Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep947: Being Socially Engaged While Maintaining Allegiance to Christ: Dr. Vincent Bacote

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Dr. Vincent Bacote is an Associate Professor of Theology and the Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. He is the author of the The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life (2015), The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (2005), and has contributed to books including On Kuyper (2013), Aliens in the Promised Land (2013), Keep Your Head Up (2012) and Prophetic Evangelicals (2012). He is a regular columnist for Comment Magazine and contributes to other magazines, including Books and Culture, Christianity Today, Think Christian and re:generation quarterly, and journals such as Christian Scholars Review, Urban Mission and the Journal for Christian Theological Research. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Christian Ethics. He resides in the Chicago area with his family. https://www.vincentbacote.com Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends and enemies. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Vincent Baycoat, who is a professor of theology, director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College, where he's been since the year 2000. an ethicist, a writer. He's published The Political Disciple, A Theology of Public Life, and The Spirit in Public Theology, Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper. He's contributed to various books, including Black Scholars in White Spaces, Aliens in the Promised Land, Why Minority Leadership is Overlooked in White Christian Churches and Institutions. And, overlooked in white Christian churches and institutions. And oh, there's another one here that's not listed in my notes, but he's written several other books, many scholarly articles, and is somebody who I've known from a distance and not known him, but just known of him. He's a well-known name in evangelical scholarship. And I'm so excited that he agreed to come on the show to talk about what it is to be a Christian disciple in our public arena, how to maintain our allegiance

to the kingdom of God while participating in being an agent of justice in society. So please welcome to the show, for the first time, the one and only Dr. Vincent Baker. All right. I'm here with Dr. Vince or Vincent Baker is your last name, but I didn't clarify. Would you prefer Vince or Vincent? Both are fine. last name, but I didn't clarify. Do you prefer Vince or Vincent? Both are fine. Okay. I'll go with Vince.

I'll go with Vince. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. I mean, you're an established theologian, ethicist, public theologian. For people who have been in evangelical scholarship circles, your name is very well known. So it's an honor for you to be on the podcast. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I appreciate participating. And I mean, so you have, you have, I mean, written on some pretty important would be an understatement themes in Christianity involving politics and race

and evangelicalism and white spaces with minority leaders and all these things. So we have so much to talk about. But why don't you give people a quick background of who you are, how you got into wanting to be a Christian scholar? Oh, so I'm in my 23rd year at Wheaton College. I'm a professor of theology and director of our Center for Applied Christian Ethics. I've been the director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics since 2007. Started here in January of 2000, so I'm on actual calendar years. My PhD is from Drew University in

Madison, New Jersey. Undergrad, I went to the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. I was a biology major there. I started there, planning to be a veterinarian, but now I teach theology for a living. And so how did all this happen? Basically, I mean, if I look back over my life, there are probably like signposts that maybe this was the direction even when I was 12 or 13 years old. But it wasn't until the middle of my time in college when I had a sense about what I now call some call to what I call a semblance of full-time Christian service, which at that time only meant to me being a pastor, because I didn't know that it was okay to be a professor, because I was in a very practically oriented parachurch ministry. And at least my interpretation

of the ways that they talked about people like me was, read those people, but don't be those people. read those people, but don't be those people. So it wasn't really until I got to Trinity where I discovered that I was one of them. The big catalyst for that was someone saying, Vince, a guy like you ought to get a PhD, and that really set me on the path towards doing it. In terms of my particular interest in various things, as I say in my Political Disciple book, in various things as i say my political disciple book really what oriented me towards matters public was rock and roll uh because of being the guy in our bible study that was listening to iron maiden and other bands and you like iron maiden i grew up with iron maiden yeah yeah yeah people weren't exactly enamored of uh the fact that you know I had a cassette of their Peace of Mind album when I was in the 80s.

Oh, that's a great album. It is a great album. But I had an intuition that Christians could appreciate things outside the church, but I didn't have any theological language for that. I didn't really get that theological language until I was in seminary, honestly. I didn't get that theological language until I was in seminary, honestly. And whether it was matters of culture like rock and roll or whether politics and race and things like that, the concern about a faith that can go into public spaces or faith that orients people into public spaces was something that was very important to me. I think there was also certainly when, you know, I was listening to a lot of Christian radio in the time between seminary and, I'm sorry, between undergrad and seminary. I lived in Memphis, Tennessee for three years between them.

And, you know, I liked a lot of what I was hearing, but it was always interesting to me that there wasn't a whole lot said about race or even that you could make a theological case for why people should care about it. Now I think, well, it's not really that hard of a case to make, but I didn't understand that then. And I would say that politics in general, questions of race in particular, not only questions of race, but those things were important to me. So how do you have this kind of holistic faith? That's why I've always sort of been inclined towards the link between theology and ethics. To me, it's a mistake anyway that our theology doesn't automatically open up the path toward our ethics, except we have this bifurcation between theology and ethics. But the fact of the matter is that seminary curricula kind of inhabit that bifurcation.

And I think a lot of times the way that many Christians go about their ethics is really more of an ad hoc approach to how they live their Christian life. about their ethics, it's really more of an ad hoc approach to how they live their Christian life. It isn't, because I believe these certain things, these things orient me to at least give me a disposition towards discerning how to make ethical choices. So that's been very important to me to have that connection because, you know, to put it, you know, really basically, when Jesus says, follow me, of course he means believe in me, but he doesn't mean just believe in me in terms of a set of abstractions. But really there's the whole question of how I'm actually following me. So there's something about living your life, not just saying the right things. Getting doctrine right, massively important to me.

But getting doctrine right isn't just to be good about talking about stuff. It's about being able to live out those doctrines. Can you really quick, as an ethicist, because a lot of, not a lot, maybe some, maybe a lot, lay Christians don't really know kind of the various Christian views on ethics, whether it's deontological, virtue ethics, or an

integrated approach. Can you give us just a really quick maybe lay of the land and where you fall? Sure. I'd say the simplest way to put it is that a lot of times when people are talking about Christian ethics, the question is, is it about commands that we're supposed to follow? Is it about consequences that are the result of your actions? Or is it about the character, the kind of person that you have right so what people call deontological ethics are about a command theory of ethics uh the consequentialist or teleological ethics is what happens you know what's the result or what's the trajectory

of our decisions where is it going what's ultimate what's its ultimate purpose and result and then what they call virtue ethics is about the kind of people that we are it's about the it's about who you are in a certain situation rather than just whether you're obeying a command or thinking about the end. Those are big picture things. I'm a very synthetic thinker, so I'd rather not choose between the three, honestly. Yeah, they don't seem mutually exclusive. I mean, yeah, yeah. I think sometimes when people wind up magnifying one over the other, it can be because of limitations that they can see with only going with one dimension or the other. But if we're thinking about it from a Christian point of

view, there are things we are told that have to do with why do it? Because God said do it, that's why. It's a command. Sometimes, why do it? Because God said do it, that's why. It's a command. But sometimes why do things? Because of the trajectory, because of where it's going. And certainly God cares about our character. Sure, sure. So it needs to be a sort of thread of all those things. Right, right.

Would you say that, this is actually a really live question I've had asked me a lot is, does God always reveal, does he have to reveal like a moral rationale for a certain command? And I don't want to get sidetracked on sexuality debates, but that's typically where it comes up. What's the reason why God would define marriage this way? Okay. I can get it from scripture. God said it. So is it just God said it, I believe it, or is there a moral rationale? And with certain things like idolatry or drunkenness or adultery are kind of really easy to see that these aren't just morally wrong. These are harmful to the person and society. With other, the classic example in my mind is two Christians get married. They're married five years. They don't have any kids and they just fall out of love.. They're just fighting all the time, and they're just pushing each other away from Jesus,

and it just makes more sense for them to get divorced. And yet, my deontological side comes in and says, I don't have a verse that would say there's grounds for divorce here, even though practically, I can make a good case for it. So back to the question, do you feel like you can always find some moral rationale for how we are to live or is it less clear in some instances? Well, in the same way that God doesn't tell us everything, I think that sometimes God says, you're just going to have to trust me on this one. I do think in the long run, when it comes to things that God commands us to do, if you look at the truth, so this is more of a consequentialism type of thing, I think. If you look at the long run,

and people are being completely honest, I think we see that the reasons reveal themselves over time. Now, that doesn't mean that when it comes to prohibitions about divorce, that doesn't mean that when it comes to prohibitions about divorce, okay, if it's not adultery, then just stick it out. Because the question is, you know, in the example that you have, a couple of this falls out of love. Well, what I want to know is, well, how did that happen? What was going on? What's actually happening in the relationship that led to that to get to the place where there's so much dissonance? I mean, is it a relationship that became abusive? Is it a relationship that became, you know, all these different ways where there was a violation of neighbor love because your spouse is your closest neighbor? Um, and, and, and so are there things that are happening that are actually are violations of, of, of things, uh, and things that perhaps are putting people in certain kinds of danger or maybe not, I mean, not necessarily somebody holding a knife to their throat, but there are other ways that evangelicals to begin with, because we value the word of God, or we say we do, let's put it that way, because I don't think people are consistent about it, at least because we purportedly care about everything that the Bible says. We think that when it comes to moral decisions, that there ought to be just a verse that tells us what to do. But the fact of the matter is that that's just not the case.

And I mean, should you build nuclear weapons and should you drop them on your enemies if that will prevent them from killing other people. Well, we don't have a specific verse about the construction and use of nuclear weapons. So the fact that we have questions that emerge in our context, I think we had to find out from Scripture, and again, not just specific verses, but are we being told things about consequences? Are we being told things about character that are giving us a trajectory upon which to sort of follow? And in following that trajectory, does that give us wisdom about what's at least the better choice to make? Because it's not always clear what the best choice is.

That is an interesting one. I mean, I remember wrestling with this. I taught – I mean, I'm not an ethicist, but I taught an undergrad class on ethics many years ago. And one of the things we wrestled with was just war theory. And the question always comes up, dropping the two bombs on Japan during World War II, you know, arguably saved a ton of lives. And yet you also violated, is an understatement, a main principle of just war theory where you don't nuke civilians, right? So is there like a lesser two evils here? Do you have, in your way of thinking ethically, do you have space for a choice between the lesser of two evils?

Because I know some people say that's never actually a thing. Well, here's why I think it comes down to is that we have to make prudential judgments about something. And in making those prudential judgments, we are doing hopefully the best we can. And we are entrusting ourselves to God that we're having the wisdom to make those choices because it's not always crystal clear about whether or not to make those choices. Because, you know, World War II, I mean, that's a really, really hard situation. Yeah, yeah. Which doesn't mean...

Though they should have dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That's not my point. Yeah. But it's not as if that was... Especially in hindsight. Well, it was just an easy choice for them to make to put a wrap on this, right? Yeah.

I imagine that they agonized about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one's tough too, because I think in Nagasaki at that time, there was a pretty large Christian, Catholic Christian population. I think it was Nagasaki, 20% or something, or like a million.

So even as a Christian, if you think just on the political realm, should this nation have done this to this nation okay we can kind of sort of do that but as a christian should we nuke other believers like that yeah that's a tough case man i don't know it's really hard i'd lean towards no but um i want to talk about so i mean you've written on race you've written on politics can we let's start with your 2015 book uh a political disciple umple, A Theology of Public Life. And I love what you say, the description, at least in the website, helping Christians navigate.

I love this phrase, relative allegiance to a nation and or a political party and ultimate allegiance to Christ. I have so many questions about that. One of my questions is you wrote that book five, six, seven years ago. If you were to rewrite it, what would that look like in light of the last few years, especially would it change or maybe new illustrations, but maybe start with giving us a gist of what's your kind of main thing you're trying to accomplish in that book?

The main thing really is the theology and ethics thing, that our beliefs orient us towards living in certain ways. So it's a holistic faith, and a holistic faith that's oriented toward the public. It isn't just about being internally pious people, but people whose lives publicly express their faith, hopefully in a thoroughgoing way, and trying to learn and grow in that way. So that part of our discipleship includes the fact that we participate in God's world, and that we don't participate in God's world in ways where we naively think that we see everything in crystal clarity. As I always like to say, Paul said, he sees through a glass darkly, I'm not going to start talking about this.

Well, that was for Paul. I see quite clearly that that's a bad idea. So a humility, but a humility that tempers how much certainty we have about every choice that we're making or everything that we're saying about a policy or something. So I think that's part of the kind of thing I'm encouraging. Specific to your question about relative allegiance, well, to me, that just goes back to being a person in the United States of America. There are ways that people have called us a Christian nation.

And people need to understand, if you read Martin Luther King, he said that we're a Christian nation. So way before people are thinking about certain forms of current nationalism, if you will, a lot of people thought, well, we are in a way a Christian nation, although imperfectly so. I think it's just very important to understand that, and I think I quite put it this way in the book, but the Bible says nothing about Western Hemisphere countries. And since it does say nothing about it, except for all the earth or all the nations. Anything that we think about our relative importance in terms of God's narrative of salvation history, we are basically making things up, if that's what we're thinking. So, the point isn't that God can't use people, that in a country where we have a unique level of political agency that most people haven't had in world history, that there isn't something there that is an opportunity.

There absolutely is that opportunity. put it one way, that George Washington's real name was, you know, Moses reincarnated or something, that this is just making things up. And that for all the unique ways that the United States may be, you know, that Chesterton quote, a nation with the soul of a church, none of that means that we're another Israel. So we need to understand, yes, we have a lot of Judeo-Christian thinking in our DNA, but that means those are good influences that obviously our history shows that we haven't always been good about practicing. Uh, so we're, we're, we're an imperfect nation with certain opportunities, but, um, no allegiance to any place can ever be greater than our allegiance to God. Otherwise you're trafficking in idolatry. And can you, how has that been going for the church in the last couple of years? Like you've been around longer than I have. Have you seen that misplaced allegiance to a certain perhaps political identity or even a certain just social way of thinking? Has that been exacerbated in the last couple of years more than before?

Or has it always been kind of this much of an issue? I mean, I think it's fair when people are talking about certain ways that there have been forms of nationalism where people who don't even go to church call themselves evangelicals and who have this sense of thinking that we really are a kind of chosen nation. But there are people who have been talking about sort of the Christian character of the United States for much longer than that. So that's not new. I think it's just intensified in certain ways. party or the policies about which they are concerned and the things that they're optimistic about with the country and the things that they're fearful about. And that would be that just being in the United States, no matter where you land, you're in a country where so much of our rhetoric inclines us to think that because we're in the United States

of America, we ought to have a certain set of expectations about the possibilities for our lives. And people are very frustrated about things that get in the way of them pursuing those possibilities. Now, that's whether you're from the right or from the left. You just have to choose who you're going to blame and who's getting in the way of this. And my point being that I think there's a way in which a lot of people in the United States of America, they want desperately what is the promise

that they're handed about what you know what you can do in america you can the land of opportunity um and because people think i ought to be able to have that i think sometimes there's this way of thinking about the country even people that criticize it so yeah but you're criticizing it because you're upset about not being able to have what it said you should have. Not just because it's always antagonized, people being able to have that. It's because you're saying, well, if we're really going to live up to these documents, then we ought to be able to have it. So it's not that people don't want those things. They want those things. They're frustrated that people are getting in the way of them having those things.

And again, so which people are stopping you? So, I mean, is it people who are more right-leaning? Is it people who are more left-leaning? Is it people who are apathetic? Whatever it is. Is it China? Is it it used to be Russia, et cetera? So my point being that there's something about just inhabiting the United States that creates this sense that really, if I just use my agency properly, I get to craft my own personal eschatological reality.

And if something's getting in the way of me doing that, then I should be upset about that because we're a country of rights. And that's my right. Now, who's getting in the way of my rights here? Or who's stealing that? Or who's trying to change our country so I can't pursue those rights? Right, yeah. It's hard. And as I've journeyed in the kind of – who wrote the book on Christ and culture with the kind of five different postures?

Niebuhr. Yeah, yeah, yeah. H. Richard Niebuhr. What's that? Yes. H. Richard Niebuhr. Richard, not Reinhold, right? Right.

Reinhold was arguably more popular than Richard. Right. But Richard wrote Christ and culture. So as I've thought through that paradigm over the last 20 years or so, maybe not explicitly, but more just kind of using those categories, I have leaned, I feel like, lean more to what might be more of a Mennonite kind of strong separation. Not in the way that the religious or conservative, more fundamentalist evangelicals do, because I think they fall into this weird patriotism that's the opposite of what I'm wanting to do. But it does make like I, you know, I often use the phrase, I'm an exile living in Babylon. America's Babylon. I'm an exile. I'm called to be a good citizen. But my allegiance is fundamentally not here. At the same time, I do think Christians are called to be an agent of justice in the world. And, you know, King

overturning unjust laws was, I think, an outflow of his Christian faith and rightly so, partly at least. And we should follow in suit. Here's where I get nervous though. Like I just get more and more skeptical about aligning myself with a certain political tribe as a means to accomplish this. And this is where, I don't know, because people would say, no, if you vote for this leader or not that leader, whatever, and I don't even care which one you put in the blank there,

you aren't actually achieving, like this vote is a more just vote. And I don't know, I'm just vote. And I don't know. I'm just maybe more. I don't know. Like I, I've, I just don't,

I'm not convinced that's really healthy. Can you disciple me here, Vince? Cause like, and one more thing, like I, and this is something I've noticed in the last couple of years, especially,

but like when you even have a little bit of allegiance, lowercase a allegiance to one tribe, if you listen to the rhetoric, to be a member of that tribe means the other tribe is your enemy. And man, that's so, once you start absorbing that, I think, I just think that that can be destructive to Christian discipleship because now half the church is now your enemy because they're in a different Babylonian tribe. And so, I don't know, I'm wrestling with what's the role

of a justice-seeking Christian with his relationship with the powers of the state. Yeah. You got a clapper? His light just went out. You know, if I stand still long enough,

the lights just go out yeah um so i'll like move around like i'm like i'm grooving to my my electric bass is over there so you're pretending i'm you know so you're a musician too you're not just a fan we gotta save a little bit of space i play at electric bass is what i like to say i mean i'm looking at a picture of my friend john patatucci right right here. So you're just John's, uh, you know, way more accomplished, right? So I always think, you know, well, no, you're a hack basis is what you are. But, um, but I think the fact is that depending upon where you are and a lot of times, depending upon circumstances, you may at times feel more like an Anabaptistic Mennonite type of posture where you think about that what you do models to the public an alternate allegiance and participation in the community that models that in their life together. Because of the kind of agency that we have where, at least in theory, any boy and girl in elementary school right now could one day be president of the United States of America.

Because of that possibility, and because all politics is local, all that type of stuff, you can show up and be constructive in having a voice. Or you can run for office yourself, or you can at least write your congressperson. The fact that our elections, generally speaking, are pretty reliable. It's not like what I heard about in Nigeria once, where people couldn't even get to the polls until like an hour before they closed because people were stopping them, all this kind of stuff. And of course, Nigeria is just one example. I mean, it's happened in so many countries. But the point being that the agency that we have creates opportunities, and I'll put it this way, to think about how we contribute to neighbor love being expressed through things like public policy.

to neighbor love being expressed through things like public policy. In which case, I have to think about, well, to what degree? Again, it may just be voting, but it may be writing a congressperson. It might be really thinking about a particular issue and bringing it to the mayor or your town council or whatever. council or whatever. But there's the possibility to think about how you can actually actively, in my view, as a response to, at the least, just thinking about loving your neighbor. At the most, thinking about this cultural mandate language of, you know, whether it's Psalm 8, that God put humans over the creation,

or whether it's Genesis 1, 26 and 28, that God gave us dominion. Dominion not meaning tyranny, dominion meaning really stewardship, because it's God's world, we're responsible to God. So whatever we do, it's a reign under, being under the reign of another. So, that stewardly opportunity in terms of public life is possible here. But I think this is part of the problem. Sometimes the ways people talk about that, it's as if they think that any public policy is going to deliver completely whatever they care about. That's misunderstanding the world in which we live. One, hasn't anybody seen clearly enough about the public policy that's going to deliver the full realization of the kingdom of God about anything? And then second, what do we know about the world that we inhabit? Oh, wait,

it's a world where we're still waiting for Jesus to come back, even though we're between Easter and the second advent. We are waiting for God to set everything right, to bring full shalom to his world. So while we're waiting, it's just not going to work out super smoothly. When people say things like, this is a vote for justice, et cetera, it's like, well, that's great rhetoric. But let's think about the fact that most of the people that you vote for deliver a little of what they said. Recently, we had an event on campus. I had the privilege of co-moderating a conversation with Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and former Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee. It was a great event.

The way Ben Sasse put it was, he says, we shouldn't be overly enthusiastic about politics. We should have one chair instead of three chairs for politics, is what he says. And so the point is that, yes, there are certain things that can be done through politics, but the idea that everything is getting done through politics is misunderstanding how things work in the world. And even if

you think about the phrase, people say, you know, politics is downstream from culture. What kind of cultural formation are we doing with the with the things that we are doing in society and where people who have influence with to become movers and shakers or to influence movers and shakers how are people helping to inform the choices that get made inform things like say a corporate a corporate culture, etc. How are those things happening in ways that can be facilitating good? So I think a lot of Christians aren't being told in their discipleship that part of their discipleship is being, you know, looking for opportunities.

Everybody doesn't have them, but some people do, to be very culturally formative because of being in places of influence where things that happen that may seem to be inconsequential now, 20 years from now, they may be playing a role in why people are thinking about addressing certain things in terms of public policy, but because of other things that have been put into place in terms of the culture. So I think we do need to think about that agency, but it has to be done with humility. It has to be done with an understanding that we're not the only people in the world, that people see things different from us, and that whatever we're doing, I mean, we're not fully establishing the kingdom of God. I know some people like to use bring in the kingdom language, establish the kingdom language. I like witnessing to the kingdom language. Witnessing to doesn't just mean I model

what other people see, but that even things that I might produce that get put into the world, so to speak, they are at best a vague signpost of what is coming. Oh, that's good. I like that. I like that language better. Yeah. Yeah. Bringing in the kingdom. I get the idea and the motivation. It's just never, it does kind of reveal a certain, I don't know, theological commitment to, um, and a certain level of disappointment when these values they want to see brought in are constantly not really truly fully being embodied.

Right. Um, right. Well, I think the other problem is, and I think a lot of people with integrity, they want these things to happen. But my advocacy for X, Y, or Z also has to be tempered by the fact of my own imperfections and ongoing need for further sanctification in my entire person, which means I need to always be thinking about, hey, I'm proposing this, but why am I proposing this? And who else am I thinking about besides just a particular constituency? Am I thinking about really trying to do something for the common good, or am I only thinking about it for a particular group of people?

I have a question. I'm trying to figure out even how to word it. So it might come out a little longer than I intended. But my answer was really long, so that's fine. And it's going to end up having a racial component to it, just to prepare you. Okay. So I'm more of an Anabaptist Mennonite, kind of.

And that like, I don't know, like that's kind of where I'm at thinking through, but I know there's blind spots. And so when people say, yeah, but we need to be an agent for justice. I'm like, yeah, absolutely. But can we do that as the church, as a Christian? Yeah, absolutely. But can we do that as the church, as a Christian? Do we need to go through, I'll say, you know, Babylonian means as if people in political power care about anything other than staying in power? And maybe that's my cynicism, but I'm like, I don't know. I'm still laughing at Babylonian means. laughing at Babylonian means, but yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, really like I vote for justice. I'm like, you really think that candidate and not this really cares about you. You don't think they care primarily and ultimately about staying in power, achieving power, and they will create whatever narrative and they will spin whatever it is to stay in power. You may resonate with

the means they're doing to stay in power and who they're speaking to and appealing to you. Okay. I get it. But don't think this is your Messiah on any level. So that's my cynicism. But at the same time, I want to be an agent of justice, but do we have to use Babylonian means to do that? But here's the racial component, the pushback I get, which is, I think, really good. It's been sitting with me as they say, well, Preston, you have the white privilege of being able to say that. There's a reason why most black churches and black Christians in particular are really invested in politics. And that's a big deal. And social involvement is not kind of some distant thing they can kind of choose or not choose because they haven't had the privilege of living as a white man in America. And I'm like,

man, that's a great, I'm like, man, that is a huge blind spot I need to think through. Can you, we'd love to hear your thoughts on kind of my convoluted question. Well, first I would say, even in African-American churches and other minority communities of faith, I think even there you have people that are more political, people that are less political. There are a lot of minority churches where people are like, look, yes, we care about that. We should pray about that. But it's not going to be showing up in our sermons the way that in some other churches, it's showing up very much that when you're talking about what God is doing, what God is doing is about is about yes it's about saving people but it's really about changing the world and changing certain

if you will uh exilic circumstances um so i just want to note that just for for for to complexify that that because a lot of people think oh black church if i go to a black church everybody can talk about politics well i depend you might go to one they say nothing about it uh so um so i think um the fact is that change happens lots of ways and i do think because of the way that things have worked out in a racialized fashion in the world, well, not just in America, but in the world, that pulling public policies in place has been part of that. I mean, Jim Crow is a public policy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Slavery, you know, that was the law. Sure.

Slavery, you know, that was the law. Sure. So we need political dimensions to attend to those things. that are involved in what makes possible the flourishing of people that, in terms of the history of the country, have not had the same access and opportunities. a judge the other day talking on radio about the fact is that, you know, there are still places where the effects of redlining exist. Right. Yeah. And there's disinvestment in neighborhoods and parts of cities.

So, well, how do you facilitate that? Right. How do you address public education which isn't just a minority problem it's also massively a class problem yeah um so there has to be the public policy dimension of that now that said i don't think everybody needs to be pressing for transformation through the same means as if everybody cares about all the same issues the exact same way. There's a lot of issues to care about. Even a person says addressing some political realities.

Well, which ones? some political realities. Well, which ones? Because on the one hand, you know, now there's going to be this case brought before the Supreme Court, initially brought by, well, I think the guy is white

who's bringing it, but the plaintiffs are Asian, about Asian students being limited in their admissions to places like Harvard, etc. Yeah, I heard about this. And the point, though, is that when people have tried to attend to the question of race, they want, you know, like apparently Judge Roberts has said, the way you stop discriminating on race is you stop discriminating by race.

Judge Roberts has said, the way you stop discriminating on race is you stop discriminating by race. I always like to say, you mean because, of course, the effects of discriminating by race for most of the history of this country just stop in a way where there's the opportunity for people to pursue trajectories towards flourishing. Because you can't make people I mean, even if people know what equal opportunity is when they see one, which you cannot assume, and then know what to do with an equal opportunity when they see it, which you also cannot assume. There are people who could have all that in front of them and they go,

yeah, I'm going on vacation. I'm going to do something else. I don't want to do that. So you can't, you can't, you can't, there are always going to be people who choose not to take advantage of opportunities. So you can't guarantee that people are going to always make choices, right? But you can facilitate, I think, some things to public policy to help people to have better possibilities to have choices, to be able to recognize those choices, because it takes an education to see those things and to be able to have some people. I mean, there are all kinds of supports that some people have in place. They're just taken for granted that enable them to to see an opportunity and then do something with that opportunity. There are people who can see it, but they don't have those other support.

So they try to do it and they may do it, but it's a lot harder for them. try to do it and they may do it but it's a lot harder right yeah for them the point being that we have to think about all these different factors that are involved it's not just a particular policy or a particular law it's also attending to the multi-faceted dimensions of of what's what what's necessary in a society. And of course, that also includes how do you facilitate greater, you know, things that can encourage family life rather than create dissonance of family life. Because statistically, obviously,

people who come from broken homes have a hard time. The people who come from, you know, homes where there's two parents. All those things we have to think about. It's not just one. Some people go,

it needs to be about supporting for families. It's like, well, it's not just supporting for families because there's still all these other things. If you have a family unit where everything is great,

yeah, but they don, but they're in a terrible community with disinvestment. They don't have networks to help them to get to places where people can take advantage of things. There's just all these things that get in the way. The whole point being, part of what needs to happen is attending to the public policy side of things. And so we should encourage that big picture as one version of the ways that we're thinking about how public policy can be a way to love our neighbors. Because questions of race are one thing among many other things that we need to address. Yeah. Man, I have so many other questions, but I really want to make sure we do.

I want to get to more of a race-specific conversation in particular because I got you for another 10 minutes here. You contributed to the book Aliens in the Promised Land, Why Minority Leadership is Overlooked in White Christian Churches and Instit institutions. Provocative and brilliant title. And this is almost 10 years ago. And I know you've written on it since then, even being a black leader in largely white spaces. I don't even know what direction you want to go here. Maybe that latter part, maybe on a testimony standpoint, what have you learned slash been frustrated with slash want to speak into being a minority leader in largely white spaces and is that the right way to even frame it do you feel like that i mean is that there's lots of ways different that we'll go with that that's fine um i think the first thing i always like to say this is that part of things people need to understand with me is that i am

very culturally fluid remember i mean i mentioned iron maiden i know so uh i mean i mean also you know i like the temptation i grew up in a town home playing motown just listening to the jackson five all that uh but you know my first concert was kiss in 1977 so uh so you know i've seen more rock concerts than I've seen R&B concerts, but I like most forms of music. That's another conversation. being uncomfortable in ways that somebody who isn't as culturally fluid or hasn't been in as many different cultural spaces as I've been in, it may be harder for them. So I have to qualify that because a lot of people say, you're in your 23rd year at Wheaton. Man, I mean, like, how do you do it? I'm like, I'm all right. In fact, some of my wife, our kids, we joke, yeah, well, I mean, we have like all these white friends, you know, just kind of our world, right? But we don't think for a moment that that's like, we're also aware of like the realities about, you know, we're talking about race all the time. So I think one of the biggest things to recognize is that whatever it's in terms of minorities being in evangelical spaces, first of all, in terms of leadership, you antagonize that flourishing you get in the way of creating some huge pipeline of all these people that can be in leadership positions so that number is growing

but it's still a small number so you know so somebody gets a phd or whatever sometimes there's three or four people that want to hire you rather than one person that wants to hire you. So the point being is that you have a numbers issue to begin with. Then I think you also have the fact that when it comes to what I teach in theology, biblical studies, et cetera, at least I think in the context, especially if people come up in African American churches, if you show interest in religious things, a lot of people tend to get oriented towards pastoral ministry rather than to the academy. So there's that piece. the academy that there's not for some people when they get there um the things that would be helpful for people to to flourish in those spaces um and i don't think it's always intentional i just think

it's sometimes it's harder for people to inhabit this world where you might be the only one or, or, or one of a few people. And, um, and sometimes people, you know, people need other things that are just like things that contribute to your general wellbeing. And if you're not having those things, um, I think the assumption could be, Oh, look, you're in this space, you got this job, you got the salary. Um, what, what, what else could you need? It's like, well, look, you're in this space, you got this job, you got the salary. What else could you need? It's like, well, a lot of the other things you're taking for granted probably about things that sort of give you a sense of comfort because they're used to inhabiting that world. So I think

you have to think about, I'll talk about in terms of what the aspirations should be. Ideally, the point what institutions ought to be able to do is to ask the question, how do we really make our places home for everyone? And how are we helping people to understand that, no, you're home here, not just because you're a contributor, but there are also things that makes you feel like it's your home. And depending on who people are, I mean, there's all kinds of things that could mean. But I think when you feel like you're at home, you're just comfortable. And so how do we do that? I think it just takes work to learn how to do that.

And the thing is that there's just not one way that that is, because if you take a survey of people, okay, well, what do you need? You might get as many different suggestions as people. So I think there needs to be attentiveness to that. But I think also when it comes to the numbers, I invite any listeners to go look up all the different universities, colleges, seminaries, etc., and then find all the African-American PhDs. And the point is that it's not that there's a market saturation when it comes to that. Yeah, no. And why is that it's not that there's a market saturation when it comes to that. Yeah. And why is that? I think part of it is the legacy of, I mean, we're only like 56, 57 years since the Civil Rights Act. you know, it's, it's, it takes a long time to, to, I mean, to build, to build that. And then for people to want to participate in that. Okay. I mean, because if you think about it,

just among white people, okay. What percentage of white people are PhDs? Not a whole lot, right? So if you have a minority community of African-Americans, maybe 20% of the population, So if you have a minority community, African-Americans are maybe about 20% of the population. Okay, 1% of that population. And you have all these institutions, most of which are white institutions. I mean, if you think about the number of people that are going to be at HBCUs, then if you bracket those people up, you've got everybody else in all these other institutions. If you bracket those people out, you get everybody else in all these other institutions. Even just the numbers, if it's 1% of the people, it's going to be hard to get somebody that's in every one of those institutions.

And then the institution itself has to be a place that isn't an old boys club. Yeah. Just like a woman who's in political science or the hard sciences, et cetera, no matter what her race is, sometimes those are largely male-dominated professions, irrespective of race. And, okay, so what does it take for that person to flourish there? Sometimes because the people there are really committed to it. Other times there are people who've been around for a while or people who think that they've competed with these people and they don't want to lose a job to a woman or to anybody that's not them. That person may have to deal with suspicion and always feel like you have to prove yourself and all this type of stuff. So they may not want to be in that environment. It's not that they wouldn't be let into that environment on the hiring side.

Of course they would be. They might even be preferred for diversity's sake sake but would they want to enter into that well i i think what i say about that is that i think there are people more people now who ask that question yeah maybe 20 years ago yeah yeah the fact is and a part of that's because you know social media does a lot of great things uh one of the things it does is is people communicate their distresses about things. And so I think people are discovering more people being willing to say how hard it is to be the only one, etc. Or to be one of a few. point of view um if for a person who's in any discipline any kind of situation one of the questions certainly should be i mean is this part of your vocation and dealing with that challenge is part of your vocation for some people um maybe it's it's that's probably not part of their vocation and they thought it was better to um be at a different institution whether it's an hbcu or

or another school, but a particular place that they thought was great. I think anybody, no matter what your race is, that wants to be in an Ivy League school, my question to them is, so are you really good at academic publishing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if you want to stay there,

you will be good at academic publishing. Just look up the requirements for tenure at Harvard or Yale or something. Oh, crazy. if you want to stay there, you will be good at academic publishing. Yeah. Just look up the requirements for tenure at Harvard or Yale or something. Oh, it's crazy. Yeah, it's insane. It's, I mean, you know, there is that phrase, publish or perish.

So, yeah, yeah. And the point being, obviously people do it, but is that what you want? And is that when you're thinking about your academic career, that's the thing you want to do. So the vocation question itself.

Vincent, I want to respect your time. You've got a meeting in a couple minutes. So thank you so much. I have so many other questions. I'm writing them down and didn't get a chance to ask them, which means I'll have to have you back on. But thanks so much for giving us your time and many blessings to you and the fine people

over at your historic Wheaton institution. Alright. God bless. Thank you.