Latest / Future Christian / Is Church History Repeating Itself? A Bold Look with Elesha Coffman

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Is Church History Repeating Itself? A Bold Look with Elesha Coffman · Future Christian

0:07
>> Loren Richmond: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast, your
0:10
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in the
0:13
21st century. At the Future Christian
0:16
podcast, we talk to pastors,
0:18
authors, and other faith leaders for helpful advice and
0:21
practical wisdom to help you and your community of
0:24
faith walk boldly into the future.
0:27
Whether you're a pastor, church leader, or a
0:30
passionate member of your faith community, this podcast
0:33
is designed to challenge, inspire, and
0:35
equip you with the tools you need for impactful
0:38
ministry. And now for a little bit about the guest for
0:41
this episode.
0:43
>> Martha Tatarnic: Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. Today,
0:46
Loren Richmond Junior welcomes Doctor
0:49
Elesha Coffman to the show. Doctor
0:52
Coffman is an accomplished historian and
0:55
associate professor at Baylor University,
0:57
specializing in the study of american religious
1:00
history. She earned her PhD in
1:03
american religious history from Duke University
1:06
and has contributed significantly to the
1:09
field through her extensive research and
1:11
publications. Coffman is the author
1:14
of the Christian Century and the rise of the
1:17
Protestant Mainline, as well as
1:20
turning points in american church history, which
1:23
we'll be talking about today. Her work
1:26
examines the intersections of media,
1:28
religion, and culture, highlighting the role
1:31
of religious publications in shaping public
1:34
discourse. Kaufman's scholarly
1:37
pursuits focus on how religious groups
1:40
engage with broader societal issues,
1:42
offering valuable insights into the evolving
1:45
landscape of american faith and
1:48
identity. And of course, a
1:51
reminder. Before we start today's conversation,
1:54
please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast,
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2:20
>> Loren: Alright. Welcome to the Future Christian podcast. This is Loren Richmond,
2:23
Junior, and today I am pleased to be welcoming
2:25
Doctor Elesha Coffman So thank you so much
2:28
for being here. Welcome to the show.
2:30
>> Elesha: Thanks so much for the invitation. I'm looking forward to this.
2:33
>> Loren: Yeah. Anything else you'd like to share with our listeners? Just about yourself.
2:36
>> Elesha: Oh, wow. I, uh, grew up in central Indiana.
2:39
Um, big basketball fan, as one is growing
2:42
up in central Indiana and then graduate school at Duke.
2:47
Um, I don't know what. I was a journalist, uh, between
2:50
undergrad and grad school, so I've been both a journalist and a
2:52
historian.
2:53
>> Loren: Okay, so Duke, you're duke fans. That means, like, half
2:56
the listenership probably hates you, and then m
2:59
the other ones love, uh, you,
3:02
right?
3:02
>> Elesha: Yes. Yes. Duke. People. People either love Duke or
3:05
love to hate Duke. And we'll take both.
3:09
>> Loren: What do you think about the new coach then? I guess the question.
3:12
>> Elesha: Johnny Shire. So this is wild to me. He
3:15
was a student when I was there in grad school,
3:18
and I think he was a religion minor,
3:21
so I would see him around the building, my PhDs in
3:23
religion. So I still remember seeing him in the
3:26
hallways and always being shocked. He's so tall.
3:29
They're all so tall. Even if you're not the tallest member
3:32
of a, uh, d one basketball, they're still so tall.
3:35
>> Loren: Right, right. All right, all right. Well, that's a
3:38
little interesting tidbit here. Um, before we get into
3:41
Duke basketball, because I could just, I had a guest, we
3:43
chatted New York Knicks basketball. Um,
3:46
before we got into the conversation. We'll save our listeners from that
3:49
share if you would just come out. Your faith journey. What's that looked like in
3:52
the past and what that looks like today?
3:55
>> Elesha: Yeah, I was raised evangelical,
3:58
sort of non denominational or
4:01
denominational. Nomad mhm, born
4:03
in Washington state and then grew up in central
4:06
Indiana and went to several different kinds of churches
4:09
growing up. And then went to Wheaton College,
4:12
also evangelical, non denominational, pan
4:15
denominational. And then I worked at
4:17
Christianity today briefly. So again, we're
4:20
solidly in the evangelical world. Grad
4:23
school at Duke. Duke is historically Methodist,
4:26
but, um, the graduate program in religion has all kinds
4:29
of denominations and non christian faiths as
4:32
well, in terms of the student population and what people
4:35
train in. And my first book was
4:38
on the protestant mainline and the christian century. So
4:40
the arch rival to Christianity today, which is
4:43
where I had been a journalist, not at Christianity Today
4:46
magazine, but at the company, at some of their other titles.
4:49
I didn't want to write about evangelicals. I wanted to write
4:52
about something that was adjacent to my own
4:54
experience. And in the process of that
4:57
research and personal church
5:00
experiences, um, have been
5:02
attending more mainline churches since grad
5:05
school. So I currently attend the episcopal church that
5:08
I can walk to from my house here in Waco.
5:11
>> Loren: Awesome, awesome. Thanks for sharing that,
5:14
M. Gosh, I was going to ask something follow up.
5:17
Anyway, how about this?
5:20
Uh, any spiritual practices you find meaningful, you're willing to
5:22
share?
5:24
>> Elesha: So I'm a choral musician,
5:26
um, amateur. I took one semester of voice at
5:29
Wheaton, and I find the
5:32
practice of singing in a group
5:34
singing religious, ah, repertoire.
5:37
Um, that is a spiritual
5:40
practice for me. Um,
5:43
combination of the lyrics and music, the
5:46
experience of singing, particularly in a church
5:49
space, the visuals and
5:52
acoustics of that, but also the togetherness of
5:55
it. So I was one of those people. That
5:57
was one of the things that was really hard about the pandemic was not
6:00
having corporate singing anymore.
6:03
I really, uh, missed that. And I like to listen to it and I
6:06
like to participate in it.
6:08
>> Loren: Yeah, I remember. I was going to ask you. Wheaton.
6:11
I remember hearing a lot about Wheaton when I was a kid. Wheaton, uh,
6:14
was kind of, at least I was told, a very prestigious school
6:17
evangelically. I'm curious still, what's its
6:20
reputation today? Is there similarities to
6:22
Fuller? Which is fuller as kind of, like, quasi mainline, or
6:25
is Wheaton still pretty entrenched in evangelical world?
6:29
>> Elesha: That's an interesting question. I would think of
6:32
Wheaton as still entrenched in
6:35
the evangelical world, but
6:37
american evangelicalism is notoriously
6:40
hard to define or pin down.
6:43
Um, Wheaton is sort of the
6:46
intellectual, leading
6:49
edge of it. Um, Christianity today is right up
6:52
the street. So,
6:55
um, more of a pro education,
6:58
at least somewhat cosmopolitan.
7:00
And unfortunately, the stark
7:03
dividing line now never trumpers.
7:06
Yeah, right. So, um,
7:08
but that's not most of evangelicalism. So they're
7:11
kind of like a, quote unquote, leading institution, but they're also
7:14
kind of out on their own, advocating for
7:17
a tradition that is no longer as
7:20
strong and maybe never was as
7:23
strong. There are comparisons to the christian century and the mainline
7:26
tradition that the christian century
7:29
placed itself as this leading periodical.
7:32
Well, it had a really small, elite
7:34
readership. Was it leading?
7:37
Who were they leading? Or were these people who had
7:40
learned things? A lot of the readers were clergy had
7:43
learned things in seminary. Really
7:45
nuanced, complicated things about the Bible,
7:48
about church history, about,
7:51
um, the potential for better race relations in
7:54
the country. You know, that coming out of
7:56
seminary, and then you get into a congregation and your congregants
7:59
are just sitting there, arms crossed, looking at you like, don't you
8:02
even tell me about advances in biblical studies.
8:05
Don't you even tell me about why white supremacy
8:08
is a bad thing. Um, I think
8:10
evangelicals in the United States
8:13
didn't used to have that experience as
8:16
much. Um, clergy and laity were more on the
8:19
same page. And now the minority
8:21
of evangelical clergy who
8:24
aren't full Trump bandwagon are having some
8:27
of the same experiences that mainline clergy
8:30
had throughout the 20th century, is one way to put it.
8:33
>> Loren: Hmm. Man, I wish we had time to talk about that.
8:36
Yeah, well, we're not here to talk about
8:39
that. Uh, we are here to talk about her book,
8:42
turning points in american church history, how pivotal events
8:44
shaped a nation and a faith. But
8:48
I told, uh, I told Lisha already, like, I want to have her
8:51
back to talk about that first book, but that sounds
8:53
really more, um. I'm officially more motivated to have the
8:56
conversation now. Um, but let's talk.
8:59
If you want to give just a little quick overview about the book.
9:02
We're going to primarily talk in chapter eight, but why don't you for our
9:05
listeners, just talk about the context and overview of the
9:08
book.
9:09
>> Elesha: Sure. Turning points in church
9:12
history was a book that one of my mentors, Mark Noel,
9:15
wrote, uh, over 25 years ago. So that's a
9:18
survey of all of church history acts forward,
9:21
um, in a 1314 chapter
9:24
format. I think he added another chapter for a later. It's
9:27
been in four editions now. It's been in print
9:29
continuously. Took a
9:32
church history class, the first church history class I took, which
9:34
was after undergrad, but when I was editing a
9:37
magazine called Christian History and I needed to know something about
9:40
it, I took it from Mark Noll and he taught that
9:43
class from his turning points book. So that
9:46
was an early exposure that I had both to that book,
9:49
that idea, um, and church history as a whole.
9:52
Then after I did my PhD in
9:55
american religious history and I was teaching,
9:58
I used his book once for a uh, church history
10:01
survey at the undergrad level. And then my
10:04
second teaching job was at a seminary
10:07
in Dubuque and I was the church history person.
10:10
Every fall it was early and medieval church history. Every
10:13
spring I was supposed to teach reformation, modern
10:15
Europe and us church history all in a twelve week
10:18
semester, which is insane. And I
10:21
wanted to get in more american church history at ah, Duke,
10:24
where I had trained in that seminary. It was a three course
10:27
church history sequence. There was one early
10:30
medieval, one reformation in modern Europe,
10:33
and then one whole class on american church history.
10:35
So I was trying to think in this teaching context,
10:38
how do I get the best of the
10:41
content from what used to be a full semester of american church
10:44
history for seminarians into
10:47
the two weeks that I have for american church
10:50
history in my current teaching context?
10:53
And I thought, wouldn't it be great if there was a turning points
10:55
book like Mark Knowles because it covered so
10:58
much content without feeling overwhelming, because
11:01
it focuses on particular events and
11:04
there's enough time at that focus to get a sense.
11:07
This is the geographic context, this is the political
11:10
context, this is a little bit of the personalities of the
11:12
individuals involved. This is what was at stake and
11:15
for whom. Wouldn't it be great if there was a
11:18
turning points book just on american church history? And
11:21
so I talked to the publisher, Baker academic. Uh, are there
11:24
plans for this? Is this going to be a series of. They hadn't
11:27
really thought about it as a series. They didn't have any
11:29
plans. And then after my first book came out, so I was an
11:32
established author, those conversations became well would you be
11:35
willing to write, uh, turning points in american church history
11:38
book? And unfortunately, I've forgotten what your original question
11:41
was, but that was how it came to be. So I
11:44
then called Mark Noel again, said, because he's
11:47
also trained as an americanist, if you were to write
11:50
a, uh, turning points in american church history book,
11:53
which turning points would you focus on? And so then I started
11:56
from the notes from that conversation and then amended the list
11:59
somewhat. The challenge being, okay, I have
12:01
13 chapters. I wanted to go all the way from the defeat of
12:04
the spanish armada in 1588 to the election of
12:07
Ronald Reagan in 1980. What
12:10
dates can I space out on a timeline
12:13
to then imagine somebody in a teaching context, at a
12:16
seminary, in an undergrad institution, or in a church
12:19
adult education or christian formation class?
12:22
So we can do a creditable job of covering
12:25
that sweep of time of different denominations in
12:28
american church history with enough of a focus
12:31
on events to get that sense of what was at stake and for
12:33
whom. Not just do you need to memorize a bunch of names and dates, because
12:36
that's what history is. Because I thought I hated
12:39
history all the way through high school and most of
12:42
undergrad, because I thought it was names and dates and
12:45
memorizing and wars and presidents, and it didn't have anything to do
12:47
with me. Um, so when I
12:50
became a history teacher and writer, I always wanted to
12:53
emphasize, no, there was something at stake and for
12:56
individual people. And this all helps
12:58
explain why the world we inhabit has the
13:01
contours that it does. Everything that we see has a
13:04
history. Let's dig in and try to find out some of
13:07
why what we see is the way it is.
13:10
>> Loren: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. And that's, uh, great to
13:13
my question. I'm curious, like, one of the questions I wanted
13:16
to ask is there honorable
13:19
mentions that you really want to include, but didn't have
13:21
the context, space, whatever, to fit in?
13:25
>> Elesha: Um, Mark Nol's foreword, he mentions a
13:28
couple that he would have put in.
13:30
Um, there's not an american revolution
13:33
chapter. The american revolution in my book comes
13:36
up in the chapter on the founding of the black church
13:39
tradition. That was somewhat
13:41
accidental. That was how the timeline fell. But that was also
13:44
somewhat intentional. A lot of what,
13:47
particularly white Americans think about
13:50
the nation's history and about the impact of
13:53
the revolution and the constitution, well, there's
13:56
all kinds of more freedom. Not so much
13:59
if you were black and enslaved, and
14:02
a lot of enslaved people had sided with the British
14:05
because the British were promising freedom instead. And when the British
14:08
lost, they had to flee the country. It's just a very
14:11
different way of thinking about this founding event
14:14
and remembering what was at stake and for whom really
14:17
varied regionally and
14:19
racially. Uh, Mark Noll also would
14:22
have, um, had more about the Hart cellar
14:25
act. This was the change in immigration law in
14:27
the 1960s. From the
14:30
early 1920s to the mid 1960s, the United
14:33
States pretty well shut its
14:36
borders to immigration. There had been tons of immigration,
14:39
1880s to 1920s. Then there was this
14:42
sort of nativist backlash. We
14:45
shut the borders for a while. There was very little
14:48
immigration, mostly from Europe, and then the
14:51
law changed again in 1965. And initially,
14:54
Americans didn't think it would have that big of an impact.
14:56
Well, it has. There's been so much
14:59
immigration since then from lots of different parts
15:02
of the world, and a lot of immigrants are
15:04
Christians, and they're bringing different christian traditions to
15:07
the United States. And I agreed with them
15:10
that that could have been a turning point, that I could have
15:13
done a lot more with the,
15:16
um, different,
15:19
different christian traditions that have come into the
15:22
United States since 1965. The
15:25
United States is now both the biggest missionary
15:27
sending country and the biggest missionary
15:30
receiving country. A lot of that has to do
15:32
with the changing transnational
15:36
dynamics following, um,
15:39
that change in immigration as well as advances
15:41
in transportation. Right. It's just much easier to get back
15:44
and forth from places, whereas when immigrants
15:47
came in the 1880s, it was really hard to
15:50
get passage to the United States. And once you got here,
15:53
you maybe were never going to go back to the home country.
15:56
So that could have been a turning point. I, um,
15:59
had thought, well, how could I? Because I really wanted
16:02
to talk about, um, a lot of black civil rights
16:05
activism and the Birmingham church bombing in the
16:07
1960s. So part of that was just a
16:10
timeline issue. How could I have a chapter on
16:12
1963 and a chapter on 1965? It
16:15
would just get too bunched up. So I guess those would
16:18
be the two things. Um, and again, they're mentioned by
16:21
him. That would be good contenders. And
16:24
when I taught his church history
16:27
text, turning points in church history, um, in an undergrad
16:30
setting, that was the student's final assignment.
16:33
Pick a turning point. Pick something that could have been a turning point
16:36
and wasn't and not write a full
16:38
fledged chapter on it, but follow the format
16:41
of the book as well as you can and make a case for why that was
16:44
a turning point. Um, and I think that that would be a
16:47
great exercise for anyone who wants to use my book
16:50
in an educational. Just talk about it or as a
16:53
written project, because, yeah, there's always going to be
16:56
other contenders and then just test out
16:58
my framework. Um,
17:01
can you use this framework to make a case for a different
17:04
event as a turning point?
17:07
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. And I got to ask, maybe
17:10
now that we're on this train of thought, like, what any
17:13
events, if you had to pick one event to be a
17:16
turning point post Reagan, like, what would that event
17:19
be? Would it be Covid? Would it be 911?
17:23
Those, um, are two, of course, that come to mind.
17:25
>> Elesha: First, for me, so much
17:27
depends on where we're still going,
17:30
right? In my
17:32
own personal life
17:35
and scholarly career, it was the election of Donald
17:38
Trump in 2016, although you can
17:41
see that very much as
17:44
in the same trajectory as the election of Ronald Reagan.
17:47
And I talk some about that at the end of the last chapter
17:50
of this book, chapter 13. But
17:53
the question remaining for all of us
17:56
is, are we still on that trajectory? Are
17:59
we still on, um,
18:02
almost a collapsing of categories in the
18:05
United States, Christian equals
18:08
conservative, largely, but not exclusively
18:11
white Republican. Or is
18:14
that wave breaking? Um.
18:16
And there's strong social science
18:19
work saying that the rise of the nuns, n o n e
18:22
s people who, Americans who do not affiliate with religion,
18:25
was strongly affected by the,
18:28
um, election of Trump and the
18:30
collapsing of religious and political categories.
18:34
If the United States, which had
18:36
been diverging from the trend in
18:39
Europe of decreasing christian affiliation
18:42
and, um, and membership, like
18:45
throughout the 20th century, Europe got less and less christian, by
18:48
any measure, and the United States pretty
18:51
much bucked that trend. We modernized
18:54
technologically, we had a strong economy, we had a lot in
18:57
common with Europe, but that was different. We had high
18:59
religious adherence, and they didnt. Maybe
19:02
we are now going to be on that
19:05
strongly
19:07
dechristianizing trajectory.
19:09
And if 2016 is an inflection point
19:12
there, then I think you could make that argument. But it remains to be seen
19:15
if thats whats going happen or not.
19:17
>> Loren: Yeah, again, I think you said
19:20
this early on, right? Basically that history, at
19:23
least as I interpreted your answer, like, history is about learning from the past to
19:26
let it inform your present. Because I'm
19:29
just thinking about your point you made about the hart cellar act, about the
19:31
immigration reform and, uh, nativism
19:34
in the past. It, uh, seems like we're kind of getting a replay of that,
19:37
right? With nativist tendencies,
19:40
wanting stricter border controls. And as we'll get into
19:43
here in chapter eight, this is kind of what I'm wanting to talk more
19:46
about, chapter eight. I think in many
19:49
ways, we're seeing that
19:51
struggle, divisiveness play out again.
19:54
So why don't you introduce chapter eight, and then we'll
19:57
kind of dive in a little bit more.
20:01
>> Elesha: Sure. So, in my,
20:04
uh, format, chapter eight is the Civil War chapter.
20:07
I mentioned I didn't have a revolutionary
20:09
war chapter. I do have a civil war chapter, and it's
20:12
specifically a little bit before the civil war,
20:15
1844. And this was when the Methodist church
20:18
split over slavery. Split sectionally, north
20:21
south. Um, the presenting
20:23
event was a question about a bishop
20:26
who was also an enslaver. And
20:29
from the beginning of the Methodist wesleyan tradition,
20:32
John Wesley. John Wesley was notable in his
20:35
day for saying, slavery is wrong.
20:38
It's just wrong. You cannot be a Christian
20:41
and engage in that. And the
20:44
Methodist tradition in the United States from the
20:46
beginning was like, yeah, we are
20:49
following the founder of Methodism. We're not going to have
20:52
slavery. And they changed position
20:55
on that within a matter of months because being
20:58
against enslavement was just really
21:00
unpopular, particularly in the south, where the
21:03
Methodist movement was making a lot of,
21:06
um, experiencing a lot of growth. And so there on
21:09
the ground, the church leaders had to decide,
21:11
well, do we want to be able to
21:14
evangelize white enslavers
21:17
and also other white Americans who didn't
21:19
own slaves, but who were part of that economic system,
21:23
who had those same racial biases, or do we want to
21:26
limit ourselves and say, we're against slavery,
21:28
and so we will be small and wildly
21:32
unpopular? So they chose the path of church
21:35
growth and ended up with a lot of
21:37
enslavers among their members and
21:40
denominational leaders. But there were other members
21:43
of the church who said, we can't sell out on this.
21:45
Yeah, Wesley was against it. As we read the Bible,
21:48
we're against it. Absolute hard. No. That
21:51
becomes, um, a fight within
21:54
the church at their assembly. And, um, a majority
21:57
said this particular bishop, James Osgood.
22:00
Nandra. Nope, you can't be a bishop and an
22:03
enslaver. Um, if you want to keep your slaves, you can't be a bishop
22:05
anymore. And so then some Methodist churches
22:08
split off to the Methodist church south, saying, we will be the
22:11
Methodist church that allows slavery, and then the Methodist church north
22:14
is the one that doesn't. And that's a precursor
22:17
to other sectional divisions that are going to
22:20
come up later. Other protestant denominations
22:23
split, obviously, the political parties, the states
22:25
themselves split.
22:27
>> Loren: And.
22:27
>> Elesha: And this, um, becomes
22:31
debates that are settled on the battlefield, not in
22:33
general assemblies or in the legislator
22:36
legislation.
22:37
>> Loren: Yeah. So on page
22:39
155, you write, and I'm going to summarize here,
22:42
that this issue, slavery
22:45
for some people within church, was, like you said, crystal clear.
22:48
For John Wesley, it was crystal clear. It's morally
22:50
imperative, but struck others as divisive,
22:53
distracting threat to evangelism, m and church
22:56
growth. You quote historian Donald Matthews
22:59
saying, the Methodist church would, uh, have to
23:02
make the choice between purity and popularity.
23:05
So when I first read this chapter, of course,
23:08
what came to mind for me was just the LGBTQ
23:10
division within. Within the last 20
23:13
years, within mainline Protestantism, again, interestingly
23:16
enough, most recently in the Methodist churches of
23:19
what? Like last summer. Right.
23:22
But as you were talking, even then, I thought about
23:25
widening this conversation out to even
23:28
evangelicals in today, or at least again,
23:30
our current context. When we think about
23:33
racism, whether it be racism in, uh,
23:36
evangelical circles or LGBTQ
23:39
affirming in mainline circles, it seems
23:42
like there's the same struggle of, like, do we want to be
23:45
morally pure, or do we want to be, quote
23:47
unquote, focus on church growth and think
23:50
that these are issues that are, again, a
23:53
threat to evangelism?
23:57
>> Elesha: Yes. Um,
24:00
I've come to a couple of
24:02
strong leanings. I won't call them conclusions
24:05
necessarily.
24:08
When I was learning church history, not so much american
24:11
church history, but the early and medieval, the reformation,
24:14
the stuff that I haven't studied as deeply. But when I
24:17
was ta'ing those classes at Duke divinity,
24:20
the big church conflicts of the
24:23
past, um, especially if you're taking these classes from
24:26
historical theologians, are described in terms
24:28
of theology like, they
24:31
split over the Filioquet clause or they
24:34
split over this particular interpretation
24:36
of whether there's real presence in
24:39
the Eucharist as an american
24:42
church historian, where
24:45
the marquee rupture is this one over
24:47
enslavement? Yeah,
24:50
narrowly. If you were to read the documents
24:52
from Methodist church history, this is about a
24:55
church order question and who gets to be a bishop
24:58
and who gets to weigh in on who gets to be a
25:01
bishop. But come on, let's be honest. This is about
25:04
enslavement, this is about economics, and this is about
25:07
racism. And then I started to wonder, I.
25:09
What if all of the church
25:12
splits were actually
25:14
about things with political and economic
25:17
salience that not just a handful of theologians
25:20
arguing in Latin cared about, but affected a lot of
25:22
people? So that's now my suspicion.
25:26
Anytime I'm hearing another church historian talk about
25:29
another church split in a conference or something, I'm always the one
25:32
raising my hand saying, did you consider economic
25:35
reasons? Maybe you're. Maybe you're totally
25:37
right. Maybe it was just about this latin stuff,
25:40
but I'm suspicious.
25:44
Um, the other thing I would say about
25:48
what seemed to be the problem, what was really the problem?
25:51
Why is this a problem for churches? In
25:54
a later chapter in the book, the one on the
25:56
16th Street Baptist church bombing in Birmingham,
25:59
1963. So this is a civil,
26:02
big civil rights chapter. I really
26:05
wanted to include long quotations from,
26:08
um, Martin Luther King junior s letter from a Birmingham
26:10
jail where he calls out the white moderates,
26:13
that the white moderates are always more devoted
26:16
to order than justice.
26:19
Um, here I'm quoting, who prefers a
26:21
negative piece, which is the absence of tension, to a
26:24
positive peace, which is the presence of justice,
26:27
who constantly says, I agree with you in the goal you seek,
26:30
but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action,
26:33
who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable
26:36
for another man's freedom.
26:39
That is the interpretation that I then
26:42
use when I'm, um, looking at the documents from
26:45
the mid 18 hundreds and considering
26:48
this civil war stuff. Yes,
26:50
churchmen are going to talk about evangelism and
26:53
church growth and purity, whatever they
26:56
say. I hear them as being just white
26:59
moderates who just want to keep things the way they are
27:02
because that's working fine for them.
27:06
>> Loren: Yeah, that's interesting to think about. So, uh,
27:08
a page over, basically, you write about
27:11
how these divisive or in the context
27:14
of 1840s, this issue over slavery,
27:17
became a navigable
27:19
impasse. I'm not going to read the full quote here,
27:22
um, but again, to bring it
27:25
modern day, current day, again in
27:28
mainline context, whether it was the
27:30
Episcopalians, the Presbyterians,
27:33
the Methodists. Again, we were talking about my denomination,
27:36
christian church, disciples of Christ were so small that
27:39
we sort of had many split. It was
27:42
more splintering and individual
27:45
congregations peeling off.
27:48
That's certainly happening. It just became
27:51
a navigable impasse.
27:53
Um, and then I think in some
27:56
ways, you can correct me if you disagree, but I think
27:59
we're seeing that in evangelicalism, right, where it's becoming
28:03
a navigable impasse. And I'm wondering. I was going to ask this question
28:05
later, but I want to
28:08
ask. I remember talking, uh, a couple years ago
28:11
with a guy I worked with as a chaplain who
28:14
was PCUSA, but certainly on the
28:16
more conservative side of the PC USA.
28:20
And somehow we got talking about this issue of
28:23
lgbt inclusion, and he said, it's not about lgbt
28:26
inclusion, it's something. I can't remember the words he used exactly, but it was basically
28:29
about, like, this is about biblical authority or something to
28:31
that sense. And you write
28:34
about in 165, uh,
28:37
on 165, I don't know if I can find the full quote here, but
28:40
basically this idea that, like,
28:43
for slavery, there was
28:46
this difference of interpretation of scripture really
28:49
became a big issue of
28:53
the pro slavery, a literal reading of
28:56
people had slaves in the Bible and so on.
28:59
And Paul didn't specifically condemn what
29:02
onesimus. Right. His philemon.
29:04
Um, whatever. Um, folks can
29:07
correct me which one I'm remembering. Uh, and then, of
29:10
course, on the other side,
29:13
the anti slavery people like, well, read the scope of
29:16
scripture, read the broad themes of
29:18
scripture, and that same thing plays out
29:21
today, especially, I think, within
29:23
lgbt inclusion. This idea of, oh, well,
29:27
chapter and verse, even though obviously there's been some work
29:30
done, like I'm thinking on my bookshelf here from
29:33
Matthew Vines and then
29:36
Martin, um, Dale Martin. Two ones that come to mind is folks
29:39
who've tried to look at the text and critique the text and say, hey, that's
29:42
not actually what the text text says. But then again,
29:46
even if I think from my understanding, if folks are not
29:48
going to take that vein, they'll tell you, hey, look at the broad scope of
29:51
scripture. The Bible
29:54
and God's gospel leans toward inclusivity.
29:57
So again, it gets into the same kind of
30:00
dichotomy. So I'm just curious, how does
30:03
that. Is there any way past that
30:05
impasse of that? What I think is
30:08
kind of fundamental, like how we interpret scripture and how we
30:10
approach the Bible?
30:15
>> Elesha: I don't know that there is, um. I'm
30:18
sorry if that was not the answer that you wanted.
30:21
>> Loren: No, I think it's honest. I was hoping I was
30:24
wrong. Hoping there was a way through.
30:26
>> Elesha: Yeah. The civil
30:29
war. This is another chapter where I'm leaning
30:32
heavily on the work of Mark Noel and one
30:35
of his many, many books. That's one of my favorites,
30:38
is the. The civil war as a theological crisis.
30:40
>> Loren: Yeah.
30:41
>> Elesha: So something I read early on in grad school, and it was
30:44
really eye opening for me
30:46
that among other crises of the civil
30:49
war, it was a theological crisis for american
30:51
Protestants, because american
30:54
Protestants in, uh, um, also a
30:57
scottish common sense realism for
31:00
philosophical and theological and sort
31:02
of political cultural reasons.
31:05
Americans, uh, tend to have
31:08
this fundamental sense that the Bible says what it means
31:11
and means what it says.
31:12
>> Loren: Mhm.
31:14
>> Elesha: Okay, well, so then what do you do
31:16
when the Bible seems to be meaning
31:19
something really different to different people?
31:22
>> Loren: Mhm.
31:23
>> Elesha: There's no way past that. We don't have
31:26
councils. We don't have a pope. We don't
31:29
really look back to Creedde. Um,
31:33
there is no other authority to
31:36
bring in. And the two
31:39
big schools of interpretation that, um, they weren't
31:42
brand new at the middle of the 19th
31:44
century, but they really came into focus, and they tended to
31:47
be regional. Well, we're just
31:50
taking literal verses, even if there's just one or two verses.
31:53
Whatever seems to speak
31:56
translation in the way that we look at it,
31:58
whatever seems to speak most directly to the issue.
32:01
That's the thing. That's the interpretive key that everything else
32:04
has to fall in line behind. Whereas the
32:07
more northern and then would be liberal and eventually
32:10
mainline tradition is, as you were saying,
32:13
let's look at the scope of this. Let's
32:16
historicize it. Maybe what was true in the ancient
32:19
world is no longer true now, either
32:22
because the context has changed or because we don't want it to
32:24
be. We don't want to still be living in a
32:27
society ordered the same way as the first
32:30
century roman empire.
32:33
And you're absolutely right that those
32:36
same big approaches. Are we looking at specific
32:39
verses or are we looking at big context?
32:43
Are we trying to replicate what we believe was true about
32:46
the past versus. Are we
32:49
engaged in a process
32:51
where at some points, well, say, yeah, this isn't the
32:54
way that christians did it before. And that's not just, okay,
32:57
that's better. Um, those
33:00
are really different orientations to the text,
33:03
to the church, to society, to
33:06
what's going on in history, to what the role
33:09
of either humans as co creators
33:12
with God versus humans who have to
33:15
recognize God's sovereignty above all, like,
33:18
it affects everything. And
33:21
some denominations find ways to accommodate
33:24
both orientations. But they're
33:27
so different in so many
33:30
ways that as the united Methodist church
33:33
has learned again,
33:35
um, eventually
33:38
it seems to break.
33:40
>> Loren: Yeah, I was looking back at my stack of books for somebody who.
33:43
I can't remember his first name. Um,
33:47
let's see if I can find it. I'm, uh, not. I may
33:50
be getting this wrong. No, that's not it.
33:55
Gupta, tell her story. Do you remember that first name of that author?
33:58
I can't remember.
33:59
>> Elesha: I'm afraid I don't.
34:00
>> Loren: Okay. I'm, um, just thinking of somebody
34:03
who, um, tended
34:06
to take a broader scope,
34:09
I think is entrenched, is firmly, I think,
34:12
identifies within the evangelical tradition, and
34:15
kind of takes a broader perspective towards, for
34:18
instance, women's roles in, um,
34:21
clergy and pastoral leadership. But, yeah,
34:24
I think that's certainly a hard
34:26
balance to get. And I'm not sure
34:29
there's a lot of people who
34:32
seem to be threading that needle. Well.
34:38
>> Elesha: I first
34:40
discovered this difference in orientation.
34:43
Um, it was by accident. It was my undergrad New
34:46
Testament class at Eton, and
34:49
it was a female professor who ended up not
34:52
staying very long. Uh, I believe in part because she
34:54
was working on ordination and I could tell from
34:57
my fellow students that they thought it was just wrong that a
35:00
woman would be ordained. She got a lot of friction from the
35:03
student. And
35:06
I was not personally in favor of women's ordination then either, because
35:09
of the way that I'd been raised. But aside from that, we had an assignment in
35:12
the class. Um, was paul for or against
35:15
slavery?
35:16
>> Loren: Mhm.
35:16
>> Elesha: And we were supposed to be looking at the text, and this is like
35:19
a freshman sophomore level class.
35:23
I. Now, we had no business
35:26
doing that, but that was the assignment. And my
35:28
group, like, we were looking at the verses like, well,
35:31
he's for it. And,
35:35
like, I think you were allowed to make the case either
35:38
way. And the exercise was about making the case. But it was
35:41
clear after my group's presentation that
35:44
according, like, in the professor's eyes, we had gotten it wrong.
35:46
I was like, but that's what it says. And it
35:49
took years more study for me to understand why.
35:53
Why we. Why my group came to the conclusion that it
35:56
did, why somebody else would see that it's
35:59
wrong. Um, but there really
36:02
isn't a way to be both on enslavement.
36:06
Not politically, not economically, um, not
36:08
biblically either. Yes or
36:11
no?
36:12
>> Loren: Yeah, I want to give. I found the title,
36:14
uh, again, still could be saying this wrong. Naj k.
36:17
Gupta. Tell her story. How women
36:20
led, taught, administered in the elder church.
36:22
Um, but let's. Let's get. So I think
36:25
where this is all interesting, for me, at least, is where
36:28
I. Some further down in the chapter you
36:31
write about, um, or I guess it's. Harry
36:34
Stout makes the point about
36:36
clergy being virtually cheerleaders,
36:40
and then churches become
36:42
ideological bunkers. And I
36:45
guess I want to preface this very
36:48
cautiously or carefully by saying, I
36:51
definitely understand in some context where people need to
36:54
be in a. In a context that's safe
36:57
for them. Like, you talk about your female professor,
36:59
right? I can totally understand why
37:02
she would want to leave. I wouldn't want to be somewhere where folks were
37:05
hostile against what I was looking for. So
37:08
I definitely want to respect that, especially for
37:11
lgbt folks, for people, uh, of color. I don't want
37:14
to make assumptions that folks need to just
37:17
tough it out. Um, that's certainly unfair for me to
37:20
ask. I think it does.
37:23
There also is, like a.
37:26
The dynamic of that fully played out is, like you say, like,
37:30
churches become ideological bunkers. And certainly we saw that right
37:32
during COVID where there are all these churches growing,
37:35
because they're basically like, no masks, no Covid
37:38
shots. Um, and,
37:42
ah, we're still seeing this. I think today of some
37:45
clergy becoming a cheerleaders. Like,
37:48
certainly we could caricature someone like Robert Jeffers
37:51
as that. And I think in my own
37:54
mainline tradition, I don't want to get in trouble, but
37:57
sometimes clergy can behave
38:00
in that same vein to some extent. So
38:04
what are your thoughts there?
38:06
>> Elesha: Oh, my goodness. Ah, yeah,
38:09
Covid, that was a tough
38:12
one.
38:12
Um,
38:16
many times in my life, I've been glad that I was not a
38:19
clergy person trying to lead a church. Um,
38:22
that's just a really hard kind
38:25
of job. Um,
38:28
you're accountable to people in ways that
38:31
there's some similarities to being a professor, and then there's some ways
38:34
that it's really different.
38:36
Um, I can make my students very
38:39
angry, and they can roast me
38:42
on evaluations. I have tenure.
38:46
Um, they can't oust me in the
38:49
way that a, ah, rebellion can oust a
38:52
pastor or can. And, like, I have
38:55
students for a semester, not multi generation
38:58
lifetime. Just the stakes are so
39:00
different. Um, on the reference to Harry
39:03
Stout's book, um, that was upon the altar of the.
39:06
A moral history of the civil war that came out when I was in grad
39:09
school. School. And my first
39:12
impression of it was like, he's overstating
39:15
this. Like, he talked about how
39:18
the civil war, as it
39:21
went on, as the casualties mounted,
39:24
that there was just this, um, total
39:27
war mentality that seizes both
39:30
sides. They're raising the stakes
39:32
cosmically. Um, and they just. They
39:35
can't get out of this frenzy of
39:38
supporting their side at all costs.
39:40
And I thought, that's a little histrionic, isn't it?
39:44
No, m. No, now I've seen it more.
39:47
He wrote that in 2006, and things have happened
39:50
since then. Um, it is a
39:53
perpetual danger, not just in the church, but
39:55
in humanity. Right? Like,
39:58
one of the things this, uh, is going to get, like, very
40:01
high level. But one of the things I wonder, as a
40:04
church historian who's now also written a book about an anthropologist,
40:07
Margaret Mead, some of the,
40:10
um, intractable conflicts and,
40:13
um, tensions and fights that we see in the
40:16
church. I wonder,
40:19
is this a church thing or is this a human thing?
40:22
Is it somehow especially religious
40:25
or christian to
40:28
have this frenzied pitch of
40:31
everything is at stake in this world and the next? Is
40:34
it. Is it some kind of church dysfunction that
40:37
is causing that level of social
40:39
dysfunction? Or in what way is it just.
40:43
No. Humans are like that.
40:45
Um, humans divide the world into
40:48
us and them on various
40:50
axes. And once there's
40:53
a conflict that, especially your life or
40:56
your son's life is on the line.
40:59
Um, a sort of rational,
41:02
detached. I can see both sides of it. Part of the
41:05
brain shuts off, right? And the
41:08
it's my way, must win
41:11
kicks in. Um, my own
41:14
sort of way of understanding that the world was also
41:17
heavily influenced by reading some Reinhold Niebuhr in
41:20
grad school, moral man in immoral society.
41:24
Um, so there's a certain.
41:27
I don't know, I have a certain fatalism
41:30
almost about, like, humans gonna human.
41:32
Um. It is human nature to
41:36
pick fights and raise stakes
41:38
and become unable to hear the
41:41
other side. So then, as a church historian, one of the
41:44
things I'm wondering is, or I'm looking for is, where
41:47
is Christianity as institutional, church,
41:50
as doctrine, as text, as practice,
41:54
either helping humans move out of
41:57
this very self centered way of being
42:00
in the world? Is religion
42:03
helping or making it worse? Yeah, if it is
42:06
essentially human to prefer yourself, your
42:08
kin, your people, like you, people on your side,
42:11
prefer that to the other. If that is just
42:14
fundamentally human, is religion making that better or
42:17
worse? And definitely in the civil war, it made it
42:20
worse.
42:21
>> Loren: Are there any examples of. To use the opposite, are there any
42:24
examples you can think of that might apply for day of religion making it
42:27
better?
42:34
>> Elesha: I think that,
42:36
um, there's certainly
42:39
some work on global
42:42
exchanges, um,
42:46
an increase in a cosmopolitan outlook.
42:49
And I don't just mean, like, fancy New York or
42:52
something, but like David Holinger and my, uh,
42:55
graduate advisor, Grant Wacker, writing on the
42:57
missionary impulse, how often missionaries
43:00
would go from the west, particularly, um, these are
43:03
historians of the US thinking they had all the
43:06
answers and they would go to some other place and
43:09
realize, wow, these
43:12
other people have really different ideas and
43:14
practices than I do, and they're not all wrong,
43:17
and maybe some of mine are wrong.
43:20
And, um, developing more of
43:23
a sense of,
43:27
there's many ways to live in the world, there's many ways to live
43:30
a good life, there's many ways to be faithful in the world.
43:33
The missionary enterprise doesn't always work that way. Sometimes
43:36
there's just a lot of cultural imperialism, but sometimes
43:38
there is an openness there.
43:42
Um, churches that have
43:45
navigated LGBTQ
43:48
inclusion, um, not just
43:51
retrenched away from it. There
43:54
is a lot of growth in a lot of those. I don't mean
43:57
numerical growth, sadly, but personal, um,
44:00
theological growth.
44:03
Um,
44:05
I am someone who has changed
44:09
my views on the. Almost everything
44:11
from my childhood to now for a. For a variety
44:14
of reasons. Still a Christian, but attending a very different kind
44:17
of church.
44:19
Um, spaces where
44:21
people have changed are inspiring
44:24
to me. And you can find those. Those congregations.
44:27
And often it is. Maybe it wasn't
44:30
LGBTQ, maybe it was a, ah,
44:33
church, a, um, building program or
44:35
a new ministry or a
44:38
new minister or something that required
44:41
people together
44:44
to work through change,
44:48
um, and recognize that their way is not the only way. And maybe
44:51
there are things, aspects of their own
44:54
belief and identity that they can give
44:56
on. Um, that's really
44:59
inspiring to find and be in those spaces.
45:02
>> Loren: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.
45:05
Something else, I think, that stuck out to me from
45:08
this chapter. You write that
45:11
the raptures, or, excuse me, the ruptures of the 19th,
45:14
mid 19th century permanently disfigured both the
45:16
nation and protestant theology.
45:20
Uh, again, depending on how much you want to share on
45:22
this. But I'm curious, like, what are some examples of that? Certainly,
45:25
then, and I'm curious, like, how are those ruptures still
45:28
playing out or still evidence today?
45:33
>> Elesha: Yeah, certainly. Um, within
45:36
churches and theology, one of the questions in
45:39
american religious history in my field is mostly 20th
45:41
century. Like the fundamentalist modernist.
45:44
>> Loren: Sure, sure.
45:45
>> Elesha: And that gets pegged usually later, 19, uh,
45:48
twenties. I do have a chapter on the scopes
45:51
trial, but along with Mark
45:53
Knoll, uh, civil war is a theological crisis. I
45:56
really do date it earlier than that, because at the
45:59
fundamentalist modernist crisis, it's
46:02
still some people wanting to take certain
46:05
Bible verses literally versus other people
46:07
being more open to insights from outside
46:10
Christianity, um, science and
46:13
linguistics, and seeing the big picture
46:16
and being okay with change in
46:19
society. Um, so
46:22
again, like we keep saying, it's
46:25
such a difference in orientation.
46:27
Um, and probably
46:30
there are scholars whose expertise is in an earlier chronological
46:33
period. He would tell me, no, it wasn't even the civil war. It was before that,
46:36
that the. Let's look at the big picture versus. Let's look at the
46:39
specific versus stuff. Um, but
46:42
as far back as I know how to look as a 20th century
46:44
person, um, that's sort of what I meant by the
46:47
permanent rupture. We still can't figure
46:49
out. Maybe there isn't a way to go from one side of that
46:52
divide to the other. Uh,
46:54
politically. I mean, look at an
46:57
electoral map now. Um, the
47:00
political. The party alignment is different. I
47:03
mean, the Republicans were the party of Lincoln. They
47:06
were the party of Reconstruction and black liberation
47:09
once upon a time. Every time I tell my
47:11
undergraduate students that, it just blows their
47:13
minds. And then I have to explain the southern strategy
47:16
and why. Basically there was this big group of
47:19
white racists who were
47:22
electorally up for grabs, and they were
47:25
Democrats for a really long time. And now they're not.
47:27
And are they still fighting about enslavement? Not
47:30
exactly. Are they still flying confederate flags?
47:33
>> Loren: Yes, they are. Yeah.
47:38
>> Elesha: So we're past it somewhat and
47:41
also not at all.
47:43
>> Loren: Okay. I was intrigued by this when your chapter. I'm getting off
47:46
topic here a little bit, but your chapter on that,
47:48
um, the
47:50
controversy, the scopes controversy in seminary, I
47:53
wrote a paper on, um, what's his name?
47:56
Who's the. Who's the guy I'm
47:59
blanking on who was, uh, against
48:02
the evolution?
48:06
>> Elesha: Oh, lots of them.
48:07
>> Loren: Now, who was the lead. Who's the lead lawyer?
48:09
>> Elesha: William Jennings Bryan.
48:10
>> Loren: Thank you. Yeah, I told you not, uh, today,
48:13
Brian. I wrote like a pro William Jennings Bryan
48:16
paper. So I
48:18
actually was kind of sympathetic toward him
48:21
and think he gets unfairly painted now as this really
48:24
concerted. I guess Bob Jones has a William Jennings
48:27
Bryan house or
48:30
building or something. I'm like, he's not really fits in
48:34
modern fundamental christianity. I don't think he was kind
48:37
of a populist. He was against social
48:40
darwinism, at least as I understood in my fair.
48:43
In that assessment.
48:45
>> Elesha: He was a super complicated guy. Right. He had a long
48:48
political career. He was never as successful as he wanted to be in
48:51
a political career. Um, yeah, some of the
48:54
things that he, um, championed
48:56
about voting rights and some foreign policy
48:59
stuff. Yeah. He would seem. Workers, uh,
49:02
rights, we would now code as
49:04
progressive. And then there were other positions
49:07
that he took that were. And he
49:10
wasn't always as stridently anti
49:13
evolution. And even, even to the end, he
49:15
wasn't as stridently anti evolution. I include
49:18
here that, um, supposedly
49:21
the quote that he said, the rock of ages is more important than the
49:24
age of rocks. That's from a movie. That's not from him.
49:27
He wasn't that closed minded. He became,
49:31
both to his enemies and to his fans,
49:34
caricatured that way. He was always more nuanced than
49:37
that. Um, but this is also
49:40
very early. 19 hundreds
49:43
period. Um, and Bryan's career
49:46
spanned the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
49:48
DL Moody would be another figure who.
49:52
Some of the things that he did, especially in terms of
49:54
urban ministry, we would now think of
49:57
as progressive. Other things he
50:00
did, um, about biblical interpretation and
50:02
evangelism, we would code as very
50:05
conservative. It was not as clear then
50:08
as it would become. I believe it
50:11
was the first cover the magazine, the
50:14
christian century, the sort of flagship of the protestant main line that we were
50:17
chatting about a little bit before. Started as a disciples of
50:20
Christ publication, the Christian Oracle, when they
50:23
renamed it the christian century. I believe it
50:26
was the very first cover with that new name had a
50:29
picture of DL Moody.
50:30
>> Loren: Interesting.
50:30
>> Elesha: He was still. He could be, he was a Chicago
50:33
figure and the magazine was published in Chicago and he
50:36
was of national importance, so that was part of it. But these figures
50:39
could not be pegged as neatly boxed, as
50:42
neatly, um, at that period as they would
50:45
be after the scopes trial or
50:48
after some of the battles of the neo
50:51
evangelicals in the 1940s, or after civil
50:53
rights in the sixties, or now after
50:56
LGBTQ.
51:00
As with the political parties and the southern strategy that I
51:02
mentioned, categories can be somewhat in flux.
51:05
People can move in and out of them or have
51:08
historically stances that fit within and stances
51:11
that did not.
51:12
>> Loren: Yeah, yeah. Um, we need to
51:15
move on here for the sake of time. But I'm thinking like
51:18
your, I'm thinking about your point from the
51:20
beginning about theological issues
51:23
often being like cultural or economic issues. I'm
51:26
like, I guess that James Carville. It is the economy.
51:29
Stupid quote might ring a bell
51:31
here.
51:34
>> Elesha: Political power.
51:35
>> Loren: Yeah.
51:36
>> Elesha: Um, there, there. I don't
51:39
think have ever been. I, uh,
51:42
have to asterisk this because part of this is a
51:45
bias from looking back from our own historical
51:48
period. I find it hard to believe that there were people in
51:51
the past that cared that much about
51:54
a clause in a creed or a.
51:57
Exactly how was the real presence in the Eucharist? Like, I
52:00
just have a hard time understanding how
52:02
a large number of people could ever have understood
52:05
enough about that to have cared enough about
52:08
it, to have fought a war or split a
52:11
church or killed a bishop or something like,
52:14
it seems to me there must have been something
52:17
else going on, but
52:20
maybe things were really more important.
52:23
Like, the past is a foreign country is a
52:26
quote that we often use. I shouldnt assume that whats
52:29
important to me and people around me was necessarily what was
52:31
most important to people in the past.
52:34
Theres a book that I encountered in,
52:37
um, not graduate school. It was sent to me for review at
52:40
Christian History magazine, which we didnt actually have a book review
52:43
section, but I would sometimes review books in the
52:46
email newsletter because I was expected to produce a newsletter
52:49
every week and I had to come up with something to
52:51
say. Tia Cul Baba's the byzantine
52:54
lists. So this is about a field that
52:57
I have no deep training in at all, and I certainly didn't
53:00
then before I had done any graduate work.
53:02
But she was looking at these lists, the errors of the Latins.
53:05
These were lists generated in the byzantine eastern church
53:08
sort of crusades era. And
53:11
one of the things that she pointed out was that the
53:14
things you would expect to be
53:17
problems between east and west at this
53:19
period. If you look at the documents
53:22
from the eastern folks, what they were actually
53:25
mad about, or at least what they said on these documents they were mad
53:28
about, is not what you would expect at all.
53:31
It was like they used the wrong bread in the
53:34
Eucharist and they grow beards and
53:37
they celebrate Easter on the wrong day, and
53:39
they sometimes kiss the rings of their.
53:42
It wasn't just the Filioque clause. It also
53:45
wasn't like there are geopolitical
53:48
problems and they are waging war on us. It was
53:51
beards. And so that.
53:54
That always serves as a check for me when
53:57
I'm assuming people in the past, like,
54:00
surely I can understand what they cared about because humans
54:03
gonna human right or maybe not. Or maybe
54:06
they really did care about things. Like things were super
54:08
important to them that seem completely trivial to me
54:11
now. Um, I at least need
54:14
to admit that possibility when I'm trying to
54:17
figure out what was going on in the past.
54:18
>> Loren: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you
54:21
sharing that wisdom there, and, uh, I wish we had more
54:24
time because I feel like I could keep engaging you here for a
54:27
while with this, but the book is turning points in
54:30
american church history. How pivotal events shaped a nation and a
54:33
faith. Is there anything else you want to say about the book before we take a
54:36
break?
54:38
>> Elesha: Anything. One other thing I took from Mark Noel.
54:41
In the format, every chapter begins with a hymn text and
54:44
every chapter ends with a prayer. And
54:47
I hope people enjoy those, because sometimes those took me as long
54:50
to find as the whole rest of the chapter.
54:52
>> Loren: That's right. I was gonna ask you, like, what would,
54:56
uh. Yeah, that was actually one of my favorite things about the book. I was like, what
54:59
would be, like, the. The praise and worship
55:01
song that you would take for, like, if we had to write like
55:04
a. If you'd write a chapter on, like, 2016.
55:07
Like, I feel like. Who. How do you say his name?
55:10
Sean Fuch. Like, I feel
55:13
like he would. One of his songs would have to make it in there,
55:16
right?
55:16
>> Elesha: Like, I. Yeah, I don't really do praise
55:19
and worship, so I wouldn't know. But, uh, also,
55:22
fun fact. One reason that I didn't use a.
55:24
>> Loren: Praise and way maker, that would be the song.
55:26
>> Elesha: I would say, um, those
55:29
are copyrighted. And I could.
55:30
>> Loren: That's true. That is true. Which again, is.
55:32
>> Elesha: So I had. I had to dig out, um, God of
55:35
our fathers for chapter 13 because I can't remember now. I had
55:38
another song that was more in the praise and worship vein,
55:40
and I was denied permission to use it.
55:42
>> Loren: Interesting. Come on, people,
55:45
play along. It's important for the book.
55:48
Well, let's take a break and we'll come back with some closing
55:51
questions.
55:55
All right, we're back with doctor Elesha Coffman So
55:58
thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate the
56:01
conversation. I do recommend the book. I really nerded out
56:03
reading this, and I thought chapter eight
56:06
especially was really kind of chilling in many
56:09
ways, but also enlightening. Um,
56:12
a lot of great chapters, I thought, like the one you
56:15
mentioned or one about the,
56:17
um, American Bible society
56:19
founded. What was that chapter?
56:21
>> Elesha: Um, I think that's seven.
56:23
>> Loren: The, uh, christian empire, essentially the benevolent empire. I thought that
56:26
was a really interesting chapter, too. So a lot of good stuff in the
56:29
book. Some m closing questions we'll go through
56:32
here again, you can take these as seriously or not as you'd like
56:35
to if you're pope for a day.
56:37
Anything, anything, uh, you want to do there.
56:41
>> Elesha: So just to try to change the catholic church or are we
56:44
imagining that the pope is actually a unified global
56:47
church?
56:47
>> Loren: Hey, this is. You're the pope. You can imagine it.
56:50
Uh, how you want. My co host, Martha
56:53
Tarnick, she said this to a guest recently. If you could wave
56:56
a magic wanda or the papal
56:58
scepter, I suppose, what would you accomplish?
57:02
>> Elesha: Yeah, this would, um,
57:04
women's ordination.
57:05
>> Loren: Okay.
57:06
>> Elesha: That's one of many things that I changed my own mind
57:09
about. And for reasons, um,
57:12
both academic and personal, I went
57:14
from thinking that I would not attend a
57:17
church that had a female pastor to only attending a
57:20
church with female pastoral staff. It's that important
57:23
to me.
57:23
>> Loren: Okay, good. Uh, theologian or historical
57:26
christian figure you'd want to meet or bring back to life?
57:30
>> Elesha: This one is maybe off the
57:33
grid. Uh, Dorothy sayers,
57:36
um, she did some theological and
57:39
translation work. She has some really interesting writing
57:42
about, um, women
57:45
are women. Human, I think, is one of her essays.
57:47
Um, she was one of the inklings with Cs
57:50
Lewis and Tolkien. She's kind of at the edge of that
57:53
group. So british writer, but also the best
57:56
writer of sort of golden age of
57:59
mystery books, the lord Peter Wimsy books.
58:02
I love all of her mystery books. So I would just
58:05
like to talk to her about everything.
58:06
>> Loren: Okay, good. Um, what do you
58:09
think? I guess. I guess maybe this.
58:12
I'm going to cheat here, because I can. If
58:15
you had to, like, write again our current time
58:18
and context as a chapter, like, what would you title
58:21
that chapter? Putting your really on the
58:24
spot here.
58:28
>> Elesha: Yeah.
58:29
Um, it might be
58:31
something like the rise of the nuns. N o n e s.
58:35
Um, that's something that sociology, like, I would have stolen
58:37
that from sociologists, which is pretty
58:40
much what happens when you're doing historical work and moving up
58:43
toward the present. Um, the,
58:47
you're engaging more with sociology, political
58:49
science disciplines. Um, that
58:52
when I get called in on a sociology dissertation, they're
58:55
like, well, I hate to cite this. It's all the way from, you know,
58:58
like, 2012. I'm like, dude,
59:00
I'm using documents from the 16th century. You
59:03
can't scare me with 2012. So the social scientists
59:06
are better on the recent past, and they've been talking about the rise of
59:09
the nuns for several years now
59:12
and speculating that probably we've hit a
59:14
tipping point. Um, that that is, by certain
59:17
measures, is already the largest, quote unquote, religious category in the United
59:20
States. Um, that isn't totally new.
59:24
Um, you don't have to go back any more than the late
59:26
18 hundreds to have the same levels of
59:29
irreligiosity. Americans forget that we think we've
59:32
always been religious until, like, last Tuesday.
59:34
No, it was a rise and fall of church
59:37
affiliation. Um, so probably,
59:40
probably that rise of the nuns.
59:41
>> Loren: Okay. What would you hope for the future of
59:43
Christianity?
59:46
>> Elesha: Stop doing so much damage.
59:52
>> Loren: I guess it goes back to what you said, religion
59:55
making it better or worse, right?
59:58
>> Elesha: Yeah. Yeah. What is it that
1:00:01
humans, as humans, have a tendency
1:00:04
to. What kind of pain do we inflict
1:00:07
on each other, and how can
1:00:09
churches help us grow beyond
1:00:12
that and also take better care of the
1:00:14
survivors?
1:00:17
>> Loren: Well, we're 50 some minutes in here,
1:00:20
and I want to keep asking you questions, but I want to respect
1:00:23
your time. It's lunchtime in my neck of the world, so I'm
1:00:25
getting hungry. Where can, uh, people connect with you in
1:00:28
your work?
1:00:30
>> Elesha: I don't do a lot of social media.
1:00:33
Um, certainly you can find out about what I'm doing at the
1:00:36
Baylor history department. That's my home department.
1:00:39
Um, sometimes I'll write journalism as well
1:00:42
as historical work, but probably my faculty page at
1:00:45
Baylor would be the best place.
1:00:46
>> Loren: And is there a title for the new book yet?
1:00:50
>> Elesha: Uh, the working title, as I'm applying for
1:00:53
grant funding to do more research, is making religion
1:00:55
news history, um, of the religion
1:00:58
news service.
1:00:59
>> Loren: Okay, well, the book we talked about today is turning
1:01:02
points in american church history. Uh, I'm going
1:01:05
to have to track down the book on the christian century and then
1:01:08
hopefully have you back for that and then be on the lookout
1:01:11
for her new book. Is there a
1:01:13
time estimate yet?
1:01:16
>> Elesha: Oh, no, this one. Um, the archive is
1:01:19
620 some unprocessed boxes.
1:01:21
>> Loren: Okay. Wow. Okay, well, keep an eye out.
1:01:25
Well, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate the conversation.
1:01:28
I hope it's helpful for our listeners. I certainly found it
1:01:31
engaging. So always leave folks with the word of peace. So may
1:01:34
God's peace be with you.
1:01:35
>> Elesha: That's great. Great word.
1:01:43
>> Loren Richmond: Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian podcast.
1:01:46
The future Christian podcast is produced by Resonate
1:01:49
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