Episode 24 - Christian Nationalism

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welcome to liturgist podcast everybody we have a guest host on this week's episode uh lissa where have you been i don't even know how to answer that i haven't been anywhere i've been in tulsa oklahoma oh that explains it that's where i've been [Music] for those of you new to the show if you go to itunes our show description lists that there are three co-hosts of the liturgist podcast michael gunger science mike and lisa pano and we get a pretty regular twitter shade wondering what the heck happened to lissa i think there's some intrigue wondering if perhaps there's been some liturgist podcast conflict a lot of conflict she's alive folks and you've you've actually had people ask you why you're not on the program yes i have people come up to me all the time like man i really like you on the program what happened see like something happened no nothing happened i'm just here it's also living life and basically they want they want me on here because you guys are so smart and they want me to break it up for them so basically that means that i'm the dummy i'm the dumb person here that needs to like just simplify things apparently but alyssa you're pretty you're the voice of the people i'm not that pretty i'm just kidding she's not a dummy i just want to let everyone in radio land understand just how a professional organization we are at the liturgist podcast basically michael and i both have a lot of recording experience and so no matter where we are we can set up and record and do a show and lissa doesn't so i think we had one episode we tried to record and we couldn't get it to work with lissa and then we just never tried again there was no decision or discussion or anything no we didn't mike and i didn't even discuss it we're just like just unconsciously like that that was too hard we're not going to do that anymore it's just too much work so and the only reason why i'm on it now is because michael's in tulsa oklahoma yeah so like listen we're doing the legis podcast where are you here i am those who don't know this is also my sister so that's partially why you know those those just feel like yeah it's my sister i don't need to call her the professionalism is amazing but now but now you're back that's all that matters is you're back for a riveting discussion today i'm sure yeah what are we talking about so this is we were talking mike and i had a conversation about what we're going to talk about but then you and i got talking this afternoon about the whole kim davis situation and i thought boy it would be fun i love that we're discussing this in record what are we going to talk about because we could switch it we could switch it to what we were going to talk about but what would you think about talking about nationalism and how it intersects with religion and what that turns into wow i mean we could do that we haven't had a media controversy in a while that's cool oh man is it always with me oh my gosh it is always with lissa no it's not no it's not i just i heard lissa ranting about it today and i thought this would be good on the podcast okay so alyssa should kim davis be in jail absolutely i'm not even like this is it angers me so much that you would even ask me that why are we even talking about her though like i don't i don't understand some people have been making the comparison between kim davis and martin luther king jr or rosa parks online you you can compare kim davis to rosa parks or martin luther king jr they are both homo sapiens they uh they have convictions both of them they all have convictions they both believe that jesus christ was in their heart they oh oh this is going deeper on us so i mean you can draw it's not you can compare anything right you can compare photons and christmas socks it's just a matter of what correlation there are between the data sets i wish that somebody was here to be like listen this is why she should be or shouldn't be since we're all on the same page i'll be devil's advocate okay go ahead for the sake of conversation why does it have to be jail because at this point apparently and this you don't want to have the show just on kim davis but this i think kim davis makes an interesting case study in how religion and nationalism get mixed up with each other because you have this lady right and she got these convictions that a marriage should be between a man and a woman and she feels forced with her beliefs to you know to have integrity and not give authority to something that she considers sinful she's saying she's willing to not have her name on the paper paper or whatever right is that true mike and so why couldn't they have worked something out like that instead of just throwing her in jail like north carolina did it in a different way apparently but that's not why she went to jail right she went to jail for violating a court order therefore being held in contempt of court and it is at the discretion of a judge what penalties can be levied for a charge of contempt of court so that judge who by the way does not support marriage equality thought it was vital to set a precedent that for an officer of the court to disobey a supreme court ruling and and further to disobey follow-up orders from the court was such a misuse of official power that it had to be remedied with something like jailing it's a contempt custody charge it's not a prison sentence she hasn't been convicted of anything she's just being held in contempt of court which is not without legal precedence in the united states okay mike what does she have to do to get out of jail her job she has to comply with the court order and she has to stop doing her job yeah or she could resign her position you know i saw another uh thing although this is a private citizen but it correlates somewhat in that a flight attendant converted to islam and no longer wanted to serve alcohol to people on airplanes and so she was fired and we're going to see i think we're going to see more and more of this where people's personal religious beliefs affect the way they play a role in society and an occupation now obviously that's a much bigger deal in a government capacity but you know what if somebody didn't believe in modern medicine and had a job at the national institute of health and so they wouldn't authorize drug research they wouldn't validate pharmaceutical licenses so that people could become pharmacists and dispense medications that's what we're talking about here your personal beliefs can certainly be a guiding principle for how you live your life but i think there's a reasonable expectation that at some point your right to believe and practice what you wish does not give you the right to impact the lives of other people who don't share those beliefs okay so why do you think it is why do you guys think it is that people they see her as a hero standing up for her faith and facing the jail time as some sort of martyr some sort of the religious people are being oppressed by the united states government and she is standing up for the oppressed like rosa parks because it's fantastic pr for who a lot of christians in america believe that they are a persecuted minority and this validates that persecution complex look we're being sent to jail just for standing up for the bible so it plays into a persecution complex and validates it and it is a terrific rallying point for that movement i was having a conversation with somebody on twitter and i was like you don't understand this is great pr for them someone tweeted they said why would anyone voluntarily go to jail if you're trying to make a point and you're trying to gather media attention to your cause being jailed is a fantastic way to get the word out about what's going on and that's probably where some of these correlations between martin luther king and kim davis come from is he civil disobedience and was jailed and now she has practiced some form of disappearance with jail and in one case you have martin luther king standing up for a lack of basic constitutional rights for black people in america and on the other hand you have kim davis who was actually restricting granted constitutional rights but she sees that there's this very interesting confluence here between what truly maximizes personal liberty i i talked to a professor once who said that america law was built on the idea that your right to swing your arm ended where your neighbor's nose began uh and what we're seeing in all of these issues is where exactly is a nose and an arm and the neighbor disagrees that's the problem we have is you have christians who believe with full convictions that their liberties are being impaired because they might have to you know pay for birth control or issue a marriage license and then on the other hand you have women or lgbt people who just want either you know birth control or a marriage license and whose liberty is being eroded where a lot of people take this is a discussion between privilege the erosion of privilege and rights so what is happening is a traditionally very privileged group white evangelicals is seeing an erosion of privilege in other words an ability to be more than equal with the rest of the society and that feels a lot like a loss of liberty but i still i think i i agree with all that i think there is this weird what she's doing is seen as a moral good implies a very unhealthy and strange relationship to the state so when you look at the roots of christianity and how it begins as this sort of anti-establishment right like it's like this revolution within a culture that the powers that be are not okay with i mean it starts with the crucifixion by the state of the leader of the whole thing this jesus character that gets crucified by the romans for being a threat to the national peace and and these early followers of jesus begin with very overt like political language like caesar is lord no jesus is lord and these there's a lot of people getting killed in the state putting to death even more christians and putting them into the arenas or whatever you know i don't know all of the history how it gets revised and through through time but from what i know of the story that's it starts as a sort of standing up against the man the government the nationalism of the day um and making claims that transcend that and then somehow in the next few centuries with constantine and all that happens in the early roman empire christianity actually becomes a power and it becomes like the official religion of the empire and and it's a very strange turn and very anti what it started as and it's it's that you know that cycle that you see through history of the oppressed becoming the oppressors people that were oppressed and they gain power they gain freedom and then often they when somebody starts getting on their feet they try to take over somebody else and we see that it's kind of in human nature listen i watched this uh documentary last night friends of god on hbo and we were watching it and all of a sudden in the middle of it is like oh no i think i might be in the music the music and the first thing is as friends of god comes on friend of god oh yeah a friend of god and the show is called friends of god yeah but then we're in it literally at the end um and i was horrified i was like we were like yelling no oh my gosh no oh wow so the whole thing is kind of showing that the evangelical right and its association with the if you'll notice did you see all the american flags in every church like you know every church has like an american flag somewhere front and center and this thing we were part of that i'm so humiliated now that we were part of uh it's called battle cry and it was taken over the country again for the lord this was a christian nation we were founded on christian principles and now you know this next generation it looks like there's going to be only four percent of them that are going to be evangelical christians that was that was the stat they were thrown around and so we need to raise a battle cry and and spread the gospel to this generation and but it was all very like when you look at it especially in the context of the rest of the documentary and we're sitting there talking singing about our war cry and there's like these american flags and people like lifting their hands and it's like a freaking nuremberg rally or something it's like at some point you know we actually did crusades and killed a lot of people and used that language for the lord so maybe just get away from that language just get rid of it it's too soon it's always going to be too soon and we should all just recognize that it will always be too soon to use it um it's so weird how worshipping jesus the one who is crucified by the state becomes a way of turning the state into this massive christian power that enforces its morals and ideals on all of its citizens not only is it historically egregious to how this country was actually formed but it's destructive and dangerous yeah i think what was like so shocking to me is that like seeing how politically active a lot of the churches were in the film i felt like they were more interested in saving the united states of america as a government and as law than they were about caring about people like it was more of a goal to change like a whole system than it was just to care about actual people and why i don't understand what the purpose of that would be i feel like that's just a waste of your time when you talk nationalism and religion you have to be careful not to talk just about psychology but sociology right human beings are attracted to certainty above almost everything else certainty and a meaning in life religion by having epistemology based on absolute knowledge through revelation and authority from god is excellent in motivating behavioral changes what do governments want they want to be able to control the governed well not simply to serve them because as we understand neuropsychologically power is an inevitably corrupting influence on human psychology even the best people make subtle and measurable changes to their behavior and the way they treat people they perceive to be lower in station to themselves the longer they are in a position of authority and so of course the rulers of government seek to use the psychosocial neurological levers of religion to keep a block of voters or a populist in line and as much as we'd like to villainize republicans for creating the religious right and conflating republicanism with jesus the left certainly has its own religious fervor around say environmentalism even though that's a cause i agree with it is typically discussed in terms of righteousness and absolute certainty so that even though it is not technically a religion it is treated religiously this is a formula that works this is a hit song that always goes number one on the radio charts that's why people keep using it so as much as i lament nationalistic origins and religion and see them as harmful i also don't have a really good handle on how you could subvert the effectiveness of authoritarianism other than economic empowerment and education which is just phenomenally difficult to do at scale because authoritarianism tends to reinforce itself it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's better help h-e-l-p dot com slash liturgists with economic empowerment that's a of course an incredibly complex issue but education certainly comprehensive education is a complex issue as well but as far as kind of seeing that the emperor has no clothes does that have to be incredibly complex oh yeah because that's a self-limiting position like psychologically learning the emperor has no clothes is distressing you have to be in a position of relative economic security in order to contemplate ideas like those that's what i mean like if people are struggling to survive they will look for places to be certain places to know a true north the the more difficult your life is the greater your draw towards certainty there's a reason why skepticism is so popular among affluent westerners they have the economic means to sit there and ponder and pontificate they are so assured of where their next meal is coming from that they're okay dealing with some philosophical uncertainty because they don't have any material uncertainty i don't know i when i've traveled to different countries most countries actually every country that i've ever been to but the united states even if you just go to canada thinks that how americans get their flag and their crosses mixed up with each other is weird if you go to uganda go to a tribe in uganda which i have and worshiped with them in their huts which i have and you see how they worship there's no ugandan flag on the wall they're not talking about how god's plan for uganda they needed to become a christian nation and have christian leader it's the government is kind of besides the point for most of the world i think but the united states we uh there was this cr croatian girl that used to go to the church that we were at in michigan that i mean she was very poor uh were in her home country that she grew up in and you know had a salvation experience in her youth and then when she came over to america and she saw she was at one of our fourth of july services and there was a huge flag on the backdrop and we were singing you know god bless america or something and she was so creeped out i mean this was like a very conservative christian evangelical i mean conservative like theologically and been very influenced by a lot of american evangelical ideas philosophically theologically but the flag thing and the nationalistic thing she did not understand it she was so creeped out and weirded out by why are you mixing up jesus with your government and i think that's a lot of people i think america has a very unique uh strange obsession with us well america is one of the most deeply religious quote developed unquote countries in the world that hasn't always been the case most of western europe and eastern europe had and in some cases continue to have state religions they just now have had a period of declining religiosity in the post-war period and especially in the last 30 years where we haven't had that same decline so we're an anachronism but we're not a historic you see what i mean so like you haven't had this sort of um rampant nationalism to begin with so in somewhere like uganda because those are those have had a completely different postcolonial experience where they've been attempting to form national identity whatsoever independent from rebelling from colonialism so you know but i mean even today i mean if we look at what's happening with the refugee crisis and you have horrible situations where muslims are trying to flee really really threatening of life and property situations and they're being stopped at the borders of european nations who are saying you know like hungry we can't let all these muslims in because we are what we're a christian nation so it's not like it's not unique in the world even today to conflate national identity with religious identity yeah that's interesting because you go i mean if you go to the church of england you go to westminster abbey and it there's a huge mix of church and state in that but the christians that i meet in england today don't seem to conflate church and state so much they don't think it all comes down to england well some sociologists believe the reason that america is so deeply religious still is because we were just as religious as western europe at its peak but we've never had a national religion there's never been one denomination backed by the government merely the fact that in our country there was religious freedom and so you had this like almost protestant mimetic accelerator in the american experiment where american christianity was able to rapidly mutate and change ideologies beliefs propagation strategies proselytization strategies and compete effectively with selection pressure and mutation and because of that create much more neurologically virulent forms of christianity that were able to persist the societal changes that caused a massive decline in religiosity across europe if i would have just read that on a sentence i would have had to read it like six times i mean i was with you but if i'm saying if that was written down i would have been like closing the book but i'm like well i'm going to need to go get my dictionary okay so let me it was an impressive sentence it was it was really fantastic let me ask you this so when you read things like um we just need to get back to how we were at the very beginning a christian christian nation what are your first thoughts do you know what i'm saying like when people use that as a stance yeah i mean i understand what they're saying i mean that that's just sociology those are normal psychosocial responses conservatism always positions itself as a return to a better era the data tends to indicate that better era never existed but it doesn't matter humans look to the past with rose-colored glasses pretty consistently unless you have very clear records of atrocity and in some cases people will ignore those there was no golden age of of christian america we have had great awakenings our country there's been periods where we are more and less religious as an aggregate some of the periods that maybe christians would hearken back and and think would be exciting to return to it's are only really great if you're a white property owner but even you know it's not so simple to say that america was or was not founded as a christian religion some of our founding fathers were christians in good standing others were christians in name only who in their writings were more along the lines of dias and then some of our founding fathers were radically anti-religious and and spoke at length about the ills of religion in society i think we are now what we started at in america we are a country where everything is up for discussion and debate including our own history and i i think that's been a relatively successful system america has worked out pretty well for america and a lot of that is based on this framework that was created by these rather clever founders that allow some stability constitutional stability but an ongoing selection pressure that forces government that forces business forces markets and even forces religions to constantly adapt and compete to survive it is somewhat brutal but it has been relatively effective at keeping this country relatively prosperous at least for the people that this country believes matter over time and and hopefully that is a group that we are continuing to grow and we're continuing to apply the good things about america more universally i don't know if we've made a great case as to how the marriage is destructive between church and state and nationalism and religion and i think i would love to also talk about how do we move forward i mean england again while they may have started as a very nationalistic their religion was practiced in a very nationalistic way i don't i don't see it practice like that from the christians that i know there now i'm sure there are remnants of it but you don't know everybody for the most part it doesn't feel the same when i've been to churches in other countries so how do we how do we move forward but what are some of the potential destructive nature of when the flag gets mixed up with the christian flag and the bible and our beliefs and it all comes into this weird pot of righteousness or whatever one of the major things is nations are violent they are they're just the very nature of how every nation gets formed and is they all have militaries they all have borders they all have laws and these are all things you know we have systems of power and hierarchies and caste systems and all sorts of things happen in countries that are pretty antithetical to the sort of things that jesus taught borders and wars and where do you see jesus like that's the plan for his disciples is to mark off some borders and and take over some land and you know it's like um and that's how the country that's how our country is formed we came here and we took over land we fought wars to expand and when you start associating that with manifest destiny of god anything becomes justified any horror we just watched uh lisa and i just watched conspiracy it's another hbo movie from maybe the 90s or something but it's the story of some of the military commanders during world war ii in germany and they all met together in this house and the movie's based on i guess the actual record of this meeting they have like one copy one transcript of this meeting where basically they came to the final solution for the jews in europe in the 40s and it's so disturbing but when you hear these words and see how to kind of see how these are human beings that are having these conversations and they do the same thing with mixing up authority and power and religion and you know one of the guys makes a statement of how these godless jews and they keep like subtly changing their language um you know they're evacuating the jews and rather rather than just saying what they're actually doing killing exterminating when you it just gets all mixed up like that and anything becomes justified when god and the kingdom of god is on your side and your nation there's nothing out of bounds and all you have to do is look back at history and see what's been done when that happens and and look at the crusades and look at colonialism and the wiping out of native american tribes and of countless atrocities committed by religious people in the name of christ but through the power of the state with witch trials and with inquisitions and go to the torture museum and look at what the church used to do to heretics look at the devices they used to use with the power of the state and the violence of the state when you equip the state with the authority of ultimate truth that religion claims you just have power that is not easily stopped and no one can put a check on it because it's it's it's god that is doing it that's where the danger is and that's why when you see kim davis and anybody that's like you start seeing the religion creep into the state and and her beliefs how she's dictating the law or she's not you know it's like with her beliefs and you start getting those things married together i just immediately there should be red flags everywhere like this how could you how could one have ever guessed that the state you know that that country of germany would kill millions and millions of people sounds so absurd like putting people into showers and gassing them and killing them by the thousands every day how does that happen like this you start marrying these big ideas big philosophies big religions with authority and government power but i feel like anybody is going to disagree with you every time because they think it's right this is the right way that that only happened because it wasn't jesus who they were following who's the real true god the real way this is the right way so how why would that ever happen if you're following jesus then you're in the right no matter what yeah i guess who is this jesus that you're following and if the jesus has anything to do with the state it's not the real jesus [Laughter] well okay if it has anything to do with my specific state and the authority of my specific government and nation what nationalistic teaching do you see of jesus i see zero other than render caesar what is caesar's ah it is pretty nationalistic about the kingdom of heaven i mean there is a fair amount of uh this nation will take over all nations at the end of time language in the bible too but not not to earthly nations certainly not well isn't that to me that's kind of the whole point is this way of living trump's nations yeah but i think that's what kim davis would say that she's doing her way of living is trumping a nation yeah and actually there would be something admirable about her resigning if she said you know what this is what i believe to be true and i can't in good faith do my job anymore that's fine but when you start trying to force your religion on other people using the strength of the government you've left jesus in my opinion i just don't see jesus using the strength of the roman empire to force his message on people [Music] i feel bad for her and that on some level and then i'm like wait a minute i don't feel bad for you all you have to do is quit that's all you have to do i mean i think in her mind she's standing up for righteousness and she's you know but but what if you cut if you cut that tie between america and jesus i think she would suddenly realize oh yes if you believe that gay marriage is wrong then don't get married to a woman i mean that that would be righteous for her if that's what she thinks her faith dictates that that gay marriage is wrong or not legitimate then she should avoid getting married to a woman until that's changed for her and that's the ti like i think if you could sever that tie somehow so how do we move yeah but that's wrong in any context it's not just the government you should never be inflicting your beliefs onto someone else in any context i believe you should not kill other people and i would use the force of law to make sure that religious belief was enforced on other people i would call the police if i saw someone killing another person okay what if you were a general in the united states army and you came to faith and you had some sort of pacifism no i agree i'd step down but i'm saying we can't say that you should never enforce your beliefs on another person we have some shared belief and value that the rule of law is based on like to say you should never that would be anarchy no because i would not call the police if someone got murdered because i'm a christian but it's still a belief like anything you believe any personal ethic is a belief whether it's religious or not that's why they call me semantic mike yeah i i actually i i think that if somebody truly believes something you're going to want that belief to spread you're going to want that belief to affect other people i think using government as a means to your personal religious ends is dangerous and needless and not christian how so mike how what happened with you moving pledging allegiance to the united states flag in your church what changed for you to seeing that that was silly that was uh that was pre-atheism in high school i read the gospels a lot really started to lean towards a pacifistic ethic ethos the jesus i saw in the new testament even when i was a biblical literalist which i was at the time seemed to be espousing ideas about power systems about the treatment of the poor and the disadvantaged that were antithetical to a lot of the american experience so i was actually kind of a good baptist who was also an anti-nationalist yeah that's the same with me it's because christianity does that that's what's interesting like follow the follow the trail follow the yellow brick road i remember because there was a debate at church this was a big thing that tipped me what we you know welfare and it was basically like someone who is liberal for a baptist which was basically like well maybe if if they literally can't work then for a little while they can have government assistance and versus another person was like no there should be no government assistance ever at all no because you're you're training people not to work and that's not of god i actually said and i think i was like 16 and these were deacons in the church and i said i don't care if the church feeds them or the government feeds them but they need to be fed like i don't see a lot of room in the scripture for just people not getting fed and that's when i really started to tilt because you know you there was this message like you should read your bible every day and i actually started doing it my friends who still believe in those strong like we shouldn't be giving welfare out to people that is their their thing that it's like that should be the church's job well they're not doing their job but but that's the end of the that's the end of the statement it's not like well then shut down the capital campaign for the building and start a capital campaign to feed every person under the age of 16 in your city who's hungry yeah i can't handle this conversation it makes me so angry i don't even want to talk about it she lives until sometimes a week that i look at my husband and i go why do i even live in this country there are other places that are going to pay for my daughter's health care i don't need this in my life it makes me so angry i can't would you vote for a one world government no way [Laughter] that would be and i'm not even talking about prophecy like i am so cynical of what happens when organizations scale national governments are bad enough okay like corporations are bad enough we are we're close to having one world government and it's it's global stock markets i mean it said that most of the governments are in corporate pockets anyway think okay just think there would be no syrian refugees right now they just go to the next door it'd fix a lot of problems no i don't think it would a lot of problems or would it just create just it would create a lot of problems so much more wow this created a lot more problems just going full on authoritarian like a one-world government that also has absolute authority because if it's like what he's saying if it's like a democratic one-world government it would be even more slow and efficient and controversial than the american government and if it's an autocratic one-world government we already see what happens when giant countries go to autocracy and they can't even keep a functional economy so you'll just have a global economic collapse which might be pretty decent for the environment but otherwise a total disaster [Laughter] well what if what if it was king mike the worst thing we could do for the world is put me in charge like the last human being what would happen i would invest like all this money to like wire up the entire world with fiber optics for high-speed speed internet thinking that if everyone could just see and talk to each other and learn without restrictions it would fix everything and they'd be like excuse me chancellor mccarg yeah what's up hey you forgot you forgot to feed people oh really how many people everybody did i the whole world is dead we've lost half half half of what the population of the world we converted all the world's mineral riches into fiber optic cable so that's done but people are awfully hungry out there no that wouldn't matter yeah wouldn't if you're aware that means that it wouldn't happen yeah okay it would be really stressful no i would just freak out i would have a panic attack i'd give it a roll i'd i'd go for it i'd be like king mike all right let's go no let's roll with this oh i think that out of the three of us it would definitely have to be me no no way [Laughter] no way you just start chopping off heads you'd be like the queen and alice of wonderland the queen of hearts yeah oh whatever happened if any of us became the world ruler this show would have a lot of downloads that's that's the big thing you must listen to this podcast okay so how do we getting back on track here how does a person recognize that perhaps some nationalism has crept into her or his view of the world and view of christianity and how can they start thinking about that in a better way it was interesting when i when we had that those several religious people angry at us last year on facebook over uh you know evolution a lot of times when i would click on the person that were the angry people they had an eagle and it was an eagle with a cross and a maybe something about guns right on their bio it was always like is that a picture of all of those things well many times it was an eagle with guns in its wings with a flag flying behind it perhaps some fire and a cross yeah wow so if you have that on your facebook page you that's clue number one that you've uh allowed some nationalism into your religion and uh your religion is dangerous um it is it's the most dangerous thing on earth here's what's so weird about this this brand of thing what is it associated with guns the world is not getting warmer so don't worry about the don't worry about the environment it's a it's like the worst stuff it's that could really kill us all did you know that it's like the worst did you know that the oklahoma representative came in to the courtroom earlier this year and threw a snowball yes just writing in the room yes that's amazing so you you were saying michael what do we look out for and then you start talking about eagles and guns and flags on facebook and i think that's looking at symptoms without looking at the disease yes of course and so the disease i think nationalism is a form of authoritarianism and everything i've studied i think everything that people talk about religion's ill effects is distilled down to when religion becomes a part of an authoritarian system now it can be independently religion all by itself can be authoritarian or you can mix religion in the state and have it be authoritarian either way when your religious beliefs are marked by an importance of the good of an institution or organization over the rights and liberty of individuals you are looking at a potentially authoritarian system so it doesn't matter if you're conservative or if you're liberal it doesn't matter if you're christian or if you're muslim or if you're buddhist although i haven't met a lot of authoritarian buddhists i have met a couple it does happen anytime your system requires protecting the church or the institution more than protecting people both in and outside of that institution you are looking at authoritarian influences i think that's the most important measure the the greatest potential for abuse so that covers kim davis that covers sex scandals in the catholic church that covers spiritual abuse by preachers in the protestant church all of those situations are where individuals decided that the rights liberty and suffering of individuals was not as important as protecting a leader or an institution and maybe i've missed something but in my model that is the root of religion's rough edges i think that what most people run into like that was a great breakdown of it but i think that people run into more of what do i do when i run into the situation every day i would say it's the majority of people have this ingrained in them church and state what do you do when you run into this especially when hot topics like kim davis come up or anything anything it's just it's everywhere so but let's let's say somebody gets into this argument with their parents i think what i mean to me just saying well we disagree and walk away or do you try to like explain so you mean how do we handle this in terms of how do we become activists for anti-authoritarian policies and religion or how do we personally subvert authoritarian systems please rephrase your query i think personally because there has to be some so i mean i can we can all see what the danger of it is so then what's the solution to that no i mean i think no i definitely think you can live your life in a way that subverts authoritarian systems i am a feminist so i do things that can subvert patriarchy that's i do that on purpose i'm not particularly mean about it but if i'm talking to another man and he uses a pronoun for a woman that is like that or an object literally objectifies a woman or calls my wife quote your woman unquote i say my wife is her own individual just a really gentle correction so in the same way an authoritarian systems and authoritarian religion you can simply interrupt people and say how you would say it differently that's a really minor thing i think kind of more meaty would be i went to a church that was left authoritarian in nature i didn't spend my energy and my uh charitable givings in institutions that were defined primarily by authoritarian structures i went to a much less authoritarian church i think in terms of activism like fighting with people online or at the thanksgiving dinner table is really ineffective so there there is a true thing and that people who are frustrated as a group it is important that there are voices that kind of cry out grief and lament over you know ongoing suffering and ongoing frustration to create social identity that's important but if you actually want to create change in the powerful group that's causing the problem it's most effective to affirm people's identity and goodness first and then kind of cast ways that things can be done better so instead of like you're a terrible person because you support republican chevy jesus you say man i love the way that your faith compels you to blank and then you say something good that they actually do and if you start by finding the goodness in people and then telling them how to be more good you never activate their amygdala you never put them on the defense and you subtly neurologically recondition them and i bet a lot of people who have conversations with me right now have alarm bells going off in their head because they realize i gave them a neurological suggestion but whatever that's one way to do things my wife by the way says that i can be manipulative to which i say what what do you mean when am i manipulative can you name one time that i was actually manipulative i mean you just gave us the way to be manipulative so there you go on the myers-briggs i'm an enfj and we only manipulate people so that they can be better versions of themselves for their own good i mean but that's manipulation nonetheless i mean it's still manipulation no i'm all for it [Laughter] manipulation it has a negative connotation though i i just you know i've i see it all the time when you when you hit someone head-on and you have the war and you have the battle and two amygdalas turn on it's literally just a slog to see who's going to be victorious in battle you're not actually changing beliefs on anyone's part if you're not changing beliefs you're not changing behavior i'm just a pragmatist i would rather not have the big victory and instead have the person walk away living a little bit better to bring spiral dynamics back into this when you go sorry if this if you're not familiar you could listen to our spiral dynamics podcast how green comes after blue but there's this hatred of blue and still some of the same us and them stuff that that blues will use greens can use um but it sounds more progressive and liberal or whatever i think this same idea like it can be this anti-authoritarian anti-establishment person and i can tend to be like this so much so that it almost does become this dogma authority that i need to change the world with it's super ironic rather than it leading me to quiet pastors you know what i mean rather than it leading me to just be present with people as people and as individuals with all their own weird stuff going on all my own weird stuff going on rather than trying to see this in the same sort of establish like kind of create a new establishment that's against establishment or whatever you know like the same just destructive ways of seeing people and treating people kind of when you see that the emperor has no clothes on and you see the flag at the front of the stage i think you can start you can be subversive it's always in small ways because it's always anything you do is going to be a drop in the bucket and drop in the ocean but it starts somewhere you know so for me like i was always really purposeful at bloom the church that we had started we'd meet in a place and people would kind of make fun of me but i would always take the flags off of the stage we anywhere we'd go we'd meet in different buildings or stuff there'd be american flags on the stage a lot of times get that flag out of here not that i don't love the flag or don't love like i said there's a lot about america that i love and i'm grateful to be american but don't put that next to the communion bread get that out of here that has no place in this place and so little things like just little decisions if kim saw this relationship between church and state and how authoritarian religion is it destructive and dangerous uh i think she had made some different decisions and she would make some different decisions so i think everybody making little different decisions the people that have the graphic design jobs in the church are going to design a little differently and the people that print out the fl the void voting guide flyers during voting guide times for churches that might think twice about how they're doing that and handing those out and preachers will think twice about how they handle our national issues and holidays and i think it's just all all we can ever do is just offer the drop of ourselves into the ocean and not expect to to change other people so much but just to be kind of faithful to to what we see at the light as being and so i think the most important thing is just is to see and as we see how our our jesus has been corrupted and and formed into an idol that's been formed and given to us by nationalistic power and people that have co-opted religious language to further their own political beings when we see that it's just it's kind of like when you see oh the emperor doesn't have any clothes it it changes the little ways that you behave and interact with with religion and nationalism and so i to me the more people that see is when we'll start seeing a change obviously this is a little less prepared than several episodes so if you've got things we missed things we should hear about go to the liturgists.com podcast you leave a comment of course you can also see us on twitter at the liturgists or on facebook facebook.com liturgist we also want to let you know this november the 13th and the 14th we're going to be in london for an event called belong belong it's something we did in atlanta already we're going to do an additional cities we get together with a small number of people and talk about consciousness and art and science and faith and how to create christian communities that don't hurt people that do real good in the world and don't ignore all the changes happening in human society because of advances in human knowledge through science and expanded perspective through art they've been really really great so far we can't wait for london so if you go to the liturgist.com belong you can learn all about it november 13th and 14th and uh you can even register there as well man wild episode great to tell you every other tuesday we're going to keep releasing episodes we haven't broken the streak so far and we're going to keep that going so this is science mike lissa pano i'm michael gunger thanks for listening everybody