Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / The Secular Was a Strategy | Faith & Politics #7

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The Secular Was a Strategy | Faith & Politics #7 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.
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  Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways
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  Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,
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  Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now,
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  Speaker 1: on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, everyone.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.
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  Speaker 1: James Spencer. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Ashish Pharma,
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  Speaker 1: as well as our special guest today, Dr.
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  Speaker 2: Michael McDuffie.
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  Speaker 1: Michael was a professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute,
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  Speaker 1: now lives over in Germany. He's done multiple Reformation tours,
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  Speaker 1: some of which I've been on and quasi-helped with, and
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  Speaker 1: just an all-around good guy. And we're going to be
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  Speaker 1: talking today a little bit about political theology, the nature
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  Speaker 1: of politics. how this affects the church and Christendom and
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  Speaker 1: all those kind of ideas. And so, Mike, we're really
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  Speaker 1: happy you were able to come on the podcast. Appreciate
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  Speaker 1: you being here.
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  Speaker 3: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great to see
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  Speaker 3: you two guys.
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  Speaker 4: Good to see you as well.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be a fun conversation. So you
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  Speaker 2: gave us some homework.
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  Speaker 1: Read an essay by Habermas, which I did. I'm interested
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  Speaker 1: to get your take on it. I've read Habermas before,
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  Speaker 1: and I was a little concerned when you said, hey,
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  Speaker 1: get this book by Habermas, because I'm like, we've only
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  Speaker 1: got a week. I'm not sure I can get through
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  Speaker 1: a Habermas book in a week. But it was a
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  Speaker 1: nice short essay, so I appreciate you taking it easy
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  Speaker 1: on us.
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  Speaker 2: So describe the essay. Let's just start there.
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  Speaker 1: What was your context and purpose for us reading that,
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  Speaker 1: and what's your take on what he's talking about there?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's... He's important. I don't know so much in America,
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  Speaker 3: but here over in Europe, I mean, the European Union
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  Speaker 3: and Germany in particular, post-World War II, how do you
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  Speaker 3: set up a social order and a form of government
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  Speaker 3: that is just and humane and recognizes human rights, human worth,
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  Speaker 3: and human dignity? And Habermas was the voice coming out
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  Speaker 3: of Germany. We remember where Germany was after 1945. So
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  Speaker 3: his philosophy of communicative action in order to establish a
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  Speaker 3: sense of social order and public ethics is absolutely crucial.
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  Speaker 3: And of course, he was thinking as a child of
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  Speaker 3: the Enlightenment, but after 9-11, he was shaken and needed
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  Speaker 3: to reevaluate, well, can reason alone and can the autonomous
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  Speaker 3: subject be able to behave morally? And that question caused
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  Speaker 3: him to interact with religious figures, most especially Roman Catholics.
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  Speaker 3: But then the little thing that we read was an
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  Speaker 3: awareness of what is missing. And this is a major
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  Speaker 3: step because Habermas is seeing that can the weight that
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  Speaker 3: we put on the Enlightenment sense of reason, can it
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  Speaker 3: carry legitimacy in terms of law and social order? And thus,
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  Speaker 3: with the post-secular, he's recognizing the importance of religion, that
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  Speaker 3: by the secularization theory that was most especially supported in
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  Speaker 3: the 1960s with economic takeoff and the wonders of science
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  Speaker 3: after World War II, religion didn't go away. And so
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  Speaker 3: he interacted with that. Now, I'll just read a short
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  Speaker 3: paragraph to frame it a bit. As one of this
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  Speaker 3: generation's most respected philosophers in contemporary Europe, Jürgen Habermas makes
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  Speaker 3: clear that living in a secular society is no longer
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  Speaker 3: bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization
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  Speaker 3: can advance only at the cost of the public influence
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  Speaker 3: and personal relevance of religion. Describing modern societies in post-secular terms,
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  Speaker 3: Habermas refers to a change in consciousness that he traces
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  Speaker 3: back primarily to three phenomena. The first is the resurgence
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  Speaker 3: of politicized religion in global affairs. Perceiving global conflicts as
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  Speaker 3: precipitated by or somehow connected to religious values undermines the
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  Speaker 3: secularistic belief in the foreseeable disappearance of religion and robs
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  Speaker 3: the secular understanding of the world of triumphal zest, he wrote.
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  Speaker 3: Beyond this, religion is gaining influence not only worldwide, but
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  Speaker 3: also within national public spheres. The most, the post-secular person
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  Speaker 3: increasingly encounters on a regular basis people infused with religious consciousness.
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  Speaker 3: In addition to the social reality that naivete is unavailable
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  Speaker 3: for the believer or unbeliever alike, there is a growing
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  Speaker 3: awareness that living in a secular society is no longer
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  Speaker 3: bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization
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  Speaker 3: can advance only at the cost of the public influence
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  Speaker 3: and personal relevance of religion. What particularly impressed him is
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  Speaker 3: that churches and religious organizations are increasingly assuming the role
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  Speaker 3: of what he called communities of interpretation in the public
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  Speaker 3: arena of secular societies. Thirdly, he realized that the immigration
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  Speaker 3: of men, women, and families with traditional cultural backgrounds only
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  Speaker 3: contributed to accelerating this change of consciousness. So, that kind
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  Speaker 3: of lays the groundwork. That's what he was struck with, and...
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  Speaker 3: what he referred to as the awkwardness of a secular
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  Speaker 3: understanding of social order. And as I said earlier, it's
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  Speaker 3: like Miles Davis said, if you're not nervous, you're not
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  Speaker 3: paying attention. Habermas got nervous. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Do you see, and I just don't know this question,
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  Speaker 1: after the French Revolution, you have guys like Emile Durkheim
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  Speaker 1: who are trying to replace religion with sociology. And that
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  Speaker 1: was obviously a failed attempt, like that endurance of religion,
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  Speaker 1: even in a more arguably a more secularized, more hostile
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  Speaker 1: sort of country like France, religion continued. And so do
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  Speaker 1: you see any influences on Habermas from that sort of
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  Speaker 1: historical perspective?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, definitely. I mean, the French Revolution to Europe is
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  Speaker 3: the equivalent of the American Revolution to America. And as
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  Speaker 3: a matter of fact, French scholars speak of laification, where
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  Speaker 3: religion is moving away from clergy. It's moving away from
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  Speaker 3: a hierarchical structure. And it's moving into sentiment. A key
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  Speaker 3: thinker for this was Rousseau. that this thinking of religion
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  Speaker 3: as a personal sense of sentiment, emotive feeling, and with
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  Speaker 3: the hierarchical order being swept away, then this sense of
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  Speaker 3: religious emotion could be absorbed into the political domain.
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  Speaker 4: Hmm.
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  Speaker 1: And when you talk about the post-secular, is that sort
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  Speaker 1: of the move that you're talking about? This idea that
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  Speaker 1: you have a shift toward a mentality for whatever brief
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  Speaker 1: period of time that would have said, we can do
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  Speaker 1: this without religion. So there was a lot of resonance
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  Speaker 1: in that passage you read. There's a realization that this
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  Speaker 1: can be done in ways that would not completely demolish
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  Speaker 1: or diminish religion. That sort of secular movement toward this
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  Speaker 1: idea that science and rationality are going to go on
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  Speaker 1: the ascendancy. And as they ascend, religion will ultimately descend.
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  Speaker 1: You know, religion will get smaller, but the scientific endeavor
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  Speaker 1: will get bigger.
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  Speaker 3: Definitely the case. I mean, the Enlightenment project was to
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  Speaker 3: slay the beast. And that would be organized religion. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And what happens in Europe, is that a lot of
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  Speaker 3: religious sentiment is absorbed into socialist thought. And when we
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  Speaker 3: compare that to America, we see immediately, well, that's taboo.
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  Speaker 3: We ain't having none of that. And so this is
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  Speaker 3: beginning to shed light on the fact that the secularization
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  Speaker 3: thesis or theory that comes out of sociology, Durkheim being
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  Speaker 3: the beginner of that kind of thinking, sociological thought, is
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  Speaker 3: primarily a European idea. And what post-secular scholars are realizing,
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  Speaker 3: the presumption that Europe is normative, that as the world
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  Speaker 3: becomes increasingly more modern, it will decline in participating in
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  Speaker 3: any kind of religious type of ritual or have any
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  Speaker 3: kind of religious experience. Well, that view was actually the
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  Speaker 3: exception to what prevails in the world. But we only
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  Speaker 3: come to realize that after World War II, academically, I'm speaking.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, people are living their religious lives day in,
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  Speaker 3: day out. But academically, through decolonization, through globalization, through this
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  Speaker 3: being immersed in a wider pattern of exchanges, what scholars
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  Speaker 3: begin to realize is, holy cow, it's Europe that's the
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  Speaker 3: exception with the secularization theory. Actually, America is more in
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  Speaker 3: tune with where the world is, that religion can, hand
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  Speaker 3: in hand with technology and the process of modernization, continue,
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  Speaker 3: if not thrive. So One book was said, God is back.
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  Speaker 3: Another title is The Revenge of God. However we want
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  Speaker 3: to have the academic world come to a sense of
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  Speaker 3: connecting with reality, the fact is that post-secular studies recognize
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  Speaker 3: the continued vibrancy of religion, not only personally, but publicly, socially,
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  Speaker 3: and globally. And that puts us where we are today.
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  Speaker 3: I would say that, just to close, that post-secular thinking
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  Speaker 3: is more in tune with the social reality of the
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  Speaker 3: world than any idea of some process of secularization, however
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  Speaker 3: it's defined.
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  Speaker 2: Can I ask one more question, Ashish, and then let
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  Speaker 2: you jump in?
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  Speaker 3: Go for it.
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  Speaker 2: All right.
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  Speaker 1: So that narrative, right, I agree with the secularization thesis
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  Speaker 1: and the demise of it, that secularization is really just
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  Speaker 1: the process of diminishing religion within society. I think that
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  Speaker 1: was always sociologically wrong. You didn't see it in the people.
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  Speaker 1: But there's another sort of thesis that Manet puts forth
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  Speaker 1: in The Intellectual History of Liberalism, where he basically talks
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  Speaker 1: about in the French Revolution, there's a breaking of the
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  Speaker 1: church's political power. And the church, particularly the Catholic Church,
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  Speaker 1: is relegated to the arena of opinion. And you see
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  Speaker 1: this echoed in the work of like D.C. Schindler and
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  Speaker 1: some of these other folks, where the church has been
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  Speaker 1: folded back into society, but still folded back in under
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  Speaker 1: the general let's call it, um, philosophical authoritative view of
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  Speaker 1: liberalism in a lot of places.
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  Speaker 2: Any thoughts on.
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  Speaker 3: That, Mike?
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  Speaker 1: Like, is there an accommodation post-secular accommodation to say religion
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  Speaker 1: can work, but it can never be Christendom again?
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  Speaker 3: Well, um, I think, uh, what was his name? Uh,
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  Speaker 3: Ho Chi Minh, uh, said, uh, about the French revolution. Well, what, uh,
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  Speaker 3: What were the facts? And he said, well, we don't
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  Speaker 3: know yet. So I would not rule out, given where
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  Speaker 3: we are today, that there would be efforts at reasserting Christendom.
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  Speaker 3: And I would... And I would just leave it at that.
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  Speaker 3: I can't predict the future. But the idea that the
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  Speaker 3: world will be secular, I just don't see it. Now,
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  Speaker 3: you know, you talk about liberalism. I'm not really clear
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  Speaker 3: about what you're talking about there. We're talking about individualism,
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  Speaker 3: free markets. in representational government. Is this your notion?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's tough to pin down, right?
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  Speaker 1: So political philosophy, that is, I guess what I mean
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  Speaker 1: by this political philosophy that emphasizes individual autonomy and the
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  Speaker 1: sovereign individual. And then I think some of these other
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  Speaker 1: things like market capitalism can be globbed onto it. But
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  Speaker 1: they're all sort of geared toward the preservation of individual
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  Speaker 1: rights and the normally associated with small government. But the
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  Speaker 1: reality is that it's the sovereign individual. And so what
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  Speaker 1: I would argue is just liberalism is that moment where
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  Speaker 1: we sit back and say, we are really in charge.
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  Speaker 1: And however, we might gesture toward God, that either needs
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  Speaker 1: to be privatized, pushed into the background of our own
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  Speaker 1: private lives and treated as not a claim about reality
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  Speaker 1: that we all sort of have to ascribe to, but
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  Speaker 1: a pocket of understanding that this particular group is.
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  Speaker 2: Inclined to believe. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And then, but also that the sovereign individual, because it's
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  Speaker 1: viewed that way, then there isn't really a claim that
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  Speaker 1: reality has on us. And so, That's saying a lot
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  Speaker 1: in a very little short time. But the idea of
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  Speaker 1: liberalism that I'm sort of when I say it, that's
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  Speaker 1: what I mean. Sort of that political philosophy where there's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of individual rights and the sovereign individual sort
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  Speaker 1: of reigns.
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  Speaker 2: Consent of the government, those kind of things.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly. I would just want to say that I'm much
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  Speaker 3: more comfortable with the term neoliberalism, which includes the global market.
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  Speaker 3: And the commodification, commodification of not just goods and services,
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  Speaker 3: but values, meaning and purpose. Good. Yeah. Multiple platforms of technology.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I'd agree with that. Yeah, that's fair.
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  Speaker 3: Within that mix, there is and it's really hard to measure.
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  Speaker 3: We don't. OK, we concede we're in a post-secular moment.
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  Speaker 3: Secularization theory is incorrect. It's not valid. It just isn't,
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  Speaker 3: no matter what we measure. This gets into some really
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  Speaker 3: important stuff, because once we recognize that, and then these
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  Speaker 3: political theologies begin to come out that have been ignored,
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  Speaker 3: have been overlooked by the secular airbrush. For just one example,
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  Speaker 3: and then I'll set up, we talk about the Age
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  Speaker 3: of Discovery. And scholars like Willie James Jennings makes very
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  Speaker 3: clear that this idea that the other of color has
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  Speaker 3: the demonic presence, but the European white imperialists that come,
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  Speaker 3: they're demon free. See, that's a secular move. So that
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  Speaker 3: once we go post-secular, the doors open up. And I
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: find that to be very exciting. I find that unheard
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  Speaker 3: voices are now coming into the arena. And where that's
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  Speaker 3: going to go, I don't know either. But yeah. Very good.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks, Mike.
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  Speaker 4: Ashish, I'm sure you're... Yeah, there's so many strands to
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  Speaker 4: pick up on. I think maybe the place that I
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  Speaker 4: want to start is going to sound merely definitional, but
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  Speaker 4: I think we can go somewhere from there. We're using
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  Speaker 4: the term post-secular. And I think it can be an
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  Speaker 4: easy move to equate it with something like post-game. Post-game
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  Speaker 4: is after the game. The game is over. We're analyzing
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: the game. We're now preparing for the next game. We're
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: thinking about recovery. Those sorts of things. Analyzing tape. Giving interviews.
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  Speaker 4: And one, I think, could easily say, well, there was
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  Speaker 4: this period that was secular, and now we've moved past it.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: But I don't think that's how we're using the term.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: Sounds to me like maybe a little bit, we see
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  Speaker 4: that there is this thing that is the secular. But
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  Speaker 4: to assume an ism out of it, a secularism, a
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  Speaker 4: general state of affairs where to use Charles Taylor's terms,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: there's a subtraction involved, right? There's the basic nature of reality,
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  Speaker 4: and you can subtract religion from it, whatever exactly religion is.
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  Speaker 4: And now you get this thing that's basic reality, is
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  Speaker 4: what post-secular is sort of saying false to. That whole
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: construct is false. So that there never really was the secular,
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: while at the same time we acknowledge there is a
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: period in which ordering of the pieces on the board
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: and maybe even the way the game is played or
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: what the game is has changed, We have moved into
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: a period in which the relationship of faith to public
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: life is very different than in, say, Christendom for the
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: Western world, but maybe sits uneasily with other parts of
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: the world. The example that immediately comes to my mind
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: is Mahendra Modi in India, where he's in some sense
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: reacting to to an impulse that sees the formation of
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: India as a secular regime. Someone who is historically a
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: great hero in Mahatma Gandhi is now somewhat of a villain.
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: The guy who facilitated the creation of an idea that
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: was in its basic formation a Western idea. And I
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: want to put Western in scare quotes in light of
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: your invoking the name of Willie Jennings. I think that's
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: a point that if we have time, I'd like to
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: get back to. But with Modi, it's no, there is nothing.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: We can advance into the kind of global scene that
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: seems to embody what the secular has produced without having
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: to do so on the terms of some sort of
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: division between who we are as people who belong to
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: a place and who we are as people who belong
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: to some sense of faith and who we are as
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: global citizens of sorts. So there's a lot right there.
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: I don't know exactly what the question precisely is, but
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: maybe it's just simply in light of this very complicated reality.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: What is it that we're saying about post-secular as it
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: interacts with all these moving parts?
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: Well, when I earlier spoke, I said the secular, and
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: I tripped over my words because what came to mind
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: was the secular thesis. And of course, I corrected myself
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: and said, no, the secular theory, oh my word. But
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: I would like to scratch both of them in terms
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: of what you just said and suggest that what we're
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: really looking at when we look at the secular is
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: the secular strategy. It is a deliberate framing. Another example, J.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Cameron Carter in Kant. All of us learned Kant, you know.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Ideas that matter. We have to know these things. But
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: it was only what I would argue in a post-secular shift,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: when the secular strategy has become vulnerable, that we learn
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: about this essay that he wrote in 1777 in the
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: lectures that he gave, The Differences of the Races. And
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: out comes this whole discourse on Kant. I mean, I'm
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: an educated man. University of New Hampshire, Brandeis University. I mean,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: I studied intellectual history. Never heard it. Never told it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: But I did. And I would suggest the way that
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: I'm understanding the post-secular is a recognition that the secular
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: was a strategy. of defining others, categorizing people, categorizing ideas
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: to maintain a Western hegemony. That naturally was true because
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: the scientific discoveries and accomplishments and the technology that followed,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: that all came from the West. What I hear you
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: speaking about is, again, another angle of approach to this
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: notion of the secular as a strategy that has been weakened,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: has become vulnerable, and via alternative routes of research and perception.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: different facets of who we are and how we live
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: in this world are being brought to light. Does that
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  Speaker 3: make sense?
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  Speaker 4: It does, yeah. And yet there is still something, right?
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  Speaker 4: The sort of movement that begins the secular strategy, let's
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: call it, is something that we can describe and understand
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: what we mean by saying Christendom, right?
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: There is this.
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  Speaker 4: There's this deep interrelation between the so-called secular, as we
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: come to understand it, and the sacred, such that you
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: have the papal bull for the doctrine of discovery, as
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: you mentioned, that not just justifies but mandates the state
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: to undertake its works of discovery and colonization. There is
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: theological rationale and grounding to what's at play. And yet
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: the sort of reality that comes out of it, and
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: correct me on this one, this is the area where
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: I'm hazy as I try to understand how we move
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: from an explicitly theological grounding for this secular strategy to
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: a move that does seem to want to set aside
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: any sort of overt theological grounding. But then there's a
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: third move here that I think is really valuable from post-secularism,
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: and that's to say, Perhaps the setting aside of an
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: explicit theological grounding obscured the fact that there was actually
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: still a theological grounding. We just had a shift in
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: what we understand the divine to be. Do you think
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: that accurately describes, in a nutshell, the sort of progression
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: and the relationship to the secular strategy? Or am I
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: missing something?
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: I can walk with you here when we think incrementally, yeah? Right.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, the notion of theology itself, if we read
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: Franz Overbeck, the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, and really gave
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Nietzsche a lot of ideas. He says theology, the move
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: of theology by the church was... a strategy by which
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: the church would establish itself in this world. And establishing
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: means that it would have some leverage to control the world.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: And in that context, being that comes out of Hellenist
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: philosophy gets moved in the church and it gets redefined
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: as God. We won't go through all that and all
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: the gyrations that it went through, but that's basically what happened.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Dear Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, he pretty much made Hellenized philosophy
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: an extension of Revelation, saying that it has to be
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: in this Greek framework of being that we do our theology.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Well, arguably, Neo-Calvinism does the same sort of thing, just
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: simply with far less sort of centralized authority.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, 100%. So you have that, and then in
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: the 17th century, you move away from that. And the
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: effort to move away from this controlling theology, grounded back
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: in Hellenist thought, is to try and, can we get
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: a common denominator of religion? Are there some basics that
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: we can all agree to that won't trespass or or
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: flares go up over confessional differences. And that's deism. That's
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: the 18th century idea of deism. Can't we all agree
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: there's one God? Can't we all agree he's the one
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: that established the natural law that oversees the order of nature?
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: And so that's a major step towards secularization, although... it's
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: still the heavenly city. You know, God is still there,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: but now God is stripped of revelation and is now
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: a philosophical construct. Eternal life, happiness, good life, et cetera,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: et cetera. 19th century, it shifts again. Being becomes becoming.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: So that we could say that in the 17th, 18th century,
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: on the reliance of reason, Revelation was reduced in its importance,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: and a foundation was laid for a body of legitimate
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: knowledge that is based upon this notion of natural law
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: and the God of nature, as the Declaration of Independence
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: puts it. So reason is the basis by which this
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: movement occurs. As William Cavanaugh beautifully puts it in the
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: title of one of his books, the migration of the holy.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: So it migrates, yeah, from Hellenized Greek being through theology
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: and its dependence upon revelation. Now it's simply being in
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: the natural sense. In the 19th century, theology now is
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: subject and philosophy as well, to what? History. Everything now
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: is historicized into being, into being, becoming. Becoming is more important.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: And so incrementally, yeah, we have these changes. But I
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: would say, even through all these changes, I'm sorry in
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: terms of the academy and in terms of who gets
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: what when, in terms of who's in charge and who's
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: on first base, and I don't care what else you say.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: It's still this hegemonic mindset. And the church acquiesces. Now,
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: I'm just generalizing the heck out of this. I mean,
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: there's a whole lot of things. I'll just close by
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: saying this. that in the 20th century, this process of
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: continuance of secularity and the parsing and the whittling down
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: of the authority of God's word and the public witness
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: of the church and the power of the Holy Spirit,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: what replaces history? I would say in the 19th century, ideologies. theology,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: insofar as it retains its membership card with the secular guild,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: is subject to ideology. And of course, there's a number
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: of those, as James was talking about, liberalism, neoliberalism, that's
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: a powerful ideology out there. Socialism is a communism is
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: just in my word, the mayor of New York city. So, uh, what,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: I guess what I want to say is that what
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: happens with the post-secular shift in the academy is that we're,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: we're given a chance to reread things. We're, we're given
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: a chance to go, well, wait a minute now. Is this,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: am I, am I being held bound to something? Um,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: that I can now see in a more clear way
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: and perhaps to develop some kind of sense of moving
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: apart from or getting sufficient distance such that I can
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: actually see what I'm part of and I can make
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: a sound assessment based on good solid Christian teaching.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: So when you think about these moves.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: And it is a generalization. So even the question is
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: going to overgeneralize. I think we just need to admit
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that it's only an hour long podcast, so we can't
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: get into all these details. But if and I like
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: the way you frame secularism as a strategy, it seems
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: to me that elements of that strategy carry into post-secular.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And you have pockets of post-secular thought that are still
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: really trying to advance a secularization thesis, but talking about,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: let's say, the utilitarianism or the utility of religion. These
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: things endure because they have some social good. And you
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: get the sense from some theorists that religion may still
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: be walked out of this. We've just got to figure
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: out how to cultivate human meaning without it. And maybe
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: that'll just take more time. There's aspects of post-secular theory
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: that I think still are holding on to that secularized strategy.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: But the part.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: That they're stepping back from is that wholesale, hey, this
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: is going to be gone in the blink of an eye.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: There's an endurance and a recognition that meaning has to
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: mean something. It feels like they're having the realization that
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Habermas had. right, where he's seeing the holes in a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: secular strategy and going, yeah, but we still need this, this, this,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and this. So there's an acquiescence to that sort of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the holes in the strategy, but there's still a push
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: toward something different. And I think if you agree with that,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I'd be interested to see if you agree with that.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: But then number two, I'm interested in sort of moving
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: into how you think about America as more of a
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: religion than as a political system. and how that would
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: play into a post-secular thesis? Because it seems to me
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: that it does, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. In terms of post-secular sense, because look, this is
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: a term that's in flux. If you look at the literature,
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: it's all over the map. It's something. You know, it's like, no,
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: I won't say that. But when you say that they
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: want to hold on to some parts of the secular strategy,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: I think that we're talking about adjectives here. We've got
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: to make sure we understand we're talking about the modern world.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Is the secular world modern or is the secular world postmodern?
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Postmodern.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: And Habermas, what he helps us realize, and as Ashish
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, Charles Taylor does this as well, is that, hey,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: the world that we're living in is a new relationship
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: between those that have faith and those that rely upon reason.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: We're living in a new social relationship. where we have
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: to learn how to have these exchanges with one another
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: without imposing judgment on the other as being illegitimate, and
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: at the same time preserve a sense of, let's call
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: it decorum, where the ground rules for our exchange are
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: consistently applied. So when we think in that way, the
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: post-secondary and the secular both are trying to gain the
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: benefits of modernization, and neither one of them wants to
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: undo modernization. Everybody wants a dentist with Novocaine. They don't
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: want to go back to flyers and, you know, no.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: And I think that Habermas has done us a great
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: service because what he was nervous about was scientism. on
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: one hand, uh, where this would be this, um, you know,
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: this would be the, uh, um, the idea of, uh,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: the enlightenment, uh, having this, uh, uh, totalitarian, uh, impulse that, uh,
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: who was it? It was, uh, Adorno. Um, this, the dark,
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: the dialectic of the enlightenment where there was this dark
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: part of it, you know, we got to, you know,
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: we have to think of Auschwitz for, for example. Um,
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: and so, You cannot let scientific thinking and method and
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: technology run the show, which, you know, that's more to
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: the Enlightenment side. And also, he was concerned about, golly, postmodernism.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: An old friend of ours that used to be a
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: great Frankenstein monster for evangelicalism, raised a lot of money,
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: but it's not worth much anymore. Forget that. But he
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: was right in making that monster something that he was
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: concerned about because relativism is equally dangerous to modern society.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: And I think as evangelical Christians, thinking Christians, we should
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: tip our hat to him. for that. So I hope that...
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: In that direction. Yeah.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: So the comparison of post-secular to post-modern I think is
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: a valuable one insofar as whether rightly or wrongly, many
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: who want to hold on to the temptations and the
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: instant gratification that belonged to the modern idea of uniformity, universalism,
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: will gladly point to postmodernism and its failure to provide
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: a unified way forward. Which I think is ironic, because
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: postmodernism is precisely trying to say this quest for a
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: unified way forward is itself an idol. So I don't
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: know that it's a true critique as far as postmoderns
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: see it. But as a parallel, post-secularism or post-secular thought,
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: however you want to put it, in some ways seems
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: to be doing a similar thing to secularity. To say,
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: secularity is something of an idol. The way forward is
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: not to deny the deep and at times unentanglable ramifications
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: of the theological, faith, religion, whatever form we want to
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: put it in, with the lives that we live, while
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: recognizing things have changed. But it raises, I think, a
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: second question that I think is one that postmoderns deal
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: with in their own way. Speaking from the angle of post-secularity,
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: the answer is most certainly not, let's recreate Christendom.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: And I think it's a self-conscious... thing that they don't
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: want to do it from where i sit you know
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: i i most certainly don't want to recreate christendom christendom
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: has i think its own both historical and theological baggage
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: that are pretty damning that in some ways helps us
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: understand why secularity was such an enticing impulse even if
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: a false one right but what is the next step
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: is it just merely we dialogue Because the way that
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: Habermas puts it is the role of the government then
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: is to protect the reality of a neutral sort of
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: discourse that all can enter into, a sort of translation idea.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: But I have in the back of my mind, just
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: to put my cards on the table, again, you mentioned Jennings,
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: so let's pull that bookmark out and deal with it.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: One of Jennings' critiques, as I understand it, of the
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: idea of translation is not that he doesn't want to
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: see translation happen, but he wants to help us understand
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: that translation... in and of itself, has a loss to it.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: There's a loss in the discourse, and that loss is
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: then a conformity to another discourse. And if that translation
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: happens under power dynamics, which it always does, then that
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: translation is itself not just the loss of something, but
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: it is the subservience of what is being translated to
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: what it's translated into, if that makes sense.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: If I can just piggyback on that, I'll just say,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I think that as we look at the move from
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: secular to post-secular, however we want to construe that, which
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: again is a little complicated, but I would just say
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: what's endured from the secular to the post-secular is some
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: form of humanitarianism. That we are the center of the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: universe and that God is, and God in the form
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: of religion is, needs to enter back into our world,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: not because he is real, not because he has a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: claim on us, but because he serves us. And I
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: think in that there's a commonality across the secular and
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: the post-secular. That is, in essence, like when you're saying
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: the power dynamic and the way that translation loses something
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: within Willie James Jennings, reading that from the Christian perspective,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: reading that from the religious perspective in general, What we
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: see is that as religion is translated into a post-secular discourse,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: we are losing something.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: So I'll just leave it there.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Let me just say three quick things. Number one about post-modernity.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Post-modernity gave censored voices the chops. This is what post-modernity did.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: It unlocked the door. A lot of things came out. Okay.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: And good, bad, and ugly.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: Arguably for better and for worse, right?
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. But it was the solvency. It
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: was the solvency that broke the control that secular had.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: And make no mistake about it. When we speak about
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: the secular, we're speaking about whiteness. And when we speak
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: about whiteness, we're speaking about control of scarce resources, which
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: includes categorizing reality which includes labeling human beings. That's what
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: secularity did. All you got to do is go read,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: just do a dissertation on all the encyclopedias since the
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: 18th century. And you will see the march. And then
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: you'll see the, oh, we better drop that one. Well, no, yeah,
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: we'll sing this one now. Oh boy, that was bad too.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: This is unbelievable. This is what power does. It's going
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: to hold on to power. It's going to give up
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: a little something in military terms. It says you, you
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: give up territory for time. You, you, you gain, you
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: gain time by giving up territory. The secular has no
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: secular strategy has no, I know no interest in, um,
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: giving up power. Uh, Secondly, as regards to post-secular vis-a-vis post-modernity,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: what I would say is that whereas post-modernity gave the
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: voices the chops, post-secular is now giving the subsidy, the
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: institutional subsidy for these voices to be articulated. So many
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: more women scholars, Judith Butler and on down the line,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: And again, you could do a Google thing and get
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: one of those hockey sticks, and you would see how
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: now the voices are being subsidized. Where it goes, I
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: don't know, but that's what's happened. I can say that
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: with confidence. Thirdly, in terms of the loss, which is
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: very true, but there's a beauty to it. There's a
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: beauty to this loss because the loss is universal. Everybody
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: limps on the way home. The issue is not a
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: power dynamic. The issue is a compassion dynamic in trying
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: to live out that life of Christ. I would say
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: that the patron saint of the 21st century is Francis
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: of Assisi, not because of this gibberish, preach the gospel
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: when you must use words, which he never said, and
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: it's what's radishes and ridiculous. But what he did do,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: is he would walk around in these rags and he
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: would sing the songs of the French court because he
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: was an educated man, because he was wealthy and because
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: he wanted to be a knight and because he wanted
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: to be a crusader. So he knew the noble virtues.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: He knew the mannerisms of the court. And he would walk,
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: he'd walk dressed the way he was singing these highfalutin songs.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: And when someone would stop him and ask him, well,
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: who are you? He would say, I am the herald
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: of the great king. You see, this notion of finding
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: that voice for today is something that I find very exciting.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: And that will come as the Holy Spirit gives. America
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: anticipated the post-secular term because America has never had a
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: decline in religion. America is a religious, as G.K. Chesterton said,
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: America is a nation with the soul of a church.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: And that is what America is. I do, you know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: it's rough. the term American exceptionalism, which we throw around,
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: throw around, but how many of these dear people, they
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: use this term with great American red, white, and blue
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: pride that it originally was coined by American Marxists. I mean,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: it was this, this came from communist street literature, you know,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: as a, well, most places, uh, Of course, the revolution
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: will come through violence. But there is this American exceptionalism
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: because in America, they smudge the classes. And how can
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: you have a revolution based on class conflict when there's
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: cheating going about on the classes? That's a paraphrase. But
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: there is this notion of America as the almost chosen people,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: American exceptionalism, the city on the hill. Uh, this stuff
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: goes on and on the declaration of independence, the natural,
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: the nature's laws and the gods of nature, the God
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: of nature. Um, um, he favors, you look at a
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: dollar bill and it says he, he favors our endeavor. Uh,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: he's not identified. Who is he? Uh, and, um, I
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: could go on, but America is unique, uh, in, uh, the, um,
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: the understanding that we're in a post-secular age. If we
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: are in a post-secular age, well, America has already been
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: in it. America was born in it. America is a
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: religious nation. It remains religious. I could care less about
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: the Pew results. Oh, look, they're up 13.2 in the seats.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Who measures the Internet? Who measures what's out there? And
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: I'll just close on one last point on this. It's
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: America is no longer viewed as the exception. It's Europe
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: that's viewed as the exception, as secular. And let me
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: tell you, it is secular over here. If you don't
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: live in Europe, you don't realize how religious America is.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: And this gets into America, the monomyth, in terms of
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: popular culture. This gets into fantasy land, as another scholar
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: describes it. I would love to read to you Bratila. Bratila,
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: how do you pronounce that? Bratila? Bratila? Bratila. Yeah.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: Are you talking about the simulation and simulacra guy?
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, Bratila. He describes America. I'll read his book, America.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: This should be read late at night on some talk show.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: America is utopia fulfilled. But what happens when it's fulfilled?
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: It's madness. And I mean, I read this thing and
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: I go, wow, this is powerful stuff. All of this
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: to say that America is a religious nation. But more
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: than that, because it came out of Christendom's collapse via England,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: that's very important. Because England, going back to the mid-17th century,
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: was the first global imperialist power. And the Bible was
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: embedded right in this imperial expansion. Uh, the Navigation Acts
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: of Cromwell, uh, 1657, uh, England, um, Constantine's, uh, what
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: was it? His mother, uh, was, um, uh, was it his,
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: I forget, but a British, uh, no, it was his father,
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: I guess, a British King. The idea that, um, England
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: is the chosen nation, uh, is, was injected into America, uh,
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: And the notion that the Protestant Reformation was fulfilled in
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: England because it was the most powerful Protestant nation was
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: injected into America. It's only when we begin to step
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: back and begin to look at America in these terms,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: we see the church has a special responsibility to address idolatry.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: to address blasphemy, to address addiction to ideology, be it nationalism, socialism, whatever,
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: in America. I would say that we are called to
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: that responsibility. And what we see today, and I don't
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: mean just on the 1776 pro-Trump Christian nationalism. I mean
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: on the 1619. Because what we've talked about, when you
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: look at 1619, And it's truthful exposure of slavery as
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: being an alternative understanding of the founding of America. It's
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: true enough. But on the 1619 side, just like on
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: the 1776 side, it's moving in a trajectory to something
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: that is contrary to the scriptures. And it has to
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: be contrary to the scriptures to be consistent. Because if
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: you're going to condemn those things, You're going to have
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: to pursue equality and equity to the maximum, which is
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: going to put you right back in the Habermas mess.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: So how do we do this in terms of transgenderism,
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: in terms of transhumanism, in terms of euthanasia? It's all
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: well and good to speak of justice. I approve of
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: it 100 percent. But nobody can say what that trajectory
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: trajectory trajectory goes. So that the notion of liberty on
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: one side and the notion of individual pursuit of happiness
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: on the other, justice and liberty, these two are being
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: accelerated by technology. And it's absolutely scary what's happening in
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: Silicon Valley. We have never seen such a merger of
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: the executive branch, including the Department of War, with the
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: likes of Palantir and others. This is very sobering. And
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: so if you can see that as the three primal
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: points of America, then the last one is 1630, city
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: on a hill. There is eschatological energy that is driving
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: through the veins of of what I call a meritendum,
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: that which replaced Christendom in its final phase of the Reformation,
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: which was England. And that this notion of bringing the
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: millennium on earth, this runs through America's veins. And we
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: need to be more aware of it in order to understand,
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: and I'll close with this, that persecuted. Blessed are you
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: when they revile you and persecute you and speak all
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: manner of evil against you for my name. Rejoice for
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: your reward in heaven is great for so they did
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: to the prophets before you. You are the light of
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: the world. Let your lights, your good works shine in what?
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: In such a way that they may see them and
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: glorify your Father in heaven. The wisdom in such a
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: way and to live a suffering life of a prophet
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: in both 1619 and 1776 crews being pushed at an
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: ever increasing speed through technology with this eschatological propulsion underneath it.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: is the place where in this 250th anniversary of the Republic,
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: this is the political responsibility to be more aware of this.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: That's my judgment. Yeah.
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: Can I jump in real quick?
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, go for it.
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: So I think to put a little bit of a
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: bow on it, because there's so much context to what
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: you're saying that I think is important. There's probably not
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: enough time to delve into all of it, but, An
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: alternative that you're suggesting, I think, if I'm hearing you correctly,
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: is that if you have the 1776 and you have
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: the 1619, that both are starting from a basis that
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: misses that there are deep theological roots to the sort
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: of program or strategy or project of secularity to America,
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: to the ideas that they embody. That maybe more appropriately,
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: the starting, if we want to put a date on it,
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: and I'm going to expose my poorness with dates, the 14-something, right?
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: Whatever the doctrine of discovery is, right? That the issue
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: at play here is that both ways of reckoning for
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: whatever they see right also have a major blind spot
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: in that they don't reckon that the very idea of
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: the doctrine of discovery as a theological rationale for the
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: entire project is itself what produces the impulse to say,
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: I will covet my neighbor, which gives you the 1619 reality, right?
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: Slavery.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: It gives you the more other side of the coin,
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: perhaps 1776 reality of the positive move that brings about
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: ultimately the technological development. But what both do insofar as
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: you're seeing them as both embodying a technological thrust forward
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: is that that shows actually the theological problems at play
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: in the 14 whatever, the doctrine of discovery reality, right?
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: That there is something missing in removing us theologically anthropology
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: from reality as creation, right? To quote Norman Wiersbeck. To
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: just speak of nature is to miss that we are
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: part of and surrounded by an entity that is creation,
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: beholden to creator. And embedded within that, just to put
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: a nice little bow on that, is to go back
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: to Francis of Assisi, that the other major element that
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: I really appreciate about him is, as much as he
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: might be made fun of in modern circles, he felt
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: the need to preach to creation. He saw himself as
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: their co-laborer, and he would preach to the sun and
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: preach to the birds. He had his great canticle that
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: did just as much. But it's a beginning to reimagine
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: the world from the standpoint of a theology gone wrong
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: that creates these other sort of distorted realities, rather than
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: beginning with the distorted realities, which only can lead you
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: to other distorted realities. Is that fair to say?
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: A hundred percent. And I think to get calibrated to it,
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: we need to think in terms of the least sin
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: committed by the church aggrieves the Holy Spirit more than
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: the worst sin that the world can commit. Because the
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: sins of the church violate. both the love and fellowship
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: of the Holy Spirit. And we just refuse to calibrate
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: ourselves to this. I forget the fellow that wrote it,
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: or maybe it's anonymous, but back in the ancient churches,
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: there was that the church is the soul of the world.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know if Chesterton ripped off of that or not,
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: but for us to see ourselves that way and to
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: see one another that way and to see myself before God,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: understanding that's the way he sees me. This whole idea of,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: if we look at the 10 sayings, The last one
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: is thou shalt not covet. It is through coveting that
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: we suppress the first, which I would say, I am
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: and out of the house of slavery. This to me
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: is a beautiful phrase of the gospel that this is
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: what Jesus does. He brings us out of the house
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: of slavery. And to see each other and to see creation,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: to get calibrated to that. May the Lord give us,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: by his grace, the wisdom and the love of God
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: who has been given to us. How do we live it?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: It's a good question in a political moment.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: We're almost out of time, but I just want to
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: comment on that Ten Commandments piece because I think it's
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: such a beautiful inclusio that's so often missed in the
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Ten Commandments where you begin with this sort of call of,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I am the Lord your God who brought you out
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: of Egypt, brought you out of slavery, then do not covet.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: And when we move into the New Testament, what do
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: we see? We see that greed is idolatry. Coveting is idolatry.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: And so you have this sort of notion that you're
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: pointing out in the Ten Commandments that's often missed that
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: is made clear in the New Testament, that Paul has
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: this interesting reading of it, that he's understanding that as
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: we desire what God has not given, as we desire
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: to reorder the world by saying, he's given you something
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: that should have belonged to me, and we're moving in
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: those directions, that we're actually committing idolatry because now we
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: are saying the creator God who brought us out of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: slavery and rearranged us into a redeemed state didn't actually
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: know what he was doing. And so we recenter ourselves
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: as the ordering principle. And I think that has real
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: implications for political theology more generally.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: Definitely does. And along with A subcategory of coveting Paul
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: explores with the troubled church of Corinth, and that is grumbling. Grumbling, too,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: results in idolatry. Grumbling and coveting, they're like that diabolical
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: dialectic of depravity right there.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Well, Mike, this has been awesome. We're out of time,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: but really appreciate you being on. And we'd love to
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: do this again with you at some point if you're
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: open to it. But this has been a fantastic conversation.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: There's so much more to explore. So, yeah, I just
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: really appreciate you being here, brother.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: Well, you guys are great. Thanks for having me. And
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: blessings upon you both. And may the Lord bless your endeavors.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you, sir. Thanks, Ashish, again for being here.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: And we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got
• 1:03:16
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