Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep963: The Liturgy of Politics: Kaitlyn Schiess

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Kaitlyn Schiess is a writer, author, and a ThD student at Duke Divinity School studying political theology, ethics, and biblical interpretation. She has a ThM in systematic theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. Kaitlyn is the author of The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor, released with InterVarsity Press in September 2020. She has written about theology, politics, and culture at places like Christianity Today, The New York Times, Christ and Pop Culture, CT Women, RELEVANT, Sojourners, Fathom, and the Christian Research Journal. She also contributed some thoughts to this New York Times piece and this HuffPost piece. –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– 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. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. Before we jump into our conversation, I would love to let you know about a resource that my team and I created through the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. It's called Parenting LGBTQ Kids. So if you're a Christian parent whose child identifies as LGBTQ, this resource is for you. And by child, I mean, I don't have an age-specific person here. It could be 10-year-old, could be 20-year-old, could be a 60-year-old child, offspring, whatever. Look, I mean, I don't have an age-specific person here. It could be a 10-year-old. It could be a 20-year-old. It could be a 60-year-old child, offspring, whatever. Look, these relationships I know can be sometimes tense and difficult. So we created this discipleship resource for Christian parents who hold to a traditional sexual ethic, who are trying to embody both grace and truth toward their LGBTQ kid.

If you would like to find out more, go to parentinglgbtq.com. That's parentinglgbtq.com. And you can preview the course and see if it's right for you. If you're not a parent who has an LGBTQ kid, but has a friend who is, please do let them know about this resource. The best way to get the information out

is through word of mouth. So if you know somebody, please do pass on the website, parentinglgbtq.com. Okay. My guest today is Caitlin Schess. I pronounced that right. You wouldn't know her. I always called her Sheese because that's what it looks like on paper, but it's actually pronounced Sheess. So, Caitlin, I nailed it. Caitlin is a writer, author, and a PhD student at Duke Divinity School studying political theology, ethics, and biblical interpretation. She has a master's degree in systematic theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. Caitlin is the author of the book, The Liturgy of Politics, Spiritual Formation for the

Sake of Our Neighbor, which came out a couple of years ago with InterVarsity Press. Now, here's the thing. Normally, I record these intros after the conversation. I'm recording this one before, so I have no clue how this conversation is going to go. In fact, I don't know a whole lot about Caitlin other than I follow her on Twitter. I like the way she approaches different conversations on social media. I have not read her book yet, but the title alone seems really provocative. But yeah, this conversation is really a genuine attempt at me getting to know Caitlin. And we're going to banter around a bit, I'm sure, on politics and Christianity. So please welcome to the show for the first time,

the one and only Caitlin Chess. All right. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in Raw. I'm here with Caitlin Chess. Caitlin, thank you so much for being on the show. As I said in the intro, this is going to be a real time to get to know each other because I don't know a whole lot about you other than your book looks awesome. I haven't read it yet. And you're doing a doctorate at Duke Divinity School, which is not for the faint hearted. And I love your salty Twitter feed. It's so awesome. So wait, okay. So having said that, um, I gotta, wait, I gotta go to your, um, your pinned tweet. This is, you say one day, one day I'm going to write a book on biblical womanhood and the cover is just going to be a bunch of flowers framing a

bloody tent peg. Oh my word. Nice judges for illusion there. That's so cool. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Caitlin. Tell us a little bit who you are, what you do, what drives you, what are your passions? And then we can, then I do want to jump into the content of your, of your book. Yeah. So, um, like you said, I'm a doctoral student. I'm in my first in my first year studying political theology, which has kind of been the theme of the last few years of my life. I grew up as a military kid all over the country. And then I went to Liberty University for my undergrad, which was in history. And I was there from 2012 to 2016. So my last two years at Liberty were like the height of Jerry Falwell Jr. And,

you know, Ted Cruz announced his candidacy on campus and Trump was there a few times. And it was just the difference between 2012 when I got there, where they were sort of, I mean, I remember someone explicitly telling me early in my years there that they were trying to move away from the Jerry Falwell Sr. moral majority kind of thing to my last few years there, which was just full on all of that. And I mean, it was like every single day there was, you know, press on campus. There was some conservative commentator or politician or something. And so that was a really formative experience for me those couple of years. And then right after I graduated in 2016, I went to seminary at Dallas

Theological Seminary. I was there for five years working at a church and getting my THM. And so similarly, I mean, I started and ended that program in election years and had so many conversations with, you know, fellow students about that. And it was a really interesting time. You know, Dallas is kind of in that area of the country where there's lots of big churches and lots of conversations about politics and faith and got really interested in all of that. And then in the middle of my seminary program, I'd been kind of writing some stuff around that online and got an opportunity to write a book about it, which was a weird thing to do like in school. I was like going to all my professors like, please, you know, read this and

tell me it's not stupid or crazy. So yeah, I wrote this book about a little bit about that background and thinking about spiritual formation and politics differently. And then as I was doing the research for that and just falling more and more in love with my theology classes, I just thought, how do I find a way to just keep doing this in some form forever? And so that led me to where I am now. Why Dallas of all the seminaries? So honestly, I had had zero plan to go to seminary. I thought I was going to go to law school, most of college. And then I made a very last minute, like my senior year of college.

There's a whole story. Beth Moore came to campus. I had like a come to Jesus moment. And I was like, I think I should go to seminary. And I barely knew what seminary was. Like I wasn't even really aware of it. And I interned at a church because I was like, I should figure out something. Like I wanted someone to confirm for me. Like, is this a good idea or not? Like, do you see something in me? And do I seem like the kind of person that, you know, is going to be faithful in doing this? in me? And do I seem like the kind of person that, you know, is going to be faithful in doing this? And everyone at this church that I interned with just happened to have gone to Dallas. And I had no context for any other seminaries. I remember telling a pastor there, I feel like I need to figure out what I think about all these theological questions to know where to go to seminary. But I want to go to seminary because I don't know what I think about all these theological questions. So

what do I do? And so that was just the only one that I knew about. And so ended up there. And then now it's strange being at Duke. People at Dallas have strong feelings about Duke. People at Duke have strong feelings about Dallas. Like it's just, it's, I think it's been really healthy and wonderful for me to be in two very different theological environments and be shaped and pulled and challenged differently in both of them. How much of those assumptions are accurate? I'm curious. Like when you hear Duke people talk about Dallas, are you like, yeah, that's spot on? Or are you like, yeah, that's not exactly what they're all about and vice versa?

Yeah. I mean, a little bit of both. Like I remember before I left Dallas, none of the people who were like mentors to me ever said this, but I did have kind of random professors stop me in the hall and say like, they're going to hate you at Duke. It's going to be so hard. You're going to lose your faith. Like, you know, told me every horror story they could think of, of someone going there. And they were wrong about a lot of that. There are such faithful people here and people, and there's a lot of people that I really deeply agree with. And then there's other people that I don't,

but there's a lot of, you know, really faithful people here. They weren't totally wrong about it feeling very different. And sometimes feeling, I imagine other students here that share generally conservative theological commitments that I do have moments where they feel kind of embattled. And so they weren't totally wrong, but they also were wrong in some significant ways too. And then the opposite is interesting because a lot of people here hearing that I came from Dallas, they assume you must hate everything about that because you're coming here. So you made a choice to leave a place like that. And so you must, and so they don't even often ask me sometimes like what I think about, they just kind of assume that I'm an ex-evangelical or like, you know, have, have an idea both of what I believe

and the kind of posture and like tenor that I have. And they're usually wrong about everything at Dallas being terrible. And, you know, I feel like I learned, I learned biblical languages fantastically. I had great mentors. There were things about it that were really hard as a woman. And there were things theologically that I learned to disagree with, but I also think it was really formative and good for me to be in an environment where I could finish some of my classes and have really deep disagreements with some of my professors about some theological questions, especially about eschatology, and yet have such respect for them as people and for their reasons for coming to the conclusions they had come to that really actually, I think it would have been

really hard for me to come to that place in a place like Duke if I'd gone there for my master's. I think I would have just learned kind of a caricature of the things I grew up with instead of holding on to a lot of stuff I grew up with. And then even the things I disagree with really, I think having a better representation of what those things really were than I would have had otherwise. I was going to ask, I mean, you mentioned in passing, I was going to ask you what was it like being a woman at Dallas? Because I mean, as a more conservative evangelical institution, I don't want to make any assumptions. Like, well, yeah. So you said it was, wasn't the easiest. Can you just tease that out a little

bit? Like what, what does that look like? Yeah. So, um, there's a lot of women at Dallas. Most of them are in a couple of programs that kind of attract all of the women, the program that I was in the THM that like everyone is like the biggest program and everyone who's kind of training to go into ministry does, very, very few women. So I had, especially in theology, I had a lot of classes, like upper level theology electives, where I was the only woman or maybe one of two, but a lot of them I was alone. And so there's just that like basic dynamic that is not true at a place like Duke. There's way more women studying the stuff I'm studying here. And it really wasn't so much a matter of professors. Like I said, I had, I had just amazing mentors and just really supportive professors who wrote me

wonderful recommendation letters and were really supportive of what I wanted to do. Um, I think the harder thing was there were a lot of my fellow classmates who came into the program with some really strong opinions about what women should be doing and shouldn't be doing and felt pretty free to, you know, kind of let those be known or feel like they should be enforced in some stricter way in the school. So I had to take preaching classes and there were a lot of men in my preaching classes who thought, you know, they shouldn't have to be in the room while women were preaching. And so there were dynamics like that, that at the time felt very normal, even though they were really hard. And it's interesting how now being in a

very different environment where like, that's just not even a question anyone's talking about. I'll sometimes remember some of those things and go, yeah, that was really like, that was made my education really a lot harder than it would have been if I hadn't had that kind of constant pressure of proving that I had done the work on the relevant passages and I could prove that it was okay what I was doing. And also feeling the kind of pressure of a lot of men in some of my classes who, you know, felt like it was their job to let me know every opinion they had about what I should or shouldn't do. I'm going to think out loud here.

Yeah, yeah. As lame as that is. I'm wondering, there could be a really positive formation there to build resilience. I mean, I'm just thinking like preaching is super hard to do. Preaching to an audience where you know people maybe disagree with you is super hard. Preaching to people who think you are disobeying the Bible by simply being there has got to be really difficult. But that cauldron of difficulty has got to produce a lot of really healthy resilience and courage and confidence and

self-reflection. I would imagine you came out of that, the fact that you did come out and you moved on to doing a doctorate that there's probably some formation that happened there. I don't want to say, I mean, there was actually like, man, I'm, because ministry is not for the faint hearted, you know, in any form. And it's like, if it was too easy, it's like, you know, I don't know. Yeah. On one hand, on one hand, yes. Like I, and I told people often, I'd be like, I, it's not because I think women are just better or smarter, but I do think the women finishing this program with me are in general better and smarter than the men because

they had to work so much harder and they had to, I mean, they had to have gotten so much stronger confirmation before they started the program to even consider doing it, let alone to finish it and have kind of made it through those things. Like, I just think it produced some really amazing women. On the other hand, like, just having your calling and identity questioned constantly. Like, the preaching class, if that had been the main thing, would have been one thing. But when it's like, it just could, it was honestly sometimes just kind of the fear of it coming up. Like at any class, in any moment, in any chapel, I could be unprepared for the person there is going to sometimes verge on questioning my like made in the image of God-ness. And like that kind of like worry about that

constantly is exhausting. Like I remember talking with someone when we were, we were going through Ephesians, we were translating through Ephesians in one of my classes. And we were talking about how we were frustrated that some of the men in the class, we realized had done a quarter of the work that we had done on a few of the passages in Ephesians that deal with women, because we felt like if we were going to defend our position on these, we needed to do so much more work. And on one hand, that's like, wow, we, we like knew our stuff really well. We had done a lot of really good work. On the other hand, like we had full lives and some people had children and some, you know, and it was like, I'm exhausted by both the extra work I feel like I have to do and the mental load that it takes. Because what's a fun theological exercise for the men in my class is like changes my whole life. And that carrying that weight over

the course of a lot of years, it is frustrating to think like, I think there are some women in my, in my program who could have done even more if they hadn't had to carry that weight of constantly working on that. If you had it, had it to do over again, would you, would you go back there? Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, part of it is like, it's hard to know who I would be as a person if I hadn't had that experience. But I also, like I said, I think it was really, for someone who really cares about evangelicals and wants to continue to work and minister and teach in evangelical spaces, I just can't imagine some of my colleagues now who haven't really had any of their education in those spaces, I think are sometimes at a loss to understand what they're like and to empathize well, even if they theologically kind of align

with some of those places. Okay. That's super helpful. I want to jump into your book, but real quick. So again, I had no clue coming into this, like, is Caitlin like super liberal? Is she super conservative? Is she like, I think she's a Christian. I guess that's all I really know. How would you describe yourself in terms of like your theological, um, makeup or whatever? Yeah. I mean, I think I, uh, you know, think of myself in terms of that kind of question of conservative liberal, I get those words, like, I don't love those categories just so you know, but totally lacking better categories, you know? You're right. They are also sort of helpful. I mean, I feel, especially in a place like Duke now, I feel like a fundamentalist.

I feel so conservative. And I think generally speaking, I am pretty conservative. I'm an egalitarian when it comes to gender roles. So that kind of puts me in a different place than some people. But I also, you know, believe in the full inspiration and errancy of Scripture. And like, you know, I can say the Creed in church on a Sunday without crossing my fingers. And like really deeply, in a place like Duke, really deeply care that our theology is really rooted in Scripture. Outside of like doctrine of Scripture and like how I think about it, just in terms of like how I think about the theological task, I have noticed as much as I was

sort of resistant in seminary to the idea that like conservatives care about the Bible and liberals don't, I have felt in a place like this very quote unquote conservative in the sense that I just am so much more concerned with rooting everything in scripture than some other people who feel like that's what biblical studies do. We're doing theology, like we don't have to do that. That, um, and I'm, I'm at a strange spot too, because I grew up in, um, some SBC, some Bible churches. Um, I'm at a Presbyterian church now that is a part of a mainline denomination, but is a really evangelical, pretty conservative church within that denomination and the PCUSA, yeah. So I feel like being here has sort of, on one hand, I feel more conservative and I feel more like I really deeply care that we get the Trinity right, that we get soteriology right. I really deeply care about how we think and talk and use scripture in ways that I cared about before.

But I just wasn't faced with the challenge of people who thought in ways that I thought were really wrong about those things to kind of have that feel important. And on the other hand, being in a place like this has made me really kind of realize that some of the boundaries that I thought made sense don't make sense anymore because they're really deeply conservative people. And like, again, depending on how you use that word at a place like Duke, I'm at a church that's in the main line. And to me, it's main line versus evangelical. But this church is super evangelical in our culture and in our theology. And so there's all of these weird – a place like this is strange because I think it brings a bunch of people from fairly evangelical, fairly conservative backgrounds. And then they change their mind about lots of things. And it makes just this swamp of stuff that makes it a little – it's a little less clear than at a place like Dallas where it felt like I know how to categorize myself and other people.

I don't feel quite that way as much anymore. That's it. Cause I always pictured Duke as, well, again, here's where the terms aren't helpful, but like, let me say left or sorry, less far left liberal as the other kind of school like Yale or Harvard or, you know. Um, and, but maybe I'm thinking more of the biblical studies department or new Testament. Yale or Harvard or, you know. Yeah. But maybe I'm thinking more of the biblical studies department or New Testament. So like Richard Hayes and Kevin Rowe and even Hauerwas.

I mean, you read some of his stuff and he's like, I mean, he's feisty and you can't pin him down. But he still is very, so ecclesiologically church driven and says things that are like, wow, that sounds very, again, for lack of better terms, conservative. But so the theology department might be a different flavor than the kind of biblical studies. Would that be accurate at Duke? Oh, I think that's partially true. And I also think there's a weird dynamic at a place like this where there's the faculty and then there's students. And I'm not used, and I guess in Dallas, this was a little bit true that the students felt a little more progressive on like social issues than the faculty did sort of generally, but that wasn't so neatly defined.

Whereas here, I feel like both theologically and politically, the students, especially MDiv students, are probably as a whole more progressive theologically and politically than the faculty. And that's some of what I feel is like conversations with students in class, things like that, where I'll realize, oh, I, I am coming from what feels to you like a very old fashioned, like backward kind of way of thinking about things. So, and some of that is a reactionary thing. Like Duke is such a weird place because it's full of, like I said, a lot of people who come from more conservative backgrounds and are in this weird place of like, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them don't end up where they're at now. Cause they're just reacting to what they grew up with and everyone's kind of trying to figure all of that out, which I, there's some bad things about that, but there's also some really healthy things that I feel like at a place like Dallas, where it was really easy to go. This is exactly like what I grew up with. And I can just kind of keep going with that tide.

There's good and bad things about that too. So I don't know. That's super helpful. Let's jump in. So Liturgy of Politics is your book, subtitle, Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor, which I love, title and subtitle. So I want to dive in, but real quick, do you, can you, or do you even want to explain, do you have a sort of political leaning position that you're coming from as you began to write the book or how would you describe your political identity as you entered into this book project? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I really wrote it in part because, like I said, I was coming out of the 2016 election. A lot of people my age really rattled by what they saw and

the not just what happened politically, but what they saw evangelical leaders say and do about what was happening politically. And I think it's pretty representative and pretty normal that I grew up in a really conservative, politically conservative Republican context, both in the military and my family, even in the kinds of communities that I was living in. You know, I was I spent a bunch of my childhood in Colorado Springs, which is like a very Christian-y, Republican-y military area. And in college, I went to Liberty partially because I didn't really know a lot of the background and history of the moral majority, but also because if I had known, I probably would have thought that was great and fine. And then by the time I finished, had a lot of really deep disagreements and problems with that. And I didn't go into it so much wanting to change particular policy decisions. In fact, I was pretty ruthless in editing in terms of trying to keep from having, I mean, I'm sure some people will still read it and think, oh, you're bent a

certain way, but it was, I was really trying to not do that. And what I was trying to do was say, I think prior to those particular policy decisions, there are some background theological and spiritual formation problems happening that even if me and a particular Christian disagree on a specific policy question or who to elect for some certain office, hopefully we can, if we're trying both really faithfully to figure out what scripture says and what God demands of us now in our context, we can agree there are some of these kinds of spiritual problems motivating things. And even, and I hope that changing those or addressing those would produce different voting. Like, I think there are some material things that we could work together on to improve with policies and with electing leaders.

But that kind of comes secondary to what are the background spiritual formation problems that I can see, which are partially rooted in American evangelicalism's relationship with the Republican Party, which is why I can imagine someone reading the book and thinking, okay, you're not a Republican, definitely. And that's not necessarily, like I'm not, but I also wasn't trying to do that because I wanted to come at it from a different political position. I wanted to say, our history impacts the place that we're in and our history is really rooted in an unhealthy relationship with the Republican Party. So that's going to be more of what gets addressed just because of that history. So on the face of it, though, you're not coming from a certain partisan perspective, even if maybe the weight of the critique might be toward Christians who are too intertwined with the Republican Party versus the other side.

Well, that's helpful. So, yeah, let's dive in then. Liturgy of politics. Walk us through. Is there kind of a consistent argument or what's your main goal of the book? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So kind of broken into two parts. The first half is trying to articulate, I think, what is happening spiritually when we are politically formed by the world that we are in. So how does our political participation impact our theology, impact our spiritual formation? And so really part of the heart of the book is like, those are not two completely separate worlds. Like when we're talking about our political participation and when we're talking about our spiritual formation, we're not talking about distinct separate things. We are spiritually formed by all of the things that we do regularly in the world and including our political participation. And in fact, that might be a really particularly strong form of spiritual formation because it draws on story and emotion.

And it tries to tell us there's one chapter that kind of goes through some familiar political gospels. Like those stories function in a salvation oriented kind of way. Here's what's ultimately wrong with the world. Here's what will ultimately solve it. And here's what the good life looks like. Here's the specific images and symbols and stories that represent what that good life is. And even if we're not fully aware of the way those stories, those loves and fears and loyalties are kind of shaping us spiritually, they are. And we first have to just be aware that we don't just kind of go out into the world as Christians and kind of poke and prod it as outside observers. We are shaped really deeply by our political participation. And then

the second half, in a line not very far apart from Harawas, it says, what does it then look like in the church for us to engage in spiritual formation practices, personally, things like spiritual disciplines, corporately, especially the sacraments, but also everything about our corporate worship together? How do those things have the potential to form us in ways that very particularly, you know, conflict with the spiritual formation that we are getting in our political participation? What is the political education that we are supposed to be getting when we are in corporate worship, when we are practicing spiritual disciplines? Not to say that if you kind of do all of those things, you know, if you understand baptism correctly, if you kind of do all of those things, you know,

if you understand baptism correctly, if you understand the Eucharist correctly, if you do these spiritual disciplines, then bam, you'll go out into the world and be a perfect, you know, citizen and engage well. But just to say that sometimes I felt like post-2016, there were a lot of church leaders, theologians, but especially people in churches grappling with what do we do? Like this felt like a rupture in our normal way of going about our political lives. And sometimes we acted like we had to reinvent the wheel. Like we have to come up with some new way of addressing this political problem. And I wanted instead, especially as someone who was, I was 24 when I wrote the book,

like I was not trying to come in and be like, here's the program that will solve, you know, the problem. I wanted to say, I am someone who represents a generation that was really uniquely, because of our age, uniquely impacted by this and rattled and sort of rootless and confused. And what I have found great solace and comfort in, and what I've seen have great impact on people's lives, is returning to these kinds of regular forms of the church. And seeing them in light of our political problems now has really illuminated for me how politically important they are, like how much they shape me in ways that should have impact on how I advocate for my neighbors politically, how I think about my identity in the world, how I think about what my ultimate community and meaning is. And so my hope was just to kind of say like,

this is not a new project or plan. This is just someone who's spent a bunch of time over the last few years thinking, I mean, every class I took in seminary, I was like, yes, I'm learning the material, but also I have these political questions. So every class, can I write a paper on this? Can I think about this from this perspective? And just trying to kind of, I really was honestly often thinking of fellow students graduating with me who I had so many conversations with who were like, I see the idolatry in my church. I see the political confusion and division. And as a pastor, I don't know that my education really helped me think about what my role in all of this is. And I wanted to give them a pile of the 20 books I read for my independent study about spiritual formation and politics, but I knew they wouldn't read them. So I thought, you know, here's, here's my kind of very limited attempt at trying to kind of

communicate some of those ideas in a way that that could help people in churches. So the first of all, thank you. That's super helpful. And I've got tons of other questions, questions. One of which is your, you finished this book before the pandemic, right? It came out in 2020. Wait, did you freeze? Did I freeze? You there? Yeah. You finished a book before the pandemic, right? So, I mean, in the last two years, everything you're – nice mug, by the way. That's nice. Way to advertise Duke. I mean, everything you're talking about has been exacerbated, it seems like, where the divisions have gotten more intense, more divisive. divisive. What do you deal with? Man, I got so many questions. The role that like media outlets play in shaping Christian formation. And here's, I've been, I would say in the last

six months listening to and reading, there's a growing number of people who have kind of exposed the underbelly of these dying news outlets. Even the whole phenomenon of moving from ad-based revenue to subscription-based revenue. I don't know if you've looked into this. This is fascinating to where now places like the New York Times, they're funded by subscription-based revenue. And so now they're more than ever appealing to a certain ideological tribe for the subscription. And now it just becomes this echo chamber. And same thing with Fox News and whatever.

It's like no longer do you have news outlets that are really kind of doing traditional journalism. And a lot of it's due to the different ways in which things are funded. And so now, and as we know, they're all low, the ratings are down, viewership is down. So they're scrambling around to get more subscriptions. How do you do that? Well, you, you have clickbaity headlines that ignite anger and play on emotions and get people fired up. And then they click and they click and they click.

And it's the peak behind the curtain and it's just like i don't want to say it's 1984 yet um you know sometimes orwell gets around a little too haphazardly but it's a little eerie it's like it's like whoa whoa what is this just a big game that's going on like yeah i don't know like can you i'm kind of thinking out loud a little bit. Can you help us navigate that part of it? Just the kind of propaganda machines that are... And it's just so sad when you see Christians and it's like, you're obviously just nursing from this thing that doesn't care about you. They want your money. care about you. They want your money. They want, but they're not, you know, it's like, you're just being discipled by these. And I feel like both the left and the right here. Totally. Maybe we can say one more than the other. I don't even know. But yeah. Anyway, thoughts on my Rambo. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, that's a big part, both of the book and then how I've ended up communicating yet. I don't know if you have

this experience of like, there's, there's the book that you wrote and then there's like the book that you talk about, like with everyone else. Like, I feel like the media element of it has taken on so much more when I talk to people so much more of the space, because one, it's just such a good example of what I'm trying to communicate both with media and with all sorts of other things, which is that they're selling you a story. And it's not just about a single policy or a single, you know, proposal or vote for this person. It's a whole broad story that impacts what you think is valuable in the world and who you are and who your community is. And one of the things I do, I talk to a lot of college students and pastors groups. So for some reason, that's like the two

groups of people I'm always talking to. And I often will show, um, Ronald Reagan's it's morning in America ad, which if you've never seen, like, it's worth watching. It's like, I mean, I it's like famous because it was so successful. I mean, it's such a good, if you watch it now, it's such a good ad and it's like rolling green Hills and like family moving into a white picket fence. And there's a shot of the Capitol and there's a shot of a farmer and, and over these like beautiful rosy scenes that end with it's morning in America is all of these, you know, um, economic statistics and like actual political arguments. Like you should vote for Ronald Reagan because he has done this, this, and every single time, whether it's pastors who are in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, or college students who have very, I mean,

the media lives of those two groups of people are totally different, but either group, I will show them this ad. And if I say, can you tell me any of the words that were spoken almost every single time, not a person could tell me a fact that was given an actual political argument that was made. But then when I say, but what did you think like a fact that was given, an actual political argument that was made. But then when I say, but what did you think the real argument was? How did this make you feel? What do you think it was trying to communicate? People can wax poetic about the vision of America that they saw described just by the images. There was a story being told that was only loosely connected to those kind of facts that were said in the voiceover.

The bulk of it was, this is the life we want, and it looks like this, and this is the person who will give it to us. And the same can be said for, you know, news media, and even just like television, film, all of these, everything. There's not really divisions in people's lives when it comes to these sorts of things they're consuming. It all comes down to, I think that I am a rational brain. James Casemore says, like, I think I'm a brain on a stick. And when I watch a political ad or I watch a movie, a lot of Christians who will write about movies will do this, right? There's just information. Like I just was given facts and I can compute in my brain which of those were true or false. And if I'm thinking about who

I vote for, I can just compute the facts. Here's the pros, here's the cons, spit out the answer, here's who I vote for. And like no one on earth is operating that way, you know? No one does that. They are caught up. They find themselves captivated by falling in love with a story about the world and their place in it. And that's so much more powerful than that kind of information. And yet when I talk to a lot of pastors about their, you know, congregations, for a lot of people that I talk to, it tends to be, I have this segment of my population that is captivated by TikTok and they're learning a lot of stuff about the world on TikTok. And then I have this portion that watched Fox News for five hours a day and they're learning

a totally different world. And trying to have a multi-generational church with those two groups of people is just impossible. They live in different worlds. They don't speak the same language. The world doesn't work the same way for both of them. And trying to move away from the kinds of conversations we need to have are, well, you believe that this particular budget policy will cause this thing to happen in the world, and you think this will cause a thing to happen in the world and you think this will cause a different thing. Moving from that kind of conversation to what are you ultimately afraid of? When you look at the world, what scares you? Or when you think about what a good life looks like, what are the images that pop into your head? Or when you think about what it means to have

a good relationship with your neighbor, who is your neighbor? What kind of image pops into your head of neighbor and what does it mean to have a relationship with – like thinking about emotion and affect and story is so important. Again, because I'm concerned about how we vote. I'm concerned about our political witness in the world. participation formed us into the kind of people who not only vote poorly, but mistreat our neighbors, even in just a personal relationship, because I have learned who to fear and who to love and what kind of life is good from the media that I've consumed and the political participation that I've had. Wow, that's super helpful. I'm going to assume you're familiar with Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind. That's the elephant rider illustration that the elephant represents 90%

of why we believe what we believe based on intuition, emotions, story. And the 10% is a little rider at the top, our rationality. And our elephant takes us into the jungle and the guy on top thinks, oh, I decided to go to the jungle. No, he didn't. The elephant wanted to go there. He saw some

fruit or whatever. I don't know, some peanuts. Yeah. I'm like, no, you didn't. The elephant wanted to go there. He saw some fruit or whatever. I'm like, oh, some peanuts. Yeah. You know, it's like, no, this is, you know, that's so, I mean, I remember reading that years ago. And then now every kind of cognitive psychologist I read just reconfirms that there's so much of what we believe is based on almost like subconscious emotions, our tribal allegiances, fear. Fear's a big one. I'm glad you touched on that. That's so huge. Like, yeah, what are you scared of? When you ask those questions, do you get through to people to kind of unravel kind of the underlying reasons why they hold to this view or that view? Does that work? kind of the underlying reasons why they hold to this view or that view? Does that, does that work?

Well, the funny thing, I mean, I, I don't do that when I'm talking to people that I have never met before, you know, when I'm just with, you know, a group of people, but most of my experience, it's so funny. It's like, I did all this research for this book theologically and thinking about, um, you know, political questions. And like you said, like social psychology kind of questions, but also I was in ministry in a local church that was struggling with like the thing I just described about the Fox news group and the TikTok group, like that was my church. And I was ministering to people in their twenties and thirties who were like me really rattled by the 2016 election. We were coming up on the 2020 election and we're trying to figure out what to do and how to work through it. And then also ministering to other, you know, I wasn't totally sequestered in this group. So I had a lot of relationships with people who were

quite a bit older than me also thinking through all of that. And it's the number one thing I end up talking, when I talk to pastors groups and some almost inevitably someone will say like, could you write a curriculum or like, could you come and just like fix this? Could you come and talk to my church and like tell people like all this stuff so that like they could be fixed? And I always want to say like, I, not only am I young and you should do what you're doing and like, hopefully I have something to offer you, but like, you know, your people and like, you should keep doing what you're doing. But also the most that I learned was through the years where I was doing Bible study every week with a small group of people. And when we came to passages about wealth and poverty, or we came to passages about

foreigners, or we came to passages about justice or Jesus quoting Isaiah, or we got to revelation, like we had built up relationship to where not only when we got to those passages, we could have really fruitful, like, I think people would be surprised. I think we're so scared of talking about this stuff. But it came naturally when it's like Jeremiah yelling at the people about how they're mistreating the vulnerable. And someone in our group goes, hey, the Texas governor just decided last week that even refugees who've been vetted by the U.S. government can't be relocated here.

Does that have any relationship to like what Jeremiah's talking? Like that was a natural conversation for us to have. And it also, when I had that relationship with people, it was easier in that moment when someone had a sharp reaction to something. Cause it's, it's on one hand, it's so much easier to, to bridge from a Bible study into those conversations than come on a Thursday night and we'll talk about politics. Like that's just, everyone's coming walls up. So angry, you know, that's easy. But even once we bring it up, right, there's a little bit of the pulling the walls up and getting a little tense. And it is amazing how in that moment,

if you've built relationship, you're, you're rooted in, we're having a conversation about scripture, which we all agree is important. it does become a lot easier to go, it seems like you're really afraid of something here. Can we talk about what that is? And it doesn't mean people are honest 100% of the time, but it does mean that people who are in deep relationships with people in their community and who are in relationships that have been built on studying scripture together, I think in particular, it is incredible how much work can be done to undo that kind of affective storytelling part of this, which is why I feel like at the end of the day, like I hope people keep writing books and thinking about what's happening politically in the church in America. But at the end of the day, I think it's going to be, it's partially going to be pastors,

but I also think it's going to be like the Bible study teacher who also is an accountant and comes in for a couple hours every day and is just trying to like figure out what to do. Like those are the things that I think are going to have the most impact on people in churches. Your thought about relationships is fantastic. I wonder, would you say that in the wake of the pandemic where those relationships were now more distant and now everybody's online drinking propaganda, listening to this side, not that side, that side, not this side. Do you think that severing of relationships was a major cause for the exponential vitriol within the divisions of the church that happened the last couple of years? within the divisions of the church that happened the last couple of years?

Oh, totally. I mean, one of the things I really believe so strongly about the relationship between corporate worship and our political identity is that there is something politically powerful about sitting in a pew and then the pew ahead of you has a single mom who's relying on food stamps and the pew behind you has someone who's worried about this change in tax policy. And there's like, it just changes your political imagination if you're aware of those things. And when you're disconnected from those people and they're not physically near you, that makes a big, that makes a big difference. I remember my church, we had been online, everything had been online for months. And it was last summer when a lot, I mean, there were protests happening in Dallas about racial justice. We had a curfew. We were like trying to plan our first in-person, but like outside and everyone's wearing a mask. And I mean, this was pre-vaccine. It was like very kind of trying to

figure out what to do that was faithful, but we were outside and we had moved the time to make up for the curfew because of the protests. And we had the best conversation we had ever had in the entire time I was there about race, partially because it was this pressing, real thing happening in our community. But also I think because everyone was so hungry to be physically near someone and have a conversation that people were more vulnerable and open. And like sometimes in ways that were hard, like there was someone there that was like, I'm angry about all of this. Cause I feel like it's indicting me. Like I feel like I'm supposed to feel guilty and upset about it, which is not the emotional response that I want us to have when we've been kind of trained in our love of God and neighbor.

But it's an honest one. And that's what we're starting with. And I want to hear that so we can have a conversation about that. That was it was such a wake up call to me of on one hand, we're doing the best we can during a pandemic, and there's going to be these real problems and divisions, I think, have increased because of it. But I don't know that we've spent enough time going, as we continue to do more and more back in person, is there a real kind of gift about the longing people have had over time to be back together to where we could really, like, if we went in expectant, I wasn't expecting it at that point, but like, if I could go in more expectant of like, this is an opportunity again, you know, to have these kinds of conversations that maybe someone has been bottling this thing up for a long time. And again, and that could be a lot of us. I mean, even people, I talked to so

many people my age who are new in churches, pastoring for the first time, kind of working things out. An emotional outburst like that, we're done. Like, nope, okay, that was a bad thing to do. We should not. Instead of going like, is that a gift? Like, is that a moment of honesty that we could like really lean into that I couldn't have had online? And maybe being online made it way more of a big emotional outburst than it would have been. And that's not totally good, but also could it be good? Like, could it be a way for us to move forward? Because at least we're being honest with each other about the feelings that are motivating our really deep divisions and disagreements. Yeah. I mean, because honesty is, I mean, I don't want to say completely lacking in church, but we just got so used to put on these plastic faces and it was happy. Hey, how are you

doing? Oh, I'm doing fine. Yeah. Oh, how about you? I'm doing great. Yeah. You having a good day? Yeah. Good, good. And then statistically, you know, marriages have fallen apart. 30% of the church has gone through some kind of sexual abuse that they believe not healed from. There's physical abuse. There's, I mean, it's just on and on and on. Statistically, we're pretty broken and in need of healing and, you know, that's just on and on and on. Statistically, we're pretty broken and in need of healing. And, you know, that's just the way it goes. And yet, so taking off that mask, even if it results in some outburst and emotional this and that, that, yeah. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired. I'm like, yeah, let's go for it.

Let's get it. Let's get after it. Yeah, yell and yell back. And then let's have a conversation, you know. I mean, I know? Yeah. Do you, I mean, I'm really disturbed and every pastor I talk to, every, literally every single, well, all but one says the last two years has been the greatest challenge in my ministry. The divisiveness is out of control.

And for the first time in my ministry, it's not even over theological issues. It's like, I'm a heretic because I said something wrong about masks or vaccines. And it's like, I don't have a degree in epidemiology. And all of a sudden I'm required. And do you, is it repairable? Is there hope? Because I mean, at the moment right now, I feel like I have not seen a huge reconciliation happening. Obviously, I haven't been in every church or whatever, just generally speaking.

I guess, one, are you hopeful or discouraged? And two, what is necessary for us to deep breath and pursue paths of reconciliation? Yeah. I mean, the answer to the first question is like, it depends on the day, if I'm hopeful or not. I do think, I don't know, I think I tend to be an optimistic person in general. And I have felt over the last few years that, you know, so context for this is that I had this really beautiful, fulfilling, just like spirit-filled few years of ministry in a church that by the time I left was a mess. Like so much of everything you've described

culminated in people acting in ways that I would have never thought they would have acted. Like every kind of horrible thing you can imagine in a church, just like all was happening. every kind of horrible thing you can imagine in a church, just like all was happening. And I have so many people now that I'm a little bit over a year after all of that kind of happened. So many people saying like, you post up on Twitter about like how much you love the church and how much you love your church. And like, aren't you being kind of unrealistic? Like, aren't you being kind of, you know, rose colored glasses, cheery eyed about something that like, you know, it's awful. Like you've been through every, you know, um, and I almost feel like having those really close experiences of seeing so much good, seeing the spirit work in so many amazing ways. horrific ugliness revealed that had been kind of there a lot of the time and I was unaware of it and really taking the brunt of it at the end, I think it actually instilled in me this really resilient hopefulness about this because I think beforehand I would have said,

I'm hopeful to see some change in the church politically, but it would not have been a realistic hope because I hadn't experienced what I then spent the next couple of years experiencing, which was just the most painful, difficult thing I have ever faced in my life. And finishing that and going, all of the good stuff didn't outweigh the bad stuff, but the good stuff was still there. And God was faithful in ways I was surprised to see in the midst of what was just horrific. I don't know. I think it, I think it instilled a real kind of like, I refuse to, because it just feels like surprising ways were not the places I wanted or the places I expected.

And I, it kind of relates to my answer to the second question, which is, it's not a comfort, and I don't want this to come across as if this is the answer to the pastor facing this. I think the answer to the pastor facing this is just like, I am so sorry, and I hope you're getting like the comfort and the support that you need. But the really big, broad theological answer, I think, is like, there are churches that are falling apart and that are going to die, and the Spirit is working in those same communities and in different communities in not the same way that the Spirit always has worked here. Like, we can so easily fall into the, like, we just keep doing the thing we've been doing, and everything will just keep going the way it's always gone. Instead of, yeah, maybe this version of the church or this denomination or this particular church or this strategy or this, you know, whatever will die and the spirit will work in some other way.

And I have just tried as someone who is fairly young and yet really committed to some of the things that I have learned about what the church looks like in seminary to just like hold my hands a little open and go, hold my hands a little open and go, I want to be faithful, whatever happens next and where the spirit leads and nothing about the history of church teaches me anything other than that. It will be in a way that I do not expect. Do you, do you, thank you for that. Do you, do you follow politics? Is like, is that a thing that you wake up every day and, and read what's going on and everything? Like, would you be, okay. I dabble. I don't, it's never been kind of my bent but i feel like i mean ever since 2016 i feel like you kind of have had to it's just been kind of in your face a lot and um i would say i think it was early fall 2020 or summer 2020 when i actually ended

up deleting all my news apps because i was like it's it, it's, I felt, and, and I, I'm, I was, I would say, well, this isn't about me, but I would be a partisan to the point of being almost anti-partisan to being, I have more of like a Mennonite kind of approach to politics in general. They would probably be closer to maybe a Harawas or Tolstoy or more leaning towards Christian anarchy, for lack of better terms. But in my cynicism, I see the whole thing as just both entertaining and completely corrupt, and nobody cares about you, left or right. They're all after power. They're all lying to you. Oddly enough, the one that I think might be the most honest would be maybe someone like Bernie Sanders.

He's one of the only people I know that I think he actually believes in what he's saying. I think so. I don't know. As much as I don't know if I would agree with stuff he's saying, I don't know enough to agree or disagree. I'm not a political scientist. Anyway, having said all that, I think 2024

is going to be a bomb. If we don't start discipling or re-discipling the church now, the chasm that is destroying the church, that's too strong, that is dividing the church. That's too strong. There's divide in the church now is only going to get more infected. Would you, A, would you agree with that? And then would love to hear your thoughts on, because I'm thinking, and I would love to hear, it seems like from my vantage point, again, from a place where it's like,

I'm in exile watching Babylon do weird stuff. And it's like, sometimes I got my popcorn. I'm like, this is better than Netflix. You know, like it's just, it's sad because I know I get my popcorn. I'm like, this is better than Netflix. It's sad because I know lives are affected. But I'm like, oh my word. It doesn't seem like the country is very excited about the last year and a half, the Democratic takeover. Could it be that Trump might run again?

And could it be he could even win? That's going to be a bomb. Or even if he doesn't run, it seems like it's going to be, there could be a swing back to the Republican Party. And again, for me, who's not invested at all, I'm like, I don't, just one Babylonian leader taking over another. But what do you think is going to happen in 2024?

And how can the church prepare for that? Because I don't even know if what I'm saying is correct. I could be just misplaced. Yeah. Um, if it's okay, I'm going to also partially respond to, to the other stuff. Okay. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Just to say, which is, yeah, which is just to say that, and this is related to what I think the church could do. Um do and what I think would be a faithful response, regardless of who's running Babylon. think about politics to think who's the president, who's the senator, maybe what policy at the national level, maybe what policy at the state level, maybe the Supreme Court plays, yeah, definitely Supreme Court plays a big role. And what I really want us to do and what I would think would be the most faithful way going into 2024 would be for us to change our definition and understanding of what counts as politics,

first of all, which would be to say, you know, my advisor here, Luke Brotherton, he has this phrase that I love where he says that politics is the forming, norming, and sustaining of common life together. So like that includes who's president and what the laws are and who the senator is and whatever. But it also includes the stories and relationships and everything else that kind of sustains that life. And that it also includes both in terms of policy and in terms of relationships and stories, very, very, very local questions of politics. So my

relationship with the neighbor across the street that I'm looking at through the window right now, who's coming out of their house, is on some level not political. But if they play loud music at two o'clock in the morning and I decide whether or not I go and knock on their door or call the police, suddenly that's a political kind of question. And my relationship is a political kind of relationship. And so what I really am passionate about when it comes to those conversations with churches is to say, there's a lot going on nationally and we can have really different ideas about what we're supposed to do with that. Or even then, if we've decided we have some responsibility, then what choice we make,

who we vote for, whatever. But on a really local level, we also have all of this incredible agency to do things that very intimately and materially affect our neighbors. So that when there's a question of what happens with rents in Durham right now, where I live, that's like this huge question that has like material effects on my neighbor across the street who has four kids and could get evicted from the house that she lives in. And me showing up at a city council meeting and advocating for some kind of change of policy that prevents their landlord from raising their

rent to an unreasonable degree that has this like very close material effect and does get entangled with questions of power and other things, but doesn't have the same, quite the same level of abstraction that national politics has and quite the same level of proximity to power that can really kind of distort what we're trying to do. And that kind of like really close level relationship is what I wish, like if we were going to go into 2024 and say like, how can we, you know, if I could change one thing that we think, if I was queen of the world,

if I could just make everyone think one thing differently, which is a terrifying thought. But if I could do that with the church in a way that I thought made us more faithful, it would be that to just say, when we talk about faith and politics, we include questions of who's the president, et cetera. I think it matters. Like you said, a national policy about immigration, like changes people's lives. Like that has a material effect

on people. But also there was a pastor that I was really close with in Dallas. He was also one of my professors who we were having a conversation about this. And he told me that he realized in Dallas, very segregated area where like one neighborhood next to another, one could be so wealthy and one could be quite impoverished. And he realized that the neighborhood next to him wasn't getting trash service that was required by the city for them to get trash service. And the city had just decided these people don't matter. They're not going to get it. two people from the rich neighborhood next to them writing letters to the city council for them to make a change on this, you know, small thing, you know, in the grand scheme of things, but also really affected this community. Like if you can't have your trash taken away where you live, it

changes your whole quality of life. And he was talking to me like, well, I'll do that, you know, but maybe this other stuff, political stuff, no. And I was like, that's a political, like that's an opportunity for you to use the resources you have available to you to do something. And I think if we had those conversations in 2024, not only would we have more effect materially on our neighbors, but also I think it would help us have a healthier perspective on the choices available to us at that higher level. Like if I think everything about my political identity and action has to be encapsulated in a vote for one person who leads the country, that's an impossible decision. And I will have to force it like morally that won't feel right, like to try and have everything

I do be wrapped up in this one person or party or even policy. But if I think I'm making a decision for president, that's important. I want to be faithful. I want to think well about it. That's one thing. But if my vote for president doesn't do much about abortion or it doesn't do much about immigration or it doesn't do it, do I have other options? Are there a diversity of ways that I'm engaging to where if in 2024 the options feel impossible to me, I can make the best decision I can make, whatever that is, whether that's voting or not voting or voting for one person or voting independent or whatever. And then I can go, there's a crisis pregnancy center down the street from me and I can volunteer there or I can give them money or I can do something that materially

helps women in that circumstance. I can write a letter to my Senator, whether I voted for them or not, and try and get them to support a policy that changes how we treat people at the border. Like, I have all of this diversity of ways to get involved. And I'm sorry, none of that is an answer to what I think will happen. I can't tell you how hopeful this is, because you're talking me off the ledge of just... Good, good. just good good so so as you're talking i wrote down so you're saying like local politics is closer to neighborly love than these kind of more distant national level things and yet as not just christians but as humans we typically get so wrapped up in all the rhetoric and politics at the top. Totally. So you would say, would you say personally, and I'd just love to hear your thoughts,

would you lean a little more towards indifference, for lack of better terms, towards the big stuff at the top and just more, I'm going to focus my energy on the stuff that actually can make changes in my embodied communal life as I live in Babylon, right? We're still, you know, planting crops and building homes and being good citizens and praying, seeking the good of the city. And to kind of live out that kind of exilic identity, it's the local stuff that really does actually matter. It's the local stuff that really does actually matter. Yeah.

And I don't think, I think the decisions that we make at a more abstracted state or national level are not unimportant, but I also think they would be better decisions if we were more focused on the local things that we're doing. Like if I am in relationship with people in my community who are suffering from, yeah, I mean, literally people in my community are are suffering from, yeah, I mean, literally people in my community are suffering from some policy that is happening at a national level when it comes to welfare questions, when it comes to housing questions, like there are national policies that impact them. But if I'm in personal relationship with them and doing everything I can materially at the local level to help them, one, I think that's where my energy should be

spent more than being obsessively refreshing the New York Times homepage to figure out what's happening at the national level or Fox News or whatever. But also, I think I'll make better national decisions. Like if I am going to be involved in that, and I do think that's a good thing to be involved in, I think that will be better motivated and rooted and less obsessed with power and justifying anything for the sake of some vote or for some Supreme Court justice. If my idea of my neighbor who's impacted by this welfare policy is Karen, who lives across the street from me, who I have a relationship with, as opposed to some vague notion of my neighbor. Like, I love that we use the language of loving our neighbor when it comes

to politics. I think that's so true. But as you've described, I think once we start talking about that nationally, we're not talking about a neighbor. We're talking about this like idea of a person that doesn't exist. And I don't think that's going to help us either locally or nationally do something that's faithful. Cause on one hand, there's the consequences of the thing. And I don't think those are irrelevant. But like I said, this book that I wrote is really like, how are we being spiritually formed? If my national political participation is spiritually forming me in a way that I can't love my literal neighbor across the street, then I should stop it. Like that shouldn't be a part of my life. But hopefully my loving my literal neighbor could make me into the kind of person that

has the ability by the leading of the Holy Spirit and by the grace of God to do some things at different levels politically without it forming me in such a negative way. Well, and no, that's so helpful. So, I mean, here's, I guess, here's where my cynicism comes from with the national stuff. Is even, even if someone's like, yeah, okay, but this candidate's better than this one, or that one's better than this one or this. I'm like you're basing that knowledge on information that has come to you that has been so cluttered with lies and propaganda and bending this and bending that. Even things like social media. I refuse to retweet anything

that is like, look at this video, look at that video. It's like, you don't know. And we've been through this so many times where if you, the larger context of this video, it's like, oh, wow, okay, well, that wasn't what the story told. Like there's, like the mediums are so cluttered with propaganda, lies, power, manipulation,

abuse, untruths. Nobody, few people care about. I just want to know what the truth is. They care about this person or this side getting in power so that when we're on the receiving end of all that, we don't know which policy is actually going to produce more good for this person or that person or this group or that group. It's so much more complicated. And unless you're actually there looking at all the facts through fresh eyes, you don't know. You don't know. Maybe this candidate's better than that candidate at the national level. Maybe. How do we know that? Man, you don't. You don't. Your knowledge is so cluttered with propaganda and lies. And I think in the past, 10, man, you don't. You don't. Your knowledge is so cluttered with propaganda

and lies. And I think in the past, 10, 20, 30 years ago, it might have been a little bit different. But in this day and age, I just I don't know. Am I right to be I mean, unless you're going to, like, whenever I hear any

and I got examples that I don't really give because it's either going to piss off the right or the left. left like i can give examples on both sides where it's like hey if you actually do a thorough fact checking not not by listening to fact checkers because who's fact checking the fact checkers but if you actually go and do it an exhaustive investigation of this story of that story and you got all your facts straight until you do that, you don't, you don't know, you don't know what is going on. Yeah. I mean, I think what you've, what you've hit on too is, is a real, um, problem in how we think about what we're doing. We did, we do tend to think when I go to a voting booth and I check, you know, Republican or Democrat all the way down,

or if I check each person, you know, as I go down, I am not only making what I probably think is a pretty informed decision when, like you said, it probably isn't, but I also think that I am, I think I understand the consequences of this more than I actually have any ability to know. I don't know what the whole makeup of the Senate will be, or I don't know. And what frustrates me a lot of the time, and this is why I, I tend to think about it in terms of spiritual formation. I think it is a good thing for us to spend time trying to the best of our ability to understand what would be a good decision for our neighbors. And I think the inconvenience of walking to a voting booth and participating and like

that, I think there's something spiritually formative and good about that. But we have to then change our thinking about our political participation as if it is fully about material results that I feel like I you assume will make this decision in the future. And you can justify all these other things about a candidate because they'll appoint the right person and the right person on the Supreme Court will do the right thing. I mean, it's like chain of logic that is just ridiculous. And it doesn't mean we don't evaluate consequences. It doesn't mean we think strategically or thoughtfully. It doesn't mean that we're completely unable to know things. But I do think it should just make us more humble, lower our expectations about what's possible in a fallen world, but also not lower our sense. I think sometimes we confuse lowering our expectations politically with lowering hash it out in a government that tries to very imperfectly figure out what lots of different people with different beliefs about the world want and try and do something good. And people are oftentimes motivated by all sorts of messed up things.

And you've got lobbyists and you've got corporate. I have very low expectations for what that mess of things will produce. But I don't want to either say this whole system, any at any form, local or national is so irredeemable that I should just absolve myself of responsibility to be involved in it or to say, well, that's just how things are. So if my neighbor across the street is going to get evicted because she can't pay her rent because it was raised $500 in the last month, that's just the way of the world. You know, I have to have the ability to say I have low expectations, but I have a lot of, I have really high standards for how God has described a flourishing community. And balancing those two things, I mean, that's like the history of all political theology for Christians. It's like, how do we balance like our vision of the

coming kingdom of God with our very low expectations of what can happen? And I think a lot of our problems happen when we pick one of those two sides to just lean really hard into. We can create a utopia on earth or we can do nothing. And I don't think either of those are very faithful. Is it fair? So with your neighbor who can't pay rent because it's been jacked up, would it be fair to say there's kind of two things that should happen? Yes, as we have opportunity, try to change those laws, address it, execute justice in the marketplace, Try to change those laws, address it, execute justice in the marketplace, but also the church. Like, I feel like shouldn't the, while we're working to change those laws, which may or may not be changed, can the church come alongside and cover the rent?

You know, if it got jacked up from $1,000 to $2,000 overnight, single mom struggling to raise her kids, she can't pay that. So until this law is changed, the church can compensate for that. Cause this, I guess this is where I get nervous when Christians seem to put almost more focus or more faith in Babylon's political structures to execute the kingdom of the values of the kingdom of God. And then church is just a place to go to on Sunday rather than, no, the values of the kingdom of God. And then church is just a place to go to on Sunday rather than, no,

this should be the machine that is instituting and embodying a better polis in the midst of corrupt policies. But polis, the Greek word for city. So it is a both and right. Or what do you think? Yeah. And, and I think there's a relationship there that we don't talk about very

often, which is that I think a lot of churches will see people in their congregation being so heavily discipled by media, particularly news, political media, and think, but it's fine if they think some particular economic policy that's very free market will solve everyone's problems. And then they can come to church and kind of give very generously to other people. And on some level, that's not wrong. Like, I think we can have very legitimate disagreements about economic policies, but also be very, you know, charitable and giving in our personal lives. The problem is the news media that people are consuming is not just saying, hey, here's this economic policy, or here's this economic philosophy. They are selling you a whole story about the world that often includes a way of thinking about poverty and wealth that imputes a lot of moral weight to those categories that are

just in total contradiction to how scripture talks about, you know, the poor and the wealthy. And so then you have the problem where we think these are two separate parts of our lives, and it doesn't matter if they're getting discipled by Fox News five hours a week, they come to church on Sunday and we say, hey, there's a single mom in our congregation who needs help paying her rent. Who wants to do it? I think some people would be able to hold the tension of those two things. I think a lot of people have been so discipled by that media into not only thinking some certain economic policies are true, but also people who are poor and can't pay their rent need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And they're not working hard enough and they're not trying hard enough.

need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and they're not working hard enough and they're not trying hard enough. And then it causes us to not be as faithful personally in our relationships with our neighbors or in our churches as we could be if we said we can have disagreements about economic policies and about moral evaluations of capitalism or whatever. But also we can't believe the story Fox News is telling you that is more than that policy. That is a story about wealth and poverty and who is valuable and who needs to work for what and what it means to be dependent on other people and all those kinds of, like, we can't believe that story. That story is in opposition to the gospel. And us discipling people out of that story, as much as it makes us uncomfortable, will require us talking about political questions in church. Like, we can't avoid the fact that it's all bound up together

in such a way that we can't say we will disciple people to be generous givers and also will say nothing when they come and tell us they think QAnon is true. Like those things, we can't do both of those things at the same time. Yeah, that's super helpful. And yeah, and it shapes your heart too. And this is where, as I dabble with, I like to listen to both sides. And it's like, man, if I actually believed what I was listening to, I would be really angry at anybody on the other side. Because they cultivate this heart, this liturgy in your heart, right? Of like, our side's good, that side's the enemy. And I even hear them use language of like, we and us and them and we're winning. And it's

like, wow, if I actually believe this stuff, like, yeah, if I wasn't a Christian, I would totally be swayed by like, oh yeah, person voted for that person and oh, they're the enemy. It's like, man. So a person told me this was a few months ago where they were kind of witnessing to one of their neighbors, right? And the person was really open to the gospel. And it came to where this Christian neighbor invited the non-Christian neighbor to come to church. And the last second, the neighbor couldn't come. She's like, ah, bummer. Okay, whatever.

So she goes to church, the Christian. church, the Christian. And she said it was so laced with anti-Democrat language that she was so thankful that her neighbor didn't come to church because her neighbor is a Democrat and she would have been so shamed, so belittled, so mocked and made fun of. And I'm like, who wins? Who wins when we're glad our unsaved neighbor didn't come to church because she was a democrat like that but that that that is if all you do is drink one side of the punch or whatever like that's what's good and i'm gonna say yeah another side if you think if you find out that the person sitting next to you in church voted for trump and you as you've bought the the myth that anybody who voted for trump is a slave-owning racist or whatever and loves Hitler, then you're going to be like, I can't.

How can – you're going to be equally angry at that person and like how can he even be a Christian? And Satan wins, right? I just picture Satan just sitting here like laughing, thinking, this is too easy. I don't even need to get my pitchfork out. They're just like cannibalizing each other because they're putting so much stock in these two tribes. Oh, here's the question we never answered. 2024. I know we kind of already said, let's not think too hard about

or put as much stock, but what do you think is going to happen in the 2024 election? I really, I really do not know. As someone who thinks about it a lot and reads a lot, there are very few people that I trust who would even, who even think they have a strong, you know, prediction about what will happen. I think it's really hard partially because of social media and also because of um as you've said as you've described like how how far um 2016 and 2020 both were evidence to us that lots of people who think that they have a pulse on what's happening politically don't, even though, you know, in some ways 2020 felt more normal. There were lots of, I mean, I remember a huge element of surprise for people in 2020 was Hispanic voters and people missing like the religion element. They were like, how were so many of them voting for Trump? Well,

a lot of them are Pentecostals and a lot of the kind of theology that's happening there and political theology that's happening there. It makes actual a lot of sense, but you weren't paying attention to that. So I really, I would really hesitate to listen to anyone making strong predictions about 2024 because I think we have, it's become increasingly difficult for people to have an actual, you know, finger on the pulse of what's happening with voters. And I think especially for people who aren't in really right centered kind of communities, Trump not being on social media has also made it really hard for people to take that as what's happening because it's just not in their kind of social media world anymore.

So I really could not give a prediction about 2024. I think it will probably surprise people who make predictions right now. Yeah, that's going to be super exciting. Caitlin, I can't wait to read your book. I can't thank you enough for taking time on Theology in a Raw. It's great to get to know you. Love to talk with you. And yeah, thanks for coming on Theology in a Raw.

I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.