Latest / V / How the Middle Ages Did Easter: Evita + Rachel Fulton Brown (Ep.186)

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How the Middle Ages Did Easter: Evita + Rachel Fulton Brown (Ep.186) · V

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Bongina Report Early Edition, and today I am
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  Speaker 1: joined by Professor Rachel Fulton Brown, my former professor at
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  Speaker 1: the University of Chicago. Professor Fulton Brown is an associate
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  Speaker 1: professor of medieval history at the University of Chicago. She
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  Speaker 1: has a particular focus on Christianity in the Latin West.
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  Speaker 1: Her research is incredible. It delves into medieval devotion, liturgy,
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  Speaker 1: the role of the Virgin Mary, and she explores all
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  Speaker 1: these elements shaped by the medieval worldview. She's authored several
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  Speaker 1: very influential works, including From Judgment to Passion, Devotion to
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  Speaker 1: Christ in the Virgin Mary, plus Mary in the Art
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  Speaker 1: of Prayer, The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian
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  Speaker 1: Life and Thought. Professor Fulton Brown is also a prolific poet.
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  Speaker 1: I took one of her poetry classes, and she has
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  Speaker 1: authored with a group of poets, part of the Dragon
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  Speaker 1: Common Room, a book called Draco Alchemicus, a fantasy poet
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  Speaker 1: narrative that explores the battle between virtue and vice. She
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  Speaker 1: is the host of Mosaic Arc, an incredible show that
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  Speaker 1: live streams on Fridays, Friday nights on YouTube. And we
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  Speaker 1: also cannot forget her sub stack, Fencing Bear at Prayer,
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  Speaker 1: which we're going to cover a lot more deeply today.
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  Speaker 1: But with that, and all the links are going to
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  Speaker 1: be in the description for you guys. But with that,
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  Speaker 1: Professor Fulton Brown, thank you so much for joining me today.
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  Speaker 2: I'm so happy to be here. I'd say I've been
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  Speaker 2: watching you for the last five years, and I am
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  Speaker 2: so proud of you as a Can I claim you
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  Speaker 2: as my student? My student.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: My most magnificent student.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, I know. I love that because it really is
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  Speaker 1: like a real student-professor relationship that we have, for those
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  Speaker 1: of you listening. I've taken multiple classes of hers. We
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  Speaker 1: still talk very frequently. And I'm asking her for advice
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  Speaker 1: on things constantly. And I'm covering things that she's sending
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  Speaker 1: me and telling me. We're going to cover a sub
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  Speaker 1: stack specifically today that inspired an entire show that we
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  Speaker 1: did recently. So it really is a student professor relationship.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm just so grateful. And I want to actually
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  Speaker 1: talk about some context with our relationship. Some people probably
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  Speaker 1: don't know that I was canceled by my peers at
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  Speaker 1: the University of Chicago. I had put up this, I
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  Speaker 1: was part of an IOP event, an Institute of Politics event. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: this is the fundies making fun of me on Reddit,
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  Speaker 1: but that's okay. Just the picture is what we want.
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  Speaker 1: But I said, I vote because coronavirus won't destroy America,
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  Speaker 1: but socialism will. The campus exploded. Everyone was angry at me.
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  Speaker 1: We didn't know each other at the time. I was
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  Speaker 1: a second year. And you reached out to me and
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  Speaker 1: you basically sent me an email saying, do you need
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  Speaker 1: a friend? And I'm so grateful for that. It was
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  Speaker 1: one of the greatest things ever because you've had your
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  Speaker 1: own experiences with cancel culture on campus.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, I saw you and I didn't know who you
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  Speaker 2: were either. I think I did a little research and
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  Speaker 2: found out your mother and I have the same name.
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  Speaker 2: So I was honored at that point. But I saw
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  Speaker 2: them attacking you and I know when those swarms hit,
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  Speaker 2: you have no friends, right? It's like the point of
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  Speaker 2: the swarm is to make you feel alone. And that's
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  Speaker 2: what I wrote to you because I just said she
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  Speaker 2: needs to know that there's someone here who sees what's
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  Speaker 2: going on. And then you took my class on Tolkien
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  Speaker 2: that spring. And the rest is continuing history.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So you're a Tolkien scholar. It was one of the
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  Speaker 1: most impactful classes I ever took in college. And some
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  Speaker 1: people are like, oh, you should be learning real things.
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  Speaker 1: I'm telling you guys, the Tolkien class was one of
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  Speaker 1: the most impactful I've ever had. It's like the world
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  Speaker 1: is story. Everything is playing out. And we'll get into
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  Speaker 1: that today. But it was truly so incredibly impactful on me. And, Professor,
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  Speaker 1: I want to get into specifically Easter today because that's,
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  Speaker 1: of course, what we're celebrating. And I thought it would
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  Speaker 1: be fun to understand a little better the season of
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  Speaker 1: Lent and Easter and how it's evolved today. since the
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  Speaker 1: Middle Ages. And I was telling you before the show
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  Speaker 1: that I've read some crazy things about what this season
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  Speaker 1: was like. I read that for the whole 40 days,
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  Speaker 1: the medieval Europeans gave up meat, dairy, and eggs. Is
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  Speaker 1: that true? Were they that hardcore?
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  Speaker 2: Well, yes and no. I mean, they were that hardcore
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  Speaker 2: in giving up meat, but then they famously recategorized a
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  Speaker 2: lot of things as fish So I and the thing is, obviously,
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  Speaker 2: it would depend on the wealthy households. You said you
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  Speaker 2: wanted to know. So here is some of the things
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  Speaker 2: that they counted as fish in the 13th century.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 2: This is the Joan of Valence, Countess of Pembroke. And
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  Speaker 2: this is from her household records. And she has among
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  Speaker 2: her fish. It's a long list. I won't read the
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  Speaker 2: whole thing. But saltfish, haddock, stockfish, hake, ling, whiting, halibut, conger, bass, dory, gurnard.
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  Speaker 2: I think thinking about what the medieval diet was like,
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  Speaker 2: think of all of the fish we don't eat anymore. Basically,
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  Speaker 2: we have cod and tuna. They have sole, plaice, turbot, ray, porpoise, whale, cockles, mussels, oysters, razors, whelks, crabs,
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  Speaker 2: various things that I'm not sure what are. And famously, beaver.
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  Speaker 2: Beaver was a fish? Well, they count a beaver tail.
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  Speaker 2: It swims, right?
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  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. I think.
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  Speaker 2: This is obviously a problem if you're a very wealthy
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  Speaker 2: person and you stocked your table and you're used to
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  Speaker 2: stocking your table with game, like deer and other boar
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  Speaker 2: and things like that. So yes and no. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: they are that hardcore, but their diet is actually, interestingly,
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  Speaker 2: somewhat more varied than ours is. I know you've pointed
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  Speaker 2: out sometimes how medieval Christians had more holidays than we do,
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  Speaker 2: like days off work. They also had a wider variety
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  Speaker 2: in their diet than I think a lot of us
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  Speaker 2: do now. So yes and no.
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  Speaker 1: We're told all the time that there was like no
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  Speaker 1: nutritional value whatsoever to the medieval diet. Is that not
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  Speaker 1: true either? Is that just another like legend, another myth?
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  Speaker 2: Well, again, it's like at what level, social level we're speaking. Sure,
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  Speaker 2: of course. Most of the people are peasants working on
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  Speaker 2: the land, right? And so they have um, you know, in,
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  Speaker 2: in England, they'll be doing, uh, grain farming and such
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  Speaker 2: like that. They also do a lot of sheep farming.
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  Speaker 2: The biggest, the biggest, um, economic sort of engine of,
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  Speaker 2: of medieval England was wool. Um, particularly by the 14th
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  Speaker 2: and 15th century, they're sending it all to Florence for processing.
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  Speaker 2: So that drives the Florentine Renaissance is driven by the
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  Speaker 2: English wool production. So they have sheep. Um, they, you know,
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  Speaker 2: have other farm animals and such that they keep in their,
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  Speaker 2: in their homes with chickens and pigs and such like that. It's,
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  Speaker 2: We don't need to idealize everything about the Middle Ages,
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  Speaker 2: but living that farm life, I know a lot of
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  Speaker 2: people now are thinking we should go back to that
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  Speaker 2: kind of economy. Maybe, maybe. You wanted me to talk
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  Speaker 2: about some things that will come up in this. It's like,
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  Speaker 2: what do we lose when we lost that particular agricultural base?
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  Speaker 2: A fair amount, actually.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do want to get into that. But
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  Speaker 1: I do have one more question about a fact check
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  Speaker 1: for you. Was there a lot of liturgical theater? Was
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  Speaker 1: there a lot of theater going on? And what does
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  Speaker 1: that look like? What does that mean? Especially during Easter.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so the earliest thing that we think of as
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  Speaker 2: a play, and this is, you know, it depends on
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  Speaker 2: how you read the scripts for the performances, was... the
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  Speaker 2: play of the three Marys going to the tomb. And
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  Speaker 2: it's not so much a play as the way, for example,
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  Speaker 2: we read The Passion typically now on Good Friday, right?
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  Speaker 2: The different readers take parts, right? So there's someone reading
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  Speaker 2: Christ and there's someone reading the crowd. The people have
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  Speaker 2: to be the crowd, right? Crucify him and so forth.
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  Speaker 2: We have what look like scripts for this kind of dialogue, right?
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  Speaker 2: from the 10th and 11th centuries, and it's the three
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  Speaker 2: Marys going to the tomb and the angel telling him
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  Speaker 2: he's not here. So you could say the very first
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  Speaker 2: play we have in the Christian tradition is of the resurrection,
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  Speaker 2: because it's the angel telling the Marys, you know, you're
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  Speaker 2: looking for him and he's risen. Most plays that we
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  Speaker 2: know of from the later Middle Ages are for Corpus
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  Speaker 2: Christi processions, right? They're later in the year, in the summer,
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  Speaker 2: and they would be performed on the streets of the towns,
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  Speaker 2: like in York. York now does productions where they reproduce
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  Speaker 2: these medieval stories. In my course on medieval Christian mythology,
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  Speaker 2: we talk a lot about these plays because they're the
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  Speaker 2: versions of the stories that the people in the towns
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  Speaker 2: themselves would know and write the script for and produce.
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  Speaker 2: So yes, there is a lot of theater. Some of
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  Speaker 2: it's specifically focused on Easter, but it's more if you
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  Speaker 2: look at the cycle plays from the late medieval towns,
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  Speaker 2: it's the full story from creation to judgment.
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  Speaker 3: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think we have like a little-
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  Speaker 1: You asked me these questions.
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  Speaker 2: You're going to like get footnotes from me. You know
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  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about.
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  Speaker 1: No, I love it. I think, you know, this is
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  Speaker 1: a little bit of a different show, but I think
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  Speaker 1: the audience is going to appreciate some of the history here,
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  Speaker 1: especially as we're celebrating Easter. And I guess I want
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  Speaker 1: to ask you, Professor, like as you're comparing what was
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  Speaker 1: this holiday, like even just what was Christianity like in
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  Speaker 1: general in the Middle Ages to how it is today?
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  Speaker 1: What would you say is like the greatest thing that's
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  Speaker 1: been lost, like maybe a tradition or traditions that we
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  Speaker 1: would do well to bring back?
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  Speaker 2: The apps mosaics.
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  Speaker 1: What is that?
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  Speaker 2: Let me explain. What is that? So you mentioned my
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  Speaker 2: first book was called From Judgment to Passion. and it
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  Speaker 2: was a study of the way in which medieval Christians
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  Speaker 2: came to focus on the passion of Christ, right? And
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  Speaker 2: most people, you know I grew up Protestant, right? So
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  Speaker 2: one of the reasons I wrote this From Judgment to
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  Speaker 2: Passion is I was curious about the very realistic crucifixes
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  Speaker 2: that Catholic churches still have. And certainly in Presbyterian churches,
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  Speaker 2: we don't have those. We have no body on the cross.
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  Speaker 2: We have just the cross. And Presbyterians are always saying, well,
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  Speaker 2: we worship the risen Lord, right? So we only have
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  Speaker 2: the empty cross, not the crucifix with the body on it.
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  Speaker 2: And so I was curious about how in, it's really
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  Speaker 2: the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries, that image, the full sculptural
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  Speaker 2: suffering Christ becomes central to medieval iconography. My book is
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  Speaker 2: called From Judgment to Passion because in the earlier centuries,
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  Speaker 2: the focus I thought at the time was simply more
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  Speaker 2: on the judgment, right? It's more on the coming of
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  Speaker 2: Christ and judgment. And the passion is making you focus
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  Speaker 2: more on his suffering on Good Friday and sort of
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  Speaker 2: historical reality because what happens by the 19th century is
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  Speaker 2: that's what Christians come to care about most, the historical Jesus, right?
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  Speaker 2: So let me see if I can make this quicker.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: If you think about what most people worry about now,
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  Speaker 2: it's whether or not he was real historically, right? And
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  Speaker 2: you have endless online debates about whether the Gospels are
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  Speaker 2: accurate as historical documents. You have endless online debates about
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  Speaker 2: whether or not he truly rose from the dead. And
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  Speaker 2: so I think our iconography of the Passion is, okay,
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  Speaker 2: so the Suffering Christ, like Mel Gibson's first movie, The
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  Speaker 2: Passion of the Christ, it's all a meditation on what
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  Speaker 2: Jesus endured in his execution. And then the movies will
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  Speaker 2: always end with, and the empty tomb. What medieval Christians
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  Speaker 2: would see, and this is why I think I realized
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  Speaker 2: I got something a little bit wrong about the focus
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  Speaker 2: on the body on the cross. Their normal image of
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  Speaker 2: Christ was in the apse, in the mosaic of the majesty, right?
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  Speaker 2: He's enthroned in heaven. I mean, I have these all
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  Speaker 2: in my head because I've been meditating on them a
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  Speaker 2: lot for the last several years. But for a medieval Christian,
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  Speaker 2: that's what you would see when you think of the
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  Speaker 2: Lord Jesus Christ. You'd see him enthroned on the rainbow
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  Speaker 2: in heaven, on the throne that is described in Revelation,
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  Speaker 2: surrounded by the four living creatures. So you have the
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  Speaker 2: sort of mythological monsters, right, with their wings and their eyes,
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  Speaker 2: and they're carrying his chariot throne, and he's enthroned there.
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  Speaker 2: The point of the focus on the body on the
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  Speaker 2: cross in the high Middle Ages is, you have to
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  Speaker 2: realize those are the same character, right? That the enthroned
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  Speaker 2: majesty became incarnate, entered into our physical experience, and died
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  Speaker 2: on the cross as a human being, as a body, right?
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  Speaker 2: What we miss now, and I'd say this is what
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  Speaker 2: we miss primarily now, is we just have the crucifixes
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  Speaker 2: with the bodies and the meditation on how gruesome the
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  Speaker 2: event was. And we've lost the apse mosaics. We've lost
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  Speaker 2: the frame for why it's so astonishing that the Son
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  Speaker 2: of God became incarnate and died on the cross.
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  Speaker 1: And it seems like maybe then obviously a lot of
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  Speaker 1: Protestant churches will have just the resurrected Christ. They don't
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  Speaker 1: have the cross. And we just have the crucifix. And
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  Speaker 1: maybe we're both sort of missing that. missing the two
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  Speaker 1: pieces together. Is that fair?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think the Protestant churches have nothing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, they just have just a cross. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Or not even that, right? What I'm saying is what's
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  Speaker 2: missing is the majesty. It's what's missing. And the church
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  Speaker 2: that I attend now, because they do a beautiful Latin
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  Speaker 2: mass and the canons are magnificent, St. John Cantius in Chicago,
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  Speaker 2: there's a very vivid crucifix on the right, if you're
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  Speaker 2: facing the altar, the right-facing pillar. And so you could
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  Speaker 2: end up focusing on that if you're not used to
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  Speaker 2: that sculpture in the round. And it's not terrifically gruesome,
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  Speaker 2: but that sort of imagery of here he suffered. This
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  Speaker 2: is what he suffered for you. And on Good Friday,
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  Speaker 2: that's the meditation, right? That he's on the crossing, my people,
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  Speaker 2: what did I do for you? How did you end
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  Speaker 2: up abandoning me and denying me? But then in the
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  Speaker 2: apse mosaic at St. John Cantius, there's a beautiful resurrection,
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  Speaker 2: the resurrected Christ coming forth from the tomb. I think
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  Speaker 2: in modernity, what we mainly have is just the empty tomb.
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  Speaker 2: It's just the knot there. And we don't have, as
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  Speaker 2: a culture anymore, a particularly strong understanding of the Lord
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  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. I mean, I know online right now, everyone's like,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Christ is king, Christ is king, Christ is king. It's like, what? Yes,
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  Speaker 2: but what you mean to be saying is he is
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  Speaker 2: the creator of heaven and earth who entered into his
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  Speaker 2: creation to save it and reigns still in heaven, having
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  Speaker 2: ascended to the Father. I think a lot of times
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  Speaker 2: when people are saying Christ is king, they feel it
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  Speaker 2: in a more earthly sense. It's like he's our tribal
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  Speaker 2: totem that we're going to carry before us in battle.
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  Speaker 2: That's not the medieval understanding. Even when they're saying God
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  Speaker 2: wills it in the Crusades, what they see is the
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  Speaker 2: creator of heaven and earth who humbled himself. And the crucifixes,
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  Speaker 2: the realistic cross with the body on it is meant
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  Speaker 2: to make you feel ashamed of how much he suffered
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  Speaker 2: and you are still sinning.
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  Speaker 1: And I wonder how we can avoid that professor, because
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  Speaker 1: we're living in a world that is very tribal, where
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you feel like your Christian faith is like explicitly under attack.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, in Congo, you have Christians being beheaded. Like it,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's full-on martyrdom in some parts of the world.
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  Speaker 1: And even here in America, we constantly feel like we're
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  Speaker 1: under attack. And so people will say Christ is king,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and they have the crucifix in their bios, and they
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: will post edits of Christianity. And I understand it a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: lot because I know the reality of the world that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: we're living in, which is increasingly a post-Christian Western society.
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  Speaker 1: How do we avoid turning the crucifix, turning the resurrected Christ,
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  Speaker 1: Christ as King, into just a totem?
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  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you asked that. So yes, we live
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: in a post-Christian world. We always have, right? Right now,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: he is risen, right? We live in the world that
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: is redeemed by our Savior's sacrifice, right? Self-sacrifice. So it
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  Speaker 2: became post-Christian on Good Friday. And the sense that we
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: live within the resurrection. I think it's very easy. It's
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  Speaker 2: always easy to glorify the past as it was a
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  Speaker 2: golden age and everyone had it easier. No, they didn't.
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  Speaker 2: They had it exactly as hard as we do because
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  Speaker 2: we're alive now and we don't know what's coming. One
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  Speaker 2: of the things that I talk about in From Judgment
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  Speaker 2: to Passion is the attention to the turn of the millennium,
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  Speaker 2: the first millennium, the year 1000. Christians going up to
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: the year 1000 did not think that they were in
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  Speaker 2: the midst of Christendom, right? They were under attack by
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: pagans from all sides, the Vikings, right? England in the
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: time is subject to yet more waves of Danes, and
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: the king is having to pay them off and hoping
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: by way of paying Dane geld that he can keep
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: them from attacking. But in fact, he's just bought mercenaries
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  Speaker 2: that turn on him and ally with somebody else. This
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  Speaker 2: is all current, right? And the crucifixes that I was describing,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: those ones where Christ is shown with his wounds and
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: his full suffering, they're made around that time. They're made
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: at the turn of the first millennium when the expectation
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: is Christ is to come in judgment. In my book,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: From Judgment to Passion, one of the people I talk
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: about is Peter Damian, who should be on people's minds
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: because he's one of the most vehement defenders of clerical
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: celibacy in the period. He wrote the treatise about Sodom
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: and Gomorrah as they were dealing with it in those days.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: And in his vision, he has a prayer to the
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: crucified Christ. He's also practicing self-flagellation, so it's a little...
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: It gets a little wild. You bore all of my debt.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: You bore all of my sins. And again, it's the impropriety.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It's the reproaches. Why are you rejecting me? So I
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: think for those of us Christian now, on Good Friday,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: we're there on our knees again because we still are...
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: wanting to, I think you mentioned our poem, Draco Alchemicus.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: One of the things that we talk about in that
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: story is the way we're always trying to guarantee things. Um, we,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: we live in a kind of casino world where here, here,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: here's the trick that's going to make sure that you
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: win the bet.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And, and that our, our main character in the story,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Eliza Drake, um, is like the whore of Babylon, right?
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: And she's, she's trying, she's constantly trying to offer the
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: character's these guarantees. If you think about that's what we
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: live in right now, we're always looking for that trick,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: that one weird trick that is going to make sure
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: that we win. Okay, that is magic. That's magical thinking.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: You're looking at the cross thinking one weird trick and
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I'm guaranteed no suffering.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: No.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: We carry our own cross. We carry our witness. We
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: stand up to the lies and the constant desire to
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: cheat and the constant desire to get more power. And
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Christ is there saying, I paid your debts. Recognize that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Just kind of sit with it. I feel like there
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: is a constant pursuit of utopia for everybody, but especially
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: if you look at communism and the way that in
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the last century and even today, there's just been, well,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: if we just do this thing, everything will be perfect.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it can be horrific. If we if we just
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: kill the people who believe in the four olds and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: they're in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, well, then it'll be perfect.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: We'll just get rid of those guys. And it's never perfect.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of a criticism of Christians a lot is, well,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: you guys just say it's an imperfect world, so you
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: never want to do anything to fix it. That's actually
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: a criticism that my mom had really recently is this
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: left-wing TikTokers had come after her because She said, you know,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: sometimes you just have to accept that the world isn't perfect.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: This is a fallen world. And that was deeply offensive
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: to her because everybody's pursuing perfection. And it's kind of
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: funny to look at the history of Christianity too, as
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: we like, even though we're not communists and godless and
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: it's doing horrific things, we still struggle with that because
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: we're humans. And there was this discovery recently, and I
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: don't remember the year, it's so bad, but There was this,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I believe it was during the end of the Roman Empire.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And he was essentially, they had found this guy's body
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in like a cave or whatever. And I guess something
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: that they had done during this time period was have
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: little necklaces with like prayers kind of scribbled on and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: then rolled together in the necklace. And so they had
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: found his necklace and they were able to use technology
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to figure out what was written on it. And there
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: was a prayer and I guess also like a little
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: complaint that basically like the people, the Christians today aren't
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: doing it right. Like they were better like a hundred
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: years ago or 200 years ago. Like this was like,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: this was like almost like just entering the middle ages
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and we were already idealizing the past. Like we're constantly
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: idealizing the past. And I feel like failing to recognize
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: that it's just a continuous struggle all the way through.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: And that's actually, so Augustine, writing at the fall of
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, he writes the City of God after
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Rome is sacked in 410. In his debates in his day,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: one of the problems that he has was with the
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Donatists in North Africa. And they were the ones who,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: during the persecutions, when the empire had been persecuting the Christians,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: didn't give up. They didn't surrender their books to the
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: authorities and things like that. And after the empire converts,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: after the emperors become Christian, the Donatists figure they're the
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: only real church, right? They're the pure ones. They're the
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: ones that never flinched. And Augustine is saying he's against that, right?
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: He's against that idea that there is this one pure church.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: I'd say the Protestants are unfortunately drawn into the same
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: temptation as saying we're the purest ones, the Baptists, right?
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: It's like the real church is founded in 33 AD
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: and the rest of you are all wrong. It's like,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that Christians are constantly being tempted by that
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: purity spiral, right? We are the only group that's ever
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: kept the true church. And you know online this is
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: a constant problem, the ortho bros versus the trad cats
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: versus the Baptist versus the Russian. I don't know, right?
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, pick a group. And the medieval meditation
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: should be with Christ saying, You're all wounding me, right?
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: You're all part of the wanting to guarantee, right? And
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Peter Damian in his meditation on this pain of the debt,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: this is a money economy, right? One of the things
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: that Peter is very interested in is also worrying about
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: people paying for church offices, the sin of simony, right?
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: And we call that political corruption now, right? You should
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: be chosen for your ability to serve, not because you've
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: made a donation, right? We need to recognize simony in
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: our current political sphere. And paying for the offices is
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: paying again and again and again. You're trying to guarantee
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: the presence of the Holy Spirit. If I give this donation,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: I will control the outcome. No, right? And that's what
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Jesus criticized the Pharisees for. You think that you stand
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: there in the temple doing your perfect prayer. Well, that
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: sinner over there, that tax collector over there who is
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: who is penitent, he's the one who God accepts his offering,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: not you because you considered that you were the perfect
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: one doing your devotions. It's a huge temptation. And people
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: are always asking, you know, they worry, in devout terms,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: they worry, am I doing this prayer right? And I'm like, well, yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Are you sincere about it?
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Okay. It's, are you doing it, you know, with attention
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: on God rather than yourself? So you're talking about the
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: communists and their purity spiral. Communism is basically monasticism without God.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain that.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: What does that mean? So when I teach, I teach
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: History of European Civilization, and one of the texts that
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: we use to think about communism is a text that
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: was published in 1919, right after the Bolshevik Revolution, by
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks. It's the ABC of Communism. And it's like
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: a textbook for the party. And the way I read it,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: there's a post on my blog, if you're curious about
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the long version of this, the Church of the Left, right?
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: You realize the people who wrote it, they tended to
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: be priest's sons, right? They're the journalists who became Bolsheviks,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: but their fathers were priests in the Orthodox Church. And
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: what they're describing in communism is a priestly class, the party,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: who has all the knowledge, which if they have the knowledge,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: they'll make sure that we create this perfect society. Communism
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: is appealing because the pitch is, if we get enough
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: machines to do everything for us, we'll all be poets.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute. They think that they're going to create
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: a perfectly virtuous society, but the first thing they need
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: to do, as you said, is get rid of everybody
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: who's not virtuous. It's a purity spiral. It's thinking that
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: you're going to have the perfect virtuous society artistic society
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: if nobody has to work. It made it straight up
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: utopian fantasy. And the Bolsheviks, that's the way they sold it.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: We have the knowledge and the science to make everybody
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: not have to work anymore.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And I worry that we're going to see it now.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think about what's happening with AI, with
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk and Neuralink, and they're saying, you know, No
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: one's ever going to have to work anymore because robots
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: are going to do everything. The world is going to
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: be perfect. You won't have to have children anymore. We'll
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: put them in pods and artificial wombs. And so it's
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: a new type of technological utopia revolution that we're seeing.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And I think it's actually going to be even scarier
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and more horrific than any other pursuits of utopia we've
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: seen in the past because this is so unhuman. that
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I have a lot of concerns for it.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: But I want to cover.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I agree with you absolutely on that. The AI robots,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I've joked before that it's talking to demons, but it's
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: not really a joke, right? It's this, again, it's desire
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: for perfect knowledge, right? The AI people are, I think
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: the AI, interestingly, is it's a giant database, which if
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: you use it like a library catalog or something, you
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: may get good information out of it, right? If you
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: ask them- questions to search for details or something. Things
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: like Data Republican was doing with her big spreadsheets. But
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: the desire is, of course, perfect knowledge that you then
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: can use to control.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: I heard you talking about- Create a god.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Cybernetics. Cyber comes from governor. It means control. Cybernetics is
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: control systems. It's literally wanting to control everything. So it's
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: again and again and again the same temptation. You will
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: be like gods. You will- you know, be in control.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: The casino image, you will win the bet always.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Or the Tower of Babel. I mean, this is kind
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of what you specialize in, Professor, is like just noticing
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: these patterns. Like it's just, it's the same story over
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and over again, every time.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's, you did the Tolkien class. We did
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: that class online because they'd shut everything down in, you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: March 2020. And I'm writing back in, you know, May 2020,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: one COVID to rule them all. It was the ring.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: It's always the ring. It's always that promise of controlling
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: other people's wills. Tolkien was a genius. He understood the temptation.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And I want to talk about a piece of just
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: a reoccurring historical theme here, because you wrote this substack
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: that was brilliant and very insightful. And like I said,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I did a whole show on it. It's titled something
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: about dire wolves, but really the show was about the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: sub stack that you wrote, Professor Fulton Brown. Michael picked
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the headline. That wasn't my fault. We can blame Michael.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: But the title of this article that you wrote, it's
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Free Trade in the Language of Power. And in it,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: you explore how the backlash to President Trump's tariffs isn't
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: just about economics. but it is about centuries-old linguistic manipulation.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And you argue that terms like free trade and among
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: others are actually word spells, meaning like euphemisms, crafted by
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: empires to like mask exploitation as somehow like progressive. And
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: this is, you bring up specifically the East India Trading
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Company and connect it to modern global finance. So you
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: trace this pattern of like imperial control justified by word
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: spells like free trade. And I used this term in
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: my show, and I think this is kind of like accurate.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: It's pirates in suits. Like it's always been pirates.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Using this moral language to maintain monopolies and to just
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: kind of crush rebellion. So I want you professor to
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: explain for everybody listening just a little more deeply, like
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: why free trade is a kind of word spell and
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: how language has been used historically and now to disguise
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: empire and control.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: So the language of free trade comes, I mean, it
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: comes from Adam Smith, right? But it becomes most prominent
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: really in the early 19th century with The Economist, which
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: is like the journal, The Economist, which was the organ
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: of that particular movement. And liberalism originally meant that free trade, right?
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: With the idea that we make one thing, they make
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: another thing. If we trade them freely, then we both benefit.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: The Economist, argument becomes most contested, I suppose, around the
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: corn law debates in the early 19th century. And it's
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: about whether or not there should be tariffs on the food.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: The British, and I'll say the British rather than the English,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: because I think the English in all of this have been,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: as a people, vanished, right? I'm teaching a course right
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: now in Anglo-Saxon England. And one of the things that
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: I show in that is how Englishness is sort of
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: subsumed under The British Empire, it's under the United Kingdom.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Scotland and Wales still have an identity, but England has
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: kind of been erased, right? So you can think this
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: is what empire does. It erases people's national identities. Anyway,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: back to the British. But the British use those debates
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: over the Corn Laws to starve Ireland. It's brutal and
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: it's ruthless. And the reason that the Irish have the
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: famine that they do in 1848 is because of these
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Corn Laws and the way that the free trade argument
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: has been used to support that. Um, the same group
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: and I, it's, it's funny how I flip back and
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: forth in my understanding of who's on the good. Are
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: we the, are the, the, like the meme that are
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: we Hans, are we the baddies?
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Yes. All of it.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It's like, I just remember we're before we were in
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: front of the cross.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: We're the baddies. We keep falling for these traps. So, okay. Right. Um, the,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: the economist, uh, promotes, uh, particularly in 1851, this big
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: exhibition that is held at a building called, they call
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: the Crystal Palace, right? Because it's this big fabricated greenhouse of,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: you know, steel and glass. It's the first world exposition, right?
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: And The Economist is, you know, the articles that we
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: have to read for The Economist are all talking about
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: how everybody's going to live in glass houses, and everybody's
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: going to be comfortable. And, you know, the progress that
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: we're having is you know, benefit of all of this
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: industry and such like that. I used to fall for that.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Well, me too.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we all did. It's the industrial revolution. It's the
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: joy of, you know, all of this comfort and luxury
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: and such like that. Well, the thing that the Crystal
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Palace was showing off was it was British industry, but
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: it's also the industry of the world, all of the
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: industry of the world. This is in 1851. This is
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: centuries after the East India Trading Company was has perfected
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: its conquest of all of those shipping routes. And you
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: mentioned in your episode that the East India Trading Company
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: is originally chartered under Elizabeth I. I love this because
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: our Draco Alchemicus, Eliza Drake, is our main character. She's
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth I. Drake is because one of her founding guys
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: is the pirate, Sir Francis Drake, and his cousin, Sir
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: John Hawkins. And there's Walter Raleigh and such in there.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: These guys are all pirates. They're privateers serving her. They're
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: stealing from the Spanish.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Pirates with paperwork.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Pirates with paperwork. And the paperwork they get, first they get,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: their biggest conquest is, you'll appreciate this, a Portuguese Carrick
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: called Madre de Deus. They steal from the mother of God.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: That one they capture in 1582. In 1600, Elizabeth charters
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: these guys to, you know, with the Madrid de Dios,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: they also capture a lot of the Portuguese trading records
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: for China, India and Japan right in the east there.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: So East India Trading Company. She charters them to do
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: voyages to the East Indies, right, to China, India, Japan.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Their first, I love this, I only just found this out.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Their first ship, the ship that first goes with them
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: is the Red Dragon. Okay.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I had that as my title for one of the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: shows on China.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: You've got to think like me and bookend these two.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: And there's lots of story in the middle. And I'm
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: still learning a lot of the details about the East
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: India Trading Company. But from Elizabeth I to Queen Victoria,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Britannia rules the seas. And they do it through this
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: business entity. which is the East India Trading Company. In 1858,
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: right after the Crystal Palace exhibition, they nationalized that stock company.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: And by 1876, Victoria's declared herself empress. But in fact,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: the ruling of the seas comes through this merchant company.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: And you mentioned Pirates of the Caribbean in your episode.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk about that for sure.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: What they have Beckett say, it's just business.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Think about that, right? It's all just business. We are
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: going to send our gunships in and you're going to
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: trade with us or else we'll blow you up.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's interesting. That Pirates movie, I wanted to get
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: into it a little bit because you kind of mentioned
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: to me, not in the article, but just to me
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: that the movie really reflects this actual real world dynamic
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: where you're, you're, you're actually showing the, the imperialism and the,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: and the corporatism power, like just take over and the pirates,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the real pirates, right? Like Jack Sparrow They're bad, but
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: they're also kind of good because they own the badness.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Whereas these guys, right, the East India Trading Company in
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: parts of the Caribbean, kind of like the global capitalists today,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: will pretend like they're the good guys. We're just free
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: trade and we're spreading wealth all around and we're just
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: doing business. And really, it's kind of horrific. And I
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: want to ask you this because I think a lot
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: of people listening are probably under some of these word
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: spells where A lot of capitalism and free trade, it's
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: tied up in kind of a Protestant work ethic, I
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: would say, where people view it as a moral good.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Is that true? And how should we be viewing economics
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: in an authentically Christian and moral way? Obviously, we don't
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: want pirates with paperwork, but how can we shake them
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: without acting like we're communists?
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: You've nailed it, right? They're both. The capitalists are Protestant
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: work ethic. The communists, I said, were monasticism without God.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: It's the same picture.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Weber, with his Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: was doing a fast one. That's another of the word spells, definitely.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Because Weber was writing as a sociologist in the early
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: 20th century in a Lutheran region of Europe, of Germany, Prussia, whatever.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: And he's trying... I guess it's Germany by then. He's
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: trying to explain why their region is more profitable than
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: those Catholic regions. But his actual... Asceticism, the images that
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: he has of asceticism, it comes from monasticism. It comes
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: from medieval monasticism. So if you want to know what
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: is an economy that looks like not predatory capitalism or
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: robot-fueled communism, it's in fact monasticism. And it's an economy...
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: designed for the support of prayer, for the care of
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: the poor, long-term investment, right? It's like Peter Damian is
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: among other things.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Are you saying a unity of church and state professor?
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that question came from outside. So this
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: is challenging, right? And it's challenging because, I mean, throughout
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: the Middle Ages, there is this big competition between the
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: papacy and the empire. over who gets the final say in,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: for example, choosing the bishops. And that, I'm glad that
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Peter Damian turned into my theme today because he's an
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: appropriate anchor for people. He's caught up in this debate
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: as well, right? He doesn't want the churchmen being paid,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: paying for their church offices. So he's against simony. He's
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: very concerned about the clerical celibacy, also with sexual sins
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: that the clergy is involved in. And He was famously ascetic, right?
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: So your fasting question came in. He sees all three
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: of these in this nexus of, again, it's like each
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: one of them is a way of thinking that you
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: can be in control of the situation. And I think capitalism,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: you know, invisible hand or the market or something like that,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: they're making the market into the idol. Communism is making
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: the machines into the idol. One way or the other,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: you are failing to see the creativity in our human existence.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: What medieval Christians properly understood was we are creatures of
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: a maker. creatures of an artist. And that's what Tolkien
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: pointed to constantly. We sub-create within this invitation to make
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: still in the image in which we are made. And Tolkien's,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Tolkien's answer was, you know, the Shire, these local communities
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: that care for themselves and for the people in them.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: He was, the image of the ring is the image
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: of that global capitalism. He hated American cosmopolitanism. He thought
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: it was a, it was a terrible danger of homogenization,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: which we've seen, right? It's like, it, Communism was going
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: to make every city look the same. Well, capitalism succeeded.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Every every, you know, that Crystal Palace tower of glass
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: and steel is every financial center in the world. We've
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: homogenized the entire world under a ring.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: So I think the the I think it's not so
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: much the the the union of church and state is
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: the ruler recognizing that he is part of this economy
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: of God. And he rules under the potential of judgment
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: that we all do. The rulers are constantly wanting to
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: make themselves all powerful and tyrants. Well, the tyrant is
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: the one who you think who's Satan, who puts himself
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: above God.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: What would you say is a leader in history, Professor
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Fulton Brown, who actually exemplified genuinely that good leadership, a
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: good king who was deferential to to God and Christian authority?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: That's a trick question. There are not very many saints
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: who are kings. I mean, who would I say?
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: St.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Francis, right? Everybody likes St. Francis because he talks to animals.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: He was the son of a merchant, and he became
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: very distressed at the sort of problem of wealth and
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: threw off all his clothes and became the fool for God.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: But he was also... completely obedient to the Pope. So
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: we need to be under some rule. I think anarchy
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: is definitely not the answer. We're not libertarian in that sense.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a giant challenge because in monasticism, the
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: monks put themselves under the abbot voluntarily, right? They live
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: according to a rule. They live according to a rule
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: that enables them to function as a community. Communities do
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: need to have guidelines, right? I mean, the pirates make
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: jokes about that. They're not so much rules as guidelines.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: But communities do need manners and rules and hierarchy, all
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: of these things. And monasticism was a practice recognizing that
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: you are as sinners in need of Christ as King,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: the monks, the monks recognize Christ as King. That's why
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: they're under the rule. They, they, they, um, have put
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: on the strong, bright weapons of obedience to do battle
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: for Christ, our King. That's our battle in obedience to
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: God's will. Um, I, with rulers, um, I mean, St.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Louis is one of our, I was born in his city, right?
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: St.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Louis, Missouri. It is obedient to God. I think, I mean,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: it's a challenge. It's a dangerous, dangerous position for a
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: ruler to be in because he is going to be
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: tempted to control.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, for whom much is given, much is,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: of course, expected. And I do think that there's a
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: lot of trad Catholics online who will say, We need
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: to bring back the Catholic monarchy. We're done with representative government.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: It's over. And so they just want to name somebody
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: king and have them be deferential to the pope. And
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe that is a preferential to a representative government.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Who knows what the answer is? But I think coming
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: back to what we were saying before, it's never going
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: to be perfect. Like it doesn't matter what, I mean,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: some are obviously better than others, but it doesn't really
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: matter what the form is. It's always going to be
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: imperfect in a fallen world.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: And I mean, the medieval kings, divine right of kings
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: is a Protestant claim, ironically. It's James I and wanting
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: to justify his own sovereignty. A Christian king recognizes himself
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: under God's judgment.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to get to something before we have
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: to close it out, Professor, because we.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: You're somebody who has obviously a very unique perspective when
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: it comes to higher education. You've been in it for
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: pretty much your whole adult life, right? And you are
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: obviously a professor yourself. So we're living through kind of
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary moment in American higher education because the Trump
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: admin is really taking on the university system. The admin
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: has frozen $ 2. 2 billion in federal funding and contracts to Harvard,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: They've also put similar pressures on Columbia University, which eventually
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: caved in. And the move is being framed by the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: admin as an ideological correction, an institutional reckoning. They want
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: to shut down DEI. They want to restore merit-based hiring.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: They want to dismantle activist programs. They're reviewing departments for
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: ideological bias. I think these are specifically Middle Eastern departments
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: for anti-Semitism. They also want to defund student groups like
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Students for Justice in Palestine. Now, for everybody listening, Harvard
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: today is basically, as many schools, and probably including the
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: University of Chicago, tax-exempt hedge fund. They are not the
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: same as the universities from the Middle Ages, which is
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: your specialty. Professor, what do you make of this? Is
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: this going to fix the university system?
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: So I tend to be, you all have guessed, I'm
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: at odds with everybody. I like Jack Sparrow because he's
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: at odds with everybody too, right? The problem is, you know,
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: if you're in search of truth, you're already sort of
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: ideologically framed. And what I see happening is, you know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Christian universities or, you know, the medieval education system is
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: bounded by this claim that we are creatures of God.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: And science in the, you know, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: centuries develops as a search for understanding the workings of God, right? It's, it's,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: it's this system that we live in. It's like the
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: image of that majesty that I was describing. He's the
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: creator of all of it and gives us reason. And
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: therefore we can understand it and study it. And the
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: world acts as a book showing us the glories of
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: the creator, much as scripture does.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: So, um, I would love that as a vision of
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: why we have higher education, because it is higher education.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: It's looking to a higher understanding, which is the transcendent
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: and theological. What I see happen in American academia is
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: from the 19th century, the schools secularized themselves. The strangest
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: effects that I've had in academia was I wrote a
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: little post back in 2017 for the University of Chicago
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Divinity School newsletter about Milo.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Milo Yiannopoulos, for all of you listening.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: And it was around his, you know, his campus tour
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and why had there been that explosion at Berkeley. And
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: I said we were in a religious crisis, right? Because
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: you know, we didn't know how to talk about theology anymore,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: everybody was getting very upset. I still contend that I
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: was absolutely right in that, that we don't understand how
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: to talk about theology, and that what we are in,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: people are framing it as, you know, freedom, again, you know, science,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: international relations, and so like, we're in a religious crisis,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: because we're incapable of recognizing the fundamental ground on which
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: people argue. Now, This is more than we have time for,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: but progressives are a religious movement, too. They think they're
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: going to fix society. If they can fix society, the
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: individual will be perfectly free. It's a utopian project. And
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: you've talked about things like, you know, how the identity
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: politics takes away individual responsibility. Well, because sociology... and other
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: social sciences as academic disciplines have said, the system is broken.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: If we fix the system, everything will be perfect. Well, obviously,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: as a Christian, I think they're utopian and failing to
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: understand why they're going to keep failing. But the universities
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: themselves were founded as ideological entities. For example, Harvard. This
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: is its original rules and precepts from 1646.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: consider well the main end of his life and studies
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: John 17, 3. And therefore to lay Christ in the
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: learning and seeing the Lord only give wisdom. Let everyone
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: of him. Proverbs 2, 3.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: I don't feel like that's the mission anymore.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Harvard was founded as a seminary, right? It's founded as
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: a Puritan seminary, a congregational seminary. I think the reason
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: they're in danger now is because they've lost their own purpose.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: They can't defend themselves because they don't have their own
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: ground anymore.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: What do we do about universities like Chicago, where it
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: was never religious? I mean, we have a lot of
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: schools like that now.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, Chicago was originally a seminary too. It was? The
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: University of Chicago, the original University of Chicago before its
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: refounding and the institution that we have now was a seminary.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: It was a Baptist seminary.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: I thought we were always secular. No, that's why we
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: have this giant chapel on campus. Well, I thought it
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: was like a fake chapel. It's like, it's called Rockefeller
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Chapel and it's like a chapel to nothing. There's like
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: nothing in there. It's like the weirdest, it's the weirdest
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: chapel ever.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: It looks nice. They didn't have any art.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: It was originally called the University Chapel. Rockefeller himself is Baptist.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: He was Baptist. The main window in the East End, right?
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: East....
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Whichever way it's facing, it's not even facing east, it's
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: facing north, isn't it? Is the flame, right? That five
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: star flame. No, the original institution that Harper, our founding
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: president was faculty on was a seminary. Harper himself was
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: a professor of Hebrew and scripture. So like our founding
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: president was a scripture scholar. And in the middle of
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: our campus is a divinity school. We've lost our purpose too.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: And the only way a university functions as a university
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: of knowledge with a focus is if you believe there's
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: such thing to be found, right? If you believe that
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: there's such thing to be truth, this sort of post-modernist
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: claim that all truth is relative. No, it's not. And
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: they don't believe that either. They are absolutely convinced that
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: they have the truth. I think it's satanic, but it's
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: the enemy's version of thing, which is If we get
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: all of this knowledge and get it perfect, we'll control everything. Sorry, no,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: you won't. Lord is Jesus Christ. It's so funny.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: I know that you've read this book and I read
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: it too because of John Daniel Davidson's book, Pagan America,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: but the space trilogy, which I'm obsessed with from C.S.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: Lewis.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: And it's always kind of like this idea of secret knowledge.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's another reoccurring theme. Where they say, okay,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: truth doesn't exist. Everything's like morally relative. And that's kind
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: of what I'm given at the university system. I actually
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: like was explicitly taught that. I took a class called
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: media aesthetics, which was like a huge mistake. I didn't
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: know what I was getting into when I signed up
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: for that class. I just thought we were going to
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: be like talking about art and then like. I don't know.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be like old films.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: It was studying the dark arts. There you go.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was not that. I was getting like Foucault
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and Derrida and it was not fun. But in that
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: space trilogy, you think that you're going to be learning
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: something like amazing and then like the big reveal at
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: the end of the book, spoiler alert, is that they
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: have this severed head that's telling them what to do
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: and it's possessed by a demon. And so you always,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: they kind of present it as one thing always. It's like, oh,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: it's morally relative and aren't we so progressive? And then
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: you pull back the curtain and you realize, oh, it's
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: just demonic.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: That's all this is.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: And there is like a religiosity behind a lot of
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: these progressive postmodern movements.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, and definitely. And it's why they hiss at Jesus's name.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: It's the one name. They can't stand because they know him.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: The demons know him. We learned that in the gospels, right?
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: The demons recognize him. They know he's Lord. They know
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: if we stand with Christ as our shield, they can't
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: do anything to us. So you were asking, it's like,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: what should we do as Christians? One, Jesus gave us
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: all the instructions we need. We just need to listen.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: And he said, you are the salt of the earth.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: We are called to be out here in the middle
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: of it all, right? We don't get to hide. Even
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: the monasteries don't really get to hide, right? They understand
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: themselves as praying against the demons, right? So they're in
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: battle too, right? For Christ the Lord. We stand in
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: the midst of the campus of our society and witness
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: by way of our joy to the fact that our
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Lord is risen. He loves us so much that he
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: died on the cross to redeem us of our debt
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: and And they're quite clear about this in Damian and
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: 12th and 13th centuries. They understand what it is to
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: be in unpayable debt, and Christ paid it for us.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think to maybe sum up your take
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: on these, and you can tell me if I'm wrong here,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: on the university system, they've completely lost their way. They're
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: not Christian anymore, so they can't pursue truth. They don't
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: know what truth is. or they do know it, or
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: their idea of truth is a complete inversion of it,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and it becomes very demonic and dark. And I don't
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: think it's fair for the taxpayers to be funding these institutions.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think that the Trump admin is just right
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: to maybe just defund all these schools? And should we
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: fund schools that are maybe like Hillsdale College or University
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: of Dallas, which is a Catholic school, obviously, in Dallas?
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Or should we just not be funding universities at all?
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Is this no longer the role of the government? What
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: should be the admin's response to these schools? And are
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: they on the right track?
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Well, as I've been saying to some of my colleagues,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: the Trump admin is basically saying the quiet part out
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: loud right now. It's like you take this money, there
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: are conditions. But, you know, the Obama and Biden administration
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: did that with, for example, Title IX. I mean, the government,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: you know, the secular world is going to create restrictions, right,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: if you're taking that money. So I think we probably
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: don't have enough time to disentangle all of this, but
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Christians are about education, right? We are meant to seek
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: the truth. I mean, we study the scriptures as they
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: once did at Harvard in Latin and Greek and Hebrew,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: that we are creatures of the logos of wisdom, of
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: this beautiful world that we live in. I think we're
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: drawn to want to study. And so my best advice
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: at the moment is we have to start with ourselves
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: and our hearts and be joyous in our own pursuit
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: of knowledge. And how we transform the world in that,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Christ promised if we do so through him, we will
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: show the world our light. I don't have policy prescriptions
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: right now. I think there's a lot of schadenfreude in
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: what's going on right now because it's not as if
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: the previous administrations haven't made similar demands on the universities.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: It's just I think previously the university faculty were okay
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: with the demands because they were fine with DEI requirements.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: They were fine with diversity admissions. They were fine with
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: it all, so they didn't mind that the federal government
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: was making conditions. Now, you know, the federal government with
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: the different administration is making different conditions and they say, oh,
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: you can't do this.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: We're free.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, were you free? You weren't before. Yeah,
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: it's you know, it's it's the satanic trick.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: You find out you can't pay the debt.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a lot of trickery. Maybe it's a campus
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: free speech, another word spell, because they're not free. And
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: I want to, Michael, if we could pull up that- Yeah,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you're going to have me back, right?
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: We can continue.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll just go forever. I want to play your video, Professor,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: because it, so a lot of this is, of course,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: in reaction to these massive pro-Palestine demonstrations. At Columbia University,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: it was It was violent. I mean, they took over
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: an entire building. They wouldn't let anybody in. I guess
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: some janitors got stuck inside, which is just so dramatic
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: and horrible.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: The staff are the ones that always get trapped in
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: the middle of all of this.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Of course. And during COVID, too. I mean, the staff
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: was totally abused during that time. But at UChicago, where
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: obviously you teach, they had their own encampment. It was
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: on the quad. Students couldn't get to and from class.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: And you had another pre-existing appointment every week to pray.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: What was the name of your group again, Professor?
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: It was the Corona Testing Control Group.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: The Coronavirus Testing Control Group.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Just Corona Testing, right? We formed in 2022 as the
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: group of those of us who had been given religious
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: exemptions on campus from the vaccination mandate. and the university
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: was going to then require us to be tested weekly,
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: which we were unhappy about as well, because we said,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: we're not sick. Why do we need to be tested
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: all the time? And we said, okay, fine. We're the
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: ones who didn't have the vaccine. So we will be
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: your control group. And once we presented that argument with them,
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: they abolished the testing.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I had to do the testing too. But
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: we kept praying.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: We kept praying. And we were just, you know, we
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: were saying the Psalms. We prayed every Friday. It was,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: you know, a group was sometimes, Two of us, sometimes
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: 10 of us, right? But it was weekly for two years.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: And so you had this pre-existing meeting at the quad.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: Suddenly the quad's taken over by this massive encampment for,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how long it lasted.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Did it last weeks? I mean, it felt like a
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: long time.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: No, it was like a few days. Ours was only
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: eight or nine days.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yes. So, I mean, it's still kind of a
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: long time to not have access to the campus. But
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: let's play this video, Mikey, of you, Professor Fulton Brown,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: at the encampment, attempting to actually do your weekly prayer,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: and you're in the midst of all this chaos.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Rachel Fulton-Brown, I'm an associate professor at the University of Chicago,
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: and I am here with my prayer group this morning
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: on the University of Chicago campus. I want to go
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: into the encampment as I did on Friday and invite
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: our students to come pray with us for peace. My
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: prayer group has been the Corona Testing Control Group. We've
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: been praying here for the past two years on campus
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: every Friday during the first year, every Monday during the
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: second year. We have witnessed many of the displays and
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: arguments that the students have been making to help the
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: victims in Gaza and in Israel. We have seen the
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: flags that they put up. We have seen the kites
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: that they've done. And we want now to invite those
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: students who have been participating in those activities to come
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: pray with us in our continuing prayer to our Lord
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: for peace. I'm going to go into the encampment, invite
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: any of our students and faculty.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: The outside organizers are also.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Welcome to join us if they would like to come pray.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: And we hope very much that this is a demonstration
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: of the way in which we can move forward without
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: having to bring in the campus police or the city
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: police to dismantle the encampment. I invite you to come
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: into the camp with me as we go to offer
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: our invitation.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: We're good with that, Mikey. So then that's the rest
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: of your video. But I don't have the full confrontation,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: but you were not allowed, if I'm remembering correctly, to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: just have your prayer. I think that they kicked you
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: out of the encampment. Is that right?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: Not quite. So I went in. And I'm remembering that
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: we'd actually done our prayer on the Friday as regular,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: and the flag event happened on Friday, too, that I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: think you've covered. That was Monday. So I went in
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: and I said, you know, we're here to pray. And
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: someone there, I learned later she was one of our
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: grad students, and masked, right? They were all wearing COVID masks,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: as it were.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Which is something the Trump admin wants to stop them
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: from doing. So now we were pro-mask. Now there's no
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: masks on campus.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: Right. And she clearly had been trained on how to
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: deal with someone like me, which was, She came up
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: to me. I was trying to talk to several of
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: the other people. And I said, we're here to pray.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: They were listening. That was fine. And she came up
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: and said, oh, you know, show me where it is.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: And she like scooted me out of the encampment. So
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: I was not going to be able to distract anybody
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: with my invitation to go pray over there. And, you know,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: it was an interesting lesson in how to prevent me
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: from making my point. Because she kept saying, oh, yes,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I'm here to listen. I'm here to listen. I'm like, well,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: who are you? What are you here to learn? I'm
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: here to pray. Why are you, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: And obviously she managed to walk me out and nobody
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: was able to follow. So it was more a demonstration
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: of the way they trained their agents, I think, in
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: mounting these protests. It was clear that the encampment was
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: a managed event, right? These were not organic. Yeah, it
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: was very organized. Very organized. Yes. They actually, so the university, we,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: I think, I actually credited our president with handling this
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: fairly well, that the encampment stayed up a week and
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: a day and a half, or it started on a Monday,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: they took it down Tuesday morning the next week. And
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: they did it in a way that nobody was hurt.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, the protesters were clearly interested in
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: making sure that they ended up with themselves screaming at
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: lines of police. Our police did very well on campus
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: as well, keeping things calm and divided in terms of,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: you know, clashes and things like that. I hope that,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: in fact, my being praying on Friday, being there again,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: it actually helped, right? Because I was most worried about
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: these sorts of events are set up. It's very like
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: the East India Company did, if I may bring that
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: back in, in another movie called Ace Ventura. When Nature Calls,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: which is ridiculous and nobody ever remembers anything except the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: rhino birthing scene. Please don't look it up on the Internet.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: So what was interesting about that one, that movie was
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: written by a man whose grandfather was a boar, an Afrikaans,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: which has also been in the news lately.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: And.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: In the story, Ace Ventura is called to Africa to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: get back the sacred bat because it's been stolen. And
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: if the bat isn't brought back, the two tribes will
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: go to war. And it turns out, quite interestingly, that
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: the British consul has used the Australians to steal the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: sacred bat so as to start the war because the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: bat makes guano, which the British want control of. And
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: if they can get the two local tribes fighting each other,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: they get to run off with the, the shit.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: The bat poop. Right. And that, that is what I
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: see happening in the Gaza Israel exchange. And in many
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: of the others exchanges that the, the, the EIC, the,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: the just business pirates will start a conflict, ramp it
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: up between two groups so that they hate each other
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: and will kill each other. And the actual purpose of
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: the whole thing was to get control of the guano.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: or the oil, or the lithium, or in our poem,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: we just learned out the perfect red, right? Coconil. One
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: of the things that was in Madre de Dios when
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: Raleigh captured it was red dye, right? It's this very
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: precious red dye that made everything beautiful. So the red
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: dragon is sent to capture the red dye. Just keep
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: that in your head. and recognize all of this is
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: a beautiful metaphor for the passion.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it's interesting.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Now you all know what Evita had to put up with.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: There's always a connection. There's always a through line. No,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: but I do. It is a good point because I'm
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: constantly grappling with this question of like, well, why do
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: they sometimes, I mean, I understand some of the pro-Palestine arguments. Actually,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of them, I'm like, I can be sympathetic.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: But I'm also like, why don't you guys care about
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: stuff that's happening here on campus as much as you
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: do this? Like, why don't you care about things that
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: are happening in the United States or just in the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: city of Chicago? And it always does feel very astroturfed
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: and not so sincere because it's not affecting any of them.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: And this seems to be a lot of, like, I
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: would be much more sympathetic to an encampment that had
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: something to do with something happening in the city of
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: Chicago or at the University of Chicago. And it just,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: these protests, these movements, these mass demonstrations, they never seem
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: to be related in anything tangible to the actual lives
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: of the people protesting.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: Word spells.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Word spells.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: That's, that's what, that, so, I mean, a race relations
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: one is, is one of the most insidious, that it
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: was invented to make sure that the Irish and the
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: black slaves didn't band together against their abuse. It's like, oh,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: you're white, you're black. Now you have to be enemies.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've been watching it. That plays out constantly.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons that I started back in
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: 10 years ago with my Three Cheers for White Men
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: blog post. You know, now I appreciate what was going on.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: That was about feminism, right? I think I recognize now
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: that we are regularly beset with a word spell that
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: turns this other group into our enemy. It happened, for example,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: in World War I when the English are taught to
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: hate the Germans. Many Americans, my family has German ancestry, right?
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Everybody forgot about it after World War I because we
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: were so trained by the propaganda to get us into
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: war against the Kaiser to see them as the enemy.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Our families don't even have the story anymore. Your family
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: has Spanish ancestry, right? The English have been stealing from
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: the Spanish for centuries. 1588 was Elizabeth's pirates defeating Philip's armada.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: And from that story, we end up with, I mean,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: truly this is what Evita has to put up with, right?
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: If you're in Fulton Brown's class, what do you know? everything.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: The battle between the British Empire and the Spanish Empire
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: goes back to the very beginning again.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: It's it's a lot of it plays out from the
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: 16th century in these great, great imperial contests over control
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: of the resources.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: And we're still in it. We're still in it. The
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: United States. I mean, what Trump is doing. I have
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: a through line for Trump is.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: Watch.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Watch the waterways that he's concerned with. It's usually cast
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: as self-determination or the people's want to choose or something
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: like that. But we won't control Panama because that's a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: major waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That's why
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: we built the canal. The Greenland waterways are also very important.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: I think what's going on in Israel, Gaza, Iran, Russia,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: all of that has to do with those shipping lanes.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: And therefore access to particular resources. It's the same as
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: in the Ace Ventura. These movies, we were shown all along, right?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: It's the same as in the Ace Ventura when they
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: want control of the guano.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Or the Houthis in Yemen. I mean, that's all about
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: a trade as well, right? I mean, that's why we're
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: going after them. Yeah, I mean, there's so many through lines, Professor.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: And you obviously are a very brilliant person who has
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: been able to bring all the pieces together. You've done
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: it multiple times for me. I'm like, what's going on here?
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: Help me understand this. And you have an explanation. And
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: it's always, like I said, very brilliant. So I do
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: want to be respectful of your time, Professor Fulton-Brown. Where
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: can people go to follow you on social media and
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: to follow anything else that you're doing, anything you want
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: to plug here? Just give it to us now.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: I think now I understand why I never have a
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: single place. Anyway, but I did. To be respectful of
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: everybody's desire to find things on the Internet, go to dragoncommonroom.com.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: And the website has links to all of my projects,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: all of the people that I'm doing our poetry with,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: our video, the mosaic arc. And you find my academic homepage,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: you find the other version of all of these links.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: If you want my academic writing, it's there on the
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: academic homepage, but go through dragon common room.com.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: And the sub stacks are all there as well.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: Everything's linked. If you go to my about in the
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: dragon common room, it's got all the links.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for your time, professor Fulton Brown.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: It was such a joy to have you on. And
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: for all of you listening, make sure to hit the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: like and follow button. So you keep up to date
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: with this podcast. If you want to follow me, My
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: user is avitadeffy1 on Instagram and Twitter. I will see
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you guys all tomorrow.
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  Speaker 3: I'm your host, Megan Klingenberg, and I am super stoked
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: to be joined by Daryl Dike.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Arguably, your most impressive quality cannot be measured. You're a
• 1:10:25
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• 1:10:29
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• 1:10:31
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• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. That's a good intro right there.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: That's good.
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