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"Moral Humility" with Mark Chancey · The Weight

• 0:01
  Chris McAlilly: I'm Chris McAlilly.
• 0:02
  Eddie Rester: And I'm Eddie rester. Welcome to The Weight.
• 0:05
  Eddie Rester: Today our guest is Dr. Mark Chancey. Mark Chancey is a professor of religious studies at SMU here in Dallas, Texas, where I am. He teaches courses to undergrads in the Denman School there on biblical studies and helps them begin to understand what it might mean to read scripture in a different way and in a deeper way. Chris, what'd you think about the conversation today?
• 0:29
  Chris McAlilly: There are different ways to approach scripture, and you can approach it devotionally. You can come and you can ask, what does this mean for me? How does this connect me to God? But that's not the only way to read scripture. You can read scripture historically and get a better understanding of the ancient world in which it was written. You can read it academically in a way that helps you to understand that everybody, everybody brings a certain set of assumptions to the text. And every text is interpreted. Everyone interprets the Bible, and so a lot of what he's doing is teaching that.
• 1:04
  Chris McAlilly: My own experience of going to a liberal arts school and becoming an English major, some people will say, you know, that's going to lead you away from God. It's going to steal your faith away from you. My experience is that the more I have learned, the more my faith has deepened, and some of the tools of of interpretation that maybe distance you from the text allow you to see it in a deeper way.
• 1:30
  Chris McAlilly: And so he would, he reminded me Yeah, he just reminded me of that. And, you of that.
• 1:32
  Eddie Rester: It's like you pull back the layer.
• 1:37
  Eddie Rester: know, that's kind of his work with undergrads. He's teaching the Gospels, he's teaching early Judaism. He's teaching archeology. And so we talk a little bit about that work, and then some of the ways in which... It kind of... The conversation moves in the direction of what's the relationship between religion and public life, particularly civic life, political life. And so some of the research that he's done around the Ten Commandments in Texas, in schools and in courthouses, and we kind of have a pretty robust conversation about, where's the proper place for moral formation for children. Is it in the school? Is it in the home? Is it in churches? What's the relationship between those spaces? And man, I thought it was kind of a wide ranging conversation. It was good.
• 2:26
  Eddie Rester: I thought it was wide ranging, but it was really good, I think. And it's, I think it's the right conversation for Christians to begin to have, because when we assume that other spaces and other places are going to create Christian kids, I think what we're doing is we're giving away our agency.
• 2:45
  Eddie Rester: We're giving away our responsibility, not just to shape our own kids within the faith, but others within our faith communities as well. And you know, I had some thoughts about other institutions, but I think where we push is that the conversation of where it happens and how do we want our faith to be utilized or misused in the public square. So anyway, great conversation today.
• 3:12
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, I think where I really want to press it, as you're listening to this conversation, it's gonna... It's easy in these conversations around religion and public life or political life to kind of, to... You know, there are these kind of normal divides that we have between folks that are conservative or progressive.
• 3:30
  Chris McAlilly: Everyone needs moral formation.
• 3:34
  Chris McAlilly: Everybody needs to build.
• 3:35
  Eddie Rester: Everyone receives moral formation.
• 3:37
  Chris McAlilly: Everybody receives moral formation. And we all have to engage our neighbors. And I think the question that I'm thinking about is not just how I form my kids in the faith, but also, what does it look like for the church to draw people to Christ in an environment that's pluralistic, where everybody's going to be...
• 3:56
  Chris McAlilly: You know, where... One of the ways to do that is just to be humble as we go out into the public square. That's the thing I'm going to take away. And man, I love the conversation. It was a lot of fun.
• 4:07
  Eddie Rester: Great conversation today. I hope you'll enjoy it.
• 4:11
  Eddie Rester: Share it with some friends, maybe even have some conversations about it with others. Let us hear from you. If that's what happens, we love to hear from you when you enjoy or don't enjoy one of our episodes.
• 4:24
  Chris McAlilly: [INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.
• 4:42
  Eddie Rester: As Christ-centered leaders in churches non profits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.
• 4:53
  Chris McAlilly: But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.
• 5:03
  Eddie Rester: That's why The Weight exists: to create space for the conversations that challenge our assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.
• 5:12
  Chris McAlilly: Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition, and responsiveness to a changing world.
• 5:21
  Eddie Rester: So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a nonprofit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] Today we're here with Dr. Mark Chancey from Southern Methodist University. Mark, thanks for being with us today.
• 5:42
  Mark Chancey: Thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.
• 5:47
  Eddie Rester: Yeah. I've known Mark. We've kind of known each other, kind of at the edges for a long time because, uh, you married one of my seminary classmates that I was close with, so and now in Dallas, we get to see y'all occasionally.
• 5:59
  Eddie Rester: fantastic.
• 5:59
  Mark Chancey: Which is fantastic. Thankful for that.
• 6:02
  Eddie Rester: Yeah, so Mark, you're teaching at SMU. You're teaching in the religion department, and you teach really Biblical Studies. That's your background. Why is it important to teach good Biblical studies to undergrads? What do they get out of it? What do they come to your class hoping for? What do you hope they get out of it?
• 6:24
  Mark Chancey: Well, for Biblical Studies, the starting point is to note that I teach at Southern Methodist University, and so it is a United Methodist affiliated school. So teaching Biblical studies to undergraduates is very much out of respect for that Methodist heritage and that ongoing Methodist affiliation, certainly. My context here in Dallas, Texas is important for that, right? We are in the buckle of the Bible Belt, and it being Texas, it is the biggest buckle of the Bible Belt. And so it's certainly important for the sake of cultural literacy, for our students to know something about the Bible.
• 7:05
  Mark Chancey: And so my colleagues in the department, who come from a variety of fields, they teach Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other aspects related to religion, all agree that we should have these classes and make them available.
• 7:20
  Mark Chancey: So most of my students come for liberal arts purposes. Our courses are taught from a non confessional perspective in the religious studies department that is different from how they're taught down at SMU Perkins School of Theology, right?
• 7:36
  Mark Chancey: In the theology school, they're taught from a Christian theological perspective for the purpose of shaping people for Christian ministry, which is an outstanding project, but it's a very different project from teaching about religion in a religiously diverse student body. So we focus on critical reading of the texts, the ancient context, history of interpretation. Just try to help students develop a sensitivity for the fact that texts can be interpreted in different ways, that texts and interpretations of those texts by particular communities can have wide ranging impacts. And plus, I just want them to love the stories. I want them to become familiar with the text, familiar with the characters, familiar with the key passages. Some of them will use that in their own meaning, making journeys, which I am excited to get to contribute to. For others, again, it'll just be a matter of cultural literacy, and that is, that's a great project.
• 8:43
  Mark Chancey: So most of my students are actually general education students. So many of them are there, crossing off a box for general education. And once they take a class for me or from one of my colleagues--and my colleagues are all great teachers--they often find themselves sucked in and take more and more and more. So it's a very fun job. I'm lucky to have it.
• 9:10
  Eddie Rester: Well, it's an important role. When I was a freshman, I took a religion class, an honors religion class, by a guy named Michael Harrington. It was the first time in my life that I'd ever engaged scripture at any other level, other than the simple reflection devotional method, which is important, and it's a significant part of how we grow in faith as Christians. But it was the first time I'd ever been pulled into some of the deeper textual conversations. Do you find those moments for some of your students, when they're kind of, the light bulb goes on for them, or they really begin to see that there's a lot more going on in Scripture than maybe they thought was going on before?
• 9:52
  Mark Chancey: Oh, definitely.
• 9:52
  Mark Chancey: And this happened just yesterday when we were talking about Mary Magdalene in class, and I had to explain how Mary Magdalene actually was not a prostitute in the Bible, right? This is a later interpretive tradition that is not based on anything claimed in the text. And we looked at the passage and talked about how that interpretation came to be, and put Mary Magdalene into a very different perspective for them. They were very intrigued by all of this because they were used to this popular notion of Mary Magdalene that actually is incorrect in terms of reflecting what's in the text.
• 10:32
  Chris McAlilly: What is it, when you're studying texts out of the Judeo Christian setting in a more pluralist environment, certainly in the Deep South, you know, in Texas, which is a very Christianized environment, what's the value of, you know...
• 10:50
  Chris McAlilly: I mean, for someone who may not immediately get it or immediately see the value of coming at the text from a humanistic or an academic perspective, just say a little bit more about the values that arise for someone who may be resistant to the idea.
• 11:10
  Mark Chancey: Sure. Well, we want them to know that all texts are subject to interpretation.
• 11:12
  Mark Chancey: That's the first thing. And different readers and different communities may develop different interpretations.
• 11:21
  Mark Chancey: There's nothing inherently wrong with that. What I emphasize in my classes, and this is just the way I happen to do it. One could do these classes otherwise. But I always emphasize how the texts were shaped by and reflect their ancient contexts, so their contexts in early Judaism, their contexts in the Greco Roman world. And this underscores the point that both texts and interpretations are, in fact, all related to the context of their production as well as the context of their interpretation.
• 11:55
  Mark Chancey: And I think those are good skills for them to have that they can apply in other aspects as well. Just the sensitivity towards the context in which their whatever they are interpreting come from.
• 12:13
  Eddie Rester: For me, what it gave me, I'm sure it does for those students. It just gives you additional questions to ask when you're reading. You know, where did this come from? Why was this written? I had never thought until Dr. Harrington talked about the world of Paul and his letters. I never thought to ask the question, well, why was this letter written? Why did Paul write this then? What was going on with the people? I just thought Paul was writing it to me 2000 years later.
• 12:46
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, I think, so, I was an English major in a small liberal arts school and I grew up, my dad's a pastor, and so, you know, interacting with the Bible in a confessional context, within the context of a youth group, that was basic for me. I will say that I developed a love of stories, texts of all traditions. I mean, I remember taking this course on Native American mythology and just being completely blown away by some of the ways in which a culture that's very different from mine was making sense of the world, of God, of the land, of one another.
• 13:27
  Chris McAlilly: And I, you know, beyond that, I went and studied abroad for a semester. And it was I, it was I remember the distance from, you know, Southern culture, where everything, like the whole rhythm of life is oriented around college football, SEC college football, and it was the distance. It's the distance of reading texts that are not your native culture, and then coming back to your native culture and reading them, and then also actually going and seeing you know, you can actually take a siesta every afternoon, and that's like a really awesome way to live.
• 14:03
  Eddie Rester: Yes, it is. I was... We just dropped our daughter off in Spain, and yes, the two to four everything shutting down, taking a siesta.
• 14:12
  Chris McAlilly: It's brilliant.
• 14:13
  Eddie Rester: We should. We should have a national conversation about this. Yeah.
• 14:15
  Chris McAlilly: I guess my point is simply that having some distance from beloved cultural artifacts, particularly texts and particularly religious documents, for me, helped open them up much more for a much deeper, broader understanding.
• 14:35
  Chris McAlilly: And, you know, I went from, I mean, I remember Paul Ricoeur talks about kind of a first and a second naivete as a mode of interpretation. You grew up and you have a childlike faith. And then maybe you get disillusioned by that. And then you have to come back for a kind of, what he calls a second naivete. You kind of come back to the text that you knew once on one level, and it has this completely different meaning, because you're bringing adult questions, adult, kind of adult modes of interpretation to the text. And it can be more open, it can be more life giving. You can see more in it.
• 15:12
  Chris McAlilly: And, you know, I can imagine that most students, most days, are just checking a box, and I'm sure that that's difficult, because they're not going to those deep levels. But I wonder, kind of, you know, how do you...
• 15:23
  Chris McAlilly: You know, is it... I assume, the first day of class, is there a moment in a semester where you can kind of see something click, and if so, what part of the syllabus? Is it there one particular dimension that it's like, ah, this is a day they really sink their teeth into, and they really... You know, the conversation is better. Or where is that in the semester for you?
• 15:46
  Mark Chancey: So it really varies from student to student.
• 15:52
  Mark Chancey: So it's hard to generalize about that. I mean, for some students, it comes when we discuss what scholars call the Synoptic Problem, which is the question of how Matthew, Mark, and Luke are related, right? Because Matthew, Mark, and Luke have so much content in common, often have the same wording, often have the same sequence of stories, but not always. And scholars call them the Synoptic Gospels, because one can look at them side by side together in many cases. And so when we explore reasons, possible theories for why they are so similar and why they are different, students are often intrigued by that.
• 16:32
  Mark Chancey: In other cases, it is just as we were talking about a moment ago, like Eddie was talking about with Paul's letters, just the idea that these are not general essays thrown out to the world at large, but they are responses to particular situations in particular groups. That is a big moment for many students, just as Eddie described. For some students, it's when we talk about Paul and women and the roles of women in early Christianity, where I'm able to go through and show that actually women had prominent and important roles in early Christianity that have often been forgotten or pushed to the side in some parts of the Christian tradition, but that are actually there right in our original documents. And then, of course, at the end of the semester, there's always Revelation, which is enough to blow anybody's mind.
• 17:32
  Eddie Rester: I remember when Dr. Efird, who you knew at Duke, explained that 666 actually spells out Nero, and I'm messing that up. He would probably...
• 17:44
  Eddie Rester: He's in heaven. He'll come down and stab me. And that even if it's 616, and not 666, it still refers to Nero.
• 17:55
  Mark Chancey: That blows students minds. It's like the last day of class, but you know, we end the semester on a bang, so to speak, absolutely blows their minds.
• 18:03
  Eddie Rester: Yeah. Well, I wanted to shift gears just a little bit, because one of the things we really wanted to talk to you about today is some of the research and writing that you're doing right now, really looking at religion in America in some very specific ways. I know you've talked about the Bible in the classroom at times.
• 18:20
  Eddie Rester: But the thing that seems to be coming up, and you and I have had a lot of conversations about this, is states mandating the Ten Commandments to be put in classrooms. And so I want to have you back up, because it was helpful for me when you did this, and I think it would give us a good starting point. One is to talk about--and you can pick your entry point here, Mark--kind of where that comes from, or when that started, and kind of give us a little historical information on where this is all bubbling up from.
• 18:58
  Mark Chancey: Sure, well, you know, we are right in the middle of a moment where, in a lot of state legislatures, we're seeing a move to introduce the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. So three states have passed laws about this.
• 19:14
  Mark Chancey: Louisiana was the first last year, and then Texas and Arkansas this year. So we've got three states that now have statutes that require the Ten Commandments to be posted on public school classrooms. And for Louisiana and Arkansas also in post secondary classrooms as well. So these laws often, you know, specify the size of the poster. So in Texas, it has to be a 16 inch by 20 inch poster on every classroom. In Louisiana, it was 11 by 14 inches. Again, everything is bigger in Texas.
• 19:53
  Mark Chancey: And these laws even specify the specific version of the Ten Commandments that has to go up there. This isn't the only legislation. I mean, 14 other states just this year considered bills that would put that same version of the Ten Commandments up on school walls. So we have seen pushes to introduce the Ten Commandments in schools before.
• 20:17
  Mark Chancey: This one seems to have really taken off, beginning in 2023 when Texas debated a bill with these same provisions and it died in committee. But Louisiana, the next year, took the Texas bill, modified it, and passed it, and now we've got these bills breaking out all over and with court cases and federal courts, so, in all three of these states, in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. So clearly, there are many state legislators, in not every state, but many states who think it is absolutely essential for public school students to be exposed to specifically the Ten Commandments and to a specific version of the Ten Commandments
• 21:13
  Eddie Rester: In Louisiana and in other places, I know some of the justification for that is they appeal to our Founding Fathers. They appeal to our founding documents. They appeal to James Madison. You know, something that they attribute to him, where, what do you see, in your research, what do you see in those arguments for putting the Ten Commandments in the classrooms?
• 21:40
  Mark Chancey: Well, your question is right on target, right? This is a standard justification given for these bills and laws that the Founding Fathers, including the names you mentioned, regularly quoted from the Ten Commandments, and the argument goes, even based the Declaration of Independence and especially the Constitution on the Ten Commandments. So the argument there is that the Ten Commandments is in some way a text that is quintessentially American. It's part of American identity. It is the basis for our laws and government.
• 22:20
  Mark Chancey: Historically, this is just flat out inaccurate. This is not the way things happened, shall we say.
• 22:31
  Mark Chancey: And here, I think nuance is important, right? It is true that Christianity was very important in the founding era, in the time of the colonies, and in the time of the early republic, and no serious scholar disputes that Christianity was important and influential. Where these arguments go astray is by highlighting a specific passage from scripture and suggesting that it is the foundation on which our whole system is built.
• 23:05
  Mark Chancey: Right? One can talk about the Bible's use in political discourse at the time and the way in which speeches are peppered with biblical allusions, as are pamphlets, without somehow suggesting that any particular quotation, once again, is the wellspring from which our way of life springs.
• 23:28
  Mark Chancey: So there is a scholar at Willamette University named Stephen K Green who went through and looked at founding era documents and his question was, okay, so when people specifically are talking about the Constitution, let's look at our sources for the drafters of the Constitution. Let's look at the minutes from the Constitutional Convention, or the records from the Constitutional Convention. Let's look at the discussions happening in the states as they consider the Constitution. What are they talking about? And what he discovered was they were not talking about the Ten Commandments. It's just not there, right? You've got all sorts of things to talk about.
• 24:12
  Mark Chancey: You've got enlightenment philosophy, Locke, Montesquieu.
• 24:15
  Mark Chancey: You've got English common law.
• 24:22
  Mark Chancey: You've got a whole variety of influences. But actually no one anywhere is quoting the Ten Commandments or suggesting that they are the basis. They're really looking in other directions.
• 24:34
  Mark Chancey: So just to sum that up, the Ten Commandments are important for early America as part of the Bible, which is important as part of the larger religious context, but it is inappropriate to single that out as some type of major influence, when, in fact, the evidence is very, very explicit that other sources were informing the construction of our founding documents. So the idea that the country is based on the Ten Commandments is just historically false.
• 25:09
  Chris McAlilly: So I do think you know that having accuracy in the way that we read our history and then as the way we kind of build the foundations of our institutions and and our civic life is really important, and what's true and what's false is really important to kind of interrogate. You know, as you were talking, I was reminded of this book that I came across by Jonathan Rauch. The book is called "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy." And in the book, one of the things that he says is, like the quote of the book is, "In American civic life, Christianity is a load bearing wall, and when it buckles, all the institutions around it come under stress, and some of them buckle, too." And essentially, what he's saying is, if we're in a, you know... I mean, a lot of people are saying, you know, we have a crisis of democracy. And he's suggesting that there's a crisis also within kind of American Christianity, and that, you know, it's, perhaps, putting the Ten Commandments on the wall in classrooms and courthouses may or may not be the way to rebuild that load bearing wall. You know, it sounds like that's your perspective, but I do think the gesture of like needing something beyond the base level.
• 26:29
  Chris McAlilly: You know, there's a lot of stress that all of our institutions within our civic life, are under, it seems. And the impulse to maybe seek some, I guess, foundational text upon which you could kind of build back some stability or structure or order in the midst of what feels like a very chaotic moment. I think I understand that impulse, even if that's not the right, even if you know what you're saying is you might not encourage a school district or a courthouse to kind of put the Ten Commandments up. I think I understand the impulse that moves us in that direction. I don't know. What do you guys think?
• 27:19
  Eddie Rester: I mean... Go ahead, Mark.
• 27:21
  Mark Chancey: Well, I was going to say, I, you know, I basically agree with that, right? It is all about creating some sort of stability. It's also about fostering a particular understanding of American identity that's quite narrow, but there is a restorationist impulse to it, right? This idea that back when people knew the Ten Commandments, society was more stable. Kids stayed out of trouble, etc. Now whether that is accurate or not is a is a different matter altogether, but it is definitely trying to restore America back to our proponents to this thing was a simpler time, right?
• 28:04
  Eddie Rester: As I think about it sometimes that you know, Chris, when you talk about when Christianity buckles, other institutions buckle it, it feels like, to me, it's putting the cart before the horse, or it's attacking the wrong end of the problem. If you want to join those two things together, the Ten Commandments on the wall of a classroom will matter little to restoring any sense of that load bearing wall, in my mind. I think that's how I would talk about it. If the issue is that, then this is not, this doesn't do anything. In fact, it may work at cross purposes to putting strength back in that load bearing wall. That's just an initial thought I got.
• 28:54
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's a simplistic way to think about, I mean. I mean, if you care about the Ten Commandments, if you care about a moral foundation for your kids, I mean, don't outsource that to schools. Do it in your home. I mean, I think that that would be... And recognizing we're in a pluralistic society, and you've got, we're neighbors with Muslims and Jews and folks of faith and folks that have no faith. I think that's probably where I would come down, but I understand the sense that we're living in a moment where we have, where it's a morally and epistemically incoherent environment. And the impulse, I think, some of the politicians that I mean... Just like, I mean...
• 29:38
  Chris McAlilly: We had a conversation with this guy, Michael Wear, who said, you know, what politicians will do with faith traditions and Christianity specifically, they will either find them useful or useless, depending on their political ends. And so, you know, I want to set aside that for a moment, but also just think about if that's not the right way to build a healthy moral and coherent universe for young people, what's a better way to do it? You know, I wonder, I mean, I certainly, I have ideas about it, but I wonder what you think about, when you think about that? Both Eddie and Mark, I'd be interested to hear, you know, if that's the wrong way to do it, what's what's a better way to do it?
• 30:22
  Eddie Rester: Mark, you want me to take the first stab or?
• 30:26
  Mark Chancey: You take the first one.
• 30:28
  Eddie Rester: You know, I think you were onto something a second ago, Chris, when you talked about the home and churches, and I think, yeah, I often think about people complaining when Target or Starbucks or whoever doesn't say Merry Christmas to you, and for me, that is dereliction of duties. We shouldn't expect Target or Starbucks or anybody to tell our story of faith around the birth of Jesus Christ and the incarnation. And I feel like the same way whenever we give some outer institution the responsibility to try to tell our story, what we get is a lesser version, or a performative version of the story, rather than the truth of what we believe.
• 31:20
  Eddie Rester: And the truth is even Jesus, when he talked about the Ten Commandments, he said, "You've heard it said, thou shalt not kill. But I say to you this." There was a fuller conversation about it than simply the words.
• 31:37
  Eddie Rester: And so I think for me, I'm not sure what the right way is, but if we're talking about strengthening the voice of the church or the life of the church, I'm not sure a coach teaching history with a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall accomplishes what folks are setting out to do.
• 32:07
  Chris McAlilly: What about you, Mark?
• 32:09
  Mark Chancey: Well, I think about the function of public schools in a pluralistic democracy. And so what their contribution to that is in shaping citizens, right, which is their primary function. And it seems to me, one of the most important tasks is underscoring the very nature of pluralistic democracy, which is that we all have an equal seat at the table, regardless of our religious identity, regardless of whether we identify with any religious tradition, or which religious tradition we identify with, or if we choose not to identify with any religious tradition.
• 32:45
  Mark Chancey: We're all equal at the table of American democracy, and as such, students and citizens should show respect across those differences.
• 33:00
  Mark Chancey: And showing respect doesn't mean glossing over disagreements or pretending that disagreements don't exist, because they do and they always will, but the hope is that we can shape young people to disagree respectfully and defend each other's freedoms under the Constitution. And I think that's where this Ten Commandments in schools movement goes wrong, because whatever the varied intentions of the legislators introducing these bills, the effect is very much to privilege Christianity and Judaism over other traditions.
• 33:41
  Mark Chancey: And because of the context in which this happening, frankly, it's a privileging of Christianity over Judaism as well. So rather than communicating respect across difference, it's an attempt to privilege some religious views over others, which sends the message to school kids that they're actually not at all equals, after all.
• 34:12
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, you know.
• 34:12
  Chris McAlilly: I mean, I don't know if you have children, Mark, or if you're raising kids right now. I'm thinking about doing that and my kids. So my mom was in the public school. My mom was a public school teacher. She taught, I mean, her first job was on the Choctaw Indian Reservation in Philadelphia, outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. So she taught in that cultural context. We went to the city schools. Oftentimes I think about a particular strand of particularly southern evangelicalism that would want to bring back God into the public schools and make sure that we're praying at football games and that kind of thing.
• 34:53
  Chris McAlilly: And there's, it's, you know, God and football and hunting and whatever, I mean, all these things kind of fit a certain kind of cultural norm. And then I think about my mom's experience out on the Choctaw reservation, it's just a very different cultural environment.
• 35:10
  Chris McAlilly: I would love to engage the Ten Commandments, you know, with But I don't know. I think there is this longing for a world that anyone who wants to read those you know. But I certainly want makes sense, and that we could get back to a simpler time where my kids to know them, but I don't expect the public school you didn't have to engage these different kind of, didn't really to do that work. I think, I think that's the thing, and I don't expect the culture around it to be at this point, helping have to engage these other traditions. And I don't know, I much. I think, you know, if you want to teach your kids deep, think that what I want to do is to say, absolutely, let's make meaningful faith within a covenant community, do that at sure that we're engaging these texts on a deeper level, rather home, have a deep catechetical program in the midst of your than just as a set of slogans.
• 35:39
  Chris McAlilly: It's almost like they're local church. But then when we go out into these spaces that are shared spaces, you know, go with curiosity. Go with like...
• 35:43
  Chris McAlilly: talismanic, you know. It's like, hold up the Bible and swing it I want my kids to interact. I'm really grateful that my kids are around or we're not really engaging the Ten Commandments.
• 35:55
  Chris McAlilly: in an environment where they're having to kind of interact with all kinds of people at various socioeconomic levels. I think that's part of the benefit of public education, and one of the Commandments as a part of a catechetical process. In our reasons why my family's always been very supportive of it, but I don't know. I think I am sympathetic to the... I'm not talking about political impulse, the impulse to to create an environment that makes sense for your kids. There are things that come on the on TV right now that I don't know how to communicate with my kids. I don't... It's not easy to be raising kids in They're coming across things on YouTube.
• 37:08
  Chris McAlilly: America in the year 2025.
• 37:15
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, 100%. it's a morally chaotic environment. And, you church, it's confirmation. We kind of lead in that direction.
• 37:53
  Chris McAlilly: But that's done within the family. It's done within the faith community, rather than in the public square.
• 38:00
  Mark Chancey: Right. And I'm all for that. I couldn't agree with you more. I agree with all of that. You know, this is actually possibly a good segue to talk about another aspect of this current campaign. I mentioned that these laws and these bills are all promoting a particular version of the Ten Commandments, and the backstory of that version ties directly into what you were just talking about, Chris.
• 38:23
  Mark Chancey: So the text of the Ten Commandments that shows up in these laws comes from the granite monument at the Texas State Capitol, which about 20 years ago, the United States Supreme Court said was legal for display on Capitol grounds. Now that's the monument. That decision did not pay much attention to the words on the monument. I mean other than Ten Commandments, didn't zero in on the details of the version. But that monument was donated to Texas by an organization called the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which is a service and social organization. Historically, they're known for supporting progressive social reforms like Social Security, workers compensation, things like that.
• 39:13
  Mark Chancey: And the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated nobody knows how many of these monuments, couple of hundred, maybe more, as well as made hundreds of thousands of prints of the Ten Commandments back in the 1950s and 1960s and they created their own, what they called translation of the Ten Commandments that's now on many of these monuments, and is now in these malls.
• 39:44
  Mark Chancey: And it's the version that's not in anybody's Bible. It's kind of an amalgamation, mostly following Exodus 20, drawing some from Deuteronomy five, and then tweaking the wording as they see fit. They strip away a lot of the Jewish elements from the TEn Commandments. So they have, "I am the Lord thy God," but then they strip away, you know, "who brought you out of the land of Egypt," the part that anchors the entire Ten Commandments passage and the Jewish story, that sort of thing. They have Honor the Sabbath. But then they strip away the justifications for it that we see in the Bible, which is that everyone needs a break, or this reflects the order of creation.
• 40:30
  Mark Chancey: So they developed that version in 1951 and the reason they did was because of a juvenile judge in Minnesota, St Cloud, Minnesota, EJ Ruegemer. Judge Ruegemer was seeing troubled youth in his courtroom, and he thought, we've got no stability.
• 40:56
  Mark Chancey: Our society is going down the hill, and the reason why is because young people don't know the Ten Commandments. So one day, he had a teenager in front of them who had gotten involved in a pretty serious automobile accident, and he asked the young man, do you know the TEn Commandments? And the teenager said, I've never heard of them.
• 41:19
  Mark Chancey: And the judge, the story goes, said, "I want you to memorize the TEn Commandments and apply them to your life. That's your sentence." And supposedly, the young man turned his life around, this teenage boy, and grew up to be a productive citizen.
• 41:37
  Mark Chancey: And the judge said, that's the key. Look at the scourge of juvenile delinquency. Look at how our society is struggling.
• 41:45
  Mark Chancey: We need to plaster the TEn Commandments, commandments everywhere so that we can once again have stability in our society. So from the very beginning, this particular TEn Commandments campaign, starting in the early 1950s was addressing exactly the sorts of concerns and fears that you just you just identified.
• 42:11
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, that's fascinating. I sympathize with the desire for stability and moral coherence for youth, so that they can move out of the world. Yeah, I do think a naked... I don't think... I don't like the idea of a naked public square, because I just think it becomes morally incoherent. You know, I think that there is a need to bring moral convictions to our civic and political life. I think that's a good impulse. I do think that sometimes when we do that, it's more like we're waving around the Bible. We're waving around the Ten Commandments. But I do think this deeper question.
• 42:49
  Chris McAlilly: I think what I'll come away from this conversation thinking is what is the proper relationship between religion and civic life?
• 42:58
  Chris McAlilly: Religion and public life? What, you know, what do I believe about that? Whether... What would be the way that I would want to teach my kids to do that faithfully and well? And then what's the relationship between moral formation and public education? For those that are in a public school environment, what's the proper place to do moral formation? Is that in a school context? Is it in a family context, in a church context, and everybody's going to be slightly different about these things based on where they come from, where they go. But those are the questions that I think I'll probably take away from this conversation.
• 43:35
  Eddie Rester: And I think if you look historic, Mark, you've done more work in this than me, but I would think historically, one of the pieces that has helped the moral formation, schools have had a part in that moral formation. I don't think we can say that they haven't, but churches have. But then you've also had scouting groups and other civic groups for teenagers and kids, whether it was FFA, FHA, some of those things that have all worked together in that. And I think what we've seen in my lifetime is that a lot of those institutions that really helped in that moral formation of our at least in previous generations, have crumbled.
• 44:17
  Eddie Rester: So FFA, FHA, some of those, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts have been replaced by travel ball and travel soccer and travel cheer and travel dance. And there's been a shift. And I think there's a big question here, as we talk about the moral formation of our teenagers and younger kids, is, have the structures we've created over the last generation, are they providing the same kind of moral foundation that we had previously from a whole amalgamation of groups that included the local church and youth groups and camps and church camps and retreats and things? And yeah, I think things have shifted, and not just with church and school for moral formation, but I think in a lot of other organizations and institutions that we don't have anywhere. I'm just just thinking here, that there seems to be a lot at play here. If we really wanted to have the conversation, there's a big conversation to have.
• 45:23
  Mark Chancey: Yes, definitely. I agree.
• 45:25
  Eddie Rester: Mark, you're nodding there. So.
• 45:28
  Mark Chancey: Now, well said.
• 45:30
  Eddie Rester: Yeah.
• 45:30
  Mark Chancey: Yeah.
• 45:30
  Eddie Rester: Chris, what are your thoughts on that?
• 45:31
  Chris McAlilly: No, I just think I don't like tokens of faith plastered on walls. I just don't think that does much work. I think the question I think that I wish that Christians would wrestle with is in an environment that is increasingly pluralistic and morally incoherent, don't expect the world around you to teach your kids the faith. If you want to teach your kids the faith, do it in your home. Do it in the church, and do it in a very deep way. And then, you know, I'm remembering Brent Strawn, he teaches the Old Testament. He wrote this book, "The Old Testament Is Dying." It's a book on essentially, biblical literacy. And one of the concepts, I think it comes from, First Kings, Second Kings, I can't remember, is this idea that you learn the language of faith behind the wall, and then you learn to be bilingual on the wall. I don't remember. I'd have to go back in.
• 46:28
  Chris McAlilly: And I think that's ultimately, I want people to have a deep, clear, stable moral foundation from whatever their faith tradition. For us, it's Christian, and certainly that's going to be the Old, New Testament, know the Ten Commandments, know the Lord's Prayer, know the Sermon on the Mount. But then also, there's this secondary impulse which I hear in the conversation, which is we have, as we go out into the public square, there's a recognition that not everyone's going to share the same convictions, not everyone's going to share the same set of moral foundations, and that is not a problem that actually makes the world more interesting. And difference is something that can be both valued and appreciated, and you can do that without losing your sense of moral grounding. You know, I think that it's, there's a, you can learn your first language, and you can learn to be bilingual. And those strengthen faith. They don't diminish faith, it seems to me.
• 47:28
  Eddie Rester: And the early church didn't expect the world around them to support their version of the faith, their understanding of Jesus. In fact, you could argue that when the church was growing the fastest in the world, and you can even look at China and some other places today where Christianity has grown significantly over the past decades, and it hasn't been where culture has supported the understanding of faith, where Christians have had to be bilingual. So yeah, Mark, what are you thinking about these meanderings of two Methodist pastors?
• 48:05
  Mark Chancey: No, I agree with what you're both saying, right?
• 48:11
  Mark Chancey: The need for strong faith formation that taking place best and most appropriately in context other than public schools, right, in church, in a family, the need for other support structure around that with other organizations, the need for civic education and public schools as well to help us navigate our differences with each other and identify our common interests, which, as Americans, we actually do have common interests across these differences, and the need not to use religious symbols as talisman, to stress...
• 48:59
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, or...
• 48:59
  Mark Chancey: I think at the end of the day, yeah, go ahead.
• 49:02
  Chris McAlilly: Sorry to interrupt. I didn't mean to.
• 49:05
  Mark Chancey: No, no, it's fine.
• 49:05
  Mark Chancey: I think one of the things that troubles me about the Ten Commandments is not that children might learn thou shalt not steal. You know that one doesn't keep me up at night.
• 49:19
  Mark Chancey: It's the use of concepts and passages that are important to me and my family and my religious community as tools of political power, right? That actually bothers me a lot, because I think the Ten Commandments are really important, and I think there are other ways in which they might be studied appropriately in public schools. But what these laws do, it's a power play to privilege one group above others. And I just, I just hate to see my Bible used that way.
• 49:58
  Chris McAlilly: I. Yeah, yeah. I think that's helpful. You know, there are two... I mean, I come back to this Michael Wear conversation when it comes to politics. This is a quote from our podcast conversation with Michael Wear. He said, "When it comes to politics, I think that there are two predominant approaches to Christianity. It's either Christianity can be used as something that's useless or something to be used." And I do think, in general, politicians use use the faith for their own political purposes. I think the question is, what's the appropriate use of the Bible?
• 50:30
  Chris McAlilly: How do we engage the Bible well, and then when we step into the public square, having the full breadth of our convictions, pursuing what it means to love our neighbors well. That that's not something... It's not just cultural assertion. It's something that we're going into the public square with a certain kind of moral humility.
• 50:54
  Chris McAlilly: That's one of the things I hear you saying, and I think that that posture, ultimately, I mean the goal. If you're... Within the context of an evangelical Christian framework, I think the goal is to draw people to Christ. You're going to do that less by cultural assertion.
• 51:07
  Chris McAlilly: You're going to do it more by moral humility. You know, I think that's the way to draw people to the Lord. And so, you know, I mean, I think I appreciate, I mean, it's a wonderful conversation. I'm fascinated by it, because I think it just raises up a lot of lot of great fodder for conversation. When's your next class? Are you done for the day?
• 51:27
  Chris McAlilly: Or dare you done for the week?
• 51:29
  Chris McAlilly: You guys heading into the weekend.
• 51:32
  Mark Chancey: No classes today.
• 51:32
  Mark Chancey: Research and writing for the rest of the day, and classes tomorrow, so. And after that, Parents' Weekend at SMU.
• 51:45
  Eddie Rester: Who's SMU playing this weekend?
• 51:46
  Mark Chancey: SMU is playing Syracuse.
• 51:48
  Chris McAlilly: That'll be a wonderful ball game. You guys Oh, there you go.
• 51:49
  Chris McAlilly: should win that one. Yeah, that'd be good.
• 51:50
  Mark Chancey: That's the hope.
• 51:50
  Mark Chancey: That's the hope. So, yeah. Go Mustangs, as they say.
• 51:57
  Eddie Rester: Thanks for the conversation, Mark, thanks for your time today. Appreciate it a lot. We'll catch up with you soon.
• 52:02
  Mark Chancey: All right, thank you guys. I really appreciate it. Bye bye.
• 52:05
  Eddie Rester: [OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
• 52:14
  Chris McAlilly: If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]