Theology in the Raw - 690: #690 - A Conversation with Karen Swallow Prior

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

On episode #690 of Theology in the Raw Preston talks with Karen Swallow Prior. Karen is a Professor of English at Liberty University. She writes frequently on literature, culture, ethics, and ideas. You can follow Karen on Twitter and order her new book On Reading Well on her website. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, Theology in a Row listeners. I'm excited about today's show. I have a special guest, Karen Swallow Pryor, who's going to be joining me in just a few minutes. And we had a wonderful time talking through all kinds of things going on in evangelicalism, what it's like being a woman in the Southern Baptist Convention. We talked about different things going on in the evangelical climate. We talked about books. We talked about all kinds of stuff. You're going to really enjoy this interview, I hope. I had a great time talking with Karen.

Before we jump in, I wanted to let you know again that I will be in Los Angeles on September 25th for a One Day Leaders Forum. That's September 25th. It's a Tuesday in Los Angeles for One Day Leaders Forum. This's September 25th. It's a Tuesday in Los Angeles for One Day Leaders Forum. This is coming up really soon. So if you want to attend this event, you need to sign up very, very soon. Don't wait till the last second because you might not be able to sign up. We've had some of these forums sell out, and I think this one is going to be fairly big. So if you want to attend the LA Forum, go to centerforfaith.com and go to the events link.

Go down, scroll down, and you can find the details for the LA Forum. Again, that's September 25th. That forum is hosted by my former college, Eternity Bible College. They are hosting the event. They're promoting and sponsoring it, as well as Rocky Peak Church, where the event's going to be at. And speaking of Eternity Bible College, if you are looking for an incredibly affordable, thoughtful, theologically engaging and practical biblical education, you've got to go check out eternitybiblecollege.com. I had an amazing five

years at the college teaching there, and I just cannot more highly recommend going to Eternity Bible College. You can go to the LA campus or you can take classes online. The online program is just really growing. I think they have the largest incoming group of students this fall. I believe they might have surpassed the previous record for that. So now is a great time to consider Eternity Bible College for your very affordable, thoughtful biblical education. Also, I'm going to be in San Diego on September 27th. So just two days after the LA Forum, I'm driving down to San Diego and going to be doing a one-day leaders forum on faith, sexuality, and gender. So if you're down to San Diego and going to be doing a one day leaders forum on faith,

sexuality, and gender. So if you're in the San Diego area and want to attend that event, again, go to centerforfaith.com and check us out and sign up soon because seats are limited. One last announcement. This month has been a really encouraging month in that I have received a lot of new Patreon supporters. As you probably know, if you've been listening to the show for any length of time, you know that this is a listener supported show that I depend on the support of my listeners to keep the show going. And I have had 25 new Patreon supporters in the month of August alone. That brings the show up to 163 people supporting the show. And if you, if you want to support the show, okay. And I really mean that,

like, if you don't want to support the show or it's like, man, money's tight, or I give all my money to missions, then that's amazing. And I would never, uh, encourage you to do anything other, other than that. But if you do want to support the show, if you're like, man, I keep forgetting, I want to support Theology in the Raw, then go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. The link will be in the show notes. And here's the cool thing is you can support the show for as little as five bucks a month, just five bucks a month. Uh, you can consider it. You buy me a cup of coffee or, uh, I guess kind of expensive cup of coffee, buying me a nice big latte once a month.

And in return, you get access to premium content like a Patreon-only podcast that I record for my supporters. If you support the show for $10 a month, you get the podcast and a Patreon-only blog. And at $25 a month, you get two podcasts that only you can listen to and a blog that only my supporters can read. So that's patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Rye. Okay, without further ado,

here is Karen Swallow Pryor. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am here with my friend from a distance, Karen Swallow Pryor. Karen is a professor of English. Is that correct, Karen? Professor of English. Is that correct, Karen? Professor of English. Is that your official title at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia? She's the author of several books, including Booked Literature and The Soul of Me and Fierce Convictions, The Extraordinary Life of Hannah Moore, Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist, and the forthcoming book on reading well, Finding the Good Life Through Great Books. Karen, I'm so excited. This is long overdue. Thank you so much for being on Theology

in the Raw. Thanks for having me. Let's start just with a quick overview of who you are. I, you know, I think we share a lot of the same audience. So I think the majority of our listeners are going to know who you are, but for those who don't, can you tell us a little bit about who you are? Who is Karen Swallow Pryor? And how did you, more specifically, how did you become interested in English and reading and writing and that whole area of life? Okay, well, who am I? Let's start out with the existential stuff, shall we? Okay. Sure. off, shall we? Okay. No. Actually, that's the story that I tell in the book I just mentioned, my first book, Literature in the Soul of Me. I grew up just loving books and being a reader. I also grew up in the church. And somehow or another, not from my parents, because my parents

let me read whatever I wanted to read, and they were not strict in that way at all, or nervous the way so many parents are today. But, you know, growing up in the church, I kind of got the idea that you had to, well, basically that if you didn't become a missionary or a pastor, I guess in my case, a pastor's wife, then you didn't really love God. And that the life of the mind was not something important in the church. And so for the longest time, I felt like I had to choose between loving books, loving the life of the mind and loving God. And God lost out for a long time. So hard.

And but it was ironically, and I tell this story in Booked, it was when I was in graduate school pursuing my PhD that I had this professor who was really liberal and really racy and just shocking in many ways. But he really respected me as a Christian. When he found out that I was a Christian, because I pushed back against something he said in class, he was very respectful. And he would actually ask me, he, he told the rest of the class at one point, who wrote Paradise Lost, which of course I was familiar with. But he also told me about a lesser known work by Milton called Areopagitica, which is basically one of the first modern treatises on free speech. And Milton in that book, in that pamphlet, makes an argument for Christians to read books promiscuously, to read a lot of books. Promiscuous, that's awesome. Yeah, it used to have a different, you know, it didn't have the connotation it has today. It just

simply means like inordinate mixing, like just mixing things. And so Milton argued that Christians should be reading a wide variety of views. We got some technical difficulties either. Yeah. So ironically, it was this liberal secular professor who was not a believer who helped me to see for the first time in my life, how being a Christian and reading widely and well, not only are not contradictions, but actually go very well together. So that's when I really began to develop my biblical worldview about literature and language.

And just as I was really finishing up my PhD program. And ironically, the rest of the story is that that professor later became a Christian. Oh, no way. Yeah. Through you, like through conversations with you? No, he, he left the university, uh, went to another university and we didn't get, we got in touch like years later. And, um, he said that he'd been wanting to get in touch with me because he wanted to tell me that he'd become a Christian. So that's really cool. Wow. So, uh, so just going back a little bit, you said in your church environment growing up, it was kind of like, if you're, well, apparently, if you're a woman, you can make a good pastor's wife. But as far as being an intellectual kind of person, let alone somebody who is very influential as you are, was that just, what did that do to your constituency, your background? Did that create any, did that ruffle any feathers? Or are people like, whoa, what's going on with this crazy liberal lady now who's using her mind to think, you know? Yeah, no, it didn't at the time.

It has more now, I guess, because there's all the trolls out there. But no, I mean, I had, you know, we moved a little bit. And so we moved away. I grew up in rural Maine and went to these little country churches. And by that time, by the time I was in high school, we moved to New York. And actually, that's where also that church youth group was, where I had a little bit of that mindset as well. But no, I would say by the time I, you know, I married and finished grad school, and even though I continued to go to, you know, Baptist, conservative, even fundamentalist churches, I was just blessed to receive a great deal of support from my pastors,

from my husband, and so really didn't receive any kind of backlash. I was very much supported in pursuing my academic career. Yeah. How would you describe yourself theologically? I'm curious how, cause I have my own idea just from a distance or whatever, but like, how would you, I think I'm pretty conservative theologically, but conservative in the true sense. I have a conservative hermeneutics, I think, which is conservative in the sense of being hundreds or thousands of years old, not rooted in the 1980s or something. So yeah, I would say I'm probably, you know, culturally liberal and theologically conservative. And when I say liberal, I mean, you know, like I like art, literature and books. Yeah. It's sad that that has to. Well, in the classical sense, like classical liberalism is not modern day kind of left.

Exactly. So maybe like a classical liberal um i would imagine you get critiqued from people on both the right and the left probably can i say pretty equally would that be a good assumption or yeah i would say that's you know depends on the day but overall definitely like pretty equally it's bizarre sometimes and you i I, I'm trying to look for the right word here. I'm nervous saying, yeah, using language around an English professor, but I mean, you, you have a prophetic, maybe that's the safest word, um, kind of pot stirring voice and evangelicalism. And I mean that, and I would say, I think people probably say the same thing about me. voice and evangelicalism. And I mean that. And I would say, I think people probably say the thing about me. How would you describe your specific place, your voice, your role, I guess, in

contemporary evangelicalism? Is that, I mean, pot stirring? That might be a little... I mean, I recently said to my husband, well, you know, a couple months ago with the most recent pot stirring, I said to him, I said, I don't go looking for trouble. And he just kind of like rolled his eyes, but I don't, um, I'm just me. Um, I, um, I mean, again, not to keep referring back to my first book, but it is, um, I talk about that as well. Like just never feeling like I fit into exactly one category. And, you know, of course, that's painful when you're growing up and you're going through adolescence, not really fitting in.

But now it's just that I realize that's just who I am. And so just by not fitting into the prevailing categories, I think that itself stirs the pot without even trying. I'm just, I've just learned to be myself and, um, and that's what stirs the pot. And then you add Twitter into the mix and that helps a little, I think. Well, so I discovered the mute button on Twitter probably two years ago. Isn't it amazing? Oh, everybody loves me. Like I don't, I have like great conversations, dialogues, and I'll get, I'll literally get emails or text messages saying, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. What's happened to you on Twitter. I'm like, I don't see anything. You know, it's really fun. I was just, I just was going to tweet this last night. I'll tweet it

another time. I didn't, I would tweet another another time like i mute so many people then there are a few people i don't mute just because it's a mute they amuse me oh yeah yeah like i keep i keep some trolls as pets and most of them i i mute but the thing is they'll never know which ones they don't know they don't they'll never know which ones i'm seeing and which ones i'm which ones are okay i i need to unmute one two maybe three or four people trolls as pets that is so funny i think it's so far out there that it's like it's like gone far past like oh that really hurts my feelings or offensive or how can you say that or that makes me mad it's like this is just so comical. Like it's entertaining. It's just fun. Yeah.

You know, what's funny is I've probably, I almost want to run the statistics on this probably muted. I would say pretty close to 50% people on the, for lack of better terms, far left 50% of people on the far right and the language tone everything is almost identical it's almost word for word identical like completely misrepresenting uh dehumanizing no effort to try to understand what i'm actually saying trying to smear my character name views whatever it's almost like i'm like you guys should go hang out they're so they're so far on the far left and far right that they've come like they've met met again again on the top of the circle. Uh, it's fundamentalism and comes in many forms. Yes. Yes. For our audience, maybe, uh, what are some things that you feel like you've gotten

mixed up in, in terms of controversy or stirring the pot? Um, yeah. What, what are some things that, that. Well, I mean, the most recent, uh, the most recent thing is, um, is, you know, the church to movement that, um, yeah. Yeah. I haven't followed that one too closely. What's yeah. What's that all about? Um, well that's, you know, the me too movement. Everyone I think knows what that is. It's, you know, calling out misogyny and sexual abuse and harassment, in the culture specifically in hollywood um yeah but of course the church also has its own version of that um i'm just getting a note saying my internet connection is unstable just so you know okay okay but um uh if it starts freezing, we'll just delete the video. We'll cancel the video and just keep talking. OK. All right.

So so, you know, that was the most recent and kind of ongoing controversy is that I was one of 3000 Southern Baptist women who signed a petition Southern Baptist women who signed a petition calling for one of our leaders to account for his kind of long history of misogynistic and abusive comments. Three thousand? Three thousand. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of women. He was. That's more than like Solomon. That's like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and this is a great hero of my denomination who is credited with what's called the conservative resurgence back in the 80s, which is – he called the Southern Baptist Convention back to a conservative theological and hermeneutic approach, which I support and am thankful for. But yet he, because I guess of this accomplishment, and maybe it's, you know, not unrelated, because conservatism that is corrupt is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than liberalism that is corrupt. I mean, it can do this, it ends up, like you said, doing the same things. And so, um, I mean, if you had told me several months ago that, uh, that I would, you know,

that this denominational leader would be forced to resign, I would never have believed it. And I never would have believed that it would be because of women, because of women within the domination. So it's so unfortunate. I don't want to downplay or whatever at all but is that a little bit not exciting does that give you hope in a sense that's like wow people actually are calling people out and things are actually being addressed because five ten years ago for sure it probably would have been you know shoved under the carpet or hidden or

right i mean it's heartbreaking in the sense that this was never, to me, this was never about this one person because one man's power is dependent upon many other men. Right. And a culture that enables it. Right. So it was very important and significant that it was like, you know, a stronghold has been broken and then immediately was like, you know, a stronghold has been broken. And then

immediately following or, you know, in the weeks that followed, we had our annual meeting at the Southern Baptist Convention and some important resolutions were passed, a new president was elected. And so I really do think that some significant steps have been taken. Things don't get fixed overnight and, you know, it won't happen that way, but I'm very encouraged that this wall has come down and that we are taking steps forward. Would you say you've experienced a lot of misogyny in the church? I mean, growing up and more recently or yeah. What does that look like?

That's a good question because this has been part of my problem is that I have not, or if I have, I didn't, you know, I'm too obtuse to see it or recognize it. So I really, as I said before, I've been, I've received a great deal of support, even within my conservative, you know, little Southern Baptist or independent Baptist churches all my life. And it has actually taken, and then of course I'm insulated because I'm in academia and, you know, even at Liberty University, women are treated pretty well and pretty equally. We're an academic institution. You know, we have lots of women professors and educators and, you know, who hold leadership positions and administrative positions. So I actually feel

like I've been insulated from a lot of the worst things. And it's really through the internet, through social media, and making more connections outside my circle that I've, I have learned about the experiences of other women, and just how pervasive some of these experiences are in some church circles. So I've had to have my eyes opened and I think opened and I think that helps me to be a little bit more patient and understanding of, you know, of some men who also are just kind of slowly awakening to this problem as well. I mean, I think some people willfully turn a blind eye, but I think a lot of us just, you know, we depend upon our own experiences. And I mean, that's true of racism too.

I think, you know, a lot of people just don't feel racist and they haven't seen it, you know, and so they think it doesn't exist. Well, you know, this is they think it doesn't exist. Well, you know, this is, this is why we should read promiscuously and interact with people. Because our own experiences are so limited. And we have a lot to learn about the world from what other people are experiencing. Yeah, that's so good. I want to get to your book, I want to make sure we have time for your book. But I you guys, you raise so many important things. This is a question I often ask like thought leaders as you are one. How, when you look at the state of American evangelicalism,

I mean, there's a lot of, depending on how you look at it, it's very polarized, a lot of tensions, a lot of just upheaval and things going on. But then there's a lot of, I think a lot of good things too. Kind of like when, you know, when you look at like younger people, it's like, oh, they're entitled and they don't read and they don't, you know, they don't work hard, all this stuff. It's like, yeah, but they care about social justice, the poor, they're very compassionate. And depending on how you look at different scenarios or different people, groups or whatever, I mean, there can be pros and cons and these things tend to balance each other out in some way. But when you look at the state of American evangelicalism, are you hopeful, distraught, angry?

Or, yeah, what's your take? I know it's a really broad question. Yeah, no. It's a good question. I mean, I'm overall hopeful. I mean, and I think part of that is because a lot of people seem to think that evangelicalism is like two years old or something. You know, because it came to their attention in 2016. But my area of academic study is the evangelical period's origins in England in the early 17th century. So I've studied this period for a long time. And I mean, my dissertation was on one of the second or third

generation evangelicals in England, a friend of William Wilberforce, who is also an evangelical. This stuff is 300 years old, and there's been a lot of good that evangelicalism has done and it's had its weaknesses even, even then. And so, um, we need to look at the long view and we're going through something difficult and, and refining at this time. And it's hard, but it's good. What do you think is a difficult, how would you pinpoint the difficulty right now with evangelicalism?

What are the hurdles it has to get over? Well, it's, you know, it's really the same difficulty that it's always had. difficulty right now with evangelicalism? What are the hurdles it has to get over? Well, it's, you know, it's really the same difficulty that it's always had. We don't have a pope, right? Which I'm glad we don't have a pope, but that also means that we're all our own sort of individual popes. And so we don't have a centralized authority. And that's, as I think, doctrinally and theologically, I think that's correct. But that also entails a lot of risk. I mean, freedom always entails more risks, more risk. And so that's a risk of evangelicalism because we put so much emphasis on the

individual and individual experience and individual autonomy. And evangelicalism has always been connected to entrepreneurialism. And so that is both a strength and a weakness. We've always been enamored with celebrity and prosperity and those sorts of things. You know, maybe even just on the fringes. But this is, I mean, evangelicalism was birthed by men who got kicked out of the established church for preaching in open air sermons, you know, outside, outside. So these were risk takers, these, these were innovators, these were rebels. They were hated and despised and loved. So that's in evangelicalism's blood. And they got a lot of good accomplished a lot of social reform accomplished but it was always messy evangelicalism was divided on the issue of

slavery from the beginning to our shame and so we still see ourselves divided in many ways on the issue of race and racism. So it's, you know, it's a mixture of good and bad as the church has always been, as the bride of Christ has always been and always will be. The term evangelical, I just got it. I'm in constant conversations with people that discussing whether or not evangelical is even a helpful term anymore or whether it's been so polluted by, say, politics or its reputation that we need to come up with a new term or just not have any term. We're just Christians or Jesus followers. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you think that the term evangelical is so polluted it can't be redeemed or do you think it's still helpful? Well, I have a whole essay on this in the book, still evangelical, which is a collection of essays and I contributed one. So yeah,

people might want to check that out. But you know, Shakespeare said it best arose by any other name is still a rose. Like what evangelicalism is as defined by the church historian, David Bebbington, which, you know, he's called Bebbington's quadrilateral, which entails an emphasis on Christ's atonement, on the centrality of scripture, on activism and on individual conversion experience. So those four things are the hallmarks of evangelicalism.

Activism. Activism was one of the four. Activism is one of them. Yeah. The evangelicals helped abolish the slave trade in England. They didn't in America, really. Well, maybe less so. But anyway, America is another story. We had to go to war because anyway. But even in, say, the late, correct me if I'm wrong, I mean, you're the expert here, but in the late 19th century, people like D.L. Moody and several others, that it was out of their evangelical conviction that they were going to urban centers and reaching the poor and confronting poverty. Right. Wasn't it really in the early 20th century when liberals started doing that, too, and you had the social gospel and you had the same kind of concern for the poor and for the marginalized,

except now is detached from the gospel. And then as a counter reaction, you had this kind of fundamentalist movement that was kind of anti. So is that a decent summary of the... From what I know, I'm not an expert in American, whatever, my areas or history of any kind, it's British literature. And so, of course, I've studied a lot of British history through that study. But all this points to the fact that we as evangelicals just simply don't even know our history. You know, again, we think it, and we've allowed the headline writers and the clickbaiters to define the terms. and the clickbaiters to define the terms. And that's, you know, yes, perhaps the term is sullied. But if this is what evangelicalism is, then we can call it by a different name. But I

think that's just sort of, you know, so you want to you want to keep the you want to keep the term keep the label. Yeah, it's 300 years old. So if we're going to maintain the term evangelical and, you know, try to maybe resurrect its roots and where it came from, how do we shed the pollution that it's picked up, especially in the last 20, 30 years where the term evangelical is so intertwined with, you know, certain political views. And for a lot of people, if they hear, oh, you're an evangelical, they say, oh, so you're a Trump supporter, you know, like, how do we? Yeah, how do we get rid of some of the pollution that the terms picked up? Or is it even possible? Well, I do think it's possible. And I think we do it, again, by first knowing our history, and theneling what it already is. Um, and if we act embarrassed or ashamed, then I think that just makes it worse. I think, you know, I think we just have to, um, stand for what we believe in, uh, gently correct in love where we see error being made, um, and be in this for the long term. I mean, we have to stop letting the headline writers define the terms, as I said before, and we have to be bigger and better and stronger than that. And we have to expect, and this is one thing that American

evangelicals are not good at. I mean, we take the slightest problem or discomfort as some sort of a persecution or something, you know, some pain that we have to avoid. Well, just being in community with brothers and sisters that we do not agree with, who perhaps are weaker than we are, that's part of what it means to be in the church. So let's just gin up and get over it. That's so good. You know, I think too, it's not... Metaphorically speaking, metaphorically speaking about the gin. Oh, well, it's not noon yet here.

So I'll keep it a metaphor. Oh, he threw me off with that. What was I going to say? Oh, it seems like the problem people have with evangelicals is for the most part, not exclusively, but for the most part, it's the tone, right? The tone, the posture, the arrogance, the lack of humility, the inability to kind of admit that, man, we got tons of issues we need to work on and we want to learn from people outside our evangelical community. Like it's not so much like our doctrinal beliefs. I mean, our doctrinal beliefs, you know, I know it's a big category, evangelical, but I mean, it's kind of just standard Christianity. Like, yeah, centrality of scripture. We value the atonement. Like, well, duh, we're Christians, you know? But it's, I think it's been, would you agree with this? That I think that it's been the posture and the kind of the, the, the, um, yeah, overall, just the lack of humility. I think that evangelicalism has, has, has demonstrated.

And I'm not saying that evangelicals aren't humble. I'm saying that has been for good or for ill that has been the reputation that it's picked up, but perhaps because there's a few loud voices that haven't been humble and it's kind of tainted the whole thing. But no, I think evangelicals are not humble. And I think it's so you said it more categorically. I mean, generally speaking. Right. I mean, myself and yourself accepted. No, I'm just kidding. No, but I mean, I resist the characterization that is just about tone because I, a lot of my trolls will claim that the slander and the lies that they're spreading about me, oh, it's just about tone. You know, the blog's writing nasty things. Oh, it's, you know, we just, it's true, but it's just the tone that you don't like, or we need the tone police. No posture gets a little bit closer to it,

but ultimately, and thanks for the segue to my new book, Preston, it's about character. It is about character. We can believe the right things, but we don't have enough virtuous character to live it out properly or virtuously really. And so, you know, if you think about the relationship between posture and character, they're not the same thing, but I do think that they're related. And I think when we have a certain posture for a long time, like just having been in this accident and, you know,

I think about posture a lot because of the pain that I'm carrying. That, you know, I have to, I have to think about my posture. And I have to think about how, you know, I just had to tell my husband that, you know, I have the most pain at night. And I know that now. And so I know that my character, I have to deal with my character issues at night, because I get grumpier and sadder. And so I have to think about my posture and how that affects my pain. And I have to think about my posture and how that affects my pain. And I have to think about how my pain affects my character. And so I think evangelicals have a character problem. You know, the gin will help with that, that pain at night. And maybe even the character. Yeah, maybe the character. So the book is on reading well, finding the good life through

great books. This is Karen's latest book that will come out on September 4th, 2018. And in the book, you say, reading well is in itself an act of virtue. And it is also a habit that cultivates more virtue in return. Can you tease that out a little bit? That's a fascinating statement. Sure. Well, of course, I'm talking about reading, reading great literature in the book, but we can apply that even to reading tweets, which, you know, as you said, at the beginning of the show, the people that you have to mute the most often, the ones who don't even charitably or intellectually with any intellectual honesty read even a tweet so we can read tweets well we can read newspaper articles well um we can read blog posts well um and to do that actually does require character it requires

attention it requires thoughtfulness and reflection, circumspection, not assuming the worst, not assuming anything, charitableness. All of those things are required in reading well to read what someone is actually saying as opposed to how you want to use it or exploit it or virtue signal with this thing you're prone to disagree with. And so if you employ all of those good characteristics of patience and humility in reading something, it actually in turn cultivates more of those qualities in you. And of course, the reverse is true. If we cultivate bad habits in the way that we read and we interact on social media, then we just simply deepen those qualities in us and become of worse character. So I've said, and it sounds like it's exactly what you're saying. I've told people,

you have a moral responsibility to try to interpret what I'm saying, according to what I'm actually trying to say. Like, like when you misrepresent or don't seek to, you know, interpret me correctly, like that, that's, that is a, that's not a neutral thing. Like that is a moral act and you're, you're being immoral when you actually don't put any effort into actually interpreting what I'm actually saying. Would you, is that a little too strong or is that kind of what you get? Oh no, that's, that's not too strong at all. That's absolutely right. And there's the intent that you're talking about here, which is immorality, if you're not even trying. But then beyond that, there are also found that people, like, read something and don't even know what scare quotes around a word signal or what the difference between one proposition and another. And so then I spend all this time kind of explaining, well, this proposition suggests this relationship between these two ideas. This is what it means.

People just don't have the skills to even read that closely, but it is something that can be practiced and pursued. And that's really what I'm trying to, one of the things I'm trying to show in my book and help people with. You have another cool quote here. It says, to read well is not to scour books for lessons on what to think. Rather, to read well is to be formed in how to think. That is, I love that. I love that. I wish people actually believed that or did that. Like if people actually did that when they read, I think this world would be a much better place. So do I. That's why I wrote a book on it. I absolutely agree with my quote.

This time, this time, I reserve the right to change my mind but i i do i do agree with that that's so funny okay so the book again is on reading well um how reading great literature makes better humans so it's so good i can't wait to get this book karen um i'm hoping your publicist will send me a free copy if not i will gladly purchase it on Amazon. I can hook you up. Thanks. Okay. It's worth all the internet trouble I'm giving you today. It's the least I can do. I'm like, no. Oh, you know what? So we have my Zoom chats about to shut down in a couple minutes. Do you have two minutes to say a word about Revoice? Were you caught up in that controversy at all? Because I know you endorsed Revoice,

and I know that you are in circles similar to me where some people are not very excited about the Revoice conference. Yeah, sure. I mean, how have you handled all that? What I'll say will connect to what we've just been talking about. I mean, people have been misrepresenting what Revoice is about, either willfully or, I mean, there have been some people who have good faith concerns and criticisms, and that's great. That's an important conversation to have. I just haven't seen enough of those. I've seen a few, but most people have been either willfully misinterpreting it or just simply unable to actually read what people are saying um and to to charitably um engage with ideas that they may not understand or even disagree with um for everyone's betterment i mean

people are are just not not doing that and that's really unfortunate for everyone. Yeah. I was, you know, um, Ron Belgao and Wesley Hill and a few other people who are, are, you know, uh, they contribute to the spiritual friendship network, the blog, and it's kind of a, you know, like-minded organization is revoice and they were at the revoice conference and those Ron and Wes are so filled with joy. They're so charitable. They're so humble. They're so gracious. And I remember just thinking like, for how much crap they've been through and how many times they have to rewrite, re-explain for the 15th time what they mean when they say

the word gay or whatever. It's just, I'm surprised they haven't just tossed it all in and say, you know what? I'm kind of done with this community, this branch of evangelicals and whatever. It's just, I'm surprised they haven't just tossed it all in and say, you know what, I'm kind of done with this community, this branch of evangelicals and whatever, but there's not, they're so gracious, so charitable. It's just, it blows me away. Like, I don't, I mean, they've been under the gun like crazy. I've gotten a little bit of it, but I'm, you know, I'm a straight guy up in Idaho, so it doesn't hit me nearly as hard. And even some of the stuff that I get, I'm like, oh my gosh, I am so tired of people. Like you said, just not just refusing to try to understand what I'm actually saying. And they, they just, their character, their character is just unbelievable. I remember just being really blown away. And a lot of people at the Revoice

conference, I mean, there were, there were so much grace and humility. You didn't see a lot of kind of the cynicism or people just kind of wanted to ditch this whole evangelical movement at all. Well, you know, there's this little thing the Bible talks about called the fruit of the spirit and some people have it and show it and other people don't, you know? Yeah. And, and I, you know, I, I've been very vocal that um yeah i think some of the critics have raised great good questions um and i and revoice has never said which to me is a great value of

that's the whole point of revoice is to have this conversation thank god we're having this conversation and thank god for those people who are engaging it honestly and um lovingly but they are few in between and far in between. Totally. Karen, thanks so much for being on the show. I'm excited to release this episode. If you are listening to the show and you want to support Theology in the Raw, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. And please, please do check out Karen's book on reading well, finding the good life through great books by Brazos Press released September 4th, 2018. Thanks so much, Karen. Have a great day.

Thanks, Preston. You too. Thank you.