Latest / Future Christian / Amanda Udis-Kessler talks Progressive Christian Ethics

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Amanda Udis-Kessler talks Progressive Christian Ethics · Future Christian

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Alright, welcome to the Future Christian Podcast.
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This is Lauren Richmond Jr.
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and today I am pleased to be welcoming Dr.
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Amanda Udis -Kessler.
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Thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me.
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Great, great to have you.
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Anything else you'd like our listeners to know about you?
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No, I think that covers most of it.
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Awesome.
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Well, share if you would kind of about your faith journey, what that looked like for you in the past and what that looks like today.
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Sure, so I grew up a secular Jew.
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I then spent about 30 years with the Unitarian Universalists following a kind of a tormented teenage spiritual journey.
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And I have come to identify as a Christian over the past four years or so, which for me means that I commit to trying however fumblingly to follow Jesus's path and be part of a
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community that helps.
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bring his vision of God's kingdom into being.
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I specifically call myself a progressive Christian to indicate that I don't believe that Christianity is the only true religion, that I'm deeply committed to the rights and
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wellbeing of all people of all religions and to no religion, that I do not find religion and science incompatible, and that I believe any religious path worth its salt involves
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both our own spiritual growth as individuals and our commitment to justice for the most devalued among us.
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So I sometimes call myself actually a non -doctrinal Christian because I think doctrine is less important than striving to cultivate love, compassion, generosity, hospitality,
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courage, and self -discipline in service to building that beloved community.
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I'm not very good at any of this, but I am certainly working at it.
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Well, I think that's right.
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The most important thing, right?
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I would say is like just that admission.
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I'm not very good at this either.
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And I appreciate what you said about that.
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Anything, any religion worth its salt is about spiritual growth and I wrote down justice, but I'm not sure how you said it, but I would certainly, isn't that the hardest thing,
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right?
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Is maintaining both sides of that coin.
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-hmm.
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Yep.
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What are some spiritual practices or things you do to ground yourself, to center yourself?
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So these days I'm focusing on kind of sensory presence practices.
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So engaging my senses in terms of sight, sound, touch, taste, those kinds of things.
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They're ways of trying to really live in the present moment.
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I have a number of gratitude practices that I've had for years.
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I find them extremely helpful.
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And then...
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Progressive Christian music is really important to me.
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I listen to as much of it as I can and there's a lot of wonderful stuff out there that I'm very grateful for.
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Here, give some shout outs then.
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Groups or songs, what do you like to listen to?
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Obviously, your own, right?
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Sorry.
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I do, no, I do write my own, but I also, I love Christopher Grundy's music, I love Andrew Moran's music, Richard Brucksvort Colligan, his song, I Choose You, has been really
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formative for me.
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There are a few others, Brian Circio's music is wonderful.
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So.
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There's the music that's on the Convergence Music Project website is great and there's a group I'm a part of called Progressive Christian Artists Network.
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They have a great Facebook page and so I get to learn about new music in part through that.
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So that's all pretty wonderful.
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Yeah, I don't think this is unfair or I think this is fair for me to say that Amanda you are quite an accomplished Tim writer yourself.
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Is that true?
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Am I understanding that correctly?
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I write a lot of progressive sacred music and it's in use in a bunch of places.
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So I don't know if I would say I'm accomplished.
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I would say I try to serve.
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Okay, sorry, I'm getting...
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Somebody randomly is calling me right now in the background, so audience forgive the...
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The ringing will continue.
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I wanted to say two.
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Yeah, probably, probably.
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I was also thinking, as someone you were saying that you were, as I heard it, non -Cretal, I'm reminded of the tradition I'm a part of, the Christian Church Disciples of Christ is
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famously non -Cretal, so perhaps we need to get you over here, Amanda, to the Disciples world.
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I have to tell you one of my recent commissions was for a disciples church.
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I love the disciples.
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If I were not connected to the UCC, I'm sure I'd be in a disciples church, honestly.
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Yeah, well, I suppose we can we can allow that since the disciples and you see for those non mainline folks unite Church of Christ do tend to get along play well together most of
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the time.
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Well, let's chat about Amanda is the author of the book Abundant Lives a Progressive Christian Ethic of Flourishing.
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Tell us first of all, guys, is this already out?
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When did this come out?
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When does it release?
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So it is already out, it released in April.
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Pilgrim Press published it and they would love you to buy it from their website.
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So if you go to thepilgrimpress .com and either look up the phrase Abundant Lives or my last name, Udis -Kessler, you can find it there.
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It's in paperback, it's not particularly expensive.
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I have also just written a...
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a study and action guide that goes with it.
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And they are gonna post that on the website at some point.
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But if people are interested in the study and action guide, I am making it available for free with their permission.
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So people can also contact me for that.
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Yeah, please send me, if you would, the link for the Pilgrim's Press website for it to sale, so I'll put that in the show notes.
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We don't need to give Jeff Bezos any more money, right?
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hear you.
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I'm just gonna, yeah, I'll make sure I do that.
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Thank you for doing that.
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Well, let's let's jump into the conversation this way.
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I usually start with authors with a question, something like, why did you want to write this book?
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But I'm going to frame it this way.
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Why do ethics even matter anymore?
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And I ask that because it seems like we're in a context socially where winning and maintaining power or
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Achieving power is really the only thing that matters and so long as one of those things happens, it doesn't matter how it happens.
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Doesn't matter to the ethics.
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Right, so I am so glad you asked that question because even though I think it can feel as though this phenomenon is new to us today, that power and winning is all that matters, in
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fact, power was all that mattered in first century Judea, where the Romans occupied the Jews.
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And that fact did not stop Jesus, and so I believe that for those of us who strive to follow Jesus, that fact must not,
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stop us either.
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I think we have to be fearless in naming and challenging anything, any social system, any practice that harms people.
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I think Jesus did that.
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And so in our day, that might look like challenging systemic inequality, challenging violence, challenging environmental degradation and so on.
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So, you know, I think he did that and I think we need to do that.
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But if all we do is point out what's wrong, very few people will listen these days.
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So if you think about just how insanely full our lives are and how much information is out there and how kind of narrow our bandwidths so often are right now, we are only gonna
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reach people.
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And by we, I don't just mean people who care about ethics.
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I mean, you know,
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aggressive -minded Christians as well, we have to lift up a vision, a dream, an aspiration.
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We have to sort of be able to talk about what could life be like if people got to have good lives, or as I call it, flourish.
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And I think if we do that and inspire people, we might be able to recruit more people to work for human and planetary well -being.
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And if we did that, we might make things better.
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And so, you know, when we think about people who do that kind of work,
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We know that they lift up certain ideals like justice, or they might be focused on particular struggles, like struggling against gun violence or against racism and so on.
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But I think our vision needs to be grounded in some kind of ethic.
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We have to be able to give an account of why we care about other people's wellbeing and not just our own, because we live in a society that socializes us to be selfish and self
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-interested.
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And so I actually think we need to be able to say something about ethics to say, why do we care about other people?
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Why am I willing to make sacrifices or give up some of my freedom or donate some of my hard earned money to good causes?
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Why would I do that?
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And so for me, one answer to that has been to try to develop this way of thinking about ethics and therefore,
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this book, I have always wanted to make a positive difference in the world and my hope is that this book is one of the ways that I can do that.
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So I'm glad you put the question that way because it's good to remind ourselves that we are not the first people living in a time of chaos and terror.
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Yeah, I appreciate your point about lifting up a vision or a dream.
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I have, I'm looking at right now an article that's an adaption of a book these two authors wrote, Justin Michael Williams and I'm gonna mispronounce his name, Shelley Tagelsky?
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And it's 10 steps to, you know, bring about change is roughly the idea.
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But I think the number one here is like, I'm trying to see it underneath the staples is inviting people basically to a vision, you know, inviting people to a vision of a better
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future.
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So I appreciate that.
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And I think that's so much more compelling than than like you say, just telling everybody what they're doing wrong.
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So use a word there.
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Use the word of flourishing.
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So do you want to talk more about what you mean by
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human flourishing.
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Sure, so I'm actually gonna quote from the book first.
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This is kind of a definition.
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This is on page 18.
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People flourish when we are encouraged and enabled to be and to become our whole best selves, to fulfill our potential, to contribute effectively to the wellbeing of others and
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to society more broadly, and to live joyful, meaningful lives that make a difference and leave a legacy.
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And I'm aware that that is a pretty vague way to talk about flourishing.
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And so what I go on to do in the book then is focus on flourishing in and through what I consider to be universal human attributes.
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And the really simple one of those, the first one I mentioned is embodiment.
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Human beings are embodied, we live in our bodies, we have pleasure in our bodies, we have pain in our bodies, we die when our bodies give out or are kind of too severely injured.
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And so,
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Once we kind of think about flourishing in that sense that we can flourish as embodied beings, for example, or as emotional beings, or as meaning -making beings, or as
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relational beings, and so on, then we can start identifying beliefs or values or actions or even organizations that are more or less ethical.
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So if an organization supports war,
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There's something ethically problematic about that because we know that war causes all sorts of suffering and makes it hard for people to flourish.
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We know that people are literally killed, their lives are cut short, people are injured, people are emotionally traumatized.
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In times of war, people don't have enough food or they don't have access to kind of pleasurable, joyful things.
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And so we can say that,
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that by and large, from a perspective of flourishing, war tends to be unethical.
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So then we could also say that say an organization that works for peace or works to build up connections between people is doing something ethical because it is supporting human
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relating or it is supporting the human capacity to live without fear.
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So there are many, many possible examples, but to me, that's kind of the way into the conversation.
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And I should just point out that chapter two covers actually 10 different human attributes of which embodiment is only one of them.
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So we are rich, complex beings and embodiment is just a place to start.
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Yeah, I was just looking here at the book.
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I was flipping through the pages trying to find that chapter where you go through those.
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So I thought that was a good part of the book that I appreciate.
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Something else I appreciate about your foundation of human flourishing is I think obviously you've written this book from a progressive Christian context and framework, but
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I think this also that ethic or that framework provides opportunity for cross collaboration, whether it be, you know, like you've said, cross religiously.
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Cross inner faith, cross non -faith, and then what frankly can be one of the most controversial, cross like evangelical.
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In a lot of evangelical spaces, I know they talk about human flourishing.
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Obviously, some people are going to define that differently, but I think it does provide at least a broad -based framework to build off of.
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So let me ask this is you write that people...
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are the point of ethics and I interpreted that phrase, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I interpreted that as, broadly speaking, as a goal -based type ethic.
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When we think about the three broad frameworks of ethics is virtue -based ethics, duty -based ethics, and goal -based ethics.
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So are there any limitations, assuming I'm understanding your approach correctly, are there any limitations of this kind of goal -based ethics?
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approach.
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Sure, and actually before I answer that, I do want to say that this approach draws on virtue ethics and duty ethics as well, even though it is substantially goal -based.
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But because the case I'm making more broadly is that, first of all, we have to cultivate virtues in ourselves in order to be able to live into this.
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I talk a little bit about that in chapter six in a limited way.
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So,
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I actually think that one place where this approach to ethics is similar to virtue ethics is virtue is not the point of the ethics, but virtue is an absolute necessity.
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And in the same way, there is a sense in which, especially as this moves from being the secular ethic that it started as to being a progressive Christian ethic, it actually
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really does have a duty -based component.
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I mean, I think the case I would make for this as a Christian ethic is that,
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it is an ethic that Jesus would call us to.
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I mean, not that Jesus used this language, but I think there's sort of enough in the Jesus story and in the kind of inspiration of the prophets and in the early Christian
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communities that, I mean, it is an invitation, but we could call it a duty.
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So having said that, I think that in terms of limitations, the main thing I would say is that I really understand that this way of thinking about ethics,
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is not for everyone.
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It is not simple.
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It is not a 12 step program.
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It requires a lot of discernment and energy.
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We have to ask at any given moment, is my most immediate obligation to taking care of myself right now or taking care of someone else?
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Is this a moment when I should be making some self sacrifices, donating some money, giving away some time?
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committing myself to listen to someone else's concerns, even if I'm in a lot of pain.
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So there's quite a lot of work that I think goes into this.
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It's very strenuous.
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It also requires us to ask hard questions about our own social groups, our own religion, our own country.
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So, you know, in theory, the US, which we are both citizens of, can be a place that can help people flourish, but it's
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and can also do things that cause harm.
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And so we have to be willing to speak up when our country or our religion is doing harmful things.
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That's hard for a lot of people.
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And then finally, I think what is really important is most of us absolutely do not already want all people to live good lives.
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We want to live good lives, but we don't necessarily...
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We aren't necessarily committed to everyone living good lives, and we aren't necessarily committed to making certain self sacrifices to help others.
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So again, I think that this is probably not a very broad approach.
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I think of it as very aspirational, and for people who are inspired by it, it can help them make a difference.
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But so the main limitation I see is less conceptual than the ways in which this is just challenging.
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to live out, I mean, it's challenging for me to live out and as far as I know, I came up with it.
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So clearly it'll be challenging, but you know what?
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Trying to follow Jesus is challenging.
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Right, right.
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You know, one of the things that I appreciate about the book and your approach here is I think you took a very nuanced approach to the idea of human depravity.
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I was just talking, I was on another podcast or as a guest and the guest or excuse me, the host was asking me about, you know, my understanding of that.
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I always come from like the framework having grown up Baptist worthy is certainly this idea of original sin and I remember hearing like you kind of look at your You know when
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you have kids you look at your kids and be like you'll recognize human depravity which I always thought was the most ridiculous thing in the world and and Having kids I'm like,
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that's the most ridiculous thing in the world but also I Think there is some
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And I have not yet been able to put my finger on it exactly like that.
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I think there is some capacity in humans to do horrible rotten things.
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And you write about that.
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So talk more about this tension, as I understand it, you try to hold for the goodness and problematic nature in humans.
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Absolutely, this is super important to me.
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I'm really glad you asked about it.
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So there are various religious accounts of human goodness and badness and to oversimplify profoundly, there is sort of a Unitarian account of inherent human goodness and there are
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Calvinists and Lutheran and other Christian accounts of human depravity.
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I don't know whether I would exactly call them inherent or not, but that's kind of nitpicking.
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And I find both of those kinds of approaches unsatisfying.
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When I first became a Unitarian Universalist, I felt very strongly dissatisfied by the Calvinist account of human depravity and Unitarianism arguably in part kind of developed
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in response to that.
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But over my years as Unitarian Universalist, I became increasingly dissatisfied with
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what I think of as the sort of relentless optimism that stereotypically can be part of that tradition.
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And in fact, one of the things that moved me toward Christianity was reading a book published by, I don't know if it was a UU lay person or minister called Beyond the Good
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News.
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And it was an attempt to wrestle as a Unitarian Universalist with kind of human frailty and failings and systemic inequality and things like that.
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person who wrote the book had some kind of response that worked for them, but it didn't work for me.
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And that was one of the things that kind of moved me a little more in the direction of Christianity.
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So it seems to me, and now I'm not talking about religion, I'm literally just talking as a sociologist, clearly people are capable of phenomenal goodness and terrifying evil.
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I mean, that's just empirical reality.
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That's not about religious claims.
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That's just what we see when we
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Right.
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Right.
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you know.
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And then years ago, I ran into this quote, a lot of people know it, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about the line between good and evil running through the middle of every
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human heart.
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And I find that really powerful and useful.
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But I think there's one thing to add to it, which complicates matters further.
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Not only do I claim in the book and deeply believe that people have the capacity for tremendous good and tremendous evil,
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But the direction we move in is also shaped to some extent by the societies we live in.
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So I think it was Niebuhr who wrote the book, Immoral Man, sorry, Moral Man and Immoral Society.
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So there's this whole, there is this tradition in Christianity of understanding that the systems we live in matter.
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And so if we are socialized, trained, raised to value greed, it's harder for us to be generous.
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If we're trained to value greed,
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it's harder for us to be kind and so on.
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So I think we're looking at a double complexity.
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One of them is literally our own pluriform capacity and the other is what we're taught growing up in society.
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And so to think of Christianity as counter -cultural in some ways, I think in part is to say that it demands that we try to
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be our best selves and cultivate our virtues and move toward the good even when our society encourages us in the other direction.
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Yeah, I think that's helpful.
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And I definitely appreciate that more nuanced take.
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Something else that I feel like speaking of, you know, societally and the importance of that kind of societal expectation or that cultural expectation is you write about...
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this generation of spirit and cultivating a generosity of spirit.
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And that's something that I kind of want to read a bit.
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This is from page 99.
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You write, cultivating generosity of spirit involves learning to see people as more than their worst attributes, beliefs, values, and actions.
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I think we're, at least as I see it, we're in a time period where really it's so hard.
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to do that because we do want to just label people as their worst attributes, beliefs, values, and so on and so forth.
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Talk about that importance as you see it.
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Yeah, so first of all, I think that that is a sort of virtue that all people, regardless of their religiosity or lack of religiosity, could work on cultivating simply to help our
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society, even if we weren't talking about religion.
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But for me, where that kind of language becomes or that kind of aspiration becomes connected to
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Christianity is in Jesus's invitation or command, you tell me which, to love our enemies, right?
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Because we cannot love our enemies in any sense of the word love if we dehumanize them and reduce them only to the most horrible things they do.
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And for context, for listeners who have not heard my earlier talk with you, you know,
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I am someone who sees myself as having actual enemies because I am a queer woman and there are people in the US today who are working very hard to strip rights from women and to
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strip rights from the LGBTQ plus community.
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And so I think it's really okay for me to understand those people as my enemies.
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I don't think that's necessarily wrong.
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The question then becomes what is my response to this?
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And so I say a bit about this in chapter five, but it is connected to this notion of generosity of spirit.
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Because if I love my enemies in the sense of actively seeking their wellbeing, I don't necessarily have to like them, I don't necessarily have to wanna go have dinner with them,
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right?
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But I do have to wish them well, I have to pray for them, I have to hope that they find some,
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capacity to see me in a different way and to stop working against me, right?
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But I can only do that if I understand them as more than the actions they are taking against me.
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So I find this actually kind of conceptually complicated.
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It requires me to not to sort of ignore the harm that some people are doing in the world.
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And I think loving our enemies doesn't mean that we're
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we have to accept their program for us.
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I don't have to support homophobia or sexism, but I do have to rehumanize my enemies and I have to wish them the same full rich life I would wish for myself.
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And I can only do that if I have some practice with generosity of spirit.
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And if I understand that I also am more than my worst self.
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There are people out there who could reasonably see me as their enemies and that is a humbling thought.
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So that's why I think that's particularly important and I think it's something Jesus did exceptionally well.
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If we take the prayer attributed to him on the cross in which he asked God to forgive his enemies because they don't know what they're doing to me, that is a.
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about the ultimate generosity of spirit.
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And while I would not like to actually be crucified or killed, I do think that that is a model for what we can strive toward.
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Yeah, yeah, I don't have anything more to say because I think what you said is so good.
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So I appreciate your words there and I'm challenged equally too to think about not, you know, not wishing or thinking the worst about people.
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It is so hard.
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It is, I mean, and that's the other thing.
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I mean, it's so important and it's so hard.
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And so one of the reasons why I think my approach to ethics does sort of involve both virtues and duty is because without some sense of duty and without cultivating some
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virtues, I don't know how we ever do this.
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Mm -hmm.
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Mm -hmm.
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Yeah.
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Well, it's...
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Let me...
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Let me...
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Let me move the conversation a little bit more towards the...
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More toward the spiritual aspect of this.
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Certainly all of this is undergirded by spirituality, but I'm thinking about this in perhaps more theological context.
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I see this...
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I see this tendency...
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to understand the gospel and I'm using that as a broad for sake of time, I won't kind of explain, or at least try to talk through what the gospel means.
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That's a whole nother podcast, but to broad brush, understand the, the idea of the gospel from a Christian perspective as being equivalent with human flourishing or social
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programming to achieve human flourishing.
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And I, I at least would say that I think there is.
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a difference, there's a distinction between the gospel and human flourishing.
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So this is kind of a loaded question here for you, but feel free to respond how you think best.
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But I'm curious, what do you think the gospel does that social programs can't do?
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So I did prepare an answer, but I think I'm going to start by asking you what you think the difference is so that I can see if I can respond thoughtfully from kind of where
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you're approaching this.
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man, that's good.
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Turn it back on me.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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Well, let me, let me give my best.
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let me give my best answer here.
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So I would say like, I think the gospel is both physical and spiritual or has physical and spiritual implications.
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So I think.
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you know, there's a spiritual implication that we can't tangibly touch, right?
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I would believe that the gospel does spiritual work inside humans, inside society, inside our creation.
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I would also say that the gospel has physical or practical implications because it invites us or encourages us or transforms us into living more, what I would say, holy, faithful
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lives, which has the practical implications, I believe, of
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Like you said, loving your neighbor, praying for your enemy, being kind to others, looking out for our neighbor.
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That's how I think I would answer the question.
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so to finish that, and I guess I'm half answering that.
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So what I would say then is social programs can bring about like food programming and...
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kindness training, tolerance training, diversity training, but I don't think, I believe at least, I don't think that social programming can spiritually change hearts and minds.
31:31
Okay, so I think that there are some ways that we are similar and probably some ways that we are different.
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What I am kind of immediately reminded of or was when you kind of sent that question was the quote attributed to St.
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Teresa that Christ has no body now but ours.
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And obviously that's a slight paraphrase, but not much of one.
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So I think,
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I guess my focus in the book and in my own life is certainly on my own personal spiritual development and supporting the spiritual development of others.
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But I think in terms of the idea of the working of the holy in us, that is kind of beyond, that is a mystery beyond what I have control.
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what I have control of are my own efforts, which means that that's kind of where my focus is.
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And so I guess I would say in a sense that I leave it to God to do what God's gonna do in working in us.
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And my question is, what am I to do?
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And what are we to do?
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And so with that St.
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Teresa,
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kind of concept in mind, I'm not 100 % convinced that social programs or justice work can really be separated from the gospel.
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And at a minimum, those programs are a way that the gospel is incarnated or enfleshed in our own time.
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I mean, if you think about Luke, I wanna say it's pretty early in chapter four where Jesus,
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goes to the synagogue and says, today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing, the scripture that he points to is not really about what we would necessarily call spiritual
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things.
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It's about the liberation of the enslaved and the healing of the wounded and kind of the feeding of the poor and so on.
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And so I don't.
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necessarily want to get into it with you about what the spiritual side of this is, because each of us as individuals has our own engagement with that.
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What I want to know is, what is Jesus asking me sort of to do?
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You know, what, if I, you know, what that, that, that evangelical phrase, what would Jesus do?
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I think that phrase is way too good to leave to the evangelicals.
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I think all of us can ask it and then we can ask, and then we can ask,
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what should we do if we're trying to follow this guy, if we're trying to bring his vision to being, not alone, but in tandem with God's work and so on.
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And so the other thing that, we talk about the gospel as though we all know exactly what it is and what it means, and I'm gonna controversially venture that there are somewhat
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different ways of talking about what we mean by the gospel.
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So for example,
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The author Kurt Struchmeyer is one of the progressive Christians today who has talked about the distinction between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus.
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And I am much more interested in the gospel of Jesus.
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What is the good news that Jesus himself shared?
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And I am not 100 % convinced that it is about his own godly nature.
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I mean, I'm reminded in Mark of this
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where he says, I think maybe it's in Mark 10, he says, why do you call me good?
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No one is good but God alone.
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Which incidentally is a very Jewish thing to say in that time and place.
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And so when I try to think about what is the good news of Jesus as I understand it in the broadest possible way, in the least sort of sectarian or doctrinal way, for me what it
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tends to come down to is the idea that God loves us, God provides for us.
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God is with us even in our hardest times.
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We are never separated from God's love, whatever exactly that means or looks like.
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And so I think that that good news, to the extent that that's a way of understanding what Jesus thought the good news was, it can inform and infuse our work to build a world of
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flourishing.
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It can be why we do this work in the first place.
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It can comfort us when cruel people make us suffer.
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It can...
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sort of strengthen us to call out the immorality of people around us who are violent or greedy or heartless, and it can call us to repent ourselves of our own violence, greed,
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and heartlessness.
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So in a sense, and I realize that may be a somewhat non -traditional understanding of what the good news is, but to the extent that that's part of it, it can absolutely inform,
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our desire to do this work, it can strengthen our capacity to do it, it can remind us that this isn't just about helping other people have good lives, though that is certainly part
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of it, it's also about trying to enact this vision that we've had before us for several millennia now, that some of us just cannot seem to let go of.
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So that may not quite be the...
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answer you were looking for, but that is the answer I can give you.
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No, I appreciate that.
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I appreciate those words.
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I'm also reminded you mentioned WWJD.
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If I'm remembering correctly, that phrase comes from the book In His Steps.
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And I think that book was written out of what was once a Congregationalist church, I think in Nebraska or something Midwest.
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And sadly, I don't think the congregate or the became a UCC church from for the church nerds out there when the congregationalist became UCC.
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I don't think it's a UCC church anymore.
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So, yeah, it seems appropriate for us to be to appropriate that language.
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So, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that.
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And I think I think it really gets at the last question I was going to ask you, too.
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So let me pass on that and ask one more since we're running out of time here.
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before we take a break.
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What does this all mean for churches, especially those churches who would consider themselves, you know, on the left theologically?
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How can they live out their faith?
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So in chapter seven of the book, I say a little bit about this, though not nearly enough, but I think a particular congregation or a particular pastor that found the ideas in this
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book compelling or meaningful or sort of interesting to try out could do sort of two different things to try to apply the book to their local circumstance.
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One of them would be to focus on the virtues that I specifically list in chapter six, but also any number of other virtues that would be relevant to develop.
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And the church could ask, how can we be a laboratory for the development of virtues among ourselves?
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So what do we need to do in our worship practices, in our mission work, in our liturgy, in our music, in our faith formation with adults and children, in all the different sort of
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capacities of church life?
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so that we are deeply committed to cultivating virtues in all people who are among us that will help them live lives of flourishing and help other people live lives of flourishing.
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So I think that's one absolute kind of direction that congregations can go in.
39:36
The other direction, which I write about very briefly, because I did have a pretty severe word count limit on this book from Pilgrim, is I talk about congregations as becoming
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laboratories of radical hospitality.
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which is in a sense of virtue, but is also kind of a different way of talking about how we order and orient our practices.
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So if churches want to be hospitable as Jesus was hospitable, obviously that looks really different in our context today than it did when Jesus was this guy walking around Judea
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with a bunch of friends.
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So what does that mean in the context of religious institutions?
40:18
What does that mean about who's in the room?
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What does that mean about minimizing barriers or what Paul might say, maybe minimizing stumbling blocks, right?
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So, you know, is our communion accessible to people who are gluten intolerant or who cannot drink alcohol because they're recovering alcoholics?
40:38
You know,
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Are we including a wide range of people in our liturgical materials and our music?
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I'm actually in a few weeks headed to Connecticut to do a workshop at the UCC Musicians Association on writing inclusive liturgy, because this is a topic that really matters to
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me.
40:56
I have been in too many churches where people with physical disabilities just stopped coming because the churches were not sufficiently accessible.
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That's unacceptable.
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You know?
41:08
But to say, okay, we wanna be an accessible church is really demanding.
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It demands time and thought and money.
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My own congregation is trying to understand how to be in relationship with a number of unhoused people who are connected to our community.
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For many of us, there's a lot of work to be done there to open our own hearts and minds and figure out what that looks like.
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So I feel as though,
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The ideas in this book have both indirect and direct implications for congregations that wanna work in these kinds of areas.
41:45
Yeah, I don't know if I'm jumping ahead.
41:48
I feel like I'm excited about a possible sequel then.
41:50
Sounds like possibly.
41:53
What do you think?
41:55
I mean, actually I think every single chapter of the book could be its own book.
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And certainly, even though it's not currently on my to write list, on my to write list is a book called Love Your Neighbor, A Progressive Christian Politics of Flourishing.
42:12
Who knows if I'll get to write that.
42:14
But you know, taking chapter seven and making it its own book for churches would be a great idea.
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So thank you for the idea.
42:22
Yeah, yeah.
42:24
well, we need to move on, but the book is Abundant Lives, a Progressive Christian Ethic of Flourishing.
42:30
Again, I really recommend it.
42:31
I think, as I hope is evident, Amanda, like she knows her stuff here.
42:35
She thinks about this stuff very intellectually, academically, spiritually.
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So it's worth checking out.
42:42
I'll make sure to leave a note or a link in the show notes.
42:45
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back with some closing questions.
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Are you good or do you need a minute?
42:52
I'm fine.
42:53
hopefully you've been hanging in there because I've had like a million interruptions like someone was ringing my doorbells, someone's not calling me, so a lot of distractions.
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So hopefully you've been not too distracted by my distractions.
43:06
Okay, I'll reintroduce you here and we'll run through these.
43:10
Okay.
43:13
All right, we're back with Dr.
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Amanda Udus Kessler.
43:15
So again, thank you so much for the time and the conversation.
43:19
Appreciate your contributions to the show.
43:21
You've been through this before, so I think this should be somewhat familiar, but since it's been a while, let's just do these again.
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Perhaps your answers have changed.
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If you are Pope for a day, what might you want to do that day?
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I would use my spiritual authority to ask all Christians to refrain from violence, to share their wealth with the poor, to work for justice, and to welcome absolutely everyone
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to church and to the communion table full stop.
43:48
Alright, that's good.
43:50
A theologian or historical Christian you'd want to meet or bring back to life.
43:56
So the same one I mentioned when I was last on your podcast, but for a different reason, that figure of course is Jesus and because I am fully aware that I could have all of this
44:07
wrong.
44:07
So I would really love to ask him if these ideas are at least in keeping with the spirit of what he was trying to do.
44:14
Yeah, and let's just go back to what you wrote, Amanda, about that generosity of spirit.
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Also in that chapter we reference is just this emphasis on humility.
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So again, here's Amanda literally practicing her humility.
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So thank you.
44:28
Thank you for both that, Amanda.
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What do you think history will remember from our current time and place?
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So if we survive as a species long enough for history to remember the time that we are living in now, it will be because we somehow found the humility and the courage to repent
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of all the things we're doing wrong now.
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White supremacy, Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, environmental destruction, and just all the other ills of our time.
44:58
And if we actually pull off that repentance, it will enable us to rebuild the world.
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as a better place.
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So I have to think that that is what history will remember.
45:08
If that doesn't happen, I have no idea how to answer this question.
45:12
Well, I like, let's stay with that answer because I like that.
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And I feel like that's more hopeful.
45:17
This is related then to your answer then, but if you want to add anything, if you have hopes for the future of Christianity.
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Sure, and I mean, I think Christianity will always take many forms and have a wide range of priorities because so many different kinds of people are part of it.
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But that said, I hope that more people come to see the beauty, power, and value of progressive or liberal or non -cretal or justice -focused or open -hearted Christianity
45:44
and build it up for the healing of our individual lives and the healing of the world.
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And the one thing I'd add is I really hope that people who already identify with this
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kind of approach to Christianity, I hope we get bolder about evangelizing specifically about this approach to Christianity.
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Because as I say in the book, I believe that the gospel, the kingdom of God and flourishing are bound up together.
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And I think the world would be better if more people saw things that way.
46:13
Yeah, I appreciate you saying that last part, but because especially as someone who's spent the last 20 years in mainline circles, so often mainliners are like apologetic or...
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want to define ourselves by who we're not.
46:28
Like let's define ourselves by who we are.
46:30
Like you said, open -hearted.
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I mean, I think even that's a great way to say it.
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We're open -hearted.
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We practice generosity of spirit, all those good things.
46:37
So thank you.
46:39
Thank you for sharing that.
46:40
Share if you would how listeners can find out more about you, connect with you, all that stuff.
46:44
All right, so mostly I have two websites.
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My writing website is amandayudiscessler .com.
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So literally my name without the dash between Udice and Kessler.
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And it includes information about all of my books.
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I have a number of them as well as a repository of other freely available writings, including Liturgy and Sermons.
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My music website is queersacredmusic .com, all one word.
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and it has more than 150 free use original progressive hymns, worship songs and rounds in multiple formats such as scores, recordings and videos.
47:19
And finally, if anyone is interested in buying a copy of Abundant Lives and would like to take advantage of my author discount, I am absolutely permitted by Pilgrim to buy books at
47:30
basically half price and sell them for whatever I want.
47:33
And so if anyone actually wanted to buy a copy of the book and spend a little bit less money on it,
47:39
They could either contact me through the contact page on my website, or they could email me at my personal email address, which is amanda at amandayudiskesler .com.
47:51
I wouldn't do this if Pilgrim hadn't given permission, but they have, so I am.
47:56
Okay, that's great.
47:57
That's great.
47:58
Well again, really want really want to recommend the book I was excited Amanda when you emailed me and said hey got a new book out Are you interested to talk about it?
48:06
Because I know whenever I talk to Amanda like it's gonna be an intellectual heady conversation where she's gonna have some chops to send my way So thank you again for the
48:16
conversation.
48:16
Thank you for the book Looking forward to hopefully future endeavors here to come.
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Let me leave you where the word of peace may God's peace be with you.
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and also with you.