Does Sociology Matter for the Church? - Samuel L. Perry

welcome to the table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to the table we discuss issues of God and culture I'm Darrell Bach executive director for cultural engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary in the Hendrick Center there and our topic today is sociology and our guest is Sam Perry Samuel Perry who is associate professor for sociology at the University of Oklahoma so uh sooner and he's also affiliated with the religious studies Department there how long have you been at OU now this is my eighth year at uh at OU uh this was my first first uh academic job out of grad school okay and where did you do your grad work so I went to Dallas Theological Seminary from 2005 to 2008 and then I went to the University of Chicago okay where I finished with my masters and PhD oh wow good old Chicago where the weathers are where the weather in the winter is really exciting yeah yeah I'm at Wheaton up three times a year for board meetings and uh when we come to the February board visits and my wife says what should I what should I pack I got single digits especially around this time of year it's pretty exactly right so uh anyway we really appreciate you taking the time to be with us and we're going to walk into the area of sociology and and how it can help us kind of see and understand the world around us sure um so let me start with what is a traditional question for anyone who's a first-time guest and that is uh what's a nice guy like you doing in a gig like this how did you get how did you get I guess from Seminary to Sociology it actually has a rhetorical ring to it yeah so um you know actually it was uh the seminary's influence I I was not a strong student uh in an undergrad I was a b a b student and I I wasn't a Christian before I came into college I went to the only college that would accept me became a Christian in college and and was discipled through that and only through that uh became a halfway decent student I got into Seminary and realized that I actually really uh enjoy academics I love research and I love writing um and I think like many I also saw I I saw that and this is part of seminary's role is Discerning calling and figuring out what you're supposed to do and how you're how you can contribute and uh I quickly discovered that I think I'm too much of an introvert and not uh I don't have the right skill set or personality to be uh vocational Pastor um but I felt like being a professor is something that suited me really well and and by that all of that I mean I think the teaching the research and the writing and the academic life um but I actually got some really good advice from some Seminary professors they took out lunch uh and they said I don't know if I should say it so they said uh I was I was academic New Testament at the time and and uh I was tracking towards some you know PhD into Edinburgh or something like that as is off in the case and they said whatever you do don't do PhD and something like you know New Testament studies or whatever because they were they were they were they were cautiously saying like hey that the jobs are really Slim it's really hard to get a game and there's so they said you should consider other fields and disciplines that you might find interesting that you could go and and pursue and I thought about my uh the fields that I loved in undergrad and one of those happened to be sociology and I was fortunate to get into a a really strong PhD program at the University of Chicago where I could study the things that I wanted to in Chicago has a reputation of of just kind of letting you do your own thing the mentorship is not particularly like intrusive and involved in that way you just they just kind of give you a stipend and say you know come back when you've done some sociology so I was able to study what I wanted to and work on my own um and yeah so uh the University of Oklahoma I was fortunate to to get a to land a solid job out of graduate school and I've been here uh ever since and uh and that's really great for us because we have family in Texas and we're you know native native Texans and so we're close to I think you know kind of culture and restaurants that we are familiar with and family of those things fair enough so um so let's talk a little bit about your your time in Chicago um because I'm interested did you know American programs vary some of them are just dissertation some of them are a little bit of classroom work and dissertation so what kind of a program did Chicago have so Chicago um uh was was really well suited to somebody like me who was who knew what they wanted to do and wanted to get out quickly uh they do have classroom uh requirements it's not like a UK PhD it is it is there but there was maybe like a year or so of like class requirements um after that it was basically you take some comprehensive examinations uh which you can do in a number of formats and then you just focus on the dissertation uh so I was able to to be pretty direct and focused and and finish quickly uh which was which was good and the University of Chicago I think was uh a really academically and intellectual it was a really intoxicating kind of environment is very prestigious it's terrific people are just very driven by big questions and that's kind of what their currency right like they have a reputation of they are they are they are people who are not impressed easily with with with a lot of Flash and show they really want to dig in and argue and so I think that was a lot of fun to be a part of interesting so what did you work on there so I actually you know all research this is all social scientists uh and and end up writing about things that are relevant to them personally uh and and this one was no different uh I got to the University of Chicago and I was fascinated by uh what was called at the time the Evangelical orphan care movement and this is uh Christians involved in adoption and orphan care and Foster Care uh and I was curious uh uh the the workings of this movement how it got off the ground and what what did the results been like and and how was it whether it was succeeding whether it was not succeeding what are the reasons for those things and so uh my dissertation was uh uh on the Evangelical orphan movement and which ended up being my first growing God's family and so it's it's about um about the challenges that Evangelical movements face when they try to get involved in kind of social activism uh and uh ways that goes well in ways that uh they end up kind of undercutting their own efforts unfortunately so was that local orphan care or did it involve you know traveling overseas to care for kids what what kind of or all of that what kind of organizations were you looking at yeah so I looked at the primary organizations leading this movement so Christian Alliance for Orphans and their leadership and and this involved a lot of quantitative analysis but it involved interviews with several hundred uh leaders and families everybody from Russell Moore and people who are writing books about adoption and and Foster Care to people who are leading whole organizations and Ministries about this to try to pick their brains about like how people had been mobilized uh what was working what was not what are the challenges um looking at and comparing their accounts to the actual numbers of you know how many kids are being adopted from Foster Care uh in States and are those numbers changing over time and and what is that the evidence that Christians have played a role in those kind of hinges and so it was really taking the movement and scrutinizing what had been going on to try to develop a broader Theory that's really the goal is we're trying to develop or I was trying to develop a broader theory about how religious Faith motivates or does not motivate Collective action in a way that can contribute to addressing social problems interesting and it was basically local uh adoption agencies that you were looking at that they were working with or was it Global well it says Global uh local Global foster care agencies adopting international adoption agencies I mean we were I was uh asking any and everybody who who had any experience or exposure to that yeah and uh just curious what years would this have been so I was doing my research so that the movement runs from early 2000s all the way to today uh I was doing my research from about 2012 to 2017 when I wrote the book and I still track those numbers but um that's that's when I was doing my research yeah and uh this is actually an area of interest for me because I happen to be in uh Romania the year chachesco was replaced and wow adoption agencies were functioning and took relief from Germany into Romania five different orphanages in Romania uh while I was there once on sabbatical got to see those agencies up close got to see how relationally isolated these kids were that were in these adoption agencies I mean you got to hold a kid and they would not let you go because you were holding them I mean it would I mean brought tear to your eyes I mean it was really a tragic situation and and so um you know the issue of caring for for kids who who need care and you know need a family it's very very close to my heart so it's a terrific topic it sounds like and and was a great way to start but let's talk about the mechanics of Sociology a little bit and what what sociology tries to do so let me let me do it in that order first if you were explaining to someone who who only knows sociology is an ology and that's about all they know um uh how would you explain sociology and then we'll I'm going to follow up with some questions about how do you do your work what makes it what makes it a a science in the humanities if you will yeah so um you know I I teach an intro level social problems course almost every semester so I have this conversation a lot with my students and try to explain to them what is sociology how would we distinguish it from something like psychology or economics or political science and um I stress first of all to me so like in as as I understand sociology sociology is a social science uh and it has its foot in the humanities because there's an evaluation of texts and content especially people who are doing higher level theoretical work and and and and and uh I think uh the sociology of history or historical sociology but um as I practice sociology and as I engage and I teach it um I Center sociology more within the social sciences and so what that means to me is it is an evidence-based approach to understand uh how Society works and why I say Society there is because sociology as a discipline distinguishes people in groups from people in isolation right like so so psychology would be a social science that is an Evidence evidence-based way to understand maybe say the influences of things like personality and cognitive development and stages of life and the influence perhaps of the social on the individual but sociology is far more interested in when people get together like uh Emile durkheim taught that social groups Society is a reality Swedish generis right like it is of its own it is it is its own thing it becomes its unique a unique thing that is worth studying on its own not just as individuals aggregated but as its own uh uh a kind of way of Behaving and so sociology is a is a social science that aims to at its best uh to be a an evidence-based data-driven approach to understanding how social groups act work uh how they organize themselves and arrange themselves and and all of the things that come into consequence now is there is a whole series of questions uh and I'll I'll deal with the evidence side in a second I want to pursue the social science part of this and one thing that strikes me is is that in our culture for most people they think very individualistically they don't think about the nature of groups group impact group Culture actually I would call it group Culture that what we have are cultures that rub against each other in our in our in our world and so uh the nature of pluralism is is the plural and so um uh so in thinking about how that works um just wrestling with um things that people don't might not normally think about and they certainly don't think about it I think in terms of you mean there's evidence behind this I mean we can actually study it and and so talk about what it takes to do a sociological um study what what goes into that yeah so uh one of the things I appreciate about sociology and in particular is it is a it is a really eclectic discipline and that we we pull from a variety of different uh methods or or approaches so it's it's not like economics economics is like a purely quantitative the way it's practiced is purely quantitative like discipline that is looking at everything from administrative data to survey data to to you know experiments psychologists you know use quantitative data primarily as do most political sciences sociology integrates really a lot of qualitative uh data analysis that involved interviews with people like I did with my patreon or participant observation where you're actually going and observing and taking notes and and and and going along with like what the group is doing to try to gather data with how that culture works and what meanings uh are Salient within that context and how people mean certain words and and movements and rituals and then you've got also the same kind of quantitative data that you would use in as in the political sciences or psychology or something like that so I use personally uh I use large National data sets uh that we we partner and and pay we we get get grant money to pay surveying firms like yougov or or whoever to fund large National surveys some of them follow people over a certain amount of time we call those panel studies so like we are actually asking the same people the same questions over time to see how they change so is that a longitudinal study is that what that sometimes called yeah that would be a longitudinal panel study right so that we are we're doing that so we're looking at surveys we would also look at administrative data and I run with my graduate students I run survey experiments to see how uh exposing a group to a certain treatment or a reading or a condition will actually change their minds or perspectives or get a different response based on I think social cues so I we are eclectic in that way so so just to just to simplify um the quantitative stuff is like the survey that would that would go out and you just fill it out with with answers to questions and they're usually options that are given to you and and it's called Uh quantitative because you're you're surveying a vast amount of people but you're not you're not digging in all that you get is the answer that you put provide in the in the survey that's a qualitative survey actually involves um some interviewing and some some um some in-depth follow-up they're harder to do and and much more uh uh much more complex in some ways to analyze because this isn't just raw numbers on an answer your your uh you know you're having to fill in what what they're telling you Etc and you put those together into a formal study to try and wrestle with uh whatever it is you're looking about looking at and what those answers are revealing is that that's a really quick and dirty summary and then if you do it longitudinally you're doing that over time so you're looking at someone at the beginning through a period of time until whatever you wrap it up and and Etc and sometimes those longitudinal studies can go for decades right right and those are I mean and those are expensive studies and those are labor intensive but they are so rich in terms of the payoff right like what they can actually tell us about uh how people's lives change and the kinds of situations and Circumstance that lead to those changes and the data that we get from those is super valuable but the best kind of of Sociology in my opinion and this is what I I aim for in my own research is is is is a combination of qualitative and quantitative it it quantitative because it provides that generalizability right like that those large numbers the representative samples that I can draw conclusions from but also it provides that depth that you were talking about richness of qualitative data that allows follow-up questions and really dig into what did you mean there and you know elaborate on that and talk to me about your story and and kind of and and it allows what we call triangulation where we can triangulate that data to really zone or zero in on on exactly the answer where we're feeling like it's data are telling us so generally speaking when you do this do you do your uh quantitative stuff first to kind of surface what you want to go after and then your qualitative after or do they run side by side or does it depend well that's a good question oftentimes they end up running side by side I mean I think in a perfect world um um in a perfect world uh I think you would do uh your qualitative work I think first uh so that you can figure out what questions you're supposed to be asking in your quantitative data right like here is oftentimes your your quantitative data like your survey questions you only get one shot at those I mean you're paying a lot of money to send this out and hopefully ask these questions of a lot of people they're very expensive they're done well but qualitative work allows you to to to understand okay what are the important questions here and what should I be asking and so things that I it helps you develop theories that you'd actually like to test with that quantitative data uh to be able to I think come up with answers that are satisfying and I think you know backed by the evidence yeah I've been involved because of my work with chosen people in a variety of surveys that um one first designed the questions and then go through on a quantitative level uh on you know how people feel about Israel and the Middle East and some of those kinds of questions uh what do they think about Jewish people and Muslims and Palestinians and Arabs and then the one thing we haven't been able to do with that because because of the time an expense evolved is to actually sit down in face-to-face interview in depth you know the group of people that we're dealing with so we're all we're only on the on the quantitative side of things in doing the work that we've done but we're actually working on here at the at the center planning a study on doubt for young students in non-Christian University uh context and which we hope to combine qualitative and quantitative analysis to figure out what generates the doubts and also more importantly how Ministries that come alongside students attempt to minister to those doubts on what's effective and what isn't right right and to sort through that that layer of uh of reflection in a way to help people think through you know when are they doing something that's beneficial and when might it might be these they might be spinning their wheels right right and I think this is as actually I like a great I think segue into I think some important distinctions between sociology as a method which I think it sounds like you guys are engaging and I think what is a very familiar sociological analysis and approach to understanding those issues that you're talking about whether it's prejudice against uh Jewish people or its doubt and the ways those things are are generated among young people versus what a lot of people I think mistakenly consider sociology which is some kind of like I think a um unfortunately can be like a discipline that kind of you know uh masquerades as social science but is really more kind of like ideologically driven activism toward a certain goal um and I get that question a lot and I try to dispel it whenever I can that it doesn't have to be that it's it's it's that is that is a way a lot of people who self-select into sociology kind of take their skill set uh but that is not I think that where the discipline has to be to say or where certain practitioners yeah I actually think that's a pretty important point because um I I think that a lot of people think that if you're in the social sciences or if you're even in the humanities in a larger kind of way that there are there certainly can be ideological drivers but there don't have to be ideological drivers in that in that kind of a sense and you can deal with what it is that you find in the material uh that you're that you're wrestling with and what I mean by that is uh that you can you can you can take a look at the factors that that people themselves are actually dealing with and I mean we all come with perspectives I'm not I'm not trying to shed that but uh right right exactly yeah but but I am trying to say that there is a way to do the work that actually is trying to make a good faith effort to understand what's going on yes exactly right and I think uh so uh you know Peter Berger I'm sure you're familiar with Peter Paul's work and the sacred canopy but also he wrote a I think a really foundational book that was that was uh foundational for me getting into sociology as a discipline that I'd like to pursue and this is invitation to theology one of the things that he talks about in that book is in really early on in the book is that it you know the methods of Sociology are really agnostic in terms of uh and I don't mean agnostic in a spiritual sense I just mean ideologically they could be used for for anything because it really is just an Evidence data-driven way to understand social groups and the intersection of history and identity and you know your own kind of social experience rather than something that has to be driven by some kind of political or ideological uh Viewpoint or another right we all come with priors but it doesn't have to be so uh infected with that and in fact one of the challenges doing good sociology is figuring out how to actually word your surveys so that they are right they don't they don't skew the results by the way you ask the question that kind of thing right exactly exactly yeah so um so so you did this one on on orphanages what other kinds of sociological work have you done uh so my second book was I actually I've done a lot of work on this which was which uh on uh people of faith and their experiences with pornography um and this was uh my book addicted to lust uh what I do is it's qualitative and quantitative and and what I do is we found that and this is my co-authors and I and and over time we found that pornography tends to be Associated pornography use tends to be associated in all of the expected ways with things like unhappiness and and marital struggles and relationship struggles right so people who look at pornography more are more likely to say their marriage is unhappy more likely to say that they themselves are unhappy now it's it's always difficult to disentangle what causes what there right like so is is it is somebody unhappy and therefore they look at pornography or did the pornography make them unhappy is somebody in an unhappy marriage so they run to pornography or did the pornography make their marriage unhappy uh in reality it's probably some of both but one of the things that we found uh is that we found that whatever the negative consequences of pornography use it seems to influence people of faith more um it it's way worse uh like their marriages are worse off their personal happiness is worth off worse off when they're looking at pornography and so one of the things that I was talking about in addicted lust and this is a theory of moral and congruence that we've developed with clinical psychologists and I'm very eclectic in who I work with so I work I work with a lot of clinical psychologists and political scientists one of the things we wrote about and that I wrote about in this book was the connection between uh our own culture within say Evangelical culture um and our inability to talk about say pornography use in a way that is constructive and healthy either as couples or within the church and how that contributes to shame and isolation uh and and really uh a way that elevates pornography use to to such a heinous and unforgivable sin that we we have a difficult time breaking out of that pattern in our lives either in romantic relationships or in our personal struggles and so one of the things I'm talking or I was talking about in that book it was published in 2019 um one of the things I was talking about is is uh what would be a Better Way Forward for the church in light of the fact that um you know Evangelical Christians are the least likely to look at pornography but they're the most likely to say that they feel addicted to pornography that they feel overwhelmed or overcome or or depressed because of pornography or that they hide their pornography from others uh that shouldn't be right like that should be a you know according to our own kind of expectations of how the church is supposed to work in relationships with work we should be uh willing to talk open and and uh uh there for one another in that regard so that was uh addicted to lust subsequently uh most of my work has been on um uh religion and politics so the the study of Christian nationalism uh and and what that looks like and how to how to define it what is what is it and how do is is there a good way to measure that kind of thing what are its consequences for our political attitudes and behaviors and so that's been the last five years of my work is focused on that okay so let's let's take these one after another um it's interesting that you did this analysis on pornography yeah and then turned around and began to wrestle with um what the solutions might be which writes an interesting question uh for me about sociology and how it works because I think for a lot of people if they do know something about sociology they they tend to say Well they're just analyzing the nature and causes of where we are and the issue of how do you deal with this uh I guess this is the way to ask the question is the question how you deal with what you find a part of Sociology or is that kind of the addendum that comes out of it where you're trying to get reflective on what it is that you're seeing yeah um I think for me it's it's it's a necessary part of of what what am I supposed to do with this and it's one of the things that I think makes social science different from physics or geology is is that the the geologist or the physicist may have some ethical or moral kind of like import to what they do if they're developing weapons or something that's going to harm people or whatever but uh as a social scientist I'm I'm interviewing people who are struggling and crying before me to talk about their own struggles I feel like it is imperative for me to to say what are some what are some tools what are some conclusions that we can draw from the data that would actually benefit human flourishing in a way that is uh conducive to the goals I think they are after right and so uh each conclusion the very least is wrestling with where would people who are interested in this topic where would they go from here based on the data uh and this is I think this is something that that Max Weber So Max babers uh you know imminent sociologist talked about you know we have the the term the Protestant ethic right like this idea like comes from Weber but he wrote a lot about ethics and research and objectivity uh and one of the things that he concluded was was that uh science and the social sciences in particular um cannot determine what is moral right because that's a that's a that's a question for I think our priors our ethics our theology our philosophy but it can inform our morals in that in in in what we feel are the best ways forward to attain those those moral goals so for example in in the book addicted to lust as a sociologist um as a sociologist I I don't feel like from a social science perspective it's it's uh necessary for me to say pornography is evil right but I but I but I can say as a social as a sociologist um pornography seems to be associated with a lot of harm and particularly for this group of people who really want to avoid it so what would be some really practical ways forward best on the based on the evidence of how say people get out of pornographies of Habitual pornographies so you see in that in that regard I'm using the social science and the evidence to say for people who want to get out of this Habit in their life it's pattern behavior what are some ways that have been uh demonstrated beneficial and conducive to that and what are some ways that are not beneficial to that you see how I'm like it it's not making a moral claim but I'm using the science to kind of inform that moral Pursuit so you used a phrase earlier that I think is also important in this conversation in this kind of conversation and that's the phrase human flourishing and uh you're you're really you're studying to see both what is and I guess beginning to raise questions about how it could be better um uh and and that seems to me to be some that seems to be an area where if I can say it this way uh uh faith and and social science could work together um to to raise and wrestle with those kinds of questions right absolutely in in the same way that faith in the medical Sciences can should should work together right like we exactly as a medical professional I should I should absolutely 100 be committed to whatever the data tell me about what is the best way to cure uh a virus or cancer or or to solve an epidemic or or that kind of thing uh to accomplish the kinds of things that that we feel like are beneficial for all human beings and in the social sciences I mean that really is an approach and I teach every semester I teach a large social problems course and in that social problems course I I tell students from the very beginning that this is not going to be like an ideology course or an activist course this is a course on what do what does the data tell us uh are the reason behind we have the reproduction of say poverty uh generational poverty in this country or or generational racial inequality or those kinds of things what are the sources of that and if we would all conclude that those things are problems that we want to solve what does the evidence tell us about the best solution forward rather than saying hey this is you know uh the the solution is I've already decided the solution is this and let me just tell you uh that it's it's I really am committed personally I want to be a social science that social scientist that is Guided by where the evidence leads and in a professional capacity offer solutions to a world that says how do we learn about this a little bit yeah I I find one of the things that the reason I think sociology is so one fascinating too and too valuable is because it probes these corporate structures in ways that generally speaking people don't pay attention to they react to right but they may not pay attention to it and that's those are two different things um and and so sometimes I find myself um you know I sometimes get asked the question about about the nature of certain structures and whether they're operating in our society in certain ways I mean you know this I mean you get into discussions about whether something is systemic or not that kind of thing and um and the only way to know that it seems to me is to actually take a pretty close cross-sectional look at the a space and see what's going on right right and that requires but that and so this is where I think the science part of this comes in um because we are human beings and all of us have biases and blind spots um we we it it is the reason that we we invite accountability when we're a part of a translation committee or a Bible right like so if I'm a part of a translation committee I I do that because uh I need different perspectives and I need to be challenged in my own biases my own leanings and I need accountability in that way and science is supposed to be when it's done right is supposed to offer that through the process of say peer review and criticism and and Challenge and data and evidence and showing their evidence and then I'll get to uh one of the reasons I like The Net Bible so much second is is because we want to we want to show the process by which We Gather this information we made choices about what we think is true and we did that within a context of accountability so that we feel like um this is moving us forward now in a conversation about what can be known you know like I mean I think these These are really important and and so society and decisions that we make about policy and about how Society Works need to be I think developed within that same context rather with just kind of all priori assumptions they need to be uh Guided by uh what the best evidence suggests is good practice and effective uh and and so uh about The Net Bible so this is one of the things I I tell everybody people ask me all the time and I've been writing uh a lot about Bible translations and I think that's really important and I get asked often what's the best Bible translation and I'm trying to I'm trying to steer people away from what I feel like are kind of uh historic kind of like slogans or ad campaign words like uh literal or or or things like uh oh I guess yeah literal or or you know paraphrastic yeah what is it paraphrase and and and what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to push people towards greater transparency and accountability like those are words that I would like to to be higher in our lexicon for when we talk about like what Bibles or good Bibles to read one of the things I really value about The Net Bible is because I I think it gets as close as as as possible to what we would consider kind of like the open science understanding of like how we how we how we come across how we come about like our decisions like there's accountability there there is a uh transparency there and how decisions were made whether or not I think you know Romans 3 23 is is is translated in that objective or subjective genitive like whether it whether they got it right at least they explained it right like at least I know how they win you know what the options are and what the contextual choice is well and so that and that I think is is a picture right of if anybody who appreciates that about The Net Bible should appreciate what I'm talking about out with with a social science perspective is that we we are transparent about the methods that we used and we're accountable to our peers and to everybody else to say this is how we drew our conclusions show me the bias right and and if there is no bias then we we which which is our goal we we've used that to be able to draw conclusions about what the what the data say okay so we got time for your third kind of you kind of giving us three studies here uh the Christian nationalism stuff um uh what what I guess the first question is what drove you to go uh study this particular topic um in all in all honestly we we backed up into this subject as as something that we were we were playing with the data uh back in like 2013 we were looking at several surveys and and surveys that asked questions about how Americans thought about um whether or not America should be considered whether the government should declare us a Christian Nation whether like we should institutionalize our kind of Christian identity as a nation and we looked at how that was corresponding to various attitudes and we found that wow this is this really tracks with a lot of uh a lot of a lot of what we would consider pretty reactionary or far right political attitudes I mean these were not just kind of like I value uh I value uh Faith or religion or I value pro-life kind of things even though those things are correlated um we have shown within the last I think 10 years of studying this thing that that Christian nationalism is an ideology um is associated with things like authoritarian uh uh control support for authoritarian control for for example any means necessary policing that the police should be able to use any means necessary to to enforce Law and Order or things like uh torture uh uh voter suppression like things that we would uh hopefully agree that you know what those things do not contribute to a uh like a thriving uh stable liberal democracy uh and and subsequently we collected a lot of data Pro post say January 6. uh so Christian National psychology tracked very closely with say like absolving um anybody there of any blame for for anything the saying it was it was a good thing that that uh that that actually it was like that was something positive that we ought to see more of so all of these all of these things so what we're ultimately getting at is that um I I think the evidence would suggest that um this isn't this isn't about and we've never like been against no uh never been against uh Christians voting their values and living out their faith in the Public's fear I think that is something that is not only a good thing but but inevitable right like like we could like we could even ask people to suspend their faith at the door in politics like all of those things are so uh closely connected but it becomes a more complicated question when we're talking about whether or not we institutionalize Christian privilege in the public sector so that we actually say disenfranchise people who are not so that we actually take away privileges or so that we actually create a hierarchy in which Christians are at the top systematically and everybody else are at the bottom and you actually have several you actually have several books now that are arguing for this very thing right so like within the past six months there have been two books written naming Christian using Christian nationalism as a name saying that essentially we ought to create a situation a new context in which only Christians would be able to hold public office that only Christians uh would be able to to have a leading role in determining the kind of nation that we should be now uh you know I'm not sure who's listening to this podcast but I feel like that is that is uh me personally in the way I consider my own Christian values I feel like that's uh as an American I feel like that's uh antithetical to the Constitution but it is also unchristian in the sense that it would require coercion um in a in a way that I feel like is is unhelpful so we've been trying to in our writing about Christian nationalism analyze the data to to draw out what did the data tell us about where this kind of belief uh and uh could lead us and what are some ways that we need to approach this in a healthy way so that we can actually have conversation who are people of Faith interested in voting their values and a growing percentage of the population who is not interested in that and and how these two work together to solve problems interesting well man that that sounds like it's almost a topic in and of itself and it's a whole can of words I know yeah and and it isn't like we haven't been there in these conversations but uh uh Sam I just want to thank you for taking the time to kind of walk us through this and give us some samples of what it looks like and how sociology goes about what it does this is very very valuable I know that we are constantly at the center as we work in these spaces where um where faith and and and pluralism and and uh and options are on the table we're constantly wrestling with and utilizing uh material and statistics that really have emerged out of the out of the sociological space it's an important discipline for us I mean in anyone who's heard the name Barna or Pew or whatever you know knows uh how uh lifeways another one uh knows how this kind of data and the work that it takes to get there um which some people don't appreciate uh how much work it takes to actually you know surface this kind of material and how it does help us look at at particularly corporate spaces in ways that otherwise we might we might miss so so I I guess that's a nice way of of thanking you for one year time and two your commitment to a discipline that actually does I think Service uh when done well it serves us very well and helps us out in terms of uh of the way we see the world around us yeah thank you I appreciate that and I and and I will say like I think that uh it's it's a large discipline and people can kind of take disciplines in different directions but I think sociology at its best can when done right like you said I think can offer something uh that benefits the church and benefits uh all of us hopefully well thank you for being with us we really appreciate it and we thank you for joining us at the table hope you'll join us again soon if you want to see other podcasts take a look at voice.dts.edu slash cable podcast and we hope you'll join us again soon thanks for listening to the table podcast Dallas Theological Seminary teach truth love well

Channel: Dallas Theological Seminary

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Id: 0XGASvVlq70

Length: 42min 34sec (2554 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023