Talking Faith: Christianity & Politics

In this pivotal election year, Rev. Dr. George Mason led the participants at Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church’s Pub Theology in a reflective exploration of the role Christianity has played and should play in the realm of politics.

From navigating contentious issues to grappling with the concept of Christian nationalism, he delved into the complexities and challenges of faith-based engagement in the public sphere.

“Patriotism is love of country. Nationalism is hatred of the other.”

Watch the video, here.

GEORGE (00:00:00):

Christianity and politics. I'm going to give you three models of how we engage, uh, in politics as Christians. And, uh, the summary of it is this. I'll start on the right, which is my left. You're right. I'll move over to the left, which is my right. Uh, and then I'll finish in the middle, uh, which is correct, <laugh>. However, I want to, I want to prepare you for the fact that the center is not, uh, correct because it's in the center. Uh, only because it is, uh, it, it is more like the Latin root of the word radical, which means from the root that is, it's at the center, it is, uh, it, it takes account of all that is around it. And so we're gonna be looking at these three models, you might say. And the first, uh, it, well, another disclaimer or two, um, is that in order to characterize these three models, I will try to say some things about approaches.

GEORGE (00:01:29):

And you will probably, I will probably need to exaggerate a, a a bit, because we all know extremists in each of these groups. But it's a, it's a good discipline for us to keep in mind that if we're going to have a civil society at all, we should not look for the worst adherence of any position and characterize the whole position that way. We would not want that for ourselves. So we should also look at, you know, what, what is behind these positions? What noble ambitions can we find in them? So we'll try to do that together as well, and then arrive in an approach that I hope to say is constructive engagement. So when we think about these three approaches, let me, let me say that all three of these approaches are going to draw upon American history. And we, American history is contested.

GEORGE (00:02:40):

That is to say, we always have people who say this is the right interpretation of American history, right? And it's fair to say that there are truths to their interpretation, but we're gonna try to examine them and say what's right and what's wrong about those different interpretations. You know, like I'm a Baptist and we tend to like to say my kind of Baptist hold to the real, true, authentic vision of being Baptist, you know? Well, I mean, that's simply a claim that we make. There are a lot of kinds of Baptists and different kinds of Baptists also have validity to their claims because they have history as well on their side. So we're all trying to move toward what is a good, right, healthy approach, a, a, a vision of how we can engage in, uh, our faith and the political process that is, uh, uh, an approach we should, uh, hold to The first approach then I'm gonna talk to you about is what has come to be known as Christian nationalism.

GEORGE (00:03:59):

And obviously January 6th was, it was on full display. It's sort of come into pub, the public sphere in a big way. But it's rooted not in the era of Trump, only. This has a long history in our country of an approach to religion engaging in politics. And I'll take you back to the, uh, Massachusetts Bay colony. That is to say, the Puritans who came over and established, uh, a colony of religious liberty. They wanted freedom of religion from the Church of England Yeah. From Great Britain. And they, they came to these shores and they, they wanted to establish a place of religious liberty for me and not thee, right? That is to say this was going to, they were going to do it right where everyone else had done it wrong, right? This was the Massachusetts Bay colony. They used language like the new Jerusalem, the New Israel.

GEORGE (00:05:18):

They were the people of God, and they were going to, uh, come to this land, which despite the fact that they were Native Americans there, they, they claimed it as an empty land that they were going to settle and did. And so this tradition grew out of Protestant Calvinism in Europe. Now in England, what they, uh, were leaving was a church that they felt was corrupted in various ways. And they were called puritans because they wanted to purify the church. They wanted sound doctrine. They wanted, uh, adherence to God's laws. They wanted a church that would honor God. And so, uh, they, that they worked hard to reform the church, but came to the conviction that it could not be reformed there. And they had to flee persecution, and they left England and came to these shores to do it right, okay? But doing it right meant setting up a, a, a new colony that would be established on God's laws.

GEORGE (00:06:34):

Because in their way of thinking, in a Calvinist mindset, you have to think about the fact that the chief idea is the sovereignty of God over all things. The world is entirely God's. It is sacred. There is no secular. It is all gods and must therefore respond to God's laws and God's ways. And if we order life in that way, then God will be pleased and we will prosper, and we will do as we are mandated by scripture to do. This is a Calvinist view of things. No separation of church and state. It is all one thing. Everyone has a job to do and a a role to play. And this is the way society is ordered. It is it, it is highly, highly structured, heavily, uh, controlled, uh, controlling behavior. It is highly scrutinized and organized. And this is a kind of religion that sees the need for establishing God's ways in political life.

GEORGE (00:07:58):

And so they did this in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, of course. And so when you hear people talking about how we were founded as a Christian nation, this is largely where they're referring to that period of time, roundabout 1630 and the like, where the Massachusetts Bay colony, uh, and in the years following was at its, uh, at its height. These were Christian people who came seeking to establish a Christian country. So they're not wrong, these folk, when they talk about the Christian origins of our country. But this is also what spawned the colonial period of time, a period in our country up until Constitutional America, when states and commonwealths were all, uh, had all established religions, and we would have to get a license from the magistrate to preach if we were not Anglican. You know, in Maryland it was the Catholics in Massachusetts, it was the Congregationalists, uh, in Pennsylvania, it was the Quakers and so on. By the way, Baptist didn't have one <laugh>. And that's part of this story as well. We'll get to that in a minute. But this kind of religion has a long history. And, and when we think about why this continues to recur now and why people think this way, try to imagine that in the entire history of the world up until 1789, right?

GEORGE (00:09:50):

That was it, right? There was always a sense that there was an established religion and church and state were together, so to speak. So when we find that people today want to have a Christian nation and think that's the normal order of things and want to build an argument for it, we should at least understand that this is still this idea of an American democracy with separation of church and state, a pretty young idea. And what comes last goes first, you know, under pressure, when people are anxious, the tendency is to revert to what they've known. Even if it's not conscious, it's buried in our hypothalamus somewhere. And somehow the history of how we organize life and faith and government and all of that, this is the long history of humankind. So we've tried to do something extraordinary in these last 240 odd years. And, uh, and it's a project that is going against the long history of how religion relates to politics.

GEORGE (00:11:13):

But what characterizes this is control and power and the need to honor God because God is in, uh, it needs us to organize all things according to God's law. So freedom in this idea is only found in obedience to doing what God's law says. And when we do what God's law says, and when we enforce that in law, whether people agree or disagree, it's good for them. So this is kind of the idea. It's not just identity politics, it's also this sense that we have a divine mandate to do this. And America is not exceptional in that respect. Every, the whole world is Gods. And so now we have a, a movement called the Seven Mountains Mandate, which represents some of this Christian nationalism, which says that you have to put into seven areas of influence in society, Christian people who will run religion and family and government, and education and entertainment in the arts and business, and I'm sure I forgot one, but you, you know what I'm saying, all of these things and win God's people are in charge of all of these things. Then society will be well ordered. And this is part of what's happening with the desire to get the right Supreme Court justices in place with the desire to get the right politicians in place with the desire to get the right people in all the right positions and school boards and the like. So that's part of what Christian nationalism is about, and it is difficult for them to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. By the way, George's little quip about that is Patriots are patriotism, is love of country. Nationalism is hatred of the other.

GEORGE (00:13:39):

You can be a patriot and a nationalist, but it's hard work. Uh, and so I'm gonna get to, uh, the second one now, which is on the other side. And these two react against each other. The second stream of American history comes from the Enlightenment. It is America. America was not just founded by Christians. America was founded by people who believed that reason not religion should govern society. Enlightenment thinkers from Descartes on onward struggled with the fact that the church had claimed that it had an exclusive, uh, purchase on truth. And somehow God had bypassed human reason and given all the truth to the church, when we had a movement that began to take place, 18th century and onward, that said that human beings could use reason to discover the truth by, uh, the scientific process, the scientific method and the like, and we could understand the world that we find ourselves in subject and object were split.

GEORGE (00:15:04):

And there was this sense of, of human mastery over the world. So that what what you had is, if you had in this group over here, the idea of the, of the sovereignty of God, here, you had the sovereignty of man, you might say, uh, the enlightenment thinkers gave rise to the revolutions in France and in America that moved the church out of the position of authority, as well as of course, the, you know, the, the nobility and the French Revolution of the American Revolution was largely indebted to these people. John Locke's idea of individual rights were encoded in our Bill of Rights. Uh, voltaire's idea of the separation of church and state were more or less, uh, French. We took a version of it. But the point is the, there is a strong enlightenment, rational view of life that does not need to make reference to God or religion in order for us to have a civil society.

GEORGE (00:16:25):

This is also part of the American story, and we have to acknowledge that it's part of it, and it exists. And part of what's happened in this, uh, aspect is we all are experiencing now the loss of religious participation in America. St. Michael and All Angels Church is smaller than it was 30 years ago. Wilshire Baptist Church is smaller than it was 30 years ago. Almost all churches in America are smaller than they used to be, because people have figured out that they can kind of live okay without religion in their lives, or they've personalized it, and it's just, you know, them and God, and they don't need to participate in a community of faith in order to feel somehow that they are right with God. What is happening is a growing secularity in our culture. You know, of course, that according to census, uh, data, that the fastest growing group that identifies, uh, themself from a religious point of view are those who are called the nuns, N-O-N-E-S, that is none of the above, right?

GEORGE (00:17:47):

That they are not participants in any organized religion. So don't label them as such lots of research into who they are and why they are and all of that. But the, the short answer is they now represent a fast growing 30% of the American population. Now, what does that mean to people who traditionally have thought that whether they were right or not, America was kind of a Christian culture, that there was a kind of deferral to the Christian faith. I mean, if you grew up in East Texas, in a county seat town, the likelihood is that on a Sunday morning at either the First Baptist Church or the first United Methodist Church, the local judge and mayor and school superintendent we're on the first three pews. Uh, I mean, that's just the way it was, right? Because this is the way society functioned and was ordered, and there was a kind of deferral to clergy that no longer is really true in our society.

GEORGE (00:18:56):

We, we see this happening, and then we, we see this in the reaction against elitism, against the educated elite. So what's happening in this world of reason is that we, we have people who, uh, are claiming authority for truth apart from religion. Well, how can that be? We, we got it straight from God. How can you say you got it without God? And what does that mean for society? Without God, it's going to crumble. Do you see the anxiety that's happening between these two groups? So this, this group needs to mobilize to get these folks off the scene. They have to lose if these folks are gonna win. This is part of what's going on. There's not a constructive engagement of conversation between revelation and reason between religion and science. It's, we found this during covid, didn't we? You know, science tells us one thing, but we have preachers telling us that God tells them something else and putting people in danger.

GEORGE (00:20:17):

But over here, there's also a kind of intellectual arrogance that can be present as well, where, you know, we, we don't need to, we don't need to have truth from religion in order to live our lives well or understand the world well, we simply need to be able to analyze something in a test tube to be able to, um, figure something out according to the scientific method. But even the scientific method operates with this sense of givenness, a sense of faith in a hypothesis that has to be tested. And if these folks would listen to that, and if these folks would acknowledge it, that's not actually as radically different as we think. But these folks can't seem to hear each other at all. And so what we have over here is the fear that people are socially engineering things that they say Christianity needs to stay in its lane and stay out of the business of medicine, business, politics, whatever the case may be, because we are the experts here.

GEORGE (00:21:38):

This is not your lane. And frankly, a lot of us in the more liberal tradition have basically conceded the point. And so what's happened is we, we say we believe in science, you know, and, and what that tends to mean is that we also say we're gonna stay in the area of psychology, personal faith, and we're going to talk about your relationship to God, and we're gonna talk about your family. But we're not gonna get into the question of whether the budget of the city of Dallas is a moral document <laugh>, because that's not our lane. And it's also a problem because we have elected officials sitting in our pews who don't want it to be our lane, and they are often rich, and we preachers like to be liked. So if we just like let them do their thing, let business do its thing, let all of these institutions out there do their thing. And we don't, we tend to Sunday, but we let them worry about Monday, then we've got this figured out, but we're conceding too much because there can't be such separation between the secular and the sacred.

GEORGE (00:23:20):

The Enlightenment era gave us the separation of church and state in large part, and that is a positive contribution that I want us to recognize. But at the same time, it also gets us in trouble when it does not admit that there are more sources of truth and life that come through other means, including religion and Christianity. That religion science can deal really well with matters of cause and effect. Analyzing how things are religion adds the question of purpose and why things are and what they're meant for. Uh, Leslie Newgen gives the illustration, uh, one of your Anglicans that, uh, if you, if you were to stumble upon a, uh, someone to stumble upon a machine, uh, in, in the forest and not know what it was, you know, you could take all the parts apart and put it back together and see how they fit, but you wouldn't necessarily know what it was designed for. And this is part of religion's role, is to help us think about what is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of human existence? What, why are we here? These are things that are deeply important, and we can't just say we're gonna leave politics to politicians. Which leads me to the third area, and I wanna remind you again, this is the correct one, <laugh>.

GEORGE (00:25:09):

So if the enlightenment over here was one source and the puritans were another, so you have this notion of sovereignty and power and the unity of government and, and, and religion. And over here you have a strict separation of them and different magistery of, uh, of, of knowledge, uh, that keeps, uh, keeps faith in its own lane. Here is where I'm gonna tell you, I agree that religion and politics belong together. They just have a fraught relationship. And how should that relationship exist? Here, I'm gonna talk to you about pilgrim, a pilgrim spirit. And I'll, and, and I'm gonna say, I'm gonna frame this as a Christianity in politics, should be about a committed pluralism in our country. Now, before the Puritans, the pilgrims came over on the Mayflower. Pilgrims and Puritans are often confused. They were not the same. The pilgrims were not puritans because they didn't think the church could be purified because they believed that as long as the church and state were together, it would always be a problem.

GEORGE (00:26:43):

These are my ancestors as a Baptist, they were called separatists congregationalists and, and a lot of congregationalists, but all Baptists that came over, uh, were also, uh, what were known as separatists. We were dissenters, we were dissenters from the established church. And the idea was that we had, if, if, if, if the church was going to have an authentic sense of community and be able to respond to God, it had to be free from the state. If an individual was to be able to be held responsible to God, that soul had to be free to respond as well. And so this is the Baptist spirit, which actually was well, uh, encoded in a man named Roger Williams. Roger Williams, uh, was infected with this separatist spirit, this nonconformism in England. He came over and he served some Puritan congregations and in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but they were not happy with his radical ideas.

GEORGE (00:27:52):

And, uh, in, uh, in the Puritan spirit, you have to conform. And he was a non-conformist. And eventually he gets kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay colony in the dead of winter. And he, unlike the Puritans, actually believed that Native Americans should be both respected, and that if there were to be, was to be land, uh, that was to be claimed it, they should pay the Native Americans for that land. He learned the Native American language and met, and, and some of these folks met him in the woods in New England and helped him survive the winter. And then he paid them for property that ended up being what is now Rhode Island. And he established the first colony of true religious liberty in the history of the world, and called it providence because of the providence that got him through that winter. And when he established the First Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island, he then invited Jews and Turks, which what they called them then Muslims, right?

GEORGE (00:29:15):

Seekers and any others to come establish congregations and worship freely in Providence. This was a new experiment in religious liberty. And this became an incubator during this colonial period for what would become the United States of America. Ultimately, this country decided with its constitution that colonial religion did not work. We decided that we would be a country with no religious tests for public office. Can anyone tell that? We actually say that by the politics that we hear. I mean, everybody is trying to use God language all the time. It's really hard to imagine an atheist becoming President of the United States. I mean, someday, maybe. But the point is, we still have a deep, uh, sentiment toward religious identity, despite the fact that Article six of the Constitution says there should be no religious test for public office. And the first Amendment to the Constitution was, which says that there would be no establishment of religion nor prohibit the free exercise thereof.

GEORGE (00:30:39):

That was a joint effort of the enlightenment thinkers. On the one hand, and forgive me, the Baptists on the other <laugh>, because the religious group that was most persecuted in colonial period, the colonial period were the non established churches and the Baptists were among them. And we pushed James Madison to make sure that that would be true. There's a great story about that with John Leland and, and James Madison. But, uh, but the point is, this model said that we would not be like France. So France basically has separated, uh, religion and government to the point of a, a kind of secularity that they're continuing to struggle with, where there's no desire for accommodation to religious practice in America. We decided that we wanted a robust religious pluralism, something that is an ideal we have never fully achieved, because largely it was an ideal, it was a principle.

GEORGE (00:31:52):

Now, I want you to think with me about our country. This is the first country in the history of the world that is not rooted in blood and soil identity politics, where we are a country because we have, we are this ethnic group. We are this people who have been on this land. We built a country on ideals. Chesterton came, uh, GK Chesterton came on a visit to America and, and, and, and said that he, he, he said that Americans have the soul of a church and their constitution has a creed, uh, built into it, which is based on the Declaration of Independence, which is that all men are created equal, and, uh, that we have the inalienable right, unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is our secular creed. We are built on ideals that we are trying to live up to.

GEORGE (00:32:58):

It is no surprise that it took us a long time to live up to some of those. How are we doing on time? Five minutes, five more minutes. That it's no surprise that it took a long time for us, for example, to, to say that slaves should be free. That people of African descent and, and people of English descent who look like most of us in this room are equal. I'm not sure we've still gotten there, uh, that women should have the vote. You see, my point is, we've been in a process. This is a project to live up to ideals that were, I mean, our founders said more than they even themselves understood at the time. A lot of that's true in the Bible too, by the way, <laugh>.

GEORGE (00:33:57):

So what is a constructive position for the church, for Christianity and politics today? Here's what I would say. While many of these folks say we need, first of all to protect ourselves, and we need government to protect us because, uh, we have the truth and we have the right before God, uh, to be the people of God. And we need the government to respect us. Therefore, we're going to take over the government so that we make sure that we are in that position. These folks over here have a tendency to say, we're gonna protect your right to exist, but we're mostly gonna tolerate you. And we're, we're glad for you to stay in your lane and be in your small communities. Just don't try to have a conversation with us about how to run a university or how to, uh, how to run a law practice or how to run a city, right?

GEORGE (00:35:02):

Because we are the professionals here, I want to say we have to engage in a politics of compassion, of love for our neighbor that says, uh, what really sets apart religion from everything else is that it is not just about self-interest, it's a vision of the world that God has planted in us, whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, or whatever. And that vision is not identical, but it doesn't have to be. It just, we just have to listen to each religion, enter into public life and make claims about what God wants for our, uh, criminal justice system, for our city budget, for our transportation budget, for the way we have tax policy. All these things are things that people of religious faith believe contribute to, whether we are loving our neighbor as ourself or not. And we as Christians, we view the cross as an act of self-sacrificing love for others.

GEORGE (00:36:34):

We are all connected because everything is connected. Everyone belongs. Everyone is a child of God. And in fact, the Christian faith was born with this egalitarian view that challenged all the caste systems of society. And this is part of our witness, that it's not just a private matter, but it's a public matter. But how do we do that? One of the ways we do it is we do it first in our own congregations. We have no moral authority to call on people in business to pay a living wage. If we don't pay our custodians and our churches a living wage, we have no moral authority to ask for equal rights for L-G-B-T-Q persons. If they are not experiencing equal rights in our own congregations. We have no right to challenge systems of racial justice. Uh, if we are not doing so within our own congregations, these are principles that we have to operate under.

GEORGE (00:37:50):

And, and so a politics of compassion begins at home, but it doesn't end there. It's got to move into the public sphere because we are there to be salt and light to humanize our systems. The technology that is dehumanizing people every single day in this scientific world that we live in, that has given us wonderful gifts, has a shadow side. The the same is true. I mean, I'm sorry, but Adam Smith doesn't get a pass in capitalism. Our system of free enterprise has to be challenged by religious convictions and ask whether it is actually distributing resources in an equitable way. And politics is a way of how we live together, and that's a choice we make. So people of faith have a vision of wholeness about what God wants for the world, and they have a moral voice to add to our conversation. This means advocacy. It means that we speak up, especially for the marginalized and for the vulnerable. When you have some power, are you going to use it for yourself to protect yourself, your wealth, your privilege, or are you going to use it to promote a vision of abundance in the world where everyone has a share and a participation in prosperity? This is the kind of politics that I'm advocating for. And I wanna say one more thing before we close. This notion of pluralism is really important.

GEORGE (00:39:42):

Christians do not have any greater right to this country, to Jews or Muslims or Sikhs or Hindus or Buddhists or atheists. We are all equal before the law, and we should all have an equal voice in how to address what a good society is. In fact, because Christians are still the majority religion in this country, the real test of our faith in political life is whether we honor, protect and respect minority religions. And today, that especially means challenging antisemitism, Islamism, Islamophobia, uh, Islam is probably the most important test case for us in this country right now. Do we give a voice for Muslims to be able to speak out of their faith tradition about the common good in this country? Or do we only tolerate them and say, you're lucky you're here. That's a real question for us. We will not rise to the level, uh, that we need to be of achieving this robust pluralism that is a vision of our founders until we engage in our public life that way.

GEORGE (00:41:04):

So when people say to, to, I mean, look, as a pastor, I always got in trouble when I talked about politics, <laugh> and Chris does too. We all do, and it makes us want to not, but then we look in the mirror and we look in the Bible and we realize we have to because it's just what our calling is. And for those of you who are uncomfortable by that, I hope you will understand that's what we're called to do. You don't have to agree with us, but we hope you'll reckon with us because this is, the gospel is not, is personal, but it's never private. It's about public truth as well. And we want a good society for everyone. Thank you.

GEORGE (00:42:00):

Okay, so a frequently asked question is what do you think about putting the 10 Commandments in the classroom as they have done in Louisiana and as Dan Patrick has committed, uh, to doing in Texas in this next legislative session? He tried in the last one and it failed, uh, to get to a house vote. Uh, but, uh, okay, I'm again, it, uh, I don't think it's a good idea. Um, so there, there are so many things about this that we could talk about, but first of all, understand that we, the 10 Commandments cannot be abstracted from the religious communities that hold them as authoritative and live them. So Jews, Catholics, and, and Protestants all up have a sense of fidelity to the, the, uh, 10 Commandments as being important to their faith tradition. But they should be abstracted from religious communities and be then generalized for everyone imposed on everyone.

GEORGE (00:43:25):

We, uh, so first of all, which 10 commandments are you going to choose? Because if you, if you do a quick Google search, what you will find is that the, the, the list of 10 commandments, what's, is it gonna be posted in Hebrew, by the way, the original, you know, or, or, but Jews order them differently than Catholics and Protestants, and they break them up differently. It's not actually clear in Exodus or Deuteronomy what the 10 are. And so we, we have that issue, but beyond that issue, these are these, this is part of covenantal religion where people become part of a covenantal community and say, I will live by this. That is not something that is true in the general public. They have not consented to join our church, to join our synagogue to accept the responsibility. So a Jew, uh, it, it decides in a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah to become a son or daughter, daughter of the commandments, right?

GEORGE (00:44:41):

That is, they take that upon themselves as part of their religious obligation and their identity. That is a choice that is made. And we Christians see that as holy scripture as well and binding upon us. But that is not true of people, of other religious traditions. To impose that on them is against their will. They do not go to public school to consent to having someone's religious interpretation placed upon them. So I think it's, it's, it's out of bounds in my mind from the position of, uh, how we engage publicly, uh, in public policy and in our schools. That does not mean that we should not expect for high moral standards, but this is, in my mind, a a kind of performative Christianity that it simply wants to establish its reign over the public sphere and in the schools. But how are you gonna enforce it? And what's the point of it? It feels to me more like, vote for me. I believe in God, you know? Uh, alright, so the next question is, how do you feel about churches directly or indirectly endorsing candidates? Again, I'm against it. I'm against it, not because I don't think that

GEORGE (00:46:18):

We should talk about politics or even elections, or even candidates in church. I actually think we should, but we should do so based upon our religious narrative and how we want to engage in the world. So does this candidates or that candidate more closely reflect a vision of the world that our faith tradition sees as, um,

GEORGE (00:47:00):

Part of our revelation? Now, that doesn't mean that we have to argue who to vote for in, in our Sunday school classes, or, you know, in the fellowship hall over coffee. We can, we can actually model civility and respectfulness, but the question should not be, you know, are we on this team or that team? You know, we, I like to say we're, we're not donkeys or elephants, we're doves. You know, we, we, we, that is to say, we, we are, we are gospel partisans, and no politician is going to perfectly reflect the gospel in his or her politics, but we should at least talk about whether someone approximates that better than another. And there's nothing wrong with having an honest disagreement about whether we think someone does or doesn't, uh, because we all put weight or emphasis in different areas, and this is just part of the process.

GEORGE (00:48:18):

So somebody else asked the question, how do you, uh, how do you, uh, promote a robust pluralism and still hold to absolute truth? Well, I, I think that the, the question really about that is that we can, we can hold our own convictions about absolute truth, but we're never gonna prove it until the curtain comes down on this drama called history. And we finally know, as we have been known as the apostle says, now we all see in a glass darkly. So when we're out there claiming the absolute truth, we can't do it with a hammer. We have to do it with humility, recognizing always that while this is my deepest conviction about what is true, I could be wrong. I, and someone else could be, right? And, and what's beautiful about really relating well to other religious traditions is they become a kind of mirror to us that we see in them things that we then reflect upon our own tradition and ask, Ooh, have I neglected something in my faith?

GEORGE (00:49:40):

I admire something in that faith, or I disagree with that. Why? What, what is it, uh, that I think is mistaken about that? But I can't do that just by writing them off. I have to take them seriously, engage with them, learn from them. I have a nonprofit organization called Faith Commons, uh, that I do with, uh, my close partner, rabbi Nancy Caston. And I've learned so much about my own faith because I have learned more about her faith, and also with Imam Omar Solomon, who is a, a, a dear friend, and we don't agree all the time, but that's not the point. The point is we make each other better, and we, we look for those ways in which we think, ah, that is, that, that's closer to the dream of God for the world, isn't it? You know? And, and it makes us reckon with one another.

GEORGE (00:50:42):

Religious truth should be, shouldn't be protected as if to say nobody can ever challenge it. It should be contested like every other truth. And we should, but, but the question is how is it proved? And I would say it's proved best by how it's lived. You know, when people say that Christians are being persecuted all the time, I wanna say, is it because you're holding to absolute truth or because you're being a jerk? You know, because you're, you're not, you're not honestly caring for your neighbor. Uh, that's what people are rejecting. They're not rejecting your God or your faith. They're rejecting the way you live your faith, the way you treat your neighbor. And, uh, this is, uh, they'll know we are Christians by our love, you know, not by the deferring to our rightness, you know, which again, is why should every truth, claim of science have to be tested by peer review, uh, and religious faith Be exempted from that conversation. I think it should be, it should be subject to the same kind of debate in the end, we'll all find out. But in the meantime, this is the way I live my life because of the faith convictions I have. Okay? Um, so do, how do I feel about the possibility of Sharia law being urged on the US at some point?

GEORGE (00:52:36):

So let's be clear about what Sharia law is and is not. Okay. Sharia law is what is an obligation for Muslims that goes beyond, uh, civil law, but is also subject to civil law. So we have a precedent for this in Judaism because both Judaism and Islam are based upon law, uh, in, in Judaism, haka in it, in in Islam, it's Sharia. This is a, a, a system of law that is a way of life is a way the community or organizes itself and, and holds each other accountable. This is Jews do not ask for everyone to keep kosher. They are not trying to get America to have kosher restaurants. They understand that everyone does not share their point of view about that. And so they may practice a certain dietary practice in their own family and own community, religious community, and personal lives, but they don't need to mandate that for other people.

GEORGE (00:54:13):

Muslims are doing the same thing with Sharia law. They adjudicate matters of marital discord according to Sharia law of business disagreements according to Sharia law. But that doesn't mean that they expect that if they can just become numerous and get enough Muslims elected that they can institute Sharia law in the United States. That is a fear that is irrational in American politics right now, and it's largely based upon a fear of the loss of Christian hegemony in our country. The fear that we are becoming less influential, that the stranger is coming among us, that people who are different from us are going to take over, that we're going to be replaced. This is all language of antisemitism, of xenophobia. Uh, it, it's the kind of thing that as Christians, we can do the very best job of combating. Unfortunately, it's mostly coming from people who say they're Christians. So it's really important for us to speak up. It's really, really important for us to use our voice in public, to call on our fellow Christians to live up to these ideals of honoring these other religious traditions of, uh, of making sure we defend their rights to speak and allow them to participate fully in, in our society without the sense of being othered. Okay?

GEORGE (00:55:52):

So, uh, one question had to do, well, several questions had to do with how to deal with family members and friends who, uh, you share a faith tradition with, but you do not share political views with. And I think we all know what that's like, right? Um, so I, I would like to refer to refer you to my talk tonight, um, and say, try to get underneath the anger, the volume, the fear, and all of that to ask what's, what's the good motivating factor in their position. Not only this scares me, if you are an existential threat to me, our country is going to go down the drain if this election doesn't go my way. All of these things I feel on a daily basis, but I fight because I think that we, what we have to do is recognize that, you know, even people who marched on the capitol on January 6th, as much as I am a Christian against Christian nationalism and work actively to defeat that ideology, um, these are people who in their bones want to honor God and fear that we are losing a sense of transcendence and a sense of, of, of spiritual reality in our world.

GEORGE (00:57:41):

And they want desperately to have a sense of mission and purpose about their faith. They want to integrate it into their whole lives. And they are, even if misguided, deeply committed to being willing to sacrifice for that sake. Uh, e even to the point of violence, which I disdain and, and say is not Christian, in my view of Christianity, by the way, there's more than one Christianity. We have many Christianity. Christianity itself is contested. So let's not just say that's not Christian. They're not Christian. Well <laugh>, you know, they look at us the same way. Let's at least look at their motivation and, and, and people of no faith. Let's look at their motivation. Let's look at people who have a hard time seeing anything of value in, in, in religion at all, and, and understand why. Usually we just have to look in the mirror for the way we have, have behaved. But what, what is a value in their point of view? Try to get underneath the fear and the anger and the emotion to, uh, what is their best motivation, not their worst. And find some common ground in that respect. The final question is, uh, for the night. So some of you, um, might know that I was actually in Jerusalem on October 7th.

GEORGE (00:59:18):

Um, I had, uh, just been in Bethlehem, in the West Bank for four days for a conference among Palestinians, um, Christians, Muslims, uh, academics, um, people from all over the world, from, uh, um, 25 countries. I think, um, maybe more, uh, talking about the Palestinian situation, about the history, about, uh, the relationship with Israel, about where things stood. And I heard an awful lot of, you know, uh, pain, an awful lot of, uh, you know, criticism of the Israeli government and Israel's treatment of Palestinians, and the sense of hopelessness that they were feeling among people, uh, who were, um, not picking up stones to throw literally in the street, but who were analyzing this from historical, theological, philosophical and political, uh, ways. So I was full of the Palestinian experience when I went to Jerusalem to await my group that was coming to join me for a 12 day, uh, trip in Israel proper, and in Palestinian Territories where we would be meeting only with groups of people who were modeling how to create understanding and peace between Israelis and Arabs.

GEORGE (01:00:57):

Uh, on Saturday morning, October 7th, I was waiting for the flights to come. I woke up and I began to hear bombs overhead. Um, so the short answer is half my group got there. I had to tell them trip canceled, we're huddled up in the hotel. Eventually we made it to Jordan, and about a week later, most of us got home. Um, but the question really was, what did I learn about religion and politics from being there on October 7th? And the answer is, uh, everything I've said tonight on steroids, there's not just Christian nationalism going on in the world. There is Jewish nationalism going on in Israel, and there is Hindu nationalism going on in India, and there is Islamic nationalism going on in numerous countries in the Middle East, uh, and in Southeast Asia. In other words, we are in a period of time, and I think you have to take a long view of this and realize that as democracy has made its way, uh, and as the enlightenment has made its way through, uh, time and culture, the the sense of the traditional ways of understanding who we are and of what, where our places in the world feels increasingly threatened, and the idea that people would organize themselves to claim it back again, somehow over against our neighbors, to be somehow secure in the world.

GEORGE (01:02:49):

This should not surprise us. This is just the nature of human, uh, relationships. And politically this is playing out, uh, across the globe. But in the end, do Christians have something to offer to all of this? And I would say to you, it is the man who on the cross stretched out his arms in love, even for his enemies, and said, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Thank you.