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17: Living Out Your (Evangelical) Faith In Public (Bonnie Kristian) · Finding God at Work

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  (Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
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  This is Finding God at Work.
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  Just a reminder that Finding God at Work isn't just a podcast.
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  It's also an online course.
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  Check it out at findinggodatwork.org.
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  Our current series is A Mysterious Business, bringing ministry and marketplace wisdom together.
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  And today, we have a special guest, Bonnie Kristian is joining us.
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  Bonnie is an author of three books, Untrustworthy, A Flexible Faith, and most recently, In Defense
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  of Evangelicalism, A Response to Its Cultured Despisers, which you'll get to hear about
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  today.
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  And she's also deputy editor at Christianity Today.
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  She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their three children.
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  Thank you for joining us, Bonnie.
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  Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
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  So before we jump right in, just to kind of contextualize this conversation in this series
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  that we've done on the podcast, we've talked with a lot of business leaders in the podcast
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  and about others, talking about how their faith motivates their work, how their faith
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  influences the way they do their work in business.
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  And your book specifically addresses the intersection of faith and specifically evangelicalism
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  with public life.
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  And when we hear the phrase public life, we often think about politics, but it also has
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  to do with businesses that serve the public.
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  And in your book, you focus on the story of a family that has a business called Olympus
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  Spa and how it kind of unexpectedly intersects with public policy.
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  So could you share a little of that story?
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  So this is an entire chapter of the book, almost.
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  I think it's the story that I spend the most time with because I think it's really fascinating
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  and really important.
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  So Olympus Spa is a Korean spa.
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  And have you ever been to one of those?
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  I have not, although I watched K-pop Demon Hunters and it looked exciting.
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  Yeah.
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  So I had never been to one either.
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  Apparently, this is a longstanding tradition in Korea.
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  I believe there's something similar in Japan as well.
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  It's quite different from an American spa or the kinds of things that we tend to be
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  used to in America.
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  Although I have heard that they are becoming popular, not just in the Pacific Northwest,
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  which is where Olympus Spa is located near Seattle, but also in the DC area, in New York.
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  I've even heard in Dallas they are a big thing, which is fascinating to me.
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  So a traditional Korean spa is single sex and it is nude.
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  And this is a really key part of the story because this is a question about who is permitted
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  to come into Olympus Spa as a customer.
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  So kind of the main part of the spa is soaking pools like with hot water or there's a cold
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  plunge and then the signature traditional service that they offer is a skin scrub, which
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  is like just getting all that dead skin off you.
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  And it's like kind of when you realize how disgusting you are as a person and how badly
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  you've been scrubbing yourself.
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  And that is nude as well.
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  It all happens just fully nude.
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  And this is why it is and has to be a single sex space.
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  Not just all of the customers, but also all of the staff who are back in that spa area.
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  And so Olympus Spa is this little family business.
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  It was started by, it's currently managed by Soon Lee, who is the owner whom I interviewed
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  when I traveled out there and went to the spa.
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  It was founded by his parents.
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  They are immigrants from Korea and they are Christians.
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  They're evangelical Christians and they really see this business as like a labor of love
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  to serve particularly, I mean women, but particularly busy moms.
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  Like they really see it almost as a ministry of like care for women who need a rest.
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  And it's been very successful for them.
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  It's very popular among women in the area.
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  And so the question is, do they, as per the law of Washington State, have to let trans-identified
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  males who have not had any surgery, so like just to be blind, all the genitalia is intact.
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  Do they have to let those males, if they identify as women, into the spa with the other customers,
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  fully nude?
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  Customers can be as young as 13, so there are minor underage girls in there as well.
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  And they would have, do they have to make available to them all of the services, including
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  that skin scrub, which would then require a scrub tech, who in my observation were also
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  all Korean immigrants, to just get in a very intimate position with a male customer.
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  So I understand that there's a law that's on the books in Washington State called the
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  Washington Law Against Discrimination.
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  And there's also an enforcement entity called the Human Rights Commission or HRC.
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  And the HRC essentially communicated that, yes, trans-identified males, or to use their
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  language, transgender women would need to be accepted as customers.
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  And you cite, there was a court ruling about this because the Lee family brought a lawsuit
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  on First Amendment grounds.
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  And the court's opinion states, this is quoting from your book, the HRC's action under WLAD
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  does not prohibit the spa from expressing its religious beliefs.
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  But then you say on your reading of the court that Lee can do whatever he wants, provided
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  it's in his own head or in his own home or in his own house of worship, provided it has
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  no meaningful effect in his life.
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  And so on your view, this interpretation of the law and the court is essentially saying
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  you can have Christian beliefs, but you can't actually live them out or obey them in the
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  way you run your business.
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  Is that correct in your reading?
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  Yeah, I think that's a fair summary.
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  It's a complicated thing because, you know, I'm not a lawyer, but with legal scholars
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  who have looked at this, I think it's true.
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  Like, as the law is written, the spa did violate the law.
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  And I don't really think that they're contesting that.
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  What they're arguing is the way the law is written is wrong.
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  And, you know, this is very controversial in the sense that it's gone to court.
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  The Lee family did bring this lawsuit, but they did not initiate the confrontation.
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  The Human Rights Commission got involved after a would-be customer complained.
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  But on the other hand, I think there's a sense in which it's not controversial.
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  I mean, at this stage, eight in ten Americans believe that you should not have
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  trans-identified males in women's sports because we recognize that in that kind of
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  very physical space, like athletics, be that on the field or in the locker room or
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  in the spa, those sex differences matter.
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  And so here, you know, the law does not have a religious liberty exception.
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  And for the Lee family, like, yes, this is about business, their customers, their
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  employees, not really eager to have a visibly male person in there with them.
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  But it is also truly about, you know, their faith and their sense that it is immoral to
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  have a nude male and man and woman together when they're not married to each other.
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  And so, yeah, the legal situation, you know, technically, yes, they have broken the
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  law. The law should not say what it says.
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  And that's something that, you know, very akin to the women's sports question.
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  I think the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum agree.
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  Yeah, yeah, I think about how evangelical Christians sometimes come across in the
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  public sphere and sometimes we haven't done the best job with our public witness, but
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  you have this quote from your book, our failures do not justify treating public religion
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  as a sinister imposition.
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  Following Jesus is not an at home hobby.
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  How would you respond to somebody whose view is, well, these are private religious
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  beliefs. And by refusing to admit at least some trans identified males as customers,
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  the Lee family really is imposing their beliefs on the public.
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  Yeah, so I would say a few things.
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  One is, you know, this kind of nondiscrimination law, it comes from particularly the
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  civil rights era where we're thinking about things like if a black person goes into a
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  grocery store, can you say I will not sell you bread?
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  Right. And where the law landed is in those kinds of public accommodations.
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  No, you can't you can't do that.
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  This is not a grocery store, right?
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  This is not about selling bread.
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  This is a very intimate, single sex setting.
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  And as much as that kind of law rejects racial discrimination, rightly, it also protects
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  sex segregation.
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  Because, again, we recognize that there are situations in which the physical sex differences
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  between men and women really do matter.
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  And particularly, again, thinking about those customers as young as 13, when I visited the
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  spa, which I did because I needed like as a reporter to see it for myself.
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  And also you couldn't I couldn't just walk in there in street clothes and kind of look
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  around and everybody. Right.
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  That was deeply inappropriate.
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  So when I visited the spa, like I did see a girl there with her mother who was probably a
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  teenager. They do have these younger, underage customers who just like you can't expose
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  them to male bodies in a setting like that.
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  But I think, you know, there is this we do have legal protection for for single sex spaces
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  like this where it really does matter.
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  And so this is you could argue this is a case of competing rights.
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  But I would and that happens.
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  That happens in a free society.
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  And we have to figure that out.
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  But I would say in addition to the issue of sex protection on one side of the ledger, we
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  do also have that religious liberty piece.
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  Because, again, it is not just about their business.
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  It is not just about the comfort of their customers and their staff.
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  It's not just about the sexual differences between male and female that you can
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  acknowledge even, you know, regardless of faith.
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  But it is they are evangelicals and it does matter for them.
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  And so, you know, that is that is a deeply important thing that that even though we
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  sometimes need to recognize rights are in competition, like the the deeply important
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  nature of religious liberty in particular is something that we rightly value in America
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  and have and always have, you know, it's right there in the First Amendment.
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  Like it's highest on the priority list to say that this is something that needs to be
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  protected. And, you know, again, thinking back to when I went to the spa and met with
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  Soon-Lee, you know, this is not a confrontational guy.
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  He is not like trying to have this fight.
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  He did not pick this fight.
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  You know, I don't think it ever even occurred to him that the state of Washington would
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  want him to let intact males into his ladies only spa.
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  But that is the position in which he finds himself.
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  And I think it's to his credit that he decided I'm going to do something about this.
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  Yeah. To your point about a free society, it seems like a significant part of your argument
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  is a free society needs to make room for people living out their religious convictions, not
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  just having it in a fully privatized manner, but being able to run their business in a
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  way that lines up with their faith convictions.
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  At the same time, even though they didn't pick this fight, right, the Lee family is now in
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  the midst of a lawsuit.
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  I learned from you they recently appealed.
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  And so they're looking at possibly going to the Supreme Court.
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  I also know in your book you shared a little bit about your Anabaptist heritage.
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  And so that's a Christian tradition that tends to be very skeptical of using like the state
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  instruments of power in any way.
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  So how would you speak to maybe a Christian who maybe agrees on what the faith convictions
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  are, but is more skittish about using those instruments of public contention to press our
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  case?
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  Yeah.
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  So I think a really key distinction here is thinking about principles of voluntary
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  association.
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  Are we forcing people to hang out with us?
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  Are we forcing them to do something with us that they don't want to do?
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  Are we doing some kind of harm to their life or liberty or property?
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  Or is it about sort of like more of a principle of leave me alone?
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  That we would mutually leave each other alone, not in like a mean way, like we don't want to
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  hang out with you way, but just like people living together who have differences of opinion
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  in a free society.
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  And we're kind of doing our own thing.
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  And as long as we're not hurting each other, that's okay.
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  And so, you know, in the case of the Spob, you know, he seemingly is seeking to run his
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  business as he believes God told him to do.
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  He did not go out and start this fight.
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  He is not trying to prevent trans, like transgender identifying people from transitioning from
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  living how they choose.
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  He's not interfering with anything else that they're doing.
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  He's not using the power of the state to control them.
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  He's not, you know, trying to ban gay marriage.
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  He is just trying to operate his own business as he believes is right for the business and
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  as he believes God told him to.
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  And again, I do think it's important to emphasize that it's, you know, it's not a grocery store
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  and it is about single sex, very intimate spaces.
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  Like it's a unique kind of business.
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  There are many businesses where you wouldn't run into this and an accountant is probably
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  not going to have this.
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  Right.
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  But like this is a unique kind of business where these details do matter.
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  I really appreciated your coverage and your in-person reporting to cover the story of
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  the Lee family and Olympus Spa.
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  But I also was really moved by another business you looked at.
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  So in the Portland area, owner of a tattoo shop named Meagan, and you included this wonderful
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  quote from her.
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  So I just want to quote it.
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  She's kind of talking about the overall culture and attitude towards Christian faith in the
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  Portland area.
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  And she says, to be honest, I usually just avoid talking about my faith at my shop.
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  If anything ever comes up about church or Christians, usually in a negative light, I'm
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  just like, I hope they don't ask me any questions, which is probably terrible, but it feels so
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  awkward.
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  I don't want them to think that I am what they think of when they think about Christians,
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  homophobic, racist, probably Trump supporters and all that brings with it.
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  So I feel like a lot more Christians are maybe in Meagan's situation than the Lee family's,
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  where it's not that we have some niche same set or single sex space that we need to protect.
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  But we just feel awkward about sharing our faith, perhaps in a business context or in
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  some sort of public context.
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  So how would you encourage those of us who are in Meagan's boat?
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  Yeah, I think you're right that that's a much more common position.
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  It's a position in which I found myself at times in the past.
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  And it honestly is part of why I, how I decided to write this book.
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  I think I tell in the book a story about, I was reading another book by J.I.
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  Packer for something at my church.
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  And this is not a super old book from Packer.
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  It's within the past decade, it's recent.
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  And so basically, present day, and I remember reading it.
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  And he's talking about how he's an evangelical, and he's like, so happy about it.
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  And I was like, having this experience in myself of like, why is he so happy about it?
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  Like, shouldn't he feel a little more delicate about this?
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  Like, isn't this a little bit awkward?
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  Like, why is he not embarrassed?
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  Why is he just like, so on board with like, because I'm an evangelical.
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  And I really had to think about like, I work in Christianity today, I go to an evangelical
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  church, I went to an evangelical seminary.
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  Like, it's not like it's a secret that I'm an evangelical.
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  And yet I'm having this response as I'm reading Packer.
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  A response that yeah, I think is in some ways quite similar to what Meagan sort of feels like.
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  And as I wrestled through that, and like decided to write the book, the conclusions I came to is,
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  you know, as you said in the quote earlier, sometimes we do not always behave ourselves
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  well in public.
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  Certainly, this is a big movement, it has its flaws, it has its weird stuff.
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  Any movement with tens of millions of people will, there are things that we need to work on,
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  we should like give a good listening ear to like a real and good faith critique and see
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  what we can do.
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  All of that is true.
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  And at the same time, I don't think we need to be ashamed to be evangelicals.
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  And I know that that is a hard, can be a hard thing to get over.
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  Especially if like Meagan, you are in a social context where it does feel really intense,
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  and you do have a pretty good sense of what people are assuming about you, and you know
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  that it's bad.
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  I get that.
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  But what I would really just encourage people is like, if you are in a good evangelical
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  church on Sunday morning, like you know what goes on there, you know that it is normal,
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  and that it is fine.
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  And that, you know, the people that are not perfect, but they are like doing their best
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  to worship God and to help their neighbors and like serve their community in tangible ways.
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  That evidence is in front of your own eyes and hold on to that.
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  Remember what that is like, instead of allowing yourself to sort of have your thoughts taken
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  over by these other depictions that are maybe uncharitable and maybe have some grain of
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  truth and something we need to work on, but do not give a good sense of the whole end
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  of the evangelicalism that you actually do know and live.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  I was actually really moved at the end of your book.
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  Spoilers for those.
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  Everybody, please go out and buy the book and read it.
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  But in your conclusion, you kind of give three examples of like how to think about evangelicalism.
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  And the final one is think about evangelicalism like you think about your mom.
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  And I was wondering if you could just speak like how that kind of came to you and how
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  that shapes your attitude when you have these conversations.
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  I mean, two things.
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  One is, it is a long standing thing in church history to talk about the church as mother.
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  So there's like a nice historical resonance there.
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  And, you know, there's a reason why that's been used a lot.
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  And I think part of that reason is, and this is the other thing, like everybody has a mom.
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  Everybody's been real mad at their mom, right?
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  Like we have all had those experiences of your mom is frustrating, like, you know, the
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  things that are wrong with her.
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  You know that she makes the same mistakes over and over and over again.
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  And that, you know, every time you come home for a visit, you are having that same conversation
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  that you don't want to have.
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  And it's going to happen to you.
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  And so I think you can have, you can be so aware of the flaws in your mom or in this
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  movement.
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  And that doesn't preclude you from also seeing the good in it, and also loving it and wanting
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  the best for it.
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  And again, not being shamed of it.
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  You know, there's that classic playground dynamic of like, you can make fun of your mom,
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  but someone else can't make fun of her.
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  And I think that that's, I don't know, maybe it's not great to use such a childish example,
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  but I think that's kind of the turn that I hope that people like Megan are able to
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  make of not whitewashing the situation, not descending into like closing their eyes to
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  real problems, but like having that basic affection and loyalty to a tradition that
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  formed them and to which they owe a great deal.
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  Praise the Lord.
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  The church as mother language and idea comes to me in the Anglican tradition, which I know
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  is one we share as well now.
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  And yeah, so I love that way of imagining the church universal, but also specifically
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  imagining evangelicalism that way just felt really appropriate and really like a humanizing
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  way of us talking about this tradition and all the good that's come through it imperfectly.
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  Yes.
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  So speaking of Anglicanism, I know you included a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer in
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  your book.
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  Would you be willing to just close our time with that?
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  So I picked this to start off the book because, as you'll hear when I read it here, it is
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  about defense, but it's not about defense from external enemies.
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  It's about defense from ourselves, which I think is a really good preface in terms of
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  keeping that tension of not saying we are perfect and should be immune to critique,
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  but also saying, you know, this is a good thing and let's recognize the goods and not
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  overstate the wrongs.
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  So here's the prayer.
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  O Lord, our Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, You have brought us safely
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  to the beginning of this day.
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  Defend us by Your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin nor run into any danger,
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  and that, guided by Your Spirit, we may do what is righteous in Your sight.
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  Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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  Amen.
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  Thank you.
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  Thanks for listening.
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