Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / William Cavanaugh on Idolatry and Power | Faith & Politics #5

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William Cavanaugh on Idolatry and Power | Faith & Politics #5 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: James Spencer. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Ashish Varma.
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  Speaker 2: And we have a guest today who we're really excited about,
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  Speaker 2: William T.
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  Speaker 1: Kavanaugh, who is from DePaul University.
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  Speaker 2: He's a professor of Catholic studies and director for the
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  Speaker 2: Center of World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology. He's also the
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  Speaker 2: author of The Uses of Idolatry and a number of
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: other books. One of my favorites is Torture and Eucharist,
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  Speaker 2: excellent book about the Pinochet regime in Chile, as well
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  Speaker 2: as Migrations of the Holy, which I'm sure we'll touch on,
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  Speaker 2: and Theopolitical Imagination, which was one of his earlier works.
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  Speaker 2: And so we're excited to welcome William Kavanaugh.
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  Speaker 1: Bill, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, thanks very much, James and Ashish. Good to be here.
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  Speaker 2: Well- We're in the midst of this series on faith
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  Speaker 2: and politics, and you've written an awful lot on topics
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  Speaker 2: related to faith and politics and ancillary to faith and politics.
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  Speaker 2: And so I guess my first question, and I'll try
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  Speaker 2: to make this a little bit of a softball just
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  Speaker 2: to kind of get our conversation going, is how do
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  Speaker 2: you actually think about politics from a theological perspective? Is
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  Speaker 2: it for you something that is separate from politics? Christianity, faith, theology,
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  Speaker 2: or is it something that's a little bit more integrated?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's integrated. And I think you can see that,
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  Speaker 3: you know, just in the Bible already, Jesus is using
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  Speaker 3: political language, talking about the kingdom of God. And Jesus
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  Speaker 3: is referred to as the king, you know, king of
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  Speaker 3: the Jews and so on. So there's all kinds of
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  Speaker 3: political language. The word gospel is is originally derived from
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  Speaker 3: a Roman political ceremony that the Evangelium that's from the Greek,
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  Speaker 3: which is the good news of the return of the
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  Speaker 3: emperor and so on. I mean, there's all kinds of
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  Speaker 3: political language that's there in the Bible already. And I
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  Speaker 3: think the way that we tend to think about it
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  Speaker 3: these days has kind of gotten separated. So we tend
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  Speaker 3: to separate Sunday from Monday through Friday. And a lot
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  Speaker 3: of that has to do with the way we define
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  Speaker 3: what we mean by politics and what we tend to
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  Speaker 3: mean by politics these days is having to do with
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  Speaker 3: power in the nation state. And that is a relatively
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  Speaker 3: kind of new narrowing of the term power. politics that's
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  Speaker 3: associated with Max Weber and others in the 20th century.
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  Speaker 3: But if you go back to Aristotle's idea of politics,
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  Speaker 3: it has a much broader sense of just what does
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  Speaker 3: it mean? How do we organize ourselves to get along?
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  Speaker 3: How do we serve the common good together? How do
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  Speaker 3: we structure our lives together? And so in that sense,
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  Speaker 3: it's got a much broader sense. It's not just about
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  Speaker 3: who to vote for every four years. or every two years. Um,
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  Speaker 3: but it's about how do we, you know, how do
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  Speaker 3: we live together?
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  Speaker 2: When you think about that sort of integration of theology
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  Speaker 2: and you, you think about that broader sense. So like when,
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  Speaker 2: when politics had this notion of public life together, was
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  Speaker 2: there also a Christian or a theological sense about how
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  Speaker 2: politics worked within society that would have been different from
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  Speaker 2: that broader public life?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I mean, you look at, um,
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  Speaker 3: The way the church thought of itself, the term ecclesia,
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  Speaker 3: the biblical term, the Greek term for church, has roots
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  Speaker 3: in the Hebrew sense of assembly, kind of assembly before God.
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  Speaker 3: And in ecclesia, in Greek, ecclesia is kind of the
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  Speaker 3: assembly of the citizens of a city-state. And so there's
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  Speaker 3: a sense in which it's not so much just about
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  Speaker 3: having power over the whole, but it's a sense of
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  Speaker 3: kind of how we see ourselves as doing something different
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  Speaker 3: in the world. And I think the church in a
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  Speaker 3: lot of ways in the early centuries thought of itself
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  Speaker 3: as kind of being a, a third thing, a tertium quid,
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  Speaker 3: other than the individual on the one hand or the
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  Speaker 3: powers that be on the other hand. It was this
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  Speaker 3: other kind of community that was ushering in the kingdom
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  Speaker 3: of God. And that made it both public but not
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  Speaker 3: kind of looking for power. And so the early Christians
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  Speaker 3: for the first three centuries, for the most part, did
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  Speaker 3: not participate in the military, for example. They thought that
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  Speaker 3: a Christian could not kill, but that didn't mean that
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  Speaker 3: they were just thought of themselves as a private club
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  Speaker 3: or something like that. It was something more than that,
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  Speaker 3: this kind of public community that was the herald of
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  Speaker 3: what God is doing with the world.
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  Speaker 2: And you sort of pull that through in Migrations of
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  Speaker 2: the Holy, so how the state or the nation takes
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  Speaker 2: up some of the sacred terms, let's say, of Christianity
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  Speaker 2: and becomes in and of itself almost like a religious
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  Speaker 2: organization making quasi theological claims, even though it wouldn't frame
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  Speaker 2: them that way. I don't know whether I'm representing that well,
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  Speaker 2: but maybe you can explain it a little differently.
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  Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, I think I think that's pretty clear. And
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  Speaker 3: that's that's not anything new. you know, the Roman emperors
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  Speaker 3: considered themselves gods, and so you have this kind of
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  Speaker 3: dense intertwining of political power, what we would call political power,
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  Speaker 3: with divinity, with sacredness. It's worked out in a different
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  Speaker 3: way in the medieval period where you've got two different forces.
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  Speaker 3: You've got the church on the one hand and the
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  Speaker 3: the ecclesiastical authorities, and then you've got the kings and princes,
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  Speaker 3: on the other hand, who thought of themselves as also
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  Speaker 3: serving the kingdom, and you have this kind of tension
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  Speaker 3: between these two parties. But then in the early modern period,
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  Speaker 3: it tends to be all the sacredness kind of gets
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  Speaker 3: sucked into the state, the kind of new nation state
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  Speaker 3: that arises in the modern period. And so that's why
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  Speaker 3: I call that the migration of the holy. It's actually
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  Speaker 3: a term that I borrowed from the historian John Bossie,
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  Speaker 3: who looks at the way that all of the kind
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  Speaker 3: of trappings, the kind of liturgical trappings that used to
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  Speaker 3: be the province of the church now become the... the
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  Speaker 3: province of the state. So Queen Elizabeth I, for example,
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  Speaker 3: borrows all this kind of imagery from Corpus Christi processions
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  Speaker 3: and suppresses Corpus Christi processions at the same time that
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  Speaker 3: she's kind of putting herself in the place of the
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  Speaker 3: Eucharist in all of these kind of ceremonial ways. And
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  Speaker 3: so that's a very clear kind of movement in the
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  Speaker 3: early modern period. And you can still see it even
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  Speaker 3: in so-called secular nation states like the United States. There's
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  Speaker 3: all kinds of that sort of symbolism. If you look
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  Speaker 3: up into the dome of the Capitol building, for example,
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  Speaker 3: what you see is a painting on the dome called
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  Speaker 3: The Apotheosis of Washington. the becoming God of Washington. It's
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  Speaker 3: George Washington ascending into the heavens surrounded by these mythological figures.
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  Speaker 3: It was painted by Constantino Brumidi, who had previously worked
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  Speaker 3: for the Vatican. And so all of this very much continues.
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  Speaker 1: Ashish, anything?
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  Speaker 3: I have a.
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  Speaker 4: I have a somewhat funny question, but there's a method
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  Speaker 4: to the madness, so if you can bear with it.
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  Speaker 4: So I like sci-fi a lot, and one of the
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  Speaker 4: things that actually irritates me about sci-fi is that when
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  Speaker 4: you watch, there seems to be this very linear projection
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  Speaker 4: of the development of societies. So you can go from
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  Speaker 4: one planet to the next, and as you arrive at
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  Speaker 4: the next planet, you know where they are, and they
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  Speaker 4: can map them relative to especially the US, but generally speaking,
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  Speaker 4: Western nation civility development. And then they project that into
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  Speaker 4: the future, right? Because in the sci-fi shows, we're living
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  Speaker 4: in some sense of where we project that going. I
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  Speaker 4: couldn't help but think of this when I think about
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  Speaker 4: one of the claims you're working through in your Migrations
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  Speaker 4: of the Holy, where you talk about what to me
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  Speaker 4: is pretty significant, especially for our conversation, but you say,
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  Speaker 4: We didn't have to end up in this notion of
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  Speaker 4: the nation state in the way that we think about it.
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  Speaker 4: And of course, that is taken for granted. Not only
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  Speaker 4: did we have to end up here, it was good
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  Speaker 4: to end up here. And whatever we project that to
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  Speaker 4: mean going forward is the best path forward and the
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  Speaker 4: way that popular consciousness seems to take our development. Why
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  Speaker 4: is it that you, you would want to push against
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  Speaker 4: that when, when you make your sort of claim of,
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  Speaker 4: we didn't have to end up here.
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  Speaker 3: It's always a good idea to, to think about different
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  Speaker 3: ways that history could have ended up. Um, Because once
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  Speaker 3: we think that the way we do things is inevitable,
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  Speaker 3: then it makes it very hard to change. Then we
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  Speaker 3: just accept the status quo as if it were our
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  Speaker 3: fate instead of our destiny. And I think that's always
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  Speaker 3: a kind of dangerous thing. So it's always good to
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  Speaker 3: think about alternatives. and to think about different ways that
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  Speaker 3: we could have gone as a way of thinking about
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  Speaker 3: different ways that we could do things in the present
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  Speaker 3: and could do things in the future. That's one of
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  Speaker 3: the things that is, I think, really embedded in the
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  Speaker 3: Christian tradition through the Genesis story, right? The fall is
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  Speaker 3: often misunderstood as pessimistic. Doctrine that it means that things
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  Speaker 3: are messed up and there's nothing we can do about
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  Speaker 3: it But the fall is actually an optimistic doctrine because
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  Speaker 3: it means that there was an original condition That was
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  Speaker 3: good that we fell away from And this is as
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  Speaker 3: opposed to you know, the way the Babylonians told the
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  Speaker 3: story for example in their creation story they basically say,
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  Speaker 3: you know things were messed up from the get-go and
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  Speaker 3: It's the gods are violent, there's a war amongst the gods,
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  Speaker 3: and that's how creation happens. And the writers of Genesis
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  Speaker 3: tell a different kind of story that, no, it was
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  Speaker 3: good to begin with, and then things got messed up.
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  Speaker 3: And so they're as realistic looking out at the world
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  Speaker 3: and seeing the damaged condition that we live in, as
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  Speaker 3: realistic as the Babylonians. But the way they tell the
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  Speaker 3: story gives us hope then that because things are not
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  Speaker 3: just the way they are, always have been, then things
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  Speaker 3: are not just the way that things have to be either.
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  Speaker 3: And so all of our eschatology is embedded there in
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  Speaker 3: the first few chapters of Genesis. The idea that we
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  Speaker 3: have hope that God is good and that creation is good.
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  Speaker 3: And the final word in the universe is love. And
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  Speaker 3: therefore we can do things differently even though we find
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  Speaker 3: ourselves in this predicament now.
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  Speaker 4: So I take one of the significant developments that comes
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  Speaker 4: out of imagining otherwise, or at least the possibility of otherwise,
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  Speaker 4: is that it gives us the potential to say maybe
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  Speaker 4: that there are better choices, especially the church can make
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  Speaker 4: when it thinks about engaging publicly. Is that a fair
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  Speaker 4: takeaway then?
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 4: Do you mind going into some of what, you know,
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  Speaker 4: in a perfect situation where the church sits down and says,
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  Speaker 4: teach us, Dr. Kavanaugh, what are some of those takeaways
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  Speaker 4: that you'd like to see the church imagine?
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  Speaker 2: Well, let me ask it this way, because again, I
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  Speaker 2: mentioned like Torture and Eucharist is probably my favorite book
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  Speaker 2: you've written. I just, I'm wondering if, the situation described
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  Speaker 2: in that book under the Pinochet regime and the importance
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  Speaker 2: that the Eucharist takes on that is even beyond the
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  Speaker 2: importance that it probably should have had in the church
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  Speaker 2: in the first place. But I'm wondering if part of
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  Speaker 2: what the church needs to do is recognize forces that
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  Speaker 2: require our resistance or forces that require a counterpractice At
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  Speaker 2: a sensitivity level well beyond what we see under the
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  Speaker 2: Pinochet regime.
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  Speaker 1: Right. And so that this starts to sort of.
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  Speaker 2: Guide our our political imagination and our public life in
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  Speaker 2: ways where we say, no, we're going to we're going
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  Speaker 2: to push against this ethos. that the surrounding culture is
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  Speaker 2: trying to cultivate us into, we're going to actually resist that.
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  Speaker 2: And we're going to do that by being a different
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  Speaker 2: sort of people with different sort of practices, shaping ourselves
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  Speaker 2: into a different sort of community, similar to what you,
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  Speaker 2: you argue in torture and Eucharist, but at a very, um,
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  Speaker 2: at a different level of extreme activity. So maybe, maybe
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  Speaker 2: that helps frame this a little bit.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. The first thing that I would say is that
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  Speaker 3: the church should not think of itself as an oppositional
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  Speaker 3: group genetically. It's not as if we should always be
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  Speaker 3: opposed to the wider culture. We are not meant to
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  Speaker 3: be a sect. We're not meant to be a minority.
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  Speaker 3: There's nothing inherently good about being a minority. But we
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  Speaker 3: find ourselves often in situations where it is important to resist.
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  Speaker 3: But there's nothing good about resistance in and of itself
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  Speaker 3: or about being different or anything like that. But we
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  Speaker 3: do find ourselves in situations where there are times when
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  Speaker 3: we have to say no and we're not very good
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  Speaker 3: at saying no. And one of the things that, one
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  Speaker 3: of the reasons for that is because we tend to
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  Speaker 3: think of our national belonging as something which is more
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  Speaker 3: important than, even if we wouldn't articulate it that way,
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  Speaker 3: we tend to think that it's more important and more
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  Speaker 3: basic than our church affiliation. And so the public thing
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  Speaker 3: is national belonging and the church, our Our church belonging
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  Speaker 3: is something that we do on Sundays, and it's a
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  Speaker 3: private sort of thing. It's the people that we hang
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  Speaker 3: around with and go to Bible study and go golfing
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  Speaker 3: with and that sort of thing. And reversing that is
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  Speaker 3: very hard. And that's what happened in Chile in a
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  Speaker 3: lot of ways is that The idea that the church
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  Speaker 3: would be oppositional to the authorities that were running the
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: country was not something that was in the habits of
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: the church. And they had to learn that after the
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  Speaker 3: military coup in which you've got people being tortured and
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  Speaker 3: killed and this surveillance state that was imposed upon them.
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  Speaker 3: And the church did respond. And so this is, I'm
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  Speaker 3: talking primarily about the Catholic Church, although Lutherans were also,
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  Speaker 3: the Lutheran Bishop Helmut Frenz was also very courageous in
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Chile as well. But they... But they did very quickly
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: kind of pivot. And it's a relatively happy story, as
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: it was not in Argentina, where the church tended to
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  Speaker 3: just go along with the military regime. And human rights
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  Speaker 3: abuses were horrible in Argentina, much worse than in Chile.
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  Speaker 3: So it's these kind of habits of thinking that we have.
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  Speaker 3: We don't tend to think about our our primary loyalty,
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  Speaker 3: you know, for Catholics, this is, this comes to fruition
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  Speaker 3: in a, not necessarily a good way with the first
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  Speaker 3: Catholic president, which is John F. Kennedy, you know, so
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Catholics are, they tend to be, you know, most Catholics
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: come in large numbers in the 19th century and, And
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: they tend to be suspected, as Muslims are today, as
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: being anti-American and undemocratic and, you know, suspicious and, you know,
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  Speaker 3: obedient to a foreign potentate, the Pope and so on.
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  Speaker 3: And so there's all this kind of suspicion of Catholics.
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  Speaker 3: And so then finally, in 1960, we get the first
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  Speaker 3: Catholic president is elected. And we celebrate this, but the
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  Speaker 3: way he got elected is by promising that his Catholicism
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  Speaker 3: will have nothing to do with how he governs the country.
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  Speaker 3: So what a victory this is that, you know, now
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  Speaker 3: we've got our first Catholic president and it's, you know,
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  Speaker 3: on the basis of this complete disavowal that it means
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  Speaker 3: that Catholicism won't do anything at all in public. And
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  Speaker 3: that tends to be the kind of Pyrrhic victory that
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: we have. We're so... you know, interested in gaining power
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  Speaker 3: in the state. And we think we're going to do
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  Speaker 3: good with it. But, you know, it's like Stanley Hauerwas
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: used to say that the church went to Washington to
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: change Washington and Washington changed the church. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's what I agree with you. I
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: don't think we're meant to be a sect. I think,
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  Speaker 2: you know, when I think about things like the true,
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  Speaker 2: the good and the beautiful, we should affirm the truth,
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  Speaker 2: the good and the beautiful wherever we find it. But
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  Speaker 2: we should also recognize the limits of the sorts of goodness, truth,
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  Speaker 2: and beauty that the world has. can actually show us.
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  Speaker 2: And so there is a sense where we're not trying
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  Speaker 2: to be marginal, but we're trying to be part of
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  Speaker 2: an integral to the public life. And to do that,
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  Speaker 2: your work spans things like like torture and Eucharist, but
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: also being consumed and the economics of that, the way
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  Speaker 2: the church needs to rethink its economic practices, the uses
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  Speaker 2: of idolatry deals with that a good bit. And so
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  Speaker 2: there's all these things that sort of the world is
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: trying to understand how to navigate that the church through tradition,
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  Speaker 2: through revelation, through various other aspects have insight that the
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  Speaker 2: world simply doesn't accept. And so that's our point of resistance.
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  Speaker 2: And so maybe the question is then, how do we
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: proactively pursue those unique resources? And how do we reinforce
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: ourselves with those unique resources in ways that will allow
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  Speaker 2: us to point beyond the good, true, and beautiful that
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  Speaker 2: the world is capable of showing us?
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  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, exactly. So we have all of the resources
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  Speaker 3: that we need. We have Jesus. in the sacrament and
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  Speaker 3: in the word. And we have the Holy Spirit and
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  Speaker 3: we have God the Father. And so it's a matter
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  Speaker 3: of being obedient to that calling. And there are lots
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  Speaker 3: of different ways of making that happen. I think one
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  Speaker 3: of the problems oftentimes when we think about having an
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: impact on Christians having an impact in the public sphere,
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  Speaker 3: we think that we need power to do that. And
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: there's different ways of defining what power means. But what
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: I mean when I say that is that we think
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  Speaker 3: we need to have elected officials and judges who are
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  Speaker 3: on our side. And that then, it can often become
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  Speaker 3: the The end to which all kinds of means are used. Right.
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  Speaker 3: And I think we're seeing that in a lot of
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  Speaker 3: the Christian nationalism that we're seeing now. Right. It doesn't
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  Speaker 3: matter who is, you know, who is in charge as
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: long as they're on our side. It doesn't matter how.
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  Speaker 3: how they behave and what they do, as long as
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  Speaker 3: it means power for Christians. And I think, you know, again,
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  Speaker 3: this is going to be a Pyrrhic victory. It's, you know,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: the more power we seem to gain, the more people
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: seem to be avoiding the church because they're disgusted by
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: that kind of, you know, so people will celebrate having
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: our champion in office by staying away from the church
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: in ever greater numbers. And that's probably the fate that
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: we deserve.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: One of the words that's come up a few times
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: already is idolatry. I think of Alistair McFadden, the Scottish
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: theologian who talks about he's interacting with questions of sin
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: and interacting with ideas in psychology and in the medical world.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: And one of his contentions is that There's a lot
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: that we gain from understanding issues in psychology, understanding issues
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: of disease, things like that. But we do lose something
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: if we don't bring the category of sin into the conversation.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: And that's a case that he makes. What do we
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: lose if we are afraid to actually trade on the
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: language of idolatry and what that means in this conversation?
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, interesting. I mean, there are good reasons to
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: avoid the language of idolatry, because it is associated with
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: a certain kind of chauvinism. It's associated with violence in
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the Bible, in colonial history. And I think what you
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: find in the Catholic world and maybe the Christian world
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: more generally is, you know, around the era of decolonization
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: in the 1960s, you get away from using the terms
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: idolatry because that's, you know, I just read through David
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Livingston's account of his travels in Africa in the 19th
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: century and he's full of, you know, disparaging the locals
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: and their idolatry and their superstition. And so there's good
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: reasons to avoid the language of idolatry. But ultimately, I
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: just don't think you can avoid it. And it needs
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: to be recovered for very good reasons, because what we're
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: really faced with is not just, you know, people doing
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: bad things, but it's not just sin, but it's a
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: false kind of worship. And that sort of language is
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: really necessary because we need to realize the stakes and
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: the extent to which we create gods and then fall
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: down before them and obey. And so what you find
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: already then in the 1970s, You get this group of
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: liberation theologians in Latin America who are recovering the language
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: of idolatry and saying, you know, for so long the
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: enemy has been Marxism and atheism. But what we find
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: in the real enemy in Latin America is not atheists,
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: because there's not that many of them, but the real
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: enemy is people who worship a false god. And they're
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: talking about specifically the certain kinds of economic problems practices
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: that turn capital into this god to which millions of
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: lives are sacrificed. And so in the context of post-colonial context,
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: you have them recovering the notion of idolatry precisely because
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: it really captures the nature of what we're dealing with,
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: the idea that you can't, the current economic arrangements can't
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: be questioned. We just need to bow down in front
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: of the so-called free market and let things go the
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: way they're going because there's nothing we can do about it.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: The market is sovereign and we just need to obey.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: And I think that's really dangerous. So the language of idolatry,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: I think, is really necessary. Pope Francis really used the
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: language of idolatry a lot, especially when talking about economics,
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: and I think for very good reasons.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: In evangelical politics, I would say economics is fairly.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Undertreated.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: If we think about it, we only think about it
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: in terms of whether my taxes are going to go
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: up and whether inflation is going to increase and how
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: does this work itself out for me.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And my family.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Is that different in Catholic circles where there's a deeper
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: sort of consumerist tendency, a notion of the greed, which
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: is idolatry, and the economic systems and the way that
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: they can deform us? Or is that also as anemic
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: as it might be within evangelical circles?
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't have any problems in the Catholic Church.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: We're fine. So....
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Everybody should convert.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: No, I wish I could say that it was different,
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: but it's not, not much. You know, Catholics are as
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: divided as evangelicals are politically and economically and so on.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: We do have this whole tradition of Catholic social thought.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: which is, you know, reflections on kind of bringing the
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: gospel to bear on economic and political realities. And that's
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: been a tradition since 1891 is usually considered, you know,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's encyclical about, you know, trying
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: to counter rampant capitalism on the one hand and rampant
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: socialism on the other hand and trying to figure out what,
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: what a Christian. So we, we do have that tradition
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: and that's, that's, uh, really good. But, um, but I
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: don't think that the average Catholic is any better than
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: the average, uh, evangelical and in, uh, in their day-to-day lives. Um,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: and to me, that's, um, that's a real issue. And
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: one of the things that I really like, uh, when
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: I'm teaching undergraduates, is you can really teach theology through
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: economics in a lot of ways because it's so hands-on
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: and practical, right? So we talk about, you know, ordering
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: things from Amazon, for example. You've got this dynamic, look
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: at Psalm 115 or Psalm 135, where you've got this
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: notion that you make idols of which are lifeless, but
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: you attribute life to them. In the meantime, they're taking
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: life away from you. You become as deaf and dumb
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: and mute as the idols themselves, according to these Psalms.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of that in the scriptures. And you
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: can see the same kind of dynamic in our economy
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: where things take on life and life is drained away
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: from people. And so you have this kind of thing-centered
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: economy where you go online and all you see are things,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: and you click on them, and then they appear magically
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: on your doorstep. And with a smile, right? The Amazon
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: packages with the smile, right? It's this personification, you know,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: on the commercials, the little packages, sing and dance and
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: so on. and this animation of these things. And the
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: people then that are making these things, they might be
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: 14-year-old Thai girls making 50 cents an hour, the cobalt
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo making $ 3 a
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: day in these horrible conditions to keep our cell phones
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: running and everything. All of that and the environmental degradation
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: and the guy who delivered the product to your door
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: who's got no benefits and is making minimum wage, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: this is his second job because he's got to try
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: to feed his family and all that. All of that
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: is just invisible to us by design, right? And so
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: our whole economy is is based around the centrality of products,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: what Karl Marx called the commodity fetishism, the making of
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: fetishes out of commodities. And at the same time, life
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: is drained away from so many people that are caught
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: in this kind of economy. And so when you start
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: really looking at these very concrete day-to-day practices, and really
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: start digging into that, then you realize just to what
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: an extent there's this idolatrous economy that we're caught in.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: And most of us, and it's designed so that we
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: don't think about it, right? And when we do think
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: about it, then we get these feelings of helplessness. And
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: we'd rather just kind of think of this as our fate, right?
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: That's just the way it is, and there's nothing to
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: do about it, right? You have to order from Amazon
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: because it's just there, you know? And it's like, no,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: you don't have to order from Amazon. And there's a
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: lot of other different things that you can, economic practices
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: that you can undertake that... can contribute to a different kind,
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: different kinds of economies, right? We have a tendency to
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: think about the economy as if it's just this big
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: thing that is, you know, unavoidable. There's nothing we can
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: do about it. Nobody's actually running it. Um, but it's
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: made up of all of these decisions and there are, there,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: there isn't just one economy. There are economies. There are
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: farmers markets that are a different kind of economic space. Um,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: in all kinds of different ways that we can practice.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: What I try to do in my little book, Being Consumed,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: which is just a little 100-page long, but I try
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: to kind of point to different sorts of economic practices
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: that Christians are undertaking in attempts to kind of make
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: this kind of economy not inevitable.
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: Some of those examples are pretty powerful in that they
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: show how entangled we are in ongoing colonial practices. The
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: world being carved up and ordered in the way that
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: it is has created a cadence for the world to
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: have to play into. That's really how idolatry works. It
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: consumes everything around it by forcing all things into this structural,
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: as Willie Jennings calls it, enclosure. And yet at the
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: same time, I often feel at a loss, not because
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: I could choose to order a book from a publisher
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: instead of Amazon, but over the fact that if I
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: don't buy the bananas, for instance, how are those underpaid,
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: brutalized workers on the Costa Rican banana farms going to
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: make money given the way that the order is set up?
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: Or if I don't have a cell phone, I might
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: be fine, but the people working in the cobalt mines
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: in the Congo, um, unfortunately depend upon it where it
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: just seems a bit like a, you're damned if you do,
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: you're damned if you don't. And we should take these
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: things seriously. We should think about them. How do we,
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: how do we address that sort of rock and a
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: hard place dynamic?
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, the problem is that we've come to
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: think that, um, taking advantage of someone's desperation is a virtue.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: And that, I think we need to start there, right?
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is what I talk about in the
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: first chapter of being consumed, is that a free market
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: is free, according to Milton Friedman, if a transaction is
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: voluntary and mutually informed. And so if the Thai girl
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: knows that she is getting 50 cents an hour, and
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: that's better than starvation, then it's a free transaction. That's
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: the free market, right? And I think the problem is
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: that we've defined freedom in this very narrow way, in
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: this very self-serving way, rather than a broader sense of
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: what freedom means might actually mean, which is a kind
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: of more positive sense of freedom. So not just the
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: negative lack of interference, but a positive sense of the
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: flourishing of all of the parties involved. And in order
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: to do that, you need to start looking at the
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: power disparities that exist in that kind of economy. And
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: so the fact that the you know, the Thai girl
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: might be happy or the, or the cobalt miner in
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: the democratic Republic of Congo might be, you know, happy
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: to have a job in $ 3 a day, um, because
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: it's better than what the alternative is. Um, that in
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: and of itself is, we need to stop thinking that
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: that's those parameters that have been set, um, are, uh,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: are inevitable in this way. We need to start asking
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: the question of the power dynamics that are involved there.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Why is the cobalt miner so desperate that he needs
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: to do this horrible work for $ 3 a day? And
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: so that leads you into all of these kind of
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: larger questions of how the system got set up in
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: the first place. And so it's never simply a matter
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: of are they working? Well, therefore, buying something from their
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: business is good. It's always these much larger questions of
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: how much are they getting paid? How is the environment
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: being treated? All these other kind of questions that we
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: would prefer to forget. So, yeah, so I mean, it's,
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: I remember something that Desmond Tutu said during the apartheid boycotts,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: when people were boycotting South Africa because of apartheid. And
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: the argument was that, well, we can't, you know, the people,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: the South African people will suffer if we don't buy
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: their products. And Desmond Tutu said something of the effect of,
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: let us decide that, right? I mean, we're already suffering
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: under this regime. Let us decide what kinds of suffering
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: we're willing to put up with and what kinds we're not.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: And so he was calling for a boycott, even though
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: in the short term, that was going to be bad
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: for business and some people might lose their jobs. But
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: he was after something much larger than just the perpetuation
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: of an unjust status quo.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: It does point us to something, I think, that we
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: don't often address in what I'll say our public life
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: is or our political life. And what I mean by
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: political life in the United States is You know, sort
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: of the Republican and Democratic machinery that is going to
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: own offices and, represent us in government. Public life, just
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: sort of the way we live, I think that we
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: don't often think through how stuck we actually are. Or
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: if we do think about how stuck we actually are,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: it feels a little bit hopeless to get out of it.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I can think of ways when I'm just sitting around
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: and go, I don't actually need some of these things
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: that I buy.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: And so I can stop buying them.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: But then there's a whole other apparatus where it's like, well,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: where else am I supposed to get that if I
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: actually need it? It creates sort of this interesting tension
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: because we can't escape it totally. And that may just
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: be life in the world. But then we could also
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: think through ways of working against it, even as we're
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: using it. I think that's probably the way I have
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: tended to approach some of this. It's like, I can't
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: really escape this. You know, I'm not, I'm not going
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: to be great living in a tent, um, out in
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: the woods somewhere. Like I have to buy a house.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: I have to buy into, you know, centralized banking. I
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: have to buy into mortgages. Like, you know, some of
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: that just feels like I have to, um, But at
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: the same time, you can sit back and say, but
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know that these policies need to continue. I
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: don't know that the next generation really needs to do
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: it in the exact same way we've done it. And
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: there might be reform here. What do you think of
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: that kind of an approach to these things that feel,
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: as I think Ashish is.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Saying, like they just feel like you get structured into it?
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: Right, and you do. I mean, I am not, I
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: can't claim any kind of, you know, purity on these
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: kinds of matters. But I do think that we need
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: to stop thinking that the alternatives are either the status
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: quo or living in a treehouse. All kinds of stuff.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: you know, that can, can happen. Right. And so I've
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: got a house and I've got a mortgage and I've
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: got a car. Right. And so, so what can you
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: do with that? Well, we put solar panels on our house. Right.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: And so we produce more electricity than we use. We've
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: got one car and I get to work on public transportation,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: you know, and so we, bought a house in a
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: place where that's accessible to public, uh, transportation. Who do
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: we get our mortgage from? We got our mortgage from
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: the local community bank rather than one of the, the big, uh, conglomerates, right. Um, uh,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: where's your, uh, retirement funds? Well, some of it is
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: with the self-help credit union, you.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Know, um, all the different really helpful that.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: You can do. Um, And and so I really want
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: to push back against the idea that there's nothing, you know,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: that we're trapped and there's nothing we can do because
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: there's all kinds of things that we can do. And
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: there's more that that needs to to be done. And
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: it needs to be done at all sorts of levels,
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: not just the the. personal levels of trying to shop
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: local and go into the farmer's market and that sort
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: of thing. But all the way up to the political level,
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: there's so much more. I mean, there's so much more
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: that could at least be done to stop making it worse.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, the.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Current policies are you know, climate change is great. Let's
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: burn more fossil fuels, you know, and I mean, at
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: the very least, you could, you know, dial back on
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: that rather than, you know, putting, you know, as in
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: the first Trump administration, when the head of the Environmental
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: Protection Agency was a coal industry lobbyist, for God's sake,
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: can we just get back to a little bit of sanity,
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: you know, so there's, there's all kinds of things. But
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: then there's also kind of You know, businesses that if
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: people could think creatively about the kinds of businesses that
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: we need and start them. You know, there's a corporation
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: in Spain, the Mondragon Corporation, that was founded by a
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: Basque priest in the 1950s. And they have over $ 3
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: billion of sales every year. But it's all worker-owned and worker-run.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: And so the highest paid person can only make eight
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: times more than the lowest paid person in the corporation.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: The typical CEO to worker ratio in most large Forbes
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: 500 companies is like 400 to 1%. Instead of eight
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: to one, but it's a cooperative in the sense that
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: the workers have an input into any decisions that the
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: management makes and the workers own the corporation, you know,
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: so it's eliminated the tension between shareholders and workers. That's
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: the basic tension at the root of so much of
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: this is the difference between capital and labor, right? People
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: with money want other people to work for them and
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: make them more money. And so there's this antagonism between
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: the owners of capital and people who have nothing but
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: their labor to sell. And if the workers were also
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: the owners, then the world would be a very different place.
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: And so it's thinking in these, I mean, this is
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: a multi-billion dollar company and It can be replicated elsewhere,
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: I'm sure, and it has been replicated elsewhere. But if
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: we start thinking in terms of worker ownership, the idea
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: that the main purpose of a corporation is not just
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: to make money for the shareholders, but it's to make
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: the world a better place, then there's so many different
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: ways that that can be done.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very helpful.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: Is there a way you think that we can be
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: actively exercising our agency to put pressure on corporations to
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: think that way, local governments to think that way, rather
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: than to be thinking, you know, the lobbyist wants this
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: and they give me the money. Go for it.
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There's lots of different ways. I mean, you can boycott.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: I don't buy anything from Amazon, for example. You don't
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: have to, right? There's other ways of getting things. You
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: can support labor unions. You can put your retirement accounts
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: in sustainable funds as opposed to unsustainable funds. I mean,
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I Those things have their limits too, but it's better
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: than nothing. You can put your money in credit unions
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: instead of the large banks. You can do shareholder activism.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: You can write letters. You can organize at the local level.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: You can organize at the national level, get involved in politics.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: You can get involved in business. There's all kinds of
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: different ways of going about it. You can give your
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: money away. Some of it. Because there's all kinds of
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: great people doing great things with charitable works. My church
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: here in Oak Park through the hard work of some
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: great lay people When in 2022, the governor of Texas
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: just started busing migrants up to Chicago and dumping them
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: on the streets. Some people got together and said, well,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: what are we going to do? And so we now
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: have a flourishing migrant ministry. We've taken over an old
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: school building. We provide clothing and food and legal help,
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: sometimes medical help. uh, accompaniment, spiritual accompaniment, all, all kinds
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: of things that, you know, over 500 volunteers have been involved, uh,
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: at one point or another. Um, there's, there's all kinds of, uh,
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: things that can be done. And those are the things
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: that give you hope. Yeah.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's almost like.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: When you think about just even that, that piece with
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: the church at the end, you know, caring for the
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: immigrants that are being dropped off, um, There is something
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: about the church's theology, about the church's commitments and convictions
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: that allow us to do this or should allow us
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: maybe to do this, should lead us to do this
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: better than other groups. It's not that other groups don't
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: do good things. They can't be involved in humanitarian action.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: But it just feels like as Christians, we should be
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: almost proactively looking for these kind of opportunities. and trying
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: to understand how to plug into these various aspects.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people who are
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: not Christians that have have come and helped out at
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: this ministry, but I do think there is something that
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: motivates it and animates it and was there from the beginning.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: And that's Matthew 25. This is the idea that if
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: you're looking for Jesus now, where do you find them? Well, you,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: according to Jesus, you find them in those who are
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: hungry and thirsty and strangers and in prison and sick
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: and so on. Yeah. That's, you know, that's what Jesus said.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: You know, if you're looking for me, here's where to
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: find me. Yeah. And so, so you go out and
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: do that. And if you treat people as if they
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: were Jesus, it makes a difference.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: And you mentioned Stanley Hauerwas earlier, I think in his
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: Brazos commentary on Matthew, when he talks about the poor,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: he makes the statement, Jesus is the poor. And so
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: you have this notion where when you're interacting with the poor,
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: when you're interacting with the marginal and the downtrodden, you
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: are in some sense interacting with Jesus.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's not Stanley Hauerwas. That's Jesus.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: It's slightly different levels, but yes, I get, Good.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: For Howard Walsh to notice, but yeah, Jesus said it.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Well, we're kind of closing in on the end here.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: I guess sort of my final question is, you know,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: as Christians approach this sort of midterm election that we're
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: coming up on, what sort of framing would you encourage
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: them to take as they're evaluating candidates, as they're thinking
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: about this as one relatively small, though not unimportant act?
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: In sort of moving toward the type of community that
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: you've described.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Lord. I mean, I'm not sure I can answer
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: that question without sounding partisan.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Go for it.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: It just seems like things have gotten so crazy that
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: just looking for a little bit of sanity and a
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: little bit of decency, a little bit of honesty. that's
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: a really important thing. I mean, I think Christians need
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: to stop thinking in terms of who's.
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: Going to benefit us, who's going to make sure that
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: Christians have power, and they need to start thinking the
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: opposite way.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: That wasn't what Jesus was talking about. Jesus was saying, no,
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: don't go looking for the people in power. Go looking
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: for the hungry and the thirsty and those who are
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: strangers and welcome them. Who's welcoming the strangers and who's
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: killing them and putting them in cages and so on?
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: Who's demonizing them and scapegoating them? Yeah, those are the
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: kind of questions that I think we ought to be asking.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so reframing toward not how can government serve us
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: as Christians, but how can government serve those who are
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: currently marginal in our society, who are currently downtrodden, who
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: are currently, you know, very Lucan themes here, right? So
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: to those people who are on the sides of society
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: who are very vulnerable, how can our government help them
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: and who in our government is going to help them
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: would be okay.
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: Sounds a bit like JFK Redux.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it is, right? It's different. The parties
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: have changed, but it's this idea that the really important
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: thing is we've got to get recognized by the people
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: in power, and what we need is political power, and
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: then we're going to change things for the better. And
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: it almost inevitably backfires, right? I mean, the more, you know,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: the people that are studying secularization over the last few
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: decades since the 1990s, one of the big factors is
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: people have gotten turned off by the church being politicized
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: in that narrow sense, right? Of the church trying to
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: gain political power. And so the more we try to
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: gain political power, the more people stay away from the church.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: So I think there's a sense of panic amongst some
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Christians that we've lost social status, and the country is becoming,
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: it used to be a Christian country, and now it's
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: becoming dechristianized, and so we have to do something about this.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: And that means getting the right judges and the right
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: people in government to And it almost inevitably backfires. I
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: was in Hungary a couple of years ago, and this
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: is after, I think, I can't remember how long was
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: Orban in power. He had been in power at the
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: time for more than a decade and had really put
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: all of the resources of the government behind reviving the
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Christian church's and had written Christianity into the constitution. And
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: he was the champion of Christians. And I got there
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: the week after the first survey revealed that for the
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: first time in a millennium, fewer than 50% of Hungarians
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: identified as Christians. You know, I think one of them
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: had just gotten disgusted with, with Orban and that, kind
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: of attempt to gain power and decided they just weren't
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Christians anymore. And that, I think, is almost inevitable. I mean,
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: if people look at the church and see, you know,
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: the kind of dishonesty and mendacity and power and cruelty
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: that we're seeing now, they're going to stay away from
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: the churches and for good reason. But if they saw
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: that we were taking care of the marginalized and reaching
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: out beyond ourselves and doing what Jesus told us to do,
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: then I think there might be hope to be attractive
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: rather than repulsive, for the church to be something attractive
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: rather than repulsive.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: I know I said last question last time, but I lied.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: So....
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Do you see that as rooting back into the theopolitical imagination?
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: It seems to me that part of what's happening is
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: when the church joins with the political party, we're really
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: surrendering a theopolitical imagination that is uniquely Christian. And we're
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: adopting one that is idolatrous, that is worshiping something else.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: And so now we're giving other people reason to reject
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: Christ on criteria other than the gospel. And we're giving
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: them reason to reject Christ on reason of partisan politics.
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, that's exactly right. They see the God that
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: we worship in reality and they don't like the looks
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: of that God.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: Because they see that we're not worshiping Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: I'm going to throw in my last two sentences as well,
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: if that's all right.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: I'll go for it.
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: So I've tried to tell students over the years, just
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: try to get them to think through just how many
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: of these intense policy-directed political leanings and decisions that they
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: have leaned heavily into, or their parents have leaned heavily into,
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: or their communities have leaned heavy into, how many of
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: these have actually resulted in changing people's minds about what
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: they think of the good, the true, the beautiful, never
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: mind Jesus himself? And the answer seems inevitably to be zero, right?
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: No remainder.
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: But then when you throw in the added irony of
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: statistics show that over the last 15 years, even conservative
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: churches have bled significantly, right? Because for a long time,
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: the narrative was, well, liberal churches are bleeding, conservative churches
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: are staying true, and we maintain. But the numbers bled
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: are just remarkable. So it really seems that the more rabid,
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: more vitriolic stances that have just increased over the last
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: decade and change have actually had the counterintuitive effect. And
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: at a certain point, I think the church does need
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: to wake up and say, let's get back to the
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: sorts of things that Jesus himself, say, identify followers of him, right?
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: Taking care of the poor, taking care of the migrant,
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: taking care of the widow, taking care of those who've
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: been socially outcast for racial reasons, for gendered reasons, for
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: what have you.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, amen to that. And it's not just a
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: kind of strategy to gain more people in the pews,
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: but it's just the right thing to do. It's just
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: the truth, and it's what brings us joy, right? The
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: Christian life is not some terrible burden that's been put
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: upon us. It's a joy to live that to live
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: that life, to try to live that life. You know,
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: Jesus says that when we encounter people who are hungry
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: and thirsty and so on, we encounter Jesus, and that's
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: a joyful thing, right? And so I think rather than
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: thinking about all of these things as some kind of
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: list of tasks that we need to do and some
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: kind of burden that's been laid upon us, it's really,
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: you know, Jesus says, yoke is easy and his burden
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: is light. Yeah. Indeed.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Very good.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Well, It's been a joy having you on. We've been
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: excited since you agreed to be on the episode. So
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: thank you for being on. Like I've read a ton
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: of your books, really formative during my MDiv and MA years.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: And so very much appreciative of you and your work
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: and glad to have you on.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: So thank you.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: It's been a real pleasure. Thank you, James. And thank you, Ashish.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: Well, we're going to close it up there. Thanks, everybody,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: for being here. And we'll catch you on the next
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: episode of Thinking Christian.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Take care.