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Again, it's worldrelief.org/holypost. Welcome

0:55

to the Holy Post. Since the Supreme

0:58

Court overturned Roe v. Wade almost two

1:00

years ago, the debate about abortion has

1:02

taken on new dimensions. Factions within the

1:05

pro-life camp are now debating one another.

1:07

Could they break the entire religious right apart?

1:10

Then, Caitlin interviews Professor of Law

1:12

and Religion John Inazu about his

1:14

new book, Learning to Disagree. He

1:16

says our differences don't have to

1:19

become divisions, which is a timely

1:21

message in an election year. Also

1:23

this week, is Indonesia hiding a

1:25

secret island of hobbits? And a

1:28

new documentary asks whether Jesus was

1:30

a vegetarian. No, the answer

1:32

is no, he wasn't. Here's

1:34

a few announcements to be aware of.

1:36

First, we have two new Holy Post

1:38

events coming up in April and May.

1:40

The first one is in Dallas on

1:43

April 15th with Caitlin, Beth Allison Barr,

1:45

and Malcolm Foley. And then I'll be

1:47

in Nashville on May 9th with Mike

1:49

Erie and David French. Space is limited

1:51

for both of those events, so if

1:53

you want to go, grab your tickets

1:56

now by going to holypost.com/events. And

1:58

of course we have brand new content. this week

2:00

exclusively for Holy Post Plus supporters. New

2:02

episodes of shows like Getting Schooled by

2:05

Caitlin Ches and The Skypod, where this

2:07

week I interview my improv coach, Jeff

2:09

Ash, as we apply the lessons of

2:11

improv comedy to life, parenting, and faith.

2:13

It's a great conversation and you're missing

2:16

out on it if you're not a

2:18

Holy Post Plus supporter. So go to

2:20

holypost.com and find out all the things

2:22

you'll get access to by becoming a

2:24

Holy Post Plus supporter. Okay,

2:26

here is episode 610. Hey there, welcome

2:29

back to the podcast. This is Phil Visscher.

2:32

This is the Holy Post Podcast. I'm here

2:34

with Caitlin Ches. Hi, Caitlin. Hi,

2:37

Phil. And

2:39

Sky Jatani. Hi, Sky.

2:42

Hello. Hello. If

2:45

you're watching on the TV,

2:48

you can see that Caitlin is wearing

2:50

a hat. This

2:52

has never happened before. An unusual,

2:54

yeah. Of the podcast is a

2:56

Duke, a bright pink Duke

2:59

hat, because those are Duke's colors, right?

3:01

Barbie pink and blue. I wish. That

3:03

would be so great. Wouldn't

3:05

that be something? If that had been an

3:07

option, like if when I was applying to PhD

3:09

programs, there was a school that had hot pink

3:11

colors, that would have played into my division.

3:14

That would have been a serious

3:16

scholar. Was DTS hot pink?

3:18

DTS is purple. That

3:21

was a nice, I like that. Yeah,

3:24

yeah. My alma mater was

3:26

purple. Awesome.

3:29

St. Paul Middle College was purple. Thank you

3:31

very much. It's my favorite color. Did you

3:33

know that Caitlin? Purple's my favorite color? No,

3:35

but now I will get you something purple.

3:38

Oh, I'd appreciate that. That's very nice. Thank

3:40

you very much. Sky, you're just looking like

3:43

you don't really like this at all. No,

3:47

this is why people tune in to find out what everyone's

3:49

favorite color is. You

3:51

never know. You never know.

3:53

And where are you? You look like you're in

3:55

a hotel. Okay, I am in a

3:57

hotel. I Want you to take a while.

4:00

Guess as to why it's university

4:02

owns the hotel that I am

4:04

and right now. Liberty.

4:08

They. Were doing it. Yeah, Only

4:12

because I have some friends who live in Lynchburg

4:14

and I came to help the movies. had a

4:16

baby moved house i can tell the move and

4:18

I just booked a hotel anyway. I didn't know

4:21

that I was looking a hotel that is literally

4:23

on Liberties campus and owned by Liberty and I

4:25

walked in at like midnight last night coming off

4:27

as a speaking of and and walk in the

4:29

lobby and they're just like a giant picture of

4:32

a Liberty football player and I was like what

4:34

have I done. And

4:36

then the smile I walk down

4:38

in the morning wearing my do

4:40

cat and. Technically out of dress code

4:42

for liberties campus because I'm wearing leggings and

4:45

a t shirts and I'm not getting that

4:47

like. I was stared

4:49

at. There was a reasons that have

4:51

been positive looks given. To me this morning. Well.

4:55

The it was more from the leggings.

4:57

do think we're from the Duke Pat.

4:59

Honestly, it really could go either. I

5:01

really canada. By now and

5:03

say that we have done a podcast.

5:06

Were. One of us at least was

5:08

was recording from Liberal University Yes,

5:10

live from Liberty University where we're

5:12

seeing how many dress code violations

5:14

Return make it in one episode

5:16

The Street or right now it's

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time for the theme song. Was.

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let's dive right? And we got

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stuff to talk about was Jesus.

7:59

A vegetarian. New.

8:01

Documentary called Christ

8:04

Spira see. That's.

8:06

The name a documentary Who that's a

8:08

good as hate all. Christ

8:10

Spirit see why didn't you think

8:12

that for your documentary? Kalan.

8:15

And leggings were Christ's

8:18

spirit see: filmmaker Kip

8:20

Anderson. Also. Created

8:22

to hit documentaries see Spear A

8:25

Seat, Cows Spirit see and what

8:27

the health prerogative exposes of the

8:29

fishing, dairy and meet industries. Those

8:31

were done. I think all of

8:34

them are. Some of them were

8:36

done. I would pick up by

8:38

Netflix. Netflix Was going to pick

8:41

up their new documentary Christ Spira

8:43

See but they parted ways after

8:45

the platform Asked for redactions from

8:47

the film. Productions

8:50

Something of the stuff they

8:52

were claiming to say about

8:54

Jesus Christ. Netflix wasn't comfortable

8:56

with Seven Years animators about

8:58

given me what made is

9:00

comfortable with. Sorry, yes, Ah

9:02

yes. Of all the things

9:04

they're comfortable with, calling Jesus

9:06

a vegetarian is not no

9:08

one of things they're they're

9:10

comfortable with Seven Years in

9:12

the making. The fast paced

9:14

film tracks Anderson, a self

9:16

described Clause I, spiritual Buddhist

9:18

yogi and his partner. Or Somebody

9:20

Waters a one time Southern Baptists

9:23

and gospel musician as they seek

9:25

new insights about the compatibility of

9:27

religion and meat eating. Amid the

9:30

film's many action shots, eating, farming,

9:32

selling, slaughtering, it's through Line is

9:34

the case for Christ's opposition to

9:37

eating and killing animals. The evidence

9:39

includes an interpretation of Jesus well

9:41

documented cleansing of the temple, the

9:43

fact that four days before he

9:46

was crucified, he goes in and

9:48

shuts down. the. Temple to

9:50

basically stop animal sacrifice. He

9:53

was one of the most

9:55

hardcore animal activists. says.

9:58

Filmmaker and or said okay. Not

10:00

going to honor that as he is

10:02

a new like only one That little.

10:05

Nugget of and can I can I

10:07

take for swing at this Caitlin? L.

10:09

Go for it! Okay, he did not

10:11

go into the temple and clear the

10:14

courtyard in order to stop sacrifices that

10:16

they were sacrificing. Winslet I. Jesus.

10:18

Haven sacrificing animals for one. Hundreds and hundreds and

10:21

hundreds of years going back into the history of

10:23

Israel. and he never says anything about that. That's

10:25

not why he's. There. To

10:27

stop bad, there's other terrible things going

10:29

on that he. But

10:32

is it the other thing that he mine is the

10:34

last supper? Was. A Passover meal.

10:36

Central to the Passover meal was

10:38

the slaughtering of a lamb and

10:40

the eating of alam was Jesus

10:42

participated in and then after the

10:45

resurrection city don't know you know

10:47

realist. He cooks breakfast for his

10:49

disciples on the beach and he

10:51

grills this. So. Know

10:53

that. That's. Just what I do

10:55

know that assist us, right? but they

10:57

are based in the argument on what's

10:59

in the Gospels including the Clintons, a

11:02

Temple Than and because Big Farming got

11:04

a hold of the bible translations and

11:06

made it sound like he was eating

11:08

meat When when filmmaker Anderson told Religion

11:11

New Service it so overwhelmingly obvious when

11:13

you see this all put together that

11:15

not only did Jesus not eat animals,

11:17

but this Nazareth movement he was part

11:19

of was fiercely against killing animals. His

11:23

nursery movement that we call you know,

11:25

Christianity was fiercely against the killing of

11:27

animals. Caitlin Caitlin Years, I'll sky The

11:30

one thing is that they had brazen.

11:32

Really good points. Now I

11:34

don't think they are but I I just

11:36

looked at this article and further down attacks

11:39

about. How the film sites that

11:41

unites a sex that described Jesus as an

11:43

opponent of animal sacrifice, refused to eat lamb

11:45

during customer and as he's into the slater

11:47

like oh in a also denied the divinity

11:49

of. Christ. So some as

11:51

an awful group. Have. This opinion

11:53

less. but it's. Pretty good description

11:55

this whole approach to this documentary.

11:58

A pretty good description of. The

12:00

way some people. Treat Early

12:02

Christian theology which is like there was the

12:04

big bad kind of oppressive Orthodox Christianity that

12:06

just took out all of these other little

12:09

sex that had all these creative interesting ideas

12:11

about all is interesting stats and is like

12:13

yes, the Lg the always done with other

12:15

things in mind including pressures of political power

12:18

and the way that people get into conflicts

12:20

that seem to be about theology but are

12:22

not really about the allergies but also the

12:24

any approach that basically says I uncovered the

12:27

secret truth Christians used to believe and it

12:29

got stamps our bodies oppresses p Ball is

12:31

now I would have a real suspicions about

12:33

that. that's just not really and really going

12:36

to lead you and a good theological direction

12:38

which is why this is a great example

12:40

of why many of our churches just saying

12:42

let's just study the bible as as read

12:45

the bible, we don't need that theology. We

12:47

don't need to think about church history, we

12:49

just need to read the bible produces people

12:51

susceptible to someone who says I have to

12:54

create truth is I'm very gnostic. I have

12:56

the sequence rude No one else wants you

12:58

to know that if you'd said no back

13:00

The Early Church. They had it figured

13:03

out. We need Christian history. We need

13:05

actual robust urology That shows us why.

13:07

For example, It's a

13:09

better way skies interpretation is a better

13:11

way to read the story of Jesus.

13:13

Flipping over the table is you get

13:16

that partially by reading the text and

13:18

the way the story is going. Very

13:20

importantly to understand how that relates to

13:22

the other history of animal sacrifice in

13:24

the Old Testament, to understand how you

13:26

bring together all of these different stories

13:28

that talk about creatures that our. Beloved.

13:31

And created by God in all these different ways, you

13:33

need theology to help you do that. You won't get

13:35

that by just. Reading. The Bible on

13:37

your own. Ochre I hung

13:39

obviously her percent agree encourages have

13:41

one other pieces or is it

13:43

yes. Like. The are good reasons

13:45

to be a vegetarian. There are admirable reasons

13:47

to be a vegetarian. There's nothing wrong or

13:49

ungodly or on Christian or up, you know,

13:51

vegetarian. There's a lot of animal cruelty in

13:53

this world, including a lot of industrial farming

13:55

that miss treat animals in their we should

13:57

Be advocating for reforming of those things and

13:59

I. I'm all for. That's great. The

14:01

thing that irks me. Is

14:04

whatever your cause may be this instinct

14:06

specially if you're a Christian, but this

14:08

instinct to say there has to be

14:10

some biblical proof that Jesus is on

14:12

my side. In this issue

14:14

like is making Jesus into a

14:16

vegetarian does not. You. Don't

14:19

have to do that to make your

14:21

case for vegetarianism. and we do this

14:23

with all kinds of things like that.

14:25

He goes on and on and on

14:27

but like use it just that's been

14:29

unfaithful to. The text is claimed he

14:31

was a vegetarian, but that doesn't mean

14:33

vegetarianism is bad. Like if you don't

14:35

have to have Jesus as a vegetarian.

14:38

To. Argue for vegetarianism. The

14:40

hands of Clarion line with your point Sky that's

14:42

important is part of the reason I think we

14:45

want to get Jesus on our side is it

14:47

we think the only way seat fully to to

14:49

think about ethical questions as christians is to say

14:51

there's a universal rule for all times and Riley

14:54

says and so as to rooted in scripture it

14:56

is very different how you were to think about

14:58

how animals are treated even if you are opposed

15:00

to the killing of animals you have the knowledge

15:03

that the way they were killed in the time

15:05

of Jesus is different like you to sad when

15:07

it comes to factory farming at that are at

15:09

than their killed. Now we should embrace as

15:12

Christians the fact that there are truth

15:14

and scripture that are universal but our

15:16

ability to discern in the moment, how

15:18

we respond to certain ethical questions and

15:20

our time and place will be different

15:22

than other times and places see that

15:24

make a really good Christian case for

15:26

vegetarianism in her by saying young Jesus

15:28

ate meat and sanctioned it. but the

15:30

way that they want about treating animals

15:33

and eating meat at that time is

15:35

very different and now there's a different

15:37

demand upon us Southee, an argument that

15:39

I hadn't accidently been. In has convinced

15:41

of by could be convinced of this

15:43

one. I. Could not be convinced

15:45

Us and our going to the

15:47

science desk. So this is pretty

15:49

interesting and I'm wondering about as

15:52

theological implication scientists find last human

15:54

subspecies that could still be living

15:56

on an Indonesian island. Are

16:00

you interested? Are you intrigued? I

16:02

am intrigued. One

16:05

of the mysteries that the earth may

16:07

be hiding is the possibility of an

16:09

ancient hominin species, Homo floresiensis,

16:12

presumed to be extinct, thriving

16:14

on a remote Indonesian island.

16:16

Anthropologist Gregory Forth has unveiled

16:19

this astonishing speculation. Okay, it's

16:21

a speculation. Shedding light on

16:23

the existence of these enigmatic

16:26

creatures on Flores Island, Indonesia.

16:28

Okay, so you're asking, what

16:30

the heck is a Homo

16:33

floresiensis? Are these the

16:35

Hobbit people? Yes! How

16:37

did you know that? I know about because I,

16:40

you know, they're either Hobbits or

16:42

Oompa Loompas, but this

16:44

is where they come from. I

16:46

have a connection. Homo floresiensis,

16:48

although these were discovered more recently

16:51

than either of those works, so

16:54

they're actually called the Hobbit people

16:56

because of the Hobbit. They didn't

16:58

inspire the Hobbit. An extinct species

17:00

of small archaic human that inhabited

17:03

the island of Flores, Indonesia until

17:05

the arrival of modern humans. This

17:07

is the Wikipedia entry. The remains

17:09

of an individual who would have

17:11

stood about three foot seven were

17:14

discovered in 2003 in

17:17

a cave. Partial skeletons of at least

17:19

nine individuals have been recovered, including one

17:22

complete skull. Okay, now

17:24

you might ask, Caitlin, you might ask, what

17:27

if you just found a child? Wouldn't

17:29

that be three foot... Okay,

17:32

no. No, Caitlin. Now they

17:34

did not find a child because

17:36

they can tell by, you know,

17:38

dental wear and various things how

17:40

old. So they estimated this three

17:43

foot seven inch specimen was a

17:46

woman who was about thirty years

17:48

old. So this was an adult

17:50

and now they have five or

17:52

nine other specimens also of

17:54

equally diminutive size. So here's where

17:57

the story, because that's not the

17:59

story. because that was 2003. Here's

18:01

the story. Okay, this guy,

18:04

what's his name? I said his name but

18:06

I've already forgotten it. Peter. Fourth,

18:09

his name is Fourth, something for, oh

18:11

Gregory, Gregory Fourth. Oh, I was no

18:14

problem. Fourth

18:17

revelation is

18:20

that he decided to ask,

18:23

to engage with the indigenous

18:25

peoples and interview them.

18:27

And what he discovered after interviewing

18:29

about 30 of

18:32

the indigenous Leo

18:34

peoples who have lived there forever is that

18:37

they had stories of eyewitness

18:39

accounts of people they referred

18:41

to as ape men. Ape

18:44

men. And that their descriptions

18:46

of the ape men that were

18:49

in their own tradition match

18:51

the descriptions of

18:54

the Florensihomo Florensius-ness-ness-ness.

18:56

So he's postulating

18:59

that they

19:02

overlapped, that the current

19:04

indigenous people lived at least

19:06

at some point and maybe

19:08

recently and maybe still lived

19:11

side by side with

19:13

another line of

19:16

human species. Okay,

19:18

so this sounds an awful lot like

19:21

the Bigfoot mythology, like

19:23

the Sasquatch Bigfoot thing but would

19:26

these be little foot? Yeah, little

19:29

foots. Yeah, but we don't

19:32

have any skeletons of little foots. We

19:34

do have big foots. I mean we

19:36

do have skeletons of little foots. So

19:38

we know they existed and we have

19:40

stories from the indigenous people of having

19:43

seen little foots. Well,

19:46

the part of this that is unconvincing thus

19:48

far to me, and I'm not an anthropologist

19:50

and I haven't read this book, but the

19:52

part that's a little unconvincing to me is,

19:55

isn't it just sort of a story that

19:57

is pretty prevalent in lots of human cultures?

20:00

by the fact that we had language of

20:02

hobbit before this was discovered, that you have

20:04

some kind of legend of people

20:06

like this. So isn't his argument that why

20:08

they could maybe still exist is partially just

20:10

because these stories so amazingly

20:12

map on to these skeletons we

20:14

found? Is that really that amazing

20:17

now? But they're the

20:19

same people in the same place

20:21

where the skeletons were found, Caitlin.

20:23

It's like if everyone who talked

20:26

about leprechauns lived somewhere

20:28

where you found skeletons of

20:30

leprechauns, you'd say we might

20:33

be onto something. Yeah and

20:35

you know they're leprechauns because they're buried with their

20:37

gold. Yeah but it just

20:39

seems like this is a pretty

20:41

common like in many different cultures a

20:44

story like this comes up. It doesn't seem that

20:46

distinct to the people that you could

20:48

tie it. No I don't buy that

20:50

though. What other stories are there in

20:52

cultures of little people? Leprechauns, hobbits. It's

20:55

a pretty common it's also it's also in the plug

20:58

to be true that lots

21:00

of cultures come up with some

21:02

like almost human but not quite

21:04

and people have really good both

21:06

evolutionary and other expectations. Okay you're gonna

21:08

be okay we're gonna be sorry you're

21:11

gonna be sorry when we find one.

21:13

I think he's totally wrong okay. And

21:15

she's on the tonight show being interviewed.

21:17

You're gonna be so sorry. I said

21:19

I'm not an expert and I haven't read this book. I

21:22

just it seems like a pretty slim

21:24

link here. Hobbits were invented by Tolkien

21:26

when he wrote Lord of the Rings

21:28

it wasn't like he was drawing from

21:31

some deep European mythology. Yeah and elves

21:33

and dwarves he made all that up.

21:35

There's no mythology around elves and dwarves.

21:39

You know what I mean.

21:41

But here's my here's my

21:43

final question. If we find

21:45

some floresiensis how

21:51

does that if we find human

21:54

relatives that aren't

21:56

human but are human like

21:59

us What does that do to the

22:01

creation museum? What do they got to do to make

22:04

that? How do you make that fit? What do you do?

22:06

They they get discounted tickets um

22:10

What? My question is

22:12

do does does the bones that they

22:14

found in this cave were they accompanied

22:16

by any artifacts of civilization? Like did

22:18

were they tool makers? Did they have

22:20

arrowheads like are do they exhibit human

22:22

behavior or are these just a species

22:25

of primates? Like

22:27

an orangutan or some other gorilla type

22:29

primate that happens to maybe fall in

22:31

line with the evolutionary development of homosapiens

22:33

No, they they believe that

22:35

this is a hominin species not

22:38

a hominid species Do you know the difference

22:40

guy because I just had to look at

22:42

this morning Do you know the difference? An

22:45

N and a D Yes, that's part

22:47

of the difference, but there's it goes deeper than

22:49

that. It's not simply that hominins

22:52

That's the new term for

22:55

modern humans and all of

22:57

the ancestors of modern humans

23:01

Hominid is now the term for

23:03

any great ape And

23:05

all the ancestors of great apes so

23:08

if you consider humans part

23:10

of the great ape family, then we are

23:12

a hominid but more

23:15

specifically a hominin And

23:17

not a hominim because that's a word

23:19

that sounds like another homophone Yeah,

23:22

so what are these? What are these little guys?

23:25

hominins They're modern. They're

23:27

related to modern humans. Okay,

23:30

so like neanderthal neanderthals are hominins

23:33

Right. So that's my question If

23:36

this species is still alive somewhere on some

23:38

remote indonesian island and we find them do

23:40

they actually have a culture? or

23:42

are they just Primates

23:44

that are living in the wild running around naked

23:47

doing their thing Just

23:50

like spring break kids um

23:53

I don't have all the answers to that and I didn't

23:55

really want to spend this much time on this

23:57

story I just was wondering

24:00

And if you do

24:02

bump into an actual living

24:04

relative of modern humans

24:06

that is not ape,

24:09

that is human, but

24:11

not homo sapien, what

24:14

does it do to your theology and

24:17

your museum of

24:20

creation? I

24:22

feel like you either evangelize them or

24:24

you learn about Jesus from them. Either

24:27

they are fallen and they need the gospel or they are not

24:29

and you could learn something from them. But what

24:31

does it do with where is Adam and Eve

24:34

fit with the

24:36

little lady of Flores as they

24:38

nicknamed this little person? You

24:42

don't know. I have stumped you both.

24:44

I don't know. I win. Okay.

24:47

You only have five bucks. Do you know? Okay.

24:50

No, I have no idea. Okay. I

24:54

am not the one wearing my academic

24:56

credentials on my head in

24:59

this conversation. Okay.

25:02

Alright. Okay. Okay. Bradley

25:05

Onishi. Onishi. I think it is

25:07

Onishi. Bradley Onishi. Do you know who he

25:09

is? Yeah. He hosts

25:11

the Straight White American Jesus podcast.

25:14

He grew up Evangelical,

25:17

no longer Evangelical. He

25:19

did a lot of really

25:21

good work explaining the New

25:24

Apostolic Reformation and

25:26

their series on Great White, Straight

25:30

White, Great White,

25:32

Straight White American Jesus.

25:35

Their series on the New Apostolic Reformation

25:38

is worth listening to. But

25:40

he wrote a piece in

25:42

Politico magazine, somewhat provocative. It

25:46

says, Why Christians and Republicans Should

25:48

Reconsider the Premise That Life Begins

25:50

at Conception. Subtitle,

25:53

It's Not Settled Christian

25:56

Theology and It's

25:58

Outliving Its Political utility.

26:01

So if you say life begins at conception

26:04

because you believe that is eternal and immortal Christian

26:09

theology, he's saying it's actually not.

26:11

If you are saying it because you believe it

26:14

works out for you politically, it no

26:17

longer does. And I have seen

26:19

this to a certain extent in

26:21

the online Christian community because

26:24

there's a very strong wave

26:26

of abortion abolitionists who

26:29

are saying and the overall

26:31

pro-life community is not abortion abolitionists. They

26:34

think there should be some exceptions, the

26:36

overall pro-life community believes there should be

26:38

some exceptions and also they believe that

26:41

a woman who has an

26:43

abortion should not be treated

26:46

like someone who commits murder,

26:48

should not be prosecuted for

26:50

homicide. And so if

26:52

you're an abortion abolitionist, you're saying,

26:54

hey, wait a minute, we all

26:57

agreed that life starts at conception

26:59

and that taking innocent life is

27:01

murder, so therefore even like a

27:03

day after pill that prevents a fertilized

27:05

egg from implanting, that's murder and you

27:08

should be tried for murder. Do we

27:10

believe that or don't we believe it?

27:12

And it's caught much

27:14

of the pro-life community kind of

27:16

in a bind of saying, yeah,

27:18

well, we're not comfortable with that,

27:20

we're not comfortable with prosecuting women,

27:22

we're not comfortable with telling a

27:24

10-year-old that she has to have

27:26

the pregnancy from a rape, we're

27:30

not comfortable with these things

27:32

that on one level do

27:35

seem consistent with what you're saying, so

27:37

we in fact are not

27:41

being very consistent and we don't

27:43

know what to do now. And we saw this,

27:46

he talks a lot about the

27:49

Alabama case, Chief Justice

27:51

Tom Parker's opinion at the Alabama

27:53

Supreme Court that classified frozen

27:55

embryos as human persons. He

27:58

says in Chief Justice Tom Parker's opinion the

28:00

case which draws on the Bible,

28:02

Christian manifestos, theologians such as St.

28:04

Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and the

28:07

reformer John Calvin says it's an

28:09

openly theological document. Parker argues

28:11

that since life starts at conception, humans

28:13

are called to implement policies and make

28:15

decisions that will protect the sanctity of

28:17

human life. Okay, and

28:20

he says he's starting with the assumption

28:22

life starts at conception and that's what

28:24

Christians have always believed and then from

28:26

there it makes pretty logical

28:28

sense to say alright you got

28:30

to protect frozen embryos as

28:33

if they're humans, Skye. I

28:38

mean Christianity is kind of old, it's a

28:40

couple thousand years old now. Yeah it is, it's kind of old.

28:42

If you want to go back into the Old Testament you can

28:44

add time on to that. Yeah. Did

28:47

early Christians understand what conception

28:49

was scientifically? No. So

28:52

can you even, the question is

28:55

it's non-chronologically accurate, I

28:57

don't know what the right term is for

28:59

that but it's like. Anachronistic.

29:01

Anachronistic, there you go. Oh good. That's

29:04

right. Like the anachronistic camels in Deuteronomy.

29:07

It was a story. I had to

29:09

go to John Walton to have one packet.

29:12

To say Christians have always believed life started

29:14

at conception when conception as a scientific reality

29:16

wasn't even known until I don't know when

29:18

is kind of weird. Which the opposite then

29:21

is sort of anachronistic too to say Christians

29:23

haven't always believed this. It's like

29:25

well if this wasn't a concept at the time then it wasn't a

29:27

concept they could have believed. Exactly. Okay.

29:31

So I did a little digging in. Bradley

29:33

Onishi does a little digging in in this

29:35

article. I did more

29:37

digging in because I did just want to take

29:39

Bradley Onishi's word for it. I don't know him.

29:42

I don't know him. So

29:44

I did a little digging. Yeah. Thank

29:46

you. And here's the deal. I think

29:48

this is an interesting, well you will be the

29:51

judge of whether this is an interesting point. I

29:53

believe the phrase life begins at

29:55

conception isn't a

29:58

response to the secular world. world, it's

30:01

a response to a prior Christian

30:03

belief. Okay, so

30:06

I think it's actually like a

30:08

reforming of Christian belief. So let's

30:10

go back shall we to Aristotle.

30:14

Okay, Aristotle had

30:16

an opinion about abortion and

30:18

he had actually seen aborted

30:21

fetuses, so he had a very

30:23

well-formed opinion. Aristotle believed that the

30:25

formation of a human was complete

30:27

at around 40 days after gestation.

30:32

That was his estimate that you had a formed

30:34

human at 40, they were tiny,

30:37

they had arms and legs. Okay, okay. That's

30:40

what he believed. So 40 days after conception

30:43

is what you mean. Yes. After

30:45

gestation, that's what. 40 days of gestation.

30:49

Yes. Yes. You're

30:52

definitely 40 days after gestation.

30:54

It's a human. That too,

30:56

yeah, sorry. So I was thinking.

30:59

So he, now this is where

31:01

it gets kind of interesting because he

31:03

believed this applied only to boys. Boys

31:06

were fully formed at 40 days, girls it took

31:09

80 days to fully form. What's

31:11

that? That

31:13

makes no sense. Because girls,

31:16

and this was Aristotle's belief,

31:19

were malformed boys.

31:22

That females were malformed, yeah,

31:24

males that hadn't developed all

31:27

the way. They developed slower.

31:29

So now for Aristotle, that

31:31

point, the 40-day point for

31:33

boys and the 80-day point

31:35

for girls was when they

31:37

were given eternal

31:39

souls. Okay, so

31:41

the idea of insolment happening

31:43

at some point in human

31:46

development comes from

31:48

Aristotle. That

31:50

logic does not make any sense. I'm sorry.

31:52

I'm snagging on that one. What part does

31:55

that make sense? Well, okay, if

31:57

girls are malformed boys. Yeah.

32:01

And it takes

32:03

girls longer to form.

32:05

Here's my point. Boys have bits

32:07

and pieces girls don't have when they're born.

32:10

You know what I mean? And those bits and pieces develop.

32:12

Because they didn't fully develop. That's right. But that's

32:14

my point. But the boys should

32:17

have, it takes longer for a boy to develop

32:19

those bits and pieces that are visible, right?

32:23

Am I right? I'm

32:25

sorry. I feel like, I don't feel

32:27

like we really need to talk through. Was

32:29

Aristotle right about girls being formed boys?

32:32

Like it sounds to me like he's

32:35

saying girls didn't fully develop and

32:37

that's why they're girls and not boys. So

32:39

to not fully develop. Not that they're longer.

32:41

Exactly. That's just because they get souls. They

32:44

get souls later. They get souls later because they're

32:46

just behind. And their souls are different. Right.

32:49

They're left over souls. So one

32:51

really interesting point of conversation

32:53

that we can't dive into today

32:56

is how much the Western

32:58

church was influenced by Aristotleian thought.

33:01

Both in terms of the concept

33:03

of insolment and in terms of

33:05

the superiority of males over females.

33:08

That a lot of that was influenced and

33:11

you see a lot of that coming up

33:13

in Augustine. So in the fifth century Augustine

33:15

argued that homicide applied only

33:17

to killing a formed fetus.

33:20

One that was either 40 days for a

33:22

boy or 80 days for a girl.

33:25

So any killing of a fetus before

33:27

40 or 80 days wasn't a homicide

33:29

because the baby wasn't fully formed. Now

33:32

this gets interesting because it kind of

33:34

differed from Jewish thought. And here's where

33:36

it gets really interesting because what does

33:39

the Bible say about abortion? Virtually

33:42

nothing except for one passage in Exodus.

33:44

Okay, there's a passage in Exodus where if

33:47

a man strikes a woman and the woman

33:49

is pregnant and you know

33:51

has the baby or the baby comes out. And

33:54

it's controversial because it's interpreted two

33:56

different ways. The Hebrew version of

33:58

this text. This is how it

34:01

reads in Hebrew if a man

34:03

strives and wounds a pregnant woman

34:05

so that her fruit be expelled

34:08

But no harm befall her then he

34:10

shall be fined as her husband shall

34:12

assess and the matter placed before the

34:14

judges But if harm befall her then

34:16

you shall give life for life So

34:19

that's the Hebrew of that passage human

34:21

life is sacred But the unborn child

34:23

does not for these purposes in

34:25

Jewish thought count as a life now

34:28

the Septuagint The Greek

34:30

translation changed it reads

34:33

one word completely differently when the Hebrew

34:35

word a son was translated as harm

34:38

That Septuagint reads it as form

34:41

so the Greek translation reads if

34:43

there be no form yet to

34:45

the fetus He shall be

34:47

fined but if there be form you

34:49

shall give life for life And

34:52

that means applying the life for life principle

34:54

to the fetus rather than to the mother

34:57

Which is why form became so

34:59

important for early Christians who read

35:02

the Septuagint as opposed to Jews

35:04

Who did not who read the

35:07

Hebrew? Okay, so now Augustine comes

35:09

along and says it is

35:12

homicide only if the fetus is

35:14

fully formed He's going off the

35:16

Septuagint reading of Exodus. In fact,

35:18

he says this in his His

35:21

commentary on the book of Exodus and

35:24

if it's you know, so 40 days

35:26

So he borrows from Aristotle and

35:28

then he applies it to the Septuagint.

35:30

Okay, you with me? That's interesting,

35:33

huh? Okay, then where do we go for life? Yes

35:36

Kaylin Jewish people were reading the Septuagint

35:38

too Yes,

35:43

okay, whatever sure

35:48

No Kaylin's point was by the time

35:51

the Greek translation of the Old Testament came along

35:53

this Septuagint there were Jews living throughout The

35:55

Roman Empire and many of them read the Greek

35:58

Torah, which is the Septuagint. So

36:01

it wasn't just Christians reading the Greek

36:03

Old Testament. There were Jews

36:05

as well. By your point, Phil, is

36:07

the earlier manuscripts, the Hebrew manuscripts, are

36:10

the original, closer to the

36:12

original text. They used it

36:15

differently. They translated one word

36:17

differently. And the first, well,

36:19

the third century Jewish scholars

36:21

were not shaping Western civilization

36:24

as much as the third

36:26

and fourth century Christian scholars. So in

36:28

the fifth century, Augustine argued that homicide

36:30

applied only to killing a formed fetus,

36:33

one of 40 or 80 days gestation.

36:35

The Justinian code of the

36:37

sixth century confirmed that fetuses

36:39

under 40 days did not

36:41

have souls. Okay.

36:44

As of the sixth century, that was

36:46

widely the Christian position. Before

36:48

40 days, you don't have a soul. Then

36:51

we go to 1588 and... If

36:54

you're a boy. If you're a boy. If you're a boy. 80

36:56

days if you're a girl. I wonder if

36:59

they changed that at any point. I

37:01

don't know. But in 1588, Pope Sixtus

37:04

V rejected this view and issued

37:07

a papal bowl. His

37:09

name is... Papal bowl. His

37:12

name is Sixtus IV. Sixtus

37:14

V. Sixtus V.

37:17

Sixtus V. That's

37:20

confusing. He was the fifth Sixtus.

37:23

Was fifth to fourth and fourth to

37:25

third and third to second? No.

37:29

No. Pope Sixtus V

37:31

rejected Augustine's view and

37:35

issued a papal bowl that declared that

37:37

abortion was murder whatever stage of development

37:39

the fetus had reached. Okay. So he

37:41

changes it for the Catholic

37:43

Church. But three years later, his

37:46

successor, Gregory IX, rejected

37:48

that and put it back in the

37:50

Augustinian way. So he canceled

37:55

the papal bowl that said any abortion

37:57

was murder. That stayed

37:59

in place... until 1869

38:01

when Pius IX

38:03

reinstated 6th to

38:06

5th bull and

38:08

made it again homicide at any

38:10

point in development. And from then

38:12

on that has been the view

38:15

of the Catholic Church. How

38:17

long was it between Gregory IX and Pius IX? 1591

38:22

to 1869. So almost 300 years that it returned in the

38:24

Catholic Church to the Augustinian view.

38:34

But since 1869 it has been universal

38:36

in the Catholic Church that any form

38:38

of abortion at

38:41

any time is homicide. Okay,

38:43

so the Bible doesn't actually say

38:46

much about this other than the

38:48

part in Exodus that is hard

38:50

to interpret depending on whether you're reading

38:53

the Septuagint or the original Hebrew, Sky.

38:56

I have another question just

38:59

for my own. Okay, so since

39:02

1869 the Catholic Church has consistently sided

39:04

with the view that abortion is homicide.

39:07

Yes. But I could

39:10

be wrong. I don't recall ever hearing

39:12

that the Catholic Church advocates for

39:15

women who've had abortions to be prosecuted

39:17

for homicide. Is that correct? I'm

39:19

not aware. Yeah, I'm not aware of that ever

39:21

being in the case. Right. Okay.

39:25

So then, yeah, so

39:27

it wasn't until the

39:30

late 1970s that

39:33

American evangelicals began embracing

39:35

the Catholic position. And

39:38

there's a lot of writing from

39:40

Southern Baptists and other denominations that

39:42

were supporting limited access to abortion

39:45

because they took a view that was

39:47

closer to the Augustinian position. And

39:50

it was fairly common even throughout the 19th

39:52

century in America that there

39:54

was a different legal status to

39:56

a fetus after quickening.

39:58

And quickening is about 18

40:00

weeks when a mother can feel

40:02

a baby moving. So because some people

40:05

had decided that quickening was the moment

40:07

of insulment, that quickening, the baby comes

40:09

to life when God puts the

40:11

soul into the baby. Before there's a

40:14

soul, and in fact Thomas

40:16

Aquinas wrote something where he said that

40:18

a fetus starts out with the life

40:20

of a plant and then develops

40:22

to the kind of life of

40:25

an animal and then upon

40:27

insulment becomes human. Interesting.

40:30

Again, going back to

40:32

Aristotle, if the progression is from

40:34

lower form of life to a higher form

40:36

of life, then you

40:39

would argue if women take longer to

40:41

gestate in form, they are actually a

40:43

higher form of life than men. Really.

40:46

But if you want to argue the other way, then they should be

40:48

in sole force. Okay, but all of this

40:52

stuff is all built

40:55

on a non-scientific pre-enlightenment understanding of

40:57

all of this. Like the argument

40:59

that a fetus isn't sold when

41:02

there's quickening, which is when a

41:04

mother can feel the baby moving

41:06

in, that's all just experiential. It's

41:08

not scientific. We know that now.

41:11

So what's the

41:13

point? And

41:18

this is the point Bradley Onishi

41:20

is making, but I'm also making

41:23

that the phrase, life starts at

41:25

conception, is confusing,

41:28

number one. And

41:30

I've had this conversation with

41:32

several people online. The egg and

41:34

the sperm are both alive. There's

41:37

not dead things coming to life. So just

41:39

the way it's phrased

41:41

is misleading. A more accurate

41:43

phrasing would be the development

41:46

of a new human person

41:49

begins at conception. A

41:52

process is beginning at conception. Whether

41:55

you say that process is a person,

41:57

because this leads to some tricky questions.

42:00

questions like can

42:02

a single cell be considered a

42:05

person? You know,

42:07

when you have it, when you have and these

42:09

are questions that no one was asking in biblical

42:11

times because no one had any idea what

42:13

was actually going on inside a womb. No

42:16

one had a clue. You know,

42:18

can you say that what do

42:20

we grant personhood to? Do we

42:22

grant personhood to a fertilized egg?

42:25

On what grounds do we

42:27

grant personhood to a fertilized egg? Do we

42:29

grant personhood to do you need a body

42:31

to be a person? Because

42:34

up until the blastocyst stage, there's no

42:36

body. There's just some cells.

42:38

There's no body there. Half of the

42:40

cells in a blastocyst will become the

42:42

placenta. The other half will differentiate and

42:45

start to develop into a body. But

42:47

before that stage, there's no body. No

42:51

body. No body. From my

42:53

AP Biology class in high school. The

42:55

blastocyst, so like, okay, fertilized

42:58

embryo starts multiplying cells and then

43:00

it creates like a

43:02

sphere of cells. And then there's

43:04

the beginning of

43:06

the digestive system occurs when like

43:09

indents and creates a little hole that eventually pokes

43:11

through the other end. So then you get like

43:13

a- You just jumped, you just jumped way ahead.

43:16

Did I jump ahead? What is that? Because

43:19

the sphere itself, the outside of the

43:21

sphere is the placenta,

43:23

will be the placenta. The

43:25

inside of the sphere will eventually start

43:28

to develop the embryo. Right.

43:30

But the beginning of that is the formation

43:32

of a canal through

43:34

the middle which becomes your digestive

43:37

tract, right? And I think

43:39

in different species, the

43:41

beginning of that indentation that goes all

43:43

the way through, in some species it's

43:45

the mouth, in some species it's the

43:47

anus. And I believe in humans, it's

43:50

the anus. So when we are all starting out, we're

43:52

all just little a-holes is my point. Which

43:55

I think- That's brilliant evidence. That's

43:57

gorgeous. That's for Justin. Caitlin. Caitlin,

44:00

would you like to comment? Yeah, well,

44:02

can I add some of the history you didn't talk

44:04

about too? I think it's

44:07

also important because people will talk about

44:09

this a lot. They'll use

44:11

even more recent history to say Christians,

44:13

even evangelical Christians have not always been

44:15

pro-life. And they'll go to statements that

44:18

the Southern Baptist Convention made, groups of

44:20

evangelicals made prior to Roe v. Wade.

44:23

And that's important on one hand to say

44:25

a certain political orientation to this question has

44:27

not been the universal political

44:29

orientation of even evangelicals in our

44:31

country. Daniel Williams, historian,

44:34

has written a bunch about this whole

44:36

period. But what's important to notice that

44:38

there's a big shift among evangelicals. I

44:41

mean, you can trace the year that some

44:43

of this changes in part in relationship to

44:45

the ability for people to have ultrasounds and

44:47

see unborn children. So

44:49

that's a huge emotional part of it. But

44:52

also some of the story of this with evangelicals

44:54

is not a story of enlightened

44:56

people who were very open about

44:59

abortion and then got in league

45:01

with Republican politicians and became very

45:03

pro-life. Part of it is there

45:05

were some powerful men early in

45:08

evangelicalism that wanted to have a

45:11

theological account of access to abortion,

45:13

in part because it

45:15

was men who benefited from women

45:17

having access to abortions. In

45:20

this work that Williams has, he talks through some of

45:22

the higher up leaders who prior

45:24

to some of these changes with access that

45:26

women had to all sorts of reproductive care,

45:29

wanted access to abortions so that their mistresses

45:31

wouldn't have a baby and out the relationship

45:33

that they were having. So it's not an

45:35

unbroken history of like, we used to be

45:38

cool about this and then we got uncool

45:40

about it. It's like we've always

45:42

had mixed motives in how

45:44

we came to the conclusions we came

45:46

to politically. It sometimes is

45:48

genuine reflection on scripture. It's also

45:50

the context that we're in. It's

45:53

also our own motivations for sometimes

45:55

really evil reasons. And so

45:57

the history on that, I just want to say,

45:59

is not... It's not clearly able

46:01

to be interpreted. I think some people think,

46:03

I can tell an easy story about how

46:05

Christians have thought about abortion if I tell you some

46:08

of these historical facts. And as

46:10

Phil has described, it is a complicated story,

46:12

in part because what we know about what

46:15

is happening in reproduction has changed so much. And

46:17

the average person's knowledge, not just doctor's knowledge, but

46:19

with the advent of the ultrasound, it was, I

46:22

myself can see something that I couldn't see

46:24

before. All of the things affect how

46:26

people are working through the practical question of,

46:28

what does this emerging, and even

46:31

though abortion has existed for a very long time,

46:33

the ability we have now to use certain means

46:36

that are safer, that's a

46:38

relatively new technology. Our

46:40

ability to discern how we respond to

46:42

that is changing based on a bunch

46:44

of different features and conditions and emphases

46:46

and biases that we are

46:48

all swimming in. Right,

46:51

right. So

46:53

there are a lot of questions

46:56

that it's now very hard for

46:58

evangelicals to discuss because this notion,

47:00

this very strict notion,

47:02

life begins at conception, so any

47:06

disruption to that development is

47:08

murder. It's very hard

47:10

to question that premise. So

47:13

asking questions like, is

47:16

a fertilized egg a

47:18

person or is a

47:20

fertilized egg a container with all the

47:22

instructions for the development of a person?

47:26

Can a single cell, like if I take

47:28

a cell from my cheek, it has my

47:30

entire genome in it, is that another fill?

47:33

It could be developed into another fill with

47:35

cloning, is it murder to kill the cell

47:37

I take from my cheek? No, of course

47:39

not. Why not? Why

47:42

is it okay to kill a cell I

47:44

take from my cheek but not a cell

47:46

that wants to divide and keep subdividing? Well,

47:49

because you started a process. You started a

47:51

process of human development. So do you put

47:53

the personhood in the process? You

47:55

put the personhood in the genome? Where

47:58

are you putting personhood? And we

48:00

don't even have that conversation because

48:03

we've made it off limits to even

48:05

talk about it in Christian ethics, Sky.

48:08

Yeah, but it also raises, gosh,

48:12

this is the big legal question we've

48:14

had for decades now. If

48:17

it's the beginning of a process that leads

48:19

to personhood, where in the process do you

48:21

cross the line into personhood? And that's what

48:23

no one's... Exactly. Right. That's

48:26

the hard conversation. The easy conversation is it's

48:28

not a person until they're born or it's

48:31

a person from the moment they're conceived.

48:33

Those are the two easy positions to take.

48:36

Quickening was a nice middle position where you could

48:38

say, oh, it's a person when it starts moving.

48:41

We know now, well, that's crap. That is

48:43

scientific crap. So yes,

48:46

so you are either... You're

48:48

taking some position that is

48:51

somewhat arbitrary because

48:54

there really isn't another... Unless

48:57

you start with the conception argument, which is what

48:59

the Catholic Church has done since 1869, which is

49:01

the birth argument. Or

49:03

the birth argument, which some strains of

49:05

Judaism have done. Right.

49:09

I don't know too many people that are comfortable with

49:11

the birth argument though. Yeah. No.

49:15

Well, if you believe it's

49:17

legal, it should be acceptable

49:19

to have an abortion until

49:21

birth. W.A. Criswell, one of

49:24

the most famous pastors in Southern Baptist history,

49:26

thought it was birth where you would

49:28

grant legal protection to a baby until

49:31

Richard Land changed his mind. Right.

49:35

I mean, the whole... The ambiguity in

49:37

all of this though is I can understand

49:39

the appeal of those who say conception because

49:41

it takes the ambiguity out. Otherwise

49:43

it feels

49:46

arbitrary like you're saying. So, Caitlin, you're a squirm

49:48

and you want to say something. Well,

49:51

I just think the other underlying

49:53

dynamic in all of this that

49:55

we don't name very often is

49:58

that part of the reason that... there's

50:00

been such a push to say life begins

50:02

at conception, or more

50:04

accurately, as Phil says, a new human person

50:06

has created a conception, is in

50:08

part because I think it's- Begins developing. Begins

50:11

developing. Begins developing, yes.

50:14

I think part of the reason that

50:16

that's appealing is not just that it's

50:18

a clear line, but that so much

50:21

of our advocacy around pro-life questions have

50:23

been framed and motivated and energized by

50:25

the idea that the most important thing

50:27

we can do is a life and

50:29

death thing. And if that's the issue

50:31

that's on the table, you can justify

50:34

nearly anything. I mean, in some far

50:36

corners of this, you can justify bombing

50:38

an abortion clinic or prosecuting women for

50:40

murder. It

50:44

helps us politically to say that this is

50:46

the most important thing. We've talked about this

50:48

a ton when it comes to presidential elections.

50:50

The most important thing is that you would

50:53

elect a pro-life person who puts pro-life judges

50:55

on the Supreme Court, because this is life

50:57

and death. And my frustration

50:59

with that is not just the

51:01

way that we've often used abortion as just a Trump

51:03

card against anything else, which we've talked about a lot,

51:06

but the underlying assumption that for

51:08

something to be morally and politically

51:10

important, it has to be about

51:13

life or death. Instead

51:15

of saying, lots of things

51:17

really deeply matter that are not just life or

51:19

death. So to Bradley Onishi's point, I mean, I

51:21

don't even know that he would say this, but

51:23

along the same lines of what he's arguing, I

51:25

actually think it would really benefit pro-life people to

51:28

talk more about why a country

51:31

that aborts so many children is not the

51:33

kind of place that we wanna live in,

51:35

which then does obligate us to talk about

51:37

the way that we care for women who

51:40

are pregnant, the way that we care for children that

51:42

are born in our country. It obviously then wraps us

51:44

up into all of this other stuff, but

51:46

for us to say there are deeper

51:48

spiritual and moral and political reasons that

51:51

I want less abortions to happen, and

51:53

it's not just because it's a life

51:55

or death issue. It reminds me of

51:57

the IVF conversation about

52:00

part of the opposition, not just Catholic opposition,

52:02

but some Protestant opposition, there's other good reasons

52:04

to be opposed to IVF. But one reason

52:07

that's come up recently is this life begins

52:09

at conception. And so if you have to

52:11

create additional embryos to do IVF, you're creating

52:14

additional human lives that you'll have to kill.

52:17

Some people in opposition to that have said that

52:19

that's utterly ridiculous. They've given examples of miscarriages that

52:21

happened very early, all these other examples of why

52:23

this isn't a life that should be protected in

52:26

that same way. The bizarre thing

52:28

about that to me is that this

52:30

does not have to be morally

52:32

equivalent to a born grown person

52:35

to be something that matters and

52:37

how we treat it matters. So

52:39

the fact that parents were upset

52:42

that these embryos were destroyed isn't

52:44

just because they thought this is

52:46

morally equivalent to my toddler. They

52:49

said this thing, this matter

52:51

that's here, that yes, this clump of

52:53

cells is more than just the clump

52:55

of cells off of Phil's face. There

52:57

is something sacred and important happening here.

52:59

And even if we don't

53:01

want to say life begins at

53:03

conception, and so there should be

53:05

absolute prohibitions against abortion, we should

53:07

still say this is morally significant.

53:09

And what we do with this

53:11

matters. And I just wish that that could

53:14

be more of our political conversations is saying

53:16

I don't have to ratchet this up to

53:18

the level of this is life or death

53:20

for me to say this really matters and

53:22

how this shapes our souls and our human

53:24

communities deeply matters too. Okay,

53:27

Caitlin, here's the

53:29

problem with what you just said. I'm

53:33

with Caitlin. What you just said will not

53:35

fit on a bumper sticker or a tweet.

53:40

And therefore, it is completely

53:42

irrelevant to our political conversation. Yeah,

53:46

unfortunately. Yeah, because I've gotten in trouble

53:48

on Twitter for agreeing with Billy Graham

53:50

about abortion, that in his position was

53:52

abortion is evil, but in some rare

53:55

cases, maybe the lesser of two evils.

54:00

argument everyone makes who supports certain political

54:02

candidates these days? Yeah,

54:04

but that's not about life or death, Skye. The

54:06

only things that matter are things that are about life and death.

54:10

Yeah, but if you if it's this absolutist

54:13

position that is really, I would

54:15

say, based in response to the

54:18

former Christian position of life begins

54:20

at quickening and we say, no,

54:22

no, we don't believe that anymore.

54:25

Life, but it was really about installment. It

54:27

wasn't even about life. No one argued, even

54:29

Aquinas said that, you know, at the very

54:32

earliest stages, that's a life. It's just more

54:34

like a plant life than an animal life

54:36

or a human life. So

54:38

no one has ever said there is no life before

54:41

conception or before

54:43

quickening, but we've made that

54:45

such an easy slogan

54:48

to pass around and put on

54:50

things and to kind of inflame

54:52

passions around that we fail to

54:54

think through the logic or the

54:56

implication until you actually overturn Roe

54:58

v. Wade and someone tries to

55:00

ban IVF or ban, you know,

55:03

IUD contraceptive because it can

55:05

cause a blastocyst

55:07

not to implant and then we say, wait

55:10

a minute, is that what we really meant?

55:13

But in that regard, isn't the overturning of

55:15

Roe maybe a good thing because it's forcing

55:18

this conversation? It's forcing both Christians and non-Christians

55:20

and everyone else in our society to

55:22

ask, what do I think about this?

55:24

What do we think about this? What

55:27

is the humane and just policy? I

55:29

mean, that's kind of what overturning Roe was intended

55:32

to do, is to kick start the conversation and

55:34

it's going to be very messy for a very

55:36

long time. Well, it was intended to kick it

55:38

back to the states, but now others are saying,

55:41

what we really want is national policy that outlaws

55:43

all abortion and some kinds of contraception. And

55:46

what I see potentially happening is that this issue

55:49

that welded the whole

55:51

religious right together is

55:53

now splintering parts of the religious right

55:55

because, you know, no, we're

55:57

really pro-life and we want to criminalize.

56:00

women and we want to, you know, we want to take it all

56:02

the way and others say, no, no, no, we never wanted to do

56:04

that. Why are you saying we wanted to do that? So

56:07

I find it interesting that

56:09

the coalition that was brought

56:11

together by evangelicals adopting the

56:13

position of the Catholic Church

56:15

from 1869 may be splintering

56:17

because, like you've

56:21

said several times, because the dog caught the

56:23

car and now it says, are we, is

56:25

that actually what we really believe? And

56:28

it is interesting that the standard

56:31

bearer for the religious right in the political realm

56:33

anyway is Donald Trump and he's running away from

56:35

this issue. He does not want to engage

56:38

on it. Yeah, like I said recently, he

56:40

may support a 15-week ban. Yeah,

56:43

but he's also saying it's a loser issue

56:45

or a losing issue for the Republicans and

56:48

he doesn't want to run on this. Yeah.

56:51

So winning means more than having

56:53

a cohesive ethical

56:55

code. Okay, last

56:57

thought, Caitlin, I really liked

56:59

what you had to

57:01

say there. You put that

57:04

together because it should matter. It

57:06

should matter. You know, how

57:08

we treat, how we think about creating human

57:10

life should matter. I don't even know

57:12

why you would have to say that. But

57:15

that's a good... And so there's a... Go

57:17

ahead. Well, that's it. But what you just

57:20

said is a good description of we

57:22

have often substituted thoughtful

57:24

Christian reflection on

57:26

a host of questions about how we

57:28

create life. This is about abortion. It's

57:30

about IBS. It's about... I

57:33

mean, not that we necessarily need to

57:35

adopt Catholic positions on all of this,

57:37

but we should think about birth control.

57:39

We should think about how we raise

57:41

children under what conditions people have. These

57:44

are all important ethical questions and we

57:46

have substituted thoughtful Christian reflection on those

57:48

questions in our communities with the aid

57:50

of scripture, yes, thinking about what

57:52

that means for policies that affect our

57:55

whole communities. We have substituted

57:57

all of that complicated, important, thoughtful

57:59

work for... for we're pro-life and that

58:01

tells us how to vote four times a

58:03

year and that's the subtotal some total

58:05

of our thinking about human life

58:08

and it should be so much more

58:10

than that and richer and deeper and more

58:13

interesting than that. It

58:15

feels like we've substituted really the difficult

58:19

process of pursuing wisdom for

58:22

slogans. And

58:25

that's not just true in this issue but many others. Oh

58:28

so true. Okay. Hey

58:30

guys, what do you think? Let us

58:32

know. Did Caitlin get it right? Did Sky

58:35

get it right? Who's wearing the better hat

58:37

today? I don't know. I

58:40

know we have some people in our audience that

58:42

are more liberal than I am on the issue

58:44

and I know we have a lot of people

58:46

in the audience that are more conservative than I

58:48

am on the issue so I'm interested to hear

58:51

your thoughts either way. Do

58:54

you see cracks in that the tight

58:57

Jerry Falwell, Paul Wierick, because Paul Wierick

58:59

was Catholic and he was the one

59:01

who was trying to figure out how

59:03

to get evangelicals to come along and

59:06

vote with Catholics as a single block

59:08

and his partnership with Jerry

59:10

Falwell made that happen.

59:12

He was the one who suggested

59:14

the name Moral Majority which then

59:17

Jerry Falwell took and ran with.

59:19

It's a really interesting history of

59:21

how Catholics and evangelicals came together

59:23

because they felt America

59:25

was morally going off the rails

59:27

and if they could find common

59:29

ground between conservative Catholics and conservative

59:32

evangelicals, conservative Protestants, they

59:35

would make up a huge voting block and

59:37

it was abortion that became the

59:39

issue that really brought that block together and

59:42

adopted the Catholic position which

59:44

is kind of interesting and changed the

59:46

SBC, changed the writings of a lot

59:48

of Christian organizations to match the Catholic

59:50

position. Not saying

59:52

that's wrong, I'm just saying it's interesting and

59:55

we should talk about it because it was only the Catholic

59:57

position since 1869 which is also interesting. Before

1:00:00

that, the Catholic position was more

1:00:03

influenced by Aristotle than by the

1:00:05

Bible. Also interesting. Okay, I'm

1:00:07

going to wrap it up now. Let us

1:00:09

know what you think. Come to holypost.com. New

1:00:12

stuff coming out on Holy Post Plus

1:00:14

all the time. Caitlin's getting the show.

1:00:16

Esau's getting the show. Sky's

1:00:18

got another show called the Skypod.

1:00:20

Oh my gosh. We're,

1:00:23

what are we? We're

1:00:25

like a media company. We

1:00:28

sounded like Oprah there for a minute. You

1:00:30

get a show. Everyone gets a show. And you

1:00:33

get a show. And I don't

1:00:35

need another show right now. I'm kind of busy with some

1:00:37

other stuff. Thanks for listening to that

1:00:39

and we will see you guys next week. We're

1:00:42

in another divisive election year and I know

1:00:44

that many of you feel like me, politically

1:00:46

homeless. That's even true regarding

1:00:49

the issue of abortion, where I've

1:00:51

struggled with both the pro-life and

1:00:53

pro-choice political camps. That's why

1:00:55

for years I've sponsored the work being done

1:00:57

by Pro-Grace. And I recommend you check

1:00:59

them out too. They're advancing

1:01:01

a non-political approach to abortion that

1:01:04

rises above the divide by demonstrating

1:01:06

God's grace and value for both

1:01:08

the woman and the child. Pro-Grace

1:01:11

provides resources, curriculum, and community

1:01:13

so that Christians have space

1:01:15

to explore this third way.

1:01:18

I support Pro-Grace because they

1:01:20

navigate this complex issue by

1:01:22

reflecting Jesus, not a political

1:01:24

party or partisan agenda. The

1:01:26

Holy Post is partnering with them because

1:01:29

we know that Holy Post listeners also

1:01:31

care about representing God well in complicated

1:01:33

and divisive issues. So

1:01:35

you can visit prograce.org/Holy Post

1:01:38

for free resources, including an

1:01:40

e-book, their podcast, and an

1:01:42

upcoming conversation exclusively for the

1:01:45

Holy Post community. Again

1:01:48

that's prograce.org/Holy Post.

1:01:51

And we're grateful to ProGrace for sponsoring

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this episode. This

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episode of the Holy Post is sponsored

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again to Faithful Counseling for sponsoring

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this episode. A

1:03:02

pretty good case could be made that a

1:03:04

lot of the problems we're seeing today comes

1:03:06

from not knowing how to disagree well with

1:03:08

each other. We're struggling to share our communities

1:03:10

and our country with people who don't think,

1:03:12

live or believe the same way we do.

1:03:15

That leads some to conclude that the only

1:03:17

option is for our group to take over

1:03:20

control and dominate or expel everyone else. Obviously,

1:03:23

the end of that kind of thinking

1:03:25

is pretty awful and often bloody. That

1:03:27

is not the way of Jesus, who calls us

1:03:30

to love both our neighbors who agree with us

1:03:32

and even our enemies who do not. Our

1:03:35

guest today has spoken and written a

1:03:37

lot about what it means to live

1:03:39

in a pluralistic culture. He argues that

1:03:41

there's a better way for us to

1:03:43

disagree with each other, one that bridges

1:03:45

divisions rather than widens them. John

1:03:48

Anazu is a professor of law and

1:03:50

religion at Washington University in St. Louis.

1:03:52

He's been on the Holy Post a

1:03:54

bunch of times and this time he's talking

1:03:56

to Caitlin about his new book, Learning to

1:03:59

Disagree. path to

1:04:01

navigating differences with empathy and

1:04:03

respect. Here is Caitlin's

1:04:05

conversation with John Anazu. Dr.

1:04:13

Anazu, thank you so much for joining

1:04:15

me today. I'm excited to talk about

1:04:17

your new book, Learning to Disagree, the

1:04:20

surprising path to navigating differences with

1:04:22

empathy and respect. So thanks for

1:04:25

joining me. It's great to be with

1:04:27

you Caitlin. Thanks for having me. So

1:04:29

let's start out just talking a little bit

1:04:31

about why this book and why the format

1:04:33

for this book. For people who haven't seen

1:04:35

it, each chapter is titled

1:04:38

with a different month of the year and kind of going

1:04:40

through the school year and even outside of the kind of

1:04:43

format of it, many of your illustrations

1:04:45

are about teaching students, about conversations with faculty.

1:04:47

So there is a kind of frame for

1:04:49

it that is a year of school, which

1:04:51

I appreciated as a, you know, lifelong student

1:04:53

at this point. But tell us a little

1:04:56

bit about why this book now and why

1:04:58

this format for this book. Yeah,

1:05:01

you know, so the idea for the book kind

1:05:03

of came to me at the height of the

1:05:05

pandemic when we were all, you know, distanced and

1:05:07

shut down and a lot of people were yelling

1:05:09

at each other over different COVID policies. And it

1:05:11

just occurred to me that if we were

1:05:14

gonna get better at relating to

1:05:16

each other, we would have to work on better

1:05:19

disagreement. And so I thought, well, what about in

1:05:21

my own life could be helpful

1:05:23

in that way? And it

1:05:25

occurred to me that the things that

1:05:27

I do teaching law students and then

1:05:29

the practice of law actually

1:05:31

has a lot of really good applications

1:05:33

for non lawyers for people on their

1:05:36

everyday interactions with family

1:05:38

members or neighbors or co-workers. And that there

1:05:40

would be a way, if I could come

1:05:42

up with the right storytelling form, there would

1:05:44

be a way to illustrate some of these

1:05:46

ideas that would let the

1:05:49

average reader hang on instead of

1:05:51

being, you know, dissuaded by a

1:05:53

bunch of didactic propositions. And so

1:05:56

the storytelling piece kind of merged or jelled

1:05:58

quickly for me. And then

1:06:00

it was just a matter of trying to figure

1:06:03

out the right balance

1:06:05

of true stories and

1:06:08

composite characters and all of that to

1:06:10

keep it compelling but also not too

1:06:12

particularized, if that makes sense. Yeah,

1:06:14

well, and I appreciate what you just said too, because I feel like,

1:06:17

you know, I do a lot of work talking to

1:06:19

people about faith and political life. And what people will

1:06:21

say to me all the time is like, oh, with

1:06:23

what you do, you must be

1:06:25

so exhausted. Like, it must be really... You

1:06:28

must have such thick skin, people will say.

1:06:30

And I feel like a lot of times I end up saying something to them

1:06:32

like, I feel like actually I'm

1:06:34

more hopeful because I keep being surprised

1:06:37

by goodness instead of kind of run

1:06:39

down with difficulty. And I felt

1:06:41

that in this book of you're someone I can imagine people would

1:06:43

look at and be like, oh, hardened lawyers

1:06:45

and like dealing with contentious issues with your

1:06:48

students. And you must just kind of want

1:06:50

to shut it all out and not have

1:06:52

these conversations. And instead, you've written something that

1:06:54

I found really hopeful about how we can

1:06:56

do this, which I think is a real

1:06:58

gift for, again, this year, where a lot

1:07:01

of people are feeling anxiety about difficult conversations.

1:07:04

And one of the first chapters, really the first chapter

1:07:06

is about empathy and

1:07:08

learning empathy, cultivating empathy. But

1:07:11

before you get into that, you start out

1:07:13

that chapter telling a story about you scrolling

1:07:15

on social media, something that doesn't necessarily produce

1:07:18

empathy. And I think a lot of people

1:07:20

listening probably feel that of

1:07:22

I have been shaped and formed by

1:07:24

the media I consume and the internet

1:07:27

to really kind of shield myself from other people

1:07:30

who are different from me, who I assume will

1:07:32

hurt me or I assume are too different from

1:07:34

me. This goes back to that thick skin.

1:07:36

If you do this a lot, you must have such thick skin. Can

1:07:39

you talk a little bit about how we might

1:07:41

learn greater empathy? Should we just

1:07:43

all delete social media? Is that a good first step?

1:07:47

It might be. For some people,

1:07:49

that might be a good and necessary first step.

1:07:51

I mean, you know, so the bottom line here,

1:07:53

and lots of people are realizing this now, we're

1:07:55

not going to be at the algorithms. So

1:07:58

the financial and incentives and

1:08:00

structures of our online engagement are

1:08:04

smarter than we are. And if we think

1:08:06

otherwise, we're just going to be

1:08:08

victims of our own pride. So it is

1:08:10

going to take a lot of very deliberate

1:08:13

practices and counter-liturgies

1:08:16

to balance some of these

1:08:18

online temptations and

1:08:20

urges and nudges. And

1:08:23

different people can handle this differently. I

1:08:25

find myself that I'm rarely

1:08:28

encouraged or edified by social media. It

1:08:30

brings out all of my worst tendencies.

1:08:32

So I try to push myself for

1:08:35

longer form engagement or at least a pause

1:08:37

or a delay. I mean, the number of

1:08:39

times I've come across something and thought, well,

1:08:42

I really need to respond to this one

1:08:44

now. And then just give it half a

1:08:46

day and you realize it's not as important

1:08:48

as you thought. Or the world goes on

1:08:50

or God doesn't really need you to intervene

1:08:52

on this tweet. So

1:08:55

I think this kind

1:08:57

of collective discipline will be important.

1:08:59

And this is not directly

1:09:01

your question, but it also calls to

1:09:03

mind the incredible challenge that pastors have

1:09:06

in forming and cultivating people when

1:09:08

they get 20 minutes a

1:09:11

week and some people in their

1:09:13

pews are spending 20 hours online.

1:09:16

And so this is kind of an all hands on

1:09:18

deck moment where we really need to in

1:09:21

community and in relationship ask each other some

1:09:23

hard questions about where we're spending our time

1:09:25

and forming our habits. Yeah.

1:09:28

Yeah. I feel similarly to

1:09:30

what you just described. I can

1:09:32

tell how this is malforming me. And

1:09:35

I think the common wisdom people will

1:09:37

usually have is just like make friends with people

1:09:39

who are different from you. And then you'll learn

1:09:41

empathy for different circumstances. And

1:09:43

there's sometimes evidence in our own lives that that's

1:09:46

not always how it ends up working. Sometimes

1:09:48

we end up more frustrated with the people who are different from

1:09:50

us. If someone is thinking,

1:09:52

you know, my church is really diverse. My

1:09:54

neighborhood is really diverse, but I don't feel

1:09:56

as empathetic as I wish I felt towards

1:10:00

difference in my community. How

1:10:02

would you say, or how would you recommend they go

1:10:04

about trying to learn that or trying

1:10:06

to cultivate that in their own lives? Yeah, I

1:10:09

mean, I think, so I think this, this

1:10:12

isn't a TED talk or a half

1:10:14

day seminar solution. And

1:10:16

I think the people who really wanna do this

1:10:19

need to set aside some time and

1:10:21

count the cost because this is going

1:10:23

to work best within the context of

1:10:26

trusted environments and trusted relationships. And

1:10:29

those don't happen overnight. So, you

1:10:31

know, one of the, actually the

1:10:33

surprising discoveries of writing this book

1:10:35

in narrative form was reminding myself

1:10:38

about the classroom environment and how

1:10:40

critical it is to building

1:10:42

trust over time. Right, I mean, as you know, we have

1:10:44

13 weeks together and

1:10:48

the ethos and trust

1:10:50

in the room 10 weeks in

1:10:53

is really different than week one. And

1:10:56

so I think for, you know, not everyone's in school right

1:10:58

now, but for people who want to

1:11:00

model a deep understanding and work on

1:11:03

those deep disagreements, I don't think there

1:11:05

are any shortcuts to building in time

1:11:07

and then space to reflect

1:11:10

and come back and build trust together.

1:11:13

And that takes some buy in, right? You

1:11:15

probably need good food and you probably need

1:11:17

a comfortable place to meet, but

1:11:19

those things you can handle on the front end and

1:11:21

then keep it functional and

1:11:23

small. Don't do this with 100 people in

1:11:25

a room, it's not gonna work, yeah, but

1:11:27

start small and start intentionally. Yeah,

1:11:30

I so appreciate it in a later chapter when you're

1:11:32

talking about difficult conversations. You say something

1:11:34

about, you know, the closer relationships we have, the

1:11:37

more we can risk because we've

1:11:39

built up relational trust, we share some context with

1:11:41

each other. When

1:11:43

it does then come time for the

1:11:45

difficult conversation, and I think a

1:11:47

lot of people are anticipating that this year, they're saying,

1:11:50

even if I wanted to, which maybe I don't necessarily

1:11:52

want to, but even if I wanted to avoid some

1:11:54

of the really, not just on

1:11:57

the surface political issues, I disagree with my family

1:11:59

about, but the underlying. ideas

1:12:01

about how communities should function and what kind of

1:12:03

creatures humans are and what's ultimately good and true

1:12:05

in the world will come up. And

1:12:08

let's say I've been working on building some

1:12:10

of that relational trust and maybe I do

1:12:12

have good food and I'm in a comfortable

1:12:14

situation. Are there ways

1:12:16

that we might consider best practices we

1:12:19

might consider maybe for that

1:12:21

conversation going better than our expectations?

1:12:24

Which I think a lot of us, part of it is we're just

1:12:26

bracing ourselves, assuming it will be bad and maybe

1:12:28

we need some help getting a little hope that it

1:12:30

will be hard. It might not be impossible or as impossible as

1:12:32

we think it is. Right.

1:12:35

Well, you know, and I think a

1:12:37

lot of people feel right now this

1:12:39

almost visceral sense that especially with family,

1:12:41

this is going to be hard. And

1:12:43

so practical tip number one is

1:12:46

don't start with family. Don't let that be

1:12:48

your test run. Work

1:12:50

this out in some other relationships because family is

1:12:52

just really hard. You know, they know you well.

1:12:54

There's a whole lot of shared

1:12:56

wrapped up history and sometime that's going

1:12:58

to be the hardest to

1:13:00

sort through. But if you're ready

1:13:03

for the family conversation, then I think

1:13:05

you go in with some resources.

1:13:08

You go in with a full tank, but

1:13:10

you don't do this conversation when you're tired

1:13:12

or you're stressed or you're lonely

1:13:15

and you go in with a

1:13:17

capacity for patience and for listening.

1:13:19

And then I think with modest

1:13:21

goals too. So I think some

1:13:24

people right now are feeling like I don't

1:13:26

even recognize right Uncle

1:13:28

Jim or whoever it is from the person I knew. And

1:13:33

if you step back and think, well, one of the

1:13:35

reasons you may not recognize that person is they

1:13:38

have been formed very differently for like

1:13:40

10 or 15 years and

1:13:42

you're not going to undo that with the conversation. So

1:13:45

the modest goal of an initial

1:13:48

conversation, even about disagreement is to

1:13:50

focus maybe on some

1:13:52

issue that's a little closer to common ground

1:13:54

or maybe it's some news

1:13:56

source or credible authority in their lives that

1:13:59

can push them. a little bit from

1:14:01

what they're thinking. Or

1:14:03

maybe it's to talk about football and turkey, right?

1:14:05

So you have to kind of use judgment about

1:14:07

where you engage. But I

1:14:10

think once you recognize

1:14:12

that this is a matter of

1:14:14

formation, you have

1:14:16

to then realize that the counter

1:14:18

formation is going to take a lot

1:14:20

of time. And you know, if you're

1:14:24

checking in like twice a year on the

1:14:26

holidays, you're not going to be the person

1:14:28

who's going to drive that counter formation. So

1:14:30

you just have to kind of be realistic

1:14:32

about the set of relationships that you have

1:14:34

now. It doesn't mean shy away

1:14:36

from all of it, but it means counting

1:14:38

the costs and recognizing some

1:14:41

of the significant challenges that

1:14:43

might lie ahead. Yeah, that's

1:14:45

so helpful. Because I think, I mean, part

1:14:47

of what I think underlies the question people will

1:14:49

ask sometimes, and it is usually Thanksgiving, like how

1:14:51

do I talk with my family members on Thanksgiving?

1:14:53

Or how do I and even

1:14:56

implicit in that is like, this is my one

1:14:58

time I talked to them, that seems not great.

1:15:00

But underlying that question, I feel like is people

1:15:02

wondering, are my options

1:15:05

just keeping it entirely superficial,

1:15:07

doing the small talk, avoiding the really difficult things

1:15:10

and just going like the goal is just maintain

1:15:12

relationship. And if we talk about the other stuff,

1:15:14

we just can't maintain the relationship. So

1:15:16

is my option either that or hash it

1:15:19

all out. And it has to be kind

1:15:21

of dramatic and intense and really difficult. So

1:15:24

I appreciate your advice of like, what are the manageable

1:15:26

things that we can do? What other

1:15:29

advice would you give to someone

1:15:31

who says, it's not just that I

1:15:33

feel like these things are really important. And so I

1:15:35

want to talk about them, which I think is a

1:15:37

good impulse to say, I don't want this relationship to

1:15:39

just be superficial. But then I think

1:15:41

there are some people, maybe even people listening, who

1:15:44

it feels like this is their job,

1:15:46

like and people and sometimes politicians or,

1:15:48

or commentators will even sort of imply

1:15:50

this, like you've got to make sure

1:15:52

your family members at Thanksgiving have got some

1:15:54

stuff figured out or the country will collapse

1:15:57

or the right person won't get elected. who's

1:16:00

like, it's my job, either for their

1:16:02

faithfulness as a Christian or the health

1:16:05

of our country or something to convince

1:16:07

my family members of these things,

1:16:09

I think, and maybe I'm right that they might be really

1:16:11

grievously wrong on. This could feel not just important because a

1:16:14

pundit or a politician is telling me it, but it

1:16:16

could feel really important because of my own convictions about

1:16:18

what God wants for us. Yeah,

1:16:23

it's a super important question. I mean, I think

1:16:25

the bad news is we're very unlikely

1:16:29

to change any votes between now and

1:16:31

November for some of the same

1:16:33

reasons we've just talked about. So if you kind of

1:16:35

feel, not you, but if someone listening feels this burden

1:16:38

or obligation to try

1:16:41

to persuade someone to vote differently, I

1:16:44

don't know. I mean, that seems like a

1:16:46

really heavy lift and probably unlikely. And even

1:16:48

if you were successful in a one-off situation,

1:16:50

that's certainly not going to affect national politics.

1:16:52

I think what we're about

1:16:54

to see unfold in a few months is baked

1:16:56

in at this point. And that

1:16:59

doesn't mean give up hope and

1:17:01

throw up your hands, but it does mean you probably

1:17:04

think about prioritizing your time differently. And

1:17:06

if you're feeling kind of an

1:17:08

urgent burden, there are ways to invest in institutions

1:17:13

and other kinds of structures we

1:17:15

need in place that would be

1:17:17

probably more helpful. The other

1:17:19

thing though, I think, and maybe a longer term sense

1:17:21

is to

1:17:25

ask yourself first, do you have the credibility

1:17:27

in this person's life to issue the challenges

1:17:29

that you want to ask? So many years

1:17:32

ago, I was a volunteer leader with Young

1:17:34

Life. And one of the great mantras

1:17:37

from Young Life is this reminder,

1:17:40

earn the right to be heard, right?

1:17:42

That you are first credibly

1:17:45

in someone's life and demonstrating care

1:17:47

for them before you start preaching

1:17:50

or condemning or whatever

1:17:52

it is. And even

1:17:55

with family, sometimes you

1:17:57

might have been in their life years not

1:18:00

still there and if they don't still have a

1:18:02

felt sense that you care about them as human

1:18:04

beings and that you want to listen to them

1:18:06

too, then it's going to be really

1:18:08

hard just to try to compel them

1:18:10

to a different position or belief. And

1:18:12

that's, you know, that's generalizable as well.

1:18:15

Like anyone we meet out in society,

1:18:17

people today want to hear first, do

1:18:19

you care about me as a human being? Not what

1:18:21

do you think about the world or politics or whatever

1:18:23

it is? Yeah,

1:18:25

that's so helpful. But

1:18:27

also could reframe, like you said before, who we feel

1:18:30

most called to, if that's the word

1:18:32

we want to use, to have those conversations with. If

1:18:34

it's not someone that we're in that deep relationship with,

1:18:36

maybe that's a first good question to ask. Later

1:18:39

in the book, you talk about when you're

1:18:41

talking about, you know, having difficult conversations and

1:18:44

the places where we have the most disagreement,

1:18:47

you describe ways in which none

1:18:49

of our conversations are neutral. There's

1:18:51

always deeper metaphysical questions, value judgments

1:18:54

implicit in those debates, and we

1:18:56

can't always necessarily bracket out those

1:18:58

substantive disagreements just to focus on

1:19:00

procedure. Can you talk

1:19:02

a little bit more about that? Because I think the

1:19:05

impulse right now, and this I think has even come

1:19:07

up a bunch of times on this show, is to

1:19:09

try to just either get down to the lowest common

1:19:11

denominator, like even among Christians, we disagree about so many

1:19:13

things. Let's just do the most

1:19:15

kind of bare thing that we can all agree on.

1:19:18

Or let's just give general guidelines,

1:19:21

procedural guidelines for how we interact

1:19:23

because the substantive stuff is way

1:19:25

too messy. And I feel

1:19:27

like on the show, it's typically me that's the soapbox

1:19:29

of like, I don't want to live in a world

1:19:31

where we're not talking about our substantive disagreements, or we

1:19:33

think people need to bracket that out from the

1:19:35

rest of their life. Or so can you for

1:19:37

my own sake, can you talk a little bit

1:19:39

about both how you

1:19:42

have described that truth, and then also what

1:19:44

that means then for us? Because I think

1:19:46

there's very good reasons people want to say,

1:19:48

let's bracket that stuff out and just focus

1:19:50

on what we can kind of in a

1:19:53

in the barest sense, at

1:19:55

least work with now. Yeah, yeah. Well,

1:19:58

so first of all, to say I'm on. and

1:20:00

team Caitlin here, like we gotta be talking about

1:20:02

our substantive disagreement. So I agree with you there.

1:20:05

But as a first step, especially in

1:20:08

a very diverse and complex society, we

1:20:10

need to identify what it is we

1:20:12

have in common as a people. And

1:20:14

so I'm actually quite suspicious of the

1:20:17

language of the common good when

1:20:19

we use it or deploy it at a

1:20:21

society level. For Christians, the

1:20:23

common good that's tied to a telos

1:20:25

is a significant theological concept

1:20:28

that we can't give up on. It's

1:20:30

baked into what we believe. But when

1:20:32

we try to expand the common good

1:20:34

to a very diverse set of actors

1:20:37

of different faiths and no faiths, it's

1:20:39

incredibly difficult to name what that is.

1:20:41

What's a human being? What's the purpose

1:20:43

of the country? What happens when you die? We don't

1:20:46

agree on any of that stuff. So what

1:20:48

is the common good? Well, maybe

1:20:50

it's national highways and national

1:20:53

defense or something like that, but that's not very

1:20:55

thick to hold us together. So

1:20:58

we are kind of stuck with a

1:21:00

pretty bare bones process. I think

1:21:02

a commitment to civil liberties, for

1:21:04

example, is a really important shared

1:21:06

common ground premise for most

1:21:08

Americans, or it should be at least. But

1:21:12

we can and should and must still talk about

1:21:14

our substantive disagreement. So when it comes to those,

1:21:17

and this is kind of the point about neutrality,

1:21:19

I think it's just

1:21:21

really important for us to recognize that most

1:21:23

of the time we are

1:21:25

making substantive, non-neutral normative

1:21:27

claims about what we believe or

1:21:29

what we want in the world,

1:21:32

whether that's the right policy

1:21:34

in response to the COVID pandemic, right?

1:21:36

There was no policy that was just

1:21:38

science or just law. This was a

1:21:40

blend of preferences and policy

1:21:42

and epistemic beliefs and all kinds of things.

1:21:45

And when it comes to what

1:21:47

teaching the proper curriculum in a high

1:21:50

school classroom is, there's no neutral

1:21:52

there. We're constantly battling with

1:21:55

each other over how much of

1:21:57

a story or a narrative we want to center or

1:21:59

force. and how much critique we want

1:22:01

to bring in. And I think, so for

1:22:03

Christians especially, to be honest and descriptively accurate

1:22:05

about what we're doing and to

1:22:08

recognize there is no neutral space. But

1:22:10

that also then helps us, I think, in the personal

1:22:13

relationships, because when we recognize, I'm

1:22:16

not just speaking objective

1:22:19

truth in the sense that everyone else can

1:22:21

access, but I'm actually speaking out of my

1:22:23

own lived experience, and that might be very

1:22:25

hard for someone else to understand or comprehend.

1:22:28

That's not a claim about relativism, right? There's still a

1:22:30

big T truth in the world, and we are trying

1:22:32

to pursue it and live into it, but

1:22:35

it's a sort of intellectual modesty that

1:22:37

doesn't pretend we've got it all

1:22:39

figured out. Yeah,

1:22:42

it reminds me of a kind

1:22:44

of interface group in

1:22:46

Durham that I went to when I first moved here, and

1:22:49

I was a little uncomfortable with how often,

1:22:52

you know, a great diversity of

1:22:54

denominations, traditions within Christianity and some

1:22:56

Jewish groups. There

1:22:59

was diversity in that sense, but it wasn't true

1:23:01

religious diversity across really deep

1:23:04

difference, but there was this tendency in this group to just

1:23:06

sort of act like, well, we all, at the end of

1:23:08

the day, we all believe the same things. We

1:23:10

all kind of believe in the value of humans,

1:23:13

and we believe in some kind of transcendent God,

1:23:16

and it frustrated me both because there were

1:23:18

people that wouldn't be able to ascribe to

1:23:20

that description of what we all believe, people

1:23:22

in our communities, and we were kind of

1:23:24

ignoring that difference, but also sometimes

1:23:26

ignoring deep differences amongst us, even if there were

1:23:28

things that we could agree on, and this impulse

1:23:30

to say, like, oh, no, we all believe the

1:23:33

same things, wasn't actually helpful at the

1:23:35

end of the day at being clear about where our differences

1:23:37

actually lie, but I had

1:23:39

never been in an environment like that before where there was

1:23:41

this impulse to say, like, well, we all kind of believe

1:23:43

the same things, which didn't seem true, but

1:23:46

I understand the impulse both

1:23:48

to kind of prioritize the things that we

1:23:51

share, but also because whether

1:23:53

it is sort of acting like we all believe the

1:23:55

same things or whether it is focusing exclusively on procedure,

1:23:58

I think part of what's happening for people... is it just

1:24:00

feels like these differences are so irresolvable. Like

1:24:03

you just described, if we have really different

1:24:05

ideas about what an education for a child

1:24:07

should look like that are rooted in deep

1:24:10

philosophical, theological differences, how do we have

1:24:12

public schools? How do we possibly come

1:24:14

up with a situation that people are

1:24:16

happy with? And I feel like

1:24:19

on the show, we've talked about this a lot in

1:24:21

terms of abortion. We've wanted to be honest about the

1:24:23

fact that what we're coming with are deeply held convictions

1:24:25

about what kind of creatures humans are, what it means

1:24:27

to have a family, what it means to live in

1:24:30

a community that's good and flourishing. And

1:24:32

yet we have to have laws that

1:24:34

make decisions about those things. How

1:24:37

would you describe how

1:24:39

we do that? It doesn't have to be as

1:24:41

huge as the policy questions, but I think most

1:24:43

people have this on a relational level. They have

1:24:45

the experience, even among Christians, of saying, are

1:24:48

we reading the same Bible? Like it just seems like

1:24:50

we have come from such different places. How

1:24:52

are we ever expected to come up with

1:24:54

questions that need to be answered? Like on

1:24:57

a big level, we need public schools. We

1:24:59

need to have laws that decide things for

1:25:01

us. But also on a relational level, if

1:25:03

it's a church coming up with something, if

1:25:05

it's a family making a decision about something,

1:25:08

a decision has to be made. And I understand why sometimes

1:25:10

we want to bracket out that stuff because it's like, we're

1:25:13

not gonna resolve those differences. Yeah,

1:25:15

yeah, no, I love how you said that question

1:25:18

and it actually illustrates very nicely, I think a

1:25:20

contrast that helps us think about clarity

1:25:22

and compromise. So when you talk about the

1:25:24

institutional level, whether that's a family or a

1:25:27

church or a school, you

1:25:30

can actually have clarity around purpose

1:25:32

mission values that sets the boundaries

1:25:35

of what is acceptable

1:25:37

compromise and what is outside of those boundaries.

1:25:39

Now, one problem today is a lot of

1:25:41

institutions don't have that clarity. So

1:25:43

they leave their members and they leave other people guessing

1:25:45

about what they're about and that leads to all kinds

1:25:48

of pain and confusion. But when

1:25:50

you have clarity about a lot of

1:25:52

things, who's in charge, what's the leadership

1:25:54

structure, what's the accountability structure, what

1:25:56

are the beliefs and values that guide the mission? And

1:25:58

then based on those... what's

1:26:01

acceptable, how big is the tent, and

1:26:03

within that tent you allow for intense

1:26:06

disagreement in support of the mission, and outside

1:26:08

of that tent you say, you know, this

1:26:10

institution probably isn't for you based on these

1:26:13

boundaries we've drawn. So I think you can

1:26:15

achieve clarity at the local

1:26:17

institutional level and probably with

1:26:19

some national institutions too. When

1:26:22

it comes to politics in a

1:26:24

diverse democracy, you're just not going to have

1:26:26

that clarity. Politics is inherently about

1:26:28

compromise, and one of the reasons we're in such—well,

1:26:30

you know this well based on what you've written.

1:26:32

One of the reasons we're in such a mess

1:26:35

today is that we've lost the sense

1:26:38

of compromise in politics, and it's become

1:26:40

winner takes all, zero sum. And that's

1:26:42

never been what effective politics is about.

1:26:44

And I think the message here for

1:26:46

Christians is when you engage

1:26:48

in politics, it is going to be messy. It

1:26:51

is going to give you uncomfortable

1:26:53

coalitions, and you

1:26:56

know, it's going to blur the lines. And

1:26:58

that's okay because back to the first point,

1:27:01

when you have clarity about who you are

1:27:03

and which you believe, it actually makes it

1:27:05

far easier to engage across deep difference

1:27:07

and to graciously be

1:27:09

with other people. Your interfaith example a

1:27:12

minute ago is such a

1:27:14

nice illustration because that's a group of people that

1:27:16

actually aren't clear about what they believe and what

1:27:18

their differences are which then hinders their ability to

1:27:21

work across those differences. So

1:27:23

the people who have clarity about what

1:27:25

they believe are the most effective in

1:27:28

politics because they can compromise without feeling

1:27:30

threatened or anxious. And you know,

1:27:32

compromise involves some winning and some

1:27:35

losing, and that's okay too. No one

1:27:37

promised us wins all around. That

1:27:40

is so helpful. And

1:27:43

a good word too for describing some

1:27:45

of our failures when we think that

1:27:47

our political participation is the

1:27:50

thing that tells us who our identity is

1:27:52

or what our community is. It's

1:27:54

like, well, that is, it gets really messy then. Suddenly

1:27:56

you can't compromise ever. You

1:27:59

have a chapter towards the end. and on forgiveness

1:28:01

and also on repentance. And

1:28:04

one of the stories that animates that chapter is

1:28:06

about a time when you had a preconceived idea

1:28:08

about what amount of change was possible in a

1:28:10

student. You say in an earlier chapter,

1:28:13

like, okay, I've read the first draft they have written. They

1:28:16

are not going to engage Augustine. I felt strongly

1:28:18

about this story, because I love Augustine. You

1:28:21

know, they're not going to engage him well. They have

1:28:23

made preconceived ideas about him, and they're not going to

1:28:25

be able to make a good paper out of this.

1:28:27

And then later you discover, actually, you

1:28:29

were wrong about that. Like, they were able to hear some

1:28:32

of your pushback and critiques, and they ended up

1:28:34

writing something really beautiful. And I

1:28:37

would just love to hear you

1:28:39

say more about how both forgiveness,

1:28:41

repentance, these Christian ideas, and also

1:28:43

the possibility that we and others

1:28:45

might change, how those

1:28:47

things could affect the quality of

1:28:49

our conversations and relationships. Because this

1:28:51

is, this moves beyond the kind

1:28:53

of procedure question or the best

1:28:55

practices, or these are really Christian

1:28:57

ideas about humans. How

1:29:00

can that help us navigate this stuff in a

1:29:02

better way? Yeah,

1:29:05

I'm really glad you asked that question. You know, one

1:29:07

of the reasons I included this story and a few

1:29:09

others in the book was to try to illustrate to

1:29:13

readers that this is

1:29:15

not a preachy book. This is also

1:29:17

self-reflective, and I'm learning myself about my

1:29:19

own shortcomings and some of these ideas.

1:29:22

And it was intellectually,

1:29:24

it was super interesting to be writing this

1:29:26

book and then alongside it, experiencing some of

1:29:28

these encounters where I still screwed up and

1:29:30

realized, oh, this is actually what I'm writing

1:29:32

about and I'm not doing it well here.

1:29:35

And so with students, and I think

1:29:37

this is a good reminder for teachers

1:29:39

everywhere, you know,

1:29:41

we're all works in progress and

1:29:44

we learn different things

1:29:46

at different times and what

1:29:49

seems sometimes very intractable can

1:29:51

still change. And so

1:29:53

this particular story is about a student

1:29:55

who I had basically given

1:29:58

up on. I mean, this person. was

1:30:00

brilliant. So that wasn't a question of

1:30:02

capacity, but just seemed very unteachable and

1:30:04

entrenched in their ways. And, and

1:30:08

then at the end, as you mentioned, she

1:30:10

comes up with an incredible paper that reflects

1:30:13

that deep learning. And, you know,

1:30:16

as with all the characters in this book,

1:30:18

this is a composite based on several different

1:30:20

students I've supervised, but that theme really does

1:30:23

come through in these

1:30:25

encounters, sometimes it happens years after

1:30:27

they graduate. And I'll thought,

1:30:29

well, I failed, right? I was unsuccessful

1:30:33

at being a teacher. And then

1:30:35

I learned, oh, this was

1:30:37

a work in progress. And years

1:30:40

later, not on my timeline, you

1:30:42

know, they come back and really

1:30:44

graciously encouraged me and the

1:30:46

role that I might have played. And then I

1:30:48

think the real lesson for me is to recognize,

1:30:51

this isn't just the classroom, this is,

1:30:53

this is all of us, we're all

1:30:55

works in progress, the people in our

1:30:58

lives we might have given up on the most.

1:31:01

We don't know, like their story is not

1:31:03

done, right? And this is why, you know,

1:31:05

as Christians, we commit to prayer and trust

1:31:07

and playing the long game and some of

1:31:09

our relationships. And it doesn't mean we're not

1:31:11

going to be discouraged along the way. But

1:31:13

it is to say, don't

1:31:16

give up. We're all works in progress.

1:31:18

You don't want to be stuck in

1:31:20

time any more than I do in the

1:31:22

eyes of other people. And so have the

1:31:24

same kind of grace and

1:31:26

hope with others that you would want them

1:31:28

to have of you as, as, you know,

1:31:30

you and I grow in our own lives

1:31:33

too. Yeah, I so

1:31:35

appreciated that because I do think there

1:31:37

can be a self protective impulse here of

1:31:39

not just, you know, in your instance with

1:31:41

a student, but as someone who's going, oh,

1:31:44

this person in my family or in my community,

1:31:46

they're never changing. Like they are set in their

1:31:49

ways, or they consume too much of a certain

1:31:51

media source or they and sometimes

1:31:53

I feel like I want to especially with Christians be

1:31:55

like, we believe in the Holy Spirit, who

1:31:58

can convince people and change things. And

1:32:00

sometimes I think we forget that in a self-protective

1:32:02

way of like, I don't want to

1:32:04

hope that this could change and be

1:32:06

disappointed, or I don't want to get hurt

1:32:08

again by this relationship being challenging. So I'm just going

1:32:11

to assume it can never change

1:32:13

when, I don't know, I've, I

1:32:15

have in my own relationships and in myself seen

1:32:17

change that I would've thought wouldn't have happened. Um,

1:32:21

speaking of that, I think a lot of us

1:32:23

are doing that this upcoming year, both with our

1:32:25

relationships and for ourselves, we're

1:32:27

feeling, sometimes we're just reminding ourselves what the

1:32:29

last couple election years have felt like and

1:32:32

bracing for something being really challenging. What

1:32:35

is one word or, or

1:32:38

one practice or something that you might

1:32:41

recommend to someone who is saying, I

1:32:43

want to disagree better. I want to engage

1:32:45

better in my community. This, this upcoming year,

1:32:48

I know it will be hard. Is

1:32:50

there some encouragement you could give them or something that you

1:32:53

would say, try this out or

1:32:55

practice this thing or, or just try

1:32:57

and find some, you know, small practice

1:32:59

even that could prepare us well for

1:33:01

this? Yeah.

1:33:03

So this is, this, this is on

1:33:05

sort of the order of small practice,

1:33:07

but hard practice. Uh, I would say,

1:33:09

start with the candidate you don't like

1:33:11

whoever that is or the voter you don't

1:33:15

like or don't trust and then

1:33:17

ask you and then pray for that person, but don't

1:33:19

do the prayer as a, you know,

1:33:21

please reform that lost

1:33:23

soul. Start

1:33:29

the prayer as a prayer of gratitude

1:33:31

and thank God for one

1:33:33

or two things that that candidate or

1:33:36

that voter is doing to restore the

1:33:38

torn social fabric or help

1:33:43

the vulnerable or increase

1:33:46

the, the

1:33:48

health of this country. And if you

1:33:50

can't think of anything, then you need to go

1:33:52

back to your own sort

1:33:54

of self reflection and media inputs and

1:33:57

work harder because we live in

1:33:59

a mess. system. And there

1:34:01

will be something, there will be some things

1:34:03

that you can start with for gratitude. It

1:34:05

doesn't mean you change your vote, it doesn't

1:34:08

mean you lessen any of your anxieties or

1:34:11

apprehensions about a particular candidate

1:34:13

or position. But it is to

1:34:15

say, it'll be one small gesture

1:34:18

to reverse the

1:34:20

trend of moving from your wrong

1:34:22

to your evil. And

1:34:25

reassuring yourself that your neighbor who

1:34:28

might vote differently than you is

1:34:31

not likely an

1:34:33

evil being, might be wrong,

1:34:35

might be misguided, might actually be contributing

1:34:37

to some real harms, but is still

1:34:39

a human being an image bearer and

1:34:42

start there with the relationship, not

1:34:44

the debate. I

1:34:47

so appreciate it. That's a

1:34:49

good word to end on, I think too. I love

1:34:52

that it's prayer. We're doing

1:34:54

a voter guide for the Holy Post this

1:34:56

season. And it's kind of our personal little

1:34:59

joke that it's called a voter guide because

1:35:01

most of the weeks it's just like, pray,

1:35:03

pray, spend some time in silence, build a

1:35:05

relationship with your neighbor. Maybe

1:35:07

we need more things like that. So Dr. Nasi,

1:35:09

thank you so much for this work and

1:35:11

this book, Learning to Disagree, and

1:35:13

for taking some time today to talk about it. It

1:35:17

was great to be with you. Thanks, Caitlin. merchandise

1:35:45

and much, much more.