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As I write this post, the first debate in the 2020 Presidential election is underway and it’s underscoring the prophetic nature of Carrie Lloyd’s call for a noble renaissance. Carrie believes we’ve lost our sense of nobility and we need that as humans in order to bring back a sense of trust and integrity to our public lives. This was a fun conversation—one where we also talk about orphan care and empowering families to parent their children—and you won’t want to miss it.
The Conversation | Carrie Lloyd
This excerpt has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. You can listen to the full interview by clicking the play button above or subscribing at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Josh Olds: Your book is called The Noble Renaissance. So let’s just start with this: Obviously that term is important to the book. It’s the title of the book. What does that term mean to you?
Carrie Lloyd: Well, I think I was so obsessed for many years about the concept of nobility and building noble character. What does it look like? Not just to be a good person, but the people that excel beyond greatness—the William Wilberforces of the world, the Dr. Martin Luther Kings, the Mother Teresas…And so I became obsessed with nobility a few years ago. And I always wondered, especially in the kind of climate that we’re in right now, not just the pandemic and the racism that we’ve been facing in America, but just the journey of opinions in this cyber digital era. What does it look like for us to be courageous in character? We stopped talking about noble acts or nobility. We stopped talking about integrity and some of the some of the virtues that we talk about at people’s funerals, but we don’t necessarily adhere or revere as brilliant, important things to look at today as we might have done generations ago.
And so I wanted to try and see if we can create a renaissance or revival again, on building noble character because that for me is where the gospel really shows up. Not with what we think or what we preach, but how we actually act on a day to day basis. And so I started studying nobility and noble people and looking into the history of moments that really floored us and inspired us to be better people.
Josh Olds: I guess I kind of think that we think of the word “Noble.” I kind of get the mental image of this, you know, old timey Knight, or someone. Almost maybe, there’s almost like—I think especially paired with the word Renaissance—there’s a medieval quality to that phrase. It harkens back to a different time, different way of being, when you say the word “Noble.” What qualities, what character traits, are you specifically thinking of?
Carrie Lloyd: Well, that was the beauty of writing a book. I actually went on this navigation because of course, especially in America, hearing a British author write about nobility—you can think we’re talking about the aristocracy. But actually, it’s nothing to do that with that. Essentially, it is about looking at the heavenly kingdom, actually looking at the virtues of noble character, what A.W. Tozer would call “the excellence of moral beings.” And so I looked at seven different virtues that create a noble character, one of them being self-sacrifice, one of them being integrity, one of them being perseverance, another being encouragement, and other being wisdom, and so on and so forth. And as I wrote the book, I was really just tying in the patterns of what I was seeing recurring over and over again, with characters both in the Bible and within our history.
The Book | The Noble Renaissance
Do you ever wonder who you are, why you are here, and what really makes life worth living? Or perhaps something is holding you back from believing you could be a person who can make a real difference in the world. In The Noble Renaissance, author and life coach Carrie Lloyd challenges you to be done with pretending, be done with striving, be done with religion—and develop a noble character that truly reflects the person of Christ. She unpacks seven virtues that will inspire you to come back to basic truths and embrace their power to change culture, promote justice, and steward revival.
With humor-filled personal stories and in-depth research, Carrie helps readers to more effectively reflect the abundance, the authority, and the grace of the gospel.
The Author | Carrie Lloyd
Carrie is one woman unafraid to ask the hard relationship questions to a generation questioning the relevancy of purity and spirituality in the modern world. As a professional writer, life coach, and pastor, Carrie navigates every topic imaginable in the dating world, from often hush-hush topics of sex, porn, shame, female competition, misconceptions about purity, and those dreaded “waiting till marriage” conversations.
She has written about such topics from fashion to relationships for Glamour, Magnify, Grazia, Company, The Huffington Post, and City and spoken about sex, love, and communication in schools throughout the UK and churches worldwide, as well as on television and radio. Originally from London, Carrie currently resides in Redding, California, where she has completed ministry training and works at Bethel Church.