Episode 420: Four False Political Gospels with Kaitlyn Schiess

hey there this is phil welcome back to the holy post podcast i am here with christian taylor hey phil hey everybody hi christian and sky jatani hi hi and we also have jason here jason how's everyone good how are you good thank you very much i saw someone else online notice that and there's this fourth guy on the youtube video but they don't let him say anything like oh come on pay attention so if you if you feel like you have something really uh important to say jason just you know you have permission great listener yeah uh yeah that too we uh we're gonna we're doing it i'm doing a different format today because something radical happened i did the guest interview all by myself solo just me guest interview and it's long it's longer than normal you're a big boy now i'm a big boy now i got my solo interview pants on um time to do it we have so many interesting people to talk to nowadays and that you know sky can't interview all of them and i don't want to be in on everyone that sky does because he does just fine without me so i thought well i'm going to do one or actually i'm doing another one next week too so look at me go anyway then we can then we can divide and conquer except now we actually have more interviews in the can than we have slots to put them in so we're over we're over interviewed at this point but so i want to talk a little bit about uh follow up on the jerry falwell junior thing because when we recorded the last podcast just oh a couple days ago when we actually recorded it he hadn't resigned and then right after we recorded it he resigned and then right after that he unresigned and then right after that he resigned again this guy did did we do the theme song oh jerry falwell jr sing us the theme song what's the news that you like the most who's your favorite podcast host if it's breakfast get your toasted sky and fill in the holy post sky and phil and the holy post and sometimes christians i forgot about the theme song because i was so excited about the interview that i did all by myself with my big boy pants um so jerry falwell jr is out but but he's a lot richer he's out with ten thousand and a half million dollars ten point five ten thousand and a half million i'm asked a little wrong there i'm at 10.5 million and he also got to leave without admitting any wrongdoing he not only that here's my favorite part okay and i don't know it may seem like we are uh ganging up on him uh we are um he did an interview he gave a quote to npr because npr asked him about the whole thing and you know what he said to npr about him having to resign because of uh sexual impropriety he quoted martin luther king and he quoted martin luther king's i have a dream speech and said free at last free at last thank god almighty i'm free at last. that's what jerry falwell jr said to npr about leaving because of a sex scandal just let that sink in just just let that sink in okay it sunk in now what my first thought is he could have been free at any moment at any time over the course of the entire relationship that he was there and the world would have been better off including liberty university yeah so so interestingly uh there's an op-ed in the new york times today from a former liberty student about his impact on the school and on on the christian education on the reputation of christian education which is not positive and the op-ed is by the person that i just interviewed that were about to play the interview uh caitlyn so way to go caitlyn your first new york times op-ed and her conclusion was i think i have it here to wrap up the whole mess of jerry falwell jr if liberty as an institution and scholarly community has been formed by its history of proximity to power in other words she just saw throughout the culture um under uh falwell jr the pursuit of power she says power never affects just one area of people's lives it leads them to believe they can determine right and wrong for themselves so if liberty has been formed by that it should come as no surprise that liberty now has an outsized role in americans understanding of christian education an institution that has become a central feature in our polarized political climate will of course capture the broader attention of the world but by its very political capitulation it denies some central features of christian education and then she talks about what christian education should be and what she says it often still is at smaller colleges and universities and seminaries um but she says finally the miseducation of liberty students should inspire reflection instead of ridicule none of us are immune to the power of what our hearts have grown to love uh so her point is that jerry fowler jr's love of power and proximity to power not only twisted him but twisted uh the university and it's it's not something to be mocked it's something to ponder and try to figure out how to kind of save the reputation of christian education as well as the future of of liberty she's i was so i've been so surprised because i think she sounds so young and yet she's such a deep thinker and she processes things very well yeah before we get to the interview i want to touch on one more thing skye was watching parts we're in the middle of the republican national convention what was the last week or two weeks ago was the democratic national convention last week yeah i'm kind of avoiding both i am too i didn't watch because nothing's going to happen that's going to be new information it's just both sides you know it's pep rallies for both sides and i don't need to be caught up in the emotion of a pep rally i've dabbled in watching a little bit of each just because i've been very curious to hear it for myself and also look at how they're presenting themselves because i think that's important too yeah but then i kind of i'm sort of catching snips here and there from youtube or summaries that other people are doing or so i'm not watching it live i'm just kind of picking up the bits and pieces later yeah so you brought up the mike pence speech he spoke last night and and one of our listeners tweeted it to us and said you gotta check this out and talk about what he's doing here in this speech so sky you want to summarize that real quick at our listener request yes i i was i thought it was stunning because it was the most succinct sound bite that captured christian nationalism maybe i've ever seen so at one point in the speech it'd be nice actually to have the audio clip but anyway at one point in the speech mike pence quotes hebrews chapter 2 i'm sorry hebrews 12 verse 2 where in the scriptures it says uh let us run our the race set before us fixing our eyes on jesus it's a familiar verse to a lot of people i know mike pence changed it slightly to say let us run the race before us fixing our eyes on old glory and then he turns and looks at the flag and then he talks about fixing our eyes his old glory slang for jesus is that one of jesus other names like roses pretty sure it's not i don't know about there were actually a couple different times in his talk where he um referenced scripture either explicitly or implicitly and completely changed the meaning of that verse or scripture whatever to reflect christian nationalism rather than orthodox christianity and it was just stunning i mean it is it is the most blatant christian nationalism where you exchange worship of jesus for worship of america that i've seen in modern american politics i mean we know it's always happening it's been there but it's just it's become bold-faced it's there's no even attempt to to hide it it used to be we would wrap america in in jesus or in christian language or whatever but now it's like jesus get out of the way can we just please worship america and i i just thought it was a remarkable thing and i know the democrats have their own issues with religion i'm not trying to make them sound like they're exempt from it but i think there's something a little bit more sinister when you're using christian scripture and icon icons and images it's it's donald trump with the bible in front of the church for the photo op like when you're using those things for the service of a political agenda that is decidedly non-christian it's just kind of sickening okay well i didn't watch that but i'll go watch the clips and see that leads us pretty directly to our interview which we're going to run and jump into now because here's what i want to do and this is why this is new and this is very exciting we're going to come back after the interview and just i want to because i'm the only one that was there and just get some reaction from sky and christian to the interview and some of the key points um so the guest is caitlin schuss her new book is called the liturgy of politics which actually comes out next week i think september 8th or so and it's a fascinating look at the stories that animate our political positions and how we have to be as critical of the stories behind the positions as the positions themselves so without further ado we'll listen to the interview now and then don't go away because we'll be right back after it okay here it is hey this is phil i'm here with our guest caitlin schuss is that german it is you got to be careful or you could end up swearing in german oh no yeah we don't want to do that um my name is german too but i don't i don't even know how it's supposed to be pronounced fisher visher von fischer um where are you today where are you coming from dallas texas dallas texas fantastic and you are kaitlyn schust is a writer and seminary student at dallas theological seminary and the author of a new book the liturgy of politics spiritual formation for the sake of our neighbor uh most people wait to write their first book until after seminary how did you how did you manage to publish get a book published while you're still in seminary yeah i it was not my plan at all to do that oh it just happened accidentally yeah really i it's actually a sweet story to me um i was working in children's ministry at my church that i'm still at and i work out now in a different role um but i was working full-time in children's ministry i was full-time in seminary taking too many classes taking greek and hebrew at the same time and so my job had become very stressful and difficult and i finally quit and it was very you know dramatic and upsetting and i felt like such a failure and i went into a classroom literally to cry and my phone lit up and it was an email from caitlin beatty who at the time was at university press and someone i respected so much and a publisher that i loved and it was just her being like have you thought about writing a book i got your name from someone are you interested in that and it was the week before that i had set up for my next semester to do an independent study with a professor about a particular topic that i thought i could spend a lot of time working on and really kind of agonized over whether that was the right time to do it if it was you know silly for me being young and in seminary to try and do this and i had a professor who knew my writing and knew my heart behind wanting to pursue this particular project and she just was like i think if you if you feel like this is where god's leading you you should go for it you will probably change your mind in the future about certain things but that's life and you're going to continue to learn and grow and you're never going to feel totally ready to do this so if you really feel like you know god is directing you to do this then you should go for it and so i slowed down my program a little bit to give me some time to to just work on that and i was lucky enough to have so many professors here who let me write papers that were a little bit outside of the bounds of the assignment looked a whole lot like book chapters yes yeah they're one of the chapters of the book is basically just an edited paper that i wrote and independent studies and stuff like that and so and people who were willing to read it and you know say i'm willing both theologically and the writing to kind of sign off on this and say that you know you're not crazy for writing this now and so that's cool cool well congratulations so the book's not out yet it comes out in september what's the date september 8th september 8th all right everybody at home september 8th uh the liturgy of politics uh well what is the liturgy of politics what why are you putting those two words together liturgy and politics that offends me what yeah what's the big idea other than putting them together just to put two controversial words together right um yeah so i really before i started writing the book i had become really interested in the formative power of habits and practices both in the church and outside of the church i've been reading james k smith who writes a lot about this and um growing up in really low churches evangelical churches where there wasn't a lot of what we would call liturgy but that now i know we had a system where you sing the four songs and then you pray and the sermon happened there was something formative about that that was made up we've made a liturgy of not having a liturgy right define the word define the word liturgy for us what do you what do you got so um i use it in the book more broadly to just describe repeated bodily practices that form values in us sometimes at levels that we're unaware of okay so i give an example early in the book about how you brush your teeth every you know morning and night hopefully am i supposed to do that wait a minute i just i learned something already this is going to be a great book there you go that's a freebie yeah brush your teeth um but how their that practice does something to you and is supported by a whole kind of theory about the world that says that taking care of your teeth is good and that there's certain things that even when you're a kid and you're just kind of told to do them you should do them and you've learned you know that this is an important thing and that's a really thin example if tomorrow it came out that brushing your teeth was not actually necessary it wouldn't take you that long to stop doing it how many children have been praying for that new study right oh never mind it's not necessary and showering that's not really there not a big deal but there are other ones that would be a lot harder to break like you know in a ridiculous scenario in which we all found out that some practice like baptism or communion or something you know we found out a book of the bible was not supposed to be you know something that would never really happen but it would take us a lot longer to stop doing things that are so foundational not only to the beliefs that we consciously hold but to then just the way that we live our lives and so the book tries to look at both the power of those practices in the church but then also why they're so necessary which is because they're equally powerful or sometimes less powerful because of the way that we you know do those things but they're really powerful forces outside of the church that work in a very similar way not only because they're bodily and repeated but because they more importantly they appeal to our desires and our fears and our loyalties and so we might think we're just taking in information about politicians or policies but there's doing something deeper to us and so we both have to look at our political lives through that lens of what are these deeper things that they're doing to me and then also looking at our practices in the church and going are we being faithful to the way that churches have historically practiced these things because they're so important to counter-form us against these ways that our political lives are forming us right right okay so so here's a quote uh you see important questions about parties and candidates can easily obscure another question at the heart of our political and spiritual lives what story am i buying into so i'm listening to a candidate and they're talking about a policy and that seems pretty innocuous it's just a policy but you're suggesting that there's a story behind how we hear things and even those policies uh dive into that a little bit what do you mean by that yeah um there's a story um i think i reference in that ct piece and in the book as well where i was at liberty university i was a college student and we had bernie sanders come and speak and that was a very unusual experience totally liberty university material right right i will say regardless of what you think about him you have to give him credit for coming to a place that he knew would not like him and he didn't come and yell at us he came and said is there common ground that we can have i care about taking care of vulnerable people you're christians you care about that too we might disagree on the way to do it but can we kind of dialogue about that and it was interesting because he's appealing to things that we should really deeply care about and i was very aware as i think other people who were there were of how guarded against that everyone was it was a lot of crossed arms and you know kind of stern faces i can't even hear you and the the way that they responded usually was that's not the government's job that's the church's job you know don't tell me what to do with my money all that kind of stuff very normal you know college students were figuring out their political opinions and have heard things from authorities and it was not long after that maybe a few weeks that anne boss camp came and spoke on campus and she was talking about esther and she kept using this phrase advocating for people on the other side of the wall like the people who are most vulnerable are you in a position of privilege and she used that word which was significant to people and you know what can you do to advocate for others and it was really striking to me to watch a lot of my friends and people who were in my classes respond very similarly to her it was like well don't tell me what to do with my money and where did you get this concept of privilege and you know we can't give handouts to people and she wasn't talking about the government she was talking about the church and it was a really helpful moment for me to realize that while they had been sitting you know hearing speakers talk about certain policies while they had been watching media that talked about certain policies they hadn't just learned hey i have this certain economic philosophy that could be right or wrong or could have some parts that are right or wrong they had also learned this narrative about being wealthy means you've earned everything you've gotten being poor means you've really messed up there's moral weight attached to those things and it's not my job to kind of baby you and take care of you and that that story had not just stayed confined to justifying a certain economic policy or set of policies it had moved into something that has real theological significance which is not only is there not moral weight attached to you know wealth and poverty and the way that this story tries to tell us and we have examples of that being denied in scripture but also we have a you know an obligation as christians to care about people in the way that she was describing in our chapel and so it was a moment for me to realize we can't separate these kinds of different ideas as neatly as we think so when someone shows up in a chapel and says things that are obviously biblical and the christian kids in the room feel they need to push back on them yeah there's another story competing with the biblical story yeah um and so you talk about uh the different narratives uh that that there's a there's another narrative under the biblical narrative and these other stories form in us desires fears and loyalties that we would otherwise theologically deny and that one such narrative is the promise of prosperity and do you do you see that in american politics do you see does that mean because i don't know i don't that doesn't ring true to me i don't see the chicken in every pot i don't think that's a thing never never been done before no never been done before so yes it's that's like but isn't that what government is for is you know you it's you to you're supposed to make me prosperous right right is this well it yeah it depends on your definition of that word isn't that the premise isn't that the premise of why i don't know we exist i don't know to have a prosperous nation and to put chickens in our pots and cars in our garages yeah i mean well what do you want another depression do you want another depression is that what you want i wanted a better definition of that word there's a reason i i use the word flourishing a lot which i know can be overused but i think it's a better word because it more holistically describes communities where there is both you know material needs are being met but also there's there's justice and there's care for those who are vulnerable and a lot of those narratives about prosperity on the right and the left the left kind of tends to get told they don't have this narrative but it often is still there uh if you work hard you will succeed and it might not be necessarily the prosperity gospel that we're used to of flashy preacher with a limousine and a private jet whatever right but it but it really just shifts the the agent of that prosperity from god to the all-knowing market and if you work hard enough the market will reward you and you will automatically receive good things and that's not to deny that humans were created early you know first couple chapters of genesis to work and that there's goodness and work and that there are people who have restrictions placed upon their ability to work that i would like those to be removed as well but that there's something more full and more biblical about thinking about the whole flourishing in the community okay so you see in in our political discourse that we are being offered disagree if you know i'm getting this wrong that we are being offered alternate gospels effectively you know the gospel here's the good news you know here's the problem the problem of sin the world is broken here's the good news jesus you know fixes it god will set it right that's the gospel that's the good news and you're saying that that in our american politics and i assume in most you know western especially democracies where you need to get people to vote for you you're basically offering them alternate gospels and saying here's the problem for example the gospel of prosperity you don't have as much money as you would like to have you know you're having a hard time paying your bills you're having a hard time getting ahead in your career that's the problem here's the good news i am going to bring you the answer to your prayers i am the jesus in this scenario and you'll have a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage and we'll be the richest nation on earth again and uh so what happens when when we hear those two gospels so we're getting one gospel from the church we're getting another gospel from our politicians who in america are often standing in churches yeah or or at chapel services of christian colleges when they say these things uh are you are you suggesting we can get a little bit distorted in our views of for example the good life what is the good life yeah when we have one view from the bible and another view from the politician that we're promoting who is standing in our church right preaching to us is that is that what you're getting at yeah and it's interesting because part of the reason i wanted to write this book was because i knew that a lot of people in my generation had seen some of the mistakes of you know evangelicals past yeah of the moral majority of you know the religious right and some of them i think they think the answer is well we just need to be a political because they got all twisted into politics now is that and the more that i've spent time thinking about this and reading that history and and wondering about how things are going to go in the future the more that i've realized i think the problem was not necessarily all the time that it was too intertwined it was actually that it was quite separated because there is a story about the world that makes sense in my church and it tells me to treat people a certain way and it tells me that this is the ultimate good in life and then there's my other public political life in which i have different obligations to people i can treat them differently i can hope that i am protected against them i can hope bad things happen to them i can and the goal of my life and the picture of the good life that i have is different and i think a lot of people whether they were conscious of it or not thought they could hold both of those because one's the higher spiritual ultimate you know truth right and then there's this lower one and unfortunately in the mucky world that we live in i have to kind of hold these values or think the world should be this way and it's just we thought that we could kind of hold those two intention and it turns out one will always take precedence over the other and the one that you're often more immersed in than the story you hear in church every other day of the week is the one that's gonna win the one you spend the most time with the one you know if because i have to admit i spend more time reading news than i spend reading the bible you know in a typical day uh so which narrative you uh in the book you talk about one two three four you mentioned uh four kind of alternate gospels gospels of the world one is the prosperity gospel i think we talked about that not the prosperity gospel of late night tv preachers name it and claim it if you're righteous god will give you whatever you asked for but a a secular prosperity gospel of america that if you are righteous america will give you whatever you ask for basically swapping you know the system for god then you talk about the the patriotic gospel in a nutshell what's what's that very similar to the prosperity gospel but has more to do with the goodness of our nation will secure those things for us so the savior is not necessarily the market or my good job or the politician who promises lower taxes but it is the goodness of our country and to tell that story also requires sort of telling a distorted history of our country because if this is the chosen nation that will save the world in a very paternalistic way then we have to tell a version of our history in which we've done everything mostly right and maybe some things were bad but they weren't that bad and they don't fix them we fixed them real quick yeah i have bumped into that one you know i i made a video about racism and more people watched it than i thought were going to it's like wow so the good news is a lot of people have watched this and the bad news is a lot of people have watched this and they want to tell me what they think is wrong with it and you know if i if i organized negative responses one of the top five is you're making america sound like a terrible place yeah you know and we resent we deeply resent you making america sound like a bad place because we're the good place you know we are the good place there was i don't know if you ever watched john oliver on hbo he's a little on the craft side but he uh his last show as we're recording this was on how we teach history uh in school and how we don't teach it on don't teach it honestly because we're upset you know with what some of the things we've done we would rather not pass that knowledge onto our kids and uh he showed a clip from a school board meeting in texas i don't know if you've watched that one and as a father like 10 years ago was just explaining what he wanted his kids to learn in public school about america there's only one thing he wanted them to come out knowing was that the worst day in america is better than the best day in any other country on earth that's that's it that's that's what i want you know and and then there's applause you know where did that come from how did we end up in needing not not just you know it's one thing if you i think that's true but i've never really traveled so i'm not sure i don't know maybe canada has some decent days i don't know i've never been that far north but but it's different to say i just don't know because i've never been anywhere it's it's it's another thing to actually need that to be true because of some story you're telling yourself yeah you know and that seems like what you're talking about the patriotic gospel where this is the best place on earth and if you say otherwise you know you might as you're spitting on the bible yeah it's really woof yeah and that's part of it too is if you have told a version of america's history in which it was not just a really great nation but chosen by god and you've pulled some weird verses that are talking about israel and applied them to america and you've said this is a do search and replace take out israel put in the united states of america and there you go yeah and if you've said we've been a christian country we were founded as a christian country we've been a christian country then i get why you would feel like you needed to defend that we've always been good and the best because you're trying to defend a very you know distorted version of yeah yeah it's like it's it's jesus it's my it's my mom and jesus and apple pie all right wrapped up in an american flag and and it just makes it so hard then to read about history um you know uh accurately it's like no but but but that doesn't fit into my narrative okay so that's that's the the gospel the alternative gospel number two that you mentioned is it's about america and boy we need to be the best morally financially in every possible way the third one you mentioned is the security gospel and i wouldn't i wouldn't have thought about this until you mentioned it and then it's like so stinking obvious we need to be safe yeah you know there's so much danger out there and and uh do you ever see that come up in politics [Laughter] right the same thing never never been done before yeah it's interesting because i when i when i started writing about that section i was thinking very you know macro like we have to protect our country we have to close our borders we have to and again you can have differences in opinion about policy but it's the story that justifies the policy that i'm most interested in right and that story tends to be how do we protect ourselves but then it's interesting to watch how it trickles down to all sorts of things i mean obviously still very broadly with criminal justice system issues of you know protect that's the story that's often been sold for really you know kind of tough on crime legislation is usually you know an image of a really scary person invading your neighborhood or even most recently the idea that trump tweeted about if your neighborhood being safe because it's not close to poorer neighborhoods which gets into both the prosperity and the security stuff yes we don't want for those of you who are living the suburban dream that's how that tweet started out because i i had to comment on that one that was so pertinent um and you can just kind of pile on the false gospels on that statement the suburban dream is a prosperity dream but it's also a security dream you know you don't have crime like they do in those other neighborhoods you don't want that coming to your neighborhood do you you know so i am your savior that will prevent you know and that happens on all sides you know here's here's the problem that's threatening your way of life you know whether you're liberal whether you're conservative you have a way of life that you've you know like this is the way america is supposed to be right and to get your vote i mean you talk about it that that fear is you know such a huge motivator in these stories it's like you don't have what you need to be either prosperous or safe or to feel good about your own country you know to have have nationalistic pride and here's why because there's a villain in the story let me point to the villain for you or even better put the villain in a meme and send it out on social media or just retweet it so it wasn't me i just retweeted this and now i am the savior that can restore what you're afraid of losing and that's that's really what's scary is how effective that is even for people who already have a savior right yeah yes it is it is amazing how much that instinct is so strong though to to find something that makes you feel safe and protected and like your story is right and i i wrote in the book about how i was listening to this podcast about a certain courtroom and all these cases that happened in this courtroom and there was a story of a girl who had been assaulted in a bar and you know because of a kind of mix-up a cop was there to like you know kind of settle it down and she accidentally hit him and got into this whole you know long you know drawn out case and the story was so terrifying that you could be assaulted in public and have no one believe you that because of a misunderstanding you could be charged with assaulting a police officer and it was this really terrifying story and the way that i made myself feel better about it in the back of my head was to think well i would never put myself in that situation i wouldn't be at a bar i wouldn't do what she did i would say something different i would and there's this impulse to go the world is scarier than i'd like to believe there are things that are outside of my control and so to make myself feel better about bad things that happen to other people i'm gonna say it's really about your choices and if you make smart safe choices you will be okay and if someone else doesn't then what happens to them is their fault in trouble it's because you didn't make the smart safe choices that i would have made so it's really not my problem and i have to make really excessively careful choices like i'm going to live in a super safe neighborhood and then i'm going to put a gate up about it and then i'm going to put another gate around that you know to make sure that i'm really safe and then if you're outside the gate and you get hurt that's your fault that's on you that's on you fella but it's it's so easy to end up demonizing other groups of people as basically threats to our security yeah you know for whatever reason because you're in a different economic class because you're in a different racial class because you're you don't speak the same language because you're not the same religion you know there were muslims cheering for the towers when they fell down i'm sure of it uh there are brown people coming from south of the border that are rapists you know and that goes back oh my gosh that goes back hundreds of years in politics of the fear of the other um generates an ability to to get a mass of people to follow you yeah and there's really interesting like i think i referenced somewhere in the book this thing about some psychology that's been done on the way fear changes something in our brains to where i have a sense of it's just me like anyone else is the other and then there's me and that then how that builds politically is who is like me becomes part of my self-understanding of me and i'll protect me but anyone else and there there's a psychologist who even gives these examples of people in war like the way that you survive is adrenaline kicks in and you're yourself against the world because that's just at that point what you have to do but when you can manufacture through images and sounds and videos that feeling of i'm in so much danger as the heightened kind of you know campaign ads and media and all that kind of stuff then it's you're really triggering something self-protective in people's brains and when you have created other ways of talking about groups of people that lets them make their identity a certain way and other everyone else is outside of that then it makes sense that they would respond that way so we've got a we've got a biblical narrative that says we are in god's hands and we cannot be lost you know we cannot be we can we can feel discomfort we can be we can hurt but we cannot be ultimately harmed but then we've got local state and national narratives that say you know locally oh you got to watch out for the people two suburbs over because they are very different you know and statewide say oh it's those people over there in that state and they think they want to move here to take something you know like even i live in illinois you know all of the states around the great lakes actually have a treaty i don't know if you knew this that none of them will do a deal with another state to access great lakes water without the agreement of all of the states so if you're arizona and you're running out of water you can't do a deal with illinois to get to the great lakes because there's a treaty see because ah they're coming for our water yeah they're coming they're coming for lake michigan so that that human impulse yeah to say you know who is the other and who is the us and how do we protect the us against the other which now i don't know you know if you've read the bible or not would you say that that's a biblical directive yeah it's it's amazing because so many of these gospels make perfect sense if you're not a christian i i understand why you would want your own country to be the best country why you would want your kind of people in your neighborhood safety if you don't know what happens when you're gonna die i get that your physical safety is the most important thing but if you're a christian your greatest loyalty is to god in his kingdom and his people and those people span all sorts of those divisions that you mentioned and so the idea that that you would default to stories that make sense to people who don't share your vision of the end of creation and what that looks like is crazy i don't know if you you read this but um at some time in the last couple of years the new york times center reported down to arkansas or alabama to a little southern baptist church to just interview people about trump's wall you know and say so so the with with the something in the bible about you know loving your neighbors what you know how do you put that together with this kind of anti-immigrant stance and the response i remember they interviewed a couple of women and the response was when jesus said love your neighbors he met your american neighbors those are you he told a story about that that kind of yeah but that's what we have to do when our political narrative is in conflict with our biblical narrative you know when when the political gospel of security is in conflict with the biblical gospel of hospitality we have to i i think you'd call it a syncretistic religion where you're putting together a local secular value with the global gospel and coming up with an alternate form of christianity yeah and i you know and i would love to say i personally have never done that but i'm pretty sure i have yeah yeah because at the end of the day i love the bible way much more when it agrees with things i already think and when it then when it tells me i'm wrong and and off base so okay so we all do that so we're not blaming anyone in particular but and you're in the point of your book and why i really love it is just saying you know let's be aware yeah let's let's be aware that there are competing gospels that there are competing narratives you mentioned one more gospel which i don't even want to touch because because i made a video once and i know how that goes down with some people uh the gospel of white supremacy how's that that's like that do you think that's a that's that's a thing yeah because it's not it's not no one is going to say that's a thing right right it's it's a a lot more under the surface than the other ones though they all sort of some of their power comes from being something that most christians wouldn't acknowledge explicitly right right but this one especially just because right yeah um so i spent a lot of time when i was researching for this mostly thinking through one the way that you know the church in america has somehow been able to hold to theological positions have scripture that you know makes really strong claims about the you know image of god and people and you know the matter of justice and all those things and yet have practices in churches that reinforced ideas that allowed them to for a very long time explicitly both support slavery hold to explicitly racist views continuing into today sometimes explicit sometimes less explicit and so a lot of it comes down to you're very formed by the neighborhood that you grew up in the people that you were exposed to and again those stories of someone might not explicitly say i think white people are better but what they might say is i want my neighborhood to look like me and if people you know from the next neighborhood over they might say that's a poor neighborhood but sometimes that's not even something that they know right they might make an assumption about the way people look or the music they hear there's a whole kind of story that we tell about people that are not like us like we talked about before and so if you've already kind of grown up with prejudices that your church hasn't challenged through the preaching but also through the music that we sing and the way we talk about what our identity as christians is is it something that fits entirely within a certain white american identity if we haven't challenged those things then they're going to maintain they're going to be as strong as they are for non-christians which again if you're not a christian i really i don't want you to be racist but i get why those forces would be really strongly acting upon you what i'm more concerned about is we have practices we have scripture we have the holy spirit in our churches that should be convicting us against those things and if there's reasons that that's not happening then we should be able to examine the practices in our churches and go what's happening that we aren't convicting the people in our churches that hold implicit or explicitly racist views right well if you look at it historically when our pastor challenged our views rather than changing our views we changed our pastor that was true and and the incentive for pastors to not say something because there's money involved there's power involved it's really it is really hard yeah you don't have to be our pastor if you don't want to you don't have to be our um yeah and it's you know it's a little different if you lived in an area in europe where there was only the catholic church and you only had your local parish and if you left your local parish you had nowhere to go but we have a free market we have we are a religious free market in america and there's 10 other churches that'll gladly try to accommodate me as i am just as i am and waiting not um that was an old song reference before your time um so okay so okay that's one so those are the four that you come up with um in the book i assume that's probably not an exhaustive list but it's but the basic premise is these are alternate storylines that are competing for our loyalty yeah and when and there's research that you mentioned that shows when people have adopted a political ideology it's more likely to change their theology than the other way around yeah and we totally discount i think the power of those things because we think i am intellectually agreeing with this position instead of recognizing the reasons the justifications for those positions tend to be couched in quite effective terms and i i was talking to someone about this the other day that the youth groups i grew up in we talked a lot about how the world would say you know your truth is your truth and we were the ones that were rational and defended the truth and we you know believed in absolute truth and i think some of that that's that really strong emphasis on we have the truth and we're not touchy feely like your your religion's not about feelings it's about truth led us to discount the power of good emotions in our lives and then go well if we know the right things we'll do the right thing we'll believe the right things and yet i mean not only these political gospels but rise of conspiracy theories among evangelicals often comes down to i'm not willing to admit that i'm afraid and this thing is comforting or i i desire this thing and it you know this fulfills it and not thinking about the emotions behind it leads us to go okay well i've heard some grumblings about some racist stuff in my church i'm gonna give them some facts i'm gonna preach a sermon and those things can be good the conversations i have with people in my church though tend to be your feelings are really big and you're afraid that other people will take things from you you're afraid that you're a bad person you're afraid that you didn't earn everything you got and those feelings have to you know be met with someone that can say okay let's work through why you're feeling that way and let's work through how scripture responds to our feelings and how we're intended as humans made right loving creatures to love the right thing and to find goodness in that instead of going oh i heard you post this racist thing on facebook here's a bunch of information here's you know stuff that will go to your head and not necessarily to your heart where a lot of the problem is starting yeah yeah absolutely okay and then all of a sudden in your book i'm reading on down ahead up pops saint augustine no augustine's here what do you what are you doing here are you running for office um and you you contrast his uh thoughts about the city of god and this what's the the other one the city of man city of yeah well what's the what's the not city of god city of man or city or earthly city yeah earthly city okay okay okay why are you pulling in augustine and what's what's the point of the city because his his big uh political work is city of god his big personal work is uh confessions right i i assume you had to read both of them to try try to put this together because i think i have both of them i have not read yeah well city of god's massive so it's kind of a hard you know one to sit down and read but but we do tend to think okay augustine significant both theologian for the church and also early political theorists had a great impact on just western political thought and so we tend to think city of god is his like political manifesto that's very pessimistic and like you really can't do anything and you're kind of just awaiting redemption the caricature and then confessions is the spiritual memoir where he finds god and um you know deals with a lot of his feelings and i kind of try to talk about both of them as both being stories of re-education of there being a certain story of the way the world works and the christian faith re-narrating that story so in confessions there's a certain story that augustine very well could have believed because of the culture he was in about his rise he had a lot of significant successes he wasn't you know he had kind of a a woman that was living with him that he found all this you know both physical and emotional satisfaction from he could have told a version of his life that was i have all of the best things i'm very successful in the work that i'm doing and i've kind of come from nothing he kind of came from a different background and so i've pulled myself up by my bootstraps and here i am and confessions are sort of re-narrating it and going you were really broken and lost and you hadn't yet gotten what your heart really desired and here's the story of how god intervened in your life and your mother who in that kind of culture and his own story should have played no role in his story right his mother plays this very significant role and in city of god it's chapters and chapters of here's the story that rome tells about itself of its victories of its values and morals of the history that you know brings them to the place that they are now and then kind of re-narrating it and going here's all of the destruction and evil and you know all of these lives that were destroyed and and here's the real story behind all of that and then taking the story of the world that scripture gives us and showing you know how those things are very intertwined and how often the same sort of sins come up and how humans when they get together in communities do a lot of the same things that are really bad and then how communities of christians can both live in this city where they're surrounded by people who are a part of this other city the earthly city is not human political communities it's all god's creatures that have turned away from him so you know that's fallen angels and humans that are not believers and then the things that they create the communities they create and then the city of god being god's creatures that are turned towards him angels and humans and the communities that they create and how that's a helpful way for thinking about how you can be in a place that is really fallen and dark and yet it's not that the earth that you live in is totally evil it's that there are you know forces of evil within it but you get to operate as a glimpse a sign of that coming redemption that that is promised to us and that'll change the communities that you're in and the very material things about your life not just you know your spiritual you know inner happiness or well-being um and that's a helpful picture that you it's kind of hard to get it's this giant book but has a really beautiful picture of of what christians could be doing today as well so it is so in the end does he say so just abandon politics because it's a mess and you can't be it can't be redeemed because man is evil at heart and demons and bad things so run away is that people have said that about augustine it's kind of hard because city of god is very pessimistic about the possibilities for human political communities he says that the only true just community is one that worships god so that's kind of rough for any human earthly community and yet in his own life he was advocating against the death penalty for people who were persecuting christians he was writing to public officials he was praising there's a letter in which he praises a public official because he recognizes that this public official is doing his very earthly political work but with his eyes set on the coming kingdom of god and that he's able to be a better person and a better public servant because of that focus and so there's people that have way focused on augustine's pessimism and part of my goal in kind of showing the comparisons between confessions and city of god was to say he is very willing to say there are going to be failures on this earth and they are not going to be recognized for being either failures or successes until eternity it's really hard to gauge what was good work now and so if you're gauging it based on what seems like a failure now then that's not going to be a good way to gauge political action so you can fight for causes you don't think will win you can you know support cases that look really hopeless because everything will be judged in light of eternity in which things that looked insignificant now will look really significant but you don't really can you support candidates that might not actually win i think so yeah oh man uh so you say either reading the city of god one way it helps us to look at meaningful political work is through the lens of does it align with the earthly city and her bent toward pride and domination or does it align with the love of god and neighbor that characterizes the city of god uh that's a really good way to look at it that you you use you know augustine's work as a filter to judge what we're trying to do here on earth um and then you do point out we can't judge the contours of history accurately without god's perspective we're not god we're not that's really disappointing yes thanks what a downer that is uh but we can observe the contours of the two cities operating in history animating the loves of particular nations or leaders uh augustine is happy to assign the actions of people and nations to the earthly city but not so eager to say exactly what these events mean uh in other words and you kind of push back on which someone says just about every year this is the most important election in our lifetime this this is the one this is it this is the most uh you say that's a prime example of the human tendency to take on god's perspective without warrant since we cannot read the historical progression of the world or ascribe particular theological significance to specific events christians can only evaluate the loves and trajectories of communities and institutions and make faithful decisions wow that's a mouthful [Laughter] but that feels like a really important distinction you know i have to i have to support this person this institution this idea because i can see where everything is headed and i have to you know we have to be you know because if we it's all going to hell in a handbag if we don't you know have this policy and just the notion from augustine that no that god can see where it's headed you can't see where it's headed all you can do is is does this line up with you know the doctrine of love and love of neighbor you know and of human flourishing or is it against that and that that's you're awfully young to be that wise thanks or maybe that's just augustine talking yeah let's credit him for that yeah yeah yeah uh we're out of time but the last chapter is about eschatology entitled creation redeemed eschatology as political formation and i would love to get into that because it's something we've talked about on the podcast more than once but we're not going to so if you want to hear what caitlyn has to say about eschatology as political formation you'll have to get the book and you can figure it out okay um the book is called the liturgy of politics uh the author is caitlyn schuss and uh it comes out september 8th 2000 uh 2020 that's now that's like why that's right around the corner so seriously check it out uh caitlin do you blog are you on social media where can we find you yeah on twitter uh at katelynchess and katelynchess.com i do a little bit of blogging still it's a little bit of blogging just a little yeah when you're not writing books and then trying to do your homework for seminary yeah at the switch somehow you managed to combine into the same thing which is very impressive i that's very quite impressive okay okay so you want to leave us with one last thought as we're headed into what will be a crazy election season based on your book what's one takeaway you would want none of us to forget [Music] i think for this particular election season um evaluating the practices in your own life when it comes to media consumption and when it comes to the voices that you're listening to not just news but television shows and movies and podcasts and giving yourself a moment as we get into this election season and saying what is forming me and is that the thing that should be forming me and then also going even if i'm going to still and i think you should listen to the news and be informed about things am i consistently taking stock and asking what is this asking me to love who is it asking me to fear or hate and what kind of good life is it describing and how can i be conscious of that so that i recognize where that doesn't line up with what scripture tells me dang that was a good summary did you do debate in college i did yeah i know i read that in your book [Laughter] you've been practicing all right caitlin schust thank you very much for being on the show everybody uh check out the book of the liturgy of politics uh from caitlyn and be prepared for more from her just as soon as she gets out of seminary and starts doing stuff for real this is just this is just practice um and thanks for being with us and uh you have a great day thanks [Music] okay we're back um i i was really impressed she's 26 years old she's still in seminary but she's really done some heavy lifting on bringing things to light that you know aren't radically new but she really summarized them well so i just wanted to get your guys thoughts how did how did that interview strike you what was new that you hadn't thought of before or what was just summarized really well christian taylor honestly it was all it was all great i think one of the things that was really new to me and eye-opening was a story she told early on about bernie sanders coming to liberty university and then and then anne voss camp coming yeah did anyone else find that lying you you stole mine you should have let me all talk about it no it sounds like you thought of it i'm just copying you [Laughter] it was the most beautiful summary of the problem that it was great it was so perfect and the idea that the the narrative that we really hold too strong is the one that's leading the other narratives is going to influence everything else and in her argument is that it's the political narrative that's really shaping most christians and there it was perfectly exemplified in that in that story and and i know and lost camp she's fantastic and i and i i've never heard her anything remotely political and so she's apparently there talking about esther and rooting her arguments squarely in a biblical narrative about using our power and privilege to help others and yet gets rejected because it sounds like a call that contradicts the political narrative that many people at liberty right adhere to so it was that was just amazing and i now that i think about it i see that regularly in a lot of places well we've talked about that actually a lot on the podcast what was so great about um you know her her interview but really what she's written was that she was able to give specific examples like that and what was so enlightening to me was that we've talked often about this commingling of patriotism and theology and you know we've talked about how that's happened but she laid it out like a road map of this is how the stories are intertwined and and it unpacked sort of that melding in a way that i could understand it like i'd never understood it before and one of the clearest examples with that of bernie sanders and and boss camp um heartbreaking so and i i just i've enjoyed since i read the book and then talked to her thinking through you know the prosperity gospel the patriotic gospel the security gospel the thing how prevalent that is in our churches you know that it's so american that that we're supposed to be prosperous and safe you know and good we're prosperous we're the most prosperous so so as you start to think about you know what do you do with america first kind of policies where we need to put ourselves first on the world stage instead of letting other countries take advantage of us uh you know it's really hard to to to separate how we've mixed these things up so much uh you know we need to put ourselves first so that we can be prosperous because that's the purpose of a country well that's certainly not a biblical imperative at all to pursue prosperity you know for for your own benefit um and then and then security how often do we hear you know you need to move your kids to some place safe you need to live in a safe community you need you know we if you if you home shop on zillow you can now pull up crime reports in the neighborhoods you know oh no i don't want to go there you know which many people have pointed out is also a pretty good way to tell how you know is there poverty in the community so you can avoid poverty while you're pursuing security um and we're avoiding so much of what the gospel calls us into i it's it's stunning to back up and look at that that safety part was so revelatory to me had you ever thought about that before that safety was so much a part of things in our decision making that was so unbiblical i think it's one of the core values of a lot of white american evangelicalism we've joked about it before but even the is it caleb i forget which radio station it is but someone had that their motto was safe for the whole family yeah yeah well that's right it's right there because the world is out to get us and get our our children you know i remember a seminal james dobson book in the early 90s just the title was children at risk and it's the cover was a silhouette of two clearly white children that looked dressed like they're in the 1950s walking on a tightrope and in danger of falling off you know so so our culture today is coming for our children and that's been such a motivator of christian political action over the last 40 years that our children are in danger our children are in danger and there's nothing more important than keeping your children safe so what's the balance i mean on the one hand we're not supposed to idol idolatrize what's the word idol we're not supposed to idolize safety and security yeah but at the other hand does that mean that was i think that's the end i don't think there is another but i mean are we then supposed to seek out you know what how are we supposed to respond if we don't prioritize those things that we've always become accustomed to what's the response sky here's the response and it's a story that came to mind as i was listening to your interview many years ago i preached a sermon at our church and i told the story about a christian man i met in portland oregon and he made the decision to live as a homeless person and he believed that god called him to live as a homeless person in order to minister to and engage relationally with other homeless people and i kind of shared more of a story and how this all worked out everything and i had more than a few people at the church come talk to me or email me or contact me quite upset about that story and their pushback was in one form or another god would never call somebody to be homeless that is not something that a christian should do or can do and god wouldn't do that and and my my snarky response wanted to be if you don't recall jesus said the son of man has nowhere to lay his head right like jesus was called to be homeless that just means he doesn't have a pillow right he hadn't met mike lindell the my pillow guy yet but this is what happens when we internalize the prosperity even the secular prosperity gospel that says god always wants us to be safe and comfortable and affluent and if we're not uh something's wrong and we need to fix it and to your point christian the answer i think a lot of it actually comes down to a theology of vocation meaning calling and no not all of us are called to be homeless this man i think in his sincere faith was and not all of us are called to uh be missionaries and live in in a cross-cultural circumstance but some of us are called to do that and whatever god is calling you to you do that but on the flip side going to first corinthians 7 where paul talks about all kinds of different circumstances of life he tells people remain where you are remain where you are with christ and don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to change your circumstances in order to really experience the christian life so if you find yourself in a comfortable safe environment don't believe that somehow you can't be a christian there but don't ignore the possibility that christ may well call you out of that into a much less affluent or comfortable circumstance or even safe one and if he calls you there you obey it we've just lost this theology of calling and we've made this universal sweeping argument that every christian is supposed to be safe and comfortable and affluent and that's just insane and ridiculous it doesn't hold up to the testimony of scripture well and i think what you're saying truly is we have to be walking in an intimate relationship with christ on a daily basis seeking him not only for the calling of our lives but even if we are in this comfortable place it doesn't mean we can we don't have to do anything you know there are plenty of things that we can do wherever we are to to think about things in a way that's not idolizing that kind of prosperity gospel and i think that's only done in daily communion with christ and having him you know show you what you're supposed to do how you're supposed to think how you're supposed to love others sorry i really liked uh it's her the ninth chapter of the book is on augustine reading politics with augustine and and the conclusion that that that augustine sorry augustine was both pessimistic about the possibility of accomplishing a lot with human politics but also completely engaged in trying um but he had a different way of viewing it and and caitlyn says you summarize it by saying as you look at a policy as you look as a at a person you know a politician as you look at someone who wants your support uh in policy ask this question does this policy this person this program align with the earthly city and her bent toward pride and domination or does it align with the love of god and neighbor that characterizes the city of god um and we tend to you know we want to we want to go way out in the future and say does this and does this policy end up in prosperity or does it end up in socialism you know we so we cast things into these grand like we can see all the way down 100 years what's going to happen and just giving it that simple way to look at things and i was i was really impressed because i didn't tell her in advance that uh the last thing i'm going to ask you is just to summarize you know give us one point at the very end i just threw that out at her you know and she paused for like five seconds and then said and i wrote that down what she said because i thought it was so good uh to ask in our in this political season to ask ourselves am i consistently taking stock and asking who is this this commercial speech politician who is this asking me to love who is it asking me to fear or hate and what kind of good life is it describing and how can i be conscious of that so i can recognize when it doesn't line up with what scripture tells me that's great every speech at every convention democratic republican whatever is describing the good life what good life are they describing and then what are they asking you to love and what are they asking you to hate to get that good life and if you can't back up and see that uh and then compare it with scripture we've been blinded by our by our politics do you know what that reminds me of have you seen the show the good life yes yeah it reminds me of that you know that we think the good life is this beautiful picture but in true reality it's really hell yeah yeah so okay that's all the time we have i just wanted to spend a little time wrapping that up with everybody because i thought it was a good interview and i wanted to make sure you listen to it skye yes i yeah you ended with uh alluding to her chapter on eschatology and that people have to buy the book i think we need to get her back just to talk about that talk about that here's a here's a quote can i give you a quote from that it's the last chapter eschatology is political formation um our eschatology is not just incorrect if it ends in heaven it has dangerous political and social effects on our world today so if your eschatology is just get me to heaven and then that's where my story ends it's not just bad theology and bad eschatology uh it's dangerous to our world and i agree that's what she unpacks in the last chapter of the book so thanks uh caitlyn just for being on the show her book is called the liturgy of politics it comes out in a week you can pre-order it now and we will have her back to talk about more stuff and thanks for supporting us on patreon really appreciate it patreon forward slash holy post podcast that's right right totally post podcast on patreon yeah yeah or they can just go to holypost.com and hit the support button just go to holypost.com and hit the support button and uh we really appreciate you guys go to holypost.com and tell us what you think of all this stuff even if you don't like it it's okay skye only cries a little bit uh and we will see you all next time bye everybody see ya the holy post podcast is a production of phil fisher enterprises that's phil's company and sky pilot media that's skye's company production assistance by julie betcher editing by jason rugg help us create more thoughtful christian media by supporting us at patreon.com forward slash holy post also be sure to leave a review on itunes so more people can discover thoughtful christian commentary plus ukulele and occasional but news visit holypost.com for show notes news stories and more

Channel: Holy Post

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Id: hh4Nh7g6wM0

Length: 72min 29sec (4349 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020