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Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity · Gather

0:00
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Well, hello, and welcome to this episode of the Gather Podcast from EPN.
0:05
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: My name's Charlie Bączyk-Bell.
0:07
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I'm a priest in the Church of England, and it's a real delight to be guest uh hosting this week's podcast.
0:13
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: It's an even greater delight to have with me uh Winnie Varghese, Dean Winnie Varghese, the uh Dean of St.
0:19
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: John the Divine Cathedral in New York City.
0:21
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Hi, Winnie.
0:22
Winnie Varghese: Hi, Charlie.
0:23
Winnie Varghese: Thanks for hosting.
0:24
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Great.
0:25
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So it's great to chat.
0:26
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And today, what I'd love us to think a little bit about leadership in the church of today and perhaps doing what churches do best, which is get out the church door as well as within it.
0:36
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So um so so tell me, I suppose that the thing which and we're we're grappling with this our side of the Atlantic as well.
0:43
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Um, what what is it and what do you think people are looking for in church leadership today, not just in in church leaders, but what do they want churches to do when they're leading?
0:54
Winnie Varghese: Yeah, I mean, I definitely live in a particular lane in the church, but my experience of church, and this is very much confirmed here at the cathedral, um, and in this political moment, it seems very clear, but again, has always been my experience of church, is people uh are asking church leaders to express clearly and like unapologetically their reliance on God and living in God's economy, a clear moral leadership that comes from living in, I use the word economy, but in God's view of the world.
1:24
Winnie Varghese: Um, and that, you know, that comes for us like framed in in prayer and study and worship together.
1:30
Winnie Varghese: But that we are unapologetic about about that grounding in our lives.
1:36
Winnie Varghese: And then what that has to do with the world today.
1:38
Winnie Varghese: And you know, as things are things where, you know, where I live, um literally one of our own colleagues, you know, was has been attacked in the news recently um from for a really beautiful sermon, um inviting a very marginalized group of people to imagine that God is like them, that God sees them.
1:55
Winnie Varghese: Yeah.
1:55
Winnie Varghese: Um and if that's enough for political attack, then the response of the church is, oh no, if you attack any of us, you've attacked all of us, as opposed to you are disposable because we're afraid now.
2:04
Winnie Varghese: So I think people are people are looking for courage and solidarity and a deep sense of living in a different way, accountable to a different thing than the whims of the politics of the moment or the social norms of the moment.
2:17
Winnie Varghese: Um and I think because of frankly how polarized things are, there's there it's even more visible when we choose to do that.
2:25
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah, I'm really struck by the the focus on solidarity.
2:29
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Um, I was in a conversation the other day, kind of thinking about the difference between allyship and solidarity, the idea that if you're an ally, you're kind of it's someone else's problem and you're coming alongside them.
2:39
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Whereas in solidarity, you're actually saying, no, actually, the problem doesn't lie with you, and I'm going to stand alongside you whilst you're under attack or whilst someone's trying to use you as a problem.
2:47
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And it feels to me like the church is a unique kind of place where solidarity can play out.
2:53
Winnie Varghese: Yeah, you know, we have this big globe, the Gaia that's been going around to cathedrals in the cathedral right now, and it's magnificent.
2:59
Winnie Varghese: You have to see it, it's gorgeous.
3:01
Winnie Varghese: Um, but it literally means, as I was preaching, I realized we had literally created a place where you could look from underneath.
3:07
Winnie Varghese: Like what a great time to kind of use this theological idea that Jesus stands with us for the view of Jesus is from underneath.
3:15
Winnie Varghese: So underneath what society says is respectable or appropriate or powerful, um, that Jesus stands with those outcasts.
3:21
Winnie Varghese: If we want to know Jesus, that's where we go.
3:23
Winnie Varghese: That's different than I think you're right or I think you're being bothered and I will be kind.
3:28
Winnie Varghese: That's important for sure.
3:30
Winnie Varghese: But that kind of allyship can can be fragile because it's it's always going to be poked at.
3:35
Winnie Varghese: Like that there are there's real evil out in the world that does not want that.
3:38
Winnie Varghese: Allyship is really hard.
3:40
Winnie Varghese: And when it turns to solidarity or when it can become solidarity is I cannot be anywhere but here because this is this is what I know to be true.
3:47
Winnie Varghese: This is what I know to be of God, even if I don't know your experience or don't share your experience.
3:51
Winnie Varghese: Um and that that means that that kind of relationship cannot be separated.
3:55
Winnie Varghese: But that yeah, that theological idea is that we as Christians are trying to practice and pray our way into seeing from underneath all the time whether we are there or not.
4:05
Winnie Varghese: And as that keeps moving, right?
4:08
Winnie Varghese: That Jesus insists on that view.
4:10
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
4:11
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
4:11
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And it feels to me like the the kind of the narrative, maybe in the church as well as outside the church for quite some time has been one of kind of survival and of getting by.
4:22
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And and and I guess under that lies anxieties and fear and and all these things, which I mean, certainly in in our political uh uh kind of world, and I I mean in in in yours as well, that that that has just become, you know, the the narrative of lack of things, the the narrative of there's not enough to go around.
4:42
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: We need to, we know we need to to to kind of gather our own and make sure that no one else is allowed in at the table and so on.
4:48
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And I I wonder how much that's kind of snuck its way into church conversations.
4:53
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And I wonder how much we can, you know, we always talk about counter being counter-cultural, how much we can be truly counter-cultural in a moment like that.
5:00
Winnie Varghese: Well, you know what's interesting in my context, I I I suspect this is true in yours, definitely true in mine, is we have conflated a couple of things and the church.
5:07
Winnie Varghese: Um I have have a lot of feelings about this.
5:09
Winnie Varghese: The church, I think, even in our more open side, has conflated this American distrust of government and the center, right?
5:17
Winnie Varghese: Which is which is not his necessarily his, but is is a thing that's been ginned up all over the world, right?
5:22
Winnie Varghese: That we distrust government.
5:23
Winnie Varghese: We d distrust local government.
5:25
Winnie Varghese: The philanthropists tell us you can't rely on New York City government.
5:28
Winnie Varghese: We distrust state government, federal government.
5:30
Winnie Varghese: The thing that government does, you know, if I was going to be that that people find so distasteful is it is the only platform for actual equity.
5:39
Winnie Varghese: You know, so you know, when you you you don't like American bureaucracy, what you're saying is you don't like black people empowered to work, right?
5:46
Winnie Varghese: In reasonable jobs with benefit.
5:47
Winnie Varghese: That's what you're saying.
5:48
Winnie Varghese: And and liberals will say it, conservatives will say it, oh, that if you you know if you give money to government, it gets wasted on, you know, healthcare or stamps or post, postal care or roads, you know, or clean water or safe drugs, you know, like the things that create equity, right?
6:04
Winnie Varghese: A place to a place that we can be together.
6:06
Winnie Varghese: So that cynicism that we have towards government feeds for us the far right.
6:11
Winnie Varghese: But we have it across the board.
6:13
Winnie Varghese: Democrats will do it, Republicans will do it, liberal church people will say we can't stand church bureaucracy.
6:17
Winnie Varghese: If there could just be less bureaucracy, we would have more money on the ground.
6:21
Winnie Varghese: I don't know.
6:22
Winnie Varghese: The only way we have like equity and move forward, the only reason we have women priests, right, is because we have governance and that bureaucracy is how we actually do things at scale, right?
6:33
Winnie Varghese: Like I could be kind all day long and I'm for it.
6:35
Winnie Varghese: I write about it.
6:36
Winnie Varghese: Let us claim our humanity.
6:37
Winnie Varghese: Let me not be a monster on the street.
6:39
Winnie Varghese: I want that.
6:40
Winnie Varghese: And no great justice comes to that woman who I've given a dollar to if I give her a dollar every day, if there aren't systems that protect her.
6:48
Winnie Varghese: Those systems that protect are called government, are called our bureaucracy, right?
6:53
Winnie Varghese: So that's it's the only way, and you can't think about injustice at the scale of enslavement or colonialism or genocide, you know, the things that that mark us in the United States of America and any justice, again, in God's kingdom, God's vision of the world, without the tools of thinking at a larger scale.
7:09
Winnie Varghese: So I think one, we're cynical about those things and undermining ourselves.
7:14
Winnie Varghese: And my like progressive church friends will say, Oh, yeah, that crazy stuff we do with the center.
7:19
Winnie Varghese: Right.
7:19
Winnie Varghese: You exist because of the center.
7:21
Winnie Varghese: You exist because I exist because of the center.
7:24
Winnie Varghese: We're still here because of the center.
7:26
Winnie Varghese: Without that center and that organizing, I mean, I'm sorry, the really congregational parts of our church are falling apart.
7:32
Winnie Varghese: You know, the main the evangelicals are falling apart, the Southern Baptists are falling apart.
7:36
Winnie Varghese: The heft we have as the Episcopal Church, and we still have it politically, socially, um, that authority that we have that means that we get to share that authority with people standing on the underside, we get to raise their voice, raise them, take them to the table of power, be ourselves and advocate for that power, is because of our structures and because we run those structures.
7:56
Winnie Varghese: Without this cathedral, nobody cares what I think.
7:58
Winnie Varghese: They shouldn't.
7:59
Winnie Varghese: They probably shouldn't anyway, but the cathedral means they do.
8:02
Winnie Varghese: The fact of the cathedral means that they do.
8:04
Winnie Varghese: And I'm not confused about that.
8:06
Winnie Varghese: And so if we don't actually think about how we exist with institutionally within society, and then how we protect that, I think, and steward that for the far, let that be that a hundred years from now, a voice I cannot imagine is strong in the city of New York because this cathedral exists, right?
8:23
Winnie Varghese: Like, that, like let us have that responsibility for the future, but it means that I don't walk away from administering this cathedral well.
8:29
Winnie Varghese: I don't mess around with how we do our operations, how we keep the stone, the windows, you know, working, that we do all that.
8:35
Winnie Varghese: And if I have a weakness, it's probably, and I think many of us, I drive towards the problem.
8:39
Winnie Varghese: So, you know, there's a leak, let me fix the leak.
8:42
Winnie Varghese: When I just like many of you all get to do all the time, was privileged to hear.
8:45
Winnie Varghese: I just listened, was listening this morning to Lucy Winkett's sermon at St.
8:48
Winnie Varghese: Bart's on Sunday.
8:49
Winnie Varghese: And she always gets this right.
8:50
Winnie Varghese: Like she like backs it all the way up to in God's world, what are we doing?
8:55
Winnie Varghese: Like, what what does God see for the world?
8:57
Winnie Varghese: So I tend to see, oh, here, here are all these administrative problems, political problems, let me let me go right at that.
9:03
Winnie Varghese: And in what leadership is, is yes, I don't drop my eyes on actually how that actually works and how I engage it.
9:10
Winnie Varghese: But actually, my backup all the time, and this is what prayer is for me, in God's vision of this world that we should be living in, that we are given a lot of keys towards in the Bible, in our prayer, in our history, and our great, you know, fine, fine history of leadership.
9:25
Winnie Varghese: In God's vision of the world, what is this, what are we as an institution called to do?
9:29
Winnie Varghese: And what am I called to do?
9:30
Winnie Varghese: Not just for this cathedral, but in this moment.
9:32
Winnie Varghese: And I think when we stay clear to that kind of call as leaders that I have repair to make, I think too small, I think too randomly and chaotically, like that if I'm doing that self, that work for myself and I'm thinking about that for the institution, um, then my experience is those really technical things like our deficit, then they they're in proper perspective and we work on them, but I don't start there.
9:56
Winnie Varghese: If I start with the deficit, we will fail.
9:58
Winnie Varghese: But if I start with, oh, actually, who are we supposed to be in the world?
10:01
Winnie Varghese: My experience is we find our path to that.
10:04
Winnie Varghese: And I'm gonna say this cathedral of ours, which is kind of famously underwatered, and as people say, as it should be, look at you know, look at its size, we didn't, we weren't this year.
10:12
Winnie Varghese: We actually, between the market and our and how we ran the year, um, we didn't spend everything we made.
10:19
Winnie Varghese: And we made a lot more than we expected in development.
10:21
Winnie Varghese: We did in this year, this cathedral.
10:23
Winnie Varghese: If this, I mean if this great pile can end the year, um, in this year in particular, um, realizing we've added to our endowment, um, I feel like a lot of things are possible, a lot more than we think is possible.
10:37
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah, I mean, I think that's the that's the fascinating thing, isn't it, which is it depends what you're looking, what is your focus?
10:42
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Like, where is so there's both perspective looking in and thinking, okay, is this the key?
10:47
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: You know, we we spend so much time.
10:48
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I think about this in my clinical practice.
10:50
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Like sometimes you realize that you spend all day doing the unimportant things because you feel like you need to do the unimportant things, but then the important things get dropped off.
10:59
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And at that point, you need to be like, okay, so what are my priorities?
11:01
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Let me zoom back, let me and I think you're right, prayer is such a good way of doing that.
11:05
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So you can you can sit back and think, let me just have a go at looking at this through the eyes of not where we are now, like through God's eyes or without wanting to be too presumptuous.
11:15
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But like, what what what is where's God looking into all of this?
11:19
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And where might I be being nudged to change my perspective and prior priorities?
11:23
Winnie Varghese: I think as Americans, almost everywhere we sit, and I feel like I've been in almost every kind of institution we have, you know, and I've been in different parts of this country.
11:30
Winnie Varghese: I have never been in prayer where at some point I'm not a little overwhelmed by the great privilege and just just privilege of our lives and the abundance of the communities around us.
11:40
Winnie Varghese: You know, and it doesn't mean I have a path out for this, the hole I sit in in that moment, you know.
11:45
Winnie Varghese: Um it doesn't mean I get that kind of, but I I just feel like we all probably have the same experience at some point if we let ourselves, if we give ourselves time for that, of just like that overwhelm of what it means to be um, you know, to to frankly to me, to live in God's imagination and not in mine, not be limited by mine.
12:04
Winnie Varghese: Um, I just at least for me, it feels, I just feel so grateful.
12:07
Winnie Varghese: And coming from that into whatever, whatever the day is, and whatever these puzzles are, and some of them really just feel like puzzles.
12:14
Winnie Varghese: I don't know how we get out of this puzzle.
12:16
Winnie Varghese: But my guess is we're supposed to be doing this.
12:19
Winnie Varghese: Um, my experience has been that the wisdom we need is in our communities, in our lay people, and our participants, like it's weird, it's often for me surprising where it comes from, and frankly, more surprising where it is not, where I think it will be.
12:32
Winnie Varghese: I am so often wrong about that.
12:34
Winnie Varghese: And that it comes sideways often for me.
12:36
Winnie Varghese: And it's it's really good for my own humility of like, oh, of course, that one would know.
12:41
Winnie Varghese: And it's it's really good for me that it's someone else, it's almost always someone else that helps to pull that puzzle apart.
12:48
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
12:48
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
12:49
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I mean, I think spending, I suppose, quite a lot of time over the last year looking at at what the church is doing in terms of mission and in terms of its own self-identity, it seems to me like whenever the church loses track that it's meant to be in a place doing a thing, like it's meant to be in its community, it's meant to be its mission is actually about what what impact uh is is being made by something that claims to be part of the kingdom of God in this place at this particular moment, rather than like, have we got enough people turning up?
13:20
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Have we got the finances?
13:21
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And all of that's not to pretend for one minute that numbers don't matter.
13:24
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Like, if we, you know, we we do, I suppose, hope that people will come to church.
13:28
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Like we do, we do need to keep our our balance sheets that, but actually, where's your priority?
13:33
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: What is it that comes first in all of this?
13:35
Winnie Varghese: Yeah, well, you I I had a college chaplain who is no longer in our denomination, so I feel free to talk about him, who who had the book on um on like I could see it on his desk on how he was gonna grow this ministry.
13:46
Winnie Varghese: And he was doing the reports and he was doing the newsletter and he was counting, you know, um, and he hated the church.
13:51
Winnie Varghese: He was very clear about it.
13:52
Winnie Varghese: He thought the feminists were taking over the church.
13:54
Winnie Varghese: You know, um, it was interesting.
13:55
Winnie Varghese: That was his particular concern was feminism was gonna destroy the church.
13:59
Winnie Varghese: Um, but he had the little formula, and you know, the thing is the formula works.
14:03
Winnie Varghese: If when people come, if you're kind, um, and if you notice them, and if you say, hey, come back, we'd love to see you again, or could we have a coffee?
14:10
Winnie Varghese: It'll work.
14:11
Winnie Varghese: I stayed in that place where I was hated.
14:13
Winnie Varghese: Um, like as in principle, I was hated, right?
14:15
Winnie Varghese: Um, it there's some fundamentals of church growth and leadership that just work.
14:20
Winnie Varghese: And I think to be cynical about that is foolish, right?
14:22
Winnie Varghese: The people want to know they can be well.
14:24
Winnie Varghese: But I think what we get wrong is everyone is welcome, right?
14:27
Winnie Varghese: And that that that's a people want a certain kind of person, but people think a certain kind of person makes a church, right?
14:33
Winnie Varghese: So there's a little bit of a formula.
14:35
Winnie Varghese: But the larger is I'll say I've never been very good at the formula, it's just not how my brain works, but I do know how to welcome.
14:40
Winnie Varghese: I do know how to make sure out of hospitality someone gets toll, get gets something.
14:44
Winnie Varghese: But we we thank people for coming.
14:46
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah, right.
14:47
Winnie Varghese: That were gracious about that.
14:48
Winnie Varghese: One of my first bosses, it was so great that um he said Monday morning you write thank you notes.
14:53
Winnie Varghese: And you stay until if you don't think there's something to be thankful for, you sit there until you think of it.
14:58
Winnie Varghese: And it might just be Sunday, like people that helped at church or whatever.
15:01
Winnie Varghese: So the worst Sunday of your life when you preach the worst sermon that you could have possibly preached, and everything's horrible.
15:06
Winnie Varghese: On Monday morning, you're writing thank you not.
15:08
Winnie Varghese: Um, which just so wise, right?
15:10
Winnie Varghese: That that being a gracious host is so much of what it is to be a priest, right?
15:15
Winnie Varghese: So there's that part.
15:16
Winnie Varghese: And then yeah, you got to run a shop, which is maybe harder or less structured here than it is for you all.
15:20
Winnie Varghese: Like, how do you make this thing work?
15:22
Winnie Varghese: Because the place matters so much.
15:24
Winnie Varghese: But what I have learned over the years is I might not know how to fix the whole church, the whole cathedral.
15:28
Winnie Varghese: I I can't do that physical plan, but I we can we can approach it a little bit like I would in my own home.
15:33
Winnie Varghese: Right.
15:33
Winnie Varghese: You know, that I that we can there's something we can do together that empowers this community, and that empowering the local community to care for their place is the value, not the actual repaired church.
15:43
Winnie Varghese: You know, not the the complete cathedral, but our empowerment to pick the trash up off 110th Street, you know, or to pull a weed, that's more important than if I get a billion dollars and fix the cathedral.
15:55
Winnie Varghese: And so these, like in my leadership, to be empowering of our community and to to prize it, to treasure it, and I think to treasure the place, but within the scale of what we can do, um, my experience is it opens up a lot more because frankly, that's the church is that is the magic of the church.
16:12
Winnie Varghese: When we are really open, it comes.
16:14
Winnie Varghese: It does, it's bizarre, but it's I've not not had that experience anywhere.
16:19
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
16:19
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And I suppose that leads on to kind of questions about hope.
16:22
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I mean, one of the things which strikes me again is that that hope has been really in short supply in lots of places.
16:29
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And it's not the same as, you know, we can we can rehearse the arguments around optimism and hope till the cows come home.
16:35
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But actually, there is something really important about what does what does hope look like for a generation that's facing, you know, that that war.
16:43
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I mean, in our situation, war is back in Europe, you know, the cost of living is catastrophic.
16:49
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Um, you know, political leadership around so many parts of the world is is is looking scary and getting scarier.
16:55
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And then you've got particularly young people, but it's not only young people, kind of say, well, where do we hope through all of this?
17:00
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And and I'm always sort of alert to the church kind of saying, Oh, um, you know, it'll be fine because, you know, heaven or whatever, and that that that kind of pretty, pretty phony form of Christianity.
17:10
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Um, or or indeed, and I see this amongst some of my colleagues sometimes, it's like, yeah, but just point people to Jesus.
17:15
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And I'm like, of course I want to point people to Jesus, but what does that mean for that person?
17:19
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And how does how does hope, how is hope kind of embodied in the person of Jesus or in what we're proclaiming as a faith?
17:26
Winnie Varghese: Yeah, I think I think what's happening to us, I mean, my diagnosis of the moment, right, is um we s we are a culture that believes in progress.
17:34
Winnie Varghese: We are cultures that believe in progress, right?
17:36
Winnie Varghese: The West, the Western moment is is progress.
17:39
Winnie Varghese: Like the justification for the horrors of our recent history is progress.
17:44
Winnie Varghese: It's like kind of industrialization, technology, progress.
17:47
Winnie Varghese: And the and if that so, you know, a liberationist view, I would say in some ways a truly Christian view, not a Western philosophical view, technological view, um, does not believe in progress.
17:58
Winnie Varghese: Jesus doesn't say the world will keep get creation will keep getting better and better and better, and then I'm gonna come.
18:02
Winnie Varghese: That's not what it says in Revelation.
18:04
Winnie Varghese: It goes to shit in Revelation.
18:06
Winnie Varghese: Like I got some statues around here that illustrate that here at Tech on the Divine.
18:10
Winnie Varghese: Um, what the Bible tells us is that human beings find themselves in profound conflict with one another, and it is, it is sourced by evil that Satan drives us apart, tells us we are different from one another, tells us resources are limited, tells us we should actually hate one another in the name of God, Satan tells us.
18:29
Winnie Varghese: Right, like the Bible is full of the Bible tells us all the way through, right?
18:33
Winnie Varghese: Jesus doesn't say, now that I'm here, things are gonna get better for the next 5,000 years.
18:37
Winnie Varghese: That's that's not our faith.
18:39
Winnie Varghese: So again, to say, like, root ourselves in our faith, which says, actually, your body, Charlie Bell, like exists in profound dignity on this earth, made in the image of God.
18:48
Winnie Varghese: Um, proclaim, live it, enjoy it, let it be yours, proclaim God through it.
18:53
Winnie Varghese: Period.
18:54
Winnie Varghese: Right.
18:54
Winnie Varghese: That that that's that's what's happening in this creation.
18:57
Winnie Varghese: And so part of why I think people know to come to us in times of crisis is not because we've done it right.
19:02
Winnie Varghese: They like people almost have an intuitive sense.
19:04
Winnie Varghese: We just had Shri Shri Rabi Shankar here, so intuition is on my mind.
19:07
Winnie Varghese: Oh, great.
19:08
Winnie Varghese: Yeah, yeah.
19:08
Winnie Varghese: Yeah, people like reading cards blindfolded.
19:10
Winnie Varghese: I don't know what was happening.
19:12
Winnie Varghese: Um, but that sense that we know, like the you'd like the world, like somehow the spirit moves is our language.
19:18
Winnie Varghese: That that people know these people who stand in the face of death and crisis, you go to them when you're sick and when you're hungry.
19:26
Winnie Varghese: These people, I don't believe what people, you know, regardless of what's been told about them on television, all the scandals and failures of their institution, these people, when I'm in crisis, will be people that see me, that care about my need.
19:39
Winnie Varghese: And that's just literally about what that's a body, a body that needs food, a body that doesn't know where to sleep or how to get the money they need, or what happens when there's hate speech against them on television or coming from a church, right?
19:53
Winnie Varghese: That that that the proclamation of Jesus is the dignity of the person and the dignity of creation, right?
19:59
Winnie Varghese: And I know the more conservative folks think that's a really shoddy theology, but I grew up around that.
20:03
Winnie Varghese: Their shoddy theology, which is really shoddy theology.
20:06
Winnie Varghese: Do you think I mean Jesus we we conflate our culture and our philosophical framework with our religion?
20:12
Winnie Varghese: And our religion doesn't promise, but like our our hope in Christ is that it is countercultural that my body matters on this planet, that what happens in my brain, that my imagination matters on this planet, because it does, most bodies like mine don't.
20:27
Winnie Varghese: And Christ says to everybody like mine, you do.
20:31
Winnie Varghese: And that is so radical.
20:33
Winnie Varghese: And I think it's really hard for I wouldn't say for middle class, upper middle class, wealthy Westerners, educated Westerners, for that to mean anything at all.
20:41
Winnie Varghese: So it means nothing at all, which is why it cannot be theology that matters.
20:45
Winnie Varghese: It is overturning of the world.
20:48
Winnie Varghese: But only, I feel like only some of us, the majority of the planet, can see it easily.
20:53
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Right.
20:54
Winnie Varghese: And so that that's the that is the Christ promise.
20:56
Winnie Varghese: And it is so radical.
20:58
Winnie Varghese: It you know, as we as we preach, it overturns every system of injustice and evil that exists and proclaims against the norms of the world this this truth, right?
21:10
Winnie Varghese: That the the hungry child dying in South Sudan was where we look for God.
21:15
Winnie Varghese: And so we prioritize that.
21:17
Winnie Varghese: That I I d I mean, you can hear it.
21:19
Winnie Varghese: What is more compelling, right?
21:21
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah, quite.
21:22
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And yeah, so I think it's fascinating that that still people aren't compelled.
21:26
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So there's still a there's still a kind of sense of Christianity or or certain forms of Christianity, maybe cultural Christianity, but also forms that are increasingly um being described as Christian nationalism, which I don't like particularly as a phrase because I don't think there's much Christian about it.
21:40
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Um but you know that that these forms of Christianity are becoming increasingly vocal, increasingly associated, in fact, with the with with Jesus of Nazareth, increasingly associated with the with groups that would call themselves Christians.
21:54
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
21:55
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: To the point that actually being a Christian almost becomes a byword for cruelty.
21:59
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: and and for sort of self-involvement and and and and white I mean really kind of white racism you know all about it's it's really about um the the the essentially Christ I mean in England that Christ was was a sort of um middle class English man no in England always a man English white you know all the and and suddenly you think how far have we got away from the radical nature of this stuff and how far have we got away from being a religion that offers or indeed a movement a religion always becomes dodgy but a a movement that offers resistance to those to the powers of the world that you're talking about this and this stuff is so orthodox like this is orthodox Christianity this is what it's all about this is what it's historically always been about and yet we've allowed ourselves or somehow culture and and and the church have colluded in some way to enable a form of Christianity to to get the upper hand which is just not true.
22:51
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: It's not Christianity but but it's there.
22:54
Winnie Varghese: Yeah and this is you know and and I you know the real church is always a church in resistance for for sure from the beginning right that the that it's just how institutions work.
23:02
Winnie Varghese: But at a really dear moment I was my one of my my not one of my father's best friend died um last week and um this is someone you know family we grew up with our oldest childhood friends and really wonderful guy and he and my dad would just talk for hours.
23:17
Winnie Varghese: And back when he had one phone, you know, phone line you had to pick up and it meant that we could never talk to anyone on the phone.
23:22
Winnie Varghese: Right.
23:22
Winnie Varghese: Like we'd always like what are they talking about?
23:24
Winnie Varghese: And it wasn't in English so we couldn't know but it was sort of political they they talked about theology and philosophy and me I mean everything right um and I'm very privileged to have grown up in a in a household in a community like that.
23:35
Winnie Varghese: And I my dad said over the we were just talking about old conversations that he said, you know, one of our he said theologically one of his great despairs where Raj Uncle is and one of his w awakenings as a young Christian is they were they were alive when the British left India.
23:50
Winnie Varghese: My dad was born in 1938.
23:51
Winnie Varghese: I think uncle was born in 1936 or 37.
23:54
Winnie Varghese: They remember it.
23:55
Winnie Varghese: And he said their great confusion was how could these Christians kill us?
23:59
Winnie Varghese: Like they were around those those late years were so close, you know, they were so violent the end of the the end of the um colonial window um which I just never heard in that way.
24:10
Winnie Varghese: And it sounded like it the way my dad said it sounded like a little boy like you know saying like how would how could that be possible?
24:17
Winnie Varghese: And that that was a live conversation in their communities of Hindus and Muslims, overwhelmingly Hindus and Christians of but Christians are the people that kill us.
24:25
Winnie Varghese: So interestingly right to completely identify their religion um with uh with imperialism and with the British um and all the British not just the English um but of course why wouldn't they?
24:36
Winnie Varghese: Who else is a Christian right?
24:37
Winnie Varghese: And I think they were saying we are too and then I think part of the live question of should we be is this what Christians do?
24:43
Winnie Varghese: Like this isn't what our faith teaches us.
24:45
Winnie Varghese: So this this how easy so one the the hate that can be wrapped up in our and you know those Christians didn't see any of us as Christians.
24:54
Winnie Varghese: It didn't matter if we were Christians right in the same as they talk about it, you know you you I'm sure you've seen it at when you go to Ghana right at Cape Coast where the the Psalms are inscribed over dungeons that held human bodies not that long ago.
25:07
Winnie Varghese: It's not that long ago.
25:08
Winnie Varghese: So how easily we twist um how easily it's twisted how easily we can use our religion for whatever we want and I'm gonna say how easily the power like the power of that religion is understood.
25:20
Winnie Varghese: The religious right in this country understand it.
25:22
Winnie Varghese: It's one thing to say hey just hate some people because I want you to hate them but it's another thing to say in the name of Christ.
25:28
Winnie Varghese: And I think that it like there should be a lot more work on Satan in my opinion right like there is some some way that evil twists those things that are powerful and claims them like the the the power of just a sustenance turned into mammon you know like the gifts of the earth turning into like that that twist is so just so influential and we are so vulnerable to it.
25:49
Winnie Varghese: And part of the the power of our teaching is to take it head on.
25:52
Winnie Varghese: And I think for people that fall prey to it and everyone's responsible for themselves but I do think people fall prey to it, they're only hearing their own dignity fighting Satan, doing good, these evil outsiders and so you know I know a lot of you are working on this we think about it in this country when you poll in certain ways we're all in the same team the vast majority of us you poll in slightly different ways they hate us and want us to go home.
26:16
Winnie Varghese: Right.
26:16
Winnie Varghese: And so that means to me that it's like our connectedness is very accessible if we can it's our work to keep drawing out um how we can choose to be community as opposed to um nationalist and reactionary.
26:33
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
26:33
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah I mean what one of the one of the things I suppose that's that that has struck me over the last I suppose five to ten years is this this drive increasingly towards um the religious questions being used principally for divided purposes.
26:50
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So that it's whether it's in surveys or whether it's in the way that religions are portrayed in the media, whatever else, that actually the big thing that people like mention someone's religion for is in order to divide between them rather than because they might and but then we find it in our own in our own church.
27:07
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: We uh you know in the Church of England we have all kinds of difficulties with um conversations around I mean we're still talking about sexuality and uh and and gender identity to a lesser extent but sexuality a long time after you guys have at least had the the beginning of the conversation if not the end of it.
27:22
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And you know I'm I'm constantly being um you know asked isn't it great to be in a church where there are all these people with whom you disagree?
27:31
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Isn't it great that and particularly people with whom I disagree who really don't think that I should be in that church with them.
27:36
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And yet I'm holding that together and feeling like I'm not sure it is that great actually whilst at the same time kind of thinking well isn't it extraordinary that all of us somehow are professing the same or at least professing that we're part of the same faith albeit we see this coming and and how and then you add in the kind of Christian nationalism stuff and you think at what stage do you start to say this is a divisive and and a distinctive and you know moment where we have to say no this is not you know what what Christian nationalism is proclaiming is not the faith of Christ.
28:08
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But how do we do that in a way which doesn't then just lead to an increasing amount of divisiveness, which we're seeing elsewhere?
28:15
Winnie Varghese: Yeah I so one, I'm very grateful for your work.
28:17
Winnie Varghese: It is you know it was a generation ago for us, but I remember the hate mail and the death threats and trying to stay sensible and the toll on my health as someone who is a very minor player in our country and just trying to stand up in my corner.
28:31
Winnie Varghese: So I'm very grateful for your work.
28:33
Winnie Varghese: And you you all are in my prayers it's very very costly work.
28:36
Winnie Varghese: It's important work.
28:37
Winnie Varghese: So work of the kingdom it's very costly work.
28:40
Winnie Varghese: So I'm grateful.
28:41
Winnie Varghese: And anything we can do to support from here, we're very happy to we are very aware that we have not arrived and it hasn't been long.
28:47
Winnie Varghese: I'm not I'm not as correct.
28:49
Winnie Varghese: So um and um so I this is a long story but I'll try to be short.
28:55
Winnie Varghese: I asked uh a very uh what would I say a a group a bus I I asked a firm out of uh two professors at the Harvard Business School to help me when I got here and I was going to raise the money to pay for it for them to kind of look at this thing that has not flourished um in all the ways that it needs to and it's just so beyond the scale of any of us to imagine this, you know, crazy building that we've just they've decided to build, right?
29:21
Winnie Varghese: Um, to help me like really get it get it right.
29:23
Winnie Varghese: I wanted I wanted to do this.
29:24
Winnie Varghese: Let me be the person that sets it on a path that it can flourish for the far future.
29:29
Winnie Varghese: And they wonderfully after a couple of conversations one confessed to being a confirmed Episcopalian who had been an acolyte and offered to just do this work with us without the expense that we absolutely could not afford.
29:39
Winnie Varghese: So we have this like shocking level of consultancy working with us.
29:43
Winnie Varghese: I'm very grateful.
29:44
Winnie Varghese: And they one of them the business school people put a book on but brought a book to me called Moral Grandeur and spiritual audacity it is a phrase from uh Rabbi Heschel in a telegram to JFK um before or after one of the Selma marches and before the other one saying civil rights is not a time for reason and pro and and uh careful progress.
30:09
Winnie Varghese: It is a moral moment and the moment calls for um for that like like spiritual audacity right um and they're they're kind of I think we hear them as the words like that as arrogant and confident that grandeur you know is wonderful like yeah um and what he is claiming what he does very clearly is claim the power of the civil rights movement like the claim of the black body that I am equal that I shouldn't you know like is is a is a radical claim the claim of a queer body that I am equal that I will be equal um is a radical claim.
30:43
Winnie Varghese: This idea that we have to keep the white southerner happy is in the same book, right?
30:47
Winnie Varghese: That the white southerner, the white the white bishop isn't ready, the Episcopal bishop isn't ready to you know to Dr.
30:53
Winnie Varghese: King I I feel like that's a nice parallel for most of us to consider, right?
30:58
Winnie Varghese: That our that our our leaders aren't ready for the radical good news that all people are created equal and that the church must stand in that place.
31:07
Winnie Varghese: So it doesn't, you know I just yesterday was yesterday Sunday was given a earful by someone from the larger Anglican communion who works for the larger Anglican communion about how just appall how they could not possibly do a same sex uh marriage and went went and kept I find it so interesting when people do that to me stayed with me to keep telling me how appalling it would be it's like how long do you need to tell me that you are disgusted by me and my life and my family?
31:31
Winnie Varghese: How long do you need to do that?
31:33
Winnie Varghese: Like what justify and at the end gave me his card so that he could he could do stuff with us.
31:38
Winnie Varghese: Like so I'm so not a human being to him that he can endlessly talk about me, my family all the people I love and respect as disgusting to him and then assume that he will be privileged to do things with us.
31:51
Winnie Varghese: That that's what you're describing in your church.
31:53
Winnie Varghese: That person was from your church not from mine.
31:54
Winnie Varghese: Yeah right I can imagine it probably was yeah it's happened to you right like that that like that and that's happened to me in my church too that arrogance that that is somehow more Christian than our that is arrogance.
32:08
Winnie Varghese: I feel very comfortable saying that that that is more Christian to to do the imperial colonial homophobic sexist position is traditional Christianity.
32:17
Winnie Varghese: That's your imperial Christianity you can do that but moral grandeur and spiritual audacity is to claim the truth right that is a Christian truth if we don't claim our truths like frankly what are we but a bunch of failing buildings and empty Sunday mornings, right?
32:32
Winnie Varghese: Like that's frankly that's our inheritance of them.
32:36
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
32:36
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah I had a I had a not dissimilar occasion when I was in a meeting one of our endless um I think we're meant to call them facilitated conversations, but they're really just tedious conversations about about sexuality, you know, going over the same ground, being treated like an abstract proposition despite being in the room.
32:51
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And I remember this long discussion with one of our bishops who at the end who'd gone on about how this was all from Satan and you know that we were all you know we're not a real Christian and destroying the church and all I mean all of these things which I felt I was given being given an awful lot of authority for being this at that point.
33:05
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I was sort of I didn't think I was ordained I think I was just I think I was called into the last minute and suddenly I was destroying the Church of England it was extraordinary.
33:11
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But then at the end of it she said oh I'd love to meet your partner you know maybe we could uh we could go for coffee and I was like the ability to abstractify an issue from the person in front of you which says to me have you got this thing like the whole Christian thing is that you can't do that that like that Jesus doesn't come to visit ideas.
33:32
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Jesus is like born mucky messy in like and and I guess that's part of our problem with some of the stuff when we talk about incarnation.
33:39
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I think one of the problems we face is that um Christmas becomes incredibly twee.
33:44
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: It's like like Mary and Mary and Joseph are in the stable um and the stable's normally quite fancy um and then suddenly Jesus is born like Jesus is in the manger like and you've gone from no Jesus to Jesus there's no birth there's no actual process of birth the crucifixion is the same.
34:00
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: It's like this I mean even the gospel writers are a bit queasy about about too much you know too much telling too much of the truth.
34:06
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So so we almost end up endlessly removing some of the the kind of human grottiness of what it is that Jesus comes to do.
34:16
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And so we argue abstractly and we argue we imagine that you can abstractify people and it just does such damage.
34:23
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And if we can offer one thing surely it's to deny that and say that's not what this is about.
34:29
Winnie Varghese: The great portal in um the the doors for St.
34:31
Winnie Varghese: John the Divine above the doors are just you know kind of version of like all these things about creation, like different kinds of creation so the creation of the world and science, um the biblical creation story, um the indigenous peoples of the Americas but one of the images which I think is like shocking and brilliant is there's literally a baby crowning like on the front of the cathedral of St.
34:54
Winnie Varghese: John the Divine like the beginning of you know I love this cathedral front there's a subway there.
34:58
Winnie Varghese: The twin towers are there you know but there's a baby crown is like holy God like like that's the like that's like Mary Daly like the thing the church is terrified of is that a woman's body produces life.
35:09
Winnie Varghese: Yeah.
35:10
Winnie Varghese: You know and that that we're playacting that somehow that isn't true.
35:14
Winnie Varghese: You know, which is why that philosophized version of right wing Christianity and of some kinds of traditional Christianity not all right that um that it can be done only by men and it can be done in our brains.
35:26
Winnie Varghese: And part of what AI is contesting is everything you think your brain can do that makes you human, the machine can do oh then what can a person do?
35:34
Winnie Varghese: Express solidarity, love one another, hold each other, live in these messy bodies.
35:38
Winnie Varghese: So I respect the one thing I might have a little compassion for but it's that much is that it's the only way they've been taught to be Christian.
35:45
Winnie Varghese: Right.
35:45
Winnie Varghese: And that suits a certain brain.
35:47
Winnie Varghese: But you know the one one of the publications the Living Church posted a in the middle of all the controversies here did an article about the like 20 or 60 or some number of us that were destroying the communion and there were epic people there like people I really admire and hope to be like one day.
36:01
Winnie Varghese: But I was in my 20s at the time and I was on that list.
36:04
Winnie Varghese: And it meant hate mail and death threats started to come and the living that that organization still writes and calls and wants us to do stuff.
36:11
Winnie Varghese: I'm not over that yet like one of those threats could have been real like that you you decided to run that article.
36:17
Winnie Varghese: You've never apologized for those times that was taking a position to say that we were threatening the entire threatening our church threatening our communion of course that activates people that love their church.
36:27
Winnie Varghese: So this this false divide that that somehow the people that say that are more traditional or that just are on the side of the current legislation, like the governance as it is right now, right?
36:37
Winnie Varghese: Our positions as they are right now are somehow more truthful, more honest, more good, and that we must all accommodate that, I think is outrageous.
36:47
Winnie Varghese: Again, you know Rabbi Heschel's language is exact there are moments that are about a truth.
36:52
Winnie Varghese: Yeah.
36:52
Winnie Varghese: And we there's nothing else to prove you know it's just like our you know it it's just the gospel we must testify to what we've seen.
37:00
Winnie Varghese: Like that is that it's the demand.
37:03
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
37:03
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah and I think underlying so much of this is the power thing isn't it which is I guess and and I I do I mean I I I love many of my progressive liberal you know colleagues but sometimes we pretend things out of existence but don't want to mention things because because it's easier to stick with a consensus.
37:18
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So we play by different we play by the kind of current set of rules but we want to kind of tinker and change a little bit.
37:23
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And and the thing about power is I mean back to what you were saying about the kind of white southern bishop kind of thing that's that remains so much of the way that the church behaves and I guess we see it with us you know you get promoted still by having it and of course we're not allowed to call it promotion but it is and you get promoted by being tapped on the shoulder and you get tapped on the shoulder by not saying too much and Rocky the boat and on and on it goes.
37:47
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So you end up really just leaving the power in the hands of those, whether it's institutional power or individual power or whatever, and tinkering and hoping you can play around the edges and not get caught too much.
37:58
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And like that the that the confidence I was really attracted by what you were saying about kind of having the confidence to push back and to say you know what that's not true.
38:09
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: This is not true.
38:10
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And it's how how do we how do we do that within the church and how do we do it outside the church?
38:16
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So how you know the church is changing I think quite a lot at both sides of the Atlantic and in all different denominations.
38:22
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But what what kind of signs do you see that that that that way of being the church is beginning to take root a little bit yeah I remember Bishop Sisk so this would have been what like 15 years ago it's a long time ago coming to St.
38:35
Winnie Varghese: Mark's in the Bowery when I was there in the East Village and I I was very I was like oh we only have like 100 people on Sunday I'm really sorry you know we're doing the best we can this is what's worked but you know um like the Bishop of New York is here and there's a you know and we might have 200 because you're here we didn't see many more than 200 and he's he's Winnie what are you apologizing for?
38:54
Winnie Varghese: That makes you one of the largest services in Manhattan I was like holy shit we have no money we have no resources.
39:01
Winnie Varghese: I don't think I was being paid full time at that point.
39:03
Winnie Varghese: And I and we were doing a lot like we were in the community right we were constantly interestingly in media because the way we were engaging was so of the neighborhood right like our protests, our signs like and it still is it was just so of the neighborhood that it was intelligible to media it made you know um so I just thought we were you know we have these massive churches with all these endowments like they must be packed with thousands of people and here's our little 100 and wah wah what a waste of time for the bishop.
39:30
Winnie Varghese: And the bishop who did think we were weird for sure like we're in the round all kinds of pita bread he thought we were very strange um reminding us that oh wait this is actually the work like that so being true to this neighborhood that is not at all Christian, but that is full of artists and seekers, people that have risked a lot for social justice, a community that resisted Robert Moses and is still around, being true to that voice in that place my experience was the thing flourished by all the things I know how to measure.
40:02
Winnie Varghese: You know, and so my experience at this cathedral as well is when we say the thing that is true to people's actual lived reality, it doesn't have to be abstract.
40:09
Winnie Varghese: We can't we don't have to hide it in Jesus we can see Jesus through it in it it draws people because they know what we're talking about, frankly.
40:17
Winnie Varghese: And so my experience is literally and I don't come from an evangelical background but I am an Indian Christian and we expect our churches to grow.
40:24
Winnie Varghese: Like if you're proclaiming the gospel, the gospel is compelling.
40:27
Winnie Varghese: My experience is it draw it is magnetic but people need to know what you're talking about.
40:32
Winnie Varghese: And people don't know theological language so it doesn't mean we can't think theologically it doesn't mean we don't think in sophisticated ways.
40:40
Winnie Varghese: People need English or whatever language language that they can understand and there that God functions in things they understand.
40:47
Winnie Varghese: And and and God is happening in the world as we there is a living God that has a view and is visible in the world that we live in now and the stuff we're worried about on our streets.
40:59
Winnie Varghese: And when we talk about that my experience is people are weeping because you've said what they care about from a pulpit.
41:06
Winnie Varghese: You've said that God cares you've confirmed God cares about it and you've invited them into a theological landscape where they can see good and evil, themselves, their dignity and it's a different frame from the frame that the world gives them and that frame for everyone I've met and is more than enough to imagine what the next what the rest of life and it doesn't mean that we ignore any of the real physical needs of life but that that's what people are actually asking us for.
41:31
Winnie Varghese: They're not asking for a path to an upper middle class lifestyle.
41:34
Winnie Varghese: Most are not most are asking for like help me understand who I am on this planet and how I survive.
41:40
Winnie Varghese: We have that.
41:41
Winnie Varghese: Yeah.
41:41
Winnie Varghese: And I feel like when we speak to that like I can't say that for you but I can say it for me in a way that illustrates might might give you an opening for yourself in your prayer.
41:50
Winnie Varghese: When we do that my experience is it is magnetic.
41:53
Winnie Varghese: People want to be a part of it.
41:54
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Right.
41:54
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: And and I think we fail to have the courage sometimes to say that like we we don't we we're almost I mean I I I often find that that this kind of don't preach politics from the pulpit kind of thing that you still hear.
42:07
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: You get it in seminary sometimes you hear people say that and you're like listen to what people what do people come through the door for today?
42:13
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Like what are people here to hear?
42:15
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: They're not here to hear like some like great I love it when people are able to describe the Trinity in a way which is intelligible.
42:22
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I can't but some people can.
42:23
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But like is that what people like if people are coming through the door and the Trinity is and there's a point to it like the trying life of God has a point in their day-to-day life and we can say how it's changed ours that's remarkably helpful missionally and evangelistically yeah I actually find if we cannot talk about how our lives are being changed that because I I've listened to plenty of sermons that are technically correct and I too like I I've watched church that is technically correct.
42:49
Winnie Varghese: It's like I think they're doing everything right why do I wish I wasn't here like why do I not want to be besides my own poor like capacity to pay attention.
42:56
Winnie Varghese: And it's that you can tell when people are present and and if and frankly if if God isn't acting in your life as a preacher like if you weren't if you were not present to that if you were not being changed people can tell they don't know why they can what they can tell but they can tell that sounds like AI like you've got your illustration and your three points um but people can tell and it doesn't you know it doesn't mean some people don't like that but but the thing that changes um changes things is they can they can Carol Anderson you say people can tell your faith even if you're struggling in your faith.
43:29
Winnie Varghese: If you haven't had an encounter with the living people can tell it's what it it's wild and it's un you know you can't just teach that right um so our own wrestling even in our failure is part of leadership.
43:41
Winnie Varghese: And I would argue people argue that the opening up of the church is what's caused the church to fail I would argue the opposite the needing to cling to a church that is culturally irrelevant has led us to this point.
43:52
Winnie Varghese: We haven't flourished we haven't let flourish all of those of us that would say open open this thing up to all the people that hasn't been happening.
43:59
Winnie Varghese: People have been grabbing on and holding resource for this thing that is utterly irrelevant and not, you know it is in my and and that and this is the this is what we get.
44:08
Winnie Varghese: This is not the result of the change.
44:11
Winnie Varghese: This is the result of un being unwilling to effectively address the change in society of of people understanding themselves in the liberation movements of the late 20th century as free and being curious about freedom and being curious about what society looks like if we are free together.
44:25
Winnie Varghese: The church's disinterest in that is what gets us here.
44:29
unknown: Yeah.
44:30
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: I want to just turn to something before we close just I know in the in the states there's been a uh the suggestion that actually mainline Christianity for the first time in quite a long time might have have something really significant to to say to the upcoming elections in the political sphere.
44:45
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Does that give you hope?
44:46
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Do what how do you how does that land with you?
44:48
Winnie Varghese: I think it's fascinating.
44:49
Winnie Varghese: I'm trying to figure out how to talk about it because I mean I read it like everyone else it's in the mainstream media that mainstream Christians are mainline us are um are a significant voting bloc um this November we might be the deciders um on in across the across the country.
45:03
Winnie Varghese: James Talarico is an example of that Adam Hamilton I get to go be with him in a couple of days um Rafael Warnock was that in so these these Christians using Christian language um our Christian language the way we would preach in our churches um one being potentially elected but also that we like what we decide is the main line our choices might will influence these elections it is not how we imagine ourselves.
45:27
Winnie Varghese: We used to think of ourselves that way um probably before my I would guess the 50s we represented what was sensible and moderate and moving forward.
45:37
Winnie Varghese: Now it's staking a moral claim um can government be moral?
45:42
Winnie Varghese: And I think what we're in New York with our mayor, yes, government can be moral in being run well because when government is run well it it supports the most vulnerable person, right?
45:51
Winnie Varghese: And our government has been sold to the wealthiest and to corporations, given away all over our country.
45:56
Winnie Varghese: And so we right now have a mayor who's just making the government run well.
45:59
Winnie Varghese: And I think as a mainland Christian oh that's those are our values too we run things well.
46:04
Winnie Varghese: Like we do this we're this very moderating institutional influence.
46:07
Winnie Varghese: So to watch that happen, they're being called democrat they are democratic socialists or be called communists for just running things well because that's where our politics has landed and that people are now not deceived in the way that 80s 90s early 2000s we were deceived by the all you had to say is communist and we all fell apart.
46:24
Winnie Varghese: And now people are saying communist and socialist um and they're seeing from socialists good government.
46:30
Winnie Varghese: That so I that like in a very odd way we we find ourselves in the center in a kind of a deciding center.
46:37
Winnie Varghese: I think it's fascinating and I hope people will um there's there's a lot to learn in this moment.
46:42
Winnie Varghese: Yeah.
46:42
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Yeah.
46:42
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: The insurgent mainline it's a fascinating idea really but maybe I mean it'd be fascinating to see if we had anything this side of the Atlantic people still funny about talking about their faith.
46:51
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Ever since Tony Blair did we don't do God um there's been a a a a curious lack of faith in public life and we're seeing the Christian nationalism be the be the only real expression of the Christian faith in public life um certainly amongst politicians and I wonder whether there's I wonder whether we've got something to learn there as well about uh enabling people because there are people of faith in public life.
47:13
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: They're just not speaking about it.
47:15
unknown: Yeah.
47:15
Winnie Varghese: Absolutely and for us too th this institution understood itself as very secular because of the scale of having to run itself and I keep finding that as I go to meet our historic donors, they're all Episcopalians or Anglicans.
47:27
Winnie Varghese: Like, oh you're not here for the arts or for the building this is your faith.
47:30
Winnie Varghese: Like we've read you wrong.
47:32
Winnie Varghese: So um and they were trying to be they thought we did anyway like we're all doing this to each other where we're hiding the thing that actually drives us to public life in some way, right?
47:41
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Well I could talk to you all day um probably all week um but we can't because podcasts have a certain uh time limit on them and we've come to the end of ours.
47:49
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: But um Winnie thanks so much for uh for everything you've said today everything you're doing at St.
47:54
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: John the Divine and more widely in the Episcopal Church.
47:56
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: You have lots of support this side of the Atlantic as well as your own.
48:00
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: So thanks thanks for joining me today.
48:02
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Thank you.
48:02
Winnie Varghese: Oh well thank you for the great conversation I look forward to seeing you.
48:05
Charlie Bączyk-Bell: Pleasure.
48:05
Winnie Varghese: Bye