greater Minneapolis, St. Paul area that the minister of the first Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, California wanted her to come and become the director of Christian education in Hollywood. And she took him up on that, took her a year and a half to kind of figure out if she wanted to go or not,

came to Hollywood in 1928. And between 1928 and her death in 1963, she became one of the leading lights of, again, this growing evangelical movement as opposed to the fundamentalist. When I think of fundamentalism, I think essentially of doctrinal kinds of issues. but you think the same thing about evangelicals. You know, the doctrines are pretty much the same. The difference between fundamentalism and what we would call evangelicalism as Mears developed it was a real strong sense that we had to nurture the mind.

You had to engage secular culture in important kinds of ways while still maintaining a strong sense of orthodoxy. And she developed one of largest publishing houses of religious material in the country. She developed purportedly the largest Sunday. school in the Presbyterian Church in the entire country. She started a Christian conference center in Southern California that today hosts over 60,000 people a year. She was really involved in the beginning stages of the National Association of Evangelicals, wasn't one of the co-founders of what the first organized ministry to Hollywood celebrities back in the 1949, really influential in life of Billy Graham and Bill Bright, Jim Rayburn of Young Life. A lot of these folks that we today consider

luminaries of kind of the evangelical movement that emerges in the 40s, but she was doing evangelical types of things as early as the 19, teens, and 20s with her Fidelis class of young women in Minneapolis. It's so fascinating to think that this is someone, obviously, you know, coming of age at a time when there really wasn't much of a role for women in the church. And so the idea that she found her way through Sunday school Christian education, where you can teach you're maybe not preaching, but you're teaching. And she was so good that obviously she made an amazing name for herself. I'm always sorry if I haven't really heard of someone,

but I'm also happy because now I get to hear of them, thanks to you and your book. What an amazing life. I mean, it's kind of funny when you said the class, she took over, had about one student in it. What is about one? What is that? Is that a thin person? Yeah, she, the class was actually taught by her sister and didn't have the greatest reputation.

They were kind of not terribly interested in listening to her sister. And so whenever Henrietta would come back to Minneapolis from her teaching posts on vacation, her sister Margaret would have from teach the class. Well, when she finally came back for good in 1917 to Minneapolis, Margaret kind of threw up her hands and said, Henrietta, you take over. You're younger. They listen to you better. Maybe you can double the class, perhaps, by inviting a friend. That's what she did. That's what Mears did. She essentially, you know, they reorganized the Sunday school that same year.

So they lost a lot of the women that had been part of that group anyway. So Mears took the one or two remaining, and again, it's unclear if there were one or two or three. There's, you know, the source is really different. Suffice it to say it was a depressing number. Really small, right. So she would go out and she would call on all the young women within the neighborhood of the church. And again, within a couple months, she's more than, well, from one or two to 44. This is, we're just getting started here.

Folks, I'm talking to the author of a new book, Mother of Modern Evangelism, The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We're talking about a biography of Henrietta Mears, the most. mother of modern evangelicalism is the title, the author who's with me for this hour, Arlen Migliazo. How do you say your name, Arlen?

I assume it's not with an idiotic Italianate tone, as I just said it. Migliazo. How do you say it? Migliazo. I mean, Miliazzo is the way that it should be pronounced, but if I said that, people would run screaming in the opposite direction. Yeah, so I know they don't have not a huge ethnic neighborhood in Spokane. I'm just guessing.

I don't know. The farther west you go, the tougher it is. But here in New York, that would be, we would accept that. Well, look, Arlen Migliats. So you've written an entire book biography like this. Have you written other biographies? Is this your first out and out biography? This is my first biography. I've worked a lot in other areas.

I did a little history of a town in South Carolina. I've worked in kind of Christian higher education, kind of a culture and notions in Christian higher education, those sorts of things. but this is the first biography that I've done. It's an extraordinary process, isn't it? I mean, having done a few of them, it's just there's nothing like it to get involved in someone else's life and to dig. And you said you'd read a previous biography about her.

When was that written, the previous one? Actually, there are four other biographies. The first was written in the mid-50s by a woman that was kind of her assistant at the Hollywood Church. and it was basically an interviews that she did with Henrietta Mears in the again mid-50s. The second one came out just after her death, another assistant that worked with her actually for many years in Hollywood, and one of her college department kind of protegees wrote that one, and that came out again in the early 60s. And then it repeats a number of the things that showed up in the earlier book.

And then in the over the last decade or two, there have been a couple of other books that have come out. But again, they kind of reiterated what had been said before. And they were essentially based in her, Mears' own recollections or these people's personal experiences with her. But again, those are people all were involved with her in Hollywood. None of them knew her really before.

And she didn't come to Hollywood until she was 38 years old. So I thought there was a lot of room there to go back to the sources in Fargo, in Minneapolis, and even in Hollywood, to kind of piece together, I hope, a more detailed perspective on her life and work. Well, what, how did you do that? I mean, how does one go back? I've never written a biography where I have to use many primary sources just because there are so many books written about the subjects of my biographies, you know, whether

Martin Luther, Bonhoeffer, or Wilberforce. But with somebody like Mears, yeah, I mean, where did you go to find the information on her early years? How did you track that down? Well, I started at the First Baptist Church in Minneapolis. They have a pretty good archive there. Leighton Brewski, Jr., who was kind of their archivist, really let me have the run of the place. And I had all the old records of the church, went back and found it actually her notation in the minutes of a church record where she became a member of the church when she was a kid,

found records also in the school, in the small rural towns where she taught. One was North Branch, which was kind of north of the Twin City. She taught there for a year and then moved to the eastern, extreme eastern Minnesota and taught in a town called Beardsley for a couple of years. Went to the Methodist Church she went to there and found some records, used a lot of the archives at the Minnesota History. Center in St. Paul. And then, of course, in Hollywood, I was able to use the archives at the

Hollywood Church. I also interviewed over 60 people that knew her. And that was, that was a lot of fun, a lot of folks that. That's kind of amazing. And that's a lot of work. That is, that is amazing. So this took you a little while to do. This is not the kind of thing you, you knocked out during the Christmas vacation. Who was Leonard Eiler's the preaching cowboy? I had to ask you about the preaching cowboy. Because when we're talking about, you know, Fargo, and we're talking about another world, 1930s and 40s. So who was the preaching cowboy? Well, he grew up in Wyoming and then as a cowboy. And I think it was under the ministry of Billy Sunday.

He became a Christian, moved out to the Southern California and became involved. I think he was, if I remember correctly, he was working for one of the studios and was going to the Hollywood Church. They had a place there just south of where the church is now, a few blocks, called Gower Gulch because the church is on Gower and Carlos, which is just north of Hollywood Boulevard. And Gower Gulch is where all the cowboy guys would go if they wanted, if they were waiting for casting calls for some of the studios. And so Eiler thought, you know, here's an opportunity to have a kind of a ministry among

some of these folks that are trying to break into film and that sort of stuff. So he worked for a studio for a while, but then quit that and became essentially a full-time evangelist that he would do rope tricks and that sort of thing, talk to kids about Christianity and that sort of thing. But he married the secretary at the Hollywood First Presbyterian Church, and again, both of them knew mirrors quite well. I love the idea of an evangelist with a lassoe. There you go.

Yeah, because I think Jesus did say, I will make you a lassoor of men. But typically the Greek translation always says, fishers of men. All right. So this is another time. And when you say the mother of modern evangelicalism, again, most of us aren't aware of her, which is why I'm so grateful for your work in writing this book. But you're saying this is a woman who had an influence on some of the key figures that we would know like Billy Graham. Tell us about that. How would they come to know of her? Well, partly through her ministry at the Hollywood Church, again, she built that Sunday school for

from about 1,600 in 1928 to over 6,000 in 1960. So it was a huge Sunday school. And through that Sunday school came a number of folks. And she was really involved in developing the college department of the church of the Sunday school. And that's where she really put a lot of her emphasis. So she's training these college age leaders. And that again helped,

develop Bill Bright, for example, a founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. It came to faith under Mears' leadership. And so much of what he did in Campus Crusade is reflective of his involvement. I mean, she, he and Vonnet Bright lived with Mears for about 10 years. And actually started campus, didn't start Campus Crusade, but nurtured Campus Crusade from Mears' home across, from UCLA. Billy Graham first met her. He met some of her protégés before he met her, actually.

There was revival going on in the late 40s in the Twin Cities and some of of Mears's protegees or mentees had come out. I actually prayed with Graham as he became the head of that Northwest College or Northwest Schools that was Bill or William Bell Riley's creation. Riley passed on his mantle to Billy Graham, and Billy Graham became the youngest college president in the country for a time. Anyway, and Mears invited him to come to the college briefing conference at Forest Home, which is the conference center she developed. And that's, I'm sorry, Graham had just had a pretty disappointing crusade in Altoona, Pennsylvania,

and was feeling kind of at a loss as to, you know, what should be happening in terms of the ministry. He tried to back out of it and he couldn't. So he goes to Hollywood, or I'm sorry, to Forest Home Christian Conference Center, spends a lot of time with mirrors in prayer, counseling with her. And this is when he had his kind of breaks through experience. He was having some doubts about the authority of the Bible and should he do evangelism, that sort of thing.

And so it was during this time that he, and again, under Mir's influence to some extent, kind of has this crisis of faith at Forest Home and drops to his knees and essentially reaffirms his belief that the Bible is the Word of God. And of course, it was just a couple months after this that the Great Crusade in Hollywood, or I'm sorry, in downtown L.A., the Los Angeles Crusade of 49 happens. and that is what launches Graham into kind of his tremendous reputation as a leader of this evangelical movement. What's really intriguing to me is that Mears, there were a couple of folks that had come to her conference from Hollywood, or that had come to our conference. They were looking for someone to lead a crusade. This is before, again, this is before Billy Graham had much of a reputation at all.

And Mears said, well, you know, let's listen to Billy Graham. And then there was this other fellow that was at that conference, Charles Templeton. And we'll see if one of those might be somebody you could invite to this crusade in Southern California. And so they listen to Graham. They listen to Templeton. The end of the week, they meet together in Mears's cabin. And they said, well, what do you think? And all of them thought Charles Templeton would be much better.

More sophisticated speaker, you know, Billa Graham was a southern guy. had the southern accent and all that sort of thing. So they thought, if we're going to have a Hollywood revival here, let's have someone that can speak more to these sophisticates in Hollywood. And they looked at Mirren and said, well, who do you think we should get? They said, well, Billy Graham. And so they went with Billy Graham. And it was after that.

We're going to go to a break. That's an amazing story. I want to hear the rest of this because I've never heard this stuff before. Folks, we'll be right back. The book is Mother of Modern Evangelicalism. Don't go away. may put an end to you. Let there be no doubt. Big Tech and the far left have joined forces to purge America of conservative views. So why exactly are we choosing to give these big tech companies all of our

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said Billy Graham's The Guy, she saw something in him. What year is this, roughly? This is 1949, the summer of 1949, just before the L.A. Crusade that started in September of 49. And that's the crusade that absolutely launched his career. Is it not? It was. And the intriguing thing about this other event when you have these folks that come and want to have a crusade in Hollywood, this is before the L.A. crusade.

So again, Graham wasn't known at all nationally at this particular point in time. So Mears has them come to her conference center, listen to Billy Graham and listen to this other fellow. And at the end of it, she said, you know, Billy Graham's a guy you should have come to the to the Hollywood crusade. And so they decided to do that without, again, knowing too much about Graham. And then less than a month later, the L.A. crusade happens. The Hollywood crusade happens about a year and a half after that. And there you have it. So again, Mears plays this background role, I think, that's really quite significant in Miller, in Billy Graham's ministry in life. Bill

writes another one, Jim Rayburn, who was the head of Young Life International. He said, I learned, I learned how to do youth ministry from Mears. Look, if all she did was, you know, superintend the early careers of those three figures, we're done. She's the mother of modern evangelicalism. I mean, that is really extraordinary because you can't really think of what

20th century evangelicalism would be without those three figures he just mentioned. So that's why it amazes me that I haven't heard of Henrietta Mears. Now, did you have an opportunity to meet Bill or Vonett Bright, because I know that they've both gotten to be with the Lord. I met them both, but did you get to talk to them at any point? No, yeah, I try. Bill Bright had already passed on by the time I began this work. I tried to get a hold of Vonette Bright, but she had stopped giving interviews at that

particular point. So I was able to interview either one of those. But a colleague, Andrea Van Boven had done a master's thesis on Mears back in the, oh, I think the 90s. And I contacted her and she had done a bunch of interviews and she had interviewed Bill Bright and some other folks that I wasn't able to interview. And she graciously let me use her interviews for this. So I did my own interviews. And then Andrea let me borrow her tapes so I could use some of the work she did. Particularly with Bill Bright, that was really helpful. Yeah, I mean, look, it's impressive.

if she died in 1963, that you were able to interview 60 people that knew her personally. I'm kind of amazed by that. That doesn't even seem possible. Yeah, it was, it was amazing to listen these folks talk. I, you know, we have to talk about just the fact that she was a woman and the role of women in the church. There wasn't really much of a place for women in the church. And yet, we also, to be fair, have to say that Christians have been at the forefront of this kind of social change. There is no question about that. And so it's interesting to see that she is given a role, that she's able to be such an influence. You could say the same thing about,

you know, Amy Semple McPherson. There are women that have played huge roles in the evangelical movement. Yes, that's very true. And I think she, she, only one time did I find that she called herself a preacher. Other than that, she was a teacher. But she, she through that, that mechanism or through that function was able, again, to influence so many of these people that are, again, leading lights of the neo-evangelical movement. And again, we see them, again, I just mentioned three or four of the most significant, the ones that would resonate with your listeners. But I think that there are so many other folks behind the scenes. I mean, she trained upwards of 400 different folks that went into formal ministry.

And again, that's not just Presbyterians. That's folks in all different kinds of denominations because she believed very much in casting a wide net. She had a way of bringing people in that I think was fairly unique for the time. I mean, back in the 50s particularly, there was a pretty strong backlash against Roman Catholics in this country, among many evangelicals, many notable evangelicals. And Mears never, you know, she never did that. I mean, she had some reservations about Catholicism. I certainly don't want to overplay this,

but she didn't speak out against Roman Catholics. In fact, I mean, the only man she ever loved was Roman Catholic. And that, again, presented some issues back in the teens, the 19 teams. But I think that, the fact she had a very, very close relationship with a Catholic priest in Beardsley, Minnesota, where she taught for two years. I think that moderated a lot, her sense of, you know, the Roman Catholic threat, as a lot of people saw it. She did, she met the Pope. I mean, she met one of the popes. So this is a woman who's really quite amazing when you think of that wider net. She, she, yeah, Earl Roberts.

You're making, go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, you know, faith healers, oral, she had oral Roberts to over her house. I mean, there were a number of different, Amy SEPa McPherson. She had a cordial relationship with Amy Sampal McPherson. So these folks that might otherwise be on the outs with other folks that had a kind of a smaller net, she kind of welcomed them in. I mean, I think it's safe to say that she probably did a lot, and this is really a huge thing, in redefining or defining what is the church. because if you have that kind of healthy ecumenism, you're going to make a lot of enemies,

particularly in denominations. And yet, if you have a heart for evangelical, if you have a heart for the gospel, in a way, that's where you're going to go. I want to talk more about that when we come back. Folks, I'm talking to Arlen Migliato. The book is Mother of Modern Evangelicalism, the Life and Legacy of Henriette Amirs.

It's a new book. Don't go away. Folks, I'm talking to the author of a new book. is our final segment. The book is Mother of Modern Evangelicalism, the Life and Legacy of Henry Ademir's, Arlen Migliazo, coming to us from Whitworth University,

Spokane, Washington. Arlen, I'm amazed to hear that she was so broad-minded. Now, some of us would describe it as broad-minded. Others would describe it as sloppy, theologically sloppy. I disagree. But because of her point of view,

it's interesting. It leads really to a new thing called the parochurch movement. I mean, obviously Bill Bright, Young Life, and to some extent Billy Graham, although of course he always worked with churches, but this idea that the church exists beyond the church, it exists beyond the walls of churches beyond denominations, the fact that she was able to be friendly with Roman Catholics, the fact that she was able to be friendly with Pentecostals or Faith Healers or Orle Roberts, I mean, that is really my theology. And some people are very put off by that. They don't understand it because I think that they're, I think some people can be overly

theological in a way. It doesn't mean the theology is not important, but, you know, you have to ask compared to what. The fact that she really was so ecumenical and that she defined the gospel as the center, it seems to me, makes her extremely influential. Maybe that's her biggest, her biggest influence. I don't know. What do you think? Well, I think she spoke in a number of ways to a culture that needed to hear a, an orthodoxy,

an orthodox faith, you know, a historically, theologically appropriate faith that spoke to the 20th century. And so you have her, again, I don't want to say that she included everyone in her accumulatory. I mean, that's, that would be inappropriate or inaccurate. Who would, though, right? I mean, none of us would everyone. There's a line, you draw a line. And just because you, you make common cause with Catholics doesn't mean you agree with all

their doctrine. Otherwise, you would yourself become a Roman Catholic. So it's, you know, it all depends on what we're talking about. But why do you say that? I mean, did she have some real issues with some denominations or some people? Well, she, she took barbs from everybody. She said at one point, it'd be better to be swallowed by a whale than nibbled by anchovies, because she just was, she got it a lot, you know, but she persevered. I think too, what she does is,

Mears, how do we bring this theology into the 20th century? And so she was always trying to figure out, how do we make thoughtful connections with the world without, again, giving away our theology, without, again, taking, without giving up our conservative sense of the Christian faith. She also really treasured the life of the mind that I think was really needed against so many fundamentalists were essentially saying, you know, we have to be separate from the culture. We don't, I mean, in fact, William Bell Riley had a crusade against the University of Minnesota, which was her alma mater. She was a scientist after all.

So she believes. But it's a funny thing because, of course, it cuts both ways. And the question is always exactly where do you end up, right? In other words, the idea of being separate, that's a biblical idea, and that has to influence our lives. But some people, as you said, fundamentalists, become so separatists that they're no longer salt and light. They don't care about the culture. It's all going to burn. And they tend to have more of a focus on, you know, we're in the end times and kind of an apocalyptic schedule or something like that.

So it's interesting that evangelicalism, it seems to me, manages to split the difference in the right way. But I'm not surprised that she bumped up against a lot of people who were not thrilled. Well, and she always put the faith first. I mean, she believed very much that you need to serve the world, need to engage the world in thoughtful kinds of ways, again, without giving away your theology, giving away your fundamental beliefs. But she very much was a person that always, was trying to find ways to connect with people. And I think the more I talk to individuals,

the more I realized this woman had a real gift for discerning how people could serve the church in ways that were going to be significant for all kinds of folks. And she did that through much of her life, whether it was in Minneapolis at First Baptist or First Press in Hollywood. Well, it really is amazing. And again, the fact that she is a woman is important because, you know, we don't know how many women can we point to as major figures in the church in this way. Now, you did say, I think you said that she didn't marry. No, she didn't. And how old was she when she died?

It sounds like she was 73 in that neighborhood. Yeah, so 72. But it seems like she gave her life to all kinds of people. She had a lot of spiritual sons and daughters and granddaughters, probably. I mean, that's just amazing to me. Yeah, and that's what she called them. I have a lot of kids, you know. I just don't have my own biological kids.

So, yeah, she really poured her life into these people. And I think she poured her life out. I mean, she's one of those folks that you just, you look at her schedule. I mean, in the late 1950s when she's pushing 70, you know, She has, she had a, you know, on her annual report, her list of activities went on for four, I think it was four and a half single space pages. And this is the woman who's almost 70 years old. Oh my gosh. I'm really, I'm just thrilled finally to get to know her.

The period of her life, too, I mean, when you think of, nobody talks about Billy Sunday anymore. But obviously there was a whole generation for whom he was, Billy Graham, he was it. Is there anybody else along those lines? I mean, I think of him and Amy Simple McPherson from that era, well-known evangelist. Obviously, it's before TV. I assume they did a lot of radio. Did she know Billy Sunday?

Yeah, he came. She had known very well. She had actually met Dwight Moody, you know, when she was a little girl, her mom knew him personally, and she wanted Henrietta to meet him. So she was a little girl. She never forgot meeting Moody, you know, before he died. There were a number of kind of regional evangelists after Billy Sunday.

Again, I mean, Leonard Eilers would be one in Southern California. But I don't know anyone, I'm trying to think off the top of my hitter. I can't think of anyone that had that kind of reputation nationally that Sunday did or that Billy Graham would later. Well, I'm just so glad that we finally got you on the program. and congratulations. I mean, huge effort to write a book, especially a book like this, where you've done so much original research. I hope folks will get a copy. It's called Mother of Modern Evangelicalism, the Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears. And I've been privileged to speak with

Arlen Migliazo. Arlen, really, thanks for your work. Thanks for your time in writing this book and in joining us today. God bless you. Thank you. My pleasure. So welcome back. It's the Eric Metaxis show. And hey, Albin, guess what? Guess what? What? What? I have a new book out. I really, I don't like to talk about it, but I feel I probably should bring it up now and again. It's called Fish Out of Water, a Search for the Meaning of Life. And it's the story of my early years before I had my faith explosion around my 25th birthday. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You wrote death? Yes, I wrote it. It's called Fish Out of Water. And it's by Eric Mattax explosion. Texas, and I go by that name. And it's actually a fun read. And I want to just say that there's a lot of humor in it, and it's all true. It's all, all the insanity is true. And you, the fact that you enjoyed the read means everything to me, because I always think, I don't know, if my friends like it,

I will have, I will have scored. No, I, no, I really did. I honestly liked it. And I, and I read the uncorrected proof. I did not get all those color photographs, which are in the fun. You're going to get them. Don't you worry. You're going to get them. Don't you worry. You're going to get them. I have to say that this is really serious. There's a lot of, we know this, a lot of censorship on the internet. And it is hurting us financially because we get on YouTube. We have ads on YouTube. Facebook has shadow banned me. I barely can post on this. We're living in crazy times. We know that, right? But I try to speak my mind. I love my country. And I, I do my best.

So folks, if you want to support us, I should say one of the ways you can do that is go to mypillow.com or my store.com and use the code Eric. We'd be very grateful to you. You can buy most of my books at my store.com. Great prices. And when you use the code, Eric, obviously everything is discounted. And Mypillo.com, we know Mike Lindell has been dramatically censored. and it's just, I have to say, as an American, it really offends me. It's wrong. And even if I disagree with somebody,

and this has happened in the past where I feel like people have been really mean to liberals. And I will speak up. I'll say, look, it's just not right. You're supposed to be above that. We should be able to hear other people, give them the benefit of the doubt. I know that people on the other side of these issues often are very, very sincere. And we, you know, we have to give them that. But then it would be nice if they would, allow us to make our arguments. And, you know, so we're living in weird times. But I did want to say that because of that are one of our few outlets is this radio program. It's a, I'm grateful to Salem Radio, Salem Media for that.

And grateful to Salem for publishing my book, Fish Out of Water. Thrilled, actually, that they're the ones doing that. I guess I should say also, if you're not subscribed, to our YouTube channel. Please do find us on Rumble because we're posting all of our controversial videos on Rumble. If you want to learn, for example, how to make a pipe bomb, we won't post a video like that. But we're posting our other controversial videos because people have gotten so crazy that if you say something that they don't approve of, they accuse you of inciting violence.

So we're posting stuff on Rumble, on Twitter, on Parlor. I'm sorry, on Gab. parlor, like what happened to parlor? I don't know. It went the way of the dodo bird, I guess. Yeah. Did you know, Albin, and I wanted to close on this, I saw the last living dodo bird. It's from the 17th century. It's mummified in a cardboard box at the Oxford Museum of Natural History.

And I got a private tour, and they took us into a room, and they opened up the box, and there was a mummified dodo bird. And I honestly, it's hard to explain. Like, you just feel like honored that you get to see. This was literally the last one. They had it in a box. I got to say, I am impressed,

and it does not take a lot to impress me. That's very funny, but it's true. All right, folks, thank you for listening, and please tell your friends.