Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Do Evangelicals Struggle With Nature – Faith, Disability & Kinship with Dr. Ben Conner | Ep 31 Live Free Ride Free

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Do Evangelicals Struggle With Nature – Faith, Disability & Kinship with Dr. Ben Conner | Ep 31 Live Free Ride Free · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:01
  Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
• 0:06
  The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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  Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
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  To find out about our certification courses, online video libraries,
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  books, and other courses, please go to rupertisakson.
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  com.
• 0:34
  So now let's jump in.
• 0:39
  Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free.
• 0:42
  I have had a question in my mind for about three decades now which is
• 0:48
  having lived in the USA for 25 years or so before I moved back to Europe.
• 0:55
  I was often intrigued in watching the rise of the conservative Christian thing and
• 1:03
  how that became increasingly politicized.
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  And okay, I could understand that, but one of the things which I had trouble
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  understanding was that if one valued creation, why did one not look after it?
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  And where were the environmentalists?
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  Within Christianity at least, at least within American Christianity, because
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  it just didn't seem to be there.
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  And it seemed that this idea of man's dominion over the beasts or nature or
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  whatever seemed to be taken as a carte blanche to bleep it all up, to mess
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  it all up, to destroy it effectively.
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  And that even that destroying it almost seemed to be an imperative
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  within that theological outlook.
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  Why couldn't that mean stewardship of God's creation?
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  Why couldn't that mean environmentalism?
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  Why was that philosophically or theologically opposed to the Christian
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  conservative outlook and viewpoint?
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  And I could never quite understand this.
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  So I.
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  Been going round saying, where are the Christian environmentalists?
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  Where are they?
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  Where are they?
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  Where are they?
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  Where are they?
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  I guess you have to ask a question enough times because up pops Ben.
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  So ladies and gentlemen sitting before you today is somebody who I think
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  is part of an, of a growing movement within Christianity in America, which
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  is actually exactly this, the, the, the celebration of and nurture of nature
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  rather nature versus nurture, the nurture of nature within the Christian context.
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  Fascinating.
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  So Ben, welcome on the show.
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  Please tell us, and thank you for coming on.
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  Please tell us who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
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  Ben Connor: Yeah.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm excited to talk about this and talk with you.
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  So I am a professor of practical theology, which might lead you to
• 3:19
  ask, what is Impractical Theology?
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  You know, which would be, in my mind, would be a good bit.
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  No old theology.
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  Impractical.
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  A good bit of it is, but theology that doesn't issue in love and care for
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  others to me is impractical theology.
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  Okay.
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  Practical theology starts with the practices of Christians, the hospitality,
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  forgiveness, these sorts of things, and tries to help individuals and
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  congregations do it more faithfully.
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  That's what practical theology is.
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  So we partner with the social sciences and with the hard science is to try
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  to understand our world, to try and understand humans how they respond.
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  So instead of just having philosophy as a theological conversation
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  partner, we have disability studies.
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  And for me, I have, I.
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  Sort of books on equines and these sorts of things, or, so it's a,
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  it's a very broad conversation that's focused on practice.
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  So that's my job.
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  I also started a Center for Disability and Ministry at Western Theological Seminary.
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  And where and
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  Rupert Isaacson: where's Western Theological Seminary based?
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  Ben Connor: You would imagine it would be in the West.
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  But I think it, it might have been at the time it was built before
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  all the expansion happened with the us but we're in Holland, Michigan.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  Ben Connor: So Right, right next to Lake, lake, Michigan.
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  And so the Center is the only theological school in the United States that offers
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  accredited programs graduate certificate, a master's of Arts, and a doctor of
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  ministry in disability and ministry.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
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  Ben Connor: And the focus is, is not so much on what we often hear when we
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  think about churches and ministry, which is how are we gonna minister to people
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  with disabilities, often casting people with disabilities as needy, as not
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  having particular theological insights or, or see pro problematizing them.
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  Seeing them more in terms of a medical model of disability.
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  Like, how can we overcome these problems so they can be
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  included in what we're doing?
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  That's not what I'm doing at all.
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  What I'm trying to do is gather insights from different body minds
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  that are engaging in theology and engaging the Bible, because if you
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  have to live in a world as an expert life hacker and navigate a world
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  that's not designed for you, mm-hmm.
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  You gain many, many insights.
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  And so the purpose of the center is to.
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  Amplify those insights to invite people with disabilities into this conversation,
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  to center their voices, to center their experiences in biblical interpretation,
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  in theological investigation, and in the concrete practices of ministry.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  That's a lot of words and I'm gonna ask you to explain some of them.
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  But the first big question is, are you a priest?
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  Ben Connor: Not a priest?
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  I'm ordained in in a more evangelical tradition.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  So
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  Ben Connor: my primary role is as professor.
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  Rupert Isaacson: But you are ordained,
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  Ben Connor: but I
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  Rupert Isaacson: am ordained.
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  Okay.
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  So here's where I'd like to begin.
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  And then I want to branch out into the work you're actually doing.
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  Why in the USA is the idea of being an environmentalist.
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  Counter or opposed to being Christian in the general context.
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  Ben Connor: Right.
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  So I do think it's based in poor interpretations of our scripture.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
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  Ben Connor: And in a close relationship between a western enlightenment,
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  individualistic worldview, and the way that Christianity in America came to be.
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  Rupert Isaacson: So, okay.
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  Let's talk about how Christianity in America came to be.
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  Ben Connor: Yeah.
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  So, it's, it's a frontier.
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  The, the frontier movement, the individualism, the, the problem solving.
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  All of that got mapped onto expressions of Christianity United States.
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  And while on the one hand you had a separation between church and state
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  that was supposed to protect each from each other, allow, allow religion to
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  flourish and, and, and this sort of thing.
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  So you can't, like if you wanted to disestablish religion in the
• 7:58
  United States, where do you look?
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  Since it's not legally established, you can't disestablish it.
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  Instead, the way that it's been established is it's been more culturally
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  established through values and blue laws.
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  And if you're gonna be a president, then you better say you're a Christian.
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  These sorts of things.
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  So politics, cultural values, all these sorts of things mixed to create a kind
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  of Christianity that sees that when it reads dominion in the Bible, thinks
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  of dominion as dominance or control.
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  And, and it's, it's part of the larger enlightenment project that begins
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  with, I think therefore I am of mastery of control, of use, of othering.
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  And it, it starts with dominating land, dominating the people who are on the land.
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  And the Christians in the United States were you know, there were
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  people on both sides, but the power was more complicit with that movement.
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  And so then you have a mis oriented notion of dominion that isn't all
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  reflective of their own scriptures that talk about there's a verse here
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  and there, but you can do anything with a verse here or there, I mean.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  You know, I mean, I, I could make all kind of ridiculous claims that
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  would then be called biblical.
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  'cause I can attach a verse to it.
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  But the large arc of it is that it's supposed to be oriented by
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  a different kind of relationship with creation and stewardship
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  is a better idea than dominance.
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  Even the dominion that's supposed to be expressed is supposed to be one that
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  leads to the flourishing of everything.
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  And if everything's not flourishing, then nothing's flourishing.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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  I mean, presumably if one's, you know, I also get that, I get that
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  America started, at least Protestant America started with pilgrims.
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  Pilgrim fathers, but pilgrim fathers were actually religious extremists
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  who were kicked out of England at, they were actually in the clink jail
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  in London before they were put on the boat, the Mayflower, to be sent because
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  they were, they were troublesome.
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  And we had just had a civil war in the UK where they've cut the king's head off.
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  No, sorry.
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  We, we were about to, we hadn't yet had it.
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  And so the, the, these puritan extremists who were reflecting, you know, some of the
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  extremism that led to these cataclysmic wars of religion that we had in Europe
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  in the 17th century were like packed on boats and said, all right, lads, off
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  you go over there and good luck to you.
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  And of course, they made it, and people have heard of like the Salem Witch trials
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  and people have heard of that sort of thing, but they, you know, landed in New
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  England and walked around being unpleasant and puritan to everybody, including
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  themselves and sort of established.
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  That tradition a little bit, and we get that.
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  But given that that's 400 years ago, and given that okay, then
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  you had other things going on.
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  You had slavery, you had genocides of the Native Americans and
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  so on and manifest destiny.
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  This idea in the 19th century of progress, commercial progress with
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  Christianity getting mixed up.
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  I do understand all that, but yet it didn't, it didn't seem to that there
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  were other parts of the world that were colonized where that kind of wholesale
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  assault on the land and on nature didn't become the dominant culture.
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  I'm thinking about my own family, for example, in, in South Africa
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  who were, I mean, were not dissimilar roots in many ways.
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  They were, you know, very puritan.
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  Christians on the Dutch side who formed the Dutch Reformed Church, which is
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  one of only two churches in the world that were formed specifically to
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  justify, you know, bad institutionalized racism, one of which being the
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  Dutch Reform Church in South Africa.
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  The other one being you know, the Southern Baptist Church in in, in the USA.
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  But yet those ancestors of mine in South Africa did take a stewardship line and
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  I guess they couldn't take a genocidal.
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  There was no slavery, there was colonizing, there was no, they
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  couldn't take a genocidal line, I think because there, there were
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  always more of the local people than there were of the white settlers.
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  So you, you couldn't have done it if you tried.
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  There just were not the millions and millions and millions of people
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  coming into Africa that there were coming across the Atlantic.
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  But then we look north at Canada, say.
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  And we don't see Christianity being quite, so,
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  what's the word?
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  Manipulated into something as it's not that they didn't assault nature, but not
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  perhaps to the same degree they did do genocides, but they didn't have slavery.
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  Then you look at Mexico and you go, well, they're pretty, you know, that's
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  pretty messed up down there, but you see it through a Catholic lens, and
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  again, not, not maybe this same sort of idea that to be Christian means paving
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  the entire continent from C to C with a McDonald's every 200 meters, and if
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  you do that, you're doing God's work.
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  And that's sort of where it's ended up with a lot of Christians in America.
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  That still puzzles me, even though I understand that historical
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  process that you've outlined.
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  Ben Connor: Right.
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  Well, there are a couple other theological biblical factors that
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  shape this understanding as well.
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  So one is this expansionism the desire to manipulate, control and create
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  moved by a vision that through progress eventually the world's gonna be so
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  great through our technology progress, ingenuity and faith that Jesus is
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  just gonna come down and join us.
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  Right?
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  That's one sort of in time sort of view, an eschatological view, but then
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  other sorts of things happen as well.
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  So, so the first one is this dominion, a mis oriented dominion,
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  which we've just talked about.
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  Another theological sort of also enlightenment mindset that impacts the way
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  Christianity's expressed in some pockets in the US is this drive to differentiate
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  ourselves from other creatures.
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  Not just differentiate ourselves, but say that we're superior somehow.
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  So we're taking this whole chain of being thing, mapping it into Christian
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  theology and then saying that and it makes sense 'cause the Bible is a
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  book about humans perception of God.
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  So it's a very anthropocentric book, right?
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  But then, and so you go to these early Genesis accounts and it seems
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  like the whole world's there for you.
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  And then you gotta say, well, how am I different?
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  Well, I'm created in the image of God.
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  What does it mean that I'm created in the image of God and animals aren't?
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  So we try to figure out what is this thing that makes us in the image of
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  God and differential ourselves from the rest of creation to say that we're
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  superior and we have the right to use them, use creation, animals, and
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  land to invest in this project that we think that we're called to do.
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  And so that's a, so there's another mindset.
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  This drive to differentiate ourselves means that you can't look at a.
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  You know, now, now we're getting, we're getting things from science
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  now that are challenging how, how we choose to differentiate ourselves.
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  We say, oh, well we have rational minds and we can create tools.
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  And then you find out that a crow can create a tool.
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  Mm-hmm.
• 15:45
  Rupert Isaacson: And
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  Ben Connor: then we have this kind of empathy.
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  And then you learn more about pigs, you know, and we have
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  these parenting instincts.
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  And you learn about pods of dolphins.
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  And we're like, okay.
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  Every time we try to differentiate ourselves, right.
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  We have a posable thumbs
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  Rupert Isaacson: and then you look at a raccoon.
• 15:58
  Yeah.
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  Ben Connor: Right?
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  And so, yeah.
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  So then we start to say, well, you know how, I think a better, a better
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  idea is, is to think how animals in, in relationship with animals, how
• 16:10
  it's not a kingdom where we're the kings in charge of everything, but
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  it's a kinship relationship where we're related to everything and,
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  and perhaps the thing that makes us different is more about a responsibility
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  we have than a capacity we have.
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  'cause we start to think about the capacities.
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  Not only do we differentiate ourselves from animals, we differentiate
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  ourselves from other humans, and then we value these humans less as well.
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  So this was the thesis of a book called Beasts of Burden by Sonara
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  Taylor, who growing up had.
• 16:42
  Followed these chicken trucks, these awful farmed chickens with feathers flying
• 16:48
  behind her was trying to make sense of how, how is this these farmed, the, the
• 16:52
  way the animals, these industrial farming, the implications for the environment, the
• 16:57
  implications for the chickens themselves, the implications for the workers.
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  And she saw that her own disability, you know, she can be cast as
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  less than, because we do the same thing with the animals and we
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  do the same thing with the land.
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  So this drive to differentiate ourselves from creatures, what we've really done
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  is disconnect ourselves from nature.
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  And the biophilia hypothesis suggests that we were formed in who we are
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  as humans alongside of nature.
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  What's the
• 17:26
  Rupert Isaacson: biophilia hypothesis?
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  What is that?
• 17:28
  This
• 17:28
  Ben Connor: is by Ed Edward Wilson wrote that I.
• 17:32
  That we have an innate connection or love for living things or
• 17:36
  for nature, how can we not,
• 17:37
  Rupert Isaacson: I mean, we're, we're a part of it, right?
• 17:39
  Ben Connor: And that's what he says.
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  Like this, this whole network of conversation going between
• 17:43
  trees and mushrooms also has connections with our bodies.
• 17:46
  Mm-hmm.
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  We've just lost touch with it and we've tried to separate ourselves
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  from it, control it, dominate it.
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  And in the, in, in the process, we've disconnected ourselves from our own lives.
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  So, so this drive to differentiate didn't just differentiate us from animals, it
• 18:04
  differentiated us from ourselves, from each other, from the land, from creation,
• 18:08
  and didn't actually answer the question of what makes us different from animals.
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  So maybe we should talk more about what makes us the same.
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  So that's a second theological move that, that's, that's feeding
• 18:19
  this in the United States.
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  And there's one more.
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  Okay.
• 18:22
  You wanna hear
• 18:22
  Rupert Isaacson: that?
• 18:22
  Ask a question.
• 18:23
  Well, just, just quickly.
• 18:25
  Yeah.
• 18:25
  Is there, is there a movement within Christianity about.
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  Why are we the same as animals?
• 18:34
  Oh, yeah,
• 18:34
  Ben Connor: there is.
• 18:35
  There is.
• 18:35
  There's, there's there's a, you've heard of it.
• 18:37
  Wonderful book.
• 18:37
  There's a book by David Clef, C-L-O-U-G-H, David Clef, who's
• 18:42
  now at Aberdeen, like Clough,
• 18:43
  Rupert Isaacson: C-L-O-U-U-G-H-U-G-H, yeah.
• 18:46
  Ben Connor: Clef,
• 18:46
  Rupert Isaacson: right.
• 18:47
  Ben Connor: And he wrote a book called Creaturely Theology, which
• 18:51
  starts with any theology you do.
• 18:53
  It needs to start with your commonality with the rest of the world as a creature.
• 18:57
  Rupert Isaacson: This almost sounds like Celtic Christianity,
• 18:59
  druidic Christianity, or so
• 19:02
  Ben Connor: well there.
• 19:02
  Yeah.
• 19:02
  Yeah.
• 19:03
  You could say that that kind of Christianity is very different
• 19:05
  from Roman Christianity because of the conversation partners.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 19:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:09
  Right?
• 19:10
  Ben Connor: And, and so that's another problem with, with Christianity,
• 19:13
  is people want to think that their expression is a final expression and
• 19:17
  then sort of use that colonizing mindset,
• 19:19
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 19:20
  Ben Connor: And so evangelism becomes, you become like me, whereas it should
• 19:23
  be an expansion of our understanding of that, which we all share.
• 19:27
  So every cultural boundary you cra cross brings new riches and insights into this
• 19:33
  Christianity that we claim to share.
• 19:35
  So would
• 19:35
  Rupert Isaacson: you ca, would you classify yourself as an evangelist?
• 19:40
  Ben Connor: If I get to define what it is.
• 19:42
  Okay.
• 19:43
  Okay.
• 19:43
  Because my experience with evangelists is, is is it's techniques that
• 19:49
  were used to manipulate people into saying certain magic words.
• 19:52
  That means they're in instead of out.
• 19:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 19:55
  Ben Connor: I don't think that has anything to do with what the
• 19:58
  historical figure of Jesus was doing or the early church was doing.
• 20:02
  That was more a proclamation about what it means to live in this world in a different
• 20:08
  kind of a way that's, that's challenging power, that's caring for the poor,
• 20:14
  that is, is caring for the sick that is involved in harmony, flourishing in life.
• 20:20
  So then my evangelism in that sense is a doing, a being and a saying.
• 20:26
  It's, it's the way that I serve the world.
• 20:29
  When, when did I see you in and when did I visit you in prison and when did I give
• 20:34
  you clothes and when did I give you food?
• 20:37
  Was the question that was asked in this sheep and the goat's
• 20:39
  parable of, of Jesus, right?
• 20:42
  He said, whenever you did it to the least of these, you did it unto me.
• 20:45
  And so this kind of service is one way that I evangelize.
• 20:50
  So there's a, there's a doing, there's a being.
• 20:54
  What kind of communities am I creating and how I, how do they include
• 20:57
  the gifts of other people that are marginalized in other settings?
• 21:01
  That's a kind of community.
• 21:03
  So there's a, a being of evangelism and then there's a saying.
• 21:06
  Sometimes you give explanation verbally to, to what's going on,
• 21:11
  but that's usually the last resort for me, for my, but you and I both
• 21:16
  Rupert Isaacson: know that that's not, that's it sounds wonderful, but you,
• 21:19
  you and I both know that's not how evangelism is usually presents itself.
• 21:23
  Right?
• 21:24
  It it
• 21:24
  Ben Connor: exactly.
• 21:25
  And, and fortunately I'm teaching course you're gonna go to
• 21:27
  Rupert Isaacson: hell unless you abide by these rules and this big blowup there with
• 21:32
  a beer's gonna give you a spank bottom and send you to the place where the.
• 21:35
  Chaps of the pointy heads will stick you with pointy things.
• 21:38
  Ben Connor: So let's tie that understanding of evangelism
• 21:41
  to the third movement.
• 21:42
  Okay.
• 21:43
  So we have this dominion issue where we've gotten dominion wrong.
• 21:46
  We have the drive to div differentiate ourselves from animals and creation
• 21:51
  where we actually separate ourselves from ourselves and from our world.
• 21:55
  You just said we've gotten
• 21:56
  Rupert Isaacson: dominion wrong.
• 21:56
  That really excites me and I want to return to that later.
• 22:00
  Okay?
• 22:01
  Ben Connor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Sorry, I didn't mean to.
• 22:03
  Ben Connor: So there's dominion drive to differentiate.
• 22:06
  The last one fits right into that kind of evangelism.
• 22:09
  What happens in that kind of evangelism?
• 22:11
  We save your soul from a world that's gonna burn.
• 22:14
  I collect bumper stickers just for fun about that kind of evangelism.
• 22:19
  And it's like when the last trumpet sounds, I'm outta here.
• 22:22
  And it's like flames coming up.
• 22:25
  And it's like, if you think you're right, you know you better be right.
• 22:29
  Or smoking or non-smoking, like eternity smoking or non-smoking.
• 22:35
  People think they're so clever with these bumper stickers.
• 22:38
  But all they're doing really is offending people.
• 22:39
  I can't imagine anyone who's ever had their mind changed by a bumper sticker.
• 22:44
  So what is that viewpoint?
• 22:46
  Well, it's this, that, that creation and animals are just a dramatic backdrop.
• 22:54
  Even our bodies, our dramatic backdrop to a transaction that
• 22:58
  goes on between our soul and God.
• 23:00
  And it's a really escapist kind of understanding.
• 23:04
  So now you have another theological de-motivation to
• 23:08
  be invested in this world.
• 23:10
  'cause this world's temporary, this world's gonna be destroyed.
• 23:13
  And so let's save souls.
• 23:15
  So they have soul winners, bibles, and people are seeing
• 23:18
  how many souls they can save.
• 23:20
  Well what in the world's a soul, aside from like, dig down into me, where is it?
• 23:24
  You know, like it is it so spirit.
• 23:28
  My my point is that if you wanna find the most spiritual thing,
• 23:33
  really get to know another person.
• 23:35
  'cause God is, is in there.
• 23:38
  If, if, yeah.
• 23:39
  So theologically speaking, if God wants to demonstrate love, then God
• 23:44
  takes on human flesh and has to live in under the contingency that we live in.
• 23:49
  And what does he do?
• 23:50
  He crosses boundaries.
• 23:51
  He goes to, to where lepers are.
• 23:54
  He, he invites the tax collector nobody likes.
• 23:56
  He, he hangs around with women and gives them credibility to their testimony.
• 24:01
  He, you know, all these sorts of things.
• 24:03
  So you have
• 24:05
  Rupert Isaacson: all good ways to get yourself crucified, basically.
• 24:07
  Yeah,
• 24:07
  Ben Connor: exactly.
• 24:08
  Especially when your followers start saying your Lord, in a world
• 24:13
  where the Roman imperial coins make that very claim about their rulers.
• 24:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
• 24:19
  What's what's interesting with that?
• 24:20
  Okay, so that, there's just a bunch of things there.
• 24:22
  One is that one, one of the as you know, people who interpret, old Testament stuff
• 24:28
  and Book of Revelation and the rapture and all of that, which is very much the
• 24:33
  sort of American punishment based, you know, idea of Christianity and talking
• 24:41
  about sort of Christ and antichrist.
• 24:43
  And I've often thought that in the book of Revelation where it says the antichrist
• 24:47
  is gonna come along, I say, was that one person or was that the sort of collective?
• 24:52
  And it seems that there's an awful lot of talk by people who espouse
• 24:57
  themselves to be Christians, talking about highly unchristian things like
• 25:03
  my right to have automatic weapons or my right to be just a dick to people
• 25:11
  or to be hostile in whatever way.
• 25:14
  That's antichrist, that's anti ethical to Christ.
• 25:16
  That's antichrist.
• 25:17
  That's antichrist.
• 25:19
  And.
• 25:21
  So I've often thought, oh, I see the antichrist is this espousing of antichrist
• 25:32
  beliefs under the banner of Christ.
• 25:35
  Okay, that makes sense.
• 25:36
  And now of course it's, this is not the first generation in which that's happened,
• 25:40
  and that's been going on, you know, ever since Christianity became a, you
• 25:43
  know, a look at the Spanish Inquisition.
• 25:45
  But nonetheless, we sort of ought to be past that now and perhaps are, you
• 25:57
  know, so it's exciting to me when you say
• 26:00
  that within the evangelical, which I, I, I have experienced as punishment based,
• 26:08
  basically join our club or you'll get a hell, and saving souls or getting souls.
• 26:14
  The only other person I ever know who seems to go out to
• 26:16
  get souls seems to be Satan.
• 26:17
  You know, they, they was talking about the devil went down to Georgia.
• 26:20
  He was looking for soulless steel.
• 26:21
  He was in a bag.
• 26:22
  He was way behind.
• 26:23
  He was willing to make a deal.
• 26:25
  He seemed quite motivated to get souls right.
• 26:29
  Presumably God can look after souls.
• 26:33
  And, and here's full disclosure.
• 26:35
  I'm a full on card carrying for, for listeners too.
• 26:38
  I'm a full on card carrying believer in God.
• 26:40
  I believe in God.
• 26:42
  I so believe in God.
• 26:44
  I cannot tell you who God is or what God is.
• 26:47
  I wouldn't presume to be able to do that, but somewhere within me, there's
• 26:52
  never been any, never been any question.
• 26:54
  But God is not somebody who creates.
• 27:00
  People in order to cast them into a fiery pit because that would be God
• 27:04
  as a sort of petulant 12-year-old.
• 27:07
  Well if you
• 27:07
  Ben Connor: do that, look how much control that gives you if you do it.
• 27:10
  Mm.
• 27:10
  I mean that all fits into the same thing of mastery, domination, and control.
• 27:15
  So they've taken a, a worldview and created something, you know, they've
• 27:20
  taken this category of Christian and filled it with something that allows
• 27:24
  them to have power and domination and control to predict Absolutely.
• 27:29
  Explain.
• 27:29
  Absolutely.
• 27:29
  And it
• 27:30
  Rupert Isaacson: just becomes Pharisees and a priesthood and, and all of that.
• 27:32
  I, I, I get it.
• 27:33
  You know, and so it's
• 27:34
  Ben Connor: a malformation and I think many Christians then are malformed into
• 27:39
  this expression of Christianity that is really incongruent with the Christ that
• 27:45
  they claim in their title, in their name.
• 27:48
  And
• 27:48
  Rupert Isaacson: I dunno if I'm Christian, I dunno if I'm not Christian,
• 27:52
  you know, I, I hang out at the Bushman tra fires my, my experiences of God.
• 27:57
  Are as much within watching a healer in the Kalahari
• 28:04
  use leopard energy to pull a sickness outta somebody as it is
• 28:09
  to do something within our culture.
• 28:13
  And at the same time, I absolutely think that at the Mystic Center
• 28:17
  of all religions is, is, is the sort of same expression of God.
• 28:21
  And you find that kind of c nature-based shamanism within
• 28:25
  certain types of Christianity.
• 28:27
  You, you might find it in c sort of Catholic shamanic overlaid things
• 28:32
  down in Central South America.
• 28:34
  You might find it in France of Assisi.
• 28:37
  You might find it in the Celtic Christian outlook and, and so on.
• 28:43
  So the kind
• 28:43
  Ben Connor: of Christianity then that you're allergic to is the kind that
• 28:47
  asks you to be a cultural apprentice.
• 28:49
  It's, it's, you have to become a cultural apprentice.
• 28:52
  It's the
• 28:52
  Rupert Isaacson: kind that wants to.
• 28:54
  Sell off Yellowstone.
• 28:56
  Yeah.
• 28:56
  Right.
• 28:57
  Yeah.
• 28:57
  That's what I'm allergic to.
• 28:58
  Ben Connor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:01
  Rupert Isaacson: That seems the anti anti creation.
• 29:03
  Ben Connor: It wants to take indigenous people's holy spaces and name 'em
• 29:07
  after prominent American folks.
• 29:10
  Right, right.
• 29:10
  Well, every, every church
• 29:11
  Rupert Isaacson: in, in Europe is built on a Pagan site, but yeah.
• 29:15
  No ex exactly.
• 29:16
  The desecration of, of nature, the destruct.
• 29:19
  So you
• 29:19
  Ben Connor: don't have, so they don't have a theological paradigm for engaging it.
• 29:23
  So that's what, what's happened in a sense, is those original moves of
• 29:27
  the Christian movement sort of stop.
• 29:29
  So, I mean, originally it was a Jewish sect, right.
• 29:32
  And then it becomes.
• 29:34
  Greek.
• 29:35
  And when it becomes Greek, it gets the treasure of Greek
• 29:38
  philosophical understanding, but then it creates, creates doctrines.
• 29:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 29:42
  Yeah.
• 29:42
  Ben Connor: Right.
• 29:43
  That then are exclusive of other people.
• 29:45
  And then along with Constantine power, you have the ability,
• 29:49
  not just to, to He's de spoiled
• 29:50
  Rupert Isaacson: his wife, by the way.
• 29:51
  Right.
• 29:51
  No,
• 29:52
  Ben Connor: this is this.
• 29:52
  It's, I'm not, he's not a wonderful figure.
• 29:55
  Right.
• 29:55
  He the reason there's a Julie in the apostate is because who, who came after
• 29:59
  Constantine, who didn't like Christianity at all, and, and put his face on the
• 30:04
  coin with a big philosopher's beard to give the Christians the finger and
• 30:08
  put astrological signs on the back and said, Rome needs to go back to.
• 30:13
  The, the what we were is because Constantine had killed every
• 30:17
  potential person who could, you know, challenge him as a Christian emperor.
• 30:22
  But what you have then is you have power and Christianity together.
• 30:26
  Yeah.
• 30:26
  And in order to keep a peaceable kingdom, here's the doctrine
• 30:30
  that we are gonna agree on.
• 30:31
  So there aren't these factions,
• 30:32
  Rupert Isaacson: ene Christianity, Catholic, right.
• 30:34
  Orthodox, which,
• 30:35
  Ben Connor: and here we go to our problem with creation, ene
• 30:39
  Christianity is responding to the question of the salvation of humans.
• 30:43
  Not the broader biblical narrative about the restoration of the world.
• 30:51
  That all of creation is groaning to be redeemed.
• 30:54
  That that according to their own scripture, Christ took on
• 30:57
  flesh, not just humanity, but took on all flesh and redeems it.
• 31:01
  All that all things come together in Christ.
• 31:06
  So that, that is supposed to be the Christian message, but ene
• 31:09
  Christianity is all about the salvation of individuals where you're
• 31:13
  gonna have fights over an iota.
• 31:15
  Homo states, you know, homo us, Ian, people get excommunicated.
• 31:20
  Now you have power.
• 31:21
  You could actually kill 'em if they have a different view,
• 31:24
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 31:24
  Ben Connor: And so there's, there's, so we, we have that in the US that
• 31:28
  it's of benefit to be a Christian.
• 31:32
  That it gives you a certain kind of power.
• 31:35
  And, and the theological questions that were asked, in the exception of
• 31:39
  Christianity, were about the salvation of the human and not about the restoration
• 31:43
  and redemption of all of creation.
• 31:46
  And we just really haven't developed much since then.
• 31:48
  But there have always been people who speak against that.
• 31:51
  You mentioned Francis of assi, but even contemporarily.
• 31:55
  There was Pope Francis who just passed away, wrote a beautiful
• 31:58
  piece on creation and theology.
• 32:02
  There's a book by Victoria lores called church of the Wild.
• 32:07
  That's about wild Christianity.
• 32:09
  There's Thomas Berry, a Catholic.
• 32:11
  He called himself a Biolog Biolog.
• 32:16
  Rupert Isaacson: So
• 32:16
  Ben Connor: he
• 32:16
  Rupert Isaacson: is.
• 32:16
  Love that.
• 32:17
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 32:18
  Rupert Isaacson: But where are these people?
• 32:19
  Why don't we hear about them?
• 32:19
  Why are you the first person telling us about it?
• 32:22
  Ben Connor: Well, I'm the first person telling you, you know, I yeah,
• 32:25
  Rupert Isaacson: but come on.
• 32:26
  I mean,
• 32:26
  Ben Connor: yeah.
• 32:26
  It's, it's not a, it's not, it's not a center movement
• 32:29
  Rupert Isaacson: is what, it's a peripheral movement and why, isn't it?
• 32:32
  Or, or is it going to become one?
• 32:36
  Ben Connor: Well, in part it's a giving up of power and
• 32:38
  nobody likes to give up power.
• 32:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:40
  It's a distribution of power.
• 32:42
  It's an equaling of people.
• 32:43
  It's it's, it's costly.
• 32:45
  It, it requires thinking about what you eat.
• 32:49
  It requires, you know, it, it's just not the American way.
• 32:52
  It's not about it's not about gaining things and possessing
• 32:55
  things and controlling things.
• 32:57
  It's about giving that sort of a, a worldview up and committing to a
• 33:02
  kind of flourishing that might mean in order for mutual flourishing.
• 33:06
  You're standing quite an American
• 33:07
  Rupert Isaacson: by this point.
• 33:08
  Yeah, yeah,
• 33:09
  Ben Connor: yeah.
• 33:09
  We'll see.
• 33:10
  And to many, I'll sound un-Christian, but that doesn't hurt my feelings either,
• 33:14
  Rupert Isaacson: you know?
• 33:14
  Yeah.
• 33:16
  Okay.
• 33:17
  So you've convinced me that there is a movement.
• 33:23
  What's your work with this movement to bring us to an idea
• 33:29
  of stewardship rather than.
• 33:32
  Effing it all up.
• 33:34
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 33:34
  And I would even say stewardship's a limited term because it suggests that
• 33:38
  we have the knowledge and wisdom to, I mean, ha have we done more good or more
• 33:43
  harm for the earth than even in the stewardship things we've tried to do?
• 33:46
  I don't know.
• 33:47
  Right.
• 33:48
  Yeah.
• 33:48
  To some degree, stewardships is a, is an, is an arrogant position that
• 33:52
  doesn't recognize our limited knowledge base and doesn't draw upon knowledge.
• 33:57
  Well, there's knowledge
• 33:57
  Rupert Isaacson: is human.
• 33:58
  Right,
• 33:58
  Ben Connor: right, right.
• 33:59
  Yeah.
• 34:00
  And, and again, here, going back to scripture and Job, one of the
• 34:04
  amazing verses when Job is trying to make sense of what's going on
• 34:07
  with his life is God's response.
• 34:10
  Ask the beasts and they'll tell you, ask the birds of the air and they'll tell
• 34:14
  you, and we've broken this conversation.
• 34:17
  We've, we've, we're only talking to ourselves as Thomas Berry,
• 34:21
  this Catholic theologian.
• 34:23
  He says, we we're not talk, we're not listening to the rivers.
• 34:26
  We're not listening to the animals, to the plants.
• 34:28
  We're only talking to ourselves.
• 34:30
  We've, we have a, we've lost the wisdom of the, of the land.
• 34:35
  Where's Thomas Berry based?
• 34:38
  Oh, I don't know.
• 34:39
  You can find his I don't, I think he's passed away recently.
• 34:42
  Sacred Universe.
• 34:44
  The Sacred Universe and Evening Sacred Universe.
• 34:47
  That's one of his brilliant books.
• 34:48
  Was he, was he
• 34:49
  Rupert Isaacson: American?
• 34:49
  Was he British?
• 34:49
  Where's he from?
• 34:51
  I think he's a us Catholic.
• 34:53
  Was he Barry with an IE or A-Y-B-E-R-R-Y.
• 34:58
  Thomas Barry, the Sacred Universe Theologian.
• 35:01
  Got, okay.
• 35:01
  Gotta check it out.
• 35:03
  Sounds like I won't be able to have him on the show.
• 35:05
  You're gonna have to interpret him for me.
• 35:07
  Okay.
• 35:08
  Well, that,
• 35:08
  Ben Connor: so this is, that, that's a, where people are talking about it though.
• 35:11
  Matthew Scully wrote a book on Dominion where he's challenging
• 35:15
  this whole notion of dominion.
• 35:16
  It's called Matthew Scully, S-C-U-L-L-Y.
• 35:21
  Okay.
• 35:21
  Matthew Scully.
• 35:22
  Dominion.
• 35:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Dominion.
• 35:23
  Okay.
• 35:24
  And
• 35:24
  Ben Connor: one of the things he says right at the start of the book is this.
• 35:27
  He says, when you look at a rabbit and you can see only a pest or vermin, or a meal,
• 35:35
  or a commodity, or a laboratory subject, you aren't seeing the rabbit anymore.
• 35:41
  You're seeing only yourself and the schemes and appetites
• 35:45
  you bring to the world.
• 35:46
  Wow.
• 35:48
  And that's what Dominion is.
• 35:49
  It's the schemes and appetites we bring to the world.
• 35:53
  We've broken the conversation.
• 35:54
  We like the idea of kingdom, and we like to think we take on the kingly
• 35:58
  role and then we're no longer kin.
• 36:02
  We're not in a kinship relationship with all of creation.
• 36:04
  So how do I bridge the gap between my inherited Christianity and the vision
• 36:11
  that I wanna point people towards?
• 36:13
  Right.
• 36:13
  A couple of ways.
• 36:15
  Okay.
• 36:15
  One is Christian Indigenous Americans and Indigenous American Christians
• 36:22
  who have a whole different paradigm.
• 36:25
  When they read scriptures and when they come to faith, that critiques
• 36:30
  the one that they've inherited.
• 36:32
  In other words, through their scripture and their reading, now they have an
• 36:35
  independent standard by which they can critique the colonizer's Christianity.
• 36:41
  And how do they critique it?
• 36:43
  Well, they critique it as people who live on Turtle Island, whose mythology
• 36:47
  is filled with animals in wise roles.
• 36:50
  They critique it as people who, when they, they read they read the Bible,
• 36:55
  it's a worldview that makes more sense to them than a, a modern enlightenment
• 36:59
  worldview where there are spirits and angels and, and energies and animals who
• 37:05
  are deeply involved in, in the telling of these stories and in the redemption.
• 37:11
  So, one gentleman in particular, Randy Woodley, he talked to
• 37:16
  he, he, he interviewed Randy
• 37:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Woodley.
• 37:19
  Ben Connor: Woodley, W-O-O-D-L-Y, Randy Woodley.
• 37:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 37:24
  Ben Connor: And I don't remember his tribe, but he talked to many
• 37:27
  different tribes and he found something they all have in common.
• 37:32
  He called the harmony way.
• 37:35
  He calls it the Harmony Way.
• 37:36
  And it's a way of being in the world that's not so competitive, that sees
• 37:41
  the wisdom of animals that doesn't try to manipulate and control and,
• 37:46
  and it's, it's just a such a different sort of kinship worldview to the
• 37:51
  modern enlightenment worldview that's informed American Christianity.
• 37:55
  That I would say it's almost a different Christianity that's more faithful to the
• 37:59
  biblical vision of shalom, shalom, peace, harmony, wellbeing, this sort of thing.
• 38:06
  So conversation partners like Randy Woodley I'm looking
• 38:11
  up right here at my shelf.
• 38:14
  If I can find my glasses, and I have like three different pairs of glasses,
• 38:17
  depending on how far away something is.
• 38:20
  We have becoming kin by Patty RAIC.
• 38:24
  We have restoring the kinship view by four arrows and another author.
• 38:30
  So these indigenous worldviews, these ways of understanding how are we
• 38:35
  supposed to be in the world then is, is informs their Christian expression.
• 38:41
  Right?
• 38:42
  And that's the same move that happened when Christianity became a Jewish.
• 38:46
  It went from a Jewish sect to include Jewish, to include Greek people and then
• 38:51
  the treasures of Greek philosophy come in and have problems, but also things.
• 38:55
  And then it goes to the Germanic people and those, and it goes to, you know,
• 39:00
  when Christianity goes to Africa.
• 39:03
  Particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, you have a critique of colonizing Christianity by
• 39:11
  African indigenous churches that didn't wanna give up an African worldview.
• 39:16
  That doesn't start with the Cartesian, I think therefore I am,
• 39:20
  but starts more with like an muntu, which is we are, therefore I am.
• 39:26
  So it's a more communal understanding of self than an individualistic one.
• 39:31
  And okay.
• 39:31
  Okay.
• 39:32
  Now
• 39:32
  Rupert Isaacson: something I go to with that is again, because my family's
• 39:36
  Southern African, because a lot of these cultures that you've include, and also
• 39:41
  I'm half Jewish, so Jewish culture, a lot of Southern African culture, you're
• 39:47
  still talking about agricultural, post agricultural and herding cultures
• 39:53
  that are effectively warrior cultures.
• 39:55
  I.
• 39:56
  With the same hierarchical systems and endless cycles of blood feud,
• 40:01
  warfare, atrocity for, for horsemen of the apocalypse up and being very
• 40:07
  happy to colonize each other when they're not the ones being colonized.
• 40:10
  You know, the Zulus, the Ani, the Dani, which was the, you know, the Zulus in
• 40:16
  South Africa, colonizing everybody else around them until they ran up against
• 40:20
  the, the, the buzz and the British who then colonized them you know, west Africa.
• 40:26
  Lots of colonization going on there, you know, within that subcontinent.
• 40:30
  The Germanic tribes colonizing within Europe before they
• 40:33
  went on blah, blah, blah.
• 40:34
  The Romans obviously, and then, you know, second Temple Judaism
• 40:40
  by no means a nature based thing.
• 40:44
  You know, by then.
• 40:46
  You know, Judaism having gone from, you know, way back, pre bronze age,
• 40:50
  a polytheistic thing to eventually, you know, Yahweh and his wife to
• 40:56
  Yahweh, to some semblance of what we now know to, you know, a, a, a sect
• 41:03
  that becomes Christian much later on.
• 41:06
  But by the time that happens, of course, you know that, you know that, that
• 41:09
  the empire building colonizing people, they just happen to run up against the
• 41:14
  Romans, you know, who were just better at it, you know, for whatever reason.
• 41:19
  So we're all the same
• 41:23
  dysfunctional, yeah.
• 41:25
  Creation, destroying people except for the non-war tribes, the non-war
• 41:32
  people, the hunter gatherers.
• 41:33
  And, you know, we seem to have this at the beginning of the Bible,
• 41:36
  don't we, with Cain and Abel, you know, Cain is the farmer.
• 41:40
  Kills his brother Abel, who seems to be with the beast of the field, the hunting
• 41:43
  gatherer, classic thing, you know, the hunt, the farmers can't tolerate free
• 41:47
  moving people going across the land.
• 41:49
  They can't tolerate free moving animals going across the land.
• 41:51
  So we end up with a parable.
• 41:53
  It seems a, a metaphor within story.
• 41:56
  You know, Cain and Abel, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:58
  And then the, the mark of Cain, the curse of Cain being that he wanders forever.
• 42:02
  Well, of course, what do farmers have to do?
• 42:04
  They exhaust the land or they have lots and lots of kids because you need
• 42:08
  lots and lots of kids to put the crop in the soil and bring the crop out.
• 42:11
  So you can only pass the land onto the oldest son.
• 42:14
  So everyone else has to go out and colonize somewhere else and
• 42:17
  mess everyone else's lives up.
• 42:19
  You know, this is the curse, blah, blah, blah.
• 42:20
  It keeps going.
• 42:21
  We know this
• 42:25
  and yes, of course evangelical American Christianity is one of the many
• 42:29
  expressions of this, but so are some of the expressions of Christianity in Africa
• 42:33
  or, you know, other parts of the world.
• 42:40
  And I've always, I've never seen like the, the problem with the
• 42:45
  idea of say evolution and God.
• 42:47
  It's like, well, why wouldn't an intelligent God de design something as
• 42:51
  amazing as, you know, as, as evolution?
• 42:53
  I don't see that as being in any way contradictory, you know, Darwin himself
• 42:57
  as a Christian, blah, blah, blah.
• 42:59
  Okay, but what do we do with it all?
• 43:03
  The, the, the most functional people I've ever met on the planet were son
• 43:09
  Bushman, non-Christians, who many Christians I know would say are damned
• 43:17
  who yet lived live a, a, a very Christ-like existence, both in terms
• 43:24
  of how they relate to each other, how they relate to outsiders, and
• 43:27
  how they relate to the planet.
• 43:33
  Given that Christianity comes out of Second Temple Judaism, which is by
• 43:38
  no means an environmental movement,
• 43:43
  how do we go back to Abel?
• 43:46
  How do we sort of leapfrog back over Cain and go back to
• 43:50
  Abel and keep our Christ thing?
• 43:56
  I think I could answer that question, but I kind of want to hear it from you.
• 44:00
  This is intriguing to me and it's also intriguing to me that this environmental
• 44:04
  movement, by the way, within Christianity, I've not heard it out the uk.
• 44:08
  I've not heard it out of Africa either, so it's, it seems to be very
• 44:11
  fitting that it comes out of the USA.
• 44:14
  Who are the people with the Christians who are kind of messing it up the most?
• 44:17
  Well, America land of extremes.
• 44:20
  Okay.
• 44:21
  You're gonna find people like you.
• 44:24
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 44:24
  Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm
• 44:27
  an autism dad and we have a whole career before this podcast in helping
• 44:34
  people with neurodivergence, either who are professionals in the field.
• 44:39
  Are you a therapist?
• 44:40
  Are you a caregiver?
• 44:42
  Are you a parent?
• 44:43
  Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
• 44:47
  When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
• 44:52
  I really didn't know what to do.
• 44:53
  So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
• 44:59
  autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
• 45:02
  Temple Grandin.
• 45:03
  And she told me what to do.
• 45:04
  And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
• 45:09
  That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
• 45:14
  countless, countless thousands of others reach the same goal.
• 45:18
  Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
• 45:23
  If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
• 45:27
  approach, it's called Movement Method.
• 45:30
  You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
• 45:34
  It's almost laughably simple.
• 45:37
  The important thing is to begin.
• 45:40
  Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
• 45:44
  Grandin and see what results can follow.
• 45:48
  Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
• 45:53
  com Sign up as a gold member.
• 45:56
  Take the online movement method course.
• 45:59
  It's in 40 countries.
• 46:01
  Let us know how it goes for you.
• 46:04
  We really want to know.
• 46:04
  We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
• 46:09
  live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
• 46:14
  Can you explain to me then.
• 46:21
  No, can you, can you fantasize to me Go ahead.
• 46:24
  20 years.
• 46:25
  A hundred years in your mind, what's coming out of Christian America and
• 46:32
  how do we turn it all around for the benefit of our planet and ourselves?
• 46:36
  Ben Connor: Yeah, I think it starts a couple of ways.
• 46:39
  Deb Rera there's another name for you, wrote a book called Ugia Ugia,
• 46:45
  and she talks about a ugia faith.
• 46:47
  But the way the book starts is when Mount St.
• 46:50
  Helen's exploded, everything's covered with ash.
• 46:53
  Everything looks like death, but under the logs.
• 46:58
  And under the rocks there's life and these are spaces of Ugia and
• 47:03
  it's grown back vibrant and lush.
• 47:05
  And she says we need to have the same kind of thing in our Christianity,
• 47:09
  in a sense and a Christianity that is exactly as you explained it.
• 47:14
  There are these pockets, ofia.
• 47:17
  So I think if we, if we set up these pockets
• 47:19
  Rupert Isaacson: called Refugia, I love it.
• 47:20
  Okay.
• 47:21
  Ugia?
• 47:22
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 47:22
  Yeah.
• 47:23
  You'd love to talk with Deb and Ron sra, actually, they'd
• 47:26
  be wonderful guests for you.
• 47:28
  Okay.
• 47:30
  Okay.
• 47:30
  Keep
• 47:31
  Rupert Isaacson: going.
• 47:31
  Ben Connor: So, so it's a, it's a place of growth.
• 47:34
  It's a place of, you know, of, of regrounding, of of moving forward,
• 47:40
  of life among what seems like death.
• 47:43
  And so then in my mind, I'm trying to create places of ugia within the church.
• 47:49
  And so this goes to one project I'm on right now.
• 47:53
  Okay.
• 47:54
  And I think the place to start is with the children.
• 47:58
  You know, Malaguzzi wrote that children have 100 languages
• 48:02
  and we take away 99 of them.
• 48:05
  In other words children communicate so many ways.
• 48:08
  Everything's a language, everything's a world.
• 48:11
  They're filled with wonder, in part because.
• 48:15
  They're not captive to their rational capacities and trying
• 48:18
  to name, explain control.
• 48:21
  They know they don't know things.
• 48:22
  And, and as a result, they go into spaces with a kind of curiosity and they find
• 48:27
  a sense of connection, a sense of awe, a sense of wonder, humility and humility,
• 48:31
  and also a sense of lament and humility.
• 48:33
  This is a place to start, right?
• 48:35
  So if we can start in the church with our children, connecting them to nature
• 48:41
  as a theological conversation partner that's really not been listened to the
• 48:46
  same way since the printing press, I would say particularly in the us it's
• 48:52
  like this movement to give everybody a bible, everybody, seven or eight Bibles.
• 48:58
  This sounds, I mean, this is something that you don't wanna, it'd be if
• 49:01
  I say this in a church or I say it at a seminary, it's gonna be, I'm
• 49:06
  really gonna get pushed back against.
• 49:08
  But why are we creating more Bibles?
• 49:12
  And why are we taking about this?
• 49:13
  What's that doing to the environment?
• 49:15
  It's a, because we're so word centered that now the Bible instead
• 49:20
  of something that, that a community.
• 49:21
  That was the word and the word was
• 49:22
  Rupert Isaacson: God.
• 49:22
  Logos.
• 49:23
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 49:24
  So I mean, the Bible didn't even come into being so people could have it.
• 49:28
  For most of Christianity, you are a church that had maybe one letter from Paul or
• 49:34
  Luke Acts and another church had more.
• 49:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:37
  And when you met together, it'd be read.
• 49:39
  But the most important thing was your, your way of life in the world.
• 49:42
  How, what's your way of life in the world?
• 49:44
  But post printing press match that with Cartesian individualism and our
• 49:51
  tendency towards mastering control.
• 49:54
  Now everybody has their own Bible.
• 49:56
  Everybody's their own hope.
• 49:58
  Everybody's their own church to some degree.
• 50:01
  But this movement then what becomes squelched is God's voice in nature and the
• 50:07
  way we've organized our societies, make us less and less connected to this world.
• 50:13
  You know, we have conditioned environments and even within the churches,
• 50:17
  then you try to replicate things.
• 50:19
  A vault that goes to the heavens, well just step outside and look up, right?
• 50:25
  I, I was at this real, I was at a, at a camp once, and they took everybody
• 50:28
  from the camp inside a room and started saying, now imagine, you know, Jesus is
• 50:34
  there and Peter's walking on the water.
• 50:36
  Imagine a lake.
• 50:37
  I'm like, we were just outside.
• 50:38
  There was a lake.
• 50:39
  You know, go out to the lake.
• 50:41
  Why do we feel like we can't gain this wisdom?
• 50:43
  It's because it's about control.
• 50:46
  These wrong interpretations are dangerous.
• 50:49
  There's, but you know, anyways, the point being, yeah, I want you
• 50:52
  to pay, let's start with children.
• 50:53
  Pay me
• 50:53
  Rupert Isaacson: five.
• 50:53
  If I want you to pay me money, then I've got to Yeah.
• 50:56
  Get you in a room and brainwash you.
• 50:58
  Yeah, sure.
• 50:59
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:00
  Ben Connor: So let's start with the children and let's teach the adults a new
• 51:03
  language through the eyes of children.
• 51:06
  So you learn that.
• 51:08
  So let's start with the assumption that children are theological creatures,
• 51:13
  that children have a connection to God, that God loves children, and
• 51:16
  that God's communicating to them in a way that they understand.
• 51:20
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 51:20
  Well, that
• 51:21
  Ben Connor: makes the Bible secondary.
• 51:23
  Rupert Isaacson: True.
• 51:24
  You know, it does, it
• 51:25
  Ben Connor: doesn't mean that the Bible's unimportant, but for
• 51:27
  children, it makes it secondary.
• 51:29
  What's the most important thing is the encounter they have with
• 51:32
  the divine through creation.
• 51:33
  So let's learn the many languages of children and of
• 51:36
  children with disabilities.
• 51:38
  So, we actually got a grant from the Lilly Foundation to do this.
• 51:42
  And the first thing we did is three orientations for all the adults around
• 51:47
  disability theory, disability, theology, theology of children, children as
• 51:52
  spiritual beings, children as learning children as curious, a theology of
• 51:58
  wonder these sorts of things and a theology of nature and creatures.
• 52:03
  And, and so we, we, we prepared them and then we had six weeks
• 52:08
  where for four hours on a Sunday, we just followed the children.
• 52:12
  We followed them to see birds and, and put their arms out and see what kind
• 52:18
  of bird they are, and to hold snakes.
• 52:22
  Now, this is not snake handling.
• 52:23
  I wanna be clear.
• 52:24
  That's not the kind of Christianity I'm in.
• 52:26
  But just to to enjoy and appreciate creation, to play in the words, to create
• 52:31
  environments to, to, what's gonna change?
• 52:34
  The church is not a doctrine about how we should treat creatures.
• 52:41
  What's gonna change the church is a generation of people who are in love with
• 52:45
  the world that God created and see it as enchanted, that expect to encounter
• 52:51
  God when they're next to a horse.
• 52:53
  Expect to encounter God in the beautiful music of a stream.
• 52:57
  The holiest place I have is the pond behind my house where I have windy the
• 53:02
  willow tree dancing, watching me as I'm inside the pond, pulling out the algae,
• 53:08
  surrounded by a halo of fish who snap up everything I loosen where ducks come
• 53:14
  along the side and watch what I'm doing curiously, and let the red wing blackbird
• 53:19
  know I'm not coming for their nest.
• 53:21
  So you don't have to dive bomb his head.
• 53:23
  He's okay.
• 53:24
  You know.
• 53:25
  And the Oculus I have.
• 53:27
  Isn't in a dark room, a little hole that says God's present.
• 53:30
  It's the whole sky, you know?
• 53:33
  And the baptismal waters I have aren't confined to a
• 53:36
  fountain, but it's my whole pond.
• 53:39
  And I share these baptismal waters with the fish.
• 53:42
  So why would I wanna put chemicals in that's gonna hurt them if I
• 53:45
  could find a better way to coexist?
• 53:48
  Because these fish helped me make it through COVID as I went in federal.
• 53:52
  So anyway, this sounds like Harrison.
• 53:54
  Oh, absolutely.
• 53:55
  I'm good.
• 53:56
  Have
• 53:56
  Rupert Isaacson: the inquisition shown up at your house yet?
• 53:58
  Ben Connor: No.
• 53:58
  I'm sure they'll come though.
• 54:00
  And, and what a, what better way to go than, than than
• 54:03
  trying to enlarge the faith.
• 54:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, so in terms of pushback I, I, I love what you just
• 54:10
  said in, in, in terms of pushback.
• 54:13
  What pushback do you get on w working.
• 54:19
  With your Center for Disability and Ministry and
• 54:24
  looking at the wonder with which children engage in nature or
• 54:31
  nature and special needs, you know, your Lily grant it, it would seem
• 54:35
  insane to push back against that.
• 54:38
  So I'm interested to know what sort of insanities have, have, have arisen.
• 54:44
  Ben Connor: Well, you'll be interested to know.
• 54:46
  I've received almost no pushback.
• 54:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 54:49
  Ben Connor: I just think you haven't
• 54:50
  Rupert Isaacson: publicized it yet.
• 54:52
  Ben Connor: Perhaps.
• 54:53
  We'll see how that goes.
• 54:55
  I mean, yeah.
• 54:55
  You know, I'm working on a book on harmony with horses where I'm promoting these
• 55:00
  sort of theological worldviews and, you know, I mean, I'm a published author.
• 55:05
  You are too.
• 55:05
  You know, once you put something out there, you know.
• 55:09
  People are gonna hate it.
• 55:10
  People are gonna think you're the worst thing ever.
• 55:12
  For me, in my, I wrote a book called disabling Mission, enabling Witness.
• 55:18
  And the whole idea of that mission, the way that we practice mission evangelism
• 55:24
  is been informed by very ableist biases.
• 55:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm, good point.
• 55:30
  Ben Connor: A certain kinds of communication, right?
• 55:33
  So, and so I say to disable in my mind is to take away those ableist biases.
• 55:40
  And so that's what I'm trying to my theological project.
• 55:43
  You think about
• 55:43
  Rupert Isaacson: disarming really?
• 55:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:45
  Ben Connor: Disabling theological education, that's how the Center for
• 55:49
  Disability and Ministry came to be.
• 55:51
  And then I wrote you know, disabling mission and, you know, I'm always,
• 55:57
  I'm always thinking about that.
• 55:58
  How can we, how can we center.
• 56:03
  Wisdom that hasn't been at the center.
• 56:05
  So how do you center children?
• 56:06
  You, you center children's insights, then you engage theology differently.
• 56:11
  You, you center your relationship with the horse, you know, then you,
• 56:14
  then you see the world differently,
• 56:18
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 56:19
  Ben Connor: So the main pushback, the main pushback I get would be that
• 56:22
  I'm what would be called a pantheist or a panentheist, which means, which
• 56:27
  I'm, I wouldn't say I'm a pantheist, which means everything is God.
• 56:31
  God is everything.
• 56:32
  That, that wouldn't be where I fit in.
• 56:35
  Panentheism says God is in everything.
• 56:37
  I don't have a problem with that.
• 56:39
  I just don't like the label, you know?
• 56:42
  But traditional theism has been so informed by I think sort of, Greek
• 56:50
  philosophical categories that, that they've, they've been so entwined.
• 56:54
  It's almost like it's the same thing.
• 56:56
  So.
• 56:58
  So I'm happy to push back against various things and do some constructive
• 57:03
  theology and see what happens.
• 57:04
  And, and unless you're willing to make some mistakes, you know, it, you
• 57:10
  gotta, you gotta go ahead and make some statements to, to stimulate discourse.
• 57:15
  Rupert Isaacson: True.
• 57:15
  Okay.
• 57:16
  So what are the odds that we will see in the next 20 years?
• 57:25
  Cons, you know, conservative Christian megachurches in Houston,
• 57:30
  going out and planting forests.
• 57:36
  I'm hopeful.
• 57:38
  Talk to me about that.
• 57:38
  Hope take, take me through how that could happen.
• 57:41
  Yeah.
• 57:41
  Because I would love that to happen.
• 57:44
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 57:45
  Yeah.
• 57:45
  I, I think as, as, consequences of the way that we've treated
• 57:50
  the environment hit home.
• 57:53
  And so, so a lot of the immigration migration is related
• 57:57
  to climate issues, right?
• 58:01
  A lot of people's homes and, and, and places that they value
• 58:06
  have been impacted by this.
• 58:08
  A lot of the things they like to eat have been impacted by this.
• 58:12
  Once it becomes a personal experience for you, then for many Christians,
• 58:17
  that's when you start to ask new and fresh theological questions.
• 58:20
  And my hope is by the time they're asking these questions, which I can't
• 58:23
  imagine what happened particularly, you know, not to get political, but in this
• 58:28
  administration, you're gonna roll back any sort of environmental restraint.
• 58:35
  You know, as we see the consequences of this, then even these conservative, these
• 58:41
  more conservative congregations will have to start asking new theological questions.
• 58:45
  And my hope is that there's a group of resources there that they can
• 58:49
  call upon as this, this theological movement, eco theology and biolog and
• 58:57
  people who are creating ugia places as they're growing these resources will
• 59:02
  become, you know, someone from within their tradition is going to write
• 59:06
  something that they're interested in.
• 59:11
  Rupert Isaacson: I love it.
• 59:14
  I guess what I'm seeing practically is yeah, let's say the children of the people
• 59:20
  growing up within that type of church, historically have, I have had two choices.
• 59:26
  They, they could either
• 59:29
  reject.
• 59:31
  And say it is all a load of wan because it kind of is.
• 59:36
  And then go off into their lives outside the church or
• 59:39
  certainly outside that church.
• 59:41
  Ben Connor: Yep.
• 59:42
  Rupert Isaacson: But still hopefully take some you know, nice things with
• 59:47
  them if they could salvage some.
• 59:50
  But it's usually been stale.
• 59:52
  Go, it's usually been drink the Kool-Aid or escape.
• 59:58
  Ben Connor: When they escape, they go a couple ways.
• 1:00:00
  There's something called ex evangelicals.
• 1:00:02
  I don't know if you've ever died again.
• 1:00:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Christians.
• 1:00:04
  Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  Yeah.
• 1:00:06
  Ben Connor: So, yeah.
• 1:00:06
  So instead of evangelicals or ex evangelicals, they're not giving up
• 1:00:09
  the faith, they're just giving up that particular way of understanding it.
• 1:00:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:13
  And these ex evangelicals are much more connected to issues
• 1:00:18
  around sexuality around dominance.
• 1:00:21
  But again, where are these people?
• 1:00:22
  Rupert Isaacson: I don't hear about them.
• 1:00:23
  I don't meet them.
• 1:00:24
  These evangelicals, where are they?
• 1:00:27
  Ben Connor: They're out there.
• 1:00:28
  They're very much into podcasting.
• 1:00:30
  So you could, you could easily type in ex evangelical and you'll find a lot of 'em.
• 1:00:34
  That's sort of the white, upper middle class way to deal with
• 1:00:37
  your issues in the United States.
• 1:00:39
  Just start a podcast.
• 1:00:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Look at me.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Yeah.
• 1:00:43
  Ben Connor: Well, yeah, me too.
• 1:00:44
  We have a podcast through the center called Disabling the Church.
• 1:00:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:00:48
  Disabling the church.
• 1:00:49
  Yeah.
• 1:00:49
  Okay.
• 1:00:49
  I need to start listening to it.
• 1:00:51
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:00:53
  So that that's one direction they go.
• 1:00:55
  The other direction is, yeah, maybe they give up on calling
• 1:00:58
  themselves Christians, but a pew.
• 1:01:01
  If you, if you look at these pew research sort of interviews about the
• 1:01:06
  state of religion in the United States, you find that even people who say that
• 1:01:11
  they are the nuns, meaning when you check something about your religious
• 1:01:16
  affiliation, you check the category, none.
• 1:01:19
  You keep going down the list.
• 1:01:20
  You find out that they aren't giving up on God and one of the places they feel
• 1:01:24
  most connected to God is in nature.
• 1:01:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:01:28
  Ben Connor: And so I, that, that's the path that I'm taking
• 1:01:31
  to get this conversation going.
• 1:01:33
  I don't think I'm gonna change the mind of the diet in the wool American
• 1:01:39
  evangelical of the more conservative ilk.
• 1:01:43
  I think I can work with evangelicals very well and I can work with people
• 1:01:48
  who have left the church but still find God when they walk in Saugatuck
• 1:01:52
  dunes, you know, these sorts of things.
• 1:01:55
  And I can give them some language and I, 'cause they look, this, this
• 1:01:58
  scripture is actually pointing to this kind of thing that you're talking about.
• 1:02:02
  The Christian faith is actually it, it should have the capacity to
• 1:02:06
  speak into this in meaningful ways.
• 1:02:07
  Rupert Isaacson: Well that was going to be my next question actually
• 1:02:09
  was you know, I dunno, scripture, like, you know, scripture I know
• 1:02:13
  little fragments here and there.
• 1:02:14
  Can you give me some choice quotes from Old and New Testament about why
• 1:02:22
  we shouldn't be buggering it all up?
• 1:02:25
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  I mean, one was that from job 12 seven, ask the Beasts and they will teach you
• 1:02:30
  ask the birds of the air and they, they'll show you this, this whole idea that,
• 1:02:35
  that, that there's wisdom in creation and we should connect with the wisdom.
• 1:02:39
  You go to some of the Psalms and so the problem, okay, so we're, we're
• 1:02:43
  oriented in scripture by the creation accounts in, in Genesis, the beginning
• 1:02:49
  of Genesis, which seems to make the point that everything's made.
• 1:02:53
  Then you make humans.
• 1:02:54
  Now it's very good and your job is to have dominion over it, right?
• 1:03:00
  But then you read in a creation in the Psalms where it talks about the
• 1:03:04
  creation and it says the hills are made for the Cooney and the deep
• 1:03:09
  is made for the beasts of the sea.
• 1:03:11
  Almost like humans aren't even in mind for this.
• 1:03:14
  You know, the idea that animals have a connection with God without us.
• 1:03:20
  If you want to know anything about that, you better hope
• 1:03:23
  they're around to tell you.
• 1:03:25
  So you wanna preserve their environment and you wanna learn
• 1:03:28
  how to, you wanna learn about 'em, you wanna draw on the sciences.
• 1:03:32
  So as I think about horses, 'cause you had my wife Melissa,
• 1:03:35
  I think on a different podcast
• 1:03:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  The, the Equine Assisted World podcast.
• 1:03:39
  Yeah.
• 1:03:39
  Ben Connor: And so she runs renew Therapeutic Riding Center.
• 1:03:43
  And one of the things we're working on is how do Christians think
• 1:03:46
  about horses as having a vocation?
• 1:03:50
  A call.
• 1:03:51
  Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Yeah.
• 1:03:52
  Okay.
• 1:03:52
  So vocation.
• 1:03:53
  So vocation is right to Ari's a podcast in
• 1:03:56
  Rupert Isaacson: itself.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  So in Christianity, the view is you've been called to follow.
• 1:04:02
  And when we think of vocation, we think of the big noun.
• 1:04:05
  What's the thing I'm gonna do when I grow up?
• 1:04:07
  So we're anxious all the way through high school.
• 1:04:09
  What are we gonna be?
• 1:04:11
  And then we don't know who we are after retirement 'cause we
• 1:04:14
  don't know anymore who we are now 'cause we don't have the job.
• 1:04:17
  But Kathleen Cahalan says, instead of talking about vocation as a
• 1:04:22
  noun, we should talk about it in terms of prepositions, I'm called
• 1:04:25
  alongside, I'm called through, I'm called into, I'm called out of.
• 1:04:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:04:30
  We have many different callings.
• 1:04:32
  So I'm called as a professor.
• 1:04:35
  I'm called as a as a grant writer.
• 1:04:38
  I'm called as a husband.
• 1:04:39
  I'm called as a father.
• 1:04:40
  I'm also called into relationship with my dogs.
• 1:04:43
  I'm called into relationship with silk of the horse and we start thinking.
• 1:04:48
  Wouldn't people think differently of animals?
• 1:04:50
  If instead of saying this is a tool that you use for services that
• 1:04:55
  you thought of as animal as having a vocation, a calling from God.
• 1:04:59
  Well, vocation is also about being able to use your voice.
• 1:05:02
  Voice and vocation.
• 1:05:03
  I've amplified my voice in different settings.
• 1:05:06
  How does a course have a voice?
• 1:05:08
  How does a horse have agency?
• 1:05:10
  In order to understand this, we need to learn how to communicate with a horse.
• 1:05:14
  So we have to draw on Stephen Peters and Martin Black and all the people
• 1:05:18
  who've done this horse head, human head.
• 1:05:20
  I forget who wrote that, Jane something.
• 1:05:23
  Horse,
• 1:05:23
  Rupert Isaacson: brain, human brain.
• 1:05:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:24
  Horse,
• 1:05:25
  Ben Connor: brain.
• 1:05:25
  Human brain.
• 1:05:26
  Yeah.
• 1:05:27
  But so now you're learning, you're, you're looking at the horse differently.
• 1:05:30
  You're saying, this horse needs to have a voice.
• 1:05:33
  I need to learn how to listen to the voice of the horse.
• 1:05:36
  If the horse isn't flourishing, the horse isn't in a vocation, so we
• 1:05:39
  can't do anything that's of benefit to a student that's not in line with
• 1:05:44
  the vocation or calling of the horse.
• 1:05:45
  So there's mutual flourishing.
• 1:05:47
  How do we organize our center?
• 1:05:49
  How do we feed horses?
• 1:05:51
  How do we turn them out?
• 1:05:52
  How do we turn pastures?
• 1:05:54
  How do we allow them the time to get used to an environment before they go in it?
• 1:05:58
  How do we, you know, do we know that the horse, if this chair's in different place,
• 1:06:03
  it's not a chair, it might be a lion.
• 1:06:04
  Now, I, you know, all those weird things about horses that Melissa could tell you
• 1:06:08
  all about, but horses have a vocation.
• 1:06:11
  They have a voice.
• 1:06:12
  We just have to learn how to hear their voice.
• 1:06:15
  'cause it's usually a nonverbal voice.
• 1:06:17
  It's ear postural.
• 1:06:19
  It's, it's, it's the tension of the muzzle.
• 1:06:20
  It's the what the hind end is doing.
• 1:06:23
  It's, it's what the tail's doing.
• 1:06:25
  It's all, it's what the, how, how the eyes are, or the eyes soft.
• 1:06:28
  Or the eyes dead, you know?
• 1:06:30
  Yes, the horse is doing the thing, but the horse is getting no enjoyment.
• 1:06:34
  Yeah.
• 1:06:34
  All, all these sorts of things are for the vocation of the horse.
• 1:06:37
  Now, this is a, it's a, it's a creature that we invite to share a vocation
• 1:06:41
  with us, but the horse can say no.
• 1:06:45
  And we have to listen to the horse to know when the horse is saying
• 1:06:48
  no, I have a different vocation.
• 1:06:50
  So swing because of trauma related to being a polo horse, is never gonna
• 1:06:56
  be a good therapeutic riding horse because of all the, you know, unless
• 1:07:01
  you desensitize swing and take all the joy out of his life and make him
• 1:07:06
  an ottoman, that au ottoman that just walks around the arena, loping around
• 1:07:10
  carrying somebody that's not swing's, vocation, but swing is very good at
• 1:07:15
  being a pasture friend to another horse.
• 1:07:19
  Rupert Isaacson: If we then go from horses to mountains, rivers,
• 1:07:26
  ecosystems.
• 1:07:27
  Ben Connor: Alright.
• 1:07:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Talk to me about mountains, rivers, and ecosystems.
• 1:07:33
  Having vocations.
• 1:07:36
  Ben Connor: So mountains have been around a lot longer than we have.
• 1:07:40
  I don't think we have the patience to listen to a mountain or the
• 1:07:43
  lifespan to listen to a mountain.
• 1:07:45
  Our, our, our our listening is, is, is is this big mountains
• 1:07:49
  listening is generations and generations and generations.
• 1:07:53
  But I, I do believe that, that mountains have vocations other than being blown
• 1:07:59
  up with dynamite to hold images of presidents or images of civil War
• 1:08:05
  heroes or, or anything like that,
• 1:08:08
  Rupert Isaacson: or, or coal mine.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah.
• 1:08:10
  Ben Connor: And I think the people who were closer to the vocation of
• 1:08:14
  these mountains were the indigenous people whose livelihood were tied
• 1:08:19
  to the mountains, whose mythologies were connected to the mountains.
• 1:08:24
  I think, I think bodies of water have a lot to say to us, but were, were
• 1:08:28
  putting chemicals in their throats.
• 1:08:30
  We're putting runoff from fertilizers in their throats.
• 1:08:34
  We're we're putting plastic in their throats.
• 1:08:38
  We're taking all the life of the ecosystems outta their throats and
• 1:08:41
  we're starting to hear their voice again when we participate in reef,
• 1:08:46
  you know, helping reefs to grow back.
• 1:08:49
  And when we have responsible ways of fishing, instead of just huge nets
• 1:08:53
  that pull up everything or sharks that are just harvested for their fins
• 1:08:57
  or whales that are just harvested.
• 1:08:59
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, when we just stop behaving abusively, basically.
• 1:09:02
  Ben Connor: Yeah, so I, so here's the thing.
• 1:09:03
  This goes to vocation.
• 1:09:05
  The vocation of a horse is to be a horse.
• 1:09:08
  That's it.
• 1:09:09
  And a horse doesn't mess up.
• 1:09:10
  Its vocation.
• 1:09:12
  But humans can mess up the horse's vocation.
• 1:09:15
  And the vocation of a mountain is to be a mountain.
• 1:09:17
  And mountains don't mess up the vocation, but humans can get
• 1:09:21
  in the way of their vocation.
• 1:09:23
  Rupert Isaacson: What's a human's vocation then?
• 1:09:25
  Ben Connor: This is the key.
• 1:09:26
  Can we mess that up?
• 1:09:27
  Yes.
• 1:09:28
  A human's vocation is to be a human, but we suck at it.
• 1:09:34
  We wanna dominate and control other humans.
• 1:09:37
  What is being a human
• 1:09:38
  Rupert Isaacson: dominant?
• 1:09:38
  What is being a human?
• 1:09:40
  Ben Connor: So now you're into something from a Christian standpoint that's
• 1:09:42
  called theological anthropology, right?
• 1:09:45
  So anthropology is just the study of humans and human
• 1:09:47
  cultures and humans in the world.
• 1:09:49
  Theological anthropology adds another layer.
• 1:09:52
  What does it mean to be a human before God?
• 1:09:55
  And so, a theological anthropology before
• 1:09:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Christ.
• 1:09:58
  Ben Connor: Before Christ.
• 1:09:59
  Yeah.
• 1:10:00
  And so, so Christ, Jesus Christ from a Christian standpoint, you would say, then
• 1:10:04
  lived out the human vocation properly and what it result in his death, because
• 1:10:12
  it's in a world that's not oriented towards living in a human vocation.
• 1:10:17
  It's in, well, I meant
• 1:10:19
  Rupert Isaacson: in the Kalahari at the same time in which you
• 1:10:21
  were behaving in a Christlike way and getting along just fine.
• 1:10:24
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:10:25
  Yeah.
• 1:10:26
  Rupert Isaacson: So, so, okay, so,
• 1:10:28
  Ben Connor: so, so then a, a human vocation then is to be a, a human, which
• 1:10:33
  means there's, there's a, a, a calling to bear witness to the goodness of God.
• 1:10:38
  That's in everything, to, to treat all of creation as kin, to treat all
• 1:10:43
  people in ways that with dignity.
• 1:10:46
  And so the human creation is to live into this vision.
• 1:10:51
  Of the kingdom of God that's already breaking into the present in little ways.
• 1:10:58
  And, and these little ways are, are for example,
• 1:11:04
  I talked about Julian, the apostate.
• 1:11:07
  It's never good if your, your, your name has the apostate after it typically.
• 1:11:11
  But so Julian, the apostate, I understand where he is coming from, considering
• 1:11:15
  his family was killed by Constantine.
• 1:11:17
  That's that I understand that he wanted to bring the, the Greek
• 1:11:23
  culture back to the center.
• 1:11:24
  Yeah.
• 1:11:25
  Clintonism, yeah.
• 1:11:25
  Animating.
• 1:11:26
  Right, right.
• 1:11:27
  And so at, at one point though, when plagues broke out what
• 1:11:32
  do you do in that culture?
• 1:11:33
  If someone's sick, you get 'em out.
• 1:11:35
  Right?
• 1:11:35
  You, you cast them out.
• 1:11:37
  And so, what happened then was the Christians went
• 1:11:42
  out where these folks were.
• 1:11:44
  And they prayed for them.
• 1:11:46
  They anointed them with oil.
• 1:11:47
  They gave them food and most importantly, they gave them human presence and care.
• 1:11:52
  And this what?
• 1:11:53
  What happened then?
• 1:11:55
  Well, some immunity was built up.
• 1:11:57
  Some people came to health and then as a result of that, then
• 1:12:02
  they came to the Christian faith.
• 1:12:03
  'cause they said it's the practice of the faith that drew me to it, not a doctrine.
• 1:12:09
  This care did.
• 1:12:10
  So Julian, the apostate then calls all this priest to him and he says, look.
• 1:12:15
  These impious Galileans, which is what he called Christians impious, Galileans
• 1:12:22
  impious, because they didn't worship the state-sponsored Gods Galileans as a
• 1:12:26
  diminutive way of talking about Christians following this dead guy from Galilee.
• 1:12:31
  These impious Galileans care not only for their own sick, but for ours as well.
• 1:12:36
  That is, that's a way of being in the world that's bearing witness to
• 1:12:40
  the way that the world should be.
• 1:12:42
  That's hospitality, that's care, that's friendship.
• 1:12:45
  Christian practices that give a vision of the kingdom of God.
• 1:12:49
  And we try to do that at renew with our relationship with the horses as well.
• 1:12:54
  It's sort of a vision of the peaceable kingdom where humans and
• 1:12:58
  animals work together in harmony.
• 1:13:03
  Rupert Isaacson: If you were to put this Christian view, and I also, I
• 1:13:09
  want to go back to, is anything in the New Testament talking about.
• 1:13:14
  The, the right relationship of human to nature.
• 1:13:17
  But let's just put that to the side.
• 1:13:19
  Now, if you were, if you were to go to your average suburban megachurch
• 1:13:24
  in the south and posit your view on eco theology bio biolog, yeah,
• 1:13:37
  Ben Connor: yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:39
  Rupert Isaacson: What, what would they say to you?
• 1:13:43
  Ben Connor: So, I'm not a hundred percent sure.
• 1:13:45
  My suspicion is if I, so if I were going in that context, I
• 1:13:50
  would have a whole bunch of bible verses with what I'm saying, right?
• 1:13:55
  Because they would be really anxious about my theological conversation.
• 1:14:00
  Partners, they would say,
• 1:14:03
  Rupert Isaacson: why do you think, why, but why do you think they wouldn't
• 1:14:05
  be like, actually, you know what?
• 1:14:07
  Yeah, Ben, that makes a lot of sense.
• 1:14:08
  Yeah, sure.
• 1:14:08
  Sey.
• 1:14:09
  Let's do it.
• 1:14:09
  Let's go plant.
• 1:14:11
  We we're gonna raise a million dollars and plant a forest in our backyard right now.
• 1:14:14
  Like why would there be a difficulty taking on your point of view when
• 1:14:21
  your point of view is not only seemingly vocational and very
• 1:14:27
  Christian, but also common sense, so it be coming from their pushback.
• 1:14:34
  Ben Connor: Well, I think it's a habitus, right?
• 1:14:36
  A habitus that they've been formed into.
• 1:14:38
  Mm.
• 1:14:39
  Which is the, which is a, is sort of embodied way of interpreting and seeing
• 1:14:43
  in the world that's been informed by a mis oriented dominion that drive to
• 1:14:48
  differentiate themselves from creatures.
• 1:14:51
  And for many of 'em understanding this world is a dramatic backdrop.
• 1:14:55
  And then along with that, it's, it's a almost a kind of Bible worship.
• 1:15:01
  You know, I would say that Jesus isn't the Lord.
• 1:15:04
  Rupert Isaacson: The,
• 1:15:04
  Ben Connor: that's interesting.
• 1:15:04
  Their interpretation of the Bible is the Lord.
• 1:15:08
  And so I'm calling into question
• 1:15:10
  Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
• 1:15:10
  Ben Connor: Long, entrenched biblical interpretations of scriptures that
• 1:15:16
  aren't just a matter of opinion, but are a matter of identity.
• 1:15:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:15:22
  Yeah.
• 1:15:23
  That's well took.
• 1:15:23
  And so
• 1:15:23
  Ben Connor: it's tough to have this discourse.
• 1:15:26
  It in order to have, in order to have genuine discourse, that
• 1:15:29
  has to be the openness to the possibility that I'm wrong.
• 1:15:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Here's another question.
• 1:15:35
  Okay, so let's go to a different abusive colonist thing outside of America.
• 1:15:42
  Let's go to my own family and the British Empire and all of that.
• 1:15:45
  What's interesting about the British Empire is that they definitely
• 1:15:49
  did all sorts of bad stuff.
• 1:15:52
  And at the same time there was a conservation movement that was similar
• 1:15:58
  to like the Roosevelt Conservation Movement, which people would say
• 1:16:05
  cynically came on the back of.
• 1:16:07
  You know, native American genocides and so on.
• 1:16:09
  Yes, yes it did.
• 1:16:11
  And the, and the formation of national parks in Africa and that
• 1:16:14
  sort of thing were also predicated upon, you know, mass displacement
• 1:16:19
  and removals of peoples and so on.
• 1:16:21
  Not in every case.
• 1:16:22
  You've got the Maasai still in the Maasai Mara and that sort of thing.
• 1:16:24
  But for the, for the most part, and this idea of primordial nature existing without
• 1:16:29
  humanity in a pristine form is bullshit.
• 1:16:31
  Humans were always there.
• 1:16:33
  But just living in right relationship, not wrong relationship.
• 1:16:36
  However, for example, let's say if you were in the British Forest
• 1:16:41
  Service in British India in 1933, and you were administering a tract
• 1:16:52
  of forest, you would give 1% of.
• 1:16:58
  That forest land over to people who wanted to log it or, and the remaining
• 1:17:04
  99% would be regarded as sacrosanct to be, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:17:13
  And if I'm here in Germany and I was just actually riding through the woods today
• 1:17:17
  with a, a very lovely Christian American called Connie Uba, who works within
• 1:17:23
  therapeutic riding and out of Tennessee.
• 1:17:25
  And we were just admiring the forest and we were talking about
• 1:17:29
  how this forest is, is maintained.
• 1:17:31
  It is a working forest.
• 1:17:32
  It's logged, but it's not clear cut.
• 1:17:36
  So it's logged in a very thoughtful way.
• 1:17:40
  The timber is absolutely sold.
• 1:17:42
  You can see the trees that have been marked up, but they, they never let the
• 1:17:45
  canopy disperse and they never let the root system get, troubled, and there's
• 1:17:53
  all kinds of biodiversity in that forest.
• 1:17:55
  So there's, you know, all kinds of wildlife.
• 1:17:59
  We, we were seeing it, you know, as we were riding through, there's all
• 1:18:02
  kinds of interesting plant life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:18:05
  And this since.
• 1:18:06
  Now, the reason I'm saying all of these things is that the area that
• 1:18:11
  I'm in, in Germany's very Christian those people that were administering
• 1:18:15
  the British Empire would've seen themselves as the three Cs, commerce,
• 1:18:19
  civilization, and Christianity altogether.
• 1:18:21
  Right.
• 1:18:21
  But it seems to be very, you know, a very American thing.
• 1:18:23
  This idea that again, is where we started the podcast, that the
• 1:18:27
  Christian viewpoint means destruction.
• 1:18:32
  Ben Connor: Destruction, yeah.
• 1:18:33
  So it's related to unli.
• 1:18:34
  It's, it's related to this idea that we have unlimited resources.
• 1:18:37
  You know, we just keep, but the
• 1:18:38
  Rupert Isaacson: people who went to Africa felt they did.
• 1:18:40
  And the people in the 17th century in Yeah, Germany thought they did
• 1:18:45
  Ben Connor: well.
• 1:18:45
  I mean, it's, it's still happening everywhere.
• 1:18:47
  It's related to meat.
• 1:18:49
  Fair to some, isn't it?
• 1:18:51
  Fair enough.
• 1:18:51
  I mean,
• 1:18:51
  Rupert Isaacson: fair enough.
• 1:18:52
  Alright,
• 1:18:52
  Ben Connor: let's look at Brazil.
• 1:18:53
  What is it?
• 1:18:53
  Brazilian rainforest.
• 1:18:55
  What's happening?
• 1:18:55
  They're becoming a place for cattle.
• 1:18:57
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, right?
• 1:18:58
  Ben Connor: Why?
• 1:18:58
  Because they want the money that comes from selling the meat for cattle.
• 1:19:02
  Right?
• 1:19:02
  So then what kind of, what kind of things do you have to now grow if
• 1:19:06
  you're gonna support these cattle?
• 1:19:07
  You have to grow The corn that you turn into silage, that you fill the cattle
• 1:19:10
  that isn't, none of that is supporting.
• 1:19:13
  Human growth.
• 1:19:14
  None of it's, that's happened in the United States as well.
• 1:19:17
  I was shocked when I moved to the Midwest how humid it was.
• 1:19:21
  I thought I lived in the most, I thought I lived in the armpit of
• 1:19:23
  America when I lived in the historical triangle of Jamestown, Yorktown.
• 1:19:28
  And in Williamsburg I lived in a swamp, you know?
• 1:19:32
  No, how you get pretty
• 1:19:33
  Rupert Isaacson: sweaty there.
• 1:19:33
  Yeah.
• 1:19:33
  It can
• 1:19:34
  Ben Connor: get very sweaty there.
• 1:19:35
  And then I thought, oh, that's it.
• 1:19:36
  And then I come out to the Midwest and I'm like, gosh, it's just as humid.
• 1:19:40
  Where's it coming from?
• 1:19:41
  The corn fields.
• 1:19:42
  These ridiculous corn fields you get.
• 1:19:44
  I drove my daughter to school on the far end of Iowa.
• 1:19:47
  Why do the
• 1:19:47
  Rupert Isaacson: cornfield make it humid to other grasslands?
• 1:19:51
  'cause corns are grass.
• 1:19:53
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:19:53
  It's, it's just from the.
• 1:19:56
  The way that it produces the, the corn somehow it's just
• 1:19:59
  letting out all kind of humidity.
• 1:20:01
  I don't, I don't know all the details of it.
• 1:20:03
  I don't know if it has to do with the seeding and the chemicals and all that.
• 1:20:07
  I just know as I drive across Iowa, I see cornfield, cornfield,
• 1:20:11
  cornfield, cornfield, and none of it's for human consumption.
• 1:20:14
  It's all for the next state.
• 1:20:16
  You drive through and see cattle, cattle, cattle, cattle,
• 1:20:18
  cattle, and, and feed lots.
• 1:20:20
  Yeah.
• 1:20:20
  And what's that doing to the environment?
• 1:20:23
  What's that doing to the environment?
• 1:20:24
  So I think some of it has to do with just straight up Christianity hasn't
• 1:20:29
  provided a strong critique to the way that we've treated the environment
• 1:20:34
  based on our dietary commitments.
• 1:20:38
  And, and what's that?
• 1:20:40
  Christianity hasn't had a critique to that in the mainstream because we're all
• 1:20:45
  just a bunch of meat eaters who want to be able to buy our hamburger for 3 99 a
• 1:20:51
  pound at a big box store for convenience.
• 1:20:53
  So this is what I'm talking about.
• 1:20:55
  It's gonna cost this kind of movement's gonna cost.
• 1:20:59
  And, and in, in the US we're not ready to face that cost yet.
• 1:21:02
  And I think that it's in the generations that come behind the, so the kids that
• 1:21:08
  grew up, the kids that are growing up now.
• 1:21:10
  It's different.
• 1:21:11
  I mean, they see people with disabilities in leading roles on tv, not just
• 1:21:15
  used as a prop or as inspiration porn for somebody else, right?
• 1:21:20
  They see they see diversity in terms of sexuality, and they are feeling
• 1:21:26
  the, the impact of guns in schools.
• 1:21:29
  So the people who are starting these environmental movements, these movements
• 1:21:32
  against assault weapons and these sorts of things, these are the young people.
• 1:21:38
  And these, the young people are the ones who are gonna have to
• 1:21:40
  say, Hey, it's worth the sacrifice to, to start to make a difference.
• 1:21:46
  And, and the young people are Christians.
• 1:21:48
  They're gonna have to say, our theology's not prepared for this.
• 1:21:52
  And so we have
• 1:21:52
  Rupert Isaacson: to revisit it.
• 1:21:54
  Yeah.
• 1:21:54
  I thought our theology's not prepared for this.
• 1:21:56
  So, you know, when I asked you for, where's, where's the
• 1:21:59
  environmentalism in the Bible?
• 1:22:00
  You gave you something from job, but it's not like it's everywhere in the Bible.
• 1:22:04
  Right.
• 1:22:05
  And where is it in the New Testament?
• 1:22:08
  Or is it that?
• 1:22:09
  Ben Connor: Yeah, I mean it's, it's, or do we have to read
• 1:22:11
  Rupert Isaacson: between the lines to find it?
• 1:22:13
  Ben Connor: You have to read between the lines.
• 1:22:14
  But in Romans, in, in Romans chapter eight, it's gonna talk about all of
• 1:22:18
  creation, groaning for redemption.
• 1:22:21
  And then, and, and, and, and Philippians is gonna talk about Jesus' is the sort of
• 1:22:27
  the head over all that is all of creation comes into its fullness in Jesus Christ.
• 1:22:33
  And then you're gonna get a vision and revelation of the tree restored.
• 1:22:38
  I mean, you know, the, the mythology of, of Adam and Eve with
• 1:22:42
  rejecting the hospitality of God.
• 1:22:45
  It's not about the apple.
• 1:22:46
  It's really more about the rejection of the hospitality of God.
• 1:22:49
  It's about it's about hubris and these sorts of things, but when
• 1:22:53
  we see the restoration vision and.
• 1:22:55
  In Revelation.
• 1:22:56
  Then we have the tree of life.
• 1:22:58
  We have the river of life.
• 1:23:00
  We have those sorts of visions of ancy and, and fertility in life.
• 1:23:07
  And so it's, it's, it's not strong.
• 1:23:09
  But of course, the Bible is fundamentally a book to be read outside.
• 1:23:16
  I mean, Jesus in the wilderness.
• 1:23:17
  There's some beautiful artwork by Stanley Spencer called Jesus Jesus
• 1:23:21
  Rupert Isaacson: in the wilderness.
• 1:23:22
  Jesus in the wilderness.
• 1:23:23
  Maybe that's what we're looking for.
• 1:23:25
  Ben Connor: I think we're looking at, so it's not really told what happens there.
• 1:23:28
  People think, okay, he, he goes 40 days and he's fasting.
• 1:23:33
  He's starving.
• 1:23:33
  He is miserable.
• 1:23:34
  He is tempted by the devil.
• 1:23:36
  And then where does he go?
• 1:23:37
  He gets baptized and water starts his public ministry, this sort of thing.
• 1:23:41
  Stanley Spencer wondered what happened when the person who's involved in creation
• 1:23:45
  is there with creation and he has these clever pictures having been impacted
• 1:23:50
  by the devastation of World War I.
• 1:23:53
  You know, the trenches and mustard gas and, and, and fire and everything.
• 1:24:00
  Just the death and destruction.
• 1:24:02
  I think his paintings are a kind of ugia, it's a vision of Ugia.
• 1:24:07
  Who talking about here?
• 1:24:08
  Sorry?
• 1:24:09
  Stanley.
• 1:24:09
  Stanley.
• 1:24:10
  Spencer.
• 1:24:11
  Stanley.
• 1:24:11
  Spencer.
• 1:24:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Oh, yes, yes,
• 1:24:13
  Ben Connor: yep.
• 1:24:13
  And so, I think I can't remember where his art is now, maybe in Durham, but he, he
• 1:24:18
  wanted to do 40 paintings for the 40 days.
• 1:24:21
  But one of 'em is Jesus.
• 1:24:24
  Yes.
• 1:24:24
  His
• 1:24:24
  Rupert Isaacson: paintings are all over churches in England.
• 1:24:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:26
  Yep.
• 1:24:27
  He
• 1:24:28
  Ben Connor: does one called, you know, the foxes have holds where Jesus
• 1:24:30
  seems to be part of the environment and the foxes are playing around him.
• 1:24:36
  And there's one where he is holding a scorpion, and the scorpions obviously
• 1:24:39
  stung him, but he's looking at it with such curiosity and and love.
• 1:24:43
  And there's one where, you know, he's like the mother hen with the hens around.
• 1:24:48
  And there's one where even the lilies, where he looks like a boulder, and he
• 1:24:51
  is, he's attending to these lilies.
• 1:24:54
  Stanley Spencer was saying it was this time in the wilderness that
• 1:24:59
  gave Jesus the strength to do what he was gonna have to do the next
• 1:25:02
  three years in his public ministry.
• 1:25:05
  It was this connection and may perhaps he was nurtured and cared
• 1:25:08
  for by the very environment.
• 1:25:10
  Rupert Isaacson: If you made it this far into the podcast, then I'm
• 1:25:14
  guessing you're somebody that, like me, loves to read books about not
• 1:25:18
  just how people have achieved self actualization, but particularly
• 1:25:22
  about the relationship with nature.
• 1:25:26
  Spirituality, life, the universe, and everything.
• 1:25:30
  And I'd like to draw your attention to my books.
• 1:25:33
  If you would like to read the story of how we even arrived here, perhaps
• 1:25:38
  you'd like to check out the two New York Times bestsellers, The Horseboy
• 1:25:43
  and The Long Ride Home, and come on an adventure with us and see what engendered,
• 1:25:48
  what started Live Free Ride Free.
• 1:25:50
  And before we go back to the podcast, also check out The Healing
• 1:25:54
  Land, which tells the story of.
• 1:25:57
  My years spent in the Kalahari with the Sun, Bushmen, hunter gatherer people
• 1:26:03
  there, and all that they taught me, and mentored me in, and all that I learned.
• 1:26:07
  Come on that adventure with me.
• 1:26:08
  Now I think, I think you just draw my attention to something interesting.
• 1:26:12
  So yes, there, there was of course an environmental, philosophical,
• 1:26:19
  mythological movement within Christianity that we all know about, but don't pay
• 1:26:26
  a lot of attention to because they were written as children's books.
• 1:26:29
  And that of course is Narnia.
• 1:26:31
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:26:32
  Rupert Isaacson: So CS Lewis, as we know goes through World War I and then
• 1:26:37
  has a sort of a Christian rebirth.
• 1:26:42
  And what does he write?
• 1:26:43
  Course he writes lots of things, but the Narnia Chronicles are about, are
• 1:26:50
  with characters who the church took from pagan religion and mythology and
• 1:27:00
  turned into demons and devils, you know.
• 1:27:03
  People with horns on their head and goat's legs, for example, and turns them
• 1:27:07
  into the good characters because they were, of course back then and the white
• 1:27:15
  witch is manipulating that creation.
• 1:27:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:27:21
  But as control, who is a lion, who's an animal, and lion shall lie down
• 1:27:27
  with a lamb, and so on and so on.
• 1:27:29
  But none.
• 1:27:29
  And, and, and maybe that's it again, lion shall lie down with the lamb.
• 1:27:35
  I, I think that was what was fundamentally driving CS Lewis.
• 1:27:39
  That idea comes out of World War I, which is everyone tries to kill everybody.
• 1:27:46
  And now let's get back to Lion with the Lamb and let's, but
• 1:27:49
  specifically going back to pagan imagery and mythology, you, you know.
• 1:27:57
  SEIUs is in there, Baus is in there.
• 1:28:00
  You know, all these pagan dairies are in there, and yet there's no, and, and, and
• 1:28:09
  Christ is a lion and there's no separation in CS Lewis's mind about that Christmas.
• 1:28:18
  And the other one is Tolkien.
• 1:28:19
  So Tolkien, I was gonna say Tolkien and the, and the
• 1:28:22
  trees, the wisdom of the trees.
• 1:28:24
  He, he goes through World War I, the same thing.
• 1:28:27
  Yep.
• 1:28:27
  And what they both also describe in their when the villains are trying to, you know,
• 1:28:33
  whether it's so, and Mann cutting down Fon or the white witch, you know, turning
• 1:28:42
  everything into stone concrete, you know.
• 1:28:46
  Yeah.
• 1:28:46
  What they were seeing, of course.
• 1:28:49
  pre-World War I was industrialization of the countryside.
• 1:28:53
  And then they were seeing the absolute devastation of, of nature.
• 1:28:59
  They were in these French forests that just got absolutely destroyed.
• 1:29:03
  But then were resurrected later.
• 1:29:05
  They're, they're back now.
• 1:29:07
  And then they came out of this and they wrote these books.
• 1:29:11
  Yeah.
• 1:29:11
  Which are deeply Christian books with ELs and wizards and thorns and things.
• 1:29:17
  And so, so I guess it's interesting, I I, I guess it is there hiding in
• 1:29:21
  plain sight this this environmental movement within the church.
• 1:29:26
  Yeah.
• 1:29:28
  Are are you all gonna bring us back to Mr.
• 1:29:32
  Nus and, and, and, and Tom Bombadil?
• 1:29:36
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:29:37
  No, I, I think I think I'm gonna try to do it through, through
• 1:29:40
  nature excursions with children.
• 1:29:43
  I think I'm gonna do it with a recasting of the horses having a vocation.
• 1:29:47
  Yeah.
• 1:29:48
  I think that's the way that I'm, I'm imagining moving forward in this
• 1:29:52
  conversation and, and through my own how I consume and, and how I,
• 1:29:58
  'cause we have to consume, I mean, everything consumes or you die, you
• 1:30:01
  have to consume, but how consume
• 1:30:02
  Rupert Isaacson: consuming as being part of nature.
• 1:30:04
  It's just how we do it,
• 1:30:05
  Ben Connor: right?
• 1:30:06
  Yeah.
• 1:30:06
  I mean, one of the most yeah.
• 1:30:08
  Soil is, is death and life.
• 1:30:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:30:12
  At the same time.
• 1:30:13
  And so how, how do I, how do I engage the world in a, in a
• 1:30:17
  faithful way that doesn't, that, that contributes to the flourishing
• 1:30:22
  of all creatures and, and land.
• 1:30:24
  And that's a challenge.
• 1:30:26
  It's a challenge with where you get your clothes and what you eat and
• 1:30:29
  Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
• 1:30:30
  Mm.
• 1:30:31
  It is
• 1:30:31
  Ben Connor: even, even how you, how you take care of your pond, you know,
• 1:30:35
  all those, all those are challenging.
• 1:30:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:30:36
  What you feed your horse.
• 1:30:37
  Absolutely.
• 1:30:38
  Let alone feed your horse.
• 1:30:39
  Feed now.
• 1:30:42
  Okay.
• 1:30:44
  I would like to see like forest schools.
• 1:30:49
  I would like to see forest churches.
• 1:30:53
  Are we gonna go back to sacred groves?
• 1:30:54
  Can we go back to Sacred Groves?
• 1:30:57
  Ben Connor: So that is Victoria Loz, L-O-O-R-Z.
• 1:31:02
  Victoria Loz.
• 1:31:03
  She wrote
• 1:31:05
  Rupert Isaacson: L-O-O-R-Z.
• 1:31:06
  Yep,
• 1:31:07
  Ben Connor: that is right.
• 1:31:07
  She wrote a book called Church of the Wild.
• 1:31:10
  Church
• 1:31:11
  Rupert Isaacson: of the Wild.
• 1:31:12
  Ben Connor: Church of the Wild.
• 1:31:13
  And she was a, she was a minister for years working inside the church.
• 1:31:18
  And then she realized that, all the things we've talked
• 1:31:21
  about were a challenge for her.
• 1:31:23
  So she started having outdoor church services and now there's a whole network
• 1:31:27
  in the United States of, of wild churches.
• 1:31:30
  There's a wild church network.
• 1:31:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Wild church network.
• 1:31:34
  Ben Connor: So in just about every, and she even has almost like a, a wild
• 1:31:38
  church, church of the Wild Seminary, almost like she has trainings you
• 1:31:42
  can do and they'll be reading you know, Thomas Berry and let's see,
• 1:31:47
  Farland Lane, the great conversation.
• 1:31:50
  And they'll read
• 1:31:52
  Rupert Isaacson: Shanette.
• 1:31:52
  I've just Googled it.
• 1:31:54
  Ben Connor: Oh, you found her?
• 1:31:55
  Yeah.
• 1:31:55
  Yeah.
• 1:31:56
  Rupert Isaacson: She just founder.
• 1:31:58
  Ben Connor: Yeah, so I, I've had a couple conversations with her.
• 1:32:00
  She's doing really creative work on that.
• 1:32:02
  Again, it's outside of the mainstream of Christianity, but I
• 1:32:06
  think it's starting to have some
• 1:32:07
  Rupert Isaacson: popping up all over the land, like wild
• 1:32:09
  mushrooms after a spring rain.
• 1:32:11
  Wild churches, wild church communities are responding to a call from deep
• 1:32:15
  within to change the way we relate to the natural world, moving from a collection
• 1:32:21
  of objects to a communion of subjects.
• 1:32:24
  Thomas Barry.
• 1:32:26
  There you go.
• 1:32:26
  See,
• 1:32:28
  Ben Connor: there's the conversation.
• 1:32:29
  So in this
• 1:32:29
  Rupert Isaacson: stage of mass extinctions as, wow, wow, wow.
• 1:32:32
  Okay.
• 1:32:32
  It's all there.
• 1:32:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:34
  So why didn't I know about this?
• 1:32:35
  I'm throwing a little tantrum now.
• 1:32:37
  Nah, nah, nah.
• 1:32:39
  This is my tantrum.
• 1:32:40
  Why?
• 1:32:40
  No, I, I've, I've been living in Texas for, you know, 20 plus years.
• 1:32:44
  Why has no one told me about this?
• 1:32:47
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:32:48
  I, I, I have no idea.
• 1:32:49
  I can't tell you that, but I'm glad we're having a conversation.
• 1:32:52
  How did you find out about
• 1:32:52
  Rupert Isaacson: it?
• 1:32:53
  That, what, what was the before and the after of you discovering this
• 1:32:57
  nature movement Within the church?
• 1:32:59
  Hmm.
• 1:33:01
  Or within Christianity.
• 1:33:02
  Let's not even say the church.
• 1:33:03
  Let's say we think Christianity.
• 1:33:05
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:33:05
  I think growing up there were some things around stewardship.
• 1:33:09
  There were some bible study sort of things around stewardship in the nineties,
• 1:33:14
  but none of 'em were really gripping.
• 1:33:17
  It wasn't until I.
• 1:33:21
  I think it was related to doing research for this grant, maybe.
• 1:33:26
  No, it was, you know what, it was my relationship with horses.
• 1:33:29
  It was through Melissa when I was hanging out with horses.
• 1:33:33
  And of course I'm always thinking theologically and I thought,
• 1:33:36
  who's really written about this?
• 1:33:38
  And I couldn't find anything directly about that.
• 1:33:41
  But I found the larger conversation, which was theology of animals and
• 1:33:46
  biolog and, and eco theologians and these sorts of things.
• 1:33:50
  So a lot of it actually comes out of our
• 1:33:52
  Rupert Isaacson: wives, basically.
• 1:33:53
  Yeah,
• 1:33:54
  Ben Connor: a lot of it.
• 1:33:55
  So there's, there's a conversation strand that's connected to process, philosophy
• 1:34:01
  and process theology, which comes out of Alfred North Whitehead's work.
• 1:34:06
  And Charles Hartshorn work is the idea.
• 1:34:10
  It's basically a different way of thinking about how the world's put together.
• 1:34:14
  That they're that you, you aren't just a body, but you're a collection of actual
• 1:34:19
  es that are all working together as sort of a different structure to the world that
• 1:34:23
  had them make some creative theological moves to take creation more se seriously
• 1:34:30
  so that we are in fact part of creation and not set apart of it as a lot of the
• 1:34:35
  inherited theology spoke, so that was called process theology, and there's some
• 1:34:41
  really creative work on embodiment and bodies that comes out of process theology.
• 1:34:47
  So that, that was one area that got me thinking about that.
• 1:34:50
  And the other was of course, disability.
• 1:34:53
  Disability and disability studies.
• 1:34:55
  Since people with.
• 1:34:57
  Disabilities are often cast as less than human.
• 1:35:00
  It made people in disability studies say were treated similarly
• 1:35:04
  to animals, and then some theology developed around that as well.
• 1:35:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
• 1:35:11
  Ben Connor: But it's recent for me.
• 1:35:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Were you always Christian?
• 1:35:15
  Were you always a believer?
• 1:35:16
  Did you, did you reject it at some point?
• 1:35:19
  Do you have your punk rock band days?
• 1:35:22
  Like what, just quickly, what's your, your bio, how did you evolve?
• 1:35:28
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:35:29
  Yeah.
• 1:35:29
  I, I mean, I was the kid whose parents made 'em go to church when I was young
• 1:35:33
  and I'd sneak outta church and play in the woods by church and show up
• 1:35:37
  at the end of the church with leaves in my hair and dirt on my knees and.
• 1:35:40
  They say, where were you?
• 1:35:41
  I was like, oh, I was at the youth group or whatever.
• 1:35:44
  When I had the chance to sort of make more decisions that Christianity I was
• 1:35:50
  experiencing wasn't very compelling to me.
• 1:35:53
  And so I thought it's, it's, I would just try to do what made me happy,
• 1:35:59
  but that became very self-interested and wasn't least satisfying either.
• 1:36:04
  And then I finally met some people who lived out their faith in, in
• 1:36:10
  a way that I felt was authentic.
• 1:36:12
  Rupert Isaacson: How old were you at that point?
• 1:36:14
  Ben Connor: I was 19.
• 1:36:15
  So two things happened at that time.
• 1:36:17
  Well, probably three things.
• 1:36:18
  So I was studying architecture and realized I didn't like architecture,
• 1:36:23
  so I was having a vocational crisis.
• 1:36:26
  My dad got cancer and was gonna die really soon, so I took a
• 1:36:29
  year off to take care of him.
• 1:36:31
  He ended up only living in another four months.
• 1:36:33
  He had a massive brain tumor.
• 1:36:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:36:35
  Ben Connor: I wanted to know more about the Bible from somebody I felt like
• 1:36:38
  really knew it and wasn't manipulating it.
• 1:36:40
  And the person who most fit, that was a quadriplegic man who I'd meet with once
• 1:36:47
  a week, who would take me through the Bible and, you know, I'd have to flip
• 1:36:51
  him over and I'd have to put a cough drop in his mouth and I'd put the drink up.
• 1:36:55
  So this idea of service, the idea that people with disabilities have
• 1:36:59
  things to offer, tho, those things were there at the beginning of my
• 1:37:05
  owning my Christianity, I suppose.
• 1:37:07
  And then I started volunteering for a youth organization because I thought
• 1:37:13
  if someone had told me this when I was a kid in this way, I would've
• 1:37:17
  probably been more interested.
• 1:37:19
  So I was doing that.
• 1:37:21
  And then for the disability part, really that was with our son.
• 1:37:25
  So this was, I.
• 1:37:27
  I was getting ready to go to Princeton Theological Seminary to do a doctorate
• 1:37:32
  in basically mission acumen history of religion, which that's not worth
• 1:37:37
  continuing to talk about, but that was my focus Right before I went, my
• 1:37:42
  son had a seizure and we found out he had had a stroke at birth and was
• 1:37:46
  missing about a third of his brain.
• 1:37:49
  So that taught me to teach him differently and I found that
• 1:37:53
  classroom wasn't the best place.
• 1:37:54
  This is not un unlike your story.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah.
• 1:37:57
  Yours was the best place was have him on the back of a horse.
• 1:38:00
  Mine was, have him outside bouncing on a trampoline or scooting outside
• 1:38:04
  that he needed that in order to focus.
• 1:38:07
  So he, he listened to Homer while he was bouncing on a trampoline and I
• 1:38:11
  would read things to him while he was.
• 1:38:14
  Moving out outside.
• 1:38:16
  So outside became really important way for me to connect with my son.
• 1:38:20
  We got him into mountain biking.
• 1:38:22
  We'd spend a whole lot of time outside and then that, that needed
• 1:38:26
  to be more integrated with the faith.
• 1:38:28
  That seemed to be, you go to church, you go inside the church,
• 1:38:31
  you do spiritual stuff, and then you go out into the world where it
• 1:38:35
  doesn't necessarily apply, you know?
• 1:38:39
  And so I needed more integrated faith.
• 1:38:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Where did it go with your son?
• 1:38:46
  Quickly?
• 1:38:46
  What was the trajectory?
• 1:38:49
  Ben Connor: Yeah, so, so the trajectory for me, he won't, I'm sure he won't
• 1:38:52
  mind me saying this, but he had he had sensory integration issues, visual
• 1:38:59
  tracking issues visual range issues.
• 1:39:03
  What's that called?
• 1:39:04
  Peripheral vision issues, right?
• 1:39:06
  A lot of markers of being on the autism spectrum, but never a clear diagnosis
• 1:39:11
  because so many different things going on.
• 1:39:14
  We homeschooled him because school was a nightmare for him, but he really wanted
• 1:39:18
  to go to high school with his friends.
• 1:39:20
  So we got him to the point where he could, he barely made it through high school.
• 1:39:25
  At, at the end of it, he got in trouble for some drugs because the drugs, he
• 1:39:30
  used to self-medicate and sort of figure out who he was because he had social
• 1:39:34
  integration sort of challenges as well.
• 1:39:38
  That was a big move for him coming through that.
• 1:39:42
  Actually when I, when I picked him out from jail, I said, the first thing
• 1:39:46
  you're gonna hear me say is God loves you no matter what you do or say.
• 1:39:49
  And I love you no matter what you do or say, and we're gonna
• 1:39:53
  get this through this together.
• 1:39:56
  And the second thing I said was not as, not as nice.
• 1:40:00
  It was he sort of gave me some pushback and I said, I could have left you to
• 1:40:04
  be in the jail to be somebody else's bitch, but for the next week, you're
• 1:40:08
  gonna be mine and you're gonna get your hair cut and do exactly what I say.
• 1:40:13
  So yeah, I was dealing with the tension myself.
• 1:40:16
  Indeed.
• 1:40:16
  But the good news is he, he worked hard, had an aptitude for computers,
• 1:40:21
  put himself through a computer coding school, and now he's making more money
• 1:40:24
  than I am and living in Grand Rapids and is just a delightful, he is always
• 1:40:29
  been a delightful, wonderful kid.
• 1:40:31
  But now we relate on a different level as he's an adult who did, did he ever
• 1:40:36
  Rupert Isaacson: regrow that part of his brain that had been lost or, no?
• 1:40:40
  He is, he is made other connections.
• 1:40:42
  Right.
• 1:40:42
  The, the brain just made up for it.
• 1:40:44
  Ben Connor: Yeah, he's, he's a Wow.
• 1:40:46
  He's always been I'd say he's, he's.
• 1:40:49
  My other kids wouldn't mind me saying that Tommy's the smartest of my kids.
• 1:40:53
  I think he's smarter than me.
• 1:40:55
  As, as well in terms of his, he, he just has a remarkable intellect.
• 1:41:00
  He just schooling doesn't know what to do with someone who Yeah, sure.
• 1:41:04
  Who learns in nonlinear Well,
• 1:41:06
  Rupert Isaacson: but also what you did, of course, was you created
• 1:41:09
  all that neuroplasticity by getting 'em out in nature, moving,
• 1:41:15
  Ben Connor: yeah.
• 1:41:15
  Rupert Isaacson: BDNF, kinji cells, all of that stuff, which,
• 1:41:19
  Ben Connor: yeah, and yeah.
• 1:41:20
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:41:20
  And in the process I learned about universal design and learning without
• 1:41:24
  knowing there was such a thing.
• 1:41:25
  Got it.
• 1:41:25
  So when I found this, this really, he
• 1:41:26
  Rupert Isaacson: was really your theological teacher.
• 1:41:29
  Ben Connor: Absolutely.
• 1:41:29
  He was my teacher for theological education.
• 1:41:32
  So if you take a course with me at the seminary, it's gonna be nothing
• 1:41:36
  like a typical academic course.
• 1:41:38
  That's very
• 1:41:39
  Rupert Isaacson: interesting.
• 1:41:40
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:41:40
  So for example in a youth ministry class, I'm gonna have you.
• 1:41:45
  Learn about adolescents from social scientists and then
• 1:41:49
  create artwork that expresses the feeling of being an adolescent.
• 1:41:55
  I'm gonna have you come into class and I'm gonna put out games, and
• 1:41:58
  I'm gonna have you start playing the games and you're not gonna know why.
• 1:42:02
  And then after half an hour, I'm gonna tell you to switch games
• 1:42:04
  with someone else, and then you're gonna have to play that game.
• 1:42:07
  And then I'm gonna cut you off after 10 minutes and I'm gonna
• 1:42:10
  say, okay, let's talk about this.
• 1:42:12
  Who were the leaders who was uncomfortable with this kind of exercise?
• 1:42:15
  Who thought at the beginning, Hey, this is a learning exercise.
• 1:42:18
  What are we trying to learn?
• 1:42:19
  Who just enjoyed it?
• 1:42:20
  Who is competitive, who is collaborative?
• 1:42:23
  So I wanted them to learn about their own learning style so they can de.
• 1:42:27
  Destigmatize other learning styles and relativize their own learning styles.
• 1:42:31
  And so universal design and learning for me made a whole lot of sense.
• 1:42:35
  And it's informed, the way that I teach, it informs the way we run our center.
• 1:42:39
  So we're gonna have a symposium on disability and ministry the second
• 1:42:43
  Saturday in July, all this stuff, ministry website, we'll have a symposium.
• 1:42:49
  And the first half hour of it is an example of universal design
• 1:42:53
  and learning and worship that's led by people with disabilities.
• 1:43:00
  Rupert Isaacson: We're gonna have to do a second podcast.
• 1:43:03
  Ben Connor: Okay.
• 1:43:04
  Rupert Isaacson: So, okay.
• 1:43:05
  We
• 1:43:07
  Ben Connor: haven't even gotten into the bodybuilding.
• 1:43:08
  Rupert Isaacson: I know.
• 1:43:09
  I'm trying to marshal my questions here.
• 1:43:11
  We we're approaching the two hour mark and we are definitely gonna have to All right.
• 1:43:14
  Listeners.
• 1:43:15
  I promise you we're gonna get Ben Ben back.
• 1:43:17
  In fact, maybe we'll get Ben and Melissa back together as well because Melissa,
• 1:43:21
  his wife who runs Renew Therapeutic riding in Holland, Michigan is on his.
• 1:43:26
  I've just done a, a fascinating interview with her on, over on
• 1:43:31
  equine Assisted World, but I think, I think we need both of you guys on
• 1:43:34
  to continue this conversation here.
• 1:43:38
  Alright so here's another quick question 'cause we're approaching
• 1:43:43
  the two hour mark and you know, I think we've blown everybody's brains.
• 1:43:50
  So let's give a bit of a pause and then we'll come back and we'll pick
• 1:43:53
  this conversation up in a few weeks.
• 1:43:55
  But with your permission, why Christianity then?
• 1:44:01
  Because we've got.
• 1:44:04
  Plenty of other very good spiritual ways of looking at the world.
• 1:44:07
  You've got, you know, Buddhism, it's a good one.
• 1:44:09
  We've got Mystic Traditions within Islam.
• 1:44:12
  We've got Mystic Traditions within Judaism.
• 1:44:14
  We've got, you know, lots of good stuff.
• 1:44:16
  We, you know, shamanism and, and so on and so on.
• 1:44:20
  All of which was existing before Christianity.
• 1:44:22
  And so that, that's number one.
• 1:44:25
  Why, why then put a label on it.
• 1:44:29
  Why, why, why Christianity?
• 1:44:32
  And then the second question is, 'cause I could perhaps anticipate the answer
• 1:44:39
  of why Christianity might be to say, ah, but Rupert, it's because it's a,
• 1:44:45
  a religion predicated upon compassion.
• 1:44:47
  Although, of course Buddhism is too, but hey, but Christianity does not practice
• 1:44:54
  compassion in its mainstream, right?
• 1:44:58
  So, and why not?
• 1:45:00
  So, okay, so why Christianity?
• 1:45:02
  And then why is the Christ message the one message within
• 1:45:07
  Christianity that's ignored?
• 1:45:09
  Ben Connor: For sure.
• 1:45:10
  Sure.
• 1:45:10
  That's all fair.
• 1:45:11
  That's all.
• 1:45:11
  So on the one hand, it has to do with who, who you interact with in terms
• 1:45:16
  of how you receive the Christ message.
• 1:45:17
  Doubt.
• 1:45:18
  No, I, I, I spend most of my day with a lot of people who I believe
• 1:45:22
  are living faithful faithfully.
• 1:45:24
  Rupert Isaacson: DD, d, but you know what I'm saying.
• 1:45:26
  Ben Connor: Absolutely.
• 1:45:26
  I know what you're saying.
• 1:45:27
  I, I accept the critique with open arms.
• 1:45:31
  More question,
• 1:45:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Chris.
• 1:45:32
  Yeah.
• 1:45:33
  But
• 1:45:33
  Ben Connor: why, why Christianity?
• 1:45:35
  So I would say fundamentally then I'm responding to the call.
• 1:45:41
  Oh, follow me by Jesus, who I believe is still alive.
• 1:45:45
  I don't think he's hanging up in heaven watching cops waiting to come
• 1:45:48
  back again when the world's destroyed.
• 1:45:50
  I believe that Jesus is actively working in the world.
• 1:45:56
  Now.
• 1:45:56
  There's obviously then why is there still suffering?
• 1:45:59
  Why is all this?
• 1:46:00
  Because we live in a, in a created world with contingencies a log can
• 1:46:04
  be used to build a house or it can fall on your head and kill you.
• 1:46:07
  Water can be drunk to, to, to nourish you or it can drown you.
• 1:46:12
  Right.
• 1:46:13
  And so we have, we have choice and opportunities in that, but I'm compelled.
• 1:46:17
  Rupert Isaacson: But the world is older than Christianity.
• 1:46:19
  Right.
• 1:46:19
  And we've had, we've had Oh, absolutely.
• 1:46:21
  Christlike figures, whether it's the Buddha or Zorro Asta or
• 1:46:27
  ones we've forgotten, you know?
• 1:46:29
  Right.
• 1:46:30
  Ben Connor: So it has
• 1:46:30
  Rupert Isaacson: to be
• 1:46:30
  Ben Connor: a personal response
• 1:46:33
  Rupert Isaacson: then.
• 1:46:33
  Right.
• 1:46:34
  Ben Connor: And so it's
• 1:46:34
  Rupert Isaacson: just, it's just a, a, a, a heart feeling.
• 1:46:37
  Ben Connor: Yeah.
• 1:46:37
  It's a, it's a, it's a personal response to, and that's good enough for
• 1:46:41
  Rupert Isaacson: me.
• 1:46:41
  Yeah,
• 1:46:42
  Ben Connor: yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:43
  And, and so, but, but my Christianity doesn't take me out
• 1:46:46
  of dialogue with other religions.
• 1:46:48
  My Christianity is, it's, it's really, it's a, I, Christianity is such a
• 1:46:53
  compromise word, especially in United States where it means, you know, you're
• 1:46:57
  a Republican who voted for, for Trump, who doesn't seem to, and again, this
• 1:47:02
  is political, anybody who's listening, but the legislation that's coming
• 1:47:05
  out doesn't seem to care for the most marginalized people who I imagine Jesus
• 1:47:10
  would be spending most of the time with as he would be pushing against empire.
• 1:47:15
  And so that's the Christian
• 1:47:17
  Rupert Isaacson: telling people to go out and buy automatic rifles at Walmart.
• 1:47:19
  Yeah,
• 1:47:20
  Ben Connor: I imagine.
• 1:47:21
  Not.
• 1:47:21
  So, so, so then that's, that's the Christ that I follow.
• 1:47:26
  Christianity as a, as a religion has its problems.
• 1:47:30
  And since I'm a one who follows Christ and have been.
• 1:47:35
  In the US within a certain tradition, then I speak out of that tradition either as I
• 1:47:40
  critique it as one within the tradition.
• 1:47:41
  Okay.
• 1:47:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:47:43
  Okay.
• 1:47:45
  And, okay.
• 1:47:46
  Why is the Christ message the one message within Christianity
• 1:47:52
  in America that is marginalized?
• 1:47:55
  The Christ message is marginalized within Christianity.
• 1:47:59
  Why?
• 1:48:01
  Ben Connor: I think because Christianity in large part is too enamored with power.
• 1:48:07
  Rupert Isaacson: It just, yeah.
• 1:48:08
  Just became another power thing.
• 1:48:09
  Yeah,
• 1:48:10
  Ben Connor: yeah.
• 1:48:10
  Yeah.
• 1:48:11
  Fair enough.
• 1:48:11
  And it's, yeah, it's too costly.
• 1:48:13
  It's too costly to follow Christ.
• 1:48:15
  It's too costly to do, to do his Jesus.
• 1:48:17
  It's a pain in the ass.
• 1:48:18
  It's, yeah.
• 1:48:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:48:19
  Yeah.
• 1:48:21
  Interestingly, as we were talking, Ileana, my wife, my boss came in and slipped me
• 1:48:28
  this little bit of paper, the new Pope.
• 1:48:33
  Oh, I saw
• 1:48:33
  Ben Connor: we had that white smoke.
• 1:48:34
  I didn't know who it is.
• 1:48:35
  Yeah.
• 1:48:35
  Yes.
• 1:48:36
  It's the American
• 1:48:36
  Rupert Isaacson: dude.
• 1:48:38
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:40
  First Is that the first American pope?
• 1:48:41
  I think it is, right?
• 1:48:43
  Ben Connor: Yeah, I think so.
• 1:48:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
• 1:48:46
  Know anything about him?
• 1:48:48
  Ben Connor: Not at all.
• 1:48:49
  Rupert Isaacson: No, not at, I,
• 1:48:50
  Ben Connor: not at all.
• 1:48:51
  I really really appreciate the, the last pope.
• 1:48:54
  You know, I think, I think he was doing some important things.
• 1:48:57
  Of course he was a controversial pope because I think he was
• 1:49:00
  trying to do the very things that Jesus would call him to do, but
• 1:49:03
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:49:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:49:06
  Alright, so we can agree that if you want to live in Christ, it might be
• 1:49:13
  a good idea not to cut that forest down and pave the entire planet.
• 1:49:19
  I've really enjoyed this conversation, Ben.
• 1:49:22
  Can we, can we delve deeper?
• 1:49:23
  I've got more questions than I think.
• 1:49:25
  And actually, listeners, listeners, listeners, especially American
• 1:49:29
  listeners, please send us your questions.
• 1:49:33
  Put, put them in the comments below.
• 1:49:35
  Even if you hated this, like tell us why.
• 1:49:38
  Don't just go but just, you know, en engage us, engage the dialogue but
• 1:49:44
  come up with a bunch of questions because Ben's a rare breed and he's
• 1:49:48
  turned us onto some other rare breeds.
• 1:49:51
  And we're gonna continue this conversation, so please
• 1:49:53
  give us your questions.
• 1:49:55
  Ben, how do people find you and how do people find your books?
• 1:49:59
  Ben Connor: Well, if you go to the Center for Disability and Ministry,
• 1:50:03
  if you just type in Center for Disability and Ministry, I don't
• 1:50:05
  believe there's another one then
• 1:50:07
  Rupert Isaacson: spelt in the American way.
• 1:50:09
  ER?
• 1:50:09
  Yes.
• 1:50:10
  The wrong in the American One, center for Disability.
• 1:50:14
  Ben Connor: And Ministry.
• 1:50:15
  Rupert Isaacson: And Ministry.
• 1:50:17
  Ben Connor: Mm-hmm.
• 1:50:17
  And it's at, if, if you have a hard time finding it, you can find it on the
• 1:50:21
  Western Theological Seminary website.
• 1:50:24
  That's where I work.
• 1:50:25
  Western Theological,
• 1:50:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Western Theological
• 1:50:31
  Seminary.
• 1:50:32
  Ben Connor: Yep.
• 1:50:32
  And all my contact information is right there on the center website
• 1:50:37
  as well as a link to our podcast.
• 1:50:39
  Yep.
• 1:50:40
  They can, they can contact me that way.
• 1:50:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:50:43
  And books, publications.
• 1:50:44
  What, what, what should people look at if they want to know about your work?
• 1:50:47
  So that will be
• 1:50:48
  Ben Connor: on the, that'll be on the, that'll be on my faculty website as well.
• 1:50:52
  But three books published at, at this point, one called Practicing
• 1:50:56
  Witness, which is the very thing we were talking about that, that it's
• 1:51:00
  less about what you say about your, your Christian practice in the world.
• 1:51:04
  The second book is called Amplifying Our Witness.
• 1:51:07
  That's about youth ministry and disability.
• 1:51:10
  So it's, right.
• 1:51:11
  And that's the only book on youth ministry and disability at this point.
• 1:51:14
  Wow.
• 1:51:15
  And then disabling mission, enabling witness puts.
• 1:51:19
  Mission studies in conversation with disability studies to see what comes out.
• 1:51:24
  The other side, two books I'm working on right now.
• 1:51:28
  I also edit a book series that's co-branded between my center
• 1:51:32
  and InterVarsity Press Academic.
• 1:51:34
  So I have a book I'm doing with John Swinton of Aberdeen called Missing
• 1:51:39
  Voices in Theology, where we engage people who use augmented speech or who
• 1:51:45
  have lost their sort of platform because of an onset disability or a diagnosis.
• 1:51:51
  And we are setting up sort of why does this happen and then we're
• 1:51:55
  putting their voices in there.
• 1:51:56
  Rupert Isaacson: John Swinton, university of Aberdeen.
• 1:51:59
  Ben Connor: Brilliant guy.
• 1:52:00
  And then I'm doing a book with Melissa Harmony with horses, a
• 1:52:04
  Theology of Equine Assisted Services.
• 1:52:06
  And I'm building on the work of like, the Dorrs and what's your name?
• 1:52:11
  You're right there.
• 1:52:12
  Ray Hunt.
• 1:52:13
  Yeah.
• 1:52:13
  How do you forget the name?
• 1:52:14
  Ray Hunt?
• 1:52:15
  I don't know.
• 1:52:15
  Yeah.
• 1:52:16
  But that whole revolution in horsemanship and the way they were talking about
• 1:52:18
  harmony, how do we jive that with Christian theology and how does that
• 1:52:24
  inform the way you run a center?
• 1:52:26
  And then I have a project I'm doing on bodybuilding and theology.
• 1:52:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:52:30
  We haven't, we haven't gotten to that one yet.
• 1:52:33
  Yeah.
• 1:52:33
  When you, when you meet Ben, he's a big dude.
• 1:52:35
  So there's, there's a whole other conversation there which is
• 1:52:39
  interesting to me because most people use bodybuilding around narcissism.
• 1:52:43
  And so it's very interesting to meet someone who's into it, who's coming
• 1:52:48
  from a whole other point of view.
• 1:52:49
  But I think.
• 1:52:51
  I'm just gonna leave that as a little hook for you listeners
• 1:52:55
  for the next conversation.
• 1:52:56
  Okay.
• 1:52:57
  This has been really educational for me, so I appreciate it, Ben.
• 1:53:02
  Will you come on again in a few weeks and we can talk more?
• 1:53:05
  Ben Connor: Absolutely.
• 1:53:06
  I'd love to come on with Melissa.
• 1:53:07
  That would be a lot of fun.
• 1:53:08
  Yeah,
• 1:53:08
  Rupert Isaacson: let's do it.
• 1:53:09
  Let's do it.
• 1:53:09
  Thank you.
• 1:53:10
  And then we'll, we'll try to get some of these, these others on Victoria laws and
• 1:53:13
  Ben Connor: the Reinst.
• 1:53:14
  STRs.
• 1:53:15
  Yeah.
• 1:53:15
  Ron and Deb Reinst Straw would be a great 'cause.
• 1:53:18
  He is also involved with an organization called a Rocha, A-R-O-C-H-A.
• 1:53:23
  You can look up that online, but that's a, that's a eco theology
• 1:53:27
  sort of a organization as well.
• 1:53:29
  Okay.
• 1:53:30
  Okay.
• 1:53:30
  Okay.
• 1:53:31
  Rupert Isaacson: And I think, I know lots of people within our sort of
• 1:53:33
  horse boy world who are Christians who are also looking for something.
• 1:53:40
  I guess actually I should be paying homage.
• 1:53:42
  So actually I want to dedicate this, I want to dedicate this
• 1:53:45
  episode to my cousin Frank Taylor.
• 1:53:49
  My cousin Frank Taylor died a few years ago.
• 1:53:53
  He was the man who really pioneered the whole concept of agroforestry dry land,
• 1:53:59
  agroforestry, if you've ever picked up a Devil's Claw product for arthritis.
• 1:54:05
  He was the guy that pioneered Devil's Claw as a, as a viable commercial
• 1:54:11
  product out of the deserts of Botswana.
• 1:54:14
  He worked for many, many years with.
• 1:54:17
  Marginalized hunter gatherer communities who'd been displaced by
• 1:54:21
  more aggressive cattle owning cultures and basically enslaved by them.
• 1:54:25
  And he helped them to plant wild gardens of their wild plants that they had.
• 1:54:30
  Sun Bushman who they, where they'd always gathered these things medicinally.
• 1:54:34
  And he helped them to find the most drought resistant
• 1:54:38
  phenotypes and then market those.
• 1:54:41
  And he had a whole, and, and he broke that international market open.
• 1:54:45
  He died from a scorpion sting aged about almost 90, about three or four years ago.
• 1:54:52
  Inspiration.
• 1:54:53
  Very Christian man, even though he was hanging out very
• 1:54:57
  much in that shamanic world.
• 1:55:00
  And I remember when I first met him as a young adult, I was 18,
• 1:55:08
  19, and I had just hitchhiked.
• 1:55:12
  Across Zimbabwe and Botswana.
• 1:55:15
  And he picked me up and he said to me, his first question when I got in the
• 1:55:22
  truck with him was, so tell me, Rupert, where are you in your spiritual odyssey?
• 1:55:27
  And I didn't know what to tell him.
• 1:55:29
  And then I said, well, actually, I had a dream, not the, not so
• 1:55:33
  long ago that I met the devil.
• 1:55:35
  And the devil was playing the violin.
• 1:55:39
  And when I heard this music, I felt this great sense of sadness that I was losing
• 1:55:45
  something, but I can't explain the dream.
• 1:55:48
  What do you think?
• 1:55:49
  And he said, oh yes.
• 1:55:50
  Well,
• 1:55:52
  they, I hates to leave, lose a good teammate.
• 1:55:55
  So, you know, you can expect some resistance.
• 1:55:58
  Yeah.
• 1:55:59
  If you're, if you're looking at other, other directions.
• 1:56:01
  And he really mentored me.
• 1:56:05
  Through a lot of my early work with the son Bushman and that human rights work
• 1:56:11
  that I did, and I always marveled at the fact that he could have this really
• 1:56:15
  sort of evangelical faith without, in any way, trying to convert the people
• 1:56:23
  that he worked with or four really.
• 1:56:29
  And he lived his life totally in service to nature in, in this interesting way.
• 1:56:33
  So yeah, I think I'd like to dedicate this episode to Frank Taylor
• 1:56:36
  from Felt Products Research and Development in Botswana who, yeah.
• 1:56:42
  Yeah.
• 1:56:43
  Yeah.
• 1:56:43
  So I guess I, I guess there have been threads here that I just haven't seen.
• 1:56:48
  Ben Connor: Mm-hmm.
• 1:56:49
  Well, thanks.
• 1:56:49
  Thank you.
• 1:56:50
  Thanks for sharing that.
• 1:56:51
  That means a lot.
• 1:56:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for having
• 1:56:54
  Ben Connor: me on.
• 1:56:54
  It's always a, always a fun to speak to you.
• 1:56:57
  I, I want to hear you talking more next time.
• 1:57:00
  We have a conversation though, so,
• 1:57:02
  Rupert Isaacson: People have interviewed me, you know.
• 1:57:04
  Yeah.
• 1:57:04
  That, that's all out there.
• 1:57:06
  But I mean, not with
• 1:57:08
  Ben Connor: my questions though, right?
• 1:57:09
  Rupert Isaacson: It's all about
• 1:57:10
  Ben Connor: the
• 1:57:10
  Rupert Isaacson: questions.
• 1:57:11
  Ben Connor: Right.
• 1:57:11
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:57:11
  Well, that's fine.
• 1:57:12
  We, we'll trade questions there.
• 1:57:13
  What we'll do on the next one is you, you, you write down your questions.
• 1:57:17
  I'll write down mine and we'll have a question off.
• 1:57:20
  Sounds good.
• 1:57:22
  With Melissa as the as the moderator, as the one who will actually
• 1:57:26
  come out with the truth probably.
• 1:57:27
  Oh, there you go.
• 1:57:28
  Okay.
• 1:57:28
  I, I, I, I'm honored.
• 1:57:30
  Thank you so much, Ben, for coming on.
• 1:57:33
  I'll see you in a few weeks with Melissa.
• 1:57:35
  Sounds great.
• 1:57:35
  Thanks for having me.
• 1:57:36
  All right, my friend.
• 1:57:37
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• 1:57:41
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• 1:57:55
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