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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that

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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become

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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.

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Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways

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Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,

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Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now,

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Speaker 1: on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 3: Hey, everyone.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.

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Speaker 1: James Spencer. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Ashish Pharma,

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Speaker 1: as well as our special guest today, Dr.

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Speaker 2: Michael McDuffie.

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Speaker 1: Michael was a professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute,

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Speaker 1: now lives over in Germany. He's done multiple Reformation tours,

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Speaker 1: some of which I've been on and quasi-helped with, and

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Speaker 1: just an all-around good guy. And we're going to be

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Speaker 1: talking today a little bit about political theology, the nature

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Speaker 1: of politics. how this affects the church and Christendom and

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Speaker 1: all those kind of ideas. And so, Mike, we're really

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Speaker 1: happy you were able to come on the podcast. Appreciate

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Speaker 1: you being here.

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Speaker 3: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great to see

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Speaker 3: you two guys.

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Speaker 4: Good to see you as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be a fun conversation. So you

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Speaker 2: gave us some homework.

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Speaker 1: Read an essay by Habermas, which I did. I'm interested

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Speaker 1: to get your take on it. I've read Habermas before,

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Speaker 1: and I was a little concerned when you said, hey,

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Speaker 1: get this book by Habermas, because I'm like, we've only

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Speaker 1: got a week. I'm not sure I can get through

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Speaker 1: a Habermas book in a week. But it was a

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Speaker 1: nice short essay, so I appreciate you taking it easy

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Speaker 1: on us.

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Speaker 2: So describe the essay. Let's just start there.

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Speaker 1: What was your context and purpose for us reading that,

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Speaker 1: and what's your take on what he's talking about there?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's... He's important. I don't know so much in America,

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Speaker 3: but here over in Europe, I mean, the European Union

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Speaker 3: and Germany in particular, post-World War II, how do you

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Speaker 3: set up a social order and a form of government

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Speaker 3: that is just and humane and recognizes human rights, human worth,

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Speaker 3: and human dignity? And Habermas was the voice coming out

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Speaker 3: of Germany. We remember where Germany was after 1945. So

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Speaker 3: his philosophy of communicative action in order to establish a

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Speaker 3: sense of social order and public ethics is absolutely crucial.

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Speaker 3: And of course, he was thinking as a child of

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Speaker 3: the Enlightenment, but after 9-11, he was shaken and needed

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Speaker 3: to reevaluate, well, can reason alone and can the autonomous

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Speaker 3: subject be able to behave morally? And that question caused

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Speaker 3: him to interact with religious figures, most especially Roman Catholics.

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Speaker 3: But then the little thing that we read was an

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Speaker 3: awareness of what is missing. And this is a major

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Speaker 3: step because Habermas is seeing that can the weight that

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Speaker 3: we put on the Enlightenment sense of reason, can it

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Speaker 3: carry legitimacy in terms of law and social order? And thus,

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Speaker 3: with the post-secular, he's recognizing the importance of religion, that

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Speaker 3: by the secularization theory that was most especially supported in

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Speaker 3: the 1960s with economic takeoff and the wonders of science

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Speaker 3: after World War II, religion didn't go away. And so

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Speaker 3: he interacted with that. Now, I'll just read a short

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Speaker 3: paragraph to frame it a bit. As one of this

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Speaker 3: generation's most respected philosophers in contemporary Europe, Jürgen Habermas makes

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Speaker 3: clear that living in a secular society is no longer

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Speaker 3: bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization

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Speaker 3: can advance only at the cost of the public influence

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Speaker 3: and personal relevance of religion. Describing modern societies in post-secular terms,

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Speaker 3: Habermas refers to a change in consciousness that he traces

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Speaker 3: back primarily to three phenomena. The first is the resurgence

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Speaker 3: of politicized religion in global affairs. Perceiving global conflicts as

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Speaker 3: precipitated by or somehow connected to religious values undermines the

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Speaker 3: secularistic belief in the foreseeable disappearance of religion and robs

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Speaker 3: the secular understanding of the world of triumphal zest, he wrote.

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Speaker 3: Beyond this, religion is gaining influence not only worldwide, but

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Speaker 3: also within national public spheres. The most, the post-secular person

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Speaker 3: increasingly encounters on a regular basis people infused with religious consciousness.

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Speaker 3: In addition to the social reality that naivete is unavailable

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Speaker 3: for the believer or unbeliever alike, there is a growing

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Speaker 3: awareness that living in a secular society is no longer

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Speaker 3: bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization

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Speaker 3: can advance only at the cost of the public influence

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Speaker 3: and personal relevance of religion. What particularly impressed him is

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Speaker 3: that churches and religious organizations are increasingly assuming the role

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Speaker 3: of what he called communities of interpretation in the public

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Speaker 3: arena of secular societies. Thirdly, he realized that the immigration

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Speaker 3: of men, women, and families with traditional cultural backgrounds only

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Speaker 3: contributed to accelerating this change of consciousness. So, that kind

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Speaker 3: of lays the groundwork. That's what he was struck with, and...

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Speaker 3: what he referred to as the awkwardness of a secular

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Speaker 3: understanding of social order. And as I said earlier, it's

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Speaker 3: like Miles Davis said, if you're not nervous, you're not

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Speaker 3: paying attention. Habermas got nervous. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Do you see, and I just don't know this question,

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Speaker 1: after the French Revolution, you have guys like Emile Durkheim

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Speaker 1: who are trying to replace religion with sociology. And that

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Speaker 1: was obviously a failed attempt, like that endurance of religion,

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Speaker 1: even in a more arguably a more secularized, more hostile

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Speaker 1: sort of country like France, religion continued. And so do

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Speaker 1: you see any influences on Habermas from that sort of

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Speaker 1: historical perspective?

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Speaker 3: Oh, definitely. I mean, the French Revolution to Europe is

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Speaker 3: the equivalent of the American Revolution to America. And as

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Speaker 3: a matter of fact, French scholars speak of laification, where

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Speaker 3: religion is moving away from clergy. It's moving away from

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Speaker 3: a hierarchical structure. And it's moving into sentiment. A key

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Speaker 3: thinker for this was Rousseau. that this thinking of religion

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Speaker 3: as a personal sense of sentiment, emotive feeling, and with

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Speaker 3: the hierarchical order being swept away, then this sense of

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Speaker 3: religious emotion could be absorbed into the political domain.

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Speaker 4: Hmm.

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Speaker 1: And when you talk about the post-secular, is that sort

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Speaker 1: of the move that you're talking about? This idea that

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Speaker 1: you have a shift toward a mentality for whatever brief

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Speaker 1: period of time that would have said, we can do

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Speaker 1: this without religion. So there was a lot of resonance

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Speaker 1: in that passage you read. There's a realization that this

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Speaker 1: can be done in ways that would not completely demolish

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Speaker 1: or diminish religion. That sort of secular movement toward this

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Speaker 1: idea that science and rationality are going to go on

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Speaker 1: the ascendancy. And as they ascend, religion will ultimately descend.

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Speaker 1: You know, religion will get smaller, but the scientific endeavor

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Speaker 1: will get bigger.

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Speaker 3: Definitely the case. I mean, the Enlightenment project was to

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Speaker 3: slay the beast. And that would be organized religion. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And what happens in Europe, is that a lot of

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Speaker 3: religious sentiment is absorbed into socialist thought. And when we

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Speaker 3: compare that to America, we see immediately, well, that's taboo.

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Speaker 3: We ain't having none of that. And so this is

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Speaker 3: beginning to shed light on the fact that the secularization

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Speaker 3: thesis or theory that comes out of sociology, Durkheim being

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Speaker 3: the beginner of that kind of thinking, sociological thought, is

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Speaker 3: primarily a European idea. And what post-secular scholars are realizing,

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Speaker 3: the presumption that Europe is normative, that as the world

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Speaker 3: becomes increasingly more modern, it will decline in participating in

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Speaker 3: any kind of religious type of ritual or have any

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Speaker 3: kind of religious experience. Well, that view was actually the

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Speaker 3: exception to what prevails in the world. But we only

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Speaker 3: come to realize that after World War II, academically, I'm speaking.

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Speaker 3: I mean, people are living their religious lives day in,

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Speaker 3: day out. But academically, through decolonization, through globalization, through this

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Speaker 3: being immersed in a wider pattern of exchanges, what scholars

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Speaker 3: begin to realize is, holy cow, it's Europe that's the

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Speaker 3: exception with the secularization theory. Actually, America is more in

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Speaker 3: tune with where the world is, that religion can, hand

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Speaker 3: in hand with technology and the process of modernization, continue,

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Speaker 3: if not thrive. So One book was said, God is back.

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Speaker 3: Another title is The Revenge of God. However we want

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Speaker 3: to have the academic world come to a sense of

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Speaker 3: connecting with reality, the fact is that post-secular studies recognize

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Speaker 3: the continued vibrancy of religion, not only personally, but publicly, socially,

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Speaker 3: and globally. And that puts us where we are today.

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Speaker 3: I would say that, just to close, that post-secular thinking

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Speaker 3: is more in tune with the social reality of the

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Speaker 3: world than any idea of some process of secularization, however

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Speaker 3: it's defined.

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Speaker 2: Can I ask one more question, Ashish, and then let

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Speaker 2: you jump in?

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Speaker 3: Go for it.

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Speaker 2: All right.

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Speaker 1: So that narrative, right, I agree with the secularization thesis

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Speaker 1: and the demise of it, that secularization is really just

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Speaker 1: the process of diminishing religion within society. I think that

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Speaker 1: was always sociologically wrong. You didn't see it in the people.

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Speaker 1: But there's another sort of thesis that Manet puts forth

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Speaker 1: in The Intellectual History of Liberalism, where he basically talks

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Speaker 1: about in the French Revolution, there's a breaking of the

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Speaker 1: church's political power. And the church, particularly the Catholic Church,

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Speaker 1: is relegated to the arena of opinion. And you see

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Speaker 1: this echoed in the work of like D.C. Schindler and

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Speaker 1: some of these other folks, where the church has been

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Speaker 1: folded back into society, but still folded back in under

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Speaker 1: the general let's call it, um, philosophical authoritative view of

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Speaker 1: liberalism in a lot of places.

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Speaker 2: Any thoughts on.

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Speaker 3: That, Mike?

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Speaker 1: Like, is there an accommodation post-secular accommodation to say religion

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Speaker 1: can work, but it can never be Christendom again?

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Speaker 3: Well, um, I think, uh, what was his name? Uh,

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Speaker 3: Ho Chi Minh, uh, said, uh, about the French revolution. Well, what, uh,

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Speaker 3: What were the facts? And he said, well, we don't

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Speaker 3: know yet. So I would not rule out, given where

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Speaker 3: we are today, that there would be efforts at reasserting Christendom.

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Speaker 3: And I would... And I would just leave it at that.

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Speaker 3: I can't predict the future. But the idea that the

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Speaker 3: world will be secular, I just don't see it. Now,

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Speaker 3: you know, you talk about liberalism. I'm not really clear

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Speaker 3: about what you're talking about there. We're talking about individualism,

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Speaker 3: free markets. in representational government. Is this your notion?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's tough to pin down, right?

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Speaker 1: So political philosophy, that is, I guess what I mean

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Speaker 1: by this political philosophy that emphasizes individual autonomy and the

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Speaker 1: sovereign individual. And then I think some of these other

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Speaker 1: things like market capitalism can be globbed onto it. But

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Speaker 1: they're all sort of geared toward the preservation of individual

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Speaker 1: rights and the normally associated with small government. But the

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Speaker 1: reality is that it's the sovereign individual. And so what

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Speaker 1: I would argue is just liberalism is that moment where

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Speaker 1: we sit back and say, we are really in charge.

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Speaker 1: And however, we might gesture toward God, that either needs

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Speaker 1: to be privatized, pushed into the background of our own

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Speaker 1: private lives and treated as not a claim about reality

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Speaker 1: that we all sort of have to ascribe to, but

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Speaker 1: a pocket of understanding that this particular group is.

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Speaker 2: Inclined to believe. Right.

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Speaker 1: And then, but also that the sovereign individual, because it's

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Speaker 1: viewed that way, then there isn't really a claim that

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Speaker 1: reality has on us. And so, That's saying a lot

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Speaker 1: in a very little short time. But the idea of

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Speaker 1: liberalism that I'm sort of when I say it, that's

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Speaker 1: what I mean. Sort of that political philosophy where there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of individual rights and the sovereign individual sort

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Speaker 1: of reigns.

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Speaker 2: Consent of the government, those kind of things.

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Speaker 3: Exactly. I would just want to say that I'm much

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Speaker 3: more comfortable with the term neoliberalism, which includes the global market.

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Speaker 3: And the commodification, commodification of not just goods and services,

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Speaker 3: but values, meaning and purpose. Good. Yeah. Multiple platforms of technology.

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Speaker 3: But yeah.

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Speaker 2: I'd agree with that. Yeah, that's fair.

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Speaker 3: Within that mix, there is and it's really hard to measure.

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Speaker 3: We don't. OK, we concede we're in a post-secular moment.

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Speaker 3: Secularization theory is incorrect. It's not valid. It just isn't,

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Speaker 3: no matter what we measure. This gets into some really

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Speaker 3: important stuff, because once we recognize that, and then these

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Speaker 3: political theologies begin to come out that have been ignored,

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Speaker 3: have been overlooked by the secular airbrush. For just one example,

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Speaker 3: and then I'll set up, we talk about the Age

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Speaker 3: of Discovery. And scholars like Willie James Jennings makes very

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Speaker 3: clear that this idea that the other of color has

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Speaker 3: the demonic presence, but the European white imperialists that come,

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Speaker 3: they're demon free. See, that's a secular move. So that

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Speaker 3: once we go post-secular, the doors open up. And I

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Speaker 3: find that to be very exciting. I find that unheard

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Speaker 3: voices are now coming into the arena. And where that's

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Speaker 3: going to go, I don't know either. But yeah. Very good.

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Speaker 2: Thanks, Mike.

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Speaker 4: Ashish, I'm sure you're... Yeah, there's so many strands to

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Speaker 4: pick up on. I think maybe the place that I

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Speaker 4: want to start is going to sound merely definitional, but

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Speaker 4: I think we can go somewhere from there. We're using

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Speaker 4: the term post-secular. And I think it can be an

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Speaker 4: easy move to equate it with something like post-game. Post-game

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Speaker 4: is after the game. The game is over. We're analyzing

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Speaker 4: the game. We're now preparing for the next game. We're

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Speaker 4: thinking about recovery. Those sorts of things. Analyzing tape. Giving interviews.

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Speaker 4: And one, I think, could easily say, well, there was

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Speaker 4: this period that was secular, and now we've moved past it.

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Speaker 4: But I don't think that's how we're using the term.

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Speaker 4: Sounds to me like maybe a little bit, we see

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Speaker 4: that there is this thing that is the secular. But

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Speaker 4: to assume an ism out of it, a secularism, a

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Speaker 4: general state of affairs where to use Charles Taylor's terms,

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Speaker 4: there's a subtraction involved, right? There's the basic nature of reality,

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Speaker 4: and you can subtract religion from it, whatever exactly religion is.

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Speaker 4: And now you get this thing that's basic reality, is

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Speaker 4: what post-secular is sort of saying false to. That whole

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Speaker 4: construct is false. So that there never really was the secular,

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Speaker 4: while at the same time we acknowledge there is a

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Speaker 4: period in which ordering of the pieces on the board

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Speaker 4: and maybe even the way the game is played or

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Speaker 4: what the game is has changed, We have moved into

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Speaker 4: a period in which the relationship of faith to public

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Speaker 4: life is very different than in, say, Christendom for the

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Speaker 4: Western world, but maybe sits uneasily with other parts of

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Speaker 4: the world. The example that immediately comes to my mind

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Speaker 4: is Mahendra Modi in India, where he's in some sense

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Speaker 4: reacting to to an impulse that sees the formation of

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Speaker 4: India as a secular regime. Someone who is historically a

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Speaker 4: great hero in Mahatma Gandhi is now somewhat of a villain.

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Speaker 4: The guy who facilitated the creation of an idea that

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Speaker 4: was in its basic formation a Western idea. And I

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Speaker 4: want to put Western in scare quotes in light of

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Speaker 4: your invoking the name of Willie Jennings. I think that's

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Speaker 4: a point that if we have time, I'd like to

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Speaker 4: get back to. But with Modi, it's no, there is nothing.

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Speaker 4: We can advance into the kind of global scene that

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Speaker 4: seems to embody what the secular has produced without having

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Speaker 4: to do so on the terms of some sort of

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Speaker 4: division between who we are as people who belong to

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Speaker 4: a place and who we are as people who belong

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Speaker 4: to some sense of faith and who we are as

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Speaker 4: global citizens of sorts. So there's a lot right there.

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Speaker 4: I don't know exactly what the question precisely is, but

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Speaker 4: maybe it's just simply in light of this very complicated reality.

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Speaker 4: What is it that we're saying about post-secular as it

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Speaker 4: interacts with all these moving parts?

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Speaker 3: Well, when I earlier spoke, I said the secular, and

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Speaker 3: I tripped over my words because what came to mind

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Speaker 3: was the secular thesis. And of course, I corrected myself

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Speaker 3: and said, no, the secular theory, oh my word. But

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Speaker 3: I would like to scratch both of them in terms

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Speaker 3: of what you just said and suggest that what we're

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Speaker 3: really looking at when we look at the secular is

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Speaker 3: the secular strategy. It is a deliberate framing. Another example, J.

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Speaker 3: Cameron Carter in Kant. All of us learned Kant, you know.

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Speaker 3: Ideas that matter. We have to know these things. But

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Speaker 3: it was only what I would argue in a post-secular shift,

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Speaker 3: when the secular strategy has become vulnerable, that we learn

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Speaker 3: about this essay that he wrote in 1777 in the

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Speaker 3: lectures that he gave, The Differences of the Races. And

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Speaker 3: out comes this whole discourse on Kant. I mean, I'm

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Speaker 3: an educated man. University of New Hampshire, Brandeis University. I mean,

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Speaker 3: I studied intellectual history. Never heard it. Never told it.

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Speaker 3: But I did. And I would suggest the way that

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Speaker 3: I'm understanding the post-secular is a recognition that the secular

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Speaker 3: was a strategy. of defining others, categorizing people, categorizing ideas

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Speaker 3: to maintain a Western hegemony. That naturally was true because

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Speaker 3: the scientific discoveries and accomplishments and the technology that followed,

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Speaker 3: that all came from the West. What I hear you

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Speaker 3: speaking about is, again, another angle of approach to this

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Speaker 3: notion of the secular as a strategy that has been weakened,

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Speaker 3: has become vulnerable, and via alternative routes of research and perception.

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Speaker 3: different facets of who we are and how we live

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Speaker 3: in this world are being brought to light. Does that

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Speaker 3: make sense?

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Speaker 4: It does, yeah. And yet there is still something, right?

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Speaker 4: The sort of movement that begins the secular strategy, let's

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Speaker 4: call it, is something that we can describe and understand

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Speaker 4: what we mean by saying Christendom, right?

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Speaker 3: There is this.

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Speaker 4: There's this deep interrelation between the so-called secular, as we

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Speaker 4: come to understand it, and the sacred, such that you

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Speaker 4: have the papal bull for the doctrine of discovery, as

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Speaker 4: you mentioned, that not just justifies but mandates the state

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Speaker 4: to undertake its works of discovery and colonization. There is

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Speaker 4: theological rationale and grounding to what's at play. And yet

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Speaker 4: the sort of reality that comes out of it, and

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Speaker 4: correct me on this one, this is the area where

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Speaker 4: I'm hazy as I try to understand how we move

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Speaker 4: from an explicitly theological grounding for this secular strategy to

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Speaker 4: a move that does seem to want to set aside

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Speaker 4: any sort of overt theological grounding. But then there's a

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Speaker 4: third move here that I think is really valuable from post-secularism,

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Speaker 4: and that's to say, Perhaps the setting aside of an

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Speaker 4: explicit theological grounding obscured the fact that there was actually

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Speaker 4: still a theological grounding. We just had a shift in

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Speaker 4: what we understand the divine to be. Do you think

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Speaker 4: that accurately describes, in a nutshell, the sort of progression

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Speaker 4: and the relationship to the secular strategy? Or am I

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Speaker 4: missing something?

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Speaker 3: I can walk with you here when we think incrementally, yeah? Right.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the notion of theology itself, if we read

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Speaker 3: Franz Overbeck, the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, and really gave

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Speaker 3: Nietzsche a lot of ideas. He says theology, the move

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Speaker 3: of theology by the church was... a strategy by which

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Speaker 3: the church would establish itself in this world. And establishing

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Speaker 3: means that it would have some leverage to control the world.

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Speaker 3: And in that context, being that comes out of Hellenist

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Speaker 3: philosophy gets moved in the church and it gets redefined

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Speaker 3: as God. We won't go through all that and all

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Speaker 3: the gyrations that it went through, but that's basically what happened.

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Speaker 3: Dear Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, he pretty much made Hellenized philosophy

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Speaker 3: an extension of Revelation, saying that it has to be

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Speaker 3: in this Greek framework of being that we do our theology.

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Speaker 4: Well, arguably, Neo-Calvinism does the same sort of thing, just

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Speaker 4: simply with far less sort of centralized authority.

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Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, 100%. So you have that, and then in

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Speaker 3: the 17th century, you move away from that. And the

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Speaker 3: effort to move away from this controlling theology, grounded back

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Speaker 3: in Hellenist thought, is to try and, can we get

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Speaker 3: a common denominator of religion? Are there some basics that

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Speaker 3: we can all agree to that won't trespass or or

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Speaker 3: flares go up over confessional differences. And that's deism. That's

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Speaker 3: the 18th century idea of deism. Can't we all agree

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Speaker 3: there's one God? Can't we all agree he's the one

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Speaker 3: that established the natural law that oversees the order of nature?

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Speaker 3: And so that's a major step towards secularization, although... it's

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Speaker 3: still the heavenly city. You know, God is still there,

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Speaker 3: but now God is stripped of revelation and is now

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Speaker 3: a philosophical construct. Eternal life, happiness, good life, et cetera,

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Speaker 3: et cetera. 19th century, it shifts again. Being becomes becoming.

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Speaker 3: So that we could say that in the 17th, 18th century,

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Speaker 3: on the reliance of reason, Revelation was reduced in its importance,

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Speaker 3: and a foundation was laid for a body of legitimate

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Speaker 3: knowledge that is based upon this notion of natural law

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Speaker 3: and the God of nature, as the Declaration of Independence

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Speaker 3: puts it. So reason is the basis by which this

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Speaker 3: movement occurs. As William Cavanaugh beautifully puts it in the

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Speaker 3: title of one of his books, the migration of the holy.

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Speaker 3: So it migrates, yeah, from Hellenized Greek being through theology

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Speaker 3: and its dependence upon revelation. Now it's simply being in

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Speaker 3: the natural sense. In the 19th century, theology now is

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Speaker 3: subject and philosophy as well, to what? History. Everything now

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Speaker 3: is historicized into being, into being, becoming. Becoming is more important.

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Speaker 3: And so incrementally, yeah, we have these changes. But I

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Speaker 3: would say, even through all these changes, I'm sorry in

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Speaker 3: terms of the academy and in terms of who gets

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Speaker 3: what when, in terms of who's in charge and who's

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Speaker 3: on first base, and I don't care what else you say.

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Speaker 3: It's still this hegemonic mindset. And the church acquiesces. Now,

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Speaker 3: I'm just generalizing the heck out of this. I mean,

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Speaker 3: there's a whole lot of things. I'll just close by

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Speaker 3: saying this. that in the 20th century, this process of

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Speaker 3: continuance of secularity and the parsing and the whittling down

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Speaker 3: of the authority of God's word and the public witness

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Speaker 3: of the church and the power of the Holy Spirit,

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Speaker 3: what replaces history? I would say in the 19th century, ideologies. theology,

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Speaker 3: insofar as it retains its membership card with the secular guild,

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Speaker 3: is subject to ideology. And of course, there's a number

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Speaker 3: of those, as James was talking about, liberalism, neoliberalism, that's

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Speaker 3: a powerful ideology out there. Socialism is a communism is

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Speaker 3: just in my word, the mayor of New York city. So, uh, what,

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Speaker 3: I guess what I want to say is that what

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Speaker 3: happens with the post-secular shift in the academy is that we're,

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Speaker 3: we're given a chance to reread things. We're, we're given

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Speaker 3: a chance to go, well, wait a minute now. Is this,

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Speaker 3: am I, am I being held bound to something? Um,

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Speaker 3: that I can now see in a more clear way

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Speaker 3: and perhaps to develop some kind of sense of moving

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Speaker 3: apart from or getting sufficient distance such that I can

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Speaker 3: actually see what I'm part of and I can make

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Speaker 3: a sound assessment based on good solid Christian teaching.

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Speaker 2: So when you think about these moves.

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Speaker 1: And it is a generalization. So even the question is

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Speaker 1: going to overgeneralize. I think we just need to admit

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Speaker 1: that it's only an hour long podcast, so we can't

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Speaker 1: get into all these details. But if and I like

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Speaker 1: the way you frame secularism as a strategy, it seems

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Speaker 1: to me that elements of that strategy carry into post-secular.

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Speaker 1: And you have pockets of post-secular thought that are still

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Speaker 1: really trying to advance a secularization thesis, but talking about,

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Speaker 1: let's say, the utilitarianism or the utility of religion. These

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Speaker 1: things endure because they have some social good. And you

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Speaker 1: get the sense from some theorists that religion may still

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Speaker 1: be walked out of this. We've just got to figure

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Speaker 1: out how to cultivate human meaning without it. And maybe

428
00:33:08,390 --> 00:33:12,070
Speaker 1: that'll just take more time. There's aspects of post-secular theory

429
00:33:12,110 --> 00:33:14,890
Speaker 1: that I think still are holding on to that secularized strategy.

430
00:33:15,390 --> 00:33:16,610
Speaker 2: But the part.

431
00:33:16,250 --> 00:33:22,010
Speaker 1: That they're stepping back from is that wholesale, hey, this

432
00:33:22,090 --> 00:33:24,070
Speaker 1: is going to be gone in the blink of an eye.

433
00:33:24,910 --> 00:33:27,970
Speaker 1: There's an endurance and a recognition that meaning has to

434
00:33:28,010 --> 00:33:30,860
Speaker 1: mean something. It feels like they're having the realization that

435
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,850
Speaker 1: Habermas had. right, where he's seeing the holes in a

436
00:33:33,870 --> 00:33:37,930
Speaker 1: secular strategy and going, yeah, but we still need this, this, this,

437
00:33:38,010 --> 00:33:41,210
Speaker 1: and this. So there's an acquiescence to that sort of

438
00:33:41,990 --> 00:33:44,530
Speaker 1: the holes in the strategy, but there's still a push

439
00:33:44,610 --> 00:33:48,690
Speaker 1: toward something different. And I think if you agree with that,

440
00:33:48,810 --> 00:33:50,770
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to see if you agree with that.

441
00:33:50,810 --> 00:33:54,020
Speaker 1: But then number two, I'm interested in sort of moving

442
00:33:54,100 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: into how you think about America as more of a

443
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 1: religion than as a political system. and how that would

444
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:06,700
Speaker 1: play into a post-secular thesis? Because it seems to me

445
00:34:06,740 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: that it does, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts

446
00:34:09,100 --> 00:34:09,310
Speaker 1: on it.

447
00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:22,770
Speaker 3: Yeah. In terms of post-secular sense, because look, this is

448
00:34:22,850 --> 00:34:27,270
Speaker 3: a term that's in flux. If you look at the literature,

449
00:34:27,290 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 3: it's all over the map. It's something. You know, it's like, no,

450
00:34:33,620 --> 00:34:39,739
Speaker 3: I won't say that. But when you say that they

451
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:46,620
Speaker 3: want to hold on to some parts of the secular strategy,

452
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:52,750
Speaker 3: I think that we're talking about adjectives here. We've got

453
00:34:52,770 --> 00:34:55,850
Speaker 3: to make sure we understand we're talking about the modern world.

454
00:34:57,340 --> 00:35:01,089
Speaker 3: Is the secular world modern or is the secular world postmodern?

455
00:35:01,210 --> 00:35:01,970
Speaker 2: Postmodern.

456
00:35:02,150 --> 00:35:08,190
Speaker 3: And Habermas, what he helps us realize, and as Ashish

457
00:35:08,250 --> 00:35:13,020
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, Charles Taylor does this as well, is that, hey,

458
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:16,660
Speaker 3: the world that we're living in is a new relationship

459
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:22,100
Speaker 3: between those that have faith and those that rely upon reason.

460
00:35:22,469 --> 00:35:26,420
Speaker 3: We're living in a new social relationship. where we have

461
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 3: to learn how to have these exchanges with one another

462
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:37,580
Speaker 3: without imposing judgment on the other as being illegitimate, and

463
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:42,490
Speaker 3: at the same time preserve a sense of, let's call

464
00:35:42,550 --> 00:35:47,230
Speaker 3: it decorum, where the ground rules for our exchange are

465
00:35:47,270 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 3: consistently applied. So when we think in that way, the

466
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 3: post-secondary and the secular both are trying to gain the

467
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,660
Speaker 3: benefits of modernization, and neither one of them wants to

468
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 3: undo modernization. Everybody wants a dentist with Novocaine. They don't

469
00:36:09,300 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 3: want to go back to flyers and, you know, no.

470
00:36:13,860 --> 00:36:16,319
Speaker 3: And I think that Habermas has done us a great

471
00:36:16,450 --> 00:36:22,819
Speaker 3: service because what he was nervous about was scientism. on

472
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:26,739
Speaker 3: one hand, uh, where this would be this, um, you know,

473
00:36:26,780 --> 00:36:29,980
Speaker 3: this would be the, uh, um, the idea of, uh,

474
00:36:30,300 --> 00:36:36,989
Speaker 3: the enlightenment, uh, having this, uh, uh, totalitarian, uh, impulse that, uh,

475
00:36:37,050 --> 00:36:41,470
Speaker 3: who was it? It was, uh, Adorno. Um, this, the dark,

476
00:36:41,489 --> 00:36:44,610
Speaker 3: the dialectic of the enlightenment where there was this dark

477
00:36:44,690 --> 00:36:46,770
Speaker 3: part of it, you know, we got to, you know,

478
00:36:47,430 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 3: we have to think of Auschwitz for, for example. Um,

479
00:36:51,420 --> 00:36:58,509
Speaker 3: and so, You cannot let scientific thinking and method and

480
00:36:58,570 --> 00:37:03,859
Speaker 3: technology run the show, which, you know, that's more to

481
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:16,180
Speaker 3: the Enlightenment side. And also, he was concerned about, golly, postmodernism.

482
00:37:17,540 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 3: An old friend of ours that used to be a

483
00:37:20,460 --> 00:37:24,339
Speaker 3: great Frankenstein monster for evangelicalism, raised a lot of money,

484
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:29,210
Speaker 3: but it's not worth much anymore. Forget that. But he

485
00:37:29,270 --> 00:37:34,130
Speaker 3: was right in making that monster something that he was

486
00:37:34,210 --> 00:37:42,850
Speaker 3: concerned about because relativism is equally dangerous to modern society.

487
00:37:43,410 --> 00:37:47,390
Speaker 3: And I think as evangelical Christians, thinking Christians, we should

488
00:37:47,530 --> 00:37:51,980
Speaker 3: tip our hat to him. for that. So I hope that...

489
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:52,940
Speaker 3: It does.

490
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful.

491
00:37:54,300 --> 00:37:56,340
Speaker 3: In that direction. Yeah.

492
00:37:59,469 --> 00:38:03,969
Speaker 4: So the comparison of post-secular to post-modern I think is

493
00:38:03,989 --> 00:38:09,750
Speaker 4: a valuable one insofar as whether rightly or wrongly, many

494
00:38:09,850 --> 00:38:16,350
Speaker 4: who want to hold on to the temptations and the

495
00:38:17,130 --> 00:38:23,420
Speaker 4: instant gratification that belonged to the modern idea of uniformity, universalism,

496
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 4: will gladly point to postmodernism and its failure to provide

497
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:34,989
Speaker 4: a unified way forward. Which I think is ironic, because

498
00:38:35,030 --> 00:38:38,509
Speaker 4: postmodernism is precisely trying to say this quest for a

499
00:38:38,610 --> 00:38:43,310
Speaker 4: unified way forward is itself an idol. So I don't

500
00:38:43,350 --> 00:38:45,710
Speaker 4: know that it's a true critique as far as postmoderns

501
00:38:45,750 --> 00:38:55,910
Speaker 4: see it. But as a parallel, post-secularism or post-secular thought,

502
00:38:56,110 --> 00:38:59,430
Speaker 4: however you want to put it, in some ways seems

503
00:38:59,450 --> 00:39:01,890
Speaker 4: to be doing a similar thing to secularity. To say,

504
00:39:03,450 --> 00:39:07,529
Speaker 4: secularity is something of an idol. The way forward is

505
00:39:07,590 --> 00:39:14,410
Speaker 4: not to deny the deep and at times unentanglable ramifications

506
00:39:14,610 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 4: of the theological, faith, religion, whatever form we want to

507
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 4: put it in, with the lives that we live, while

508
00:39:22,260 --> 00:39:27,710
Speaker 4: recognizing things have changed. But it raises, I think, a

509
00:39:27,770 --> 00:39:31,290
Speaker 4: second question that I think is one that postmoderns deal

510
00:39:31,310 --> 00:39:36,930
Speaker 4: with in their own way. Speaking from the angle of post-secularity,

511
00:39:38,270 --> 00:39:42,489
Speaker 4: the answer is most certainly not, let's recreate Christendom.

512
00:39:44,690 --> 00:39:44,910
Speaker 1: Right?

513
00:39:45,670 --> 00:39:50,570
Speaker 4: And I think it's a self-conscious... thing that they don't

514
00:39:50,650 --> 00:39:53,930
Speaker 4: want to do it from where i sit you know

515
00:39:53,950 --> 00:39:57,470
Speaker 4: i i most certainly don't want to recreate christendom christendom

516
00:39:57,510 --> 00:40:01,250
Speaker 4: has i think its own both historical and theological baggage

517
00:40:01,290 --> 00:40:04,759
Speaker 4: that are pretty damning that in some ways helps us

518
00:40:04,820 --> 00:40:10,660
Speaker 4: understand why secularity was such an enticing impulse even if

519
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:14,460
Speaker 4: a false one right but what is the next step

520
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:18,500
Speaker 4: is it just merely we dialogue Because the way that

521
00:40:18,540 --> 00:40:21,089
Speaker 4: Habermas puts it is the role of the government then

522
00:40:21,170 --> 00:40:24,469
Speaker 4: is to protect the reality of a neutral sort of

523
00:40:24,530 --> 00:40:28,130
Speaker 4: discourse that all can enter into, a sort of translation idea.

524
00:40:29,350 --> 00:40:30,630
Speaker 4: But I have in the back of my mind, just

525
00:40:30,650 --> 00:40:33,180
Speaker 4: to put my cards on the table, again, you mentioned Jennings,

526
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 4: so let's pull that bookmark out and deal with it.

527
00:40:37,540 --> 00:40:40,880
Speaker 4: One of Jennings' critiques, as I understand it, of the

528
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:42,860
Speaker 4: idea of translation is not that he doesn't want to

529
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,250
Speaker 4: see translation happen, but he wants to help us understand

530
00:40:46,270 --> 00:40:51,060
Speaker 4: that translation... in and of itself, has a loss to it.

531
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,380
Speaker 4: There's a loss in the discourse, and that loss is

532
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 4: then a conformity to another discourse. And if that translation

533
00:40:57,140 --> 00:41:05,219
Speaker 4: happens under power dynamics, which it always does, then that

534
00:41:05,300 --> 00:41:08,890
Speaker 4: translation is itself not just the loss of something, but

535
00:41:08,930 --> 00:41:13,390
Speaker 4: it is the subservience of what is being translated to

536
00:41:13,450 --> 00:41:15,910
Speaker 4: what it's translated into, if that makes sense.

537
00:41:17,660 --> 00:41:19,790
Speaker 1: If I can just piggyback on that, I'll just say,

538
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:23,140
Speaker 1: I think that as we look at the move from

539
00:41:23,219 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: secular to post-secular, however we want to construe that, which

540
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: again is a little complicated, but I would just say

541
00:41:29,900 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 1: what's endured from the secular to the post-secular is some

542
00:41:35,860 --> 00:41:39,270
Speaker 1: form of humanitarianism. That we are the center of the

543
00:41:39,350 --> 00:41:43,970
Speaker 1: universe and that God is, and God in the form

544
00:41:43,989 --> 00:41:47,530
Speaker 1: of religion is, needs to enter back into our world,

545
00:41:47,870 --> 00:41:51,650
Speaker 1: not because he is real, not because he has a

546
00:41:51,670 --> 00:41:55,370
Speaker 1: claim on us, but because he serves us. And I

547
00:41:55,410 --> 00:41:58,240
Speaker 1: think in that there's a commonality across the secular and

548
00:41:58,260 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: the post-secular. That is, in essence, like when you're saying

549
00:42:02,820 --> 00:42:05,740
Speaker 1: the power dynamic and the way that translation loses something

550
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:10,859
Speaker 1: within Willie James Jennings, reading that from the Christian perspective,

551
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,540
Speaker 1: reading that from the religious perspective in general, What we

552
00:42:15,600 --> 00:42:19,880
Speaker 1: see is that as religion is translated into a post-secular discourse,

553
00:42:20,460 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: we are losing something.

554
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:24,319
Speaker 2: So I'll just leave it there.

555
00:42:25,380 --> 00:42:28,980
Speaker 3: Let me just say three quick things. Number one about post-modernity.

556
00:42:31,540 --> 00:42:37,439
Speaker 3: Post-modernity gave censored voices the chops. This is what post-modernity did.

557
00:42:38,700 --> 00:42:43,470
Speaker 3: It unlocked the door. A lot of things came out. Okay.

558
00:42:43,850 --> 00:42:46,790
Speaker 3: And good, bad, and ugly.

559
00:42:46,930 --> 00:42:48,529
Speaker 4: Arguably for better and for worse, right?

560
00:42:48,550 --> 00:42:52,670
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. But it was the solvency. It

561
00:42:52,750 --> 00:42:59,370
Speaker 3: was the solvency that broke the control that secular had.

562
00:42:59,880 --> 00:43:02,140
Speaker 3: And make no mistake about it. When we speak about

563
00:43:02,180 --> 00:43:04,839
Speaker 3: the secular, we're speaking about whiteness. And when we speak

564
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 3: about whiteness, we're speaking about control of scarce resources, which

565
00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 3: includes categorizing reality which includes labeling human beings. That's what

566
00:43:14,780 --> 00:43:17,779
Speaker 3: secularity did. All you got to do is go read,

567
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:24,219
Speaker 3: just do a dissertation on all the encyclopedias since the

568
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 3: 18th century. And you will see the march. And then

569
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 3: you'll see the, oh, we better drop that one. Well, no, yeah,

570
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,319
Speaker 3: we'll sing this one now. Oh boy, that was bad too.

571
00:43:36,090 --> 00:43:40,210
Speaker 3: This is unbelievable. This is what power does. It's going

572
00:43:40,230 --> 00:43:42,930
Speaker 3: to hold on to power. It's going to give up

573
00:43:42,969 --> 00:43:46,790
Speaker 3: a little something in military terms. It says you, you

574
00:43:46,870 --> 00:43:52,149
Speaker 3: give up territory for time. You, you, you gain, you

575
00:43:52,210 --> 00:43:55,650
Speaker 3: gain time by giving up territory. The secular has no

576
00:43:56,530 --> 00:44:02,810
Speaker 3: secular strategy has no, I know no interest in, um,

577
00:44:03,590 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 3: giving up power. Uh, Secondly, as regards to post-secular vis-a-vis post-modernity,

578
00:44:10,739 --> 00:44:15,130
Speaker 3: what I would say is that whereas post-modernity gave the

579
00:44:15,170 --> 00:44:20,930
Speaker 3: voices the chops, post-secular is now giving the subsidy, the

580
00:44:21,070 --> 00:44:29,230
Speaker 3: institutional subsidy for these voices to be articulated. So many

581
00:44:29,310 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 3: more women scholars, Judith Butler and on down the line,

582
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:38,980
Speaker 3: And again, you could do a Google thing and get

583
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,870
Speaker 3: one of those hockey sticks, and you would see how

584
00:44:42,930 --> 00:44:48,090
Speaker 3: now the voices are being subsidized. Where it goes, I

585
00:44:48,130 --> 00:44:50,410
Speaker 3: don't know, but that's what's happened. I can say that

586
00:44:50,450 --> 00:44:53,110
Speaker 3: with confidence. Thirdly, in terms of the loss, which is

587
00:44:53,190 --> 00:44:56,230
Speaker 3: very true, but there's a beauty to it. There's a

588
00:44:56,290 --> 00:45:02,170
Speaker 3: beauty to this loss because the loss is universal. Everybody

589
00:45:02,390 --> 00:45:06,549
Speaker 3: limps on the way home. The issue is not a

590
00:45:06,730 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 3: power dynamic. The issue is a compassion dynamic in trying

591
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 3: to live out that life of Christ. I would say

592
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:21,670
Speaker 3: that the patron saint of the 21st century is Francis

593
00:45:21,750 --> 00:45:26,430
Speaker 3: of Assisi, not because of this gibberish, preach the gospel

594
00:45:26,450 --> 00:45:29,029
Speaker 3: when you must use words, which he never said, and

595
00:45:29,090 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 3: it's what's radishes and ridiculous. But what he did do,

596
00:45:34,590 --> 00:45:39,029
Speaker 3: is he would walk around in these rags and he

597
00:45:39,070 --> 00:45:43,650
Speaker 3: would sing the songs of the French court because he

598
00:45:43,710 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 3: was an educated man, because he was wealthy and because

599
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:49,140
Speaker 3: he wanted to be a knight and because he wanted

600
00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 3: to be a crusader. So he knew the noble virtues.

601
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:57,360
Speaker 3: He knew the mannerisms of the court. And he would walk,

602
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:02,230
Speaker 3: he'd walk dressed the way he was singing these highfalutin songs.

603
00:46:02,820 --> 00:46:05,980
Speaker 3: And when someone would stop him and ask him, well,

604
00:46:06,540 --> 00:46:12,060
Speaker 3: who are you? He would say, I am the herald

605
00:46:12,820 --> 00:46:19,060
Speaker 3: of the great king. You see, this notion of finding

606
00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:25,510
Speaker 3: that voice for today is something that I find very exciting.

607
00:46:25,969 --> 00:46:34,029
Speaker 3: And that will come as the Holy Spirit gives. America

608
00:46:34,250 --> 00:46:40,509
Speaker 3: anticipated the post-secular term because America has never had a

609
00:46:41,210 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 3: decline in religion. America is a religious, as G.K. Chesterton said,

610
00:46:48,110 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 3: America is a nation with the soul of a church.

611
00:46:53,580 --> 00:47:00,819
Speaker 3: And that is what America is. I do, you know,

612
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:07,380
Speaker 3: it's rough. the term American exceptionalism, which we throw around,

613
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 3: throw around, but how many of these dear people, they

614
00:47:12,140 --> 00:47:16,299
Speaker 3: use this term with great American red, white, and blue

615
00:47:16,340 --> 00:47:23,290
Speaker 3: pride that it originally was coined by American Marxists. I mean,

616
00:47:23,390 --> 00:47:28,089
Speaker 3: it was this, this came from communist street literature, you know,

617
00:47:28,410 --> 00:47:32,290
Speaker 3: as a, well, most places, uh, Of course, the revolution

618
00:47:32,310 --> 00:47:37,150
Speaker 3: will come through violence. But there is this American exceptionalism

619
00:47:37,270 --> 00:47:42,489
Speaker 3: because in America, they smudge the classes. And how can

620
00:47:42,530 --> 00:47:45,690
Speaker 3: you have a revolution based on class conflict when there's

621
00:47:46,230 --> 00:47:50,609
Speaker 3: cheating going about on the classes? That's a paraphrase. But

622
00:47:52,450 --> 00:47:55,870
Speaker 3: there is this notion of America as the almost chosen people,

623
00:47:56,010 --> 00:48:00,210
Speaker 3: American exceptionalism, the city on the hill. Uh, this stuff

624
00:48:00,230 --> 00:48:03,430
Speaker 3: goes on and on the declaration of independence, the natural,

625
00:48:03,489 --> 00:48:06,390
Speaker 3: the nature's laws and the gods of nature, the God

626
00:48:06,430 --> 00:48:10,090
Speaker 3: of nature. Um, um, he favors, you look at a

627
00:48:10,140 --> 00:48:14,319
Speaker 3: dollar bill and it says he, he favors our endeavor. Uh,

628
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:20,299
Speaker 3: he's not identified. Who is he? Uh, and, um, I

629
00:48:20,340 --> 00:48:26,140
Speaker 3: could go on, but America is unique, uh, in, uh, the, um,

630
00:48:26,830 --> 00:48:31,250
Speaker 3: the understanding that we're in a post-secular age. If we

631
00:48:31,370 --> 00:48:33,910
Speaker 3: are in a post-secular age, well, America has already been

632
00:48:33,930 --> 00:48:37,250
Speaker 3: in it. America was born in it. America is a

633
00:48:37,310 --> 00:48:40,590
Speaker 3: religious nation. It remains religious. I could care less about

634
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:43,860
Speaker 3: the Pew results. Oh, look, they're up 13.2 in the seats.

635
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 3: Who measures the Internet? Who measures what's out there? And

636
00:48:52,180 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 3: I'll just close on one last point on this. It's

637
00:48:55,950 --> 00:48:58,870
Speaker 3: America is no longer viewed as the exception. It's Europe

638
00:48:58,890 --> 00:49:01,160
Speaker 3: that's viewed as the exception, as secular. And let me

639
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 3: tell you, it is secular over here. If you don't

640
00:49:06,580 --> 00:49:11,779
Speaker 3: live in Europe, you don't realize how religious America is.

641
00:49:12,030 --> 00:49:15,710
Speaker 3: And this gets into America, the monomyth, in terms of

642
00:49:15,770 --> 00:49:20,569
Speaker 3: popular culture. This gets into fantasy land, as another scholar

643
00:49:20,610 --> 00:49:26,969
Speaker 3: describes it. I would love to read to you Bratila. Bratila,

644
00:49:27,010 --> 00:49:32,410
Speaker 3: how do you pronounce that? Bratila? Bratila? Bratila. Yeah.

645
00:49:32,590 --> 00:49:34,750
Speaker 4: Are you talking about the simulation and simulacra guy?

646
00:49:34,790 --> 00:49:40,380
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, Bratila. He describes America. I'll read his book, America.

647
00:49:41,730 --> 00:49:45,730
Speaker 3: This should be read late at night on some talk show.

648
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:56,180
Speaker 3: America is utopia fulfilled. But what happens when it's fulfilled?

649
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 3: It's madness. And I mean, I read this thing and

650
00:49:59,860 --> 00:50:03,730
Speaker 3: I go, wow, this is powerful stuff. All of this

651
00:50:03,810 --> 00:50:11,410
Speaker 3: to say that America is a religious nation. But more

652
00:50:11,469 --> 00:50:19,310
Speaker 3: than that, because it came out of Christendom's collapse via England,

653
00:50:19,930 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 3: that's very important. Because England, going back to the mid-17th century,

654
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:33,819
Speaker 3: was the first global imperialist power. And the Bible was

655
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:38,629
Speaker 3: embedded right in this imperial expansion. Uh, the Navigation Acts

656
00:50:38,670 --> 00:50:45,060
Speaker 3: of Cromwell, uh, 1657, uh, England, um, Constantine's, uh, what

657
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:49,790
Speaker 3: was it? His mother, uh, was, um, uh, was it his,

658
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:52,920
Speaker 3: I forget, but a British, uh, no, it was his father,

659
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:56,790
Speaker 3: I guess, a British King. The idea that, um, England

660
00:50:56,850 --> 00:51:03,060
Speaker 3: is the chosen nation, uh, is, was injected into America, uh,

661
00:51:03,770 --> 00:51:10,110
Speaker 3: And the notion that the Protestant Reformation was fulfilled in

662
00:51:10,330 --> 00:51:15,969
Speaker 3: England because it was the most powerful Protestant nation was

663
00:51:16,030 --> 00:51:21,580
Speaker 3: injected into America. It's only when we begin to step

664
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:24,260
Speaker 3: back and begin to look at America in these terms,

665
00:51:25,380 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 3: we see the church has a special responsibility to address idolatry.

666
00:51:33,070 --> 00:51:41,530
Speaker 3: to address blasphemy, to address addiction to ideology, be it nationalism, socialism, whatever,

667
00:51:41,950 --> 00:51:45,350
Speaker 3: in America. I would say that we are called to

668
00:51:45,410 --> 00:51:51,700
Speaker 3: that responsibility. And what we see today, and I don't

669
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:56,879
Speaker 3: mean just on the 1776 pro-Trump Christian nationalism. I mean

670
00:51:56,940 --> 00:52:01,020
Speaker 3: on the 1619. Because what we've talked about, when you

671
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:08,710
Speaker 3: look at 1619, And it's truthful exposure of slavery as

672
00:52:08,770 --> 00:52:14,410
Speaker 3: being an alternative understanding of the founding of America. It's

673
00:52:14,530 --> 00:52:18,950
Speaker 3: true enough. But on the 1619 side, just like on

674
00:52:18,969 --> 00:52:23,980
Speaker 3: the 1776 side, it's moving in a trajectory to something

675
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:27,640
Speaker 3: that is contrary to the scriptures. And it has to

676
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 3: be contrary to the scriptures to be consistent. Because if

677
00:52:30,940 --> 00:52:34,489
Speaker 3: you're going to condemn those things, You're going to have

678
00:52:34,550 --> 00:52:40,700
Speaker 3: to pursue equality and equity to the maximum, which is

679
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:43,100
Speaker 3: going to put you right back in the Habermas mess.

680
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:46,839
Speaker 3: So how do we do this in terms of transgenderism,

681
00:52:46,900 --> 00:52:52,299
Speaker 3: in terms of transhumanism, in terms of euthanasia? It's all

682
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,850
Speaker 3: well and good to speak of justice. I approve of

683
00:52:54,930 --> 00:52:59,350
Speaker 3: it 100 percent. But nobody can say what that trajectory

684
00:52:59,590 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 3: trajectory trajectory goes. So that the notion of liberty on

685
00:53:04,300 --> 00:53:09,180
Speaker 3: one side and the notion of individual pursuit of happiness

686
00:53:09,700 --> 00:53:15,689
Speaker 3: on the other, justice and liberty, these two are being

687
00:53:15,750 --> 00:53:20,890
Speaker 3: accelerated by technology. And it's absolutely scary what's happening in

688
00:53:20,950 --> 00:53:28,089
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley. We have never seen such a merger of

689
00:53:28,969 --> 00:53:33,380
Speaker 3: the executive branch, including the Department of War, with the

690
00:53:33,410 --> 00:53:40,140
Speaker 3: likes of Palantir and others. This is very sobering. And

691
00:53:40,500 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 3: so if you can see that as the three primal

692
00:53:46,660 --> 00:53:53,750
Speaker 3: points of America, then the last one is 1630, city

693
00:53:54,390 --> 00:54:00,760
Speaker 3: on a hill. There is eschatological energy that is driving

694
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,060
Speaker 3: through the veins of of what I call a meritendum,

695
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:09,899
Speaker 3: that which replaced Christendom in its final phase of the Reformation,

696
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:18,230
Speaker 3: which was England. And that this notion of bringing the

697
00:54:18,270 --> 00:54:26,760
Speaker 3: millennium on earth, this runs through America's veins. And we

698
00:54:26,820 --> 00:54:30,340
Speaker 3: need to be more aware of it in order to understand,

699
00:54:30,420 --> 00:54:37,300
Speaker 3: and I'll close with this, that persecuted. Blessed are you

700
00:54:37,860 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 3: when they revile you and persecute you and speak all

701
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:45,580
Speaker 3: manner of evil against you for my name. Rejoice for

702
00:54:45,620 --> 00:54:48,859
Speaker 3: your reward in heaven is great for so they did

703
00:54:48,920 --> 00:54:52,950
Speaker 3: to the prophets before you. You are the light of

704
00:54:52,989 --> 00:55:00,129
Speaker 3: the world. Let your lights, your good works shine in what?

705
00:55:00,350 --> 00:55:03,840
Speaker 3: In such a way that they may see them and

706
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:06,860
Speaker 3: glorify your Father in heaven. The wisdom in such a

707
00:55:06,940 --> 00:55:13,030
Speaker 3: way and to live a suffering life of a prophet

708
00:55:15,110 --> 00:55:21,230
Speaker 3: in both 1619 and 1776 crews being pushed at an

709
00:55:21,310 --> 00:55:29,180
Speaker 3: ever increasing speed through technology with this eschatological propulsion underneath it.

710
00:55:30,830 --> 00:55:35,730
Speaker 3: is the place where in this 250th anniversary of the Republic,

711
00:55:36,590 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 3: this is the political responsibility to be more aware of this.

712
00:55:42,540 --> 00:55:45,759
Speaker 3: That's my judgment. Yeah.

713
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:47,439
Speaker 4: Can I jump in real quick?

714
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, go for it.

715
00:55:50,380 --> 00:55:52,020
Speaker 4: So I think to put a little bit of a

716
00:55:52,060 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 4: bow on it, because there's so much context to what

717
00:55:54,100 --> 00:55:56,380
Speaker 4: you're saying that I think is important. There's probably not

718
00:55:56,420 --> 00:55:59,069
Speaker 4: enough time to delve into all of it, but, An

719
00:55:59,110 --> 00:56:02,690
Speaker 4: alternative that you're suggesting, I think, if I'm hearing you correctly,

720
00:56:05,230 --> 00:56:08,550
Speaker 4: is that if you have the 1776 and you have

721
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:13,100
Speaker 4: the 1619, that both are starting from a basis that

722
00:56:13,200 --> 00:56:18,980
Speaker 4: misses that there are deep theological roots to the sort

723
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:24,700
Speaker 4: of program or strategy or project of secularity to America,

724
00:56:24,719 --> 00:56:28,469
Speaker 4: to the ideas that they embody. That maybe more appropriately,

725
00:56:28,510 --> 00:56:30,170
Speaker 4: the starting, if we want to put a date on it,

726
00:56:30,310 --> 00:56:35,029
Speaker 4: and I'm going to expose my poorness with dates, the 14-something, right?

727
00:56:35,070 --> 00:56:39,730
Speaker 4: Whatever the doctrine of discovery is, right? That the issue

728
00:56:39,790 --> 00:56:45,960
Speaker 4: at play here is that both ways of reckoning for

729
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:50,339
Speaker 4: whatever they see right also have a major blind spot

730
00:56:50,380 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 4: in that they don't reckon that the very idea of

731
00:56:55,030 --> 00:56:57,989
Speaker 4: the doctrine of discovery as a theological rationale for the

732
00:56:58,030 --> 00:57:04,730
Speaker 4: entire project is itself what produces the impulse to say,

733
00:57:04,750 --> 00:57:11,989
Speaker 4: I will covet my neighbor, which gives you the 1619 reality, right?

734
00:57:12,469 --> 00:57:12,890
Speaker 3: Slavery.

735
00:57:13,750 --> 00:57:16,820
Speaker 4: It gives you the more other side of the coin,

736
00:57:16,860 --> 00:57:22,980
Speaker 4: perhaps 1776 reality of the positive move that brings about

737
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 4: ultimately the technological development. But what both do insofar as

738
00:57:27,580 --> 00:57:33,120
Speaker 4: you're seeing them as both embodying a technological thrust forward

739
00:57:33,180 --> 00:57:38,240
Speaker 4: is that that shows actually the theological problems at play

740
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:41,370
Speaker 4: in the 14 whatever, the doctrine of discovery reality, right?

741
00:57:41,410 --> 00:57:48,990
Speaker 4: That there is something missing in removing us theologically anthropology

742
00:57:49,170 --> 00:57:53,870
Speaker 4: from reality as creation, right? To quote Norman Wiersbeck. To

743
00:57:53,930 --> 00:57:58,030
Speaker 4: just speak of nature is to miss that we are

744
00:57:58,110 --> 00:58:00,670
Speaker 4: part of and surrounded by an entity that is creation,

745
00:58:01,170 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 4: beholden to creator. And embedded within that, just to put

746
00:58:07,400 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 4: a nice little bow on that, is to go back

747
00:58:09,380 --> 00:58:12,540
Speaker 4: to Francis of Assisi, that the other major element that

748
00:58:12,600 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 4: I really appreciate about him is, as much as he

749
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:18,590
Speaker 4: might be made fun of in modern circles, he felt

750
00:58:18,630 --> 00:58:22,540
Speaker 4: the need to preach to creation. He saw himself as

751
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:26,460
Speaker 4: their co-laborer, and he would preach to the sun and

752
00:58:26,580 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 4: preach to the birds. He had his great canticle that

753
00:58:30,660 --> 00:58:37,090
Speaker 4: did just as much. But it's a beginning to reimagine

754
00:58:37,150 --> 00:58:41,650
Speaker 4: the world from the standpoint of a theology gone wrong

755
00:58:42,730 --> 00:58:45,910
Speaker 4: that creates these other sort of distorted realities, rather than

756
00:58:45,970 --> 00:58:48,470
Speaker 4: beginning with the distorted realities, which only can lead you

757
00:58:48,530 --> 00:58:50,770
Speaker 4: to other distorted realities. Is that fair to say?

758
00:58:51,410 --> 00:58:54,950
Speaker 3: A hundred percent. And I think to get calibrated to it,

759
00:58:56,580 --> 00:58:59,660
Speaker 3: we need to think in terms of the least sin

760
00:58:59,700 --> 00:59:04,310
Speaker 3: committed by the church aggrieves the Holy Spirit more than

761
00:59:04,350 --> 00:59:07,910
Speaker 3: the worst sin that the world can commit. Because the

762
00:59:07,950 --> 00:59:12,140
Speaker 3: sins of the church violate. both the love and fellowship

763
00:59:12,300 --> 00:59:17,010
Speaker 3: of the Holy Spirit. And we just refuse to calibrate

764
00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:23,950
Speaker 3: ourselves to this. I forget the fellow that wrote it,

765
00:59:24,830 --> 00:59:27,190
Speaker 3: or maybe it's anonymous, but back in the ancient churches,

766
00:59:28,060 --> 00:59:30,940
Speaker 3: there was that the church is the soul of the world.

767
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,780
Speaker 3: I don't know if Chesterton ripped off of that or not,

768
00:59:34,500 --> 00:59:37,880
Speaker 3: but for us to see ourselves that way and to

769
00:59:37,900 --> 00:59:42,090
Speaker 3: see one another that way and to see myself before God,

770
00:59:42,180 --> 00:59:46,670
Speaker 3: understanding that's the way he sees me. This whole idea of,

771
00:59:47,370 --> 00:59:57,100
Speaker 3: if we look at the 10 sayings, The last one

772
00:59:57,160 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 3: is thou shalt not covet. It is through coveting that

773
01:00:01,580 --> 01:00:04,500
Speaker 3: we suppress the first, which I would say, I am

774
01:00:04,540 --> 01:00:07,910
Speaker 3: the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt

775
01:00:08,970 --> 01:00:14,030
Speaker 3: and out of the house of slavery. This to me

776
01:00:14,170 --> 01:00:21,350
Speaker 3: is a beautiful phrase of the gospel that this is

777
01:00:21,410 --> 01:00:24,430
Speaker 3: what Jesus does. He brings us out of the house

778
01:00:24,470 --> 01:00:29,630
Speaker 3: of slavery. And to see each other and to see creation,

779
01:00:30,680 --> 01:00:38,460
Speaker 3: to get calibrated to that. May the Lord give us,

780
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:45,370
Speaker 3: by his grace, the wisdom and the love of God

781
01:00:45,430 --> 01:00:47,710
Speaker 3: is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit

782
01:00:47,730 --> 01:00:50,410
Speaker 3: who has been given to us. How do we live it?

783
01:00:51,690 --> 01:00:53,740
Speaker 3: It's a good question in a political moment.

784
01:00:56,340 --> 01:00:58,260
Speaker 1: We're almost out of time, but I just want to

785
01:00:58,470 --> 01:01:02,470
Speaker 1: comment on that Ten Commandments piece because I think it's

786
01:01:02,490 --> 01:01:06,210
Speaker 1: such a beautiful inclusio that's so often missed in the

787
01:01:06,250 --> 01:01:10,130
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments where you begin with this sort of call of,

788
01:01:11,390 --> 01:01:12,850
Speaker 1: I am the Lord your God who brought you out

789
01:01:12,890 --> 01:01:16,270
Speaker 1: of Egypt, brought you out of slavery, then do not covet.

790
01:01:16,530 --> 01:01:18,190
Speaker 1: And when we move into the New Testament, what do

791
01:01:18,210 --> 01:01:22,300
Speaker 1: we see? We see that greed is idolatry. Coveting is idolatry.

792
01:01:23,230 --> 01:01:26,110
Speaker 1: And so you have this sort of notion that you're

793
01:01:26,130 --> 01:01:29,550
Speaker 1: pointing out in the Ten Commandments that's often missed that

794
01:01:29,610 --> 01:01:32,110
Speaker 1: is made clear in the New Testament, that Paul has

795
01:01:32,170 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 1: this interesting reading of it, that he's understanding that as

796
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:40,620
Speaker 1: we desire what God has not given, as we desire

797
01:01:40,660 --> 01:01:44,160
Speaker 1: to reorder the world by saying, he's given you something

798
01:01:44,220 --> 01:01:47,720
Speaker 1: that should have belonged to me, and we're moving in

799
01:01:47,780 --> 01:01:53,130
Speaker 1: those directions, that we're actually committing idolatry because now we

800
01:01:53,190 --> 01:01:56,050
Speaker 1: are saying the creator God who brought us out of

801
01:01:56,130 --> 01:02:00,690
Speaker 1: slavery and rearranged us into a redeemed state didn't actually

802
01:02:00,730 --> 01:02:05,940
Speaker 1: know what he was doing. And so we recenter ourselves

803
01:02:06,160 --> 01:02:09,880
Speaker 1: as the ordering principle. And I think that has real

804
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:12,800
Speaker 1: implications for political theology more generally.

805
01:02:13,340 --> 01:02:18,310
Speaker 3: Definitely does. And along with A subcategory of coveting Paul

806
01:02:18,370 --> 01:02:24,170
Speaker 3: explores with the troubled church of Corinth, and that is grumbling. Grumbling, too,

807
01:02:24,710 --> 01:02:31,820
Speaker 3: results in idolatry. Grumbling and coveting, they're like that diabolical

808
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:33,740
Speaker 3: dialectic of depravity right there.

809
01:02:34,500 --> 01:02:34,950
Speaker 2: That's right.

810
01:02:36,200 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 1: Well, Mike, this has been awesome. We're out of time,

811
01:02:39,460 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 1: but really appreciate you being on. And we'd love to

812
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:43,180
Speaker 1: do this again with you at some point if you're

813
01:02:43,240 --> 01:02:46,020
Speaker 1: open to it. But this has been a fantastic conversation.

814
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:49,180
Speaker 1: There's so much more to explore. So, yeah, I just

815
01:02:49,220 --> 01:02:50,360
Speaker 1: really appreciate you being here, brother.

816
01:02:50,760 --> 01:02:53,020
Speaker 3: Well, you guys are great. Thanks for having me. And

817
01:02:54,100 --> 01:02:57,910
Speaker 3: blessings upon you both. And may the Lord bless your endeavors.

818
01:02:59,090 --> 01:03:01,470
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir. Thanks, Ashish, again for being here.

819
01:03:01,750 --> 01:03:04,770
Speaker 1: And we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

820
01:03:05,080 --> 01:03:06,540
Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team

821
01:03:06,620 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 1: at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the

822
01:03:09,040 --> 01:03:12,650
Speaker 1: Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find

823
01:03:12,730 --> 01:03:16,090
Speaker 1: dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got

824
01:03:16,130 --> 01:03:18,950
Speaker 1: shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.