In this free-for-all-Friday Trent shares his recent interview on the state of apologetic discourse with Adherent Apologetics.
Trent Horn (00:00):
Mondays and Wednesdays, we talk aboutologics and theology on the podcast, but Fridays, sometimes we talk about apologetics and theology because it’s free for all Friday. I can talk about whatever I want to talk about. And today I wanted to share with you an interview I did on adherent apologetics. This is a non-Catholic YouTube channel, but they invited me to come on and discuss the current state of apologetic discourse. I really enjoyed it. They were a great host and I think you’ll benefit a lot from this interview and definitely go and check out their channel. So here you guys are and I just hope you have a very blessed weekend.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (00:34):
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Adherent Apologetics. I’m so, so excited to join us today to have Trent Horn. We’re going to be talking about apologetics and online discourse and the state of the current temperature. Trent, welcome. Just thank you so much for joining me. How you doing today?
Trent Horn (00:48):
I’m doing well. I’m blessed. I’m really glad to be here chatting with you.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (00:52):
Yeah, I’m super excited. So today for everyone, we’re going to talk about discourse and just what’s going on with the world and whatnot. Trent, thank you for joining. Just to start, do you want to talk a little bit about who you are, what you do, things like that?
Trent Horn (01:06):
Sure. My name is Trent Horn. I am a Catholic apologist. I’ve been working at Catholic Answers since about December of 2012. I was a convert. When I went to junior high in the beginning of high school, I was a deist, so I was not an atheist, but I was not a Christian either. I believe there was a God out there, but I thought religion was a crutch for people. Then I met Christian friends, came around on that, came to believe in Jesus when I was 16 years old. Did more investigation into denominations and church history, was received into the Catholic Church, baptized and confirmed. 2002, I was 17. Started doing pro- life work after that for a while. When I graduated college, I traveled the country, going to college campuses, debating people on the issue of abortion. Then I started working for a pro- life group after that.
(01:57):
Then as I said, in 2012, I started working for Catholic Answers and I’ve written books since then. And my desire is just to really to share Christ to reach the most number of people who are the furthest away from Christ. So that’s why my very first book I wrote was Answering Atheism. After that, I wrote Persuasive Pro-life. So these are issues that I care a lot about. Though my bestselling book is my book, Why We’re Catholic, which I wrote back in 2017. Yeah. And I just want to share the truth about Christ as church, what God desires for us regarding divisive moral issues. And I want to engage people in a charitable way. Second Timothy chapter two talks about correcting opponents with gentleness, correcting with kindness. And I want to engage people in debates and dialogues and with a very particular way of engaging people that represents being an ambassador for Christ as two Corinthians chapter five references, not being a jerk for Christ as some people try to do nowadays.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (02:58):
Well, Trent, I’m grateful and you’re a great person to talk to about this topic. I read your book Case for Catholicism probably a year or two ago now. And I walked away, not a Catholic, but super impressed. Just with the way that you wrote and how you argue. And I just love the book and I loved everything about it and how you wrote and how you argued. So just grateful for that and your work. Let’s talk about lowering the temperature. So have you noticed things within maybe the past month, six months, year in apologetics and just conversations about what’s the current temperature that you see right now?
Trent Horn (03:37):
Well, I mean, it depends. A lot of what I see is just stuff on social media. I mean, it’s hard to see what people do in the offline world away from you, like how someone might just engage in an apologetic discussion person to person in some other college in this country. But I can see how people interact on social media. And I feel like in the past, I want to say kind of like about two years, maybe really since 2024, when Trump was reelected and we got kind of the new Christian right being emboldened by that. I think I noticed the … I mean, there’s always been a deterioration of the discourse in various ways, but I’ve noticed … Well, there was that. I guess it was the new right coming out of Trump 2024. I also noticed a lot of deterioration after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, where you’re seeing people saying, “Don’t bother having dialogue.” Dialogue is what got Charlie killed.
(04:34):
We just have to destroy, take power and demand that other people do what we say because we have the power now and we just have to mock and belittle those who disagree with us. And it’s the idea of just we’re going to win through force, either physical force or just force of mocking and ganging up on people online and meming them out of existence and just trying to win the discourse in that way. And I am firmly against that, that it’s not the Christian way of evangelizing and sharing the gospel with others. So I guess those are kind of the catalysts that I’ve noticed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed anything similar or maybe if you’ve had divergences there.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (05:15):
Yeah. It’s been really interesting because I was in the apologetics world and like the theology and all this stuff from like 2019 to about mid 2024. And then I just kind of stepped away and took a break for really like over a year. And I came back right around October, November-ish, I believe. And I think that was right around the time … Do you know when Charlie Kirk was assassinated? It was around that time.
Trent Horn (05:43):
Yeah. I mean, it was, gosh, it was just a few months ago, but now it’s starting to feel like years time, especially as you get older like I am, time moves at a very unusual speed for us. Yeah, it was September 10th. Yeah, so it was one day before nine eleven commemoration. So yeah, September 10th of 2025, but it feels like it’s been years, it’s been a few months.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (06:08):
Yeah. And I mean, what I’ve seen is it almost feels like it was kind of this way before, but I feel like, and I don’t use social media a whole lot, but I see it’s almost like just different echo chambers where there’s not really a lot of conversation, but it’s more like, here’s the way things are from our point of view. And there’s a bunch of comments that are like, “Oh, you’re crazy,” or, “Oh, you’re totally right and everyone else is crazy.” This goes Christian atheists, politics. Yeah, I just see that everywhere. That’s what I’ve seen.
Trent Horn (06:38):
Yeah. I think also algorithms have gotten much worse. If you’re talking about socially social media discourse, the algorithms have gotten much worse at sorting us into communities where we’re just echo chambers. We hear what other people … We hear people who agree with us, and then maybe there are particular kinds of people who disagree with us that we’re stuck in a vacuum talking to. For example, I find it … Now, I do think there’s some sense of revival among Gen Z, especially towards more ancient forms of the Christian faith, like Catholicism or Orthodoxy. But when you actually look at the data, Gen Z is like the least Christian generation ever. They are very non-religious, not going to church where the Gen Z who do become religious are very devout, but overall, there’s just a lot of non-religious people, a lot of people buying into arguments similar to Reddit atheism or new atheism from the 2000s and 2010s.
(07:33):
But I’ll look on social media and it’s just Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox now arguing with each other when it’s like, “Hey, there are a ton of people who don’t know Jesus. We’re not reaching out to them. We’re not engaging these other non-religious influencers that were just kind of sorted into this interdenominational debate, which I still think is important. I want people to have the fullness of what God revealed in the Catholic church, but I also want people to know Jesus don’t know Jesus. And if we’re just ignoring that, I’m wondering what are we doing
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (08:02):
Here?” There’s something to that. I remember I recently moved to Northern Virginia and I remember it was one of the first Sundays I went to church in Northern Virginia. So I live five, 10 miles south of DC, not a woodsy area in site besides for a park. And then one of the pastors said very clearly, he’s like, “There’s people in Northern Virginia and the United States of America, this country that have never stepped in a church a day in their life.” They lived their whole life in the United States of America. And we’d like to think of ourselves as a Christian country and there’s people that have just never gone to church in their whole life. And to me, that sounds a lot like, “Oh, that’s what I heard about Europe. Oh, we’re going to become Western Europe.” And I just find that sad. Yeah.
Trent Horn (08:44):
You think because you see all of your friends online talking about Christian topics, things like that in your social media algorithm, the real world is not like social media. And it is so difficult to see how we can have fruit on social media. A lot of times, I mean, I’ve interacted with people there and helped them come to know Christ or repent of really grave sins, people I would’ve never met in the real world. So I’m grateful for the internet to allow me to reach out to them and help them. But at the same time though, there are just so many people out in the real world that we’re neglecting if we get stuck in these algorithms that distort what we think the world is like.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (09:23):
Yeah. No, I get that. I have friends that I think of that I’m like, people I’ve met here that have literally just either never stepped foot in a church or it’s a very vague experience as a little kid and it’s just a very large … There is that disconnect. So what do we do about this, Trent? If Trent Horn’s in charge of the world, how does Trent Horn fix this problem? I want
Trent Horn (09:46):
To give people off the internet so bad, which is of course hypocritical because-
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (09:50):
As we’ve talked about the internet.
Trent Horn (09:53):
Well, it’s like the meme. I think it’s called the rage against the machine meme or something. It’s like a peasant carrying sticks and he’s like, “We should make society better.” And a guy pops out of a well is like, “And yet you are part of society.” I’m very intelligent as if it’s hypocritical to belong to a thing that you want to make better.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (10:12):
I saw an article on, but we just want to cut you off on- Yeah, go
Trent Horn (10:14):
Ahead. Sure.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (10:15):
Man, where did I see this? Maybe AP News somewhere where this person, this influencer on TikTok who’s like, “I want you to get off TikTok and spend maybe an hour or 30 minutes a day on TikTok or whatever, but the 30 minutes or an hour you do spend, I want you to spend watching my videos and then I want you to get off the app.” And I’m like, just out of that.
Trent Horn (10:32):
Oh, totally.That’s absurd. For me, if somebody stopped watching Council of Trent because they stopped being on the internet, I’d be so happy. I’d be absolutely happy. And it’s not even that like what I do for Council of Trent, it started as a podcast in 2018 and I still release episodes on Apple iTunes, on Spotify. And I think I would be happy if someone was like, “Hey, the internet’s sucked away in my life. I’ll just listen to you as a podcast.” I find that’s way … If you put in the chart of addictable things, the most addictive is like TikTok, shorts, Snapchat, then YouTube, social media like X or Instagram, but down at the lower end is going to be like just a podcast playlist. It’s way easier to unplug from that or not get sucked into that versus just being online. So I would be happy if someone just stopped watching me on YouTube, listen to audio podcasts.
(11:28):
I would even send people a CD if I had the infrastructure just to like freely keep them off there. No, I think it really does suck us away. I use blocking software to not get sucked in, but it still happens. I’m trying to manage that. And the more and more that we’re online, the more that we learn to relate to each other and in human ways. And this is also something that happens just in general that people want to avoid conflicts or they’ll text each other for like three hours when if they just talked for 10 minutes in person, it would be fine because we’re so worried about conflict, it’s safer to text than to … My wife and I have always had this disagreement because I am a elder millennial and she’s a baby millennial, so we’re almost across the generational divide. And I remember when we first started dating, I would call her and it would go to voicemail and then she would text me back and say, “What’s up?” And she’s a baby millennial.
(12:20):
You go to even younger than that, it’s like if someone calls you, it’s like, “Did mom die? Why are you calling me? Why don’t you just text me? ” So I do think that we have to be able to engage one another honestly. I feel like social media really engineers us towards behaving in inhuman ways, but I think when we’re going to be critiquing other worldviews and engaging in apologetics and discourse about important topics, we should treat each other fairly. So for example, in the past few months, I started doing something I hope others will imitate. I haven’t seen people really do this a lot yet, but I’ve enjoyed it. When I do a response to someone, let’s say … So Gavin Ortland makes a lot of videos and sometimes he’ll critique Catholicism or something like that. And so I saw one he did on infant baptism and I said, “Hey, Gavin, I’m going to write this script engaging your arguments on infant baptism.
(13:10):
Can you review it to at least make sure I understood your original argument? I didn’t misunderstand you. ” And we went back and forth and that was really helpful for my script. I’ve got other scripts coming out the same thing with other influencers coming out soon and it just makes it better and it lowers the temperature and it’s not like … And knowing that he’s going to review the script also, one, the fact that I script it makes it more measured and controlled instead of just turning on a stream where you’re likely to say something inflammatory or use words you probably shouldn’t have used. But also knowing he’s going to read it, it’s like, “Oh, I can be nicer because I’m talking directly to him before I put it out there.” And then also we don’t have the misunderstandings and it’s just way more pleasant to engage each other.
(13:52):
Just this idea like, well, let’s try to get together the truth together, not just playing this kind of gotcha game with each other. That’s what I want to see the discourse kind of getting to.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (14:01):
I love that. One thought I had is something I wanted to bring up just like talking about with you, Trent, before we even had this conversation or before it began was I’m working on my master’s degree and I had to interview a leader who’s a believer and my master’s degree has nothing to do with apologetics. It’s my career, but it was about conflict and like how do you deal with conflict in the workplace? Yeah. And what she said is she blew my mind. She said, when you have a conflict or a disagreement with someone, you should call them into your office … Well, she’s office workplace, call them in, talk to them in person, you sit with them, you look at them, you listen, you listen, you listen, you listen, you listen, you let them say everything you say. And then before you say what you got to say, you got to make … She says you shouldn’t be able to make sure that you can say everything that they said in their own words and be able to understand their position fully.
(14:49):
Then you check with them. We’re still not at the part where you say what you believe. And then once you check with them, you ask them, “Okay, what do we do to make this right?” And that’s more like conflict and business, but there’s that point that I think translates into apologetics where I think it’s very wise what you’re doing because you can’t respond to Gavin or treat him or whoever it is fully unless you fully understand what they’re actually trying to say.
Trent Horn (15:10):
Yeah. And it’s the same thing if I’m going to engage people, like I did a dialogue with a Protestant recently on salvation and some people clipped a few parts of that, tried to treat it as a gotcha moment when it’s like I wasn’t trying to do any kind of gotchas with him or other people. I’ve had dialogues of destiny on the whatever podcast. And I, as part of my MO of my reputation as an apologist, and I’ve used this for a long time, I started doing this as my pro- life work 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Yeah. When did I start that? Really using this, oh gosh, it was about 20, 25 years ago. What I would do is I would use Socratic method, ask questions, help them to see maybe there’s things that they are assuming to be true without proving it or contradicting themselves and using a gentle, Socratic approach.
(15:57):
And so when I engage people, I want to do that not to try to display gotcha, but I really want them to see, “Hey, can you help me understand this? Or do you see there might be a problem here that there’s an inconsistency?” And just once again, it’s about each of us trying to get to the truth.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (16:12):
So I think for dialogue, Trent, we have a good blueprint here of listening and trying to understand and using that as a framework to get truth. What about social media, like YouTube comments or like X? I hate it. Obviously probably, I know. I hate it. I hate it.
Trent Horn (16:29):
I hate it. I hate it.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (16:31):
No, I get that. I’ve told myself as I get back on, I’m like, I’m never going to get into a debate. I don’t even know if I debate again, but I don’t think, especially on a comment.
Trent Horn (16:43):
I hate comment threads. Yeah. I will maybe just throw in clarifying comments. I’ll say, “This is what I meant, or this is what I said, or you can find this here.” But it’s once in a blue moon I get sucked into a thread and I always regret it. I find that it’s just not helpful. I find there if you disagree with somebody, instead of they write a post, think it’s dumb, you disagree with them. Instead of commenting under it, just message the person and say, “Hey, I disagree with this comment. Can you help me see where you’re coming from?” Keep it private because then there’s not egos. It’s not trying to impress everybody watching. You’re talking about it privately. Now, some of these people will say something really silly or dumb or whatever and then public correction is warranted, but I find in a lot of cases that private interaction, that can bear a lot of fruit versus just putting the comments in there.
(17:32):
But yeah, I find in general prolonged threads, they’re just usually not very helpful.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (17:40):
So what do you think you do in that situation then when you’re tweeting and me and you, Trent, are going at something about Catholicism and then you say something and I say something slick back because I’m trying to make you look silly in that situation, do you just not respond? What do you think is the best way forward in those kind of circumstances?
Trent Horn (18:01):
I mean, Jesus did say, “Don’t cast pearl before swine.” You’re not obligated to give a response to anyone. That’s why I had a rule for a long time. I would do rebuttals to people like someone said, “Seven reasons Catholicism is wrong and I’ll do a rebuttal of their content and then a person will do a rebuttal to me, like saying, here’s why Trent was wrong about me being wrong.” I don’t do a rebuttal to the rebuttal. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not going to do that just because then the idea from people is whoever speaks last wins. That’s the problem with threads, YouTube reply storms, all of it. There’s a rule, an unwritten rule, people’s, oh, whoever spoke last wins and they got it and the other guy retreated. No, it just means the person who stopped talking could just have a life.
(18:47):
And it’s like, I do not have time to endlessly. I have three small children. I’m not going to neglect them for the internet for comments that people are going to forget very, very soon. My family comes first here. So I think if you engage someone and there’s a back and forth and you can see it’s conceded, you could just say, “I think we’ve reached an impasse in the discussion. There’s a lot more that could be said. Maybe we could exchange email. We could talk about this privately, but I wish you well. I do have a lot more to be tending to. ” And keeping the door open for once again, a private discussion where you don’t have as much ego involved.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (19:23):
Do you have stories or maybe people, and you don’t have to give specific names obviously, but examples of people where you think that maybe someone is super confrontational, but then you actually have a conversation with them in private, or maybe it’s a public where you’re actually talking to them instead of just tweeting back and forth or something where you found that that was super helpful and just a dialogue?
Trent Horn (19:47):
Oh yeah. I know people, I’m going to keep them nameless, but there are people who I have publicly debated who when I speak to them, part of it, it seems like an act almost. I’m not entirely sure or it’s a character they put on to try to dominate in debates. I’m not sure exactly what it is. I really do feel like, and I hope people appreciate this in the work I do as an apologist, I try to really be the same kind of person, whether you catch me online or offline if I’m doing a dialogue or if I’m talking to you one-on-one and nobody’s around, I would like to think that I’m a pretty similar … And I think people have told me that, and I hear people say that amongst themselves that I’m pretty similar in that regard, but there are people that I have publicly debated them and they can be very outspoken, mean, interrupting, uncharitable, but in private when I talk to them, they’re either really nice or they’re … This is the strange one.
(20:51):
There are people I have debated who are very rude, but when I spoke with them one-on-one and nobody was around, they couldn’t look me in the eye. They would be very passive and almost shy. So it was very, very strange that they could only … They were very shy, couldn’t have eye contact, didn’t want to speak to me really that much. But then when the camera was on, it’s like they put on this character and then they go at you. And part of me is like, “Who are you really? ” So I think one thing that we can help us when we’re evangelizing is authenticity. People care about authenticity. Be your real self, the new man renewed in Christ, and be that real person for everyone to be able to see. Don’t create a false person for the internet, another person for offline, be who you are in Christ to everyone who meets you.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (21:44):
I love that, Trent. It’s interesting to me, because I’ve seen, and I’m just getting back into this, but I’ve seen comments, they’ll talk about me, they’re like, “Oh, you seem like you’re really nice, or you’re willing to listen, you seem reasonable.” And then I have coworkers who are not believers in a job field that has nothing to do with apologetics or theology. And I hear similar things of like, “Oh, you’re really nice.” Or, “Oh, you always smile, you’re always willing to listen,” and personal relationships. And there’s something to that, Trent, that you said that when you see that’s mapping across different domains of your life, even beyond just a camera on and off, I think there’s something to that where when you’re just the person that God created you to becoming more like Jesus every day, there’s something beautiful to that.
Trent Horn (22:30):
That’s the key. And that’s why I think that especially in this age of evangelization, and we have so many opportunities now with internet, with new media, I really worry though that a lot of people treat the Christian life or theology that the Christian life is just consuming content or posting content. My Christian life is consuming content or posting content. No, the Christian life should be prayer, works of mercy, adoration of God, reflection on the word of God, public worship of God with the community, all of these living out a vocation for most people I would say is being called to the married life, some people to religious life, but most people are called to the married life family. And so I worry that it’s just like, oh, this idea that it’s just like being a Christian in the 21st century is just about consuming content other people make, watching videos, watching, watching, watching, or posting, posting, posting stuff when it’s like, no, we should be engaging people and we shouldn’t be consuming content.
(23:39):
We should be edifying ourselves. Now, videos, things like that, they have their place, but it’s never going to replace reading scripture, reading the works of great spiritual writers like Thomas Kempes’, Imitation of Christ, St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life. I mean, if you’re Protestant, obviously there are great spiritual classics or Protestants to read. You’ve got classics like Pilgrim’s Progress, my utmost for his highest, whether you’re a Catholic … And if you’re going to consume something though, just go with the classics. So a Catholic, it might be Venerable Fulton Sheen, Protestant might be Billy Graham, but I worry that yes, there are things in the consumption model of new media that can really benefit and edify the soul, but in a lot of cases, it’s spiritual junk food amidst the good stuff and that could be overwhelming.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (24:27):
There’s something, and listening to a Protestant Jean-Marcomer practice in the way, one of the things, the podcast I’ve listened to a series is about community. And there is something beautiful about social media and how it can connect people from all across the world, but that can’t be your community. You need in- person around people in the church. You need that community. Like you talked about people, you’d rather them get off of the internet than listen to necessarily maybe like a YouTube video that you made. It’s the same with me. I’d rather you not listen to this if it means you could go have dinner with a friend and just spend time together because that in- person face-to-face community is just important. So yeah, that’s great. Trent, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been awesome to talk with you. Any last thoughts or things you want to say before we start to wrap up here?
Trent Horn (25:18):
Yeah. I would just say, especially with social discourse, like Jesus said, we will be held account for every careless word, every word that’s uttered. So we’ll be held account. And when we engage other people, these are not avatars, these are not enemies. In two Timothy chapter two, Paul tells Timothy to correct opponents with kindness and gentleness that you may rescue them from the snares of the devil. And that’s the people who have a mistaken theology, ideology to varying degrees they’ve been ensnared by the evil one. And our job is to offer a gracious hand and reply to remove them from that for their eternal good. So I hope anyone listening will just take that into account and really treat … You could treat people with kindness while being assertive in defense of God’s truth. And so I really hope people will take that to heart and just share the love of Christ and the truth of Christ everybody they meet.
Zac (Adherent Apologetics) (26:14):
Well, Trent, it’s been so great talking to you. How can people follow you, connect with you if they’re new to Trent Horn?
Trent Horn (26:21):
Yeah, I would just recommend my channel, just go to YouTube, search Trent Horn. It’s called Council of Trent, C-O-U-N-S-E-L. So they could just start right there. My work is also available at catholic.com. I have a lot of articles there and we have a lot of the great resources there as well. Thank you guys so much for listening. And don’t forget, support us at trrenthornpodcast.com if you want to help us to keep creating excellent episodes to help build people up, to reach out to other kinds of platforms. And yeah, I just hope you have a very blessed weekend.