Theology in the Raw - Political Division, Technology, and the War for our Attention with Dr. Lee Camp

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Join the Theology in the Raw Patreon community for bonus episodes and more!Dr. Lee C. Camp is the creator and host of "No Small Endeavor", an acclaimed podcast series exploring what it means to live a good life. He is an award-winning teacher and Professor of Theology & Ethics at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.Following seminary (M.Div., Abilene Christian University), Lee completed a graduate degree in Moral Theology (Ph.D.,University of Notre Dame). Lee is the author of several books, including one of my favorites on political theology: Scandalous Witness.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, you have originally, originally this kind of notion that the internet and social media is going to democratize things and bring about profound social goods. Once the social media platforms decided to go towards an ad revenue model, you know, they knew that we have to have eyeballs on the platform. And then they learned that what keeps you most engaged is anger. That's one thing that I want to always try to keep in mind and tell people is that, remember, it's a business model.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology. And around my guest today is Dr. Lee Camp, who is the creator and host of No Small Endeavor, which is an acclaimed podcast series exploring what it means to live a good life. He is an award-winning teacher, professor of theology and ethics at Lipscomb University in Nashville, which is where this episode is shot. This is shot in person in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. Lee is the author of several books, including one of my absolute favorite. on political theology called Scandalous Witness.

And that's where we go. We talk about lots of things related to political theology and our cultural moment. So please welcome back to the show, the one-n-only Dr. Lee Camp. Well, Lee Camp, thanks for coming back on Theology and Arra. I'm sure it'll come up in this conversation and it did in the last conversation. But I just wanted to give another shout out to your book, Scandalous Witness was absolutely incredible. Thank you. I remember reading it.

I was on sabbatical during COVID. I think it had just come out. That was fall of 2020. I think about that spring, maybe. It came out like a week before the shutdown started for COVID. So horrible timing. Yeah. It's an outstanding book.

And what was the one I read 15 years before that? First one was mere discipleship. Mere discipleship, yeah. Yeah. And then I did one called Who is My Enemy? Questions American Christians Must Face about Islam. themselves. Oh. And then scandal's witness.

Wait, so what kind of interest do you have in Islam? Do you have a background in that? Well, that makes for an interesting story. We're just talking about what we're going to talk about. Yeah. Did not mention Islam, but hey, you mentioned your book, so. First, thanks for having me back. It's great to see you.

And first time to meet in person. So, yeah, so great to be with you. Yeah, probably, I don't know what year it was. It was in the probably 2006 or seven, somewhere in there. I was invited to do this lecture on Christianity, and it was in an interfaith gathering. And so I kind of did what I do, which is an Anabaptist-influenced kind of reading of the Christian tradition. And I asked questions like, you know, why should Muslims trust us when we have this sort of history of imperialistic imposition of our will?

Yeah. And there was a reporter there. It was a really interesting gathering, a diverse gathering of people from different religious traditions and press at the same time. And so the reporter from the Tennessean was there, and she called me afterwards and she asked some follow-up questions, and so I could tell that she was hearing some of my rhetorical questions as assertions rather than rhetorical questions.

So I tried to kind of let her know what I was trying to say. And so we talked about a half an hour. So the next morning I got up and I thought, you know, I should go check the newspaper, still print newspapers back then before I go to school. And I went out at the end of my driveway and the front page of the Tennessee in Topfold says something like theologian says Christians must let go beliefs to get along with Muslims. And I uttered an expletive and I said, I hope that's not talking about me. and it said, Professor Lee Camp said, and then it just, you know, took off. And so to make a very long story short, you know, by the end of that day, I had heard from Fox News in New York City, taught radio in Detroit, the local rap station in Nashville had had a call-in survey and found

me stupid by a wide margin. And I had been called every name in the book. I got doxed by some right-wing blog. Oh, my God. And it was crazy. How long was this? This was some 2006. seven, something like that. A while ago. Yeah. And so, but out of that experience, I thought, you know, I,

I don't, I don't know that much about Islam. And so why don't I try to go learn more? And so, I did. I went to the Middle East for a month. I got a study grant to go over there, met some wonderful, where'd you go? I went to mainly Israel, Palestine for three weeks and then Istanbul for a week. And I met a lot of Muslim theologians and philosophers and political. scientists and stuff like that. And it was just so rich and wonderful. What was that like? Oh, it was just, it was overwhelmingly wonderful, you know.

And I, I think the way I would summarize it is that, um, I loved that experience because I learned so much more about who I was and my own faith by being in conversation with people of another tradition. Because it was like, I could begin to see some of the beauty of my own tradition. that you don't necessarily see if you don't see it vis-a-vis something else. I also saw some of the beauty of the Islamic tradition, right? And so I got to one of my favorite memories is being invited to dinner one night at the home of one of the leading Muslim theologians in Jerusalem.

He's now at the head theologian at Alexa Mosque in Jerusalem. And this beautiful wonder. So here we were in his home, you know, looking right across the valley there, it's the dome with Iraq across the valley and learning about what it's like to be a Palestinian and what it's like to be a Palestinian Muslim and the kinds of struggles and difficulties that are entailed in who he is. And we've stayed in touch through the years and communicate every now and then. But, you know, a lot of beautiful, wonderful relationships.

And I just learned a lot about myself and a lot about both the horrors of the Christian tradition and the beauty of the Christian tradition. Wow. So it's like a documentary your kind of personal journey. Yeah, it talks about a lot of that story, and it also kind of lays out some of the major traditions in both Christianity and Islam on war and peace kind of stuff. Okay. But basically what I'm doing with regard to the Christian tradition is I'm kind of laying out, you know, a lot of stuff that you're very familiar with. And I have thought about a lot of the kind of tradition of nonviolence, the rise of the just war.

tradition, the way the just war tradition gets co-opted into things like the crusades and so forth, and how we typically haven't owned our own kind of violence and our own bloody hands in the Christian tradition with regard to the way we've related to our neighbors. And so I kind of try to call us to account, you know, rather than just simply pointing our fingers to give an account. And one thing that I try to do, which is this is kind of the way I try to approach a lot of my work is that I try to ask, you know, what's right and or unhelpful about stereotypical right-leaning ways of thinking about this? Right. What's right and or unhelpful about stereotypical left-leaning ways of thinking about this?

And so I just kind of play all that kind of stuff out in the book. You do that in Scandal's Witness, too, really well. Yeah. I love that you don't, uh, some books that are trying to de-partisanize the faith, they end up kind of picking really on one side over and over and over. And I think you navigated that tension really well in Scandiless Witness. Like you didn't yet, except for some people that they challenged the right over and over and over. And you almost wonder, like, do you think the hope of the best response is let's embrace the left

or to critique the right from the perspective of the left rather than from a kingdom of God? perspective. And I love that you were very clear that you're situated smack dab in the kingdom of God and viewing politics as almost like a singular entity, although there's different manifestations of that through that lens. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think that, you know, I mean, one of the things that I often find myself saying in some of these contexts, some of these conversations is I often remind people that Christian nationalism, you are much more. more likely to find that on the left, mainstream Protestantism, early part of the 20th century,

than you were among the conservatives. And, you know, I mean, Woodrow Wilson's the classic example of that, is this kind of mainstream Christian, and he was just this outrageous Christian nationalism. Really? Nationalist. I've never heard his name mentioned in that conduct. I know nothing about Woodrow than I think he was a president.

He was a president, he was a racist, and, you know, outspoken racist. And he also, you know, used the language of, we're going to get into the, you know, the so-called Great War as the war to end all wars. And so he uses this sort of, he's very explicit Christian, you know, but he's thinking about bringing about the prophetic ends of a peaceable world precisely through war. Wow. And then after the war, he goes out on this speaking tour and he does his crazy speeches where he says things like, at last the world sees America as the savior of the world.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, and you couldn't get any more blatantly, you know, nationalist. And so I think that it's important to realize that this is not just a right-wing thing historically. Because he's Democrat. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it's important to see that that kind of stuff can rise up in all sorts of manifestations, ugly manifestations. I'm curious. So we're here live in Nashville.

The South, we're in a, right now, I believe, Williamson County is very conservative Republican. Like, I don't know what kind of percentages of Williams and County vote. Republican is probably upwards 70% or something. I'm just making it up. I don't remember the numbers for it. I know Nashville, like the city of Nashville is different. That's going to be way more diverse, maybe even more left-leading. I think Nashville and Memphis are kind of like the blue dots in the state.

Yeah, yeah. Typical bigger cities. Other than Boise, Idaho. Idaho is extremely right-wing. But Boisey's pretty mixed. In fact, it might even lean blue depending on the season. But what's it? But you're a Christian teaching a Christian school, and you have a political theology.

For those who don't know Lee Camp's political theology, just Google press and sprinkle. Or if you want to know my political theology, just Google Lee Camp. And yeah, we very like-minded, very, like you said, Anabaptist influenced political theology. What's it like viewing politics

to that lens in the South and as a Christian in the South where I would imagine that's not a very popular position? Yeah, it's, it ranges between often painful and bizarre. Let's start with, let me just start in order. Let's start with painful. Well, I think that there's this sort of, you know, there's this sort of presumption that for a lot of people that if you're Christian, then you're right, you're committed to.

American right-wing politics. Okay. And for me, that's painful in that it trounces on so much about the gospel. And there's this sort of set of assumptions. And if you push back at those too much, then you kind of get, you know, dismissed, marginalized, slapped around or whatever. So, yeah. Now, in your institution, it wouldn't be like that, right? Or?

That's a complicated question these days. Okay. Yeah. I mean, when you think about my institution, I mean, you know, most of the people affiliated with my institution, Lipscomb University, is where I've talked for, I talked for 25 years. I actually stopped teaching about a year ago. I'm still on contract over there, but still around. But, you know, David Lipscomb, I don't know if you, you know much about David Lipscomb. It's a little bit.

I think last time I interviewed you, I looked into Lipscomb University. I didn't realize there's like kind of strong Anabaptist. Yeah, so David Lipscomb was this kind of committed pacifist radical Southern Agrarian. And so what's so interesting about Lipscomb and actually 19th century Stone Campbell tradition is that most of the leaders were pacifists. Wow. And so, you know, if you go to Lipscomb University these days and you're going to see a dorm called Fanning and he was a committed pacifist. who at least one biography, I've not gotten this confirmed with another biographical source, but in at least one biography of Fanning, it's told that because he refused to encourage his students to go fight in the Confederacy,

they came to his house, took all of his belongings out of his house, and burned them in his front yard. Wow. If you go over and see, you know, the dorm, Elam, well, that's another pacifist. If you go over there to the McQuitty Gym, that's another pacifist. if you go over to Harding Hall, that's another pacifist. And so I think most people these days wouldn't have the foggiest idea that you had this sort of tradition. But it wasn't just the pacifism. I mean, Lipscomb was an ardent critic of the robber barons.

He was an arctic critic of racism. He was an ardent critic of all forms of militarism and nationalism. And so he had this sort of devoted kind of American Anabaptist kind of flavor. to as Christianity. And by the time you get to World War I, that starts getting washed out of the tradition. Oh, really? Yeah. And because of, and not just chronologically.

Well, you know, I mean, World War I was a time of a lot of harsh retaliation toward anybody that critiqued the government with regard to the war. And so there was a so-called anti-sedition act that was used to prosecute people who criticized the war. So the leading journal in Nashville at the time for the Stone Campbell tradition that David Lipscomb actually edited was called the Gospel Advocate, and they were publishing conscientious objector forms in the pages of the journal. And so the federal government says, you can either stop publishing those conscientious dejecture forms or we're going to come shut you down. And so they stopped publishing it. There was a college that I'm drawing a blank on the name of

the college out in Oklahoma. and they were similarly, you know, encouraging conscientious objection. The federal government came in and actually shut the school down and replaced the board of the school with pro-war people and reopened the school. And so you have all this kind of craziness happening by the federal government in World War I. And so that begins to have a ripple effect upon the tradition that, you know, that I grew up in. And then, again, like I say, you know, by the time you get to the day, you could walk. on campus and ask probably most of the faculty and staff if they know that and most of them are going to tell you no.

Oh, wow. They don't know that, yeah. Yeah, so there's a, so the Stone Campbell movement, like today exists in kind of three parts, right? You have the Christian Church, Church, Church, of Christ, and Church of Christ. And I think Church of Christ would be the most conservative. Is that Christian Church? Well, the disciples is more the can be more liberal, right? Right, yeah, yeah, typically.

Well, it's the, the branches split. You know, as I remember the church history here, and I looked at this in a while, but the, you know, most American denominations split prior to the Civil War around the issue of slavery. Okay. And then, but the Stone-Cemble tradition did not split before the Civil War. And you had people like Lipscomb who were very insistent upon, you know, we should not go fight for the Confederacy because we're going to make widows of our Northern Sisters in Christ. And he actually wrote a letter to the head of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, and said, we will not fight for you because we're disciples of Christ. Then a year later, 1862, the federal government forces took over Nashville, and he writes the same letter. he and a bunch of ministers signed this letter to Grant, General Grant, saying, we will not fight for you, just like we didn't fight for the Confederates because we are followers of Christ. And so you have people like Lipscomb and those people around him who are insistent upon not letting that kind of sectarianism trump their identity in Christ. So the movement doesn't split prior to the war, but they do begin to have these tensions after the war. And,

And so you kind of have increasingly a tension between north and south. And a lot of that relates to, you know, the poverty in the South following the war. The South looks down up. It feels like they're being looked down upon by the northern disciples. And the northern disciples, meanwhile, are building big church buildings. And even, you know, one of the big deals in Church of Christ is instrument, non-instrumental music, right? So sociological descriptions of this, which is really interesting. The sociological descriptions of it, is that in the south, they're having a hard time feeding their kids. And the churches in the north are building big church buildings and putting in expensive organs. And so they're like, you know, this animosity, and it begins to be focused upon something like music. But then they find ways to make arguments about it that become, you know, so-called biblical. But that tension grows and grows until 1906. David Lipscomb is actually contacted by the U.S. religious census. and he says, yeah, we're two different movements.

So they split in 1906. And then within the disciples, there's another split between the liberals and the conservatives in the 1960s, which is the disciples and the Christian church. Oh, okay. So depending upon which Christian church and depending on which church of Christ, that you're comparing, they could be more or less conservative-like liberal. So we've got a pretty big population of Christian church from that movement in the... Idaho, especially Boise, Idaho where I'm at, some of the bigger churches are Christian church. The one Bible College is a Christian church Bible College. And I don't think I've ever even attended one, but I know people are involved. I know lots of people that go there. And so I know

a bit about that current form of the tradition. And it just seems like they don't, they seem like you're, I guess, typical kind of conservative, maybe more right wing, evangelical. It's just interesting that if you go all the way back to the roots, that would not have resonated with the early founders of the movement. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think that's one of the things that's happened because, you know, one of the ironies of that whole movement is that it began as a unity movement. And it began as a less don't be exclusivist thinking we're just the only Christians, but instead be Christians only and all that kind of, that, you know, well-intentioned rhetoric. but it just didn't work very well. And so then you end up with three new denominations.

And then by the time you get to the middle of the 20th century with churches of Christ, you have this exclusivism where we're the only Christians. And so you go from a unity movement to being sectarians. But then as most of the churches of Christ and Christian churches have been kind of embarrassed about that sectarianism, rather than recovering the interesting 19th century kind of Anabaptist flavor version, they're becoming evangelicals. Can women be leaders in the church? Pastors, overseers, teachers, preachers, and elders.

This is a question that I have long been interested in, but haven't studied it out for myself. And as always, the strength of our passion should match the depth of our study. So this is what I did. I spent over three years researching what the Bible says about women in leadership. And I wrote a book about my conclusions. It's called From Genesis to Junia. And on a search for what the Bible really says about women in leadership.

and in it, I thoroughly examine all the main passages and arguments on both sides of the debate and try to treat them as fairly as I know how. The book comes out in March, March 3rd, but you can pre-order it today wherever books are sold. If you care about thinking clearly, engaging culture wisely, and building bridges with people who see the world differently, then Talbot's apologetics programs are designed for you. At Talbot, you'll study with leading scholars in philosophy, theology, science, cultural analysis while joining a diverse community of students, pastors, teachers, engineers, creatives, young adults, scientists, and leaders from around the world. Talbot's M.A. and apologetics and their flexible online certificate will sharpen your reasoning, deepen your understanding of

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dot E.U. Forward slash. Have you seen that get more widespread, galvanized, aggressive you know, from like four years? Let's just go back to like

when he wrote Scandalous Witness. you know, like, have you seen it, have you seen more right-wing Christianity in your neck of the woods here, get more extreme, more powerful, more vocal, or is it always been like that? It is, from my experience, it is undoubtedly getting more extreme, more vocal, and carrying more weight. Okay. Do you have an assessment on why that is? Is it because there's people in political power that share those views? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's so much at stake, right? I mean, in the sense that, I mean, yeah, it's hard for me to know what to say here

because we're in the middle of a moment in which a right-wing influencer has been telling a lot. of lies that's causing immense distress in our community, including just this week an arrest because of a threat to blow up the school. Really? And it's just bizarre, and, you know, doing it in the name of conserving Christian tradition as far as the person who's stirring all this stuff up. Threat to blow up? Well, the person who made a threat to what school, I don't know anything about that person.

Okay. But they were reacting to what this influencer was putting out there, as best we can tell. Wow. Who is, you know, telling a lot of untruths about things. But she's doing it from this very right-wing Christian nationalist kind of stuff. Is she well known? Because there's been, you don't need to say who it is if you don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to see who it is.

Because there was another school where somebody else that sounds like a similar situation. I mean, she'd been on the news lot. you know, right-wing news outlets a lot of doing this. And so, and it's just, you know, and it's just so, and so like even in her critiques, you know, she's saying this school has left its roots and it's not the, you know, the Church of Christ that it used to be. And I'm like, you don't have that foggiest idea of what in the world you're talking about, right? You, if you, if you understood what David Lipscomb was about, you, all you could do would think that he's some far-out radical leftist, right? And so it's just exasperating because people paint in these broad strokes and don't really want to understand and don't want to have nuance, but they just have this kind of partisan, they appear to have just this partisan political agenda and then go after other people and really do a lot of damage and destruction.

And then the institutions are often left reeling with their own kind of fear and then begin to react in fear towards various kinds of things. And so it's just a bizarre time. It's a bizarre time in higher education in the country. And it's a bizarre time in Christian higher education in the country. And it's a bizarre time in Christian higher education in the Bible Belt. It's just really all sorts of layers of complexity. Because people like that can affect if they influence people to change their perception about the school, even if it's not based on truth, that can affect numbers.

affect donors, it can have ripple effects. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it has direct financial implications, right? As much as I would like to say as an idealist, like, oh, who cares, you know? Like, when you're the president, when you're managing budgets and payroll, like, you're staring at that every day and that that is something to consider. Yeah. Yeah.

I've seen that happen with organizations over the last few years. And even, I mean, my name's been, I've been subject to that. For me, I'm fortunate enough. I'm not in a situation where it ever, if anything, it like almost increases my platform or whatever I call it. So it doesn't affect me financially. But I know some adjacent ministries people don't have the luxury of being so kind of untethered from those institutional problems.

And so they are definitely affected by those kind of accusations. How have you found it? How have you found it? What have you found to be crucial in navigating that kind of critique and criticisms? Ignore it. I really, I don't, I think we're living in two different worlds. One is like an online social media influencer, Twitter world. And then there's my physical neighbors, people at the downtown,

coffee shop and, you know, all day, I'll all rub shoulders with Trump voters, non-Trump voters, whatever, and they're all pretty much decent human people, you know, that don't have a Twitter account and they're just trying to make a living and they're just, they're not that invested in the politics, you know, they'll show up with a ballot box, whatever. They watch the news. So some definitely are, you know, would be more disciples by their news channel and stuff. But I mean, my neighbors are, you know, my one neighbor is his, gosh, is his, his well for his pump just will not get going and he's had you know back surgery and just like I don't know he voted for he's just like a neighbor that needs help which I haven't helped them I drive by

in one way I should I should start that story it sounded like it was going to get to a good Christian point but poor old neighbor Mike is out there working on as well you know but I feel bad for him I just I just I just probably stopping help the Levite let us know about that yeah yeah yeah I'll go to work um but uh I don't know like yeah I saw I, um, when I almost, almost all of my accusations of being a heretic of being demonized, or whatever, all this stuff, you know, it's like it comes from some social media account that I don't know if it's a bot, if it's a real person. I don't know if they, their wife just had an affair on them or I don't know what's going on at this person. Some are more like widely influential,

but even then it's like, I don't, the accusations are so outrageous. I would say slanderous. and sometimes evil and just straight out lies that I just pray that God would deal with that. But I found that responding on that kind of platform, I have done it in the past. And I 100% always regret it. It's just not worth it. And because of the nature of my ministry, it really does not affect me. My wife's not on social media. She doesn't see it.

My kids don't see it. The real friends that have my life, either they get more upset than I do or than don't see, you know, so it's like I don't, just ignore it. And 24 hours later, they're off, you know, yelling at somebody else. And, you know, and they'll come back. And it's just like, I don't, as long as I don't go looking for that stuff, I just don't, it doesn't affect me. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. But it's, it's, uh, it seems to be an increasing problem. People with some social power, um, and strong opinions are, are getting away with slander. Yeah. In the name of Jesus. Right. Yes. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

I don't know if it's increased. I want to believe, well, this has always been around. But is it increasing? Is it becoming more of an issue? Is this like, are we headed down really dark spaces of the church where there's just going to be these influencers just slandering one another? And it's just producing greater toxicity in the church and people losing money and institutions suffering from it?

I mean, that's... Yeah, I don't know. I mean, clearly, you know, you had, we've got Sharon McMahon coming to Nashville to do a show with us. And, you know, she's, I was reading her book. And she talks about how vicious fights were in the halls of Congress in the 19th century. And, you know, you had at least one episode of a gun, somebody shooting at somebody. You had another episode where somebody, a famous beating where a guy. took a cane and beat another senator, you know, almost very, very seriously with a cane in the Senate House.

And so there definitely have been very horrifically violent times. We did go through a civil war that was the most violent. Yeah, right. And Christians on both sides. Yeah. And so, yeah, definitely have been plenty of seasons of very grave violence and hostility. But it certainly gets obviously. obviously leveraged by the tools, social tools, if we want to call them tools that we have at hand.

Yeah. Yeah. It does seem to be getting with the algorithms that are feeding people's angst and anger. And the more you click on things that make you angry, the more you get fed, the more you get polarized, the more you hunker down in their silos, the more you see people you disagree with as the enemy. It seems like that is keep, that's getting worse. And I don't know what the end result's going to be. People just unplugging. I just had a guy on the, he says, like, I, I am rarely online on purpose. Like, I just have to remove myself from that world for my, for my spiritual health, really, you know? That, I wish everybody had that perspective.

That's pretty rare. As long as people are living online, I just see that heading down to really dark places. Yeah. I don't want to be a pest age. Yeah, I mean, we recently had Garrett Graff on No Swall Endeavor, our podcast. and he has done a lot of research on the history of the Internet. And he was talking about how, you know, you have originally this kind of notion that the Internet and social media is going to democratize things

and bring about profound social goods. And their early indicators said that indeed is what's happening with, you know, Arab Spring and so forth. But then at the same time, you find these episodes in which it literally contributes to genocide. and they're using these social media platforms and the lies that are propagated and, you know, horrific case that we talked about. But he talks about how, you know,

once the social media platforms decided to go towards an ad revenue model, you know, they knew that with that, we have to have eyeballs on the platform. And then they learned that what keeps you most engaged is anger. And so, you know, He claims that Facebook realized that in their algorithm that if you responded with an angry face to a post, that was worth five times more to the algorithm than if you replied with a like. Are you serious?

And so what you have is just this propagation of anger, anger, anger, anger, because there's a financial model. So that's one thing that I want to always try to keep in mind and tell people is that, remember, it's a business model. and the business model is trying to get you ticked, right? And he, Garrett pointed me to this interview. I can't remember the man's name, but he was a former way high up Facebook executive in doing a lecture at Stanford Business School. And he says, look, this is what we're trying to do.

And he says, and he uses some expletives. And he says, but I don't let my kids use the, you know, effing stuff. I heard about this. Yeah. And he said, and I don't use the, the, but he's producing it. But, well, he, he had left at that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, but, um, and so it's just this sort of, um, poison that's poured out in our culture and that people are profiting on it. I mean, it's got to lead somewhere that it's going to cause a reboot to say, okay, we need to backtrack and say, let's, let's develop different patterns. here or something. I would hope. I mean, geez, otherwise it leads to another Civil War.

Have you done much thinking on AI? I have been thinking a good bit about that over the last year. I actually did a undergraduate degree was in computer science. I remember you had a, yeah. And so I've cared about interesting, interest in technology throughout my life. And about a year ago, I decided I wanted to try to at least start learning a lot about AI. And so like I did a, you know, a business course through Saeed Business School at Oaks for last year on AI just to start running and thinking about all that kind of stuff. And so we've started interviewing a lot of people in this one endeavor about technology and AI. Okay.

So, yeah, I'm thinking a lot about it. What are the questions you're asking? What should we be asking? What do we know? What don't we know? What scares you? What excites you? I mean, I'm still just, I'm still kind of in this place of where I'm just trying to learn a lot.

I mean, I use it. And I chat GPT or other, or? I usually chat GPT. Yeah. And, but I'm just in this place of trying to learn a lot and pay attention a lot and see what seems to be going on. And so I'm still in this learning mode. Yeah. But you know, have you read Jockey a little much?

No. I know, oddly enough, no. Yeah. But familiar with, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, his book, Technological Society is just, is magnificent. And I've always been so surprised about how few people have read him when it seems like everybody should have read him. Yeah. And, you know, no shame in anything.

For the record, I've read hardly, this is going to be embarrassing. I shouldn't even say it. I've read hardly any C.S. Lewis. Maybe cumulatively three quarters of a book piece sealed with a few. I mean, that's, that's, but I read, I read all the time for a living. That's all I do is read. So it's not like I'm not reading. I'd rather you have a great joke at a little.

Really? Okay. That's going to cause some, uh, some debate there. All right. But yeah, you know, in, in technological society, he says of this idea of what he calls technique. And what he means about technique is, technique is the means and ensemble of means without regard to ends. And it's means that asks a question, what's the most efficient way to do whatever without regard to ends.

Yes. That doesn't sound threatening, but as he plays it out, it's like devastating. And he sees it as this sort of acid that eats away at every form of community, every religious tradition, even, you know, he makes the case, it's even going to undercut. So he's riding in the height of the Cold War. And he says, everybody thinks that the big question is between the capitalist and the socialists, capitalists and the communists. And he says, but technique's going to eat away even.

at all of that. And so it's fascinating to read him and then start watching the way in which so much is unfolding. And he, I think, gives us a great question to ask, namely, he uses this weird, and he's writing in French, so I don't know what he is in French, but in English translation, he uses this word characterology, characterology. Characterology. Yeah, and so the idea is, rather than thinking of technique or technology as a tool, you ask the question, what kind of character is being developed in us by the technology and the

technique that we employ? Interesting. And so that's always the question that I'm always asking of what kind of person am I becoming by the use of this thing, you know? And that's a lot more interesting question than just thinking of our phone as a tool or AI as a tool. It's not merely instrumental, but it actually shapes us and changes us by our engagement with it.

Yeah, I don't have any kind of tech background, but I, I, I've been, yeah, listening to some conversations and just trying to follow it a little bit. And depending on who you're listening to, it can be pretty frightening how, how out, how the development of it is outpacing, like, ethical reflection or control on it to use. I listen to a, I don't know if you listen to a Tucker, Carlson interviewed Sam Altman and pushed him really hard on the ethics of like, um, can you, you know, he, Sam Altman is team, they're in control of like what is allowed to be, what answers are allowed to be given. Like someone says, um, how do I make a, a bio, a bio weapon? Like, do you give that information? What if you're a fiction writer and just want to build in like, you know, a scene,

what about how can I commit suicide? Are you going to feed people that? What about when people ask other moral questions and like what kind of answers are given and who's determining what answers are given? What, you know, I never even thought about that.

He just got pushing, pushing, pushing. And it turned out like, gosh, like Sam Altman chooses, you know, he said,

oh, we got a team of like 100, I forget what it was, like ethicists, you know, and Tucker, rightly so, so,

who are they? Like, these are, potentially the most influential moral people and, I mean, the most influential, well, moral influencers in potentially human society. And like, I want to know what's their morality. Because if someone thinks abortion is, is immoral, like, do they, is that like, do they think that?

Do they, do they think suicide's okay? How about euthanasia? Like, is that like, and I was just like sitting like, oh, my gosh, I haven't thought of any these questions. But like the, I was kind of going down the rabbit. of like, oh gosh, like we are at the fountainhead of decisions being made that we don't really even know that it could have massive effects on human civilization. Yeah, it's a huge moment in human history.

I run a conference every year, exiles in Babylon. Did you appreciate that? And we're doing a whole like three hour pre-conference on like how should Christians respond to AI? And I've got three Christians with like PhDs and in AI. Yeah, I can't wait for that. I'm like, man, yeah, I think the church, I mean, I feel like it's very segmented. Like, there's certain people that are so into it.

They think about all the time. And then nobody, and everybody else is like not even really thinking about it. You know? I feel like, it's kind of still, it's kind of a siloed interest. And I'm like, I think we need to maybe start mainstreaming these conversations more. Yeah. Yeah, I very much agree. Yeah.

Yeah. Are you working on, you said you have a paperback version of scandalous witness coming out? Yeah. That's not anything. New. Okay. Yeah. More accessible.

Are you working on any other writing projects right now? I am doing a little bit of writing for, so in the No Small Endeavor world, you know, we have our main podcast, Nosewander Endeavor. And then we've got another new podcast called The Subtext, which is co-hosted with Savannah Locke. And so the premise of that show is that our team teases me because I don't have a cell phone. I heard that when we're trying to get a hold of you when you're trying to you when you're coming here. Keep going. I'm going to come back to that, though. So they always teach me about not knowing what's going on in the world because I don't have a cell phone. And so they... Not just the smartphone, though. You don't have a flip phone, no cell phone?

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have a landline at our house. And I have a Google voice number on my computer. Okay. So, you know, so I can, I can communicate with people, but I just don't have a phone that I put in my pocket. Yeah. And so, so anyway, so they tease me about not knowing anything about pop culture. And so they said, What if we get somebody who's interested in pop culture and then you guys talk about pop culture stuff, trends, and the kind of theology or moral philosophical implications of whatever trends are going on. So that's been super fun. So, you know, working on that a good bit. And so, for example, you know, we've done an episode on the liver king and masculinity, or we did an episode on Taylor Swift's new album. And so it's fun.

I'm learning a lot. And Savannah's a great co-host. So that's a lot of fun working on that. And then I'm also doing some writing on our NSC Plus subscriber community where I had several people suggest maybe that I do some autobiographical kind of stuff, which I've never written. And so I'm writing some of that stuff and putting that out as podcast episodes on NSA Plus. Okay.

So let's go back to no cell phone. First of all, I, when my producer, Chris, told me, you know, on the cell phone. And I clarified, like, so no smartphone. He's like, no cell phone. I'm like, wow. I mean, a spike of admiration. And then like a thousand questions. Like, how do you get from point A to point B?

Like, how did you even find this? Do you, like, print out, like, Google Mac? I have an iPad. I'm not a Luddite, you know, because I, you know, so I use technology a fair amount. Oh, so you do have a GPS when you drive. Yeah. So if, as long as I load up the map before I leave the house, you know,

I can follow on GPS. I don't know if you had like a big Rand McNally. Like, uh, the two. I do love paper maps, though. I love paper maps. I love it. I do, yeah. Uh, but no, I still use, I still either use Google Maps or whatever on my iPad.

On your iPad. How about when you traveled, uh, airplane apps? I mean, do you just get the paper, like, ticket or? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's becoming increasingly difficult. I mean, increasingly you can't park somewhere without a cell phone.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's another one. Yeah. It's, it really takes me off. Like, you literally can't. Yeah, I mean, like last week I was going downtown Nashville. Yeah.

And I had to talk this guy into letting me park for free at this garage because I don't have a phone, you know? And I'm sure he did not believe you. He said, you know, I don't have a phone. He's like, oh, yeah, right. But he was gracious. And he said, okay, just pulling in there. You'll be fine. I'll take care of you.

So, but that's one of the interesting things about it is that I end up talking to people I'd never talk to. Oh, yeah. And I remind myself that it's like a. serenity tax. Yeah. You know, that you have to pay the tax. You always,

everybody's got to pay something for every, you know, whatever decisions we make. And I have to pay my tax for some of those, that decision that I've made. But at least to this point, you know, I don't know if I'll stay with that forever,

but at least to this, I'm about eight years in, I think without one. Eight years? And, did you make, go take me back to when you made that decision. And was it like,

did you really think through it? Or was it just kind of like, you just never really got one and just, I, I had just gotten a new, what was at the time, I think the iPhone 7, which was one of the first big screen ones. Yeah. Oh, so you have had a smartphone. I have had a smartphone.

Yeah. And so I had it in my back pocket, sat down in the car and cracked the screen. And so I tried three different times to get it fixed. And for whatever reason, it was just dragging out. So by the time I tried the third time, it had been a month or more. And I thought, I wonder what it would be like just to try this. and so, you know, it created a fair amount of stress with my people I work with. I bet they hate it.

And my wife. And I want to talk to your wife after this. And so, yeah, it definitely created some stress and anxiety, but, but it's worked, you know. Yeah. And it's worked also because some of those, I must say, because people around me also have cell phones. It makes it easier for me. Yeah. I have one.

And because they also will indulge me in certain ways. And so it's a team. So it's not like a, it doesn't sound like it's a moral issue. Like, how would you describe, if someone says, why don't you have a cell phone,

what would be your elevator pitch answer? I'm a less anxious person without it. Huh. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. So my own kind of trying to prioritize being at peace with myself.

in the world. And also very practically, I kept finding myself, even when I would set the phone down and put it in my console, I kept finding myself picking it up at red lights and texting. Yes. And I'm going to hurt somebody someday. Yes. And I don't want to hurt somebody by a stupid phone. Yes. texting and driving, I think, is more dangerous than drinking and driving. I think I just read something where it's like it's...

And the implications are, yeah, the consequences are horrific. Even just, what does that say about our humanity when you have 30 seconds at a red light and you want to get something done in that time? Like I find myself doing the same thing. Or tempted to, sometimes I resist. Sometimes I don't. But it's just like, I don't like this world where this is normal. I remember the world when we didn't have that even temptation. Or we're waiting in line at a store.

And everybody's on their phone. Right. Or in so many places waiting for your flight, waiting for, and if you're not staring at your phone, you just kind of look around, people think you're a creeper or something like, like, what are you doing? Well, it breaks my heart, really, walking across campus and seeing, I've gotten to where a lot of times I'll just count. And, you know, a lot of times six or seven out of ten are walking across campus looking at their phone. Yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking, they're all, it's a, it's a campus full of amazing, wonderful human. beings and we're looking at the stupid phones.

And rather than talking to people. And yeah, it's just, I think it's a real, a sad kind of thing. And you just ask the characterology question, right? Yeah. You know, what does it say about us that we can't sit for 30 seconds without trying to do something on our phone? And I just don't like the kind of person that I am when I have that available to me all the time.

At the same time, you all right? You're like, you know, when I'm at home, a lot of times I'll pick up my wife's phone and I'll start playing solitaire. You're like the pacifist that calls the cops to come do the dirty work. I don't believe in violence. So, 911, I got a bad guy here.

Can you come? So, yeah. I'm, okay, I, well, yeah, go ahead. I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD, but my friends tell me I have it because I chase shiny objects all the time. You're a pacifist.

Right? Or how would you describe your... I seek to bear witness to the ways of Christ. Okay, you got to expand on that. Well, you know, it's like Harwis always says about there's no good label, right? Yeah. Do you believe there's ever a place for a Christian to use violence to accomplish justice or self-defense or to do good? I can't conceive of how warring against enemies can ever bear witness to the way of Christ.

You know, I mean, I've had this friend that was a colleague for years. He's now somewhere else, but he used to always tease me and kind of make fun of me for pacifism. and he was a real big, strong guy. He'd start teasing me, and I'd say, Scott, I'm going to take you outside and just kick your ass. And he said, oh, there's the pacifist, there he is, there he is. And he'd start teasing me, and I'd say, Scott, you know, fool well, there's a world of difference between a fist fight

and dropping depleted uranium bombs on innocent civilians. And, you know, it's just, it's like, I'm not really interested so much in the kind of moralistic, legalistic kind of stuff. Okay. But if we just look at the practices, they're horrible. No. And we so often do it with this sort of self-righteousness that really distresses me. So you would say it sounds like your, I don't want to say ambiguous, but like your main focus is on militaristic, nationalistic,

violence or the celebration of it wars on a larger level more than violence in certain situations say as a last resort on an individual level these kind of like you know killer at the door type arguments which usually are just

I don't know they're not the way they're framed aren't realistic the way they're framed and I don't know I mean I still think that those are legit areas of moral discernment right because sure But the question becomes, you know, can we think about even those kind of personal situations with an imagination that could try to bear witness to some alternate possibilities?

Yeah. Can we find a way to respond to violence nonviolently? Yeah. And so, yeah, I think all of that's, I think all of it's important. But I think that very often that kind of what we're. would you do if kind of question is a way of ducking from what we can really see about what's going on in the world. And that our warring is just so typically this grotesque use of power.

Yeah. Yeah, for me, it's like if the overwhelming majority of evangelical Christians said violence is bad, we shouldn't do it. the church should be known for being a nonviolent community. We should be known for loving our enemies. We don't support wars. If there is, you know, but, you know, if somebody breaks in my house and I try to do everything I can nonviolently and in the rush of the situation, violence is a last resort and I'm okay, I'm going to use violence.

If that was the extent of how Christians conceive of violence, I'd be like, I could totally live with that. Yeah. I could totally. I would still, let's keep talking about that. But if that was it, dude, I could live. If it was, we will only support wars that check off the seven criteria of just war theory. We don't target civilians.

We use proportionality. The motivation is not financial gain, which rules out most wars. So it's like, I will only support wars that are run through the grid of just war theory. I can get on board with that because that's going to cancel out almost every single war. But now we have Christians saying, you know, dropping the nuclear bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was, that was a good thing. We celebrate that, you know, and like, yeah, I mean, Israel is a right to defend itself. And, like, it's unfortunate that tens of thousands of women and children have been killed. But what are you going to do?

We have to get the bad guy, you know? So, yeah, I just think mainstream Christian approaches are so far removed from anything that we could be seen as justifiable from not even like. like a nonviolent, a full nonviolent reading, but just a, like you said, kind of a basic, like Christian. I mean, for years, you know, I, uh, when I would lecture on, I'd do these lectures on nonviolence, then I'd do a lecture on the just war tradition. And, um, and when I do my lecture on the just war tradition, you know, I'd have them do a reading on it. And then I would work through the criteria. And after I've worked through the criteria, I would ask them, um, how many of you have ever heard a lecture or a sermon on the just war tradition. And out of years and years of teaching,

I had maybe two people raised their hands out of thousands of students. And one of them was, I heard it from you at our church, you know. And it's like, it's pretty fundamentally laughable when you say we believe in the just war tradition, but there's zero training. Yeah. Because if you take the just war tradition seriously, that's a very rigorous moral commitment that requires a lot of moral formation if you're going to keep it. And but we don't train people in it. Right.

And so it's kind of a joke. It's like, no, we don't believe that. We believe in doing whatever the state tells us to do. People will sling around the term, just war theory, then they still quote Romans 13, quote a couple of talking points, and then say, see, this is, you know, we should be doing this, you know. And yeah, yeah, the just word tradition is, I remember looking at that when I wrote my book on Longs, violence. And I was like, geez, the whole motivation is war is not good. Right.

It is not good at all. Like, we don't rush this, or even last resort, we have exhausted all diplomatic means that we know how. And it's like, that doesn't, that's, I mean, all over, all over Donovan, it was a just war theorist. And he even said, history knows of no just wars. You know, so it's, it's, and I think his point there, I think, I can hardly understand all for her, Donovan.

I think it was, he's not saying, therefore, just war theory is illegitimate. It's like it is kind of a untouchable standard that we should strive toward, not a criteria that every box must be perfectly checked off in order to call a war just. Is my understanding of that quote. Well, Lee, I've taken you an hour and, man, I appreciate, this went by so fast. I appreciate you taking a time to come down here. Yes, great to be with you. I came farther than you to meet here.

Indeed. You came 20 minutes. I came on a seven-hour flight. So, yeah. Well, I appreciate what you do. And I'm great to be with you today. Yeah, you too. And your podcast, it's called Every Small Endeavour.

No Small Endeavor. No Small Endeavor. Yeah. And yeah, that's been a lot of fun. We would love for some of your folks to check us out. So, yeah, our tagline is exploring what it means to live a good life. And so I kind of take my virtue ethics kind of interests and ask questions about human flourishing and then we talk to

theologians but we also talk to philosophers, scientists, social scientists, neuroscientists, artists, and about various conversations about human flourishing and it's been super fun and you may or may not know we're on public radio now. We're syndicated on public radio

and 100 stations around the country so that's been really fun and have gotten to meet a lot of fascinating people and so do that so yeah it's great. Awesome. Thanks again Lee. Appreciate it. Thank you, President. Thank you.