CASA Episode 13 - Dr. Chris E.W. Green

a sacred Commons we hope you all are well in a relatively short amount of time we've picked up some new subscribers to our YouTube channel so if you're one of them thank you we hope that Casa is something that brings light and life discovery and newness hope and joy into your day my name is John Paul Robles I'm a priest here at the sacred Commons which is a convergent community if you want to know more about what convergence is or about the sacred Commons we have videos for that here on our channel so check it out we pray that you all are doing well with everything going on as of today in Mahoning County of which Youngstown is apart we've had about 1800 cases with 231 deaths due to Cove in nineteen so prayers for all of the hospital workers and doctors medical teams and staff continue prayers for the sick and their families we hope that everyone is staying safe and that by God's grace you're finding patience and peace even in the midst of this okay so today we are so stoked to introduce to you all someone who was on our if it wasn't for lists it's a small list but our guests today dr. Chris green has absolutely been a conduit of God's grace and kindness in our lives his presence is inside his teaching just him as a person he's incredible and he's deeply blessed their lives he's a theologian a professor the author of several books including most recently surprised by God this is a book that I think every Christian needs to read it's that good he's also written the end his music a companion to Robert Jensen's theology he wrote a book called toward a Pentecostal theology of the lord's supper and this is a book that radically transformed my life he wrote a book called sanctifying interpretation which has just been revised and expanded and i believe the new edition will be out soon he just received a new role at Southeastern University where he serves now as the professor of public theology his current research interests are focused on the doctrine of God Pentecostal spirituality and issues of racial and ethnic injustice Chris serves as the teaching pastor at sanctuary church in Tulsa Oklahoma and he's also a visual artist an incredible artist I recommend that you search for him on Instagram just look for CEW green and you'll see his artwork there he and his wife Julie have just relocated to Tulsa with their three children Zoe Clive and Emory so much of what we share here at the sacred Commons and so much of what our friends and contemporaries share has been deeply impacted by the work in the spirit the presence of the person of Chris Greene so without further delay so great to introduce to you our guest today part one of our interview with dr. Chris Green dr. green it's wonderful to have you with us today thank you for your time and for making this possible I should start with a disclaimer that very few of these questions are mind I did the right thing and I pulled mutual friends of ours to ask you questions and these are some of the things that they sent back to me the first question that I thought we could start with is actually just personal and to give some context to people who may not know who you are how would you describe yourself in and where do you find yourself at right now in life it's a pretty open question oh man I don't know how I would describe myself but I find myself back in Oklahoma so my wife and I were born here and we grew up close to one another but didn't mean until college and then we after after college we left for a while lived in California for just a bit and came back to Oklahoma and then eventually left Oklahoma to go to Tennessee and from Tennessee to Florida and now we're coming back to Oklahoma again so we are going to be living in Tulsa we still haven't found a house yet so we're staying with my parents waiting to find a house hopefully in the next week or so because we'd like the kids to start in the fall in - in Tulsa so in school so that's the that's the plan and right now in this moment do you hear anything in your heart from God what has God been saying to you either personally for your journey from Florida back to Oklahoma or just in general has God been speaking to you in any way well I think so although I mean I don't know what God would say about that but I I think yeah I think so and about all kinds of things I mean whenever you're I think all of us like when we're in seasons of transition and we certainly have been my family and our I think you know you you're opened up to hear things you might not hear otherwise right I mean every routine is is disrupted and so everything is strange and when everything is strange you might notice new new new words all right pay attention to something you might not otherwise be attention to so yeah I mean I think so I don't know of course for all that's gonna mean I had felt for a while that I was in a vocational transition and then of course as you know and I'm sure most people who will see this no my contract wasn't renewed for the fall at Southeastern and that's what led us to deciding to move to Tulsa and once we had decided to move to Tulsa and put all those plans in motion the university came back and offered me an entirely new position which I got to write the job description for and so it is it has been in fact a kind of shift in vocation and I think that's just at the beginning I don't know where that's going to take me exactly it certainly involves a new job and a job with a new set of tasks and responsibilities I mean I'll still be teaching but I'll be doing more kind of public the the role is professor of public theology so a lot of my work will be more outside the classroom now than it has been in the past so yeah I mean I think a lot of it is about a shift in my vocation but I think my wife's vocation is shifting to you know our kids are especially our two oldest kids are at transitional point so he's almost 16 Clive is almost 13 which those are huge shifts for them so I think all of us kind of feel that that shift of you know turning the page or breaking new ground whatever metaphor you want so this question was asked by our friend Paul who said he wanted me to prime you because he's gonna have this conversation with you in a minute he was like you should proud of them on this question so what are your thoughts on post Kovac Church and how it will look I think we're a ways away from post kovat I mean I think we're probably my senses and I really hope I'm wrong about this but my sense is it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better and I think up to this point we've mostly dealt with the frustrations of quarantine een and social distancing so we've been inconvenienced I think what's gonna happen my guess is what I sense anyway is what's going to happen over the next few months next year or so is that we're gonna feel entirely different kind of pain people we love are gonna die from this disease and we're gonna experience that loss and losing them under conditions in which we can't be with them the way that we want to be I think it's going to be more and more politicized and that's my primary concern I'll come back to that in a moment I also think that the economic pressures that are gonna come on the backside of this are gonna be enormous for us I think churches schools restaurants you know just all of the institutions that kind of shape debate in our basic lives schools as I said and churches most of all I mean I think they're gonna be changed maybe not forever but at least for a few years there's gonna be serious change that is going to it's gonna be much more than inconvenient for us I mean I think we're going to we're gonna suffer in ways we're not yet anticipating again I hope I'm wrong about all that hope the inconvenience is the worst of it for most of us but yeah I don't think so and I think so only I think when we finally do get to postcode I think a lots gonna depend on kind of how we handle this the worst of this which i think is still to come one of the ways I'll talk about that is I think it's already politicize I mean right the way at least what I can what I can tell nothing I have my finger on the pulse of the world but from what I can tell I mean most people are interpreting this sickness via the lens of a political perspective right a political party and you know so mask-wearing is politicized but not only masculine just the way you interpret what is actually happening whether or not it's a crisis or or etc I think that's gonna get much worse both because I think the the number of cases is going to go up and we're moving into the presidential election right so the more of those things converge the election season ending all the ways in which that heightens disagreements anyway it's going to put our communities to the test I mean I think even more than the 2016 election cycle did which was bad enough for a lot of our communities I mean I know a lot of churches that split or had some kind of soft split around the 2016 election and I think this is going to be at least it is the potential to be worse I think a lot of what is going to happen after COBIT is going to depend on kind of how we navigate the next few months the next six months say or not and those are not like prophecies or even predictions that's just that's what it seems like to me I'm guessing more than anything else why has politics from secular society informed the Christian body more than the church itself I don't know if that question makes any sense do you see where I'm going with that direction like is Christianity a politic and and if so how has that politic been usurped by other narratives yeah so I have a lot to say about that you'll have to you'll have to shut me up I mean I think I think it's too simple to say Christianity is a politics but I don't think there is any way to live the Christian life without being politically involved and in a number of different ways so I just in terms of the theological framing of it I mean I think that the life God calls us to live is more than political and I think some of this is semantics so some of it depends on what what you mean by political right and so you know may it might be clearer to say I think Christianity is civic all the way down and it's political all the way down but it exceeds the political because I think the Civic exceeds the political in other words our life and community our civic life right our kind of public shared life is more than the political the political is necessary to governing that life and ordering it properly but Christianity is more than a politics because it's concerned about the whole of life it's not less than that but it's more than that mmm if that helps and I don't think it's it I don't think it's a political philosophy I think it's it's a way of living that puts pressure on all political philosophies and I don't think all political philosophies are equally good but I do think that all political philosophies are should feel the pressure of the Christian Way of life and and therefore yes but what I what I would want to avoid here is some kind of both and ism or or what about ISM I don't I don't mean that I don't mean yes the right is wrong but so is the left I mean I don't think that kind of conversation gets us very far I don't think all political philosophies are equal and I don't think that the way forward in terms of discernment is simply to say well everybody's wrong right I think that's in some sense that's true but it doesn't help very much right right now in this particular moment you know I think we need to we need to be very specific about on these issues Republicans and those on the right are wrong and on these other issues Democrats and those on the left are wrong but we need to be specific we can't just vaguely say you know it's it's assigned to me that of kind of moral stupidity when we just simply blankly say well those on the right or wrong but so are those on the left it's a way of refusing to take responsibility for discernment and refusing to actually engage what the reality is that's facing us so I think over the course of a decade or two decades if we only ever criticized you know Republicans yeah I mean it's revealing something about us but in a particular moment it may be that the Republicans are the ones responsible for in particular wrong that we need to confront and next election cycle that may shift right so I think I don't have any patience for the kind of both and ISM that never actually speaks about specifics right so I I would want to want to avoid that in terms of how we got here or why is it that so many Christians are politicized in ways that are that are unhelpful that's a complicated story and I'm not sure I understand it all too well but I do think in general my sense is at least with evangelicals I think what happened at least part of the story is that I think World War two in the year in the years right before it during it and right after it I think it shifted the ways that conservative Christians related to national identity and I think it pushed us toward nationalism in a way that's unique to America right so in terms of the Pentecostal tradition which I think is in some ways an example of what's happened to the broader evangelical tradition I you know before World War one Pentecostals were mostly a marginal community and much more identified with kind of holiness communities that were sectarian and withdrawn and mostly critical of political power it's not that there was no patriotism there but I don't think there was much nationalism at least not like we experienced it now but after World War one and in the build-up to war - that starts to shift so for instance Aimee Semple McPherson is probably the leading figure in that front she's a Pentecostal minister in California in in Los Angeles who has you know enormous Billy Graham level appeal culturally not just within Pentecostal movement but you know across the culture I mean I read just the other day something like 10% of the citizenry of Los Angeles attended her church in the thirties something like that don't quote me but it was an astonishing number like an astonishing number of people but that doesn't that still doesn't speak to the reach of her influence or so she's enormous ly influential and she in in the run-up to war to its specifically specifically it becomes more and more nationalistic becomes more and more concerned with America is the future of the world and if America Falls the world falls no end no it's it's America is good Nazi Germany is evil you know allies are the forces of light the Axis powers are the forces of darkness and and she even goes so far as to condone total war and then you can see kind of in her footsteps lots of other Pentecostals are making the same move right where there were they're condoning so much so that when you get like the bombings of Japanese cities which eventually culminates in atomic bombing exactly so there were dozens dozens and dozens and dozens of bombings of civilian centers fire bombings but in fact more people were killed in them than even in the atomic bombings but the atomic bomb was a red line and a lot of ways for a lot of people but most Pentecostals and seemingly most evangelicals affirmed that because the shift I think toward nationalism and I don't think we ever recovered from that I think it's just been a matter of that one wave after another of that hitting us right of course that came under intense pressure in the 60s around the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement but overwhelmingly white Pentecostals were resistant to the civil rights movement and more or less affirming of the Vietnam War not in the same way that they had been a world war 2 but you can still see that same kind of nationalism and in the midst of that there's more and more pressure not to speak to political issues from the pulpit right where ministers in particular are expected to focus on the gospel and to leave social issues alone and I think what we're experiencing now is is one of the long-term effects of that decision right so once you get the kind of hyper nationalism and then you couple that with a kind of ethos in which ministers are not supposed to be political what you get then is not some kind of safe space between the right and the left but now you've already located evangelical Pentecostal churches squarely in the heart of the right of the right politically and now you're no longer speaking to it which means that overwhelmingly people just assume that that right wing politics is the Christian one the evangelical one so again this is complicated and I don't mean to oversimplify anything but this is why to go back to something I was saying a moment ago this is why I don't think both and ISM helps us at all because I don't think evangelicals really are caught between the right in the left we have been historically we have been associated with the right so much so that what we've seen in the last five or 10 years right is it kind of unmistakable proof I think that evangelical equals right between or at least Republican conservative and maybe even evangelical equals white right and so you know I know like Anthea Butler who's you know something of a fire starter but she she makes that claim that evangelical not only equals right-wing politics it also equals white politics right so I think now on average our churches are much more politically conservative than they were two generations ago and much much more politically conservative than they were four generations ago right and so an example of that would be when I look at the literature what I see say in the 40s and 50s is a lot of talk about you know what matters the most is kind of making Christian choices as an individual there's a lot of talk about the conscience a lot of talk about not violating your conscience on issues of politics right in the early years of the culture war you can still see that right so in the first statement that I can find that the Assemblies of God made on abortion after Roe versus Wade there's still language of this is in some ways a matter of conscience we are against the taking of life but we understand that abortion sometimes happens under complicated circumstances and in those cases you know we leave it to the matter of conscience I think we've come to the place now a couple of generations later where there that's no longer we no longer assume in our official language that in our community are going to be people with different views of this hmm we just assume that it's no longer a matter of conscience it's a matter of right and wrong period and we're on the right side of that and for the most part almost without exception that means we're on the Republican side of that on the right side of that right and this is true not only on issues of race or issues like abortion it's also true on issues like torture or police reform for or economics right you can you can more or less go right down the line on what are the hot-button issues right and evangelical churches including Pentecostal churches and so far as their white tend to graph on that side right and without much kick right so that that would have been true less radically but it would have been true you know in our grandparents generation but in our grandparents generation that seems to me there was a lot more awareness of difference and talk about conscience as a way of navigating that difference within our communities and I think a lot of that is dropped away we've been we I think we've been radicalized and we don't even realize how we've been radicalized I think abortion has been a major part of that the but it's not only that it's about a lot of other things too right and so this again is just to start the conversation there's still a lot that I wish I could say but I don't take too long on it no it's great yeah it's great I like the way you did a brief summary of the history of all this I think that's really important so we can understand how we got here you said something in in that that kind of caught my attention where there was this ideology that America is the future of the world that was presented then even if it's subconscious do you think that this is still held in the minds and hearts of people oh absolutely yeah and that's that what I'm saying is I think so when I I think in the 30s when in 40s when Amy simple McPherson is saying that it was somewhat controversial mm-hmm in our circles yeah yeah I think over time it's come to be assumed assumed right it's it's an assumed without much critical awareness right so what I would say is what under the pressures of war specifically the pressures of wool work - which of course you know the background of the depression and the the horrors of war were one I mean there's so much at play there right and she remember she's in Los Angeles which is is you know it's a city with exploding population she was right that right at the heart of a lot of that interracial work so she's experiencing in a world that's that's lost to us like we don't we don't live in the same world that she lived in but she but her arguments for nationalism and total war I think just essentially won the day and she's far from alone I'm just saying she she took the lead on all that your end and then Billy Graham follows that right so around around the Vietnam War Billy Graham is writing to Henry Kissinger and and others senators arguing for the bombing of Vietnamese civilians you know on the basis of what we have done in war - right so he's calling for total war and those are our leading you know so any simple fears from Billy Graham I mean a lot of people I think had this sense that Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr are kind of they've come out of nowhere with these extreme views and I think that's really naive historically I mean I think Franklin Graham is less careful than his father but holds more or less most of the same views and I think the reason we feel the contrast differently is that our culture the culture wars have led to more and more conflict so now Franklin Graham's comments are not just assumed to be authoritative right they get met with criticisms and of course a lot of this is just he doesn't have the kind of personal wait that his father did I mean Billy Graham was you know an icon in a way that Franklin Graham just is not but in terms of his views I mean you can find most of those things in in what his father taught as well and and I think a lot of that is true about Trump for example I don't think Trump's views really depart that much from a lot of other presidents hmm I think he just does it with less care he doesn't have the same presence that previous presidents at he's just crude he's kind of an exaggerated cartoonish version of I think pretty standard American beliefs right and the same I think holds for Franklin and Jerry Falwell Jr I mean I think they're there we like to think maybe that they're the exception the aberration the anomaly but I don't think that's true at all they very much grew up in the same world you and I did and are not that different from from previous generations it's just our world is different now and so they're met with different kinds of resistances so as a theologian to get to the the underlying problem here how do you meet that statement that America is the future of the world because the creed would disagree with that I would say of course so how do you how do you deal with that theologically well so one this is the deep end of the pool but I would say that the future of the world is death the hope for the future of the world is God and you know there's no in our tradition and here I'm talking broadly about evangelical tradition there's a lot of confusion about the coming of God and the development that in the trajectory of history mm-hmm so without realizing a lot of us that what we've thought of as quote/unquote eschatology is really a theology of history it's a theology of how history will play out and will history play out triumphantly with the church you know winning its way to victory over all the enemies of evil in the world or will the church you know hold out against darkness to the end and Jesus come in at the last moments like Gandalf and save us from the orcs but I think those are both mistaken ways of thinking about how history plays though my argument would be that history is something different from the coming of God the coming of God is not something that happens that's in history it's something that happens to history it doesn't happen in time in space it happens to time and space and therefore the future of the world is still to be determined but ultimately it's the future that ends in death right so we can that we can live our way into a future that is more just more peaceful and then die or we can live into the world into the future in ways in which it is less just and less peaceful and then die you know so I mean I think the we are headed toward a time you know what eventually some disease is going to come that we can't beat right or if some natural disaster is going to come that we can't undo now whether that's a result of global warming or the result of you know scientific overreach or political failure I mean who could who could guess but my expectation is that one where I would already were at the beginning of history not at the end so when scripture talks about the nearness of the coming of God I think that's a statement about our openness to the god of history rather than our openness to tomorrow hmm right so I do believe that Jesus is going to appear don't misunderstand me I do believe that God is coming but I think the coming of God is something that happens to history and therefore is as much in my past as it is in my future mm-hmm so what scripture says every eye will see him I think that's a way of talking about the coming of God is something that happens to everything all at once yeah it is not you know the last thing that happens to the timeline itself it's not the last dot on the timeline it's something that happens to the to the timeline itself and that seems bizarre to us because most of us have been taught an eschatology that's just history mm-hm and but my you know what I'm arguing here I think is a much more traditional Christian understanding of of eschatology and if listeners make it this far into the interview you know this will give them something that upsets them so much they forget all the stuff I said I highly doubt it dr. Greene Diana and I love you and we're so grateful for you and your family the sacred Commons is indebted to your work and your witness sincerely you have changed our lives and continue to do so thank you so much dr. Greene for being with us today to those of you at home head over to Amazon or wherever you buy your books from in order surprised by God I think it's a great starting place to engage with dr. greens theology we'll leave a link to the and a video about the book below and come back next week where we'll pick up with part two the second half of our interview with dr. Greene okay that's it but real quick happy Anniversary Diana thank you for 17 years of the most deepest companionship and friendship I've ever known everything you do is filled with grace I've admired you since we were kids from day one John Luke and mati adore you our shared life is one big orbit around your love we love you I love you happy Anniversary Dee okay thanks for watching everybody we'll see you next week peace [Music]

Channel: Sacred Commons

Views: 627

Rating: 4.7333331 out of 5

Keywords: Dr. Chris Green, Dr. Chris E.W. Green, Chris Green

Id: PPyLFNFlJwY

Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020