Welcome to an incisive conversation with Kaitlyn Schiess, the brilliant mind behind "The Ballot and the Bible." We've all experienced that challenging intersection of politics, faith, and scriptures.
Kaitlyn, with her deep-rooted understanding of this tryst, steers us through her personal journey, from evangelical upbringing to studying at Liberty University amidst the 2016 election. A compelling narrative, questioning Donald Trump's approach to the Bible, ensues, presenting a poignant critique on the intersection of faith and politics.
Our fascinating exploration digs into the profound influence Christianity and scriptures have wielded over American politics since its inception. Imagine biblical language used to describe political dissenters during the Revolutionary War! Yes, we uncover such striking instances and turn our lens on the 'City on a Hill' metaphor by John Winthrop, revealing its darker implications. The picture of how this metaphor justified violent land acquisition in America stands testament to the power of scripture when twisted for political ends.
As we wrap up, fear not! We steer the conversation towards hope, dissecting the potential for a positive use of scriptural language in politics. The uphill task of conversing with individuals deeply set in their beliefs unfolds, along with strategies to navigate such conversations. We also attempt to understand the role of fear and interpretations of scripture on politics, referencing popular works like the Left Behind series. Get ready for a thought-provoking discussion that will leave you pondering over the complex intersection of faith, politics, and the Bible.
Welcome to an incisive conversation with Kaitlyn Schiess, the brilliant mind behind "The Ballot and the Bible." We've all experienced that challenging intersection of politics, faith, and scriptures.
Kaitlyn, with her deep-rooted understanding of this tryst, steers us through her personal journey, from evangelical upbringing to studying at Liberty University amidst the 2016 election. A compelling narrative, questioning Donald Trump's approach to the Bible, ensues, presenting a poignant critique on the intersection of faith and politics.
Our fascinating exploration digs into the profound influence Christianity and scriptures have wielded over American politics since its inception. Imagine biblical language used to describe political dissenters during the Revolutionary War! Yes, we uncover such striking instances and turn our lens on the 'City on a Hill' metaphor by John Winthrop, revealing its darker implications. The picture of how this metaphor justified violent land acquisition in America stands testament to the power of scripture when twisted for political ends.
As we wrap up, fear not! We steer the conversation towards hope, dissecting the potential for a positive use of scriptural language in politics. The uphill task of conversing with individuals deeply set in their beliefs unfolds, along with strategies to navigate such conversations. We also attempt to understand the role of fear and interpretations of scripture on politics, referencing popular works like the Left Behind series. Get ready for a thought-provoking discussion that will leave you pondering over the complex intersection of faith, politics, and the Bible.
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Speaker 2:Trump is actually the first president since Reagan to not reference America as a city on a hill, which is, I think, a good description of actually how much has changed, like even I mean like right before him, during the election, hillary Clinton referenced Reagan's shining city on a hill. So there was still an attempt to kind of draw on that, that legacy, and I think it's really important what you just said, that that, for all of our failures, it very often was a genuine attempt to have scripture shape our political lives, whereas Donald Trump, I mean and I give some examples in the book like is so awkward with the Bible.
Speaker 1:Well, let me hold it upside down, Like in some.
Speaker 2:well, he held it up at when they had cleared Lafayette Square in front of St John's Episcopal Church in the midst of these Black Lives Matter protests, and it's so like if you people should go and look at the video if they've never seen it. It's not upside down, but it is just like he's like bouncing it in his hand. He's kind of awkwardly holding it. And then my favorite part for someone writing a book on this, this was like he couldn't have given me a better description of what is wrong with all of this, because a reporter asks him is that your Bible? And he says it's a Bible which is just like a perfect description of. I don't even I'm not even taking ownership of this thing. I don't read it, it's not mine, I just am holding it up for the cameras like a prop, yes, like a tool.
Speaker 2:And it really was like you can't get a more straightforward picture of the problem. There's there's great promise, I think, actually, in using scripture and political life, but the pitfall is the tendency we have to use it as a tool, and so I think that's a great way to get a better understanding of the Bible.
Speaker 1:On today's episode of Rethinking Christianity we have Caitlin Chess who is the author of the Ballot in the Bible. It comes out on August 22nd. I'm super excited to have you on today and talk about this title and kind of how the intertwining of Christianity, politics and the Bible has happened a lot and why that's kind of an issue at times. So thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before we kind of dive into the book, I'd love to hear a little bit about maybe some of your faith, the background and how you got into writing, and maybe how did you get interested in like this intertwining of Christianity and politics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew up in the church, in evangelical churches kind of all around the country, because my dad is in the military so moved around a lot, went to a lot of churches, but they were all kind of the same kind of church and had a really positive experience in church. There's things I wish I wouldn't have been taught. There's things I would change but really felt loved by the churches that I was in. My mom often worked in the churches we went to, so I was like the kid that was there, the second the doors were open and then left when the doors were locked. And then I went to college and I had gone to public school my whole life so I thought, okay, I should go to a Christian school. I was living in Virginia at the time. I didn't really know a lot about the moral majority, the history of Christian political engagement. I'd never really thought much about Jerry Falwell before, and so I went to Liberty University for college, not thinking a lot about any of those things, and if anyone knows anything about Liberty, there's like a whole documentary you can watch. There's a lot of articles you can read, but I was there kind of at a turning point, so I started in 2012 and even when I first did a tour as a high school student, the person giving the tour said, like we're really moving away from the Jerry Falwell moral majority stuff. We're not really focusing on that anymore. And then, by the time I graduated in 2016, jerry Falwell Jr and Jerry Falwell's senior son was, like, fully involved in the 2016 election.
Speaker 2:For people who don't know, he was one of the earliest evangelical supporters of Donald Trump, very enthusiastic about Donald Trump and even more than Trump. I mean. The last two years of college for me were just politicians on campus all the time, national media on campus. All the time Ted Cruz announced his candidacy during our equivalent of chapel, bernie Sanders came and spoke. Trump was there a few times, like it was just like in your face.
Speaker 2:And I had changed about halfway through college from a politics and policy major thinking I would go to law school, to a history major still thinking I would go to law school. And really my senior year of college I got kind of voluntold into leading a middle school girls small group at camp for the church my mom was working at and had a really transformative experience and suddenly felt very strongly like I was supposed to go to seminary, and I didn't grow up in a tradition that ordained women, so I wasn't even really sure what, why I was going to seminary, what I would do. I just thought I think I'm supposed to study the Bible. We'll figure it out, we get there. So I went to Dallas theological seminary right out of college. I worked at a church in children's ministry and then in young adult ministry, and right when I got to seminary, my first semester was during the 2016 election. So not only was I like trying to figure out if I'm a woman and I don't think yet I've changed my mind about this but at the time I'm like I don't think I can preach, I don't think I can pastor. I know Beth Moore writes books, so maybe I can be a writer, so I start writing some things.
Speaker 2:My only real expertise at that point was in politics and history, because that's what I had been educated in and it was 2016, so there were people that wanted to hear people writing about that stuff, and I was in class with all of these students who, in some way, shape or form, wanted to go into ministry. I wasn't sure yet what I would do, but I was having conversations with fellow students that were either currently pastoring churches or were anticipating pastoring churches, and they were just distraught was like I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what my role is in this. It feels relevant. It doesn't feel outside the scope of my responsibilities because this is like destroying my church, but I don't know what's appropriate for me to say. I don't know how to engage in that, and so I wrote my first book in 2019. It came out in 2020. Just thinking about spiritual formation and political engagement.
Speaker 2:I started writing that book, realized there is so much.
Speaker 2:I don't know this is my like best offering right now, but applied to PhD programs because I just thought I need to keep studying this.
Speaker 2:There are more resources in the Christian tradition, and so that's what I've been doing for the last couple of years is just continuing to study political theory and you know theology and trying to just really look at what resources are available for the church today, because it felt like in 2016. A lot of especially younger people went this is really bad, this is a mess. Do we have to just reinvent the wheel? Like, do we have no resources at our disposal to respond to this? And what I really wanted to do was say let's there's, there's got to be some stuff out there and there really is. And that kind of sparked the combination of this interest in history and theology, in the Bible and especially with this new book in American history, because it's so. Our immediate context continues to shape us and so I wanted to explore, when it comes to reading scripture, we're not blank slate like. What are we bringing with us from our own history in America?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really cool, I remember so I was in. My undergrad degree is a Christian studies degree at a Southern Baptist college here.
Speaker 2:I live in.
Speaker 1:Northwest Georgia. Okay, so I actually I remember when I was in high school, like everybody that was a Christian was looking at Liberty or whatever. It was so big at the time, yeah. But I remembered like one of the semesters that fall semester of 2016 the election happening and I just had a light. There was always mixed conversation about it. It was such a weird thing, just kind of observing like such a, especially when I would go home from break Just seeing how my parents would respond to it or people in my church responded to it. And then the whole tying of like things to like conspiracy theory and that intertwining with like scripture and it was just like a mess of like I don't even know what to like say to some of this stuff. It was such a, it was crazy. It was like nothing I had ever observed before. Do you remember maybe a time before, like looking back I guess now would be hindsight, or maybe you recognize it in the moment growing up seeing some of this kind of intertwining of, I guess, the scriptures and then politics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I it's funny, it wasn't.
Speaker 2:It is a little bit hindsight of going back and realizing, oh, things that felt so normal to me, that were just like the water I was swimming in, are actually not totally normal, even within Christianity, like this isn't always how we've read this. Had read the scriptures or thought about theology and I think probably the most common thing was just I was in the kind of Christian communities that had a lot of the kind of mixing of patriotic images and biblical references, a military family and around a lot of military families, and so whether that's versus, like some places in Galatians to talk about freedom and kind of conflating that for any it doesn't even explicitly say it, it's just here's a verse but then there's like an American flag in the background or there's a sort of kneeling soldier or something and and other references to like promises and the Old Testament that are just kind of paired with images that remind us of America. Or even I mean I remember you know Ronald Reagan plays such this big role in the imagination of conservative Christians. He has so many lines where he's like talking about how all of the answers to life's hardest questions are found in this book. He gave this famous interview where he said like if I could have anything on a desert island, I would have the Bible, and so things like that that were it was clear when they were, when they were referenced. Just oh, this famous, important, powerful person also cared about the Bible. We care about the Bible. That's cool.
Speaker 2:It was like something about him being an important American conservative president with the Bible and how that was all kind of tied together to the point where I do remember in college, my first semester, I was on the debate team at Liberty, which was like where the liberals were, apparently, and it was just because we were reading really widely, we were reading people we disagreed with, we were in debates around the country with schools that disagreed with us, and I remember having like a really profound moment my freshman year of realizing like, oh my gosh, I really have believed that just to be a Christian is to be a Republican.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have never questioned that and I'm never, like you know.
Speaker 2:And especially honestly, the biggest thing that that provoked that realization to me was that a good amount of the other students on the debate team were black Christians who did not have that realization and thought it was very strange that I did, and so I really credit, honestly, a lot of my college years to giving me the space to ask a lot of questions and read a lot of things, because there were little pockets at Liberty of like really faithful people trying to, you know, shepherd students through these realizations, especially in like the lead up to 2016. And I'm honestly I'm so thankful to for really patient friends who were existing in that space and it was a lot harder for them as non white students and it was a lot harder for them and wanted to help us, like helped us read things that we weren't reading or ask questions we weren't asking. And then it was like, oh yeah, looking back, no one ever really argued for why Christians should be Republicans. It was just I couldn't imagine a world other than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I remember, I can literally remember my in being in the eighth grade was a day after in Barack Obama was elected and I grew up in South Georgia, deep South Georgia, and so it was just like I remember like like there were white people that were like this is a bad thing, and I was like I'm not good and I, and like I was just kind of under the impression like well, oh, I guess I'm supposed to agree with that because these are all Christians and I'm a Christian. Yeah, and it's such a like, looking back on a, I was just like I couldn't, I can't believe that. It's just a really crazy thing. Do you feel like in? So in some of your studies you mentioned you did study of history, american history how long has this been going on? So, like this, like how far back does this go? Because I've also read like kind of you mentioned the phrase a city on a hill, so I know that that has some American history and Christianity to. So how far back does this go?
Speaker 2:In a certain sense it goes back to the very beginning, and it wasn't just America either, or the early colonies. It was true across the western world at that point that the language of scripture was so much a part of our political and social life and it actually was kind of having a resurgence. People tend to think that that was the period, you know, in the enlightenment, where we just kind of took off the shackles of religion. Actually, people were very interested in that period, and especially in the enlightenment, shaping our political life together, and so America was, was not alone in that, but was very enthusiastic about that. If anything, I think what has changed is the references that we use have gotten less obscure over time. So we were able to make some pretty obscure biblical references and assume people would know them. Like in the Revolutionary War era there was this the curse of Maraz was referenced against people that were not sufficiently enthusiastic about the Revolution. And you know, obviously we all know the curse of Maraz now, you know. But it was in Deborah song. She talks about this place, maraz that was not fighting with Israel for God, and so it was like oh, this is helpful language to describe people that aren't aren't coming to our aid and fighting our cause with us. We couldn't do that today because people just would have no idea what you were talking about, but it's been consistent. It's just what we have gone to has had to get less, you know, sophisticated over time.
Speaker 2:And then I think the other thing that has changed and the city on a hill is a good example, so that that language is used with the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, john Winthrop, early colonial era. This is like him bringing the people across the sea. We're not sure exactly when or if he gave this speech, but this like speech or sermon that he gave references, this language from the sermon on the mount, where Jesus calls, I think, the people of God, a city upon a hill. And Winthrop says that's us, we're going to be this moral light. And he also, to his credit, like really is honest about the fact that being chosen people of God, having some kind of covenant with God, comes with judgments. He's like telling the people if we mistreat the poor and vulnerable, we will. We will face judgment from God, and so we should be careful and not do that. The negative side of this is he also ends with a quotation from Deuteronomy and basically says you know how? There was this covenant where Israel is promised land. That's what's happening with us. We've ratified God has ratified this covenant with us and we have this land. So suddenly you know, the violent taking of land in America is now divine right for these people. And so there's, it's a mess, it's really bad. And yet it's interesting that that language gets basically ignored for hundreds of years, like no one's really talking about john Winthrop or the city on a hill.
Speaker 2:Jfk finds this language from Massachusetts, from Massachusetts, so he wants to come draw on his own history. He references it a few times and then it's Reagan that picks it up, because it tells this exciting story about America's history and it makes it sound like from the very beginning we were this shining moral example to the nations, and so it's interesting that, on one hand, this has been true the whole time. We've always used biblical references like this, and yet it really is kind of in the Cold War era that we start to write a certain story about ourselves and we start going back to earlier things that we really didn't draw on for a long time and wanting to say in in part in opposition to atheistic communism in the Cold War saying no, we've always been a Christian nation, we've always been this Christian story, we've always been chosen by God, and so that's been something from our history. We have to reckon with the whole time, but it has really increased in just the last, you know, 50 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think it's like a you know something that I wasn't really aware of, the speech that Reagan gave, but it seems like that speech is given with a kind of a respect and honor for the Bible, at least to trying to present that, and those same people that probably voted in some ways are the same people that voted for Trump, whereas, like Trump doesn't necessarily have that same he uses to the Bible, but it's not that same like honor and respect, like. What are your thoughts on on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, trump is actually the first president since Reagan to not reference America as a city on a hill, which is, I think, a good description of actually how much has changed. Like even I mean hit like right before him, during the election, hillary Clinton reference Reagan's shining city on a hill. So there was still an attempt to kind of draw on that, that legacy, and I think it's really important what you just said, that that, for all of our failures, it very often was a genuine attempt to have scripture shape our political lives, whereas Donald Trump, I mean and I give some examples in the book like is so awkward with the Bible.
Speaker 1:Let me hold it upside down.
Speaker 2:It like in some it was well he held it up at when they had cleared Lafayette Square in front of st John's Episcopal Church. In the midst of these black lives, matter, protests, and it's so like if you people should go and look at the video if they've never seen it. It's not upside down, but it is just like he's like bouncing it in his hand. He's kind of awkwardly holding it. And then, my favorite part for someone writing a book on this, this was like he couldn't have given me a better description of what is wrong with all of this, because a reporter asks him is that your Bible? And he says it's a Bible which is just like a perfect description of. I don't even, I'm not even taking ownership of this thing. I don't read it, it's not mine, I just am holding it up for the cameras like a prop, yes, and it really was.
Speaker 2:Like you can't get a more straightforward picture Of the problem. There's, there's great promise, I think, actually, in using scripture in political life, but the pitfall is the tendency we have to use it as a tool. And Elizabeth Brunei, who's a writer for the New York Times at the time she was she. I loved her description of this moment. She basically was like he didn't open it, he didn't read it, he didn't go into the church to hear a sermon about it.
Speaker 2:All of those are things that you still can misuse it if you're hearing it, if you're reading it, if you're hearing a sermon about it. But it at least puts you in this posture of like I am receiving this thing, I'm under the authority of this thing. It could really, you know, god could speak through this to condemn what I am doing or to have a word against me. Actually, when you're holding it up like a prop, it it's, it's at the disposal of your will. Like you are determining how to use it. You can wield it like a weapon, you can use it against other people, and that's just such a picture like not, you know, other people have done a similar thing without literally Holding it in front of a church, but they've still treated it like a prop or a weapon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know a lot of people were. Just the whole atmosphere of that setting was just kind of rough in general to do that yeah have you observed where there's a difference between how each party uses it? Because you mentioned, if he's the first president To not make that phrase, yeah, then you know. Republican democrats both are using the bible in politics. How. How do they use it differently? Like? What's their approach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, sometimes it depends on the person. It is true that it gets used Sometimes well and sometimes poorly, on both ends of the spectrum. I give the example in the book, two recent examples of um. Mike pence, during the republican national convention prior to the most recent election that trump was in, said you know that we what? How did he say it? It was um. He referenced old glory in the context of this passage from hebrus, in which is oriented towards fixing our eyes on jesus, the perfecter of our faith, but he substituted we fix our eyes on old glory, which is just terrible. I mean, you're like, pretty direct, it's pretty directly idolatrous. But then you also have this example. It's a rider on the same same time period, that biden is talking about the sacrifice of american troops and references isaia here, I am lord, send me, which is also not great, also kind of idolatrous in its own way. And so we're. It's equal opportunity in terms of which side would like to misuse it.
Speaker 2:I think if there's a difference, I do think and I talk about this a little bit in the lens of looking at george w bush and obama I do think it's true in general. This is not true of all people, but it's generally true that, when it comes to republicans, there's more of an emphasis on telling people that I identify with the christian community. I'm one of you. I'm a christian. We share an identity. We share a community. I might misuse scripture In the case of george w bush. I might never reference the name of jesus in any of my national prayer breakfast speeches. I might really be pretty private with my faith, but I make a big deal about how my private faith is like your private faith, and so we share this identity and community.
Speaker 2:Whereas democrats are more likely to draw on the social reform tradition In american history, and so obama would often talk about like we need the moral language of scripture. This is important moral language that has shaped our country, and both of those are not really fully robustly christian, like both of them are saying like I'm using this thing either to identify with your community or to use a language that feels transcendent and powerful to you. Neither are really a picture of like my christian convictions actively shaped my policy. In fact, the speech where obama most directly did that, where he really did say Look, these are passages about how we treat the poor and vulnerable, the immigrant. I'm applying that to national policy.
Speaker 2:He got lambasted and people were not happy about that. So and and he wasn't consistent with that either. I mean, there were times in which it really was pretty explicit for him that this was language that was Helpful because it's our history's language, not because this language is true or, you know, real revelation, even though both of them, I, I think, are christians who are trying to follow christ. But we've been, we've been given certain scripts for how to use scripture, and those are two popular ones that I think Can be effective but are not really truly what it means to have like christian influence on policy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1:Something I really wrestle with, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is Is there a place for the bible in politics, like now, especially like with how pluralistic America is? I remember, you know, one of the first time I ever flew on an airplane. I was like my summer of the first year I was in at shorter where I went to school, but I was going into my junior year of college and I had been in a small town in south georgia and then a little bit bigger of a town in north georgia and I went to new york city and I was there for like Sit nine weeks or something like that. Uh, and I, and it was one of the first times where I was really around people that were vastly different than like, than me, like thinking wise and everything, and so that kind of shifted my perspective of like, how do you, how do you approach politics and do it well for the benefit of everyone, and not necessarily my faith has to be the leading factor of that. So like, is there a place for it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's such a good question and I think a lot of people right now are feeling like, no, absolutely not. There's a really important theologian, stanley Harwas, who spent a lot of his career here at Duke. He wrote a book a few years ago called Unleashing the Scriptures that starts with this very provocative claim that he says we need to take the Bible out of the hands of American Christians, like they have so misused it. We just like get it out of their hands. And I understand that. I understand the like, the kind of visceral response to how we have so mistreated scripture. I think the difficult thing is, if we really want to separate our political lives and the guidance scripture gives us, we really have to have a critique in American history of some really positive social movements, of the civil rights movement deeply shaped by scripture, the movement towards abolition, towards public schools and hospitals. There's so many positive social reform movements that have been shaped by scripture. So I think that's one thing to say is just it's helpful to keep our lens of what political work shaped by scripture looks like and widen it out and say it's not just the last, like 50 years of evangelical political engagement. There's a lot more than that. But in terms of the pluralism thing, that's such an important part of this, and I think it's important to remember that there's a difference between saying I want to coerce people into, into accepting my religious beliefs and saying I want all of us to bring our whole selves to the public square and be honest about where our convictions are coming from.
Speaker 2:I don't advocate for better immigration policies because I just think that that's a good idea. I think that the Old Testament tells us that nations will be judged by how they treat foreigners, and the lens I often kind of evaluate what I'm thinking through is my literal next door neighbors. Muslim family, immigrant family, all of the people in that family, but especially the women, have no choice really about appearing religious in public. If they go out in public, people know that they have religious commitments that are deeply held, that shape their whole lives, and so the extent to which we say I want to exclude religious arguments or Christian convictions or religious convictions in general or scripture from public life is also the extent to which we actually, I think, have greater harm that we would be enacting on religious minorities that have less ability to kind of pretend in public like they're religiously neutral. They can't do that. So I always want to be kind of running that through. How does that affect my neighbors? How would it affect their religious convictions in public?
Speaker 2:And also what it exclude like I just said, what it excludes some really positive movements in American history. And that doesn't mean that the examples that we have had in recent history of using scripture in political life are good examples. Many of them are not. But I think the response to that is instead to say let's go back to scripture and figure out if we're interpreting it well, let's be mindful of our you know our larger communities and the diversity of religious traditions that are a part of it. And what can we do to bring greater dialogue between those? Not by pretending we all believe the same thing or we don't really believe anything that important, but by being honest about our deeply held convictions that differ. And then how do we make sure that we're hospitable to people who are different from us without requiring either that we or they kind of leave their religious commitments at the door?
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are really good thoughts. Yeah, and I just I just wrestle with it in general, just because you know, just as you kind of like, grow in your faith and just grow in adulthood, like you begin to meet other people that don't think like you or grew up differently than you, and it's like, well, what gives my faith the right to be the guiding factor of, like stuff that impacts them, and it's a yeah, it's kind of a give and take. Like you, like you just said, have you found it difficult to have conversations around this concept with people and what does that experience been like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think part of what, part of what makes all of these conversations difficult about pluralism, about scripture, about politics in general is that we would like to believe that all these conversations are just about policies or politicians and we can just be like rational people about it and kind of like tally up the pros and cons for different things. And they're always involving our deeply held ideas about who we are, who our community is, what's ultimately good and true and right in the world. And I fear that a lot of people, because they recognize that having that level of conversation is really difficult and it is tend to think we should either ignore those conversations or, like we just were talking about, we should just say let's, let's bracket that complicated, messy, religious, philosophical, moral stuff and just deal with the wonky policy stuff. And you really can't like you can't separate those things. And the more that you kind of try and bracket them aside, I think the more they rear. They're really ugly heads in bad ways. Like I think there's a lot of dysfunction in our political life in America, in part because we have, we feel like the options for our religious life and our political life coexisting, are we just are a Christian nation and we coerce other people into Christian beliefs or we all have a neutral public square where no one really believes anything that deep and no one has religious convictions about anything and we just kind of stay at the superficial level and neither of those options are good for for Christians, they're not good for religious minorities, they're not good for any of us. But I sympathize with the difficulty because it is just. It is just going to be hard.
Speaker 2:I just had a conversation recently with Andi Colbert, who's a therapist who does all this work on trauma and attachment styles, and I was basically just going help me get some tools psychologically for dealing with this conversation and I think the best thing she said was we have to start with what she starts.
Speaker 2:With people who've experienced complex trauma is just like it feels hard because it is hard. This is just hard. Us having these conversations hard, us figuring out how to think about, for example, immigration policy, because I just mentioned it, what constitutes our community, how we faithfully care for people with great needs, what it means to provide, whether privately or in terms of government aid, like. All of these questions are complicated and difficult and when you have them, even with people that you love and respect. It's going to pull on all these bigger, deeper emotional things where someone's like I feel like you caught me a bad person, someone else is like I feel loyal to this community that says this other thing, so I feel like I have to defend it. Like it's always going to be this mess of attachment, relationship, community loyalty and I think the mistakes, the biggest mistake we've made in the past, is saying because that's really hard, we just, we just can't do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and a lot of times it's kind of like people draw their lines in the sands of what they'll budge on and what they won't budge on, and it's unfortunately leaves no room for any conversation around asking the question. Well, is mine as simple as my personal interpretation of this passage even correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I think that's where I've struggled when I began doing my undergrad degree in Christian studies and started actually learning how to read the Bible correctly and approaching it like from the context that it's written in and things like that, and realizing how often, like you've mentioned, these passages that are used to refer to America have absolutely nothing to do with the United States at all.
Speaker 1:It wasn't even the mind of those authors, and so it's kind of it's so difficult because it's like if you grow up in that your whole life, I mean there are people that grow up in that context into their fifties and sixties and it's like hard for them because the way it comes from if I have a conversation with them it's like well, you're expecting me to change something that I've believed my whole life.
Speaker 1:And it does impact the way they vote, the way they view politicians, the way they, and what I've seen recently especially since 2016, is how the scriptures have been kind of used as a dividing line defending against the other side, the other party. Has that always been necessarily the case where the scriptures have been used to like this side holds to it, to like point towards the other side, or is that kind of a newer concept?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have always done that and it is. It's interesting, I think, especially reading sermons and articles from the Civil War era. It's amazing how much it sounds like conversations we have today, Really, when one side will say, well, you're just not taking scripture seriously or literally. Or there's a great I forget what speech or sermon it's from, but there's this great line where a Southern preacher basically says, like our churches are full because we actually preach the gospel, but you have, like you have swapped the gospel for politics, and I was like that sounds like exactly what people say today if you talk about racial justice in your church. So it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, we've it's been this line in the sand, as you described, basically the whole time, and part of it is because, again, our political lives are not just about policy. They're about all these deeply held convictions about the world and what's true and right. And it turns out for for most of American history, people have gotten most of their ideas or at least they think they're getting most of their ideas about what is true and right from scripture.
Speaker 2:So it's always going to be really deeply intertwined For me, and I so appreciate how you just described the difficulty having these conversations, because part of the reason it's so hard and part of the reason I wanted to write this book was I actually think we should have conversations rooted in scripture about our political differences. It's kind of amazing in such a diverse, divided world that we do have people across the political spectrum that all say we really care about scripture and forming our whole lives, including our public lives. So I want us to have good conversations about scripture and politics, and part of the reason I went to history was because I have learned. I've been doing this work for I don't know like five years now, being in churches, being in Christian schools and campus ministries, and I do all this work talking to people and what I have learned is if a church or school says, hey, come on a Tuesday night and we're going to talk about politics in the Bible, people will just lose their minds. They will come ready to fight. Their walls are up. They know what you think already and I know what I think and we disagree. It's just going to be.
Speaker 2:The temperature is high, like it's just right off the bat. You can walk in the room and feel in your body that it is tense, whereas the best conversations I've ever had about politics amongst Christians who disagree deeply with each other have been, when we are six weeks into studying Jeremiah and a thing that's happening in the news has something to do with this passage that we're reading. And it doesn't mean it doesn't get heated, it can. But because we're all here, we're saying I'm submitting myself to the text, I want to be governed by this. I want to hear what God has to say. We're in a low temperature environment. No one, no one's coming in, going. I'm ready to fight about politics. It totally changes the temperature, it changes the tone, and so what I wanted to do with this book was go to our history to say let's give tangible examples. We can't ask these questions about how scripture informs politics without tangible examples. This is not something that can happen in hypotheticals. And yet I don't want to start off going. Let's talk about black lives matter in Romans 13, because that will go terribly.
Speaker 2:But what if I say hey, let me give you some examples of what loyalist priests said about Romans 13 and the Revolutionary War. Spoiler alert they thought it was a bad idea because Romans 13 says obey the government, and that also they would go to 1 Peter and say honor the king. You're supposed to submit to the king like we cannot revolt, and maybe the temperature is lowered a little bit because, yeah, we're dealing with a political thing and yeah, we have feelings about how Romans 13 should or shouldn't be used, but no one's like getting in a fight at the Thanksgiving table about the loyalists and the patriots. So hopefully we can use this example, we can learn from it and maybe it can push us a little bit. Maybe I used Romans 13 as a weapon against other people who were protesting and said, nope, obey the government.
Speaker 2:But ooh, the country that I love like putting fireworks off on on the 4th of July to celebrate actually was started by what a lot of people thought was a violation of Romans 13. So, ooh, what do I do with that? It forces us to deal with some inconsistencies that we might have, but in a way that I hope is a little less confrontational than we're in the weeds of this political moment, which does we have to have those conversations to some degree. But I think the way we enter into them and the context that we are in even just like physically and emotionally, the context we're in makes the biggest difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what I appreciate about that is is it makes your faith, it requires your faith to be nuanced and it's not like so black and white or rigid, and I think I think we need more of that. I'd love to hear some more of those examples that you you mentioned now. What are some other of those examples that you have in the book?
Speaker 2:So one of the chapters that I really love is talking about the book the Late Great Planet Earth, which people might be familiar with. It was, like the most popular book of the 1970s New York Times' Best, best Best Seller and it's describing one author's interpretation of revelation and what's going to happen in the end times. And that particular theological perspective on the end times has shaped so much of our political and theological life as Christians in America, and so I spend a chapter kind of pulling out some of the claims that this book makes but also trying to say let's remember that when this interpretation of scripture, this particular understanding of the rapture, the idea that at some point Christ returns and raptures the church out of the world and everyone else's left behind, like the left behind books, that particular interpretation not only comes from a theological context. It's not very old. That particular theological system called dispensationalism not that old, but also this period when it became so popular really is in this particular political context. That actually helps us understand why it became so popular.
Speaker 2:You're in the aftermath of pretty still recently realizing that nuclear weapons can just take out the whole world. Those are recently invented and very scary and you've seen the effects on people and now you're worried that the two superpowers in the world really could just annihilate each other. People are doing drills in schools my parents have talked about. We got under desks like that would do anything for a nuclear bomb. But it's hard, I think, for people who either were too young to remember that or weren't alive during that period to remember how frightening that was. And so the world feels unstable. There's all these modern technologies that are used in warfare and all of a sudden you go to Revelation and it starts to feel like is this describing now? And actually I'm so scared of what's happening. I am desperate to believe that at the end of the Bible, is this just roadmap of the future that I can just make, a map that tells me everything that's going to happen? We want control, we want to know what's in the future, and so this particular interpretation I mean these books sell like wildfire to people who, like theologically, shouldn't be in the same camp as the people who are believing this like dispensational approach to the Bible. But people loved it because it told them what was going to happen, it comforted them and it even told them, hey, if you do get left behind, here's this dramatic story about how you can be the hero that fights the anti-Christ, and like it's dramatic, it's exciting, and so looking back at that I want us to have a conversation about eschatology that again the temperatures lowered a little bit.
Speaker 2:There are some people who might still feel like they're living in that period, but hopefully we can look back at it and go, okay, it seems kind of silly, like we can go back and say, okay, how Lindsey, who wrote this book, he multiple times predicted the year that Jesus was coming back. And those years have come and gone. It's easy to go back and just think like that was so silly, like they thought that they knew they were like crazy conspiracy theorists in a basement with red string connecting lines in the Bible, but so it feels distant enough that you can kind of laugh at it. But then you pause for a moment and I try to do this in the book to say okay, but it made sense to them. Their fears were really motivating biblical interpretation.
Speaker 2:How is that true for us? Like what has happened in the last election season or two, where we can begin to kind of ask some hard questions for ourselves and ask where was my fear of the future, of political instability of war shaping how I interpreted scripture. What was I coming to the Bible looking for and of course you're going to find it, if you look hard enough, you'll find it and so trying to get us to ask those kinds of questions without saying right off the bat, hey, some of the things that you've said about COVID that are kind of conspiratorial, I think they're rooted in fear. I think you're just interpreting scripture based in fear. That's like a punch in the gut right off the bat, and I don't want to start there. I want to start with let's look at this example in the past that we have history enough to know their predictions were wrong, and then maybe can that help us a little bit evaluate what's going on with us now that's making us interpret scripture the way we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah and yeah, that's that. I resonate with that a lot. I remember. I remember watching the left behind movies.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I should. I was too young to be watching them to be honest, they're kind of scary. It freaked me out, I remember going to bed, thinking like what if it happens while I'm asleep, or something I get stuck here and you know, as I've gotten older, like realizing that a lot of those concepts I mean. I believe there's a book that was written, also in like the 1950s. That was another story that talked through like the end times and things like that?
Speaker 2:Oh, there were so many yeah.
Speaker 1:And I did look at that and think like it's crazy how something that can be a part of popular culture have more influence than what the actual scriptures are saying or referring to. And it's just a. It's really crazy how like I mean, you know, you have a whole book on it how the the scriptures can be used to like manipulate and abuse, and and it's unfortunate because a lot of times I think some people like it's not really their fault always if they're not in a certain context how have you seen this conversation and the issues that arise out of this impact outsiders and their viewpoint I don't know if I like to use the word outsiders, but people that aren't Christians or they're just observing Christianity from the outside in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what you just said is really important because I do think a lot of people who are not Christians very understandably will look at this history or even look at just right now like just what's happening in our political world right now and say, gosh, there must not be anything really particularly special about this book, like people can use it for anything. And honestly we have often in our political lives especially white evangelical Christians we have often actually treated scripture really horrifically, not just in our misinterpretation, but with how easily we are willing to use it for political ends and kind of flippantly and without a lot of it communicates other people sometimes that we don't actually take it that seriously, that we aren't submitting ourselves to it, that we actually think that like we are standing above it making judgments about if it's right or wrong, instead of saying like we are fallen, finite creatures that cannot know perfectly and we want to interpret this thing and we want humility. We have not displayed humility when it comes to interpreting scripture in public life, and so I can understand why people who are not Christians are looking at that and going. I don't know that I want to read this Bible because it seems like it's just open to any interpretation and it seems like it sometimes doesn't make people very nice, people like it's not, like it's forming them into people that I want to be around. But I think what we should take away from that is not only just like lament and repentance for how that has happened, but I think also the humility aspect is huge, not just humility to say, okay, I might be wrong in my interpretations. I really have to learn from other people.
Speaker 2:But anything I learned in my research of American history, it's that consistently, the people who were able to best interpret scripture were the marginalized, I mean the. The history of the black church in our country is a is a wonderful example of really faithful biblical interpretation and good, just political ends, and so our response to the, to the great misuse of scripture, should not be either pointing to that, to say, see, it's fine, look, other people have done it really well, but instead to say, actually, there's a pattern here. The people who have great political power, the people who have great wealth, tend to find ways to justify that through their interpretation of scripture. They tend to not hear the parts of scripture that might condemn them or criticize them. It's marginalized, it's the oppressed, it's the people who are kind of on the underside of history, that tend to be able to see most clearly the themes of scripture throughout the canon, see what God demands of them and their time and place.
Speaker 2:And so I think what we really need to do in response to the way scripture has been really maligned by evangelical Christians and public life is not to just say let's stop using it or to say I think those non Christians are right, it's just not, it isn't that special, the book, it's not that. Important is instead to say I need to not only have the humility that I might be wrong, I need to have the humility to sit at the feet of people who know how to interpret it better, in part because of their experience. Their experience actually more closely matches the experience of the people who actually were first inspired by the Holy, holy Spirit to write these words. Maybe I should take that more seriously. Maybe I should take some of these condemnations of the rich and the wealthy here as a reason why I have to learn from other people. I can't trust entirely my own individual interpretation of this thing by myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah and my, you know you kind of answered the question, but my, my question, my next question was going to be what is your hope for this book? Like when someone reads this book, what is your hope for that? And obviously, I think some of that is humility, but if there's any other thoughts that you have, I'd love to hear that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I, yes, I do think part of its humility, because I think reading some of this history it just forces you to be like, wow, if other people were so wrong. My thing with the Bible is.
Speaker 1:If you actually begin to like, study it, study it. You can't help but leave one sometimes like a little humiliated in your lack of understanding, as well as like just humbled. Yeah, and that's what I've learned from just taking us seriously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that's a huge. I mean I really would hope that people reading this would would get that impression, and I think the other thing is just that we would get some more resources for better conversations with each other about this. I think it's good that Christians, when we have political disagreements, want to go to the language of scripture to help us work them out. What's not good is kind of cherry picking, throwing verses at each other and not really being immersed in the full canon. The full story, and that's what I hope this inspires people to do is also just to go. Hopefully they find something in the book and they're like I didn't know that was in the Bible. I should go pick up my Bible and read some of it. That would. That would honestly be the best outcome to me.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, caitlin, I appreciate you coming on and talking through this book. August 22nd the ballot in the Bible. I want to read the subtitle how scripture has been abused and misused in American politics. It's a really good title. I'm excited to grab a copy and read through it. I'm sure I'll be left challenged, but thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Is there anywhere else that people can find some of your content and just writings and things like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you go to CaitlynChesscom you can find links to both those books and some other resources I've written and I'm regularly, every other week on the Holy Post podcast. So if you want another podcast to listen to, can you check that one out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're awesome, so cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I'll include all that in the show notes and links to the book so that people can find it and pre-order it. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Rethinking Christianity. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest from Rethinking Christianity, you can follow us on Instagram at Rethinking Christianity podcast, as well as on YouTube and Facebook. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.