It's Not the Dinner Table: Religion & Politics

we tonight we have gary paluso verdand and he in starting the center for religion and public life here in oklahoma through phillips theological seminary he is bringing together the idea of the role of religion in politics in public life in a very different way than we're used to thinking about it so gary to begin tonight's conversation and we're going to open it up to questions and if you're on zoom put your questions in the chat but i'd like to start by asking you just to say a little bit about your theological journey where kind of where you've come from religiously and how you've deconstructed reconstructed your theology to be the person who you are today so just the obviously a short version of a very long story sure sure thanks and thanks for uh marlon for hosting this and and uh for inviting me to be here um marlon grew up in the chicago north suburbs i grew up in chicago west suburbs uh and uh in a very white uh rather sheltered little community brookfield where there's a world famous zoo and uh in a methodist church that would be very run-of-the-mill kind of methodist church i always had a lot of questions and couldn't often get those questions fully answered in church it was really in college when i had my first bible course it was a new testament course where at the end of the first week or two i really felt dizzy and i don't mean that figuratively speaking i i really felt dizzy my head was spinning i had no idea that there had been these conversations and arguments going on for over 200 years about things like why are there two christmas stories who knew there were two christmas stories i mean it was don't we all put the the crush together the same way uh with uh everything from matthew and everything from luke except all the bad stuff left out so that was one and in fact that opened my eyes it was i would say that that course and then of course in the old testament prophets opened my eyes to a very under different understanding of religion from what i grew up with where religion was what i grew up was was sort of just a it was part of the whooping wharf and the culture of being a middle class white american protestant right uh chicago area we're protestant catholic uh and and all so but that started to take my faith apart in some significant ways when i had a an experience at wesley seminary where i first went in washington dc and and spent a whole semester on capitol hill and was called the national capital semester for seminarians and i got to see all these people of faith doing fascinating things on capitol hill trying to relate faith trying to relate moral concerns uh with some really difficult national issues and this was at a time when we were uh the iranian hostage crisis was beginning and there are uh the we were always concerned about where the where the hand was on the nuclear clock and how close to midnight we were then i would say i i had an another major shaping experience once i went to university of chicago after my my parish experience which in parish experience is always a humbling always a deconstructing right mode right i don't care how much you learned in school uh because you're constantly encountering yourself and uh i was used to being an a student in school and clearly in some ways in the parish i was getting c's and d's just because you can't control anything in a community the same way you put together a term paper right you can perfect the term paper communities are not perfectable and university of chicago experience was uh what they called is is the you know the acids of modernity uh was one of the phrases i learned in that freshman year in the first year in my phd program with the acids of modernity all the ways in which the modern world has helped us deconstruct religion without necessarily reconstructing it uh so in other words it's like no religion's just an onion you feel it into it's it's really psychology it's really sociology it's really just the the uh the steam coming off of the engine of the economy and all those kinds of things uh and uh then i would say the last place that i've had a you know major deconstructive experience was was probably during the time when i was a seminary president um where uh you know where i'm finally the in-charge person uh whatever that means in an academic context of shared governance and having 26 or so bosses bosses with the trustees um but the experience of coming up against my limitations again um and and uh i'd say coterminous with that my own journey at the 66 years old now has brought me to a place where i'm questioning a lot of things regarding traditional language that i grew up with that had uh remained in some way perhaps rethought perhaps not in the various other reconstructions in my life um but at this point it's it's it's as fundamental as when we say god what do we mean when i say god what do i mean if i say i'm going to pray what exactly am i doing at that point uh and all and i'm i'm i'm just at a point in my life where i'm questioning those sorts of things and so i'm uh uh i've i think i've joined uh uh there's there's there's quite a there's quite a number of persons who have reached this oasis before me so i've been uh kind of see seeking out some guides from here on beautiful well that is great so as you can tell uh gary is much like all the rest of us on a spiritual journey and i hope you'll write a lot about this journey and what you're discovering uh for yourself can you tell us kind of as we start now i just want you all to know we're gonna we're gonna talk about the relationship of of muslims in america muslims and and how oklahoma's responding there's a lot the january 6th of anti-vaxxing masking all kinds of conversations about how religion is playing into this and the american story some of the american myths so we've got a lot to cover but i want i want you to begin by saying a word about your how you understand the role of religion and politics because we a lot of us think when we think about religion and politics we think about sort of theocratic-minded evangelical christians or others who are trying to make their religion the religion of of the nation or a national religion so what does it mean to you right well and while you answer i just want you to know i'm going to share on facebook the link on my facebook so i didn't want you to think i was playing with my phone or texting somebody while you were talking i just want to make sure i share this so more people can see it and if you have facebook on your phone please do the same and share it to your to your sure well i'd like to first we need to distinguish between we're not talking about church and state we're talking about religion and politics church and state are our institutions uh uh church and state are are are well neither are mentioned just that way in the first amendment that's kind of what it's referring to with with the clauses regarding religious freedom uh and there being no established church you know there's no church of america uh that we haven't declared this as a christian nation despite what david barton and other faux historians say this is not a christian nation it has been a nation of majority christians up until recently um but church and state is not worth talking we're talking about religion politics and religion and politics are two elements of culture that in fact share some of the same soil and the same pathways because religion and politics both they both tell stories fundamentally they have they tell the story we live in if you look at the democratic party today the republican party today you see not one story necessarily in each of them but there are stories there if you wanna if if i asked you tell me the unitarian story there's a story within that and if i say well tell me how that might differ from a roman catholic version of of faith story you could tell there's a fundamental story there we live in those stories those stories then also help us determine who belongs and who doesn't belong and what the criteria for belonging is and you can see a lot in politics these days a lot of our debating about who belongs in the nation who belongs as a true you know patriot these are all major questions and uh and in the same way that you know most congregations and certainly religious fates have so what does it mean to belong here and what are the barriers to those belonging for those who may not know you know they could get in or that would say oh because you do that because you believe that i won't be part of this third those stories also help determine what the moral order is in moral order it sounds like a some uh stick in the mud sort of term but it's something sociologists use when they talk about what's your hierarchy of values every story has some higher you know kind of help set a hierarchy of values this is right this is wrong this is what we owe to each other and even whether that other includes you know the rest of the inhabited earth whether that other includes how we play with other nations other denominations other religions what we consider to be right and correct and what we consider to be wrong and even abominable uh that's moral order uh and then finally um that story helps determine uh what our vision is of what we would be if we were empowered to be all that we could be and what the obstacles are to getting there uh so for christians in particular let's say that that would be well the obstacle is some version of sin uh whether that sin is pride whether that's sin is is lack of self formation uh whether that sin is broken relationship broken covenant uh that's that's that's the impediment to being the people we should be so how do you overcome that and so the the the story has says well here are the practices here are the here are the ways to put yourself into a surrender position you know to receive christ or whatever whatever that would be i'm sure for uh in a in a unitarian setting um you might say well it's it's missing the mark uh uh it is self-interest uh twisted around itself it is uh loving the wrong object uh and and so through um uh one's connection in community uh through the what one believes through reason and the like one uh uh could be led to being more of the person and more of the people that you should be well think about that in terms of politics these days there's impediments that need to be overcome and here's the way that happens now unfortunately one of the ways you see how just just how polarized those politics are it's not you know it's it's it's not that well if you believe if you believe this about immigration uh that's that's what needs to be overcome is the belief it's the who it's it's the more identity if you're a democrat you're the impediment if you're a liberal you're the impediment or if you're a um an aoc democrat it might be well if you're if you're an establishment democrat you're the impediment uh that needs to be overcome but that was basics of we tell stories uh we we have an understanding of who belongs and who doesn't there's a moral order of of what we owe to each other and there is an understanding of what the impediments are and how we overcome them politics does that religion does that we're going to be intersecting with each other i don't think there's any way around that we will intersect and so when somebody says well i don't bring my religion into the uh into my public life i still want to say um i want to watch a while because there's often not often there's always an implied moral order um there's an implied there's there's an implied story there's there's even an implied theology in what nearly anyone in public life brings out and so i think it's fair game to know you know how someone believes i mean just one example i think james watt who was ronald reagan's uh interior secretary he never actually said uh because jesus is coming again we don't have to worry about the world burning that wasn't either that was he was he was alleged to have said that but that was actually not the full quote however he really did believe that we could open everything up to drilling we could open everything up to logging because pretty soon jesus is coming again wow there's a theological belief that is forming public policy that's an extreme example but it happens all the time well let's go let's let's continue this conversation then if we're talking about extreme examples and we're talking about um who belongs yeah yeah let's talk about the relationship between muslims and the american democracy because i mean part of what it sounds like you're saying is because we all tell these different stories the religions have their stories and the and there's political stories the but but ideally in a multi-religious multicultural democracy like we have the political realm is a realm in which a lot of these different stories can find some way to come together around right how we're going to be what we owe each other and how we're going to be together right so but muslims since certainly since 9 11 and right now as afghanistan as we're as we've pulled out of afghanistan and eight there's sixteen hundred or eighteen hundred afghani refugees coming to tulsa um to oklahoma and about 900 at tulsa we've got the head of the republican party of oklahoma saying we don't want these afghans we don't want them in oklahoma and that's clearly an anti-muslim statement right and and there's more to it too they're also uh non-white people potentially so there's a racial implication or religious implication to this but we're talking religion primarily at the moment let's talk about this relationship between what is what are the barriers to to muslims having a full uh place in the american democracy and and you know why why would you say it's playing out the way that it's playing out right now right right well it's complex right uh because we religions not only uh i mean i wish we spent a little more time trying to find common ground we we clearly are spending a lot of time also in in engaged in conflict um and especially i think in a state like oklahoma where the dominant forms of religion are christian and the dominant christian forms are either fundamentalist or pentecostal and i realize there's variety in all of this and it's not i don't want to paint with one brush this is a matter of affinities between kind of segments within each of these faith communities christianity has never made its peace with democracy um say more about that um there's nothing inherent inherent in christianity that would say democracy is the logical conclusion for how human beings ought to govern themselves um if it were true if that were true then it would have been uh that then then maybe we wouldn't have had a constantine in the 4th century and maybe we wouldn't have had all of these christian empires and republics in the east and the west up from the time of constantine up until uh the founding of the american uh of the united states and even there in the united states you know that first amendment didn't apply to all the states finally until when was it massachusetts or whatever in like 18 20 something or 1830 something finally so what you're saying is that christianity has been it was very comfortable with empire and and monarchy right for most of its history right right um founder of my uh my denomination john wesley uh uh got methodists in this country tartan feathered uh during the revolution because wesley believed that uh he wasn't he wasn't he was like old-style believer like a real old-timer as far as the divine right of kings and and uh when he when when he gave his care package uh sent his care package and his emissary over to start the american church to actually split off from anglicanism um wesley in his in his letter said referred to us as that land that god has so strangely set free because he couldn't he couldn't couldn't figure how how this how this works um so i think we've had our issues with uh with christians have had their issues with democracy i also think when you look at the the colonies they have very different understandings of of what democracy meant you know athenian democracy was based on a a a limited number of men who could vote women were to be kept in the private sphere not the public sphere and it was a slave-based democracy there were you know you look throughout the south one of the reasons why you have so many greek names attached to southern cities is because they understood themselves to be a new expression of greek civilization so that athenian democracy was pretty limited when you look at the history of american democracy and you think well we got this electoral college thing uh uh we used to up until what like 1920ish senators were elected by state legislatures not by popular vote and you know when did enslaved people couldn't vote women couldn't vote first proper you know males without property couldn't vote and most states change that over time uh we were ourselves were quite a limited democracy one could say certainly up through the civil war and then one would say again certainly up through 1965 with the voting rights act right um so we've been uh we call ourselves a democracy but we ourselves have have been a very limited democracy and then all along the way the kind of christian uh stories that have accompanied are well we're god's chosen nation uh we had a manifest destiny for white people and this was very explicit for for the anglo-saxons to move from coast to coast to bring the true religion christianity and to bring civilization and they were thought of as co-terminus you know you brought one you brought the other uh so that's our history um and i think what you therefore see today you see a re-emergence of of of a christian identity in america with with with it's it's not it's not coincidental at a time when a few years back the country fell under 50 percent protestant for the very first time in its history the number of persons who identify with religious institutions is in invent significant decline especially with younger generations and where since 1965 besides the voting rights act the other thing that changed in 1965 was a very restrictive immigration law that was put in effect in 1924 at another time when we were quite we had we had enough of my relative types and you're some of your relative types coming in we had enough of italians we had enough turks we had enough uh eastern european jews uh and like so they in 1924 they shut the doors and really things didn't reopen until 1965 and when they did they took off the preference for uh northern european countries this fundamentally was there and so you've seen we've really only become this really serious multicultural nation since the ninth since the middle 1960s and that includes for muslims muslims of course have been been here since george washington's time minimally he sent letter to the muslims and and and welcomed them as americans uh and as we know there were some persons who were carried here in the middle passage uh as slaves uh whose religion was was muslim uh so muslims been here around here for a long long time i mean really since since nearly the founding certainly longer than my relatives have been here um but they're not christians and so and and these days like with what we saw january 6th right uh is just one indication of of white christianity and and americanism being twisted up together quite tightly into an identity that you know from a christian point of view doesn't much resemble the religion i know but is being used for nationalistic purposes so i mean this is i mean what you're saying i'm even finding myself really uh taking this in in a new way that since 1965 so for 55 years or so we've had truly a democracy that had allowed women and people of color and others to be able to vote so we've finally only for about 55 years this nation has has actually been a democracy in the sense of a pluralistic democracy that allows its citizens over 18 to vote right and and then you're also saying that that much of the immigration that's come into this country that's been from not from europe right primarily happened since 1965 right so we've become a truly multicultural nation and democracy really only for about 55 years right we're young right as long as and and the story is always a little more complex right um because because we we we tend we i mean so those of us who have lived um east of the mississippi for a good part of our lives tend to kind of have this what i call puritan radiation theory uh that everything started in massachusetts and virginia and the colonies and then kind of radiated that way right rather than now you also have to remember besides of course the the the hundreds of native tribes and nations that were here you have to remember japanese immigration and especially chinese immigration in the 19th century for the building the railroads and the like and and and then the the very fact that um uh this spanish uh the spanish had had uh taken uh a good part of the southwestern land uh and uh spanish mexican you know that mixture that of of indigenous and and spanish heritage persons are also very much a part of the nation's history uh but in terms of our openness our official openness to immigration uh in for modern times really from the 20th century on uh we were nor north northern european white preference until 1965. wow all right right the other thing i'll say about that because i love this book by um levitzky and i can't remember the other author's name it's called how democracies die and their argument is is that uh from what we know was civility we were laughing about that earlier what we know a civility was actually a white gentleman's agreement from the failure or the end of reconstruction up until the civil rights movement where there were a whole lot of uh of what they talked we're going to talk about with each other in this almost all white men's house and senate uh uh it was that was the their their glue was fundamentally white christianity of some sort white male christianity of some sort and that with the uh with the civil rights movements uh in the plural and with the diversification of of the gender and of color uh in congress the the uh and then the flip between uh well democrats are the party of segregation and republicans are the party of of uh of civil rights um uh and all uh that was around 1965 that's exactly i mean from 65 through the reagan revolution basically is where you see that happening um so what what what happened there is the gentleman's agreement broke down and we haven't figured out how to work constructively with each other since that's that's the argument for how democracy is and how democracies die interesting so it's what you're helping me see why there's this fervor of people particularly white protestants who are trying to you know feel like the country they need to take back the country or whatever that whatever's going on right absolutely take it back so um let's talk about let's talk about this masking and vaccinations and all that kind of thing i mean i would think christianity would be you know it's a love your neighbor religion so i would think that that you would say hey let's wear our masks and and care for other people let's vaccinate if we can uh so that we because so we don't spread this and kill other people like it seems like the most christian when we think of like when you talk about oh it's very christian you know like you would think that the christian spirit would be i love my neighbors i'm to do what's right to to stop the spread of this thing but there's but the attitude seems to be among many christians today right at least on the on the right seems to be hey i could do what i want to do i've got freedom my freedom is more important than you know whether i end up killing some people because i'm spreading this virus right help me understand how people make sense of that i was going to ask you to help me understand that actually um right so i guess the way i look at it marlon there there are all kinds of ways to divide people right i mean in terms of just analytical categories and one of my categories that i've come i've come to at least in terms of the kind of questions i ask when i'm reading the news and the like is is this person so individualistic that they can't even acknowledge there's something called community or are they starting with that there's something called a community that i'm that i am i i can't not be a part of in other words that one of my one of my former colleagues used to say uh that uh in the beginning was the relationship uh that everything is about relationship uh and that this business of of saying well i'm claiming my freedom well you can't claim you're if you're in relationship you can't claim your freedom without also saying well you get it too right and if you're free now then you get two freedoms and then you talk about well where does my freedom begin in years end uh and and what do we again go to back to that moral order what do we owe to each other um those who are who are uh pushing away from uh the vaccine but more particularly even the vaccine it's pushing away from the mask that for me is an expression of extreme individualism which i take to be um it's it's america at its worst uh uh uh one can one can think about our nation as as well um we we had a revolution we pushed away from england for what purpose well i mean when you read the history one of the big purposes was so that they wouldn't restrict us from trying to take the land from the indian peoples who lived uh west of the alleghenies you know so their push west was a huge part in fact of of the revolution of the one of the economic and and the building up pressure to you know more and more people they need land they want property uh and all that kind of stuff but if pushed away then then what did you have you had you had states you had all these states who got together enough to push away what brings us together well i got a constitution uh is how how weak or or or strong is that constitution when it comes to the federal government well that's been an argument now for the 200 plus years of the constitution's civil war fought a civil war over it but and we're fighting another war we're fighting another uncivilish uh sort of war over that right now uh and we're hearing states rights again right uh that we probably haven't heard it this strongly since the 1960s right so i think this is it's fundamentally are you wired to understand are you wired is your moral compass is your moral system is your basic story that to take a phrase that was used at the start of the pandemic that we are all in this together right or is the basic story that you know what this country means is that nobody can tell me what to do which to me sounds extremely adolescent right so and i think we have religions that feed those very individualistic forms of religion uh that where community is almost not important other than maybe uh your own your own particular congregation but uh uh other forms of religion for for which we know that we need strong communities in order to form strong persons if we want strong individuals you need strong communities that for me is a fundamental insight out of religion that i think ought to play into the politics we want to see it even plays into the state budget we ought to have right right but that's not what we see right now what we see is a whole lot of individualism and i think again that's that that is a formula for fracture uh and uh not for uh addressing problems when you have problems as big as things like you know systemic racism or uh uh where the planet has turned seems to be turning against us weather-wise uh because as a species we're changing it in negative ways right well it's interesting you say that because uh unitarian universalism is is well known for its individualism in the sense of giving people the individual right to to determine and define their religious ethical moral life but we but a critical criteria is we do that within community and so there's this there's always this tension and there's this attempted balance between what does the individual want and and what does the community need and so we are a covenanted religion that that has a covenant with each other individuals joining together in covenant in community so the community piece is key i'll tell people i meet people all the time they say i'm a unitarian i don't go to church you know but if i did i'd go to yours and i consider myself a unitarian and i said you know actually you can't be a unitarian by yourself you have to be in a community because the only way that we can understand how you can freely and responsibly live your individual religious life is to do so within a community right and that my my freedom ends where your nose begins right and so we sort of have been working throughout our history to try to balance individualism with with what it means to be a member of community and what we owe each other so it's an interesting conversation it is it is and i think again that's a that's a conversation that we're um there there ought to be a way of nationalizing that conversation uh because i think we're really we're really at the point of well i don't trust you you don't trust me um i'm going to flip you off you're going to flip me off you know and and stay in your space because if you me if we meet in ours if we if the two of us have to meet in the same space there's going to be friction even within families and and oh yes and and workplaces and churches and all of this we're even seeing this level of polarization happening that we haven't seen you

Channel: All Souls Unitarian

Views: 126

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Gary Peluso-Verdend, Marlin Lavanhar

Id: 0Nip4YT_dsE

Length: 37min 12sec (2232 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021