Episode 69 - Evangelical (Part 1)

ASL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tsT1CNBN9I

[transcript automatically generated - please help edit to make the transcript better]

it's really remarkable if you think about it the liturgist podcast is a genre-bending conversation-shaping project that reaches an audience of millions without any institutional support and without selling a single second of space to advertisers the only way we can do this work is because some of you appreciate the program enough to send us a donation on a platform called patreon it only takes a dollar or five dollars a month to make a huge difference in our ability to create and produce this program and guess what you get something back people who support this program they get a second podcast that comes out every other week called the liturgist conversations and they also get access to weekly meditations as well as in-person events available only to our patreons if you're interested in learning how you can keep the liturgist podcast going just go to the liturgists.com and click the donate now button in the menu we'd love to see you on patreon hey everybody michael gunger here today we're talking about evangelicalism the flow of the show is a little different than usual so here's a quick rundown of what it's going to look like first we're breaking this episode into part one and part two because it's a lot of material in part one science mike and william matthews interview author and leader of the reformation project matthew vines who you may remember from episode 20. and then following that william hillary mcbride and i are all going to sit down and respond to that first conversation and then in the second episode part two uh basically the same thing only with jen hatmaker mike and william will interview her and then william hillary and i listen to the conversation and then chat about it ourselves today we've got some new absurd songs for you we've got thought-provoking ideas these conversations get a little fiery here and there it's pretty good welcome to literature's podcast everybody everyone we are here with matthew vines and science mike and william matthews so we're here in long beach california talking to you about evangelicalism particularly this label has been such a divisive word so to speak in the last few years but for a lot of us it has a certain tradition attached to it so my question to you is do you consider yourself an evangelical these days and what does that mean for you or what what thoughts or memories come up for you that's a complicated question that uh i remember so it's six years ago now that i gave this talk in a church in my hometown of wichita kansas an hour-long talk about the bible and same-sex relationships that then went viral and really was kind of the first piece in a lot of what i've been doing since then and i remember a few months after i gave that talk i was doing an event in new york and somebody wrote on twitter that they were going to the event to see the gay evangelical christian matthew vines and for the first time i thought oh am i that is that what i am i guess well i guess so yeah but what's interesting to me is there are a lot of debates especially at places like wheaton and publications like christianity today about the label evangelical but in my experience i grew up in an evangelical church in wichita kansas and i don't remember anyone talking about it as an evangelical church we didn't identify as evangelicals we identified as christians and for a lot of evangelicals the two are just one and the same in a lot of ways that's why evangelical as a term never had particular significance for me personally in my faith because it wasn't until i kind of expanded my horizon some and learned more about the breadth of christianity and of the christian theological spectrum that then evangelical made began to make more sense as oh that's right that's that kind of describes where i came from and how i learned how to read the bible and a lot of values that are still important to me today but it's never been of particular personal significance to me and so in some ways i find the debates about the term to be a little academic and oftentimes disconnected from what's what's most important to a lot of people who actually would fall into the sociological category of evangelical i don't think most people who in polls or other things are grouped as evangelical care tremendously about that term on a personal level that's just been my experience and certainly in the church that i grew up in yeah it's fascinating you know i as i think about the last evangelical church i was a part of and it was definitely an evangelical church it's southern baptist church by the numbers evangelical i'm sure that the current president enjoys broad support in the congregation but no one uh ever talked about evangelical or evangelicalism and it's so interesting i guess because if you look at the coalition that makes up the evangelical movement obviously they'll probably the largest denomination would be the southern baptist convention but then you have a lot of non-denominational evangelical churches which are actually as a group larger in number and attendance than baptist churches are and but all of those churches have such a local congregational focus and kind of view themselves as being kind of churches in and of themselves autonomous very spiritually autonomous exactly and yet in a loose association with each other or other churches but but very autonomous very autonomous and yet remarkably instep with their theological positions and frankly their political advocacy and but i think it's interesting point you make that this is a label that's often used from the outside pointing in than from within the movement as a point of identification well and too it is used within the movement but i think to the extent that it's used it's typically used among quote unquote elites coastal elites no quote unquote nashville elites yes yes exactly um quote unquote elites who are seeking to differentiate themselves and the churches they're a part of from whether it be mainline protestantism or progressive christianity [Music] so the question at hand is do i consider myself an evangelical i guess for my entire adult life i would have said yes to this question the evangelical means follower of christ and follower and believer of the gospel of christ which i very much believe in however this question has me at odds with myself recently i find that the word evangelical is more often than not now associated with politics and political right and conservativism and rules and strict religion the things that jesus actually condemned i still believe the same things i always have but because the term and those who define it and abuse it have taken over and changed it i no longer now believe and feel what the common evangelical believes and feels my name is devin and i do consider myself an evangelical even though i've taken some pretty big steps away from evangelicalism theologically and culturally it's really the only kind of christian life i've ever known and retaining that label helps me hold myself accountable for the problems i believe evangelicalism has caused and continues to cause when i was a more quote unquote sold out evangelical i helped contribute to those problems so keeping myself in the club keeps me more engaged in seeking solutions than if i were just to cut and run and label it a them problem that said a lot of evangelicals these days probably wouldn't even consider me a true christian at all so who knows certainly one of the basic approaches that i've had as a gay christian originally seeking to understand the bible and same-sex relationships and then be able to talk about that with more christians it's just a basic question of when you read a passage in paul do you feel like it's okay to respond to it and just say well i don't agree with paul or do you feel like because paul's writings are part of the scriptural canon you have to wrestle with it and you have to seek to live under that text's authority and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have room for nuanced hermeneutics and thoughtfulness about how to apply and interpret texts but that at the end of the day your response can't end with well i just don't agree there has to be a deeper engagement that's wrestling with the text and trying to find a way through the text and live under the text authority so for me that's been and i do think that that is an evangelical kind of sensibility in terms of an approach to scripture and that's something that has been important to me and remains important to me and certainly is important in the way that i approach my work around engaging christians on conversations around lgbtq inclusion and that's why i think i naturally have been and get grouped kind of within evangelicalism and i don't have a problem with it at that level because i do think that's an accurate representation of how i'm seeking to engage the biblical text so in that sense whether i like the term or not the way that i approach scripture and on some important levels would fall within that broad theological sociological category so i don't know how much it's up to me to you know how what i do with that word so as someone who has this this um this high view of the bible's authority i mean that's that's something that struck me the last time we talked on the literature's podcast way back in episode 20 was the the way that you continue to hold you know this very high view of the bible's authority um in a way that i have struggled to for for quite some time you know i just go yo paul was wrong right like that's a really easy handwave for me you're holding on to this view of scripture and you're doing this vital reformation work within the movement what else troubles you about the direction of the evangelical movement in america today so much so much uh when i was 14 years old i began to feel somewhat alienated from the church that i was raised in because while there were many wonderful things about that church and many wonderful people it also it was very much in terms of its demographics an upper middle class overwhelmingly white very republican congregation and to their credit they did not preach about politics from the pulpit they did not preach about abortion and same-sex marriage from the pulpit um at least while i was growing up but i just began to realize hmm especially as i became more politically conscious as a teenager i don't agree with some of these things that is not how i look at these things i don't think that george bush is a good president and oh man uh and i care a lot about social justice issues and so for those reasons i just began to feel out of step somewhat with the church that i was raised in and yet i didn't want to leave it because even though i felt those tensions and some of that discomfort it also had given me the most solid and important thing that i have ever known in my life which is my relationship with god through jesus and as nurtured through my faith community which was an evangelical faith community and that has shaped me permanently in ways that i think no matter what path i took i would always carry with me and i guess one thing that i should say before i get into my concerns and critiques is like there are still things and this has been a challenge for me especially since the election but there are still things that i respect and value within it um but often those things are actually very tied to the concerns that i have so the i think there are things that evangelicals as individuals and even as communities do pretty well i think that evangelicalism does a pretty good job when it comes to direct services when it comes to organizations like world vision or world relief when it comes to inspiring people to want to go help out at a local homeless shelter or soup kitchens uh and to be kind to other people to be loving caring compassionate as an individual to other individuals that's important the problem and what's troubled me is that it almost always seems to stop at the individual to individual level and there is a big there's there's a significant resistance toward looking at systemic levels of inequity and of injustice there's also a significant resistance to looking at history there's this desire to kind of see things as though they just recently started as though evangelicalism is not tainted in its dna by the history of colonization of slavery of segregation in the united states and i mean obviously colonization is not just an issue in the united states and so a lot of people while evangelicalism i think does a good job in many respects of of teaching people to be kind to others it also has a way of making people comfortable with not going deeper than that and the election is just such a tragic manifestation of that because i think your average evangelical christian who voted for donald trump seeks to treat the average person they meet in their life with kindness and so therefore may feel mischaracterized by oh you're saying i'm all these horrible things that donald trump is but actually you know i don't even like all these things about him and i'm kind and caring i just did it for these other reasons the problem is it's just like a an inability to see the collective consequences of how people act corporately and so while it is good that people are kind individually it's completely insufficient if people are not attentive to and aware of the way that their corporate actions affect other communities at a much bigger level because unfortunately you can be engaged in good direct service for your entire life but if you vote for and choose to empower and look the other way people like donald trump that is that's the thing that you do that has the biggest impact on marginalized people in your entire life that will have a bigger impact on marginalized communities than every single positive individual good act of service that you did and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't that completely negates your individual acts of service it just means that if that's all you're looking at you are missing so much of the picture and so yeah i i just feel like there's one that's a huge issue the concern i have the lack of um systemic analysis and consciousness the inadequate sense of history that dovetails with exclusionary and unjust practices around how power structures are set up which are of course overwhelmingly vastly disproportionately straight cisgender white men those are issues that trouble me significantly but since the election i was wrong about the election before it happened now i didn't say this publicly so no one have to know but i'm just going to tell you now okay i was wrong i thought i mean first of all when donald trump started his campaign for president i thought there is no way that man is going to win the nomination much less the election absolutely no way when he won the nomination i was pretty sickened but i also thought okay there could be a silver lining this will be a wake-up call to not all but uh a real number of white evangelicals this will be a sign that nope nope we cannot go along with this um and i thought there would be a decrease in support i still thought the majority of white evangelicals would vote for him but i thought there would be a decrease in support compared to romney mccain and bush and there was not there was actually a slight increase even based on support for george bush in effect if you're looking in aggregate even though you can find individual examples if you're looking in aggregate white evangelicals were unaffected by the nomination of donald trump and it did not trouble them as a group to the point that there was any change in the vote uh and so i guess when you when you are wrong about something like that you have to go back and reassess your prior assumptions and beliefs because you need to modify some of them i guess the challenge for me has just been trying to figure out wow there is a moral rot within white evangelicalism and my question has been so did this go off the rails in recent decades or has this been what it always was and in some senses it is what it always was i mean american christianity has been fatally morally compromised white american christianity has been morally compromised in a profound way from the beginning because it was introduced through violence through genocide through colonization and that's not something that has ever been seriously reckoned with at a corporate level by white american or european christians so of course american christianity has a foundation of white supremacy and indigenous genocide and the enslavement of people from africa so in some respects especially the desire to maintain a racial hierarchy with white people at the top the the fact that 81 of white evangelicals voted for the living icon of white supremacy in the united states in some respects that is a natural outgrowth of the entire history of white american christianity but i've also been going back and i've been trying to read and study and explore because it really seems to me i guess the question that i was wrestling with is wait was everyone lying to me growing up like in sunday school i don't know it's been really hard because yeah you're not the only one asking that question i'm just like wait you told me that jesus is the most important thing above everything that jesus is the most important thing and that's not how you acted and so there's been a part of me just like wait was all of this at one giant long con like was everything that i was told growing up like one huge lie um because actually was it actually never about jesus was it always about maintaining power maintaining a status quo that privileged white people men straight people and the like and that's uh i think yeah i'm not the only person who's been who's been wondering that and yet at the same time like i know that there are like a number of christian mentors in my life white evangelical christian mentors for whom jesus is the most important thing there just aren't nearly as many of them as i used to think and that's been really hard for me one thing that was hard for me when i was coming out and this is hard for so many lgbtq christians is it creates a crisis of authority in your own understanding of your faith because the problem with the topic of same-sex relationships transgender people lgbtq inclusion is it's not a normal theological topic in the sense that people have different opinions and that's people have different opinions about baptism or about eschatology it is a profoundly moral topic and while i can have a lot of respect for the hearts and the good motives and intentions of non-affirming christians non-affirming theology is morally wrong at a deep level and does profound damage in the lives of lgbtq people and so once you come to realize especially if you are gay or bisexual or transgender that you no longer agree with your church about this it doesn't just alienate you from your church in all of the obvious ways that people might reject you uh people often do or there's that's distance that created it's also when you're thinking about your faith it's very difficult to disentangle like the things that you learned about your faith across the board from wait a second the people who taught me that i cannot trust as much anymore because they not only were wrong but in most cases continue to be wrong about this question of profound ethical import and so it doesn't mean that everything that they say doesn't have value anymore but it takes a lot of work to try to go back and untangle the good from the bad and there can be a strong tendency to just want to kind of toss it all because you lose that trust in people i mean i've experienced that same loss of trust that same crisis of authority but the election has magnified that and exacerbated that because i feel like like i really need i am 27 years old what do i really know about a 2 000 year old faith i know some things but i need mentors i need elders in my life because there are a lot of things i don't know i don't want to be put in a position where i'm just kind of adrift and supposed to figure out everything about my theology and my faith and my beliefs kind of on my own i want people guiding me in the process and it is so hard when now so many people i just can't trust them in the same way anymore and for people who were silent about donald trump or tolerant of it or outright supportive of him especially i'm thinking about like evangelical leaders or theologians that to me is so compromising to their moral standing that it has been very difficult for me because i don't want my theology to just be reactive i don't want it to just be i am sickened by this therefore everything i learned here is wrong but it's really hard to try to disentangle those things when you kind of contin are continually buffeted by um the people you used to admire or the people you still admire in some ways who are just showing themselves to not to be trustworthy hi this is lynette from south africa i no longer identify as evangelical i no longer practice knocking on doors inviting people to church and i no longer consider myself an evangelical but literally every single day i deal with the thought and pain of what if i'm wrong what if hell's a real place with burning and gnashing i was part of an evangelical church for 33 years but now i refer to myself as a recovering evangelical i would consider myself an evangelical because i believe that the gospel is primarily good news for the whole world well the concise answer is no i don't consider myself an evangelical and and i think that's because i feel a good amount of anger and stress and conflict with that word i would consider myself an evangelical because i believe that the gospel is primarily good news for the whole world am i an evangelical that's a hard question to answer considering the fact that the term evangelical is so poorly defined in the first place and i also don't believe that my friends who are muslim and hindi and tamil and hari krishna are going to go to this place called hell neither am i for not trying to convert them so i choose to live my life loving people and caring for them and serving the community instead of shouting at them so i can't really answer the question i think what we need is new language to describe what we uh now see as american conservative evangelicalism because evangelical is just too broad of a category so no i don't consider myself an evangelical because i believe that all faith traditions as long as they are building and nourishing souls are beautiful it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's better help help dot com slash liturgists not to keep receipts but i'm keeping receipts um we have tony perkins family life council right who came out and said trump deserves a mulligan right he gets a mulligan from all evangelicals we have that we have you know jerry falwell jr of course always on twitter uh but recently some some theologically grotesque things he shared about you know jesus and loving thy neighbor but you know he never has a rebuke for caesar you have you know ev people like james dobson from focus on the family you know you have people bash him but even pat robertson he still has a massive platform on that 700 club that is reaching lots of christians on the daily on a daily basis you have these evangelical leaders that i grew up to some level like respecting or looking to like you said now giving so much compliance and allowance for right uh the lack of character of this president and and giving him a pass the same people that demonize bill clinton are the same ones now that are supporting donald trump well and for me okay i never cared for or respected tony perkins or james dobson i always at least and everybody's i feel like the way where you grew up and the church you grew up in if you grew up in one particular church has such an impact on how you see so many things about christianity for the rest of your life and how you weight who matters and how much does this person have influenced that sort of thing so i always kind of saw those people as a little more fringy um and not that they had no influence but i they're never people i respect and then lost respect for what concerns me just as much as those people frankly are people like russell moore because in 2015 russell moore wrote an op-ed for the new york times about the perils of evangelicals supporting donald trump he said in this 2015 new york times article for evangelicals to support donald trump they quote must repudiate everything they believe fast forward to 2017 and he said that it was quote reasonable and defensible for evangelicals to have supported donald trump now i do have a lot of sympathy for the fact that i recognize that he was vocally critical of donald trump and of evangelical christians who supported trump throughout the election and i appreciated that after the election his job was on the line he almost lost his job so i appreciate the situation that he was in but after that you know he still sometimes will be referred to as a leading evangelical trump critic accurately he would be a former evangelical trump critic yeah there is abs he's offered no consistent critique of this man no consistent critique of um his racism his misogyny uh and no consistent critique of the evangelical world that supports him in 2016 he gave a speech in which he said that if evangelicals really lined up behind donald trump then everything that they said kind of referring to progressives and liberals everything they said about the religious right would be proven to be true all of the what the time he considered to be slander about how it's really just a power game it's really about you know it's not really about that family values and faith it's really about power he said in 2016 russell moore that that would be proven to be true but since then he decided to give up his prophetic voice in order to maintain his position and sometimes i'm not a complete purist about sometimes you do have to make compromises to mainta if you're trying to have the biggest positive impact you can have but i just think he's made too many compromises he's clearly a better person than the people you were describing he clearly as an individual has better values than those people but the fact that even he now and he said that it was reasonable and defensible for evangelicals to voted for trump as long as they are against same-sex marriage and abortion because he said those are the real issues that define who we are as christians and the implicit undeniable message is that tolerance of racism and misogyny and sexual assault and you name it are not as important in what it means to be a christian as being against same-sex marriage and my feelings about russell moore were already complicated because i'm a gay christian but that has really affected my ability to to look to people like him or even tim keller and you know i have a lot of tim keller books and i've you know my feelings about tim keller have also long been complicated because i'm a gay christian but two weeks before the election he did an interview with sarah pulliam bailey of the washington post and it was a facebook live interview so you can watch it she at this point he had said nothing about donald trump she asks him about donald trump and white evangelical's involvement in politics and this is what he said you're right you know i think evangelicals have been too involved in politics but within five seconds he turned it around and he said the very same thing is true of black christians i was i was very troubled and to be honest i was very offended because that shows no understanding of history why are black christians politically mobilized in the way that they are it has something to do with what white christians have done to them yeah and so to make an equivalence there is is deeply offensive but it also shows a a reluctance to actually call out the alliance with donald trump among white evangelicals i mean he couldn't he couldn't make that criticism for more than five seconds without turning around and changing the topic to be criticizing black christians and then he went on and said he really only knew one christian who was pro-trump eric mataxis and that he didn't really he kind of doubted the poll numbers and wasn't really sure that that many evangelicals voted for him and so to me um tim keller is emblematic of white evangelical leaders who simply do not understand that we have a crisis that there is a crisis within the white evangelical church within our discipleship within our practice and yes within our theology that the 81 vote for donald trump represents and so for me if evangelical leaders don't recognize that there's a crisis they're not going to be able to help chart a course out of it or to a better place like the first step is recognizing that there's a crisis and there have been very few uh white evangelical leaders who i feel like have truly maintained their integrity in this process you know as i like listen to all you're talking about i was on james dobson's email list for focus on the family so he was like not fringe to me he was uh a vital reliable leader in the evangelical movement russell moore was like my hero for what southern baptist should be because i remember before i lost my faith russell moore would speak up about issues of race and white supremacy in the church and i was like wow really before i was even comfortable with that and then tim keller to me was like this weirdo wacko progressive who i would not listen to because he wasn't conservative enough so that's my my faith background and like coming from that perspective i also thought trump would lose and i thought trump would lose because my former church friends and family would stop him because right sexual integrity mattered because the way we treat other people matters and all the condemnations they'd heaped on politicians on the left and right for my entire childhood i thought well here is the the ultimate symbol of everything they've condemned and obviously they didn't they didn't stop him they voted for him in huge numbers and you know i've wrestled with that same question was i lied to did they lie to me and the more i thought about it i think if they were lying they lied to themselves because in the evangelical movement is a uniquely post enlightenment uniquely modern and uniquely american hyper individualism when considering both sin and salvation the sins we read in the bible we read the sins of things people do to another person individual to individual we we gloss over any time the prophets talk about the sin of the nation or the sin of the people we we unless it's about you know the same-sex marriage and then of course it's the sin of the nation and the same with salvation you say the special prayer and you're in you're good and people just reading the word you as referring to individual when actually it refers to a group of people and if you read it in a language like spanish then you would see that clearly right but in english you don't but it's uniquely american even even going down to our language and some of my understanding of history that this was intentional among elites that evangelicalism and even evangelical churches became a primary means of producing white american assimilation because it's easy to get in the club it doesn't matter who you are what where you're on the social hierarchy eventually what race you are all that matters is you say the correct prayer and then you're in but to continue in spiritual growth you've got to be a good american and what does a good american do well they read their bible every day they pray they give a tithe to the church they support the military they support the military they're involved in charitable causes and some of these things are beautiful and other things are a a subtle to the person involved support of american nationalism and that meant that if you joined an american evangelical church you got an incredible amount of social support out of the bargain you could find jobs if you were new to a community you immediately had friends your kids had friends if you were a person of color and you came and said the right prayer and the right theology guess what congratulations you're a white person too now yeah everybody can be white everybody can be white yeah i know that one so so so this whole system was designed to create easy inclusion and then reinforcement which meant very little was actually asked of a person to become a evangelical christian very little was asked except to be happy wealthy optimistic optimistic you know uh we we salute the bible and we salute the flag and then a stress point is created evangelicalism was a reaction to a theological liberalism in the main line that's where it came from a rural fundamentalism that moved into the cities and in in reaction to this new monoculture there was a backlash some of that backlash was from people of color in the civil rights movement some of that was from women's liberation and the sexual revolution but suddenly it became less simple and it became important to serve christ by preserving the culture so that creates a culture war that the church has been losing since the 60s battle by battle now they've done great on the political stage but in terms of what people actually do with their lives i guess i would say that evangelism is won in the congress but lost in the courts to the point that they felt like america is imperiled now there was a time in history when the people associated with the same faith as jesus which would be judaism were afraid they were against the wall too around the time that christ was on the earth there were zealots who wanted a messiah to come and just beat the shit out of rome that's what we need we need a messiah to come and rescue the people because even though we've been faithful god hasn't protected us and i think what has happened trump is a political and military messiah for american evangelical zealots he's someone who comes in with strength and with power and punches in the nose anyone who stands against what they see has the gospel and of course it's the gospel of whiteness [Music] why jesus why is your goodness so bad why are your people so mad why do you need so many old white races to gather [Music] [Music] i know he cares [Music] oh my jesus how can you blame us for doubting your heavenly father would burn [Music] of course you believe [Music] i do have some modicum of hope based on what i think the unique potential is specifically of the process of christians changing their minds about lgbtq inclusion so the value of that is even though unfortunately what that means is when a person comes out they oftentimes do experience terrible responses from at least some people rejection from some people in the majority of cases they also help to change other people and how other people look at things so they're gonna help to change other people's minds and i think that the basic dynamic of that topic and of greater acceptance for lgbtq people you know i think we're gonna have some we've certainly seen an increase in hate crimes and things like that but i think the basic dynamic of people changing their minds is a trajectory that is set and that is not going to change because of what's behind it and that creates a unique opportunity within the church because for whatever reason i still don't fully know why people changing their minds on this topic especially within evangelicalism it upends everything in terms of they experience tremendous rejection they become oftentimes kind of social or theological outcasts and that also creates an opportunity for reconsideration of other things so certainly within the reformation project one of my driving goals and passions has been to not just be advocating for lgbtq inclusion in the church but to be offering an intersectional framework for that advocacy that isn't just wanting to create a space for people like me who are gay white cisgender males but also seeking to center the voices of marginalized people within our own community so queer people of color women transgender and gender non-conforming people disabled lgbtq people that's been something it's something that i really care about and it's also something that i feel like especially within the younger generation of lgbtq christians is is taken for granted in some respects as that's just what advocacy that's worth doing looks like and so the possibility that that creates is i think because we will continue to because lgbtq people will continue to sprout up anew every day every week in new families and new spaces that creates an opportunity for a reconsideration and a re-evaluation not just of this topic but ultimately i think of some of the root problems that this topic is a symptom of which is whose voices matter and the marginalization and oppression of marginalized groups within the church so i do feel like there is a possibility in that as this conversation continues the lgbtq conversation continues for that to kind of be a jumping-off point for a lot of people to look deeper at a lot of other issues of oppression the challenge though is that that involves a lot of change it involves a lot of change inevitably i mean just people changing their minds about same-sex marriage often can completely change their life in ways that aren't very fun so if you're also really wanting to not just talk about racial diversity but really talk about like systemic issues of racism racial injustice and how to affect how to address that in your church and really to try to have a church that is centering the voices of marginalized people across the board in your leadership in your theology and in your membership and in your practice that is going to bring significant changes and so that's where there's a part of me that does wonder how much existing evangelical institutions how much it's possible for them to adapt to those changes versus how much new things simply have to be created from in some sense the ashes of things that refuse to change i think it will be somewhat of a mix because while at one level it seems like new things have to be created at another level just based on how people operate people have to have easier steps to take you know the idea of oh just die and rise like a phoenix yeah some people are like i can't do it i'm sorry that's just too overwhelming it's too scary it's too terrifying and so i guess the space that i'm trying to navigate is i don't know what that looks like because it does involve i think just seeking to address and ameliorate a lot of the core issues of oppression within christian theology the christian church and evangelical theology and the evangelical church in particular will necessitate significant changes but i'm seeking to try to carve a path to do that in a way that can work and in a way that isn't asking too much of people and in a way that um in a way that isn't asking the impossible of people and so that it doesn't just create ever-increasing polarization which kind of is the trajectory we seem to be on in a lot of ways and that can still respect some of the core values that i think are good values and values worthy of respect of buggies worthy of maintaining to a lot of evangelical christians things like the death and literal resurrection of jesus the trinity basically everything in the apostles creed like people wanting to hold on to something solid and something ancient and something deeply anchored in their faith and in their beliefs that's something that i think people if we don't have a path for people to hold on to those things while seeking to make these changes and seeking to build a church that is much more anti-oppressive in its practice then we will just have ever-increasing polarization and kind of islands that are ever further apart and i don't think that's really good for marginalized people it's that challenge of like wanting to hold on to all of the good in the christian tradition and yet reject everything that is oppressive and that is wrong and that is such a difficult balance especially because the emotional part of me oftentimes and the emotional part of a lot of people is is just wanting to be reactive because of course we react to things that happen in our lives and so when you're so disgusted or sickened by by so much of what you see within this entire world or subculture you want to just walk away from it entirely as a on principle and i do have i have so much sympathy and respect people who choose to do that but in terms of what i'm seeking to do in the world what i feel called to do in the world i feel like i still have to come back and seek to disentangle all of these things and try to hold on to what is good and what is you know noble what is beautiful and what is true um within the christian tradition so that i can have a path not just for other people to walk and a bridge for other people to walk but i need a bridge myself i need to bridge myself to walk to hold on to these things and that's really at the end of the day why i do it yes i obviously care about other people i care about the church but like i'm not just doing it because i hope other people can make this transition i need that bridge too [Music] so we've jumped in time into my studio now and we're here with hillary and william matthews and me michael so william what was your thoughts post that conversation there was a lot of great stuff in there did you have anything coming away from that that yeah i i really enjoyed our conversation with matthew i've one of the things that stood out to me was him talking about the crisis of discipleship and how the evangelical church today is really at a moral deficit and a lack concerning discipleship how to how do you love the other the stranger the orphan the widow um the marginalized and i think i've never heard it framed that way i've always heard it you know simply put you know just a lot of outrage about the 81 uh voting for trump white evangelicals and to hear it as a it gave me a lot more empathy to hear him talk about in that way to say hey this is actually a crisis of discipleship these are people who have not really been taught the way of jesus uh which evangelicalism claims to walk in that way so yeah i really took that away i loved his passion and his his desire for reformation um i think a lot of people like he said are willing to just burn it all away and truthfully i've been that guy oftentimes too so even to hear him care really deeply about the text and to care about um like i said that discipleship i think spoke to me meaning oh there are people that really do care about this and want to see it do well what did you think i loved his passion for reformation and and discipleship and and that's all my oppressed i loved that yeah i just stole your answers but yeah you stole my answers but i needed a positive to say before i say butt i needed to frame it in some way okay okay okay um but i mean i'm not evangelical for a reason to me while you guys were talking sorry i was distracted for a moment because i looked up the evangelical beliefs on the any n-a-e national association of evangelicals like what does it even mean to be evangelical and i know there's there's history with that word and it's not a great history kind of the history of it is pretty anti-science it's very white it's very like it's american it's young compared to christianity people in the 14th century weren't calling themselves evangelicals yeah so on the on the website it's like it says their doctrines of beliefs and it's that the bible is you know the one inspired infallible uh i forget the third word that's pretty important wouldn't it be because it's right there on my website but basically um that's probably worth looking this is a podcast with lots of listeners fact check for a second here quick fact check if i'm gonna make a point about something that they say one minute okay so their statement of faith we believe the bible to be the inspired the only infallible authoritative word of god uh we believe that there's one god eternally existed in three persons father son holy spirit a paragraph about jesus a paragraph about the self there's we believe that for the salvation of the lost and sinful people regeneration by the holy spirit it's absolutely essential um the present ministry of the holy spirit by whose indwelling the christians and able to live a godly life we believe the resurrection of both the saved and the loss that they are saved under the resurrection of life and that they are lost under the resurrection of damnation we believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our lord jesus christ it's funny that the side note the evangelicals in the statement of beliefs have a word that i wasn't allowed to say as an evangelical damnation wow not allowed i mean damn was a swear word wow you could say in the context when talking about centers you could always very yeah very specifically used um so my thoughts as i'm reading that as i'm hearing people that i think that i really have respect for and that really seem to love christ and spiritual experience and and growth in their lives that still identifies evangelical some in some way to me there's kind of at the bottom of this thing a lot of poison that the resurrection of the saved and the lost the savior the resurrection of life this lost or the resurrection of damnation you know it's about the one word of god the one god the one jesus the one it's all it's very exclusive it's very these are the answers to ultimate reality and if you don't agree you are eternally damned and that's kind of that's the whole like core of it so if you think about there's one group of people on earth that are chosen by the almighty creator of the universe to be the one chosen people and they are the people that if they believe the right things if they fit the right category if they're in the right demographic that they're in and for all eternity this is all about them it's all built around them to be in and then if they're not they're eternally damned they're out to me that's not that surprising that you would have a 150 years later or whatever the fruit of that be you've got this president who gets 81 of their vote who's all about this one group of people in the world who are the most important america first and implied in that is white america first and we're the chosen people let's make us great again and we're gonna uh rule the world i mean the theologies were going to rule the universe so to me it's like the natchez natural thing racism is is a fruit on this tree the for the tree is exclusion i i i think i mean not to i don't even want to play devil's advocate for evangelicals but but let me do it just because you're so extreme right now in this moment uh somebody's got it somebody just gotta start the conversation some someone's gotta you know convict your liberal ways um no okay so i would think they would frame it not from a narcissistic place of like this is all just to benefit them i think they would frame it as for them ultimate reality are those statements of belief meaning that god is doing these things regardless of them therefore they're the guardians of and the gatekeepers of that revelation and and to them it's mercy to communicate those ideas to you so that way you're not swept up in this framing of ultimate reality for them which looks like uh an eternal damnation eternal conscious torment for those who don't believe and looks like saying this prayer in order to whatever so i think in a in a funny way i wonder if evangelicals themselves are trapped in a world view and a framework that was given to them and told was this was the truth and nothing else and they're simply trying to operate as best they can inside of that belief system that is wrong or is limited or very myopic or maybe even fantasy [Music] i think you're on to something though because i don't think we can have conversations about things that people hold as being true or certain without also looking at belonging and fear yeah without looking at what is it going to cost me to feel othered or different than these people who are giving me a sense of value and belongingness and the fear that if i do the wrong thing that that's actually going to hurt me on some level so when i listen to this conversation about evangelicalism i also think about the cultural piece of it too and how sometimes those things get fused what we're thinking about is a theological stance is actually a cultural set of beliefs and appeals to a desire in us to feel safety and belonging within something absolutely and i think it creates people or people are then unable like so i had this conversation with a woman recently who had a daughter that came out of the closet and she kept saying over and over in my conversation with her she kept saying my daughter wants wants me to bless this and i can't i can't i just can't bless it um and i agree with you i think i wonder if a lot of people because of belonging and the tribe can't or or again unable to offer something better to pete to the world because they're caught within the legacy of their tradition and the value that you said those people that gave them the gospel gave to them well yeah i really i resonate with that word caught there's a sense of inner conflict and maybe even a relational conflict as well what do i do when the things that have actually provided safety and security and belonging and a sense of comfort at times conflict with the sense of where i want to go and where some of my friendships are going and some of my ideas are going and that sense of stuckness between who have i been how has that shaped my identity but where's the world going and how do i be a part of that or not be a part of that and so it's really hard to have this conversation about evangelicalism without also looking at the lived experience of inner conflict for people of how worldview changes impact their relationship to their faith i think the people actually at a certain stage feel stuck i think about like that the age of accountability thing that i learned as an evangelical it was like we didn't for some reason we just kind of made up you don't have to believe these things until you're a certain age because we realized that it was more barbaric to us to for god to send a two-year-old to hell than a seven-year-old which is a whole another yeah so whatever we created this little buffer yeah where's like what's the age of accountability they can't actually believe for themselves until you're a certain age and to me like there's a stage of development that that sort of tribal bonding under a great story of god saving me and my people it can actually be very helpful for people and very salvific in in people that are stuck in you know i think it'd be good for donald trump to become a christian [Laughter] yeah moving from a totally narcissistic self-involved violent view to like oh there's a greater reality than me yeah and submitting to that greater story can actually be a really big step forward so for a lot of people and for my own life evangelicalism was a great stepping stone it was a great part of the conveyor belt of moving forward into life and but then at a point and this is where i think a lot of these leaders become very culpable because they have heard other stories yeah and they have come across the destructiveness of this one story that they try to colonialize the world with and it benefits them to continue doing so so they do it regardless of the cost that they see that it brings to the world and sometimes regardless of its truthfulness i think i think a lot of them know it's bullshit what do you think the cost is climate destruction oh yeah oppression of people is colonialism shame to an amount that we can never even quantify like the amount of shame that people have yeah even that aren't part of evangelicalism anymore but to carry that around uh they carry some sort of like i am not who i'm supposed to be because i was taught this thing growing up i mean it has huge damage in not just the lives of individuals but collectively as a society so i think that the people of course there are all sorts of people that are well intentioned and even in a good place and that it's helpful on some level that kind of thinking is helpful for the world and for humanity on some level but is society it's too much there's too much there's too much of it it has enough influence to elect donald trump which means it needs to shrink um or or give up power like willingly give up power which is the call of the gospel i believe but i do agree with what you're saying about this connection of the evangelicalism having a there are very bad things that can happen from it one of it being violence uh you know we talk often about islam right and we talk about uh violence or extremism that comes from islam i heard a muslim brother talking recently on on krista tippett's podcast he actually talked about how moderate muslims need to own you know the wrong ideologies that islam perpetuates in order to heal it um and i think the same is true of christianity and so for instance you know in america we look at mass shootings and the majority of them are done by i think it's 63 of mass shootings since like 1990 or something are have been by um white men particularly white men that identify as christian uh we look at the dylan roof situation in south carolina the the young uh white kid who killed nine black church members at a black church you know when they interviewed him the fbi he said he got his ideology from white christian nationalists on the internet um and so i found this like just this little list about you know in uganda there's the lord's resistance army which is a self-described christian terrorist organization that has maim raped and killed and displaced over a hundred thousand people you know in order to establish their version of a christian state you have this all over central africa uh you know the fbi recently came out in america and said that they have over a thousand white supremacists that they're currently tracking here in america that are tied to christian nationalism kkk numbers are going up white supremacy groups on college campuses have rose by 258 uh in quebec in january 2017 a christian white supremacist killed six muslims christian white supremacists in nyc in maryland and portland have killed black americans for no reasons in kansas in october 2016. three men who called themselves the crusaders tried to mass murder somali muslims before the fbi caught them so you see like there is we don't tie it in our like framework but there is a history that comes from even before but even in recent years we are still seeing people do violence in the name of jesus and so i think evangelicalism has to to some level own that extremism yeah and own that violence and say what are we doing and matthew vines talked about it right he talked about how a non-affirming theology is dangerous and it's harmful to people and i i think even if you're not willing to do violence other people are willing to take your theology and do violence with them and if you're gonna describe to that label then you need to own that that's part of it which comes back to a conversation that we've been having about privilege which although this is the white boy song right what's his name tom tom mcdonald just to give a just to give a clarifying thing i played them this video from this uh white rapper named i think his name is tom mcdonald and he basically has a song called white boy in which he's speaking to a classroom about how he feels victimized by you know being labeled white boy and he doesn't feel responsible for any racism that ancestors have done and also mind you he's a white kid with braids and singing trap music but the point is that we have to recognize that the identity that we ascribe to means that we are upholding a premise that other people will have reactions to or have been oppressed by and that by identifying with that identity with that label that we need to take ownership of how that label has hurt other people well also recognizing that i don't think that being a christian means that you're inherently violent no so how do we as christians because i would i said something evangelical right yeah i would self-identify as a christian and i want to know that people know that i'm not going to be violent because i identify as a christian well also knowing that other people have been violent and have used that label to hurt other people so this comes back to a question of identity and belonging and our responsibility to manage our identities well in ways that aren't harmful for other people while also knowing that we want to belong to something and when we don't have a sense of belonging it feels really really good to be a part of someone's group that's going to give us something to sink our teeth into yeah i don't think the violence is just done in the name of jesus i think there's the violence in the name of jesus and the violence in the name of allah actually have more in common with it than the pers the violence in the name of jesus and the christian who think is anti-violence i think there's there's it's all based in the one story one people one truth and fundamentalism fundamentalism like extreme fundamentalism this is true nothing else so is fundamentalism problem or is evangelical isn't the problem or is it when they intersect i think when they i would say when they intersect which i think evangelicalism at this point is a type of fundamentalism i i do think they're not saying christianity is fundamentalist i do think evangelical christianity and that distinct vein of it has become very fundamentalist could you be evangelical without being fundamentalist yes i think you uh matthew vines doesn't seem to be although you could argue he's not really an evangelist he's compared like most evangelicals would probably not label matthew vines evangelical right but he does doesn't he didn't he say yeah i think he he he claims uh you know an ownership to it but you know he grew up that way so uh truthfully you know who or any of us or even them to take that away from him if that's you know he values practically virtually everything else that they value outside of heteronormativity so if that's if that's one thing that he's not in agreement with is that the one thing to utterly dismiss well if the group has been saying that that's the thing that defines us is our view on abortion and our view on same-sex relationship then that is the thing yeah there's a lot of evangelicals probably that disagree with that i mean i i know some that would agree with those positions but they would say that's not our defining position our defining position is our desire to live and share the gospel or something to that effect i guess i would i would only push back and say i don't fully care what you say it's how you practice it if you are saying that's not true but are still excluding lgbt christians inside of your space or treating them as you know second class citizens to the kingdom so to speak then then i think you are that that is a dominant belief even if you don't want to articulate that or say that and i think that's ultimately the question is evangelical christianity a safe space for lgbt people and i think the majority of lgbt people would say no um or they're from their experiences which to me would say even if the majority of evangelicalism says that they are okay with gay people being around whatever that means there's something missing there well why is that is it safe for atheists no is it safe for muslims no is it safe for buddhists is it safe for anybody but evangelical christians you know i mean that's not makes me think of the the word belief and belief actually coming from the original german meaning by life and often we hold our beliefs as these ideologies and constructs in our head and hope that they trickle down to our behavior but if you take the actual root of the word it means you subsume or you take from your life and extract from that the things that you believe yeah and so if we look at the word belief it makes me wonder what would people identify themselves as if we looked at their behavior alone and what group and what label would be used instead of saying i mean evangelical because i bel i i hold these certain ideals but there's an there's a mismatch and incongruence between what there's what's being said and done and what's held internally as a value system [Music] yeah maybe explain this to me then because i have friends i have several friends i'm thinking of right now who told me recently that they voted for donald trump now every and they were conservative for sure but nothing about trump appeased them made them feel like he was a good candidate like for on all the marks no they would they would have said that even before the election but for them when it when they got down into the voting booth the voting booth something in them this belief i i gotta vote for the pro-life candidate yeah and i don't know if that's a people trying to live up to something that should be giving them life but isn't like truthfully they probably would have voted for the pro-choice candidate and been okay with it inside of themselves but then when it came to that moment something in them seemed to i don't know fully speak for them but just for my conversation something in them seemed to be say i gotta do this like my values say i have to do this even if i don't even believe that like what is that um because i know a lot of people that did that yeah well i think it's interesting that you say if they could really vote how they wanted to vote but at the end of the day there was nobody there over their shoulder watching them and so there's a value system that they've integrated into their sense of identity that created a sense of moral conflict inside of them that when they went to the voting booth they did the thing that they actually wanted to do and we can't hold anybody else responsible for that but i think that the morality issue is really significant here it makes me think of kohlberg's theory of moral development a psychologist from way back when and his theories have have changed and grown over the years but there are these different levels of moral development and the initial level is that we just do what we're told and that's how we make decisions about right or wrong and the highest level of moral development is that we can challenge the system that we're within and even think critically about the laws so even the law which is imposed on us we can challenge and and re-evaluate whether it's good or bad even though it's imposed on us but i think that with kohlberg's theory of moral development it implies that our moral immaturity means that we're going to take the things that were told to us and do them so one we don't have a sense of personal accountability and two maybe because we don't know how to think critically about things or three because our fear takes over and it's really scary for us to do something that we don't understand the consequences for or would position us as being an outsider in our community of belonging do you think that's how we got to where we are in terms of people just being like sheep and just being doing what they're told how about i'll answer your question another way and say i don't think it would hurt any of us to think critically more and to position ourselves in the bodies and in the lived experiences of other peoples when we made decisions and when we advocated for things instead of just doing the thing that we're told and only considering ourselves wow and our tribe yeah right yeah wow i do want to make mention that if it wasn't explicit we can get so attached to our beliefs that when somebody attacks them somebody's critical about them like we're being critical of evangelicalism uh it could sound like if you're an evangelical that listens to this that we're attacking you or your people and i for one see quite a difference between a person and that system of beliefs that they think that they believe uh first of all i don't think anybody really believes most of that shit uh like who actually if if you get down to it really believes that god is sending everybody to hell but evangelical christians and you're you're sitting here listening to a podcast what are you doing go save some people what are you thinking uh nobody believes that yeah so i think there's a difference of like critiquing the system creating a system of beliefs and saying okay we need to outgrow this because it's becoming very destructive in our society and saying that people that believe that are inferior human beings or bad or stupid or whatever that's not what we're saying we all came from it we were all evangelicals and it it plays again an important place in some development and we're not attacking you it reminds me a lot of the men and masculinity argument and we can say them the patriarchal construction of masculinity is harmful but i don't believe that either of you in this room as men are bad oh thank you we're the good we're the good the point is that we can see a system that influences us and people and products and experiences that come from that and the system is problematic and within the system and from the outside we need to challenge it but that doesn't mean that any person is inherently less or more valuable because of their belief system that's how i would stand no absolutely and actually for a long time went to a church that i didn't really agree with because i thought how am i going to grow how am i going to change if i only surround myself with people who i agree with and how will they change if they're only having people engage in their congregation who believe the same things they do so i think it's important to have conversations with people who believe different things than us and see that they have inherent worth and value even if our constructions of what happens now and outside of us and in the future and in the past differ yeah and even if what they believe is bullshit you had to add that in he also keeps jabbing that in and listen i don't disagree with you i don't disagree with you if we believed in hell as much as we say we would we sing about it more in our worship just sprinkling pepper on this dish that's all i'm doing [Music] you know speaking to this whoever's listening right because there are many different types of people that are going to listen you've already spoken to the evangelical i'm going to speak to the person who has put themselves in situations and you've been in this situation where you've gone to a church that you didn't agree with some things or maybe even the majority of things but you thought maybe god's called me here or uh there's something i can learn here or these people are really great relationally and you know i shouldn't let ideology dictate you know who i surround myself with um but you've been burned and you have tried to have those conversations and they haven't gone well and maybe you've been you know kicked out or or shunned or you know socially isolated or one of the many things you know that happened like what would you say to that person who has put themselves out there and chose to be in communities that differed from them to learn and grow but but constantly have hit roadblocks and and really feel maybe either traumatized or hurt by putting themselves in that situation so they see they feel like i don't know if i can do that again or if i want to do that again what would you say to them first i'd say you're so courageous i see you as courageous that would be the first thing that i say the second thing would be i'm so sorry that people that you made yourself vulnerable to hurt you and then i would say and you're not alone and i'm so glad that you're talking about it and that you've named your pain and it doesn't mean it's going to keep happening over and over again so to heal these relational wounds we need to be in communities in relationship that can actually provide corrective experience so go find a group of people you feel safe with the reaction that we often experience or that we are pulled towards when we've been hurt by a group of people is to run really far away from them and i think maybe even to run away from people altogether and it's really hard to heal relationship wounds when we're in isolation and so i would say try and stay engaged with people who can support you to be safe not those same people not the same people exactly other people other people yeah other people who can make it safe for you to talk about your experiences and believe things and i think we need to keep having conversation and my experience has been that people who've been really threatened by my worldview and my belief system and have experienced it a lot of fear and reaction to the things that i think can do and say have been the people who've hurt me the most not people who are bad but people who are very afraid and feel very threatened and so it's really helpful to remember that when people are the most hurtful it's usually because there's something that's getting activated in them that they can't own and it's not necessarily because you've done something wrong [Music] hmm i love that i heard brene brown say recently like you can't get rid of fear but she basically said fear is best managed when you keep it right in front of you and you see it for what it is because if you let it go unchecked it'll destroy your life and it'll cause you to destroy other people's lives uh because it's going unchecked in in and around you but to hold it right in front of you to look at square in the face can you imagine what that would be like if we did that in communities of faith where we would say these are the things that we want to believe we're not sure if they're true and the consequences if they are or aren't are going to be really wild for us and let's name that there is a relative degree of uncertainty that we carry with us when we make these belief statements and let's hold the fear in front of us and talk about how that influences the way that we shut out certain people's voices or gravitate towards certain certain behaviors that that fear is a really significant motivator in our lives and that's on a neurological level and so if we can name that and own that and regulate that and speak that and be aware of it doesn't mean that it's not going to be present but it might mean that the fear isn't the only thing driving the ship yep [Music] wow i thought of you michael hearing your testimony you have a testimony michael even that languaging uh your journey into atheism uh when you're at your church in denver um but even you talking about you know saying i forgot it was maybe the creeds and you talked about how i don't know somebody gave the preface that maybe this isn't exactly true but this is what we are saying that we believe and how even that open space or that languaging really helped you feel as someone who is journeying uh feel more safe and included in what was happening to say you don't have to believe this but this is what we believe or something like that i did i was doing that at the church i thought somebody was doing that for you okay you were doing it for you i wouldn't have had the creeds honestly but the other the pastor got really one of those creeds i was like all right if we're gonna say this i would like to just tell everybody like hey listen these are words words are constructs of course your constructs and they might point to true experiences but that stuck with me though like you saying that because it made me go oh have we been been so certain in the way we proclaim certain things well if fear is there but we're not acknowledging it then it's controlling us if fear is there that's a tweet it's serious do it right now while we're talking sweet all right if so if fear is there but we're not acknowledging it it's the one in control of us so there's something really important about knowing that we can sit in a space of fear and have it not be the thing that controls us and i often say to clients if you can feel fear and it not be the thing that makes your choices for you there is nothing that you can't do because fear isn't the thing that's making your choices you're the one that's making your choices and all of the full range of human experience and emotions and memories and insights and thoughts and reason can collaborate to help you move forward in the things that you want and fear being there isn't a bad thing but the more we deny it the more we repress it actually the more that it controls us and i think that's the state of evangelicalism today i really believe that i think you have this tribal group who feels threatened numerically america's browning it's looking less white and christian it's also culturally speaking it gay marriage i think we still underestimate how big of a shift that was for america because i think it happened then we just kind of like went on to business but i think a lot of evangelicals were still upset about that or still feeling oh yeah slighted and felt like the america that they knew and loved had left and it is now europe and all hell is broke loose you know i think i think a lot of probably moderates and liberals easily just brushed it i was like yes finally yeah yeah okay let's move on and i think a lot of them still held that so i think you have this group that i think still lives in a lot of fear to the world and fear of other belief systems other stories other religions other ways of perceiving reality and is responding more or less at least in a public way very fearful or maybe even in individual ways with certain people in their midst that question very fearfully and and so it's like how do we do group therapy for them all right is this podcast group therapy can we do that it's pretty hard to have this conversation without also getting into a conversation about objective truth and moral relativism and what it means to believe something and how people multiple people can believe that something is true and then also hold space for other people who believe that something else is true and to make it from development exactly yeah to hold multiple realities at the same time actually is neurocognitively advanced so why trump can't get quotes right right like you can't see from multiple perspectives to be like this is so called or whatever like i've heard that that's true that in a certain frame of development like you can't irony or sarcasm and quoting words it's very difficult if not impossible because you have to be able to see through multiple lenses at the same time yeah or even let's take something as simple as emotion in the development of the human brain from affective neuroscience we know that you can't as a kid feel sadness that you didn't get the candy before dinner and also relieved that you're not gonna have a stomachache you can't hold both of those feelings at the same time because they present too many complex and diverse experiences of reality and so we have these really neurologically immature perspectives on truth and on other people that keep us unable to engage in holding multiple perspectives at the same time while also still owning that something feels valid and true for us while honoring the other people that's a lot of truth and tension yep [Music] all right that's it for part one everybody head over to part two we'll see you there you