Digital defenders of the faith

At the start of 2025, more than 10 million people heard Christian apologist Wesley Huff on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan and Huff talked about the gospel, the deity of Christ, and the need for atonement. Basic Christian stuff. But they also talked about manuscripts, textual criticism, and the formation of the Canon of Scripture. Scholarly Christian stuff.

Huff is a professional apologist—defender of the faith—a word we find in 1 Peter 3:15 “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense (apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”

Anytime someone is explaining why they believe Jesus suffered, died, and rose from the dead they are doing basic apologetics (1 Peter 3:15ff). But the deeper work of apologetics, and her sister evangelism, is changing rapidly because of digitization: Podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram have brought once-fringe areas of apologetic concern into the mainstream.

A 17-year-old high school kid in your church watches a Reel about how many textual errors there are in the New Testament. Your LDS neighbor sees a TikTok clip from a liberal New Testament scholar who argued that the Bible contradicts itself. Your grandson was sent a 47-minute YouTube video by a PhD historian about how the Roman Catholic Church made up the list of books in the New Testament so they could control the masses. Liberal scholarship that undermines the authority and unity of Scripture is everywhere.

The reason so many younger Christians were profoundly encouraged by Huff’s performance on the Rogan podcast is because the conversations they have with their unbelieving friends are not altogether different than the dialogue they witnessed, thanks to the podcast. Many Gen Zers and Millennials subsequently have asked, “How did Wesley Huff become Wesley Huff?” not because they want to have their own YouTube channels, but because they want to personally do evangelism with confidence and effectiveness.

All Christians care about evangelism, but few care about Christian scholarship. This needs to change, and Wesley Huff would agree.

I asked him about the ongoing changes within apologetics, and he said, “There has been a democratization of ideas that started in 2005 with Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus [a book which undermined the Bible] and then exploded with the internet. The era of the generalist apologist is probably over and done with. I think the average person needs to be aware of a generality of topics, but if someone is attempting to be involved in the formal defense of the Christian faith, I think they’ll need to pursue higher education.”

I also asked him about how he prepared for a three-hour, non-linear, and unscripted discussion with the most-listened-to man in media, and he said, “It doesn’t take much; it just takes your entire life.” The most effective apologists to the next generation will need to be scholar-apologists.

I spoke with John Meade, Old Testament professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and co-founder of The Text and Canon Institute about this changing environment. “The depth and severity of questions that are coming at the apologists is new,” Meade said. “It’s all available on YouTube. You used to have to go to the halls of Yale to hear these [liberal] arguments. Now you just need an internet connection.”

For those who want to be like Wesley Huff, Meade said, “roll up your sleeves and get ready to work. It’s less and less about raw charisma and more about having a genuine, deep well—earned through disciplined study."

Individual evangelical scholars are not enough, though. They need to be connected to a network of others who are supporting their endeavor. Huff said he regularly leverages scholars with expertise outside of his lane, “I actually texted John Meade a question just this morning when interacting with a book undermining the Protestant view of the Canon. I have to default to others; I can’t read everything.”

Building, investing in, and participating in Christian institutions and networks that birth and strengthen scholarship is, arguably, more important than it ever has been. Few Christians will read and be blessed by things like The Text and Canon Institute, but the apologists and evangelists who translate that scholarship to the popular level on YouTube will and, because of their work, regular Christians will be equipped to stand firm in the faith and unbelieving skeptics will find saving faith in the good news of Jesus.

“I’m convinced that Christianity is true because of the publicly available evidence,” Huff said. As the Church broadly speaking seeks to faithfully be a light to the lost, unearthing and translating that evidence to the masses requires a rich partnership between and within institutions, scholars, apologists, and committed donors who financially support their work.

Scholarship isn’t sexy, but it’s the mother of apologetics and evangelism in the digital era. The believing church needs to support scholarship that defends the faith.