Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1139: What Is a Christian Political Identity? Dr. Lee Camp

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Lee has been teaching full time at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, since 1999. He has an M.A. and M.Div. from Abilene Christian University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Moral Theology / Christian Ethics from Notre Dame University. Lee is the author of several books, including an outstanding book on politics called Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. And this forms the basis for our conversation which focuses on what a truly Christian political identity looks like. Learn more about Lee from his website: https://www.leeccamp.com/about-1 Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is a long awaited guest I've been wanting to have on for so long. Dr. Lee Camp is a professor at Lipscomb University. He's been there since 1999. He has tons of degrees here. Let's see, an MA and an MDiv from Abilene Christian University, an MA and a PhD in Moral Theology and Christian Ethics from Notre Dame University. He's the author of several books, including one of my favorite books on politics called, I'm going to hold it up here for my YouTube watchers, Scandalous Witness, a little political manifesto for Christians, which came out a few years ago. It is absolutely incredible. It's not too long, not too hard to

read, but very responsible and thoughtful and engaging and prophetic. And so we talk all things politics, and I loved this conversation. Lee is so sharp, so wise, so I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation. So please welcome to the Lee, thanks so much for being on Theology Journal. I've been looking forward to this for about 15 years. Long before podcasts were... You shouldn't have waited so long. I know. There's several guests that I've...

In my mind, I'm like, oh, I would love to have them on. But then I forget. I don't write it down or something. When I'm inviting guests, it's an oversight on my part. I'm looking forward to the conversation. is just off the charts. It was so, so good. It put words to how I was feeling about a Christian political perspective. I'm sure you get that a lot. A lot of people that know Reddit say the exact same thing. Like, gosh, this is how I was feeling. I just didn't know how to say it. So thank you for that book. Has it been well-received? It has been well-received. It's like any theology book. You think more people should read it than have read it. But yes, it has been well received. I've been very grateful for the good feedback that we've gotten from it. So how would you describe yourself politically?

Like if someone said, you know, this met you for the first time and they want to have a political conversation, like how would you describe your political position, your political viewpoint, or however you want to word it? Especially if I'm going to be true to what I argued in that book, then my most basic answer would have to be, I see myself politically as a Christian, and then see what other questions people are going to follow up with. But I think, I mean, that's the argument I'm trying to make in the book, is that we presumed that political means some sort of thing that's outside of Christianity, that is separate from Christianity. And so I'm trying to provocatively say in the book that if we fall into that old refrain that Christianity is not political, then we have fundamentally misunderstood what

Christianity is, and that there is no such thing as an apolitical Christianity. If it's true to the witness of Scripture, there is no such thing as an apolitical Christianity. And since Christian orthodoxy calls us to a fundamental allegiance, then that has to be our first way of thinking about the sort of political creatures that we are. It starts, originates in Christian confession, and that ought to inform every aspect of our political engagement and our political witness. I think a lot of people would, I think, misunderstand what you're saying. I think if they hear, you know, yeah, my political identity is Christian and that's why we need to vote Republican or that's

why we need to vote Democrat. That's why we need to, you know, oppose whatever. Like, like it just, they instantly go to the political discourse that our current nation that both you and I are living in have mapped out for us. Can you tease out, like, so what's the disconnect there? Yeah, so I think you're exactly right that what I just said will get fundamentally misconstrued in the political context in which we find ourselves in the United States. Because for a long, long time, well before the United States of America, there have been various moments in which the shape of Christian, the effort to hold together the political witness of the gospel with the political realities around us has taken on imperialist or militant or some sort of,

you know, to use the phrase that's kind of debated and may or may not be helpful, Constantinian sorts of approaches to thinking about what Christianity is. And so when I say Christianity is fundamentally political, I mean something very, very different in the particulars of the concrete implications of that than might a Christian nationalist, for example. A Christian nationalist could say the stuff I just said, but they're going to mean something completely different than what I mean, because in my mind, a Christian nationalist, for example, is holding on to very small amounts of the biblical witness and not the biblical witness as a whole. They might pick out, you know, and forget the nationalists, just take, for example,

the moral majority types, or even take Christian Protestant liberalism in the early part of the 20th century, who were also taking small bits, right? Generally, that sort of approach picks and chooses some so-called biblical values or some part of the biblical story and then seeks to use political means that are not specified by the gospel, political means of coercion, political means of pressing their vision of values upon others. Whereas a biblical witness is always grounded in a fundamental freedom and a fundamental commitment to nonviolence and a fundamental commitment to persuasion as opposed to coercion. And so if you assume that the biblical trajectory itself, as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, that's the fullest manifestation to us of the will of God comes to us as the nonviolent suffering Christ

bearing witness to a new politic that he called the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, then our means toward advancing that kingdom has to be the same means that Jesus chose. And that itself is a political claim, right? Our means cannot be separated from the end. And so, again, once we start digging beneath the surface of what we might mean by Christianity as political, it's going to go, it can go lots of different places. And it's very important to tease that out. So in the book, what I do is I try to summarize that quickly by saying, we must uphold the

notion that Christianity is political while being neither right nor left, right? So this is not a call to a sort of ideological partisanship of either the right or the left. And then I add this phrase, neither right nor left, nor religious, which, you know, some people have picked at me about the way I use that term religious and perhaps slippery, undefined ways, which, you know, I'm OK with that because it kind of I think it kind of did what I wanted it to do, which is namely to say that the point by saying it's neither right nor left is not to say it's spiritual and therefore irrelevant to the political questions that are before us. and therefore irrelevant to the political questions that are before us, but instead that it is profoundly political through and through. It's not merely political. It's not only political, but it is definitely political, neither right nor left, and not some otherworldly spirituality that doesn't care about the political moment or the political realities in which we find ourselves. care about the political moment or the political realities in which we find ourselves. That's really helpful. Do you find just for, and this is, I told you offline, like my,

you know, sometimes I'll have a guest on that, you know, I already have my stuff all worked out and I'm having them on to have a good dialogue, you know, sometimes it's like pushing back, whatever. But here, these are, this is like, these are just questions I'm literally wrestling with, like as of this morning, you know, like, cause when I read your book, I'm literally wrestling with as of this morning. Because when I read your book, I just so agreed with that perspective. I was trying to find something I disagreed with. Maybe I might have found a typo in the footnote or something. But beyond that, it just resonated so much with it. Well, let me start here. So between someone like a

Stanley Hauerwas, you know, and Oliver O'Donovan, I'm sure you're familiar with kind of, and I'm actually very unfamiliar with O'Donovan. I just know his perspective through other people. I actually have Desiring of the Nations here on my desk that I'm ready to break into here today or tomorrow. I'm much more familiar with a Hauerwas or a Yoder. And I know your book feels very Hauerwas-y and very Yoder-y. Would that be an accurate representation? Stanley Hauerwas endorsed your book. Would you say, yeah, you're pretty much right where Hauerwas is? And then I guess the follow-up question is, how would you relate to someone like an O'Donovan? Because I know they overlap, but they also diverge.

Yeah. Well, I have definitely learned a whole lot from Stanley and count him a friend. And he's a dear soul, and I love him and think very, very highly of him. And, of course, I was a student of John Yoder. And of course, his witness is compromised these days regarding all of the pain and the grief that has been revealed about his life. But again, I certainly am informed by what I learned from him. So I'm trying to do my own sort of interpretation of that sort of Anabaptist kind of approach, I think that there are probably places that Stanley and I would say things differently because, you know, as he puts it, as he put it a number of times in his career, he sees himself as a recovering liberal

and I'm a recovering fundamentalist sectarian. And so those are two very different kinds of recoveries. And so whereas, you know, maybe in some forms of Protestant liberalism that Stanley is reacting to, there was an over-identification, too great a desire to be, I don't even like the way I'm saying this, but I'm painting in broad stereotypes here, you know, some kind of broader over-desire, perhaps, to identify with larger cultural trends, whereas in my world, it was quite the opposite. We were always saying, what's wrong with the larger cultural trends, including what's wrong with the larger Christian world? And so I'm coming at it from a very, very different kind of place, but certainly there are

some shared common concerns. That makes sense. When you're kind of reacting against a certain camp that you see is maybe way too far in one direction, we're always going to have a tendency to maybe overcorrect slightly. So it's almost like both of you came to a very similar position, but maybe he overcorrected in one direction, maybe you over in the other. I guess that'd be debated. Yeah, if possible. What's your understanding of O'Donovan? I would love you – yeah. Because people that hear me get a little too Harawassian, they kind of – I get kind of patted on the head. Not really, but kind of.

You know, like, go read O'Donovan. We all went through our Anabaptist phase too, and then we came back to reality when we read O'Donovan. I would rather hear people tell me what in O'Donovan in particular that they are wanting to raise rather than say, a fundamentally false, and it's annoying, a fundamentally false understanding of people who are making the kind of case that I make in this book. That is that you're a sectarian who doesn't care about the principalities and powers and that doesn't care about the political questions that are pressing on us. And it's just, it's a fundamentally false construal of what's being said. You can tell my energy is kind of rising because it's just frustrating. You know,

it's like, give me a real question. Give me a real question. And so. So you've gotten this too, obviously. And I'm not saying that to you. I'm just saying that to these kinds of,

these kinds of critiques, it's like, you know, there's, I'm trying to make the case in the book that Christianity is fundamentally political and that we absolutely cannot ignore the political realities in which we find ourselves. I'm just insisting that to do that, we must first and foremost uphold the allegiance to the Lordship of Christ and to the way of Christ, and that there's no easy way, there ought not be any easy way to dismiss the teachings of Christ if we, quote, choose to be

political. And it's just like, no, again, that's a complete misunderstanding of Christianity. It's are we Christians or are we not? And if we're Christians, then it means that every realm of our life has to bear witness to the way of Christ in the way that we engage that realm of life. That's a simple claim, right? Now, I shouldn't act as if what I just said, even though I think it's little-o orthodox, I shouldn't act as if what I just said is not a minority viewpoint, right? Because even you look at somebody like Martin Luther, right. Luther, when he reads the Sermon on the Mount, he says in his famous essay on the Sermon on the Mount, he says, look, obviously I'm paraphrasing. But he says, if you want to know what your duty is as a Christian in personal relationships, then read the Sermon on the Mount. And then he says,

but if you want to know what your duty is as a lord or a prince or a judge or a lady or an executioner, he says, read the job manual and you'll know what you're supposed to do. And so what I'm saying is that Luther in that regard is, I think, absolutely wrong. And so there's a sort of fundamental choice there that we have to make is, are we going to accept that sort of interpretive move or not? And some people make that interpretive move, that sort of Martin Luther kind of interpretive move, and they're, you know, and I trust that they're doing it in good faith. I just think that they're wrong. And they think that I'm wrong.

Is this the two kingdoms? Is that the... Yeah. I don't know if he had that phrase or we have that phrase for Luther, but you kind of have this spiritual kingdom, whatever. But then when you get into your civil responsibilities, it's almost like you put on a whole different hat, which I agree is, I think,

just an atrocious reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Right. It's often called the ethic of vocation is that you figure out what the ethic is based upon what your particular calling is in the so-called secular world. And so, you know, those are two very different ways of understanding what the New Testament is and the implications that the New Testament has for us in our daily lives. And so the Anabaptist tradition never called us to withdraw, and it never called us to act as if the hard, challenging political questions in front of us are irrelevant to us, as if we're just waiting for heaven to come. And really, what I'm arguing in the book is how wrong that viewpoint is, right? So I think that's where the frustration arises. It's like you argue how wrong an otherworldly vision is, and then people will say, well, you're being otherworldly and withdrawalist

and sectarian. It's like, no, I'm not at all, right? I'm saying that what we want is a more, in some ways what we might say is we want a more holistic Jesus, a more all-encompassing vision of what the gospel is that is inseparable from all the questions that matter to us in politics and human history. And then, of course the there's the question of okay well what does that mean and then i would say okay now we're getting to good questions yeah right but to misconstrue or to reframe what's being said in a way that it's not intended just doesn't show good faith on the part of those who are interrogating it in that way. And even when I reread, well, Resident Aliens and several other works from both Harawas and Yoder, like, well, Harawas in particular, he,

and I think this is maybe intentional, he does like to say things that feel a little extreme, and then he'll come back and kind of explain it. And there are single statements that feel very separatistic, but then he comes back and spends a few pages saying, this is not separatism. Here's, you know, I'm arguing for a Christian means of engaging the world, not removing yourself from it. And seeing the church, the ecclesia, as opposed to the kingdom, as a political movement, you know, as the means through which God is engaging the world. I'm grossly paraphrasing it. I think a lot of times reading Stanley, there are, and you know, I did, when I did my dissertation, part of the thread that ran through

my whole dissertation was critiquing Stanley and arguing about how I think he was wrong about some of the things that he said and the way he framed them up. But I think that one can't appreciate what Stanley Hauerwas is doing. If we don't understand what, you know, I don't know if it was in Mere Christianity where C.S. Lewis talks about how someone who is bearing witness to a radical, helpful new way of seeing things in human history often has to resort to hyperbole to get their point across. And I think in some ways it's helpful if you just realize that Stanley's trying to get our attention, and he's trying to say, we've lost sight of some of the basics of the gospel and sort of some of the basics of, of,

of the new Testament. And so he's, he's, he's banging a drum, right. And he's trying to get our attention. I think that that in my mind is a helpful way to kind of understand what it is that he's tried to gift us with in his vocation.

Yeah. He's trying to stir up thinking, which you did extremely well. Obviously the book was, did exactly what, what he set out to do. So I guess one of the biggest questions that, that, yeah, when, when I the biggest questions that, yeah, I think both of you and I would, you know, and Stanley and others would, you know, talk about the church being the sort of like, well, kind of what I said. Like, this is a political entity.

And we are to engage the world. We are to care for the poor. We are to care for the marginalized, the immigrant. All these things that we want our current government to kind of do. So a lot of times we bypass doing those things as the spirit and power body of Christ. And I think when people hear that, they're like, okay, yeah, yeah. But we also need to engage the government because unjust laws hurt people, especially marginalized people, especially poor people. And then they

can keep going and going and going, and it'll end up to, if you don't vote for Trump or vote against Trump or whatever, you're hurting your neighbor. You're not loving your neighbor well. How do you... Yeah. What's your response to that? That if we as the church or Christians don't work through the political means, we're not loving our neighbor well. I think that's maybe a very general way in which people put it, yeah. Yeah, well, allow me first to kind of maybe suggest a tweak on the way you asked the question, and then let me give a... Again, I would want to say it's not that we're choosing to be political once we decide to

engage U.S., state, local, or federal politics. That's not when we're being political. That's not when we're becoming political. Instead, the question is, what does it mean for us to embrace the fact that we are to be a community embodying its own particular politic that we call the kingdom of God. And then there's the question of, okay, so how, as a community of people embodying the kingdom of God, how do we go about engaging with other political powers? And how do we then maintain our own fidelity to our allegiance to the Lordship of Christ as we engage other political powers. Right. So remembering we're a political witness, we're a political community seeking to bear witness as we think we are called to do so to other political powers. And so I would say that the first, you know, that that then raises lots of interesting, important observations, possibilities, ways forward.

And I think the first one needs to be that we commit ourselves to upholding the way of Christ. So this goes back to the to the Luther thing. Right. So so we're saying I'm arguing we should we should say we're not going to go the Luther route as described in the Sermon on the Mount, but instead we're trying to commit ourselves to taking the way of Christ seriously, even in our political engagements with the other political powers beyond the church. And so then if we take that sort of approach, then I think we just have to decide on a case-by-case basis how we can bear witness to what the kingdom of God, what a step in the right direction toward the kingdom of God might look like in our given situation. So one objection that some would immediately raise to what I've already said would be something like this. They would say, look, if you hold on to a nonviolent Christ, if you advocate for a nonviolent Christ and therefore the necessity of nonviolent discipleship, then you have nothing to say

to the powers that are themselves willing and often employing violent, coercive means. Now, on the face of it, I can see how some people might make that claim, but I just don't think that it's true. It's like, well, of course I can still say something to powers that use violence or that use coercion or that use the criminal justice system and are coercive in terms of incarceration and so forth, right? Of course, I can still say things to those people because, or try to bear witness to those people because, you know, why can't I? Of course, we can. And so then we say, well, what if they're not going to uphold or bear witness to the lordship of the nonviolent Christ. And what can you say to them? Well, you can say the kinds of things that Martin Luther King Jr. said to them, right? You can say,

here's your ideals that you have stipulated and you said you believe in, and yet you're not upholding them. You're down here practicing all sorts of forms of discrimination and injustice against those that you have said in your best vision are equal, but you're down here. And so what he did was he called them to repentance, to change and come here, right? And then when he got around to this famous church at Riverside Church in New York City a year before he was assassinated, and he says, now I'm calling you to take seriously that you're not uphold, that in your violent war making in Vietnam, that there's all sorts of horrible injustice and violation of the dignity of humankind that you're practicing in the war in Vietnam. And so he calls them then to this

sort of nonviolence with regard to the war in vietnam they they refused to go that go there with him and he was assassinated within a year right so he he still was able to say things to the powers that be and was very effective at trying to get them to move from from here to here right but he couldn't get them to move here but he still got him to move from there to there right now so i think that's a great model of thinking about we look for, we ought to look for whatever concrete mechanism of injustice or oppression or some social condition that needs rectification and do what we can to speak towards the rectification of that social ill or that unjust practice and do it as well as we can,

knowing that the powers that be may or may not go that next step with us, or they may or may not go as many steps with us as we would wish or as we would like. But that, you know, our job there is not to calculate where we can win and only act in a way when we know we can win. It's to instead be faithful in creative ways, trying to be effective, but not letting effectiveness be the final criteria of whether or not we do a given thing. Okay. I threw a whole lot at you there. No, that's really helpful. It made me think towards the end of your book, which I have right here, by the way. You talk about, I think it's your second to last chapter, about engaging the powers on an ad hoc basis.

Yeah. Which is basically what you're getting at. But can you explain what you mean by that? And interestingly, Jamie Smith, who's much more on the side of O'Donovan, also advocates for that as well. Towards the end of his book, he talks about ad hoc. What does that mean? Engaging the powers on an ad hoc basis? Does he use that language? He does, yeah. I didn't notice it the first time. I missed that, so yeah, I need to go back and look at that. So, yeah, I need to go back and look at that. But I mean, I mean, I think that that's interesting because that just may show what I was griping about earlier is that those who critique and act as if this anti-Baptist vision doesn't care about political engagement just have misunderstood it, you know, or think that the ad hoc thing is very helpful and is very crucial to all this.

And so by using ad hoc, I'm meaning that as an explicit rejection of partisan ideological approaches. that it's a sort of refusal to say we've got to find our way to bear witness through the right, through the left, through whatever the partisan political stance might be. The example I use in the book, I don't know that it's very good exegesis, but it's good for illustrative purposes. I talk about how if you read the book of Genesis and you got Joseph coming along, and Joseph is seen as being used by God to save God's people, that when Pharaoh has the vision of the coming famine, what Joseph does is he sets up a big government system of taxation and sets up a big government system of feeding people by which he saves God's people. And he's lauded and celebrated. So people who are ideologically committed to small government have a big problem with the end of the book of Genesis and Joseph being celebrated as saving God's people through his taxation. But then as the book of Exodus opens, right, the mechanisms of

big government have now turned such a way that they are oppressing God's people. And now they get, that becomes the locus of the divine retribution of God, and God frees God's people from the big government of Pharaoh, right? So those who are ideologically committed to big government power, they ought to pay more attention to the opening of Exodus. And so my point there is to say, there are concerns that the right has about big government that of course we ought to take seriously. Anyone who's not concerned about the overreach of big governmental powers has paid no attention to human history. Of course you ought to be concerned about that. And yet at the same time, those who are like ideologically committed to some sort of magical goodness of a so-called free market economy,

you've not paid attention to the last 150 years of human history. It's like over and over and over again. It oversteps its bounds. Power finds a way to get consolidated and overreach and become oppressive and overbearing. And so both of these sets of concerns are very legitimate, and we ought to figure out what injustices they're pointing us to and try to bear witness to an alternative. So the ad hoc approach is saying, don't get stuck in thinking your primary way of bearing witness to the kingdom of God is going to come through small government ideology or big government ideology, stereotypical conservatism, stereotypical liberalism, but instead bring something that's actually beneficial. And I think we Christians can bring something that's really beneficial to the world that we're not bringing if we will be more explicitly committed to the way of Christ as opposed to just picking and choosing some kind of biblical values, whichever they might be on either side, and pushing hard through other means for those things.

This might be grossly oversimplified, but is it basically just being like nonpartisan engagement? You're not trying to push the government to do the right thing. You're not trying to do that from the perspective of the right, from the perspective of the left. You're not aligning yourself with this political party in order to get something done. You're doing it kind of as a, well, I was a member of the kingdom of God as an independent. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a governmental policy person. And so I always am hesitant to speak with much particularity about certain questions. the implications of certain policies always have fallout that even really good policy people can't foresee, right? So that's a danger there. And I think sort of humility about that's super important.

And I'll also note that, you know, my point here is also not to say that we would never, my point is not to say we would never align ourselves with a given party at a particular historical point. That might be necessary, but that our basic commitment is not arising out of ideological commitments to a partisan, a U.S. partisan political position, but instead arises out of our commitment to the gospel and the nonviolence of Christ and bearing witness to the nonviolent way of Christ in the world. good for them. So I first heard about Haya through an advertisement on another podcast, and I immediately thought, man, I wish this was around when my kids were young. It can be so difficult. As you know, if you're a parent, you know, it can be hard to get your children to consume all the nutrition that they need. And this is where Haya can help. Because let's be honest, most children's vitamins are basically like candy in disguise. They're filled

with sugar, unhealthy chemicals, other gummy junk that kids shouldn't eat. That's why Haya was created. It's a pediatrician-approved, super-powered, chewable vitamin. And while most children's vitamins are filled with sugar, Haya is made with zero sugar and zero gummy junk. And it actually tastes good. Like, I tried it myself, and I was shocked at how good it tastes for being so packed with so many vitamins and nutrients. Haya is pressed with a blend of 12 organic fruits and veggies, then supercharged with 15 essential vitamins and minerals, including vitamin D, B12, C, zinc, folate, and many others to help support immunity, energy, brain function, mood, concentration, teeth, bones, and more. It's non-GMO, vegan, dairy-free, allergy-free, gelatin-free, nut-free, and everything else that you can imagine. So we at Theology in a Row,

we worked out a special deal with Haya for their best-selling children's vitamin. You can receive 50% off your first order. That's a lot. To claim this deal, you must go to HiyaHealth.com forward slash T-I-T-R. This deal is not available on the regular website. So you actually have to go to this website. So H-I-Y-A Health.com forward slash T-I-T-R. It's all in the show notes and get your kids the full body nourishment that they need to grow into healthy adults. Okay, friends, we are having our third ever Exiles in Babylon conference, April 18th through the 20th in Boise, Idaho. You can attend virtually or attend live.

Space is filling up. So if you do want to attend live, I would highly recommend registering sooner than later at theologyintheraw.com. That's theologyintheraw.com. We are going to tackle a bunch of really important and tough topics. We're going to talk about deconstruction, reconstruction, and the rod.com that's theology and rod.com. We are going to tackle a bunch of really important and tough topics. We're going to talk about deconstruction, reconstruction, and the gospel. Why are people deconstructing from their former evangelical faith?

We have Abigail Favali, Amin Hudson, Tim Whitaker from the new evangelicals and Evan Wickham, who are going to be, uh, dialoguing about that topic. We also are going to talk, going to cover the extremely important and very sensitive topic of women, power, and abuse in the church. We have Julie Slattery, Sandy Richter, Tiffany Bloom, Lori Krieg addressing that super important topic. We're also going to tackle LGBTQ people and the church with Greg Coles, Brenna Blaine, Art Perea, and Kat LaPreri. And we're also, of course, going to tackle politics. Three Christian views of politics where we're going to have a left-leaning Christian,

a right-leaning Christian, and a non-leaning Baptist-ish Christian. We're going to put them in dialogue together and hash some things out. So we have Brian Zahn representing that middle or non-position or whatever. Chris Butler, left-leaning Christian. Joy Mosley, right-leaning Christian. We're also going to have Max Licato there. We're going to have a joint podcast with Amin Hudson from the Southside Rabbi podcast, along with YouTube sensation Ruslan. And of course, we're going to have street hymns there throughout the conference, making everybody uncomfortable. Oh yeah. And of course, a worship with Evan Wickham and Tanika Wyatt. I cannot wait. This

is going to be a barn burner, folks. I am working extremely hard to get canceled this year. So this might be the last. It won't be. Well, who knows? We'll see. Yeah, it's going to be engaging. It's going to be, I think, helpful and profitable and uncomfortable and encouraging and challenging and convicting and all those fun things. So go to theologyintherod.com. Register sooner than later. That's theologyintheraw.com. I will see you in April. So I listened to a conversation. I forget who it was, but it's interesting. They were talking about Christian nationalism. The commentator, the host raised a question. The guest was a critique of Christian nationalism, and so was the host. But he said, well, in what way is Christian nationalism not also happening on the other side? And he just used the illustration. He's like, Christian nationalists have their set of

values, which we can debate whether those values reflect Christ or not, you know, um, and they want the government to embody those values. But he says those on the left would do the same thing. They might be more pro immigration. They might be more, you know, universal healthcare. And why, why are those things? Well, again, speaking of Christians in particular, well, because we think the Bible likes those things. We think God, God likes immigrants and we think God wants people to have, you know, everybody have access to healthcare. So both sides and really any, I mean, it just seems, this is me thinking out loud, so correct me where I'm wrong, but is it not a form of Christian nationalism in any case when a Christian pushes the government to do the right thing or votes a

certain direction or protests an unjust law so that the government will embody a just law. What is a just law? One that resonates with biblical values. So I understand the difference. This is where I would depart, not me, but like, you know, people could, I think you'd immediately say, and I would say too, that like, well, the means by which the Christian nationalists are going about it are just unchristian means, you know, coercion and militancy and so on. But that aside, is any kind of pushing the government to be more Christian, not a kind of Christian nationalist nationalism? Yeah, that's a really important question. My short answer would be no. But before I get to explain my short answer, let me back up

just a second and make a couple of historical observations. Some of the most blatant, and I think I talk about some of these in the book, some of the most blatant examples of Christian nationalism in U.S. history in the 20th century come from Protestant liberals. So Woodrow Wilson, for example, is this incredible, shockingly Christian nationalist. And some of the language that he uses for the war-making American state, he uses language like, we're going to get into World War I, or at that time would have been called the Great War. We're going to get into the Great War because this will be the war to end all wars. And he does that explicitly as a practicing Christian. And he uses all sorts of messianic, salvific language, right? And when you think about to end all wars, that is an explicitly Hebraic vision of the Hebrew prophets, right?

Sword will be bitten, plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. And this is what the early church knew about the prophets was that when the and one of the reasons that they were advocated nonviolence was that they knew that when the Messiah comes, that the nations would learn war no more. And so they they realize that when if we claim that Jesus is the Messiah, this means that we have to stop our learning of war making and stop practicing our war making. A lot of the early church fathers talk about this at some length. And so but here's Wilson using that prophetic vision of ending war. This is the key to nationalism. The problem is not the biblical value of wanting to end war. The problem with nationalism is seeing the nation state, which wages war to maintain its existence,

is using the nation state and its war making to bring about the biblical vision. So it's the salvific messianic vision of the nation state that is central to nationalism. It's not that you care about certain values. Everybody cares about certain values. Everybody wants us to practice certain things that we think are good and true and beautiful and contribute to the good of our communities. Everybody, you know, I mean, anybody who cares about anything has that, right? But that doesn't mean you're a nationalist. The nationalist is seeing that our particular nation state, our particular community is the savior of the world. And there's this crazy speech that I have

in the book from Wilson, where after the war, he goes around on the speaking tour, and he has this one particular speech that's just shocking. And he says that in looking at the United States winning the war, he says that people are now looking and saying, I now see America as the savior of the world. That's a quote, that's a direct quote from this speech, right? And so it's just sort of seeing the nation state as the savior, seeing the nation state as having a salvific mission in human history. That in my mind is what's central to nationalism. And so, and that is the great danger, is that once you attach a salvific mission to a nation state that maintains its existence through military might, then you are at a dangerous, dangerous place.

Because if the Savior has to win, right, if the Savior has to come out victorious, has to come out victorious and the savior, I'll put that in scare quotes, the savior here now brings about its ends through war-making means, then there's no stopping what's legitimate, what's thought to be legitimate for that nation state. And so I think that's where the nationalism is at play, not a commitment to sort of setting the values that you may or may not get from your religious tradition, but that you're attaching a salvific messianic vision to the nation state. That makes so much sense. So nationalism sees the state as essentially part of like God's movement, God's kingdom.

If not, like, I mean, blessed by God in the same way that Old Testament Israel had God's blessing. And once you do that, then Native Americans are Canaanites or in Israel, we have this current conflict going on where Palestinians are, you know, Canaanites. And, you know, once you, once you make the state kind of part of God's vehicle for bringing about good in the world. Yeah. That, that, that, that gets sideways really fast. Um, that actually leads into the ad hoc

thing too. Like if you view the state as more on the side of the beast than the bride, it kind of changes how you go about it. Like, and this is a point that I've tried to make on just on a theological level. Like if we take what the Bible says seriously about just empires in general, all the way from Assyria, all the way through Rome, and even the way the revelation talks about the Roman empire, it does so quite loosely, almost giving the impression that, yes, the current one is Rome, but there's going to be

other empires that are going to come along. And this is not even disputed that the United States of America currently has some very strong imperial qualities. We can just point to, I don't know how many military bases in 80 different countries. I mean, there's the economic sway that America has on so many countries. The foreign policy is, once you peel back the curtain, just a hair. You see all kinds of imperialism, which would place, is it too much of a theological leap to say that the United States of America is in the purview of that really startling description of Rome in Revelation 13 that is literally being empowered by Satan? I mean, it sounds strong, but I'm just, I'm trying to like, I want to be theologically faithful without making an

outrageous claim, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that the way I make sense of kind of the New Testament vision of relationship with powers is that you have the two poles, we might say, of New Testament possibilities for envisioning the powers that be range from Romans 13 to Revelation 13, right? So, Romans 13 is basically saying, well, let me back up just a second. So, with the New Testament, we have this fundamental claim about history in that we live between the times, right? So, we live between the time of the inauguration of the kingdom of God and the consummation of the kingdom of God. We must never lose sight in our political witness of that fact. You know, I would say that so much of our political engagement with the powers that be, if at any moment we lose sight of the fact that we live between the times, it's very quickly we can go astray. So the fact that we live between the times, very quickly we can go astray. So the fact that we live between

the times means that death has been defeated, that the way of love in Christ is triumphant, but the final shakeout of that victory we're still waiting on, right? So this is the claim of 1 Corinthians 15, that we're still waiting for the final triumph of resurrection, of life over death to come about, when then finally all power shall be put under the lordship of Christ, and then Christ will hand the kingdom over to the Father. And so, you know, if we don't have that kind of historical vision, then we're going to miss, I think, what it looks like to be faithful Christian actors in human history. Given that we live between the times, at any given moment, there's still what Paul will call the power of sin to corrupt any good practice. This is what he says at certain places about the law, right? Is the law sinful? Well, no, the law was given to us as a gift, but under the power of sin, it became oppressive, right? And so it's like, if we would just take

Paul more seriously in our political witness, we would realize that whatever kind of political policy that you're wanting to put in place, given that we live between the times, even if it's beautiful at the moment that it gets put in place, give it a generation and it can become a force of oppression. With that sort of framing, then we can kind of think about, well, what's the Romans 13 to Revelation 13 polls pointing us to? It's that at their best in Romans 13, the powers check chaos. They limit chaos. They limit the widespread violence. They limit anarchy in the worst sense of anarchy. And that they're, because of the fact

that there's still the power of sin in the world, these powers are used by God to keep a fundamental order. And then in 1 Timothy 2, you know, Paul, pseudo Paul will tell us, pray for the world, these powers are used by God to keep a fundamental order. And then in 1 Timothy 2, you know, Paul, pseudo-Paul, will tell us, pray for the powers so that there can be this sort of relative peace so that then we can bear witness to the more important thing, which is the kingdom of God. But by the time we get to Revelation 13, their other vision is that what the powers are called to do at their best has been cast aside, and they've taken on this sort of divinization of themselves and requiring other people to bow down to them, and thus have become demonic. And so the range of seeing what the powers do in the New Testament

ranges from they have a sort of checking chaos, a sort of healthy, we might say, they have at best a sort of healthy police function that limits chaos on the one hand, and then it can go all the way over to a sort of demonic self-divinization, and then things are really, really an imperialistic mess. And so, which do we live in? Well, we can, I just didn't leave that up to other people right at the moment to sort that question out. But that's at least the vision that the New Testament gives us for how to think about the powers that be, the political powers that be outside the church. That's a great way of explaining it.

It is interesting that, yeah, those passages, they feel very different. I don't think they contradict. It is interesting that, yeah, those passages, they feel very different. I don't think they contradict. I mean, yeah, Romans 13 is, you know, it's always, it always comes up in these conversations. I don't want to get too sidetracked, but I think Paul there is, you know, he calls the government a servant of the Lord. Well, that's a classic prophetic description of Assyria and Babylon and Cyrus. description of Assyria and Babylon and Cyrus. And it's like, I don't, I don't, when, when Assyria was displaying psychological warfare by skinning people alive and stacking their heads on poles, well, were they doing the Lord's will? Well, what do you mean? Like, yeah, God used,

clearly used Assyria and Babylon to carry out his covenant promise to punish Israel when they, you know, lived in ongoing disobedience to the covenant stipulations. And so on the one hand, God used them and therefore they're the servant of the Lord. But on the other hand, they're also just, you know, just an atrocious nation that God used them and he spit them out and he judged them, right? And that's what I see. So I don't, just because we are to, God uses Rome to curb evil to, you know, doesn't mean he's like sanitizing. I think Romans 13 sometimes can feel like it's read almost like a more positive description of the state than it's really intended. So I don't see a, I just don't see a contradiction. It certainly is too different.

It's very too different. Different context. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Different context. And I wonder, I want to get your thoughts on this, Lee. Some of it depends on kind of where the reader is living. It's funny. People in other nations, Palestinian Christians read Romans 13 a little differently.

I think that the first thing that we'd want to say about Romans 13 is never forget that it follows Romans 12. And that's what gets forgotten almost every time someone brings up Romans 13 as a sort of objection to this sort of conversation. They have forgotten it follows Romans 12 and Romans 12 is like Paul's. It's almost like Paul's synopsis of the Sermon on the Mount kind of stuff. Right. If your enemy is hungry, feed them. If they're thirsty, give them something to drink by doing. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Don't seek out vengeance. Vengeance is mine. I'll repay, says the Lord. And then Romans 13 is the way he's saying that God is still at work using the powers to check

evil. But the calling for the Christian is first and foremost Romans 12, not Romans 13. He's not saying, therefore, you go out and seek these positions of power to check chaos that God's doing and the powers that be. He's saying you be followers of Christ. You do Romans 12. But don't get dismayed in thinking how horrible it is that there are lots of rottenness in the world. He's saying one way God's seeking to deal with that is through the powers that be. And so that's a crucial sort of thing to take sense of. And then on the notion of different context, you know, there's a, let's see, it's Donald Durnball's book, The Believer's Church, that looks at the Anabaptist tradition and Little B Baptist tradition.

And Dernbaugh looks at the ways in which tongue cut out by both Protestant and Catholic powers that be, there's not a practical question about whether or not you're going to be in a position of power. They're hunting you down and killing you, right? And so the notion that you would participate in government is beyond the pale of even consideration because these people are hunting you down and killing you, right? But then when you fast forward to the early American experiment, and you have the Quakers who are also in this Anabaptist tradition, and they say to William Penn, hey, will you be governor of the colony of what becomes Pennsylvania? And he says, yes, I will. And then, so he becomes the governor of the colony, and the Quakers, you knowakers know what they do is that they seek to enter into friendly relationships with the indigenous population.

They have, you know, so there's that famous folk artist who paints these pictures of the lamb lying down with the lion. And then in the background, you've got this scene of the Quakers entering into friendly relationships with the first peoples, because they know that what it means to be followers of Christ is that we are embodying the peaceable kingdom of God, which is not yet come in fullness. We're embodying that even now, and we're going to do that in our political engagement with the first peoples. You know, they're able to do that as people who are governing the colony. you know they're able to do that as people who are governing the colony and um when they then get asked my recollection is that when they get asked to send up a state militia to participate in the french indian war they say no we will not do that because we are followers of the peaceable

christ and it would violate our understanding of our faith to participate in that, right? So it's not, again, this goes back to the whole false construal we have of separatism that is at the heart of this sort of thing. It's based upon context, and it's based upon particular questions and particular issues that you have to deal with, and you have to take the issues one by one and do your best to be faithful to the one by one question that comes to you in seeking to do this work. That's it. I haven't thought more than five seconds about William Penn. And that's interesting. So he, did he keep his Christian, I mean, he kept living as his pretty radical Christian convictions as a governor of the state?

And did that, did he? I don't know a huge amount about him, but my understanding is that he sought to not set aside the way of Christ in his governing work. Now, so for example, my understanding, again, it's been 25 or 30 years since I've looked at some of this stuff about him, but my understanding is that one of the reasons that we have what we call the penitentiary goes back to William Penn, and that in the original setting, the idea was that you have to take seriously people who have violated the good of the community. And what are you going to do with that? Right. And so they set up a penitentiary. Note that the root of the word penitential.

Right. The idea was that you have a place where you withdraw from the community for a while to go practice penitence, penance, so that you can then reenter the community and serve the good of the common good and set aside, repent from the damage that you've done to the community. So it was a very practical sort of, of course, we've got to take seriously people do something that harms the community. But the point was not to be this sort of capricious form of punishment that it became. But it was to say, when we do wrong, we've got to deal with it. And we've got to help people deal with it and help them become people who can contribute to the common good and be reintegrated into the community. So that's another example, as I understand it. And again, people should do

more historical research before you start quoting me on that. But as I understand it, he was trying to take seriously the gospel and the claims of Christ. And these were some of the ways he sought to do that. So would you say that it's not like a Christian could be involved in, in governmental authority on some level? Would you say, well, it just depends and they, we,

we just don't have the option of renouncing the sermon on the Mount wherever we go vocationally. So if that's compatible, then sure. But I know in many cases, that's just not compatible, but that's an example where it was compatible, where he was able to maintain his, if,'s compatible, then sure. But I know in many cases, that's just not compatible. But that's an example where it was compatible, where he was able to maintain his – if it all checks out. I mean, I think it's probably as possible to be someone who serves in government as it is to be a professor in a Christian college.

What do you mean by that? I mean that they're both just really, really tricky. I think that in all of our vocational callings, there's always these powers at play that are seeking to co-opt us and to get us to turn away from what it means, our understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. But yeah, of course, I think that it's possible for a person to be in a position of having some sort of governmental role and be a follower of Christ. Then the question becomes, well, you know, what does that look like and what does that mean? I will say that I think it's much more difficult. Well, let me just let me frame that differently.

I think it's much more difficult. Well, let me just let me frame that differently. I find it more difficult to conceive how one could be one of the top power brokers in the United States. Let's say, for example, a U.S. senator or the president of the United States and uphold the kind of vision of Christian discipleship that we've been talking about. Because for one, I mean, you know, if you're going to take a, even just looking at the oath of office of those roles, it's like you're taking an oath that in my mind puts you at tension, if not contradiction, to allegiance to the gospel. So that's a much more tricky sort of thing. But I think there are lots of roles that people could serve without having to have anywhere near that kind of tension or

contradiction of allegiances. Yeah, no, I would agree with that. Is there an oath like that you will defend through military might? I don't know the exact wording or something, but I mean, you're basically taking an oath to use – You're taking an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, yeah. Yeah. And just the way that the military-industrial complex is so intertwined with the empire, for lack of better terms, I just – how do you disentangle that? I mean it's why a libertarian will never get elected. You know, I mean, it's why a libertarian will never get elected.

I would say in defense of, well, not in defense of, let me just say that I don't think in my mind that one has to be aligned with everything that an institution is about to participate in that institution. Now, that quickly can get very, very tricky. I mean, it even goes back to, let's say, being a professor in a Christian university, right? Through my 25, 27 years, if you count my graduate school days, taking a paycheck from a Christian university, there are lots of things about the institution, institutions that I've been a part of that I think are wonderful and delightful and bear faithful witness to the gospel, while there are other things that I think are outrageous and sometimes sicken me, to be honest, you know, but it's like, and I've had, it's been personal sometimes because I've had

some people that have pushed me of how can you continue to be a part of that institution when they've done X, Y, and Z? Well, that's a fair question. Um, but I think that it's that same sort of thing in whatever institutions that we are a part of is, are we really required to have complete alignment with everything that that institution is doing to doing to see it as legitimate as us participating in that, trying to bring about some good as best we're able in that institutional setting.

And so those kind of practical realities are tough to sort through, but they're important ones, I think, to acknowledge this way, even with churches, right? I mean, you know, if you're a pastor in a church or a preacher in a church, there can be a lot of things happen in a local congregation that one might fundamentally disagree with. But you can still try to be a part of that community and try to bear witness to what you think is true and good and beautiful and faithful. And then, of course, there may be times in any of those institutional settings where you just have to decide that on balance, I can't continue to participate in this. But again, my point is simply that almost regardless of whatever institutional setting

in which you find yourselves, these are concrete, practical questions that we have to ask ourselves. Yeah. I guess the difference, I mean, it's one thing to be part of an imperfect institution, which is just part of living in the already not yet. But when it comes to being involved in the state, I'm going to sound like an anarchist now, but the state that fits the description of empire, that's a theologically different category, right? I mean, if we take, say, Revelation 13 to 18 seriously, I think there would at least be much caution before getting directly involved with the harlot riding on the beast responsible for much bloodshed. people could say, well, no, that's your mapping revelation onto the United States. And I would say, yeah, I don't want to make a direct correlation,

but is there enough overlap in the characteristics of the empire described in Revelation as there are in the United States of America? It is the closest thing we have to an empire today. Certainly being involved with,

I don't know, Switzerland or with, I don't know, Switzerland or something. I don't know. Yeah. Is that a valid, is that a valid, like push back on me if I'm, if I'm not, I don't want to,

I don't want to be haphazard and just map something that doesn't, that can't be mapped. But I also like, how do we take revelations seriously when it's hockey, it's going back to curtain on the state, you know, the empire. Well,

I think that here I am arguing for, I think, a position that some people would be surprised that I'm arguing for or making a case for. But I think that, I mean, if you want to talk about imperialist power, you know, I just got, we just a couple of weeks ago had Malcolm Gladwell on a live show we did here in Nashville on No Small Endeavor. And as a part of that, actually, after he left, I listened to his bomber mafia series on, on his podcast. And it reminded me, I knew a lot of this, but there were certain details I didn't know, but it reminded me that most of us,

in the United States are oblivious to the fact that on a single night in March of 1945, are oblivious to the fact that on a single night in March of 1945, that the U.S. military purposefully burned alive 100,000 people in Tokyo. And then they went on to firebomb another 68 cities, burning alive intentionally somewhere around 400,000 to 500,000 Japanese people. And that was before the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oh, that was before. I thought you were talking about Hiroshima. No, no. This was before the atom bomb.

And so they used very careful, deliberate practices of literally incinerating people, burning them alive. So much so that you had people vomiting in the cockpits because of the smell of burning flesh that they're smelling at 5000 feet up in the air because of the horror of it. And so, you know, you want to talk about imperialist might.

I mean, I think there you go. Right. And the fact that we talk so little about that and that we who think that I'm wrong about nonviolence and wrong about the theological depiction I've given. I'm grateful for Christians who disagree with that and uphold the more traditional mainstream just war tradition. And who will say, based upon the just war tradition, that is immoral and it is wicked and we must not do it. And so, again, I think that there's this space for us honoring people that have a differing set of convictions about what Christian witness entails and then do their best in the difficult setting or whatever difficult setting in which we find ourselves, And then do their best in the difficult setting or whatever difficult setting in which we find ourselves.

Do our best to bear witness to the in the direction of the kingdom of God, in the direction of the peaceable kingdom of God. And again, we still have our honest differences, but we can talk about those and still respect each other as human beings and as fellow followers of Christ. And know that there's lots of work for all of us and seek to find ways to be faithful, creative, and continue to bear witness. That's a great, great word to end on, actually. I've taken you over an hour. Thank you so much, Leif. Man, this is, yeah, you give me a lot to think about and wrestle with. And thank you so much for your work in this area.

I love, I mean, it's intellectually honest. It's provocative. It's humble. And yeah, thank you so much for the work you do. Again, the book, I can't more highly recommend it enough. Scandalous Witness, A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. Lee, thanks for being on Theology in a Row. Thank you, Preston.

It's been great to be with you. Really appreciate all the great questions and good conversation. And we would love for folks to join us over on No Small Endeavor, our podcast as well, and come join us over there. We have a lot of very different kinds of conversations, but ones that I think a lot of your listeners might enjoy. So thanks for your good work and thanks for the conversation. It's a great podcast. Yeah. I forgot to mention that, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Go check it out. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.