Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Michael Rhodes on What the Bible Says About Politics | #12

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Michael Rhodes on What the Bible Says About Politics | #12 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.
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  Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways
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  Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,
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  Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now,
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  Speaker 1: on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome
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  Speaker 1: to this episode of Thinking Christian. We're joined today by
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  Speaker 1: Michael Rhodes. Michael is a lecturer in Old Testament from
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  Speaker 1: Cary Baptist College in New Zealand. And he's also been
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  Speaker 1: a pastor and involved in community development. He's the author
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  Speaker 1: of a new book, We've actually had Michael on the
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  Speaker 1: show talking about his previous book, Reimagining Biblical Politics, Just Discipleship,
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  Speaker 1: and then Formative Feasting and Practicing the King's Economy. But
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  Speaker 1: this book that we're talking about today is Reimagining Biblical Politics,
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  Speaker 1: What Scripture Says and about public life and why it matters.
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  Speaker 1: And so, Michael, welcome back to the show. I know
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  Speaker 1: you're going to be doing some other stuff with this.
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  Speaker 1: You have a sub stack that you write on regularly,
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  Speaker 1: and then there's a podcast coming out. So why don't
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  Speaker 1: we just start giving people that information, and then we'll
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  Speaker 1: roll into the book and the topic and see where
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  Speaker 1: this goes.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, guys. It's great to be on the Thinking
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  Speaker 3: Christian podcast. Great to be back. That's fun. So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: the book is Reimagining Biblical Politics. It's out Um, it's
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  Speaker 3: hopefully an accessible resource for people who read books. Um,
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  Speaker 3: but there's also, uh, a companion podcast. Um, that's, uh,
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  Speaker 3: the first season of the crossroads podcast. So if you
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  Speaker 3: look up crossroad podcast, which is cross and then R
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  Speaker 3: H O D E S my last name, it's a
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  Speaker 3: terrible pun, but the first season of the crossroads podcast
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  Speaker 3: is called re-imagining biblical politics. And if you search for
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  Speaker 3: that on your podcast thing, you'll probably find it as well. Um,
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  Speaker 3: And then, yeah, you can follow me on Substack if
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  Speaker 3: you're interested. The book and the podcast, we can maybe
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  Speaker 3: talk about this, are– I've tried to create resources for
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  Speaker 3: thinking about politics in the Bible that intentionally do not
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  Speaker 3: address contemporary American political issues. And that's to give the
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  Speaker 3: church a resource, a partisan divided church, a resource that
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  Speaker 3: they can use together. If you follow me on Substack,
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  Speaker 3: you will discover that I have lots of opinions and
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  Speaker 3: I'm happy to tell you about those things. you know,
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  Speaker 3: sort of like buyer beware. But yeah, that's where I
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  Speaker 3: am on the internet.
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  Speaker 2: Very cool. Well, no, it's good to have you back on.
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  Speaker 1: And yeah, I thought the structure of the book was
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  Speaker 1: really cool. You're basically, and if you want to re-describe this,
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  Speaker 1: but you're basically walking through a series of biblical passages
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  Speaker 1: to help people frame out what scripture says about politics
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  Speaker 1: or what biblical texts would have some sort of implications
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  Speaker 1: for politics maybe.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean, in my church, I know not
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  Speaker 3: everyone's the same. In American life, there are some churches
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  Speaker 3: that are obsessed with politics and there's some churches that
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  Speaker 3: like never want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.
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  Speaker 3: In my circles, it was very common if you were
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  Speaker 3: thinking about like electoral politics or state national politics, you know,
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  Speaker 3: If you ask what the Bible says, you basically immediately
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  Speaker 3: quote Romans 13, and then you're basically done and move on.
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  Speaker 3: As we say in New Zealand, done and dusted. Not
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  Speaker 3: much more to say. And so part of the thing
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  Speaker 3: I wanted to do in this book is say, what
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  Speaker 3: does the whole of Scripture, how might the whole of
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  Speaker 3: Scripture shape our political imagination for faithful political discipleship? And
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  Speaker 3: there's sort of two huge things that I discovered in
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  Speaker 3: the process of doing the research for this book. One
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  Speaker 3: is the Bible says all sorts of stuff about politics.
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  Speaker 3: And what it says, it says in many different voices.
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  Speaker 3: So if you think about scripture as like a choir
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  Speaker 3: of voices, they might all be singing the same song,
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  Speaker 3: but there's some dissonant harmonies in the bunch. Or if
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  Speaker 3: you think about the Bible as like a photo mosaic,
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  Speaker 3: if you step back and see the whole, there is
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  Speaker 3: a big picture. But if you zoom in, there's a
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  Speaker 3: bunch of little snapshot images that are all quite diverse
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  Speaker 3: that make up this big photo mosaic. And so in
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  Speaker 3: the Bible, you've got people like John in Revelation who
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  Speaker 3: basically says, hey, Babylon is a beast. No collaboration. Get
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  Speaker 3: out of there. And you've got voices like Jeremiah that
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  Speaker 3: are saying, you're in Babylon. Pray for the flourishing of
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  Speaker 3: Babylon and seek the flourishing of Babylon while you're there.
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  Speaker 3: You've got voices that say, like Paul does, you know,
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  Speaker 3: submit to the governing authorities. You've also got Paul's example
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  Speaker 3: of not submitting to the governing authorities, but fleeing an
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  Speaker 3: official trial, which he thought was unjust, which he talks
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  Speaker 3: about and Acts talks about. But even if you get
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  Speaker 3: beyond Paul, you've got characters like the midwives in Exodus
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  Speaker 3: who openly disobeyed the Pharaoh, lied to him about it,
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  Speaker 3: and God rewards them. So you have this great diversity
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  Speaker 3: of political witnesses, and I think every biblical voice is
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  Speaker 3: a gift. It is a great cloud of political witnesses
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  Speaker 3: that can help foster a deep Christian political posture capable
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  Speaker 3: of more faithfully navigating our complicated, complex world. On the
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  Speaker 3: other hand, amidst all this diversity, I think there is
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  Speaker 3: one big message that comes through again and again, which
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  Speaker 3: is that the Lord reigns, that God is King, that
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  Speaker 3: God is on the throne. And that runs all the
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  Speaker 3: way through Scripture, from the first chapter, which portrays the
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  Speaker 3: Creator as a sort of royal king who creates creation
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  Speaker 3: and then inhabits it, to Exodus, when they come through
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  Speaker 3: the waters of the Red Sea and they sing, the
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  Speaker 3: Lord reigns on the shores of the Red Sea, to
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  Speaker 3: the Psalms, where the Lord reigns as the center point
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  Speaker 3: of Israel's worship, to Jesus' preaching, preaching the good news
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  Speaker 3: of the kingdom of God, all the way to Paul
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  Speaker 3: in Rome at the end of Acts, declaring the good
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  Speaker 3: news of the kingdom of God, to Revelation where what
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  Speaker 3: the saints are singing, you know, that great crowd of
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  Speaker 3: witnesses from every tongue and tribe and nation and people,
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  Speaker 3: what are they doing? They're praising the King of Kings
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  Speaker 3: and Lord of Lords. So God reigns gives this unifying
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  Speaker 3: structure to scripture politics. But then how you flesh that out,
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  Speaker 3: both among the people of God, which is a political question,
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  Speaker 3: and in relationship to cultures and peoples and nations that
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  Speaker 3: don't recognize God's allegiance, which is another political question, those
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  Speaker 3: things are quite diverse, and I think it's all a gift.
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  Speaker 3: And so in the book, the structure of the book
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  Speaker 3: is trying to help readers encounter that unity and diversity
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  Speaker 3: in a useful way for their discipleship.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful.
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  Speaker 1: I'm glad you talked a little bit about the unifying
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  Speaker 1: aspect of it, because it does seem to me that
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  Speaker 1: when I was just looking through the book, it's like, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: all of these are somehow fitted into faithful testimony, faithful
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  Speaker 1: action within the world. Even though you have different political arrangements,
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  Speaker 1: even though you have different, you know, different actions, you know,
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  Speaker 1: am I submitting to government? Am I obeying government? Am
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  Speaker 1: I rejecting government? Am I lying about it? Am I doing,
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  Speaker 1: you know, all of these.
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  Speaker 2: Are classified as faithful actions.
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  Speaker 1: Ashish and I have talked about this on the podcast
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  Speaker 1: in the past about the tensions involved in sort of
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  Speaker 1: lying being, you know, part of the range of faithfulness
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  Speaker 1: and how that relates to, you know, a virtue perspective
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  Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. And so I felt like
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  Speaker 1: some of the chapters that dealt with that were actually
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  Speaker 1: really helpful. The midwives in Egypt were a great example.
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  Speaker 1: Rahab would probably be another, you know, she does something
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  Speaker 1: very similar there. And so, yeah, just really interesting.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. And what's interesting is, there's also ambiguity in the
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  Speaker 3: text in certain places. So the midwives lie and, and
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  Speaker 3: hustle the Pharaoh. And it says explicitly, and God saw
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  Speaker 3: that they feared him and bless them, gave them houses,
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  Speaker 3: probably families of their own is the idea there. But
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  Speaker 3: when you get to a book like Esther, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: if you read Esther afresh, like you pretend like you
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  Speaker 3: haven't read it before. And like, it's not supposed to
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  Speaker 3: give you easy answers at every point. You're going like, wait, what?
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  Speaker 3: And oftentimes they're going, should they really have done that?
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  Speaker 3: And the book never settles that question. So whereas some
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  Speaker 3: texts sort of say, hey, look, let's put some other
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  Speaker 3: options on the menu of faithful political discipleship, other texts
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  Speaker 3: as narratives, as ambiguous narratives, force us to have a
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  Speaker 3: certain kind of humility and skepticism about even our own
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  Speaker 3: political practice because we're kind of going, oh, man, I
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  Speaker 3: wonder what God thinks about that. I wonder what God
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  Speaker 3: thinks about us. And we can't get to the answers
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  Speaker 3: too quickly in a book like Esther. So I just found,
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  Speaker 3: you know, like I've sort of been reflecting. I've written
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  Speaker 3: a few books, three of them, this being the third,
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  Speaker 3: I realize now are part of an informal trilogy, Practicing
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  Speaker 3: the King's Economy, Just Discipleship, Reimagining Biblical Politics. They're not
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  Speaker 3: written that way. I didn't know that at the time.
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  Speaker 3: They're written at different sort of levels. This is a
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  Speaker 3: much more accessible book in some ways than Just Discipleship.
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  Speaker 3: But really the trio is aspects of Rhodes' discipleship that
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  Speaker 3: were weak that he wanted to know more about from
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  Speaker 3: the Bible. That was sort of the driving. So economic life,
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  Speaker 3: justice life, politics. Obviously those are related. But so this
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  Speaker 3: was a genuine research project. What does the Bible say?
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  Speaker 3: And I just was delighted to discover how challenging, rewarding, helpful,
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  Speaker 3: I found scripture to be, in my political thinking, when
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  Speaker 3: I asked these questions and lingered in these texts.
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  Speaker 4: Thanks for all that. I really appreciate the way that
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  Speaker 4: you're setting up your projects. It sort of flows into
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  Speaker 4: what I wanted to ask you, so I'll just get
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  Speaker 4: right into that. Early on in your newer book, you
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  Speaker 4: You do a good job of delineating the difference between
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  Speaker 4: what you're doing when you're saying a political being, political disciples,
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  Speaker 4: those sorts of things. And the way that I think
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  Speaker 4: on a general basis, people tend to think of in
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  Speaker 4: our current age, what is a political being?
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  Speaker 2: Do you mind talking a little bit about that?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think what you're getting at here is
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  Speaker 3: sort of hidden in the title, you know, Reimagining Biblical Politics,
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  Speaker 3: what Scripture says about public life. So in sort of
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  Speaker 3: the popular language, when we say politics, we mean government stuff,
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  Speaker 3: you know, statecraft. We mean elections. We mean running for
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  Speaker 3: political office. We might mean protest. And often, tragically, in
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  Speaker 3: an American context, at least if your circles are like mine,
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  Speaker 3: we We mainly hyper focus on like the news hour
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  Speaker 3: and national federal kind of electoral stuff. And part of
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  Speaker 3: what I want to say is throughout scripture, the Bible
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  Speaker 3: not only says that the Lord is king, but it
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  Speaker 3: describes the people of God as an outpost of that kingdom,
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  Speaker 3: you know, a city on a hill to use Jesus's language, right? Like,
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  Speaker 3: and so the life of God's people in public is political, right?
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  Speaker 3: when God's people live out God's reign and way, when
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  Speaker 3: we live out our king's agenda, when we embrace our
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  Speaker 3: king's political agenda as a people and as individuals, this
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  Speaker 3: is political. So when churches foster children, when we welcome
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  Speaker 3: the immigrant, when we love our neighbor, when we forgive
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  Speaker 3: our enemies, this is a public action. And you see
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  Speaker 3: this occasionally in obvious ways, like a few years ago,
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  Speaker 3: the white supremacist shooting at the black church in, I
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  Speaker 3: think it was Charleston, or the shooting at the Amish school,
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  Speaker 3: both occasions where the faith community as a faith community
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  Speaker 3: responds to horrific violence with the loving forgiveness of Jesus.
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  Speaker 3: And that is a public political act. It has public
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  Speaker 3: political significance. And on those occasions, that political significance was
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  Speaker 3: noted by People who have no interest in church otherwise.
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  Speaker 3: So I think all of that stuff is political and
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  Speaker 3: part of seeking the good of the city in that
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  Speaker 3: Jeremiah 29 way. That is political, even when that involves more,
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  Speaker 3: as it does in Jeremiah 29, raising families, getting involved
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  Speaker 3: with agriculture and that kind of stuff, rather than running
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  Speaker 3: for office or whatever else. So in the book, I
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  Speaker 3: often talk about the politics of God's people as a
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  Speaker 3: community that recognizes God as king. As outpost politics, right?
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  Speaker 3: City on a hill, a people living out allegiance to God.
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  Speaker 3: And then I talk about another kind of politics, our
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  Speaker 3: pilgrim politics, which is how people who recognize God as
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  Speaker 3: king get involved with the nations and places and cultures
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  Speaker 3: and communities that do not necessarily recognize God as king.
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  Speaker 3: And that I'm calling pilgrim politics at the risk of
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  Speaker 3: making you think about the guys with the buckles on
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  Speaker 3: their hats, you know? I'm not giving you like Thanksgiving
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  Speaker 3: imagery or something. But what I mean by pilgrims, like
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  Speaker 3: the sort of like that sojourner image, you know, and
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  Speaker 3: if Jesus says you're the city on the hill, he
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  Speaker 3: also says you're the salt of the earth. You got
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  Speaker 3: to get out there. And so Christians are called to engage,
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  Speaker 3: I think, politically in a variety of ways in that
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  Speaker 3: second sense, you know, but I want to broaden the
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  Speaker 3: range of things we see as political and therefore involved
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  Speaker 3: in our political discipleship.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great. Can I ask a follow-up?
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  Speaker 3: Is that the question you were asking, Ashish?
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  Speaker 4: It very much is. Very much is.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
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  Speaker 4: Actually, the way you responded leads into a follow-up I
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  Speaker 4: was already thinking about, so I'll just jump into that
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  Speaker 4: as well. For better or for worse, I would probably
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  Speaker 4: argue for worse, especially in the American climate, we tend
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  Speaker 4: to think in terms of very clearly delineated lines between
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  Speaker 4: political identities. Yes. And as a result, as you hinted
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  Speaker 4: to with your comments about the distinction between your book
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  Speaker 4: versus your sub-stack, that creates very clearly delineated lines in
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  Speaker 4: church politics and church identity. And then the further result
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  Speaker 4: is that it can become too easy, unfortunately, to begin
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  Speaker 4: to see the church as a political animal in that
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  Speaker 4: first sense you talked about, rather than as an outpost.
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  Speaker 4: for something else, right?
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 4: But I appreciate the image you give of a photo mosaic.
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  Speaker 4: Because I think what you're describing in that photo mosaic
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  Speaker 4: is the fact that inherently, even the way that the
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  Speaker 4: Bible talks about political identity in your second sense, requires
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  Speaker 4: blurred lines already, right? There's no clear answer that's universal,
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  Speaker 4: that's good for here, there, and everywhere, and never mind
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  Speaker 4: for here versus, say, in New Zealand. Can you talk
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  Speaker 4: a little bit Yeah, so could you talk a little
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  Speaker 4: bit about why maybe the blurred lines is a good
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  Speaker 4: thing as opposed to maybe the boogeyman that modern Western
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  Speaker 4: Christians can often think, well, blurred lines means lack of
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  Speaker 4: definitiveness and therefore something to be scared of.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's such a great question. So
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  Speaker 3: let me say a couple things about that. One is...
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  Speaker 3: It's helpful to know that the Bible itself doesn't give
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  Speaker 3: one answer to many political questions because it helps give
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  Speaker 3: us permission to accept that there will be no one
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  Speaker 3: right answer on many political questions in our own context.
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  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean there'll never be a right answer, a
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  Speaker 3: right answer. It just means in many political contexts, there'll
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  Speaker 3: be a diversity of possible approaches. And Part of the reason,
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  Speaker 3: if you look in Scripture, I think that you see
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  Speaker 3: a diversity of approaches is simply that the situation changes.
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  Speaker 3: So even if you had a group of people who
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  Speaker 3: did agree on everything, right, your political discipleship would still
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  Speaker 3: have to be nimble and flexible because the situation changes, right?
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  Speaker 3: The midwives do what they do in part because of
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  Speaker 3: the options that are open to them, right? Daniel... who
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  Speaker 3: gets kidnapped, put through the Babylon, you know, Future Leaders
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  Speaker 3: of Babylon training program, he has different options. And he
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  Speaker 3: navigates those options differently. And we, again, have different options
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  Speaker 3: than Paul or Peter or, you know. And so part
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  Speaker 3: of the thing is just the situation is always changing.
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  Speaker 3: And so we have to have discernment how to figure
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  Speaker 3: out how the stable convictions that we have get fleshed
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  Speaker 3: out you know, in the messy world that we live in.
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  Speaker 3: And we have different callings and gifts. And so I
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  Speaker 3: think there's a lot of room for like blurred lines.
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  Speaker 3: What should we be doing now? Because part of what
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  Speaker 3: we're trying to figure out is how to read our
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  Speaker 3: current moment, you know? And that's a really crucial part
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  Speaker 3: of political discipleship is learning together to read our current moment.
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  Speaker 3: What's going on and what are the possibilities in front
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  Speaker 3: of us? And then how does Scripture shape us to
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  Speaker 3: navigate those faithfully? As we do that, we're going to
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  Speaker 3: have all sorts of discernment disagreements because we're going to
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  Speaker 3: read the situation differently. And we are going to disagree
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  Speaker 3: about how exactly to live out Scripture's vision in our messy,
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  Speaker 3: muddled world. and part of that is, this is kind
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  Speaker 3: of the other side of it. There's just a lot
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  Speaker 3: of stuff that the Bible doesn't tell us. The Bible
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  Speaker 3: does not tell us how to navigate a democracy because
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  Speaker 3: it does not ever write to people who were living
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  Speaker 3: in one. Like, obviously the Bible does not give us
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  Speaker 3: a blueprint on AI or gerrymandering or, you know, two
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  Speaker 3: party political system. Like we don't have, the Bible does
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  Speaker 3: not give us a blueprint on, And once you recognize
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  Speaker 3: that you don't have blueprints on those things, you realize
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  Speaker 3: you actually don't have blueprints on much at all. Right.
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  Speaker 3: You do have some blueprints. And I think among God's people,
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  Speaker 3: we have more clear demands. But for instance, my opinion
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  Speaker 3: is that like the Bible demands in unequivocal terms, no ifs, ands,
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  Speaker 3: buts about it, that we love God. and care for
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  Speaker 3: vulnerable immigrants. Like Deuteronomy 10 says that. The Lord loves
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  Speaker 3: the immigrant, so you shall love the immigrant. And frankly,
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  Speaker 3: it doesn't say, it doesn't put any asterisks beside that.
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  Speaker 3: Like this kind, that kind, etc. Right? On the other hand,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: that doesn't mean the Bible tells us exactly what number
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: of immigrants should be welcomed into America's pluralistic society. It
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: doesn't tell us exactly how to handle situations where that doesn't.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: It gives us some values, right? But it doesn't tell
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: us exactly how to navigate that. And so it is
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: possible that for Christians to disagree about some of the details,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: but they need to be called to the costly center
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: of that commitment. And that's why I feel like sometimes
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: in the church, we sort of waffle. You've got pastors
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: right now in this country who are afraid to say
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: what the Bible says about immigration because it will be
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: perceived in a certain political way. And unfortunately, if you're
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: a preacher of the gospel, you're just not allowed to
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: pick and choose, you know? You're just not allowed to
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: pick and choose. The same is true for like sexual sin.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: You're not allowed to pick and choose talking about sexual
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: sin because that might trigger certain assumptions about how that
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: gets fleshed out in the way we vote or something.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: You're just not allowed. On the other hand, especially in
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: sort of like a preaching moment, the pastor has neither
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: the expertise nor the authority to say, and this is
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: exactly how you tease out this commitment to love the refugee,
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: the immigrant, in the public square. The priesthood of all
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: believers have to hear the word of God and then
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: go out and discern together how they're going to do that.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: And there will be inevitable ambiguity in that discernment process.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: And that discernment process can be a gift because the
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: members of the body of Christ see different things and
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: we can help each other see what we're missing. And so, yeah,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: part of what the book is trying to do is
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: give us resources to come together around the mandate and
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: then release us For the work of discerning how to
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: live that mandate out in a messy, complicated world, right?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: So I don't know if that gets into what you're asking, Ashish,
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: but I think that's sort of how I would say it. Again,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: even if you go, oh, I know we're supposed to
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: welcome immigrants, and I'm convinced that we are not doing that,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: and that what we're doing is wrong towards immigrants, I
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: want to do something about that. Well, think about all
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: the options the Bible puts on the map. Your church could,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: as a church, get involved in caring for immigrants. Some
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: of you could go out and advocate. People could run
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: for office. People could change the way they do business.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: The Bible would give you lots of different avenues for
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: potential action in line with this commitment. And that's just
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: one thing Christians are called to care about. And part
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: of the problem in our current partisan sort of state-national-city
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: politics is our two-party-by-design system forces us to pick, at
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: different moments, teams that have opinions on all sorts of issues.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: So even if we knew what God cared about with
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: one issue, we have to think about and discern, well,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: how does that play out when I've only got a
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: couple options? So it's very complicated.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: A lot of things raised there. So let me start
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: with this one first. You mentioned, you know, sort of
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: picking one side or the other during an election. And
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I've often thought about this when I go to the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: store around Thanksgiving.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Because you go through the checkout line and you get
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to you can say they ask you if you want
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to round up to help feed a family for Thanksgiving.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: I don't care whether you round up or not.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: But my concern is that sometimes when we round up,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: we go, okay, I'm done.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I gave it the office. Now I don't have to
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: do anything else.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: There's a sort of a minimum standard that we set
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: that becomes a maximum standard for what we should do.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes I think voting ends up being that. We
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of emotional energy and intellectual energy trying
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to figure out who to vote for between one of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: two quasi-identical candidates in a lot of ways. And also
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: just the recognition that let's say we're voting for president, right?
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: We know that there's a system, at least in the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: United States, of checks and balances, things that this person
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: is going to have to navigate, negotiate, compromise, like all
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: of those different aspects. So even when they're promising to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: do something, we know they can't really promise it. Like
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: there's a whole mechanism that has to be taking place there.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: So On some level, we just spend an awful lot
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of time figuring out who to vote for when, in reality,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of other ways that we can
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: participate in.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I'll let you either agree or disagree with that or
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: nuance it, but then sort of the following up there
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: is I think the expanded view of politics that you
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: talked through is actually really helpful because my guess is
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of times pastors are struggling to convey something like, hey,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: we're supposed to love immigrants.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Because people are defaulting to the wrong understanding of what
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it means to have what it means to participate in
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: politics in the first place.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: And so there's a lot there that just I think
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: when we say we, you know, we need to care
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: for the immigrants.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: We need to clarify who the we is. Yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes that we may very well just be
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: the church. And, you know, the country does what the
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: country is going to do. We can't control it, but
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: we can. testify within it.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: So, man, that's great thoughts, James, and I have a
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: number of kind of things I'd want to say about that.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: So maybe one response to just clarify. When I say
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: the church has this ambiguity and this discernment and so
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: the pastor's not telling you how to do these things,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: that could be read as saying Christians should not be
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: aggressively involved, wholeheartedly involved. That's not what I mean. I
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: think Christians should walk out of the doors of the church.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: They should collaborate with other Christians of like mind, and
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: they should get involved. And we should have strong opinions.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: So I'm not arguing for like, well, we're kind of
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: all in the middle, so whatever. I'm saying the local church,
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: the preaching task, gathers around Scripture and then sends people
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: out for the risky, complicated, messy work that will always
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: leave us like an Esther going, I'm not sure we
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: got that all right. But like in Esther, we have
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: to act because they had to act. They had to respond.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: And it is true that inaction is a choice as well.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: So just to clarify that on my end, because as
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: you're talking, I was realizing you could hear me saying
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: something I'm not saying. I do agree that we need
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: to do both of those things that you described. We
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: need to expand our understanding of political action to include
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: the public work of God's people. In our churches, in
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in every area of life.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: We need to see that as a properly political thing.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: And I would also say we need to expand our
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: pilgrim political action. It's like the way we engage the
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: state to include far more than federal and national elections. And,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: you know, just like I'm not a political scientist, but
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: it doesn't take a brainiac to see in a huge
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: number of the states in our country. your presidential vote
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: means nothing. Like I'm in Tennessee, like my, I, it
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter who I vote for, right? Like Tennessee is
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: going red for the predictable future, you know? And if
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: I like that, I like that. If I don't, I don't,
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: but that's what it is. On the other hand, like
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: your city council meeting is open to everybody. And in
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: Memphis city council, anybody can talk to the city council
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: about anything for two minutes at the end of the meeting.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: And it's, Your local police chief has to pay attention
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: to you if you walk in, right? And if you
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: call your council member or maybe your local state senator
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: or whatever, they have to listen to you in a
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: different way. Now, that doesn't mean I don't think we
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: should be involved in national politics, especially if your read
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: on the national political situation is that there's a lot
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: at stake at any one point in time. I would
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: tend to agree that there's a lot at stake currently.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: But I do think in general... We should be a
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: lot more involved in school boards and residence associations, city councils,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: local protests, local– you can rant on Facebook. But if
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: you write the editor of your local newspaper, as I
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: did last week, they'll usually take a pitch for you
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: for an editorial. So you have more options even in
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: your pilgrim politics locally that I would love to see
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: Christians take. And, you know, like I'm a Bible scholar, right?
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Like I've been involved with community development, which is usually
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: not involved with partisan politics very much. And I've been
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: a pastor and a Bible scholar. So my pilgrim political
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: action is as a lay person. But as a lay person,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: you know, I've been involved with local advocacy and protests.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: I've been involved with res associations that have fought for
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: speed bumps. You know, I've been involved with trying to
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: take care of slumlords on my street. And you have
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: a much more direct line there. So yes, I want
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: to expand the range of possibilities. And I agree. Sorry,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: one more thing I want to say. I do agree
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: with you, James, that sometimes our primary public action is
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: going to be in the church. And I actually think
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: if you're thinking about the whole body of Christ, I
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: want to be really careful how I nuance this, but
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: there is a certain theological priority to our response in
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: the church. So I don't believe Christians can contribute to
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: the common good unless we've received the uncommonly good news
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: of Jesus and are living it out in uncommonly good
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: ways in our lives. So I don't think we have
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: anything to offer the state that we aren't already stumbling
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: towards our own life. So I think there's a certain
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: logical priority. But I will also say that there is
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: this rumor going around among conservative Christians in particular that
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: justice work, poverty work, that kind of thing is the
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: church's job and not the state's job. And one thing
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: I show very clearly in this book is that on
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: the few occasions where we get glimpses into how we
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: should engage the political authorities, it's people like Daniel saying,
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: break off your sins with justice and show mercy to
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: the oppressed. It's the non-Israelite king at the end of
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: the book of Proverbs telling you what the non-Israelite mom
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: said to him, open your mouth not to guzzle down
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: food and wine and self-indulgence, but speak up for the
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: rights of the poor. That's what political power is for. So,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: I don't think you're saying this, but I'm, you know, I,
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: why I'm so angry. I get actually angry that so
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: many Bible thumpers keep saying, uh, well, you know, that's
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: the church job. Cause like, it's like the text literally
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: says the opposite. So that's another thing I'm trying to
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: get people to do is, is wrestle with that. But
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: you're right. You're right. The church response. And that's political.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a great clarification. I was not
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I was not meaning to say that. What I was
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: meaning to say is when the when non-Christians, when the
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: government isn't doing what they should be doing, the church
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: still has a responsibility to do what they should be doing.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And so it's not that we would never participate with
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: them to the extent that people are doing things that
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: promote the true, the good and the beautiful. We should
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: recognize those things and plug in with them and do
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: those things with them. But we have a responsibility that
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: sets apart from the political winds.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And so we've got to feed in there. But that's
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: a great clarification, Michael.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate that. Let me say that about that, James.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: I think so often we as Americans have such a
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: hard time reading the truth of our situation. So you
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: look about the text and we say, oh, you know, Paul,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: he didn't run for office. He didn't care about. And
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: you think, Paul didn't have that option. That was not
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: on the table.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: It's going to run for Caesar.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Every single person in the Bible, I think, would
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: look at us and go, oh my gosh, do you
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: see the freedoms and opportunities you have? Like Jeremiah said
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: to seek the shalom of the city when they had nothing,
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: when they were exiled victims, when they were like, and
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: you're enfranchised voters who have the right to assembly and
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: use what you got, you know? And so I think
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: they'd be amazed by how some of us are reluctant
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: to do that. But I love what you're saying about
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: the church. The church is God's people are called to
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: do what God's people do no matter what. And one
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: of the things I do in this book and in
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: the podcast to try to put flesh on the bones
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: of biblical discipleship, I don't go into the American political
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: scene because I wanted to give a gift to a
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: partisan divided church. But to put flesh on the bones,
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: I tell stories from church history and from around the
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: world of how Christians are practicing political discipleship. And that
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: led me to go on something of a deep dive
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: on the contemporary house church in China, particularly Wang Yi,
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: a currently incarcerated pastor and leader in the house church. And, and,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: and mainly through the work of my friend Hannah Nation, who, um,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: is involved in a house church theology project where they're
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: translating writings coming out of the house church in China
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: into English so we can learn from them. And I
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: highly commend those books and her podcasts and whatever. But
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: one thing she was pointing out to me in a
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: recent conversation is right now, some of what's happening is
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: Chinese Christians in the house church are facing persecution because
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: they refuse to stop caring for abandoned children, ministering to
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: sex workers, feeding the hungry. Like they are willing to
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: be jailed for showing love and mercy and kindness in
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: ways that run afoul of the party. And I think
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: that too, in America, we just have lost that sense
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: that yes, we seek the good of the city. Yes,
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: we try to make, leave our states and nations better
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: than we found them. But at the end of the day,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: God's the one who tells us to care for the
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: poor and live holy lives and welcome refugees. And we're
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: not allowed to fudge on that stuff. That's our mandate.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Whoever's in charge. I love that point you're bringing up.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: The word that keeps popping in my head is lines.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: Now bear with me for a moment here. I've had
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: a fascination with lines for a long time and it
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: roots back to being in college and listening to this
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: Coldplay song called Yellow. And the singer says, I drew
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: a line for you. And I just, I got stuck
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: on that one at the This is a love song.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: He drew a line for her. And I actually think
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: that's an incredibly profound thing to say. And let me
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: explain real quick why to get to our conversation. There
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: are lines all around us. Our language creates lines. Our
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: institutions create lines. And if I'm hearing you correctly, and
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: I think I am, you're sort of challenging the idea
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: that churches should honor those lines in some absolutist way. Now,
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: what I mean by that is that I'll give a
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: quick story and then work to Paul, who you just mentioned,
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: as I sing sort of breaking lines rather than affirming lines.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: I was at a church for a long time, just
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: to be blunt, a very white church in a very
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: white community, but not a totally white community. And I
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: went to the pastor and I just said, why is
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: this church white? Why is it that I can look
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: around me and I can count in one hand people
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: who look like me? And he said, well, that's just
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: the community that we're in.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I said, is it?
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: Because when I come into this church, for other reasons,
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I see people from various countries
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: in Africa here learning English as a second language. And
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: yet they're nowhere to be found on a Sunday.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Why is that? I said, well, I don't know. Good question.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: He said, I think it is a good question. You're
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: the pastor. Isn't that something you should think about?
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: Lines.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: The church, and I take this to be a systemic
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: problem for churches in the U.S., that we operate and
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: we build churches according to lines that have been drawn
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: for us. And those lines say, these people in, those
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: people out. These policies in, those policies out. These issues
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: that matter, those issues that don't matter. And when the
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: church begins to draw... to locate itself within those lines,
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: I see it doing something remarkably different than Paul, even
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: though ironically often appealing to Paul. To the point of Paul,
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: Paul is, he's a marginalized member of a marginalized community
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: in an empire, right? He's a Jewish person who has
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: rejected the sort of religious substrata that would give him
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: some level of significance within that minority marginalized group. So he's,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: Following this guy, Jesus, who even his own people, not
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: in totality, but in large part, have rejected. At least
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: the elite of the group have largely rejected. And now
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: he's meant to address issues, right? Whether it be practices
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: that are going on in Ephesus in the midst of
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: the Temple of Artemis, right? Or practices of slavery that
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: now claim people who are believers on both sides of
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: the line of slave and master.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: And what have you. And he has, as you say,
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: no ability to politically make any changes there. And yet
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: he situates himself, I see it, as someone who says,
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: I see those lines and I'm going to build right
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: on top of it rather than within those lines. And
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: now we've got the question, precisely because of that, of
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: Christians who are both the slaves and the masters that
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: he has to now address. I don't see our churches
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: doing that. And to me, that's concerning and that's why,
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: to get back to an earlier conversation that we were
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: working through, that we end up with overly clear lines
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: than when we look at Scripture, rather than hazy lines
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: with photo mosaics. Do you have thoughts on that?
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: So many thoughts, Ashish. How long you got? Yeah, I mean,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: All day.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Just to say, I agree with you that, and I
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: think this is part of what we were saying, that
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: churches in America, um, have a huge problem gathering in congregations,
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: the ideological diversity and experiential diversity that's represented in the
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: body of Christ. So, uh, our local churches tend to
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: be way more ethnically homogenous, class homogenous. Um, And I
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: think probably increasingly politically homogenous in a partisan sense. than
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: our neighborhoods or schools are, right? Than the Christians in
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: those neighborhoods and schools, right? And so our local congregations
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: at our worst become gathered around Jesus, but also a
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: set of perspectives that are deeply influenced by our social location,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: our level of affluence, our ethnicity, our background, our immigration,
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: citizenship status, all that stuff. Is that resonating with what
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: you're saying, Ashish?
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: You know, I think, I mean, I've been involved with
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: sort of intentionally multicultural churches since 2008, I would say.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: First in Kenya in a congregation that sang six languages
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: and for 12 years in Memphis in a congregation in
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: South Memphis that was trying to primarily reconcile across the
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: black-white divide. And now in South Auckland where, you know,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: my church is about a third Pacific Island or Cook Island.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: And there's so much to say there. Two things I'll
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: say is one is that often one culture is sort
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: of arranging the chairs in the room, sort of setting
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: the kind of shape. And they often don't realize they're
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: doing that. And so even when you have people who's
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: from a different culture, different class, different immigrant or whatever,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: they may be welcomed in, but it's subtly demanded that
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: they adopt the perspective of the majority group, whatever the
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: case that is. And often people if your church leadership
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: is from that majority group, they just don't see that.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: They don't recognize that, in part because we often just
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: think that what we see is Christian, is biblical. And
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: that's why, like, coming back to politics, when you see
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: statistics that show things like, and I don't have these
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: in front of me, but like white evangelicals by belief,
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: so not just identifying, but white evangelicals by belief, Black
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: evangelicals by belief are almost completely opposite on a number
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: of political issues. I think in general, in America, for instance,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: people who aren't white are much more aware of diversity
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: and viewpoint diversity because they have to be because they
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: are navigating a culture in which white people are mostly
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: in charge of the cultural dynamics. the white folks on that,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: on this side of the spectrum often think of their
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: political views as just Christian, you know, it is obvious
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: to them. And so you have these yawning chasms of
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: perspective and that, that go unacknowledged often, or that in
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: leave us in different churches, or, and this is a
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: third option. You have a church that brings together political
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: diversity and, And you keep the peace like you and
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: I do probably at some of certain family gatherings. We
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: just don't talk about.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: It, you know?
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: And so part of what I am trying to do
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: in this book, especially at the end, where in the
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: last chapter, I basically name and draw on some statistics
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: that show just how divided we are in terms of
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: our partisan allegiance and how that partisan allegiance distorts what
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: we see. Let me give you one quick example. because
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: it's just amazing and it'll kind of put flesh on
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: the pants for me. We're talking about, they've done like
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: a study where you can show people a video clip
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: of police officers interacting with protesters. And when, if you,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: if people who identify as politically liberal see that video clip, they,
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: they describe the violence of the protesters differently than if
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: they think the protest is a pro-life protest versus a
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: LGBTQ protest. So for a progressive, if they think they're
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: LGBTQ protesters, they're not as violent as they describe them
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: if they think they're pro-life protesters. People who identify as
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: politically conservative do the exact opposite. They're looking at the
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: same data, same stuff, and they're seeing it differently because
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: of their partisan sort of And so in the last
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: chapter of the book, what I kind of say is
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: this is the world we're living in. And the algorithms
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: make it worse. And the increasingly strident identity connections with
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: the parties make it worse. What are we going to do?
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: And I kind of lay out a process for what
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: would it look like for a church to not only
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: announce what needs to be announced politically from Scripture, but
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: then to intentionally gather members of a congregation together to
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: discern in light of Scripture. how to respond to specific situations.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: And my hope is that if we can do that,
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: then our churches will begin not only to actually send
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: out people to do stuff more faithfully, but by creating
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: spaces where genuine disagreement can be surfaced, we actually will
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: make our churches better places for diverse communities. Because I
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: can tell you firsthand from my experience in South Memphis,
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: listening to my black brothers and sisters, the news lands
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: differently based on our racial experiences. And if you were
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: in a black church and what's in the news is
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: the death of black men, right? And police encounters gone
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: wrong or a vigilante gone wrong. if you're in a
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: black church, that stuff's being talked about, right? There's space
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: for grief and pain and lament. And in many multi-ethnic churches,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: if somebody names that as a grief, people get very agitated.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: White folks can get very agitated. They think that's political,
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: that's whatever. And in my experience, black folks are going, hey,
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: this is, worship is a space where we lament things
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: that grieve us and we're grieving. And, you know, so
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: often in the room, our differences in experiences and political
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: experiences are leading us to make our congregations spaces that
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: aren't nearly as life-giving for one group of people, the other.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: And of course the tragedy of course is that it
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: is often those who've been most marginalized in society who
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: suffer the worst in that. Cause we don't meet on, on,
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: on equal footing in terms of our social and economic power.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a huge issue. And this book is
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: only hopefully contributing to a small part of that. But
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: I do think it's a significant part of that. Yeah.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: It's interesting.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you talk about these kind of biases,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes people can kind of go blank or just,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of sit back and go, ah, that
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: can't be true. But I remember one time going out
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: with a young woman who I used to work with.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: and she was Ethiopian, and she took me to an
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Ethiopian restaurant. And I had this impression, I'm like, oh,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: they've set the table differently than I would have.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And that made the eating experience completely different for me, right?
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: There was a lot more use of hands. There weren't utensils.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: You're tearing things off. You're dipping things, right?
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: That little spongy stuff. The spongy stuff, exactly. Yeah, right?
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Like you've got all that different thing, but it's like,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the people who set the table largely control the experience.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: And now I'm being sat at this sort of, for me,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: it was a strange table, a different table that I'm
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: used to, but this is now the environment that I'm
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: in and I get to sort of interact with it.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: But I think that idea of the people who set
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the table really do control the experience is essentially what
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: you're getting at. It's like these biases, these challenges, these frustrations,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Part of what we're seeing there is there are aspects of,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: and there's an interesting study, I think it's from Campbell University.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: They talk about the people who watch more progressive news
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: channels versus more conservative news channels have different fears than
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the opposing groups. And so it flip-flops. But the inversion
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: is interesting and significant. And so I think part of
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: what we probably as a church ought to watch out
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: for is asking the question, who's setting our tables?
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Like who's setting the table? Who's serving up the experience
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: for us? And how much can we really, it's not
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: even to me, trust, right? Trust is part of it.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: But it's also like, we have to know that these
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: people who are providing the experiences to us have blind
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: spots as well. They're engaged in motivated action. They're you know,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: they're doing things for various purposes as well. It's not
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: like they're sitting in the back room, twisting their mustache
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: and going, Oh, how can I manipulate the masses today? Like,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: I don't think that people are really doing that. I
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: think we've just got a fundamental problem that we're all
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: limited beings and we have constraints of what we can understand.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: And so we're sort of, we're sort of prime to
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: put out what we're already thinking.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Sort of the way I think about it, but I
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: really appreciate the thought process there.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I, do think there are more people in
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: back rooms twisting the mustaches than I used to think
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: there were. But in general, I think you're right. And,
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: you know, in my book, Just Discipleship, I have a
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: chapter called Arranging the Chairs in the Beloved Community. And
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: the book is looking at the Lord's Supper, but in
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: dialogue with research that shows that multiracial churches like the
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: one that I was in, if you compare on a
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: series of metrics, all majority white churches, majority black churches,
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: and then you compare multiracial churches on like six metrics.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: This is research done by Corey Edwards, a black Christian sociologist.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: In general, the multiracial churches just act like the white
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: churches on those six areas. So there's black and white
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: people in the room, but it's the majority culture that's
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: arranging the chairs. And so the experience you're describing in Ethiopia,
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: any cross-cultural experience is disruptive. Any. Right. The added factor
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: that we face is that our cross-cultural moment is shot
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: through with a history of injustice and oppression and pain. And,
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: you know, this is why I think it's significant. We've
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: kind of gotten off track, but I think this is
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: not off track. We've gone in a different direction, but
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I think it's significant that Paul says, in the body
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: of Christ, Christ has arranged his body so as to
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: give greater honor to the parts of the body that
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: lacked it. Or calls us to consider others' interests before
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: our own. He's saying, you're going to have a hard
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: time doing this, but you've got to. It's vital to
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: the outpost of King Jesus, being an outpost of King Jesus,
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: and not.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Giving its actual allegiance to some other ideology or party
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: or political thing, you know? And I did want to
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: give a shout out to Miranda Cruz's book. I think
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: it's called Faithful Politics, maybe is the name of it.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fantastic. I've had her on the show, too.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: She was great.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: She's great. And she does it sort of from a
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: historical perspective. But I like the fact that she just names. Actually,
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: in a two-party system, if you're going to engage politically,
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: we have to affiliate with parties under some circumstances, right?
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: That's if you want to get involved. But we have
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: to be hyper aware of the way when we affiliate
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: with a party, there is enormous pressure to assimilate our
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: views to the full basket of goods in that party.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: And that's where political discipleship is so important. And that's
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: where political community is. A cross-party affiliation is so important
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: to help us realize the dangers. And I just want
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: to say here, I keep coming back to Daniel. I
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: can't shake Daniel. In the book of Daniel, Daniel refuses
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: to work for some rulers. He will not work for
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: some of them. He does go to work for Nebuchadnezzar.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: He's willing to work for Nebuchadnezzar. But he criticizes the
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: hell out of Nebuchadnezzar. And I mean that theologically. And
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: the principle I take from that is faithful politics is
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: willing to criticize the hell out of its own political team.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: And that is really hard. That's not something we want
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: to do. I don't want to do that. I struggle
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: with that.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Ashish, I'm going to ask a question, man. Sorry,
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: go ahead.
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: Well, in light of that, how would you recommend going
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: about the process of self-elimination? And what I mean by
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: that is that it's one thing to criticize the hell
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: out of someone or something. It's another thing to recognize
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: that you need to. Sarah Ahmed writes this piece on
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: a phenomenology of the body where she speaks of one
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: of the things that people of color tend to grow
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: up with in majority white cultures is this strong sense
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: of a line between their bodies and their environment versus
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: those who grew up as a white person in a
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: white body or identify themselves as white and implicit ways,
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: there's a blurred line. So now we're going the opposite
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: direction of the line and sort of dynamic. But the
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: result is, is that a lot there, there does seem
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: to be a lack of a sense of understanding of
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: just how deeply they're formed to their environment, as opposed
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: to those of us who have a keen sense very
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: early on. Oh, something's different. Now, the way I'd flesh
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: that out is like, it's very easy to, to eat
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: Indian food or listen to Indian music or Ethiopian food
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: or Ethiopian music and.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: Say, that's cool.
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: I like that. Because it doesn't create any sort of
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: challenge upon us.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: There's not a direct conflict. It's more, that's cool. It
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: can be complimentary to what I do. But the rub
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: comes in when ways of envisioning, organizing, operating start to
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: come up, come in to a point of clash. And
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: then that's where those sharp distinctions between body and environment
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: start to come in. And in my experience, the church,
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: especially in a majority culture, a church that belongs to it,
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: that honors the lines of a society, has a hard
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: time being able to recognize those distinctions. And so they
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: sort of fall into it. But how do you start
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: to attune yourself to be more attentive to to hear
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: difference and not react automatically, but begin to say, maybe
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: I should question why I have the view or the
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: position that I do.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is such an important and in-depth question and,
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: and one that in many ways is probably more located
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: in just discipleship than in, in re-imagining biblical politics in
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: terms of a direct address to it. But, just to
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: share a story and again even using a specific example
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: I recognize will alienate some listeners but I think it's
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: important and I won't name my friend because I haven't
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: asked her permission in this context but when Trayvon Martin
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: was murdered and I grew up an upper middle class
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: white kid on the all white side of town at
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: a Christian school that was started during busing and in
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: a church that hadn't almost no black people in it.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: So that was my upbringing. And then I moved back
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: to Memphis and I was involved with sort of Christian
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Community Development Association oriented ministry and church. So I was
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: living in an overwhelmingly black neighborhood and just sort of
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: finding my feet, you know, and then this national tragedy happens.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: And I was in really close relationships with black people
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: for the first time. And I was talking to this
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: black woman who was really, was sort of becoming a
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: kind of mentor of mine. We were working on a
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: project together. I respected her a lot. And, you know,
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: she mentioned, I think she mentioned how painful it was
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: to her that the multi-ethnic church that she was in
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: had said nothing about this national tragedy, you know? And,
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: and I sort of, we were emailing and I, I
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: sort of, I, I, I resonated with her stance, right?
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: Like I, I felt like I'd seen enough to, to
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: feel that a grievous injustice had occurred. But I sort
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: of tentatively said, well, I think, you know, most churches
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: know we aren't supposed to be like political in that way.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, they don't, you know, they're trying
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: to avoid being political. And she responded, she said, Michael,
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I don't want partisan churches either, but every church in
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: this country lamented after 9-11. And this is like our 9-11.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: And that conversation was like a turning point for me.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: It was like a fork in the road because I
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: realized that the problem wasn't so much with my theology,
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: you know, that there are certain things the church shouldn't
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: do and certain things the church should do. The problem
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: was with my perspective and that my perspective was completely
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: out of touch with the actual experience of black brothers
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: and sisters of Jesus. And so, you know, This idea
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: of proximity, which, you know, someone like Bryan Stevenson talks
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: a lot about, or relocation, which John Perkins, who was
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: my mentor and hero from afar, talked about. I don't
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: think you can really begin to see, begin to see
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: what you're not seeing without shared life together. And it
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: has to be a certain kind of shared life together.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: You know, I've often told people in some ways every
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: marriage is a cross-cultural marriage, right? Because even though my
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: wife is white and I'm white, we were both raised
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: as Christians and she spent a lot of time in
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: the South. You know, that first Christmas, all of a
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: sudden I'm looking around at what we're doing from her
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: perspective and I'm going, ooh, I didn't know that not
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: everybody did it this way, but now I do. Now
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: I see that this is weird and I'm uncomfortable. All
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: of a sudden I'm uncomfortable. And the way I respond
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: to that is different because I love Rebecca and I
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: want to not simply rebuild my home. childhood home, or
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: her childhood home, what I want to build is a
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: home together. And that's going to involve the painful work
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: of realizing just how much difference there is in our
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: family cultures. And so it's not just proximity, it's proximity
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: out of love, out of love and out of commitment
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: to go with each other and to walk alongside each other.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: And so, I mean, that is inadequate. And this is
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: why books are written and conferences are held and church
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: plants and everybody continues to struggle along. But at heart,
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: we have to love one another closely enough and longingly
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: enough to begin to at least understand their other ways
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: of seeing the world and why people might see them
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: that way. I've been talking about that. mainly in, in
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: racial terms right now, but I absolutely think it's true
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: in political terms as well. And, um, I just think
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: we have no idea. Um, another side of this that
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: does come up in the book is that, um, uh,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: We are prone to over-identify our political community with the
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: kingdom of God. And that's true in Israel. When Amos
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: has to show up and tell the Israelites they think
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: that God's on their side, but actually he's not. And
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: they think that they're chosen and they're right about that.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: But that means that they're going to be especially judged
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: for trying to combine injustice with worship. That happens among
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: God's people. where we take challenges to the failures of
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: the church as assaults on God's kingdom rather than the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: chastening of God. It also happens in our nations where
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: throughout history, Christians have wanted to claim that God was
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: on the side of their political community. And honestly, a
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: lot of the stuff that I think keeps us from understanding,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: someone like me kept me from understanding some of how
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: my neighbors from other experiences thought politically was that I
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: came from a community. That's not true. I came up
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: in swimming in waters where it was quite comfortable for
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: people to say, you know, America is on God's side.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: And the one place where I do bring in American
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: politics is to show that every single one of our
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: American presidents, last four at least, and their vice presidents
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: on both sides of the aisle have all idolatrously basically
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: quoted scripture and and put America in the place of
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: God's people or Jesus, right? So, like, you know, Hillary
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: Clinton called, or maybe it was Barack Obama called America
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: the last great hope of the world. Okay, that's idolatrous,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: you know? Hillary Clinton called America a shining city on
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: a hill. Jesus said that about the church. You know,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Mike Pence said, let's fix our eyes. That's Hebrews. Where
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: does it end? on Jesus. Where did Mike Pence go?
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: Let us fix our eyes on old glory. The flag
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: literally substituting, right? George Bush talked about the hard work
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: of the American people and then said, and the light
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: shines in the darkness. That's Jesus, not the heart. So
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: there is a history on both sides of our political
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: aisle of claiming that God was on America's side in
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: a unique way, that we were a shining city on
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: a hill. And that's wrong. It's idolatrous. And if you
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: believe that you go down the wrong track and, but
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: it's easy for those of us whose communities have had
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: a good time in America to believe that it's impossible
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: for people who've been victims, their grandparents and parents. And,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: and so this is another place where diverse viewpoints help
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: us to go, no, there's beautiful things about this place
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: and there's hideous things about this place. And so I
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: think that's another way that our, our sort of, when
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: we get together people across races and classes, we're looking
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: at two different countries and two different histories in a sense.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: And until we reckon with that, until we unwind the
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: theology that justifies that bad theology, like we're in really
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: deep trouble, you know?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: Well, and I think, I think the way that you're
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: describing things shows us just how how specifically the political
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: conscience has to be local, right? That it's not just
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: on some national election. Because this becomes, this isn't just
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: some moral ethical issue. It's an issue that creates the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: boundaries between communities, creates the boundaries that churches honor, creates
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: the boundaries where houses are built and how much they cost, right?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: And you think about someone like Trayvon Martin, the boundary
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: by which he's judged as someone who according to some,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: ought to have been shot. These are political dynamics that
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: the church has to wrestle with locally.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: And one thing I say in the book early on is,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: you know, Rebecca and I came out of college excited
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: about the kingdom of God, excited about mission, and with
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: a felt sense of call to help God's people embody
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: God's good news to the poor. And since 2008, when
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: we graduated from college, we've been on that journey. But
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: at the beginning of the journey, we would have said,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: that that had nothing to do with politics. We wanted
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: that as an alternative to politics. Like that's a politics
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: is ugly and bad. This is mission and justice and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: good stuff. And it was actually the experience of living
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: in South Memphis for 12 years and being forced to
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: confront political issues just in the daily grind that made
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: us go, oh my goodness. And then listening to the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: answers that came out of our mouths and then going,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: I don't think that whole, I don't think that's going
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: to work. That's what drove me to want to do
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: this book. It was like, oh my goodness, my neighbors
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: are being evicted while paying rent by their slumlord. That's
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: a political issue. That's going to have to be solved
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: in a court with lawyers and stuff. And then it
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: was going, I'd like to buy a house, but the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: house across the street is being sold for $ 19, 000. And
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: if your neighborhood is so divested that you can sell
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: a house for $ 19, 000, that's houses aren't worth what they
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: cost to build or repair. And so the whole neighborhood
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: is sliding further and further in the slum. And then
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: you discover there's a history to that, that 38126 was
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: the most prosperous, the first black millionaire lived in my neighborhood.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: And his home was literally taken by the state. And
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: working class black owned homes were taken by the state
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: and turned into large-scale government housing projects for the poor.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: So now all of a sudden you understand my community was–
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying every community was this way. I'm saying
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: this community was designed poor by– created poor by design
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: in very specific ways. And it's also the place where
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: the poor people's grocers were lynched, whose lynching inspired Ida B. Wells.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: And it's also the neighborhood where MLK was shot. And
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: it's also the neighborhood where the I Am A Man–
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: protest signs were printed in the bottom of an African
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: Methodist Episcopal church to come along. So, yes, you're absolutely right.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: And so, like, we have to attend to the ground
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: under our feet and the neighbors beside us. And when
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: the structures of our neighborhoods and our cities have made
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: it to where none of the neighbors beside us are
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: from another ethnic group or economic class or whatever, then
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: we've got to resist that, right? We've got to resist
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: that so that we can, uh, experience a kind of
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: discipleship to follow Jesus in real places with real people,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: not with sort of like fake artificial half answers, uh,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: you know, which is what I think we end up with. So, um,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: that was a bit of a rant, uh, but, uh,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: You said it. You said it. That's my story. My
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: story is not being a political scientist. It's having the Bible,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: being in a place, trying to love my neighbor and going, oh,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: my gosh, I've gotten so much of this wrong. And
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: there's so much I don't know. And I want to
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: do better.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Well, bro, I mean, I appreciate it.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's really helpful. I think it gets
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: to the heart of what you're trying to do in
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: the book.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's a lived experience and it's a great
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: illustration of what all of us need to be doing.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: We have similar stories in my area. I live down
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: in near East St.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Louis, which used to be a relatively prospered area, but
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: different mechanism. But economic realities, companies coming because Missouri's laws
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: for environmental dumping hadn't caught up with the rest of
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: the nation. And so you have an influx of the
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: urban poor in East St.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: Louis.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: There was white flight. Sometime during the early 60s. And
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: now that neighborhood is a mess. And so you see
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: how these different mechanisms can actually produce the sort of
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: challenges we see.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: And they are political issues. And so, yeah.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: And you know what's cool about that, James? And I've
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: seen this firsthand. When God's people get involved in places
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: like that, and we allow the Bible to shape our politics,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: it will change the way we live. And it will
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: change the way we engage the state, but it won't
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: erase all of our like sort of political philosophy differences.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: And that is okay. Like I worked on political issues
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: with people who voted Democrat, Republican and immigrant and independent.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: A few months ago, I talked to a pastor who's
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: in Arizona and he said, we have decided that We
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: share convictions about immigrants, even though we vote Democrat, Republican,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: and Libertarian. And we've actually gone to City Hall and said,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: we disagree about the details. But as Christians, Democrat, Republican,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: and Libertarian, here are some things that we insist you
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: honor in the way you treat immigrants. You honor the
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: image of God. You honor the integrity of the family.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: You honor religion. just process these things have to be
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: true even though we disagree about exactly what you might
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: be doing and so i think if we get this
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: there's actually this like life-giving like uh exciting opportunity to
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: break out of this thing this hyper partisan toxic political
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: environment that we know is bad for us everyone is
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: talking about how it's bad for us i think 80
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: percent of christians in america suspense suspect that something is
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: wrong you know And there is a better way. But
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: from my perspective, it requires some sustained lingering in the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: strange world of scripture, letting that unsettle us, and then
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: intentionally returning to these questions together with fresh eyes. And
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: that's the resource that I hope the book offers.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, man. Your passion comes out, brother. We could
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: probably do this the rest of the night and not get.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: Tired of it.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: But we got to close this out. But Michael, it's
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: always a pleasure, bro. And I just recommend people reimagining
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: biblical politics. It's available on Amazon. It's probably available on
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: Baker's site. Put the links in the footnotes. Check out
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: Michael's podcast. It is Crossroads, R-H-O-D-E-S, right? Uh, and, uh,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: and we'll put that link in the show notes as well, but, uh,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: and then check out a sub stack, um, for more, uh,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: for more commentary on, uh, politics and Bible and, uh, these,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: this sort of second way of doing politics, uh, out
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: in the world.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: So Michael, just thanks again for being here, brother. Really
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: appreciate you.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: James Ashish. It's been really fun. Thanks for having me on.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody take care and we'll catch you on
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: the next episode of thinking Christians. Just want to take
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: a second to thank the team at Life Audio for
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: and more.