Episodes

In this first of a two part episode, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May interviews Brother Jacob, a transgender Anglican Benedictine monk, about his winding spiritual journey to monastic life and his experience at Holy Cross Monastery.

The interview was recorded in September of 2025. The two parts of this interview are the last content with Rev. Deborah that will be released on this podcast.

The interview is presented with minimal editing to retain the flow of the conversation.

---

Transcript

This transcript generated by an automated process.

DDM [00:03]: Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09]: And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11]: This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

CRT [00:38]: This is the first part of a two part interview with Brother Jacob at The Holy Cross Monestary in the Hudson Valley, New York. The interview was recorded in September of 2025. The two parts of this interview are the last content with Rev. Deborah that will be released on this podcast. The interview is presented with minimal editing to retain the flow of the conversation.

DDM [01:01]: Hello. So today we are going to be having a conversation with Brother Jacob. He is a monk at the Holy Cross Monastery, which is an Anglican Benedictine religious community in the Hudson Valley of New York. So for those of you that may not be aware, in the Anglican and Episcopal Church, we also have religious communities like many other faith organizations.

DDM [01:27]: And so I am so excited that you all are going to have the opportunity of meeting Jacob and hearing from him today. Brother Jacob, and I remember that I met you first at a community meeting where ironically you and I in the break ended up bonding over food and discussions around food, because for those of you who may not know, Brother Jacob and I are both foodies.

BRJ [01:56]: Yes. Yeah, it was, it was so exciting to meet you. I was thrilled by the idea that your spirituality influences your food choices and the way you nurture your land and your animals, and I’ve, I’ve really been loving studying the theology of food since then

DDM [02:15]: So I want to begin this, um, conversation today with you, Jacob, around what called you, particularly as a young person, to religious life. You know, um, for many of us, we think of religious communities as being people who are older, and it seems unusual for a young person these days to enter into monastic community.

DDM [02:39]: Or is that just the appearance of how it seems to us on the outside?

BRJ [02:44]: Right. Well, no. Well, first, thank you for calling me young. I am 45, so I’m starting to experience aging, but, um, i- in this community, ages range from 26 to 94, so here I am among the young.

DDM [03:00]: Yeah

BRJ [03:01]: And, um, I think the state of the world today has people reassessing their lives and priorities, which means that more and more young people are considering and entering religious communities.

BRJ [03:14]: And here, there’s at least six guys here that are, like, definitely younger than me, and a, a couple right around my age, too. So,

DDM [03:20]: Fascinating, huh? Yeah. Yeah.

BRJ [03:24]: as for what drew me here, the, of course, the obtuse answer is God, right?

DDM [03:30]: Right

BRJ [03:31]: But, um, I’ll give you a, a brief version of my spiritual autobiography. Um, I was always drawn to monastic life, but I grew up in the Church of Christ, a very conservative evangelical church, part of the Holiness Movement, right?

BRJ [03:48]: Like, um, uh, I remember Elizabeth talking about, um, growing up in the Southern Baptist Church. It’s very similar to that. We– I think we thought of them as kind of liberal.

DDM [03:59]: Oh my word.

BRJ [04:01]: So yeah. So monasticism was not part of that tradition.

BRJ [04:05]: and watching The Sound of Music was, like, my first exposure to the religious life. And then in high school, I was fascinated by the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton. It’s set in a lamassery, a monastery in the Himalayas. Uh, but again, you know, mon- monasticism just seemed so set apart.

BRJ [04:26]: It was totally inaccessible. Um, and then left the church entirely when I left my parents’ house at 18. I called myself an atheist. Um, then I was exposed to Zen Buddhism when I was 25 or 26, and it totally changed my life

BRJ [04:46]: Mindfulness and meditation, uh, helped me experience an inner peace and stillness for the first time.

BRJ [04:55]: And so I, I was learning about Thich Nhat Hanh and, and Buddhist monks and, you know, I was like, Oh, what’s, what’s that over there? Maybe I could do that, right? Um, but after exploring some Buddhist sanghas, it just didn’t feel like a good fit for me. I knew that Buddhism held a lot of lessons for me and a lot of wisdom that I could learn from, but it wasn’t really my spiritual home.

DDM [05:20]: Interesting. Interesting.

BRJ [05:22]: about that same time, I was introduced to the idea that many of the major world religions are all worshiping the same God, just talking about it differently, doing it differently, and that always made a lot of sense to me, seeing the similarities and the differences between Eastern and Western spiritualities, right?

BRJ [05:43]: And again, around that same time, this was a very ri-rich period of my life, apparently, um, my sister joined the Orthodox Christian Church, and that completely changed her life.

DDM [05:56]: Wow.

BRJ [05:56]: And I looked at my sister and the changes she was making, and I thought, I want what she’s having. Right? And so I started exploring the Orthodox tradition and this beautiful and rich tradition of theology.

BRJ [06:11]: It, it really draws me in. Um, and because of my strong Christian upbringing, I felt more at home there, right, than I did with Buddhism.

BRJ [06:22]: I, I tried the Orthodox Christian Church for a while, but it– that didn’t really work out because they don’t tend to embrace members of the LGBTQ plus community of which I am a part, so, you know,

DDM [06:36]: Right. Right.

BRJ [06:37]: had to keep moving.

BRJ [06:38]: Um, and then the Episcopal Church was the next obvious stop because, you know, there is the dedication to tradition and the embrace of queer folks

DDM [06:48]: Isn’t it lovely the capacity of the Episcopal Church to hold both of those together? That rootedness but also the open expansiveness, you know?

BRJ [06:58]: Yeah, there really is, um, uh, there’s so many middle ways to be found in the Episcopal Church.

DDM [07:05]: Absolutely. Absolutely.

BRJ [07:07]: Yeah. But by the time I joined the Episcopal Church, I had already married.

BRJ [07:12]: when I found out about Anglican monasticism, I had made a commitment that prevented me from exploring a monastic vocation

DDM [07:21]: The ironies of life, huh?

BRJ [07:23]: Right.

BRJ [07:24]: Yeah. And then, um, 2020 hit, right? And totally turned my world upside down. Um, I know that didn’t– the pandemic didn’t affect everyone the same, but for me, by the summer of 2021, I was completely stripped. M- like I had, I had nothing. My sense of security at home and my s- and family and career were just completely shattered.

BRJ [07:51]: then after my marriage fell apart, the only thing I had left was church and the church community

DDM [07:59]: So,

BRJ [08:01]: So I’m sitting there at rock bottom, and I, I spent some time looking where I was and what got me there and where I wanted to go, and it just, um, just didn’t take long at all for me to set my eyes on the monastery.

BRJ [08:17]: Um, of course, I tried talking myself out of it, right? Because like you said, who joins a monastery anymore?

BRJ [08:23]: Right? Um, I was looking at compromises and religious intentional communities and, you know, all sorts of things. But I just, I just knew in my bones that I needed to become a monk. And I know this also doesn’t work the same for everyone, but, uh, you know, some monks and nuns really struggle with their vocation and making the commitment.

BRJ [08:47]: But this feeling of surety I had was familiar to me. Um, I already knew well what it meant to know something deeply about myself

DDM [09:01]: Can I just ask you quickly, so Brother Jacob being m- previously married is not an impediment to entering a monastic community?

BRJ [09:11]: No. Oh, from be–

DDM [09:13]: Interesting.

BRJ [09:14]: can’t be married while you’re…

DDM [09:16]: thank you.

BRJ [09:18]: Right, right. But, um

DDM [09:20]: just wanted that little digression, you know?

DDM [09:22]: Because I think sometimes people may feel if they have been married that, um, you know, that that may in some ways prohibit them from exploring religious life.

BRJ [09:34]: Oh God, let me tell you, there are so many, so many different tasks that we carry with us, right?

BRJ [09:43]: And I mean, I, I’ve even heard of people with kids joining monasteries. I don’t know about the details of that, like if they have to be 18 before you enter or, you know, some other arrangements or I, I… You know, that if, if you have kids and you’re interested in joining a monastery, reach out to them and talk to the vocations director because, um, you never know until you ask

DDM [10:08]: that’s amazing. sorry to have interrupted.

BRJ [10:10]: No, it’s okay. Oh,

BRJ [10:11]: okay.

DDM [10:12]: so knowing something deeply about myself, right? W- um, when I was 23, I looked in the mirror one day and I saw a man. It was– I, I– it doesn’t sound on the surface like that significant, except that I was assigned female at birth. I was raised a girl, and at that time, I identified strongly as a lesbian.

BRJ [10:40]: So given my religious upbringing, I had struggled a lot with my sexuality, right? And

BRJ [10:47]: emerging from that struggle, I knew deeply that I had zero desire to be in a relationship with a man and an innate attraction to women.

BRJ [10:58]: So that day that I saw a man in the mirror, this light bulb moment for me, it started another journey, which would eventually lead to a deep knowledge of my gender.

BRJ [11:10]: And so the, that moment in the mirror was 2003 in Kansas.

DDM [11:17]: my gosh.

BRJ [11:19]: I–

DDM [11:19]: It was a tough time.

BRJ [11:20]: it was a tough time. I had never even heard the word transgender, right? Like, I didn’t know what this image in the mirror meant.

BRJ [11:28]: But trans folks are really good at finding each other.

BRJ [11:33]: The community was small and dispersed, but very resilient. And side note, it was, it was my trans siblings that taught me what community really is and how beautiful and supportive and messy community can be, right?

BRJ [11:53]: How important it is to forgive each other and stick together, especially when it’s hard and we’re angry with each other, because sometimes community is all we’ve got,

DDM [12:05]: Yeah. I remember that was my experience in South Africa as well with the LGBTIQ community, you know, is when you’re a m- a marginal community, um, yeah, you hold together. I mean, you know, you are each other’s entire world and support system.

BRJ [12:22]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was that experience of, of community that told me when I was at rock bottom that I needed to find a religious community.

BRJ [12:33]: Yeah. So, um, living into my trans identity was like the missing puzzle piece, right? Like it, it made the rest of my life make sense.

BRJ [12:45]: And sometimes people ask me how I decided to transition,

BRJ [12:50]: but it never felt like a decision to me. Uh, right? Like I, I knew it was going to be hard. I knew my family wouldn’t understand. I, I, I’d heard more real-life horror stories than I care to recall. But I knew that I wanted to live an authentic life led by my integrity and not fear, and medical transition was obviously the way to make that happen

BRJ [13:21]: So that’s how did I decide to be a monk?

BRJ [13:24]: It never felt like a decision, right? Like it’s, it was another missing puzzle piece that just made the rest of my life make sense.

BRJ [13:31]: But, uh, um, in becoming a monk, like even with that surety, when you re- when you explore a religious vocation, you gotta, you gotta hold it lightly.

DDM [13:43]: Um, because entering religious life is a, a mutual decision for both the community and the individual, right?

BRJ [13:52]: So I was called to monastic life. I knew that, and I knew that God led me to Holy Cross Monastery, period. That was very clear to me, and I had to hold it all lightly. I, I still have to hold it all lightly because maybe this is just another stop on my journey, not the final destination,

DDM [14:14]: It’s hard to do that when you’re so sure of something in your life to still hold it lightly, yeah?

BRJ [14:18]: sure.

BRJ [14:19]: Yeah. And, and I mean, I, I have every intention of making life vows in a couple years, but anything could happen between now and then. It’s not just my decision. So even if the community and I agree that I have a call to the monastic way of life in the Order of the Holy Cross, there’s still a chance something else entirely will emerge between now and then,

BRJ [14:43]: right?

BRJ [14:44]: So for, for now at least, both I and the community agree that I am where I’m supposed to be. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.

DDM [14:52]: That’s amazing. That’s incredible. Um, can I just ask you as well, uh, Brother Jacob, like how did the community responder respond to you being transgender? Like was, was that an issue for the community? Or was it just part of that kind of mutual discernment?

BRJ [15:12]: The communi– So from what I underst– not having been here before I got here,

DDM [15:16]: Right, right, right

BRJ [15:19]: from what I understand, the community was working on And talking about being open to trans men entering for at least a decade before I got here

DDM [15:34]: That’s incredible, huh? I mean, when you think about where civil society is and the fact that 10 years ago already there was discussion and, and sort of discernment around this. That’s, you know, we don’t think of religious and monastic communities as always being that prophetic in some ways and, and ahead of the curve, you know?

BRJ [15:58]: Right. Well, uh, I mean, it’s, it’s ironic because, um, m- m- change happens so slowly in monasteries in general. And, um, like you said, we’re houses of mystics and prophets. That, that’s what we’re here for, right? Like we’re, we are here to shake things up. And, and we talk about it for a decade before we do anything, right?

DDM [16:30]: I really

BRJ [16:31]: not entirely true. Some– There were some trans guys that were exploring their vocation before I got here. It just didn’t work out for them. Like, just like it doesn’t work out for every cis guy, you know?

DDM [16:41]: Absolutely. So, so Brother Jacob, I’m very interested in sexuality and monastic life, you know, because for many, the vows of celibacy seem so strange in a society where sexuality seems to be everywhere, all around us in very explicit ways. Um, and, and I, and I guess what’s making me ask you this question is because I studied at a Roman Catholic seminary in South Africa, and I had a friend who was like a brother to me, and he was entering monastic life, and he was in his mid-20s.

DDM [17:14]: And, you know, as young people, we talk about everything, right? And I remember saying to him, But how do you not have sex? You know? And I remember him saying to me, You know, Debs, it’s freed me so much in my relationships with women, because he said prior to entering the monastic community, every woman that he kind of befriended, at somewhere at the back of his mind, there was always that thought of, This may end up being a sexual relationship.

DDM [17:44]: But he said once that option was literally taken off the table, he found that he was able to enter into very deep, intimate relationships with women in a way that he hadn’t been in the past, and that he actually found that he was enabled to, in a way, see them as full human beings in relationship rather than as possible potential sexual partners.

DDM [18:10]: You know? And so sometimes I, I wonder, you know, about, you know, the fact that we live in such an explicit, um, sexualized, um, time in our world. Is this maybe in some ways impoverishing our capacity for intimacy? You know, I mean, I listen to research, and they say the irony is that young people are having less sex than ever before of any previous generation.

DDM [18:37]: You know, and so I start to wonder, you know, maybe sex currently is not bringing us the intimacy that we’re actually longing for.

BRJ [18:45]: Yeah. I, I think you’re so right. It, um It is really interesting how celibacy can be freeing. And I, I mean, I, I know it may not sound right, um, but, you know, maybe young people are, are catching onto this. It, it is just one of the many paradoxes of, of religious life.

DDM [19:07]: But just because

BRJ [19:08]: but just because something can’t be easily explained doesn’t make it not true, right?

BRJ [19:14]: Um, and, and your friend speaks to a freedom from the pressure and expectation of sex and the way that that freedom allows us to honor others and ourselves more fully, right?

BRJ [19:28]: Um, a couple weeks ago, a few of us attended a, a, a weekend formation retreat where we discussed this, uh, right? Like, how can we foster intimacy in the context of celibate lives?

DDM [19:42]: I l- I love the fact that you guys have these discussions and, you know, are exploring these issues, you know? ‘Cause I think it’s a very different model than repressed sexuality or trying to cut off a part of ourselves, you know? I just excite- it’s exciting that you guys actually verbalize and explore these issues.

BRJ [20:01]: Oh, yeah. We, we have to. W- w- the– we talk about the hard stuff all the time, right? Like, uh, yeah. ‘Cause, yeah, ’cause we can’t struggle by ourselves. Um, so this, this, um, this weekend was led by Sister Lynn Levo, a brilliant woman, a sister of St. Joseph, who, um, is a, a psychologist, and she talked about intimacy. Um, uh, she said when we hear the word intimacy, we, we immediately think about genital sex, right?

BRJ [20:32]: Like, we know this. But, uh, but these– intimacy and genital sex are not the same, right? Like, we can have intimate relationships while keeping our hands to ourselves, right?

DDM [20:43]: Intimate relationships while keeping our hands to ourselves.

BRJ [20:44]: And we can have genital sex with zero intimacy, right?

BRJ [20:48]: Um, and the word intimate, actually, it comes from the Latin, which means to reveal what is innermost

DDM [20:57]: Oh, that’s beautiful

BRJ [20:59]: Right?

BRJ [21:00]: So in monastic life, we spend time in prayer and meditation to build intimacy with oneself and intimacy with God and intimacy with the community.

BRJ [21:15]: And, um, God, of course, already knows what is innermost in all of us, right? So, so being intimate with God is– it’s not about informing God,

DDM [21:27]: But about presenting to God what is innermost

BRJ [21:27]: in us that we may see ourselves in a divine and loving mirror,

DDM [21:33]: That’s

BRJ [21:34]: right? So we take the things that we find in ourselves that, that are ugly, and we show them to God.

BRJ [21:43]: God might say, Oh, that’s not ugly. That’s how I made you.

DDM [21:47]: you. You’re the

BRJ [21:48]: Look, you’re not the only one out there like this, and, and anyway, if I’d made you all the same, you’d all be so boring. Right? Or, or God might say, Oh yeah, that is ugly, but that’s not you.

BRJ [22:01]: That’s darkness.

BRJ [22:02]: You know, your neighbor said the same thing to me the other day. I’m gonna send them your way. They’ll help brush you off and walk you into the light. That’ll feel better.

DDM [22:10]: Oh

BRJ [22:12]: Right? And then we take the things that we like about ourselves, and we say, Hey, God, check out what I learned about myself, right?

BRJ [22:23]: And God goes, Oh, good,

BRJ [22:25]: you.

BRJ [22:26]: Now take that gift over here and tell this other person, ’cause you two are gonna do cool things together.

DDM [22:31]:

BRJ [22:31]: Right? So, like, by becoming, um, more intimate with ourselves and with God, by giving our bodies and our lives to God, we foster a different kind of intimacy.

BRJ [22:46]: We come to know ourselves better and God better, and, and the, you know, these things enable us to connect with each other better, m-more fully and authentically.

BRJ [22:55]: And, you know, anybody can do this. You don’t have to be a monk or celibate to foster that kind of intimate relationship with God, right?

BRJ [23:03]: Just that, like, being celibate allows us to, to take that energy that we might give to a sexual partner and instead give that to God,

BRJ [23:12]: right?

BRJ [23:13]: But God’s relationship with us is not exclusive.

DDM [23:17]: Oh, I love that. I love that, yeah. You know, another question is that people sometimes see moving into a monastic community almost as a, a retreat or an escape from the world, and I’m just interested to explore, do you see it that way, or do you find that maybe you are moving, like you were explaining with intimacy, maybe more deeply and more authentically into the world?

DDM [23:42]: You know, um, I’m thinking, you know, also about the idea that sometimes just because we are in the world doesn’t mean we’re actually present to the world, you know? I mean, I can be in a, in a relationship and yet not present to that person at all, you know? So I’m just interested your thoughts around some of that.

BRJ [24:00]: Yeah. I, I think it’s a, that’s a common idea, maybe misconception. Um, uh, so an- another thing that Sister Lynn talked about was the

BRJ [24:05]: distinction between solitude and isolation, ’cause from the outside they look similar, right? Um, but they’re, they’re really quite different. Isolation is cutting oneself off from others and one’s surroundings, right? You’re, you’re all alone, you’re cut off.

BRJ [24:23]: But in solitude, we bring our relationships with us.

DDM [24:29]: Um,

BRJ [24:29]: And, um, our order is, is blessed to have a house in Hermanus, South A- South Africa, um, St. Benedict’s Priory. They’re actually about to become St. Benedict’s Monastery and move to Plettenberg Bay, which is a little bit closer to, to Durban, which is exciting.

DDM [24:46]: But that’s such a beautiful area. Sorry.

BRJ [24:49]: Yes, I’ve heard. Yeah, I can’t

DDM [24:51]: area.

BRJ [24:52]: So one of the things, uh, that we on this side of the Atlantic have learned from our brothers there is the philosophy of ubuntu. I am because we are,

DDM [25:04]: Yes, yes

BRJ [25:06]: Um, and in Western cultures, there’s a big emphasis on individuality and self-sufficiency, but ubuntu is basically the other end of that spectrum, right?

BRJ [25:18]: An emphasis on our interconnectedness and, and community with compassion, right? Like, um… And it’s similar to the emphasis on, on interconnectedness and interdependency in the Buddhist tradition represented by the, the endless knot.

BRJ [25:38]: And Jesus said, uh, too, in, in his prayer to God that, uh, that they all may be one as you and I are one.

BRJ [25:48]: I and them and you and me, that they may become completely one, right? We’re all connected. Paul said in Galatians, There’s neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you all are one.

BRJ [26:03]: So all things, Deborah, me, the church, immigrants, people who are imprisoned or impoverished or differently abled, Mother Earth, our food, even, uh, the, the dinosaurs and the spotted lanternflies, and genocides and authoritarian leaders and their supporters, we are all interconnected and interdependent. It, it might be a difficult idea to hear for the first time, but it’s true. We are all part of the same ecosystem. Nothing functions by itself,

DDM [26:46]: Yeah, you’re so right. And I, when I listen to some of those things, I think about how we try to cut them off from ourselves, you know, because we hate them or, you know, um, and again, that’s that isolation maybe versus solitude. Yeah.

BRJ [27:01]: And, and we know from studies that isolation leads to all sorts of mental health and, and physical health crises and, and deteriorations,

DDM [27:10]: fragmenting.

BRJ [27:11]: so in solitude, ideally we pe- we become more acutely aware of our interdependence and how, how our every action ripples out to affect all of us, right?

BRJ [27:24]: And here at Holy Cross Monastery, we have a guest house ministry with people of any number of religious backgrounds coming and going all the time. So the world comes to us. We’re not cut off at all,

BRJ [27:37]: right? And to facilitate our ministries, we have to be mindful of and intimate with, there’s our word again, our interconnectedness.

BRJ [27:49]: So when people with whatever background they have come to us and ask for spiritual direction, we can help them in, in whatever they’re grappling with, right? Like, we, we couldn’t do that if we didn’t stay connected

DDM [28:04]: Yeah, I’m thinking so much about what you’re sharing here now, you know, and how it also relates even to transgender and sexuality, um, and bodies. You know, it’s the whole thing of if we cut off parts of ourselves, that’s that isolation, the fragmentation. So what does it mean to, to rather enable and see that interconnectedness of all parts, even the parts that we struggle with or we don’t like or we’re grappling with, you know?

DDM [28:33]: Yeah.

BRJ [28:34]: um, it’s a, it’s a deeper real- uh, well, so And it’s, it’s not just solitude we find here, right? Like, you can find solitude in any number of places.

BRJ [28:48]: But it’s– this is church. Our, our, our brother Randy said on Sunday, In a house of God, we find liberation from our illusions.

BRJ [28:59]: We can– we come here to, to shed our programming that tells us earn acceptance and find safety, be better, do more, find peace, be worthy,

BRJ [29:11]: God’s house, like you said, we a- awaken to the present moment. It’s not an alternate reality we’re living in, but a deeper reality

BRJ [29:22]: A-and, uh, I can’t pretend like we don’t enjoy a certain buffer between the monastery and the rest of the world, right? Like, we are shielded in a way that, that people who have not made the extraordinary decision to join a monastery are not shielded. But

BRJ [29:44]: That buffer between us and the world is nothing but love. That’s it.

BRJ [29:49]: Love is what softens the blows of this world.

BRJ [29:52]: And church, any church, not just a monastery, any church, I hope- hopefully, if we’re doing it right, is a place where people go to love more freely, right?

BRJ [30:05]: Because Jesus said, I give you one commandment, just one.

BRJ [30:09]: Love one another. Paul said, The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, you shall love your neighbor.

BRJ [30:17]: Our, our founder said, Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn. Love is literally all Jesus asked us to do,

BRJ [30:30]: So if church isn’t a place where you can love more freely, um, I would encourage you to explore that idea and take it to God, our loving and divine mirror, right?

BRJ [30:44]: Because lo- love is why I go to church. It’s why I moved into church, you know?

DDM [30:50]: And that’s what’s so dangerous, I think, in so many parts of the Christian church, but we could say this about many of the other faith traditions as well, is when they’re hijacked to become weaponized or, you know, to support things that really are not about love, you know? Yeah.

DDM [31:07]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BRJ [31:10]: So if, if, if there is anyone out there who finds it difficult to accept that, uh, that monastic living is anything but a retreat, I, I refuse to apologize for retreating into love

DDM [31:27]: I really love that phrase, retreating into love. That’s beautiful.

CRT [31:33]: Join us next time for the conclusion of this interview.

MET [31:39]: Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church.

MET [32:04]: Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [32:08]: Music by audionautix.

Rev. Deborah Duguid-May says farewell to The Priest & The Prof’s audience.

---

Transcript

DDM: Hello and welcome to The Priest & The Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET: And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM: This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

DDM: I can’t believe that today is my last recording with “The Priest & The Prof.” Myself and my wife, Melanie, have decided to relocate back to South Africa and are leaving in July of this year. And so I’m sad that this will be my last episode with you all. When I think back to how this was a dream of Carl and Elizabeth and mine about five years ago and where this podcast has come to today, I’m really proud of what we’ve done.

DDM: But I think more than that, for me, this podcast has been about a couple of things. I think firstly modeling what healthy dialogue and conversation can look like. We live in a time in our country where people have become so polarized. We often tend to only want to be friends and speak with those who see things the same way that we do.

DDM: And Elizabeth and I, although similar in so many ways, we also see things very differently on some issues. And so our dream was how to enter into conversation that grew us both while also having the space to disagree. I think we need a lot more models of how to have these conversations and dialogues again that are healthy and respectful, but also with a genuine desire to learn from one another.

DDM: Secondly, I’m acutely aware of how our faith has been used in the past and is currently being used as a tool for oppression to disempower those who are already incredibly vulnerable. Christianity, as it is currently being used, has become literally the opposite of the gospel. And so our faith is used to support the powerful and demonize the poor, to uphold patriarchy and denigrate women, and as a justification for treating the environment and all other species as simply capitalistic commodities.

DDM: And yet the reality is when we read the Gospels, Jesus came for the poor and the vulnerable. Jesus overturned tables in the temple and rebuked the powerful and the leaders. I really believe that Christianity is currently facing a battle for its soul. And so my dream in this podcast was to remind us of what our faith actually teaches and to educate around these issues, because a sermon on a Sunday really does not give one the opportunity to teach deeply on these issues, and people really need education around their faith. I think for me, it has also been a way about helping to articulate a vision of our faith that is life-giving and liberatory for people outside the walls of the church.

DDM: For so many people, they have not had good experiences of Christianity or the church, and so our dream was to enable those outside or on the fringes of the church to have a small experience of faith that is truly life-giving. And lastly, for myself as a parish priest, it’s been wonderful to have the discipline of having to think and write theologically in a way that often once we’re in a parish, we no longer do to the same extent.

DDM: I have thoroughly enjoyed both preparing and producing these episodes with Carl and Elizabeth, who’ve been phenomenal partners in this endeavor. And so I am sad to be leaving, but I also know that Carl and Elizabeth will be bringing in a number of new voices to engage with, that you, as listeners, will have the joy of hearing on many subjects.

DDM: And so I just want to end with saying thank you to all of you who’ve journeyed with me on “The Priest & The Prof,” because without you, this podcast would simply have been a conversation between Elizabeth and myself. But you’ve made space for these conversations to enter your home, your space, your hearts, wherever you are in the world.

DDM: I hope that this podcast will continue to inspire and challenge you as together we all do what we can to build a better world.

MET: Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM: Music by Audionautix.com.

Rev. Deborah Duguid-May interviews Linda Ketchum and Paul Pompili about “Save New York’s Rural Economy: A Journey of Empathy Caravan.”

This interview, presented in its entirity, was recorded in September 2025 about an event that took place in August 2025.  The discussion continues to be relevant today.

---

Transcript

DDM: Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET: And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM: This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

CRT: This interview took place in September 2025 to describe a journey taken in August 2025. The discussion is still very timely today, in June 2026.

DDM: Welcome. So today I want to, especially welcome Linda Ketchum and Paul Pompili. They are both members of Trinity Episcopal Church here in Greece, New York, which is a suburb just outside of the city of Rochester. You’ll recall that Elizabeth and myself have in past episodes discussed the issue of immigration, agriculture, work, poverty.

DDM: Well, today we will be having a discussion and conversation with Linda and Paul, who recently participated in what was called the Journey of Empathy Caravan in early August, which really touches on all of those above issues and podcasts. So welcome to you both.

P P: Thank you.

DDM: Can you begin by telling us just a little bit about what the journey of Empathy Caravan actually was?

L K: Sure the journey of Empathy Caravan. It was a series of events to raise awareness of the value that immigrant workers bring to our economy in New York State. So from August 2nd to August 9th, starting in Eastern Long Island, a caravan of cars and trucks and vans traveled westward to the Hudson River Valley, then up to Albany, and then the north country up to the St. Lawrence River near the thousand Islands, and then down through the middle of the state through the finger lakes region, then to Rochester and we ended in Buffalo. So we traveled a thousand miles had 50 stops. So the stops included visits at churches and synagogues. We had meetings with farmers and workers support groups. We had prayer vigils outside of two ice detention centers. So it was all organized by the Rural and Migrant Ministry. So, and then one thing to know here, in addition to, you know, expanding the empathy for immigrant workers, the event was also called Save Our Rural Economy, to raise awareness that we need immigrant workers for the health and survival of our economy. So the farms and the vineyards need them, the restaurants need them.

L K: The landscapers and gardeners that made the Hamptons so beautiful, and our healthcare system . They all need the immigrant workers. The list goes on.

DDM: Right, and I think for people who are outside of this geographic area, when they hear New York, they probably think of New York City. I remember before I moved here, I just thought New York was a big city. And then I moved here and I was like, oh my gosh, most of the state is actually rural, which I think many people who may be listening in on this podcast are not aware of how rural the vast majority of our state actually is, you mentioned , rural migrant Ministry. Can you share for our listeners briefly what the Rural Migrant Ministry really is and what it does?

P P: Yeah, it’s, an organization that started in 1981 by a group of churches.

P P: There was a point where the migrants around that day, they would go to work in the farms and their children would sit alongside the farm because there was nowhere to bring their children. So what a lot of the local people did is they got together and they built , a childcare center, a daycare center, and that was 1981.

P P: That’s basically how it got started because the farm workers needed childcare. So it’s evolved today into an organization that is in support of not only the migrant workers, but immigrants in general, especially with the climate, that we have today

DDM: Right. now, that’s fascinating, Paul, because, I’ve worked with rural migrant ministries for a number of years, but I’d actually never heard that story. And isn’t that beautiful? Just to hear how local communities see a need, respond to the humans, you know, around them.

P P: What was surprising for me personally was that story was one of the very first ones we heard on the caravan and it was in the East Hamptons. So when most people hear the Hamptons and the East Hamptons, you think of all this wealth and. That’s all it is out there. But we started there and learned very early on for a reason.

P P: It was very enlightening. Very enlightening.

DDM: Fascinating. And what inspired the two of you to join the caravan? I mean, that’s quite a commitment to make.

P P: I didn’t wanna go. No, I really, because I am not an activist at heart. Never have been.

DDM: I know you Paul,

P P: And it just never was my way. Linda and I have been kind of really polar opposites in that, over the years together we’ve come much closer, to the middle of whatever that is each.

P P: So I went in support of her ’cause she said, I’ll go without you and that’s fine. I’m okay going alone. I wouldn’t let her wanna that. So I went with her in support to her I did, and I received a lot of benefits from it.

DDM: I’m sure I’m sure.

L K: And so for me, you know, civil rights and law enforcement and the criminal justice system, that’s been a focus of mine for some time, and I’ve been very upset. Seeing what’s happening with ice, just really kidnapping people off the street and out of their homes and, that’s the Immigration and Customs of Enforcement Agency.

L K: I thought when I heard about the caravan, you know, this was a way to get involved with a group that was taking some action to support the immigrant workers because they’re, they’re all targets for ice detention and deportation.

DDM: right. And I think what we are all witnessing now by federal ice agents has been very disturbing. But while many of us are not comfortable with what is happening, I think for a lot of people that doesn’t lead. To action, whereas you both actually decided to do something in response to what you were seeing.

DDM: I’m just interested, do you feel that your faith played a role in your motivation to join the caravan?

P P: I believe so. Right, because I mean, our faith tells us we should love everybody and there’s a, a portion of our society, some religious, some not that don’t believe that. And this was a way to really act on that and put myself through the test, do I really believe this? You know, do I really want to love everybody?

P P: And so I think that was. For me, regarding the faith, that was probably the biggest thing is that we are all human beings. We’re all people. We have our own beliefs, we have our own faiths we have our own everything, of everything, so to speak. And it’s not up to me to decide I’m gonna go with this one, but I’m not gonna love this one.

P P: You know, it’s up to me to just be as loving or understanding or, there’s so many words you can probably describe it as I possibly can and just be the best at it that I

DDM: And I think somewhere that narrative is being lost in our culture at the moment in the USA, but also in other parts of the world where we are seeing just the rise of almost the legitimation of hate speech. You know, the capacity to be able to say, I hate my enemies as, as legitimate. You know?

DDM: And I think for many years we worked under the assumption that to love. Everybody is actually the way we’re called to be, and I think that’s really being eroded in our civil discourse now in a way that maybe it hasn’t in the past as much.

L K: Yes. I think even the word empathy is being mocked by some people.

DDM: I noticed that in the beginning, Linda, because with the Caravan of Empathy and I thought, wow, nowadays even the word empathy is often being seen as a negative thing, you know?

L K: Yes. It’s just so, I don’t know. It’s so perverted destructive.

DDM: It’s a distortion. Such a distortion of common…

P P: during the caravan with the signs on our cars, you put yourself out there. I mean, you’re out there and, there’s all kinds of people. Most of them really were welcoming, beeping their horns. And one town we rolled into actually had a band out on sidewalk. but then there were the other side of it that harassed us and heckled us.

P P: And there was one stop where guys driving the car around the gas station yelling out the window, just being as bad as you can be, you know, and but that was the only one of that type during the whole week. So you have to kind of expect that.

DDM: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And Linda, I’m interested in your faith, how that may have woven into this experience.

L K: Well, being a member here of the Episcopal Church, we have been supportive of the rural and migrant ministry in Western New York. And so this was a way for me to see, oh, how does it operate in the rest of the state?

L K: And I am also very drawn to interdenominational and interfaith activities.

L K: So the idea that we could be with people from many different churches, that we were going to go to some synagogues, you know, that was an appeal for me also. And…

DDM: And would you say that’s partially what was behind your decision to do the entirety of the caravan? Because if I’m right, you could choose to just do a portion when it came through your community, whereas you both chose to do the route in its entirety.

P P: I tried to talk her into just doing Rochester.

L K: Yes, most people, I mean, I think that’s how it was promoted. When the caravan comes through your area, please join us for few stops. And when I saw the schedule, I just thought, you know, this would be an interesting way to take a road trip through all of New York State.

DDM: I love that.

L K: You know, let’s see it and I’m glad we did it this way because, you know, Paul mentioned the signs on the cars.

L K: So, you know, that’s the first thing we learned. We started at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. And when we got to the parking lot people came up to us and they said, we’ll help you decorate your car. And we said, what? And, ’cause we didn’t know what to expect, so. All the cars had big signs.

L K: They said, “who will milk the cows?” “Who will pick the apples?” “Save our rural economy,” “have courage, have empathy,” so the experience of actually traveling from place to place, from city to city, town to town with the core group was very special to us.

DDM: Yeah.

L K: Sometimes when we left at the beginning there were, I think about 20 cars and trucks. We were in some places out in the country where it would be five or six cars, you know, and we went together, we had our lights blinking so people knew we were in a procession. And then when we got to Rochester we we were up to 34 cars at one point.

DDM: Wow, that’s incredible. That really is, I’m interested. Was there something that you experienced or learned or heard during this entire caravan that really stands out for you?

P P: One thing I learned that still will hold, stay with me probably for the rest of my life is how well I, I should have known this, but it brought it to the surface how scared the immigrants are to even come out into public. They don’t go to the grocery store. There was one woman at one of the detention centers.

P P: She waited until our next stop, which was several miles away, to tell her story of people she knew that was inside that detention center, that when they went in, they were able to work and they were physically able to do work. And when they came out, they were basically in a wheelchair.

DDM: From their experience of being

P P: inside, inside the detention center.

DDM: So that the abuse that took place

P P: that’s the, yeah, I think that’s the assumption you take out of her story, but she was so afraid to say it while we were to tell that story while we were there at the vigil and at that detention center, they’re very scared. I mean, there’s volunteers that go to the grocery stores and get food for them and bring them to ’em.

P P: Those people are. Go through training on how to deal with law enforcement if they get stopped because law enforcement is aware that this is going on. It’s a horrible thing and it really makes you stop and really think how fortunate in my case how I am to be white skinned.

DDM: Right,

P P: Very much so.

DDM: Because we know that this isn’t happening to

P P: They’re not taking the immigrant, Italians

DDM: Or from Ireland, exactly.

P P: They’re taking, everyone that’s a black and brown skin and it’s a terrible thing.

DDM: Right, right, right. You know, just to add into this, I recently had a family stay with me who actually were documented. They have legal status here in terms of asylum, but. They were so petrified because people are being taken up whether they’ve got legal paperwork or not, and they were so petrified their children were gonna be taken from them because they had a newborn baby and a little 4-year-old.

DDM: And they’ve subsequently just left the country. But again those are agricultural workers who’ve left again, even though they were documented because it’s just become too frightening to stay. Yeah. Wow.

L K: And those workers are highly skilled workers as well. You know, that’s one thing that we learned, we stopped at an agricultural center. It was called the Chester Agricultural Center in, in Orange County. A farmer spoke with us and he made a point of telling us, you know, we were looking out on the farmland and he said, there’s about 270 acres here.

L K: And he said, the immigrants who have farmed this land years ago, they were British, Dutch, German, Italian, Polish, and Irish. And now. More recently, they are Jamaican, they’re Mexican, and they’re Egyptian. And he said they are highly skilled. Nobody should think of this as unskilled labor that you could just send, you know anybody in.

L K: And then, and they, they can do what they do in a day.

DDM: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we forget how much of the agricultural industry is highly skilled, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely fascinating.

L K: And one thing he told us is that people think when you have crop losses, it’s because of the weather or it’s because of, you know, the economy. But he said often their crop losses are because of lack of availability of the workers. The immigrant workers that they need.

DDM: Yeah. And a lot of these are my right are not large, big agro businesses. They’re family farms.

P P: Small family farms.

DDM: Yeah. You see, and, and I think that’s the problem. You wonder how much of this is an assault actually on small agricultural family businesses. That indirectly ends up benefiting agrobusiness because I know from myself living in the rural areas, you know, the agro businesses are so big and have such a large basis that they can afford to go through these H 1 B programs where they bring in workers from, you know, Haiti or the Dominican Republic.

DDM: Whereas your average family farm, I mean, you’re not employing necessarily 150. Workers and you can’t afford the legal fees to set up all these programs for yourself necessarily. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

L K: Yes. And speaking of money there is a whole economy with this. I mean, another thing that we learned, we were at the orange County Jail, which is actually serving also as a federal detention center. And, a local man met us there. He’s not the county executive yet, but he is running for office.

L K: But he told us that the jail was built, it was originally planned for 300 people, but they built it for 800 for the express purpose of getting a contract with the federal government for immigration detention.

DDM: Wow.

L K: He says that their county has a yearly budget surplus of $200 million because of this. So this is the money that is there, and his intention if he is elected as the county executive is to end that contract.

L K: But that’s the kind of money in these small places that, you know, I think some towns will not want to lose.

DDM: Wow. So people are literally becoming wealthier on the backs of imprisonment and fear.

DDM: It’s really frightening. I know I learned a similar thing when we once went up to Buffalo with a group for education to go and see some of the buffalo. Facilities around there for processing and around that area, there’s all these hotels like the Holiday Inn and those kind of sort of things. And you assume that these are fully functioning, operating for the tourist economy. And somebody was telling us that no, they keep one floor.

DDM: For the tourist economy, but the rest have actually been converted into detention centers. And I was stunned because you’re looking at all this. Commercial tourist infrastructure thinking it’s there to serve, you know, happy holiday makers coming to Buffalo, when in fact behind those walls and curtains are just floors of detention holding centers, which I think your average person has absolutely no idea of. Was there something on this caravan that really connected with you from perhaps a faith perspective?

L K: Yes.

DDM: I’m interested,

L K: So, the rural and migrant ministry, they have a couple of slogans and one is, it’s we, not they, and it’s actually a hashtag that they use in their social media and their promotion. So hashtag it’s, we not they.

DDM: Lovely.

L K: And I think it’s a very important message because it’s not okay.

L K: They’re the immigrants. We’re the citizens, you know, they’re the workers. We’re not. It’s all of us together in community. And for me, what it also brings up is in the Episcopal church, in our service, we have a prayer called the general confession. And in one version of that prayer, there is a part that goes

L K: we repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf.

L K: And I always think of that phrase, the evil done on our behalf because I, I think we need to look at this as we’re part of the evil that’s being done here. We benefit from it. We need to, try to do more to reduce it and to minimize it.

L K: But I think it’s not right, and it’s not healthy just to look at it as, oh, other people are doing bad things and we’re not, we’re trying to stop them. You know, we’re part of this system of injustice and exploitation and I, I think it’s it’s a responsibility.

DDM: Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the advantage of churches like the Episcopal Church or some of your more traditional churches, is there was that real understanding that sin is not individual, it’s collective. Sometimes we’re benefiting and there’s a complicity in a system, even if we’re not active proponents of that system.

DDM: We’re complicit in it, and even if it’s simply our silence. What is enabling this to happen? Because I think we are living increasingly in a culture where freedom of speech we’re seeing is under attack. Uh, people are afraid to speak out. My own father phoned me this week and was really saying to me, Debs, please don’t say anything.

DDM: Maybe you should reconsider doing your podcast because of the consequences of speaking out against these things, but. If we don’t speak and use our voices our privilege, our complicity is just escalated. You know? I love that saying in our tradition, all that’s needed for evil to triumph us, for good people to do nothing, to say nothing.

P P: Yeah. For me, it’s probably a lot more simplified. to simplify things in my head in my life, but that I learned that it’s okay to care, it’s okay. It shouldn’t be an issue that’s divided by political party.

DDM: it’s such a human issue.

P P: All of us are human beings, whether it’s immigrants or whatever the topic is. That played a lot to me with my faith because,

P P: You know the old saying if you’re gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. like that. So am I just going to, you know, speak my faith once a week in church, or am I gonna practice it every day?

P P: And this was an opportunity to really look for myself, look in the mirror and say, Hey, are you doing as you believe. are you doing. As you speak. And so that was big for me. In that way and in a lot of ways during this whole week on the caravan, it changed me all the way down to allowing somebody to tape signs on my car. I mean, I’ve always looked at my car as it’s a tool to go from point A to point B. Whether it’s a small car, medium car, but it doesn’t matter. And I never put anything on the car. Even like during the last election, Linda wanted to put bumper stickers on and we agreed on just the kind that stick on the glass because they’re removable.

P P: And now we have those on a window in our home. We still have them home for the candidate, but I was outnumbered. I had to let it go through.

L K: We were told that it wouldn’t leave Marks. We weren’t so sure, but we just put tape all over the car with a lot of signs.

DDM: But you know, I was thinking when you both were speaking, because we speak about in a way our capacity for our hearts to be expanded. To be loving, to be compassionate, but having your heart expanded is, is very uncomfortable down to the practicality of. I really don’t wanna have signs on my car.

DDM: You know, I was identifying with you when you were speaking that, but sometimes what does it mean to allow everything that we own to actually be a tool for goodness, justice, for love, for compassion, you know which, isn’t always comfortable, you know?

DDM: What coming out of this experience do you wish more people knew about immigrant workers ICE raids, detention.

L K: One thing is that I wish more people understood that nobody is safe. I, I don’t feel that any of us are safe right now. There are masked men in unmarked cars. They are taking people off the streets, out of homes. There was a raid in a small packing facility in a small town called Cato, New York.

L K: And up to 60 people were taken. Many of them had legal papers to work here legally who’ve already been deported, but people are being taken without any warrant, there’s no judicial arrest warrant. There are reports that people have the blank warrants in the car, and they will fill in the names after they round up the people.

L K: And, it, it’s very dangerous. So, we stopped in a very small town in Western New York, and one of the speakers, he said he had a friend there, a childhood friend who still lives there and works for ICE, and has worked for ICE for many years. And he said, now the pressure from Washington is immense.

L K: It’s all about numbers now. And so, what’s happened there, we were told is that some of the business owners and the farmers, they’re working with the workers because instead of having the workers all go and stay in one place, because that is what ICE likes, they like one place where they can take a lot of people.

L K: So they figured out how they can move around and just have one or two people stay in different places.

L K: So there is actually some local people who might just hear through the grapevine, you know, be careful tomorrow. So there is definitely unhappiness here over a job that used to just be legitimate law enforcement.

DDM: Right.

L K: So I think these are human rights abuses that we’ve just a accepted, you know, the lack of privacy. I mean, one person on the caravan she told us of a man she knows who was detained and kept in the handcuffs and chains with other men in a van for 24 hours without water.

L K: There’s no place for them to go to the bathroom. So the ice, they don’t wanna give them water. And so these human rights abuses that we all just kind of accept are not acceptable.

P P: People are uninformed. I was with a friend of mine about a week ago, and we were having this discussion about immigration and he said, no, they’re only rounding up the criminals. They’re only taking the criminals. And I said, “no, that’s not true.” ‘Cause when we were on the caravan, we learned of an Episcopal priest, I think it was at Scarsdale somewhere. Her daughter is a student at…

L K: I think it’s at Purdue right now. She was high school graduate of Scarsdale high school. Her mother is here legally from South Korea. Her mother is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New York.

DDM: Right.

P P: Right. So I told him this. The daughter went in to renew her visa. ‘Cause she was getting ready to go back to school and it wasn’t coming up until the end of the year. She went in, did what she had to do inside. When she came out, ICE was there and picked her up.

P P: The next day she was shipped to…

L K: Louisiana Detention Center.

P P: Now she since has been released, but the horror that she had to go through that’s gonna live with her, if not the rest of her life, for quite some time.

DDM: Absolutely. And especially, I mean, you think her daughter, just what could happen to her? I mean, any of us who are parents, you think if that was your child,

P P: And my friend, thankfully, he believed me. believed what I was saying. He says, well, I didn’t know that

DDM: I think that’s the problem. There’s so many of these stories that people are just not hearing.

P P: They’re, misinformed on the topic. A lot of people don’t pay attention to it because they have their own things going on in their life, and

DDM: Of course. Of course.

DDM: What have you both done since the caravan last August? And what are some of your thoughts about what you may be planning to do in the future?

P P: There’s this weekly protest on Fridays at 12 Corners in Brighton.

L K: I think it’s the First Unitarian church. They have organized it. Because one thing that we learned on the caravan. Oh, there was a small town we went through where six Roman Catholics, they said, we stand here, with our signs once a week in the town square. And we’re just wondering, you know, are we all by ourselves?

L K: Is anybody else with us? And then we went, through another town where every Wednesday they have a protest or a vigil, they hold signs. And it’s just, it put it in our heads that doing something once a week as a ritual is helpful.

P P: Helps to raise awareness people who aren’t aware.

DDM: Right.

P P: So what we’ve been doing is we go on Friday, it goes from five o’clock to six. It’s at 12 Corners and each week there’s a few more people there. The last time we were there it’s over a hundred people.

DDM: Wow.

P P: In 12 corners, and everybody’s got signs except me. I go there to protect Linda. I am the protector.

L K: Paul. The first time we went, somebody came up to you and asked you a question.

P P: Yeah, that’s right. Yes. She remembers everything. Yeah. I’m sitting on the bench there, and I am observing the people because you never know if some kook’s gonna come over there and you wanna protect your family. ’cause one week we brought my granddaughter with us, so we had her to a watch out for, so the woman comes up to me and she says, may I sit here?

P P: I said, sure. She says. Were you in the caravan last week? And I said, yes. So she introduced herself as the person from the Unitarian Church, and she organizes this protest. She’s one of the organizers, her church is, and she’s part of that. And, so she remembered us from the dinner that we had there that night. So I thought that was so neat. And so she’d come up to me each week, you know, and one week she gave me petitions. I forget what the petition was for.

P P: But anyways, it’s that kind of relationship that has started, you know, and hopefully we’ll continue on.

DDM: Right. And it’s almost like that networking and a network of people who, who are prepared to put their bodies where their values are a way.

L K: Yes, exactly. Because you know, as we got closer to home in the caravan, when we went through the Finger Lakes area, some people joined us and they had signs that said, “free Elena, Louise and Raymundo.” These are local people in their community who were taken and then they’re trying to get them released.

L K: So they joined us in Auburn, at the Harriet Tubman house. So we went there, which was very special. And they stayed with us through Rochester and into Buffalo. And I, talked to the one of the women there and I said, you know, I’m gonna remember this. And a week later we saw a notice that there was a rally in Geneva.

L K: To free Elena, Luis and Raymundo. So. We went and I saw at least five or six people there who were on the caravan with us in this part of New York state. And you’re right. And one woman came up to me and she said, oh, I lost the piece of paper you gave me with your, your email address and your phone number.

L K: And I’m so glad that you’re here ’cause I wanted to tell you about this rally. So you’re right, this type of networking it’s very, very important now.

DDM: And I was just thinking as well the fact that Paul’s going to a protest once a week is unbelievable. If you know Paul, it’s not who Paul normally is, but, I was thinking, you know, part of what’s so important about that is the raising awareness because, you know, a lot of people, as you say, are just simply not aware of these issues if they’re not touching their intimate lives.

P P: And a lot of people that may have these type of characteristics that I do in this topic might be afraid. To go to one of these protests, you know, ’cause there’s a lot of us that have been changed by the politics and the ongoings of our country in the last 10 years.

P P: And so we may have been here at one point, but we are now here, you know, we’ve moved, not that we have changed. You know, we have changed,

DDM: But the political landscape

P P: we’ve become more aware of a lot of the things that are going on. In this case, we’re talking about immigration, which is huge. It’s huge. The nursing home we were at. There’s many immigrants in that system working in the healthcare system, at the nursing homes throughout the country. And if you took them out of that work, out of the nursing homes, who’s gonna do it?

DDM: It would collapse.

L K: Nursing homes, home healthcare, the hospitals. Yes. So we did have one stop where a doctor came. Came and talked to us and he told us about the whole healthcare economy there. And without the immigrant workers it would just collapse.

P P: Yeah.

L K: But you’re right, there is a lot of fear right now.

L K: And, you know, we’re all in a computer, we’re all in a computer on the wrong side of fascism. So, that is true. And, i’ve been thinking a lot about a movie I saw back in the eighties. We’re. Baby boomers. So we grew up with a lot of the books and the movies about the resistance during World War ii. There’s a movie, a French movie with English subtitles. The director is Louis Malle, it’s called Au Revoir Les Enfants. It’s about boys in a Catholic boarding school in France and the priest who leads the boarding school. He also uses it to hide two or three Jewish students from the Nazis. And so it really is kind of a coming of age movie, but also you see at the end.

L K: It’s not really a spoiler ’cause you know how it ends, but the Nazis come in, they arrest the priests. He goes to a concentration camp, where he dies. They take the boys, they find them. And it’s based on a true story. This director Louis Malle lived through this when he was I think 11 years old.

L K: In France and so I think clergy now are all at risk of something similar. If we don’t stop what’s happening.

DDM: Yeah. We forget about the parallels in this story with history. We’ve been through this before and we know it doesn’t end well. know, how can others support the rural migrant ministry that was so foundational to this whole

L K: So on their website. If you just go and search for rural and migrant ministry, you can sign up for a newsletter. There’s a way to donate and you know, there are many activities there that you can sign up for. They have annual dinners and then also while you’re on the website, if you search for the Journey of Empathy Caravan, you can see a lot of the local news coverage that we had going town to town.

L K: And you can see the daily schedule that we followed.

DDM: Lovely. Well, I’m so grateful to the two of you for firstly making that commitment to go and see and hear what too many of us just don’t see and hear in our communities. And then of course, for coming today to share a little of what you saw and heard and learned. And I’m also really grateful to each of you who are listening into this podcast for your openness to hear the stories of people who are vulnerable in our communities, perhaps more now than ever.

DDM: As Paul and Linda shared, I really encourage you to go to the Rural and Migrant Ministry website, but also maybe. To consider becoming a part of the Rapid Response Network, which you can also get onto through their website. They offer multiple opportunities for training on how local individuals and communities can respond to ICE raids, how to help vulnerable families, and really just to become a partner for Justice and hope in your own community and for our international listeners.

DDM: Maybe some questions are, how are immigrants being treated in your country right now? How are your agricultural laborers being treated? Are you struggling with some of the same issues that we in the USA are facing? And how are you managing to make a difference with your voice, your body, your car, your faith?

DDM: Please reach out and let us know. And thank you once again, Linda and Paul for being with us today.

P P: Thank you.

L K: Thank you for having us.

MET: Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM: Music by Audionautix.com

Join Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe for a discussion about Armageddon and the end of the world.

---

Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

DDM [00:38] Today, Elizabeth and I want to be looking at the religious ideas that are openly being expressed by people like Pete Hegseth, Lindsey Graham, but in particular around the theme that we are in the end times and approaching the final battle of Armageddon.

MET [00:58] We have talked about Christian nationalism before, but current events are making this an even more vital conversation. As Deborah mentioned, there is a theme emerging from political leaders that has long been kept in the shadows of American leadership but is now being brought into the open. And that is that part of America’s job as God’s chosen nation is to bring about God’s will, which is ultimately the end times as certain evangelicals understand it.

MET [01:32] This isn’t new. In the Reagan years, political leadership used Armageddon and the Rapture as an excuse not to take action in environmental crises. The thinking was, “Yeah, we could do something about the changing climate and carbon emissions,” because we absolutely knew about it then, “or concern ourselves with deforestation, but Christ will come back before the forest will, so why bother?” The message coming from the Pentagon, at least as it is being reported out from watchdog groups, is even more sinister. The war in Iran, and I guess it’s a war, is not just a battle over oil or money or even a distraction from bad politics at home. It serves a spiritual purpose, and that is to usher in the end times.

MET [02:23] Now, let’s be very clear, this is not a good thing. Depending on which version of the end times you believe in, and yeah, there are different versions because as Deborah will tell you, it’s all nonsense, so of course they can’t get their story straight. Either there’s going to be a huge global war led by the Antichrist, all Christians are going to be taken up in the Rapture, and the rest of us heathens, because Deborah, Carl, and I would definitely be counted among those, will be left behind in this new hell on Earth, or all Christians will be taken up and then the Antichrist will start a war with who is left.

MET [03:03] I think there are other iterations of this, but those are the main ones I can remember. And we’re sending Tomahawk missiles to girls’ schools to make sure one of these things happen.

DDM [03:16] So let’s unpack some of this. Firstly, we have to start by saying that this thinking is not a traditional Christian belief, but it really is a 19th, 20th century development based on misconceptions around biblical prophecy that believes that the world will end in a massive Middle Eastern war called Armageddon.

DDM [03:40] Now, for the first 1,800 years of church history, this was not a Christian belief at all, so we really need to understand that this is a modern interpretation being placed onto scripture. In the New Testament, the early Christians expected the end of the world to come soon after the ascension of Jesus.

DDM [04:03] They believed Jesus would come again in their lifetime, and God’s kingdom would be established. But they did not in any way equate this with a geopolitical war or map out nations and military alliances the way we are seeing this being done today. The apocalyptic imagery in the Book of Revelations, the whole beasts, dragons, battle of Armageddon, that was generally interpreted symbolically or spiritually by early theologians.

DDM [04:37] This battle between good and evil was understood to happen throughout history in every age and generation. And so Armageddon was not a literal future battlefield, but the spiritual conflict between good and evil always present in the world in every people and community. That’s how Revelations was always understood in the church from the beginning.

DDM [05:02] This only changed in the 1800s with a preacher called John Nelson Darby, who developed what was called dispensationalism. He developed an idea that history was divided into stages or dispensations, and he developed the concept of a rapture where Christians would be taken up into heaven before a time of suffering.

DDM [05:28] He developed the concept of a literal battle of Armageddon centering on Israel, and this idea was used by Christian Zionists and gained popularity as the modern state of Israel was being created, and it was also used as a theological justification for Israel’s existence as a state This kind of thinking continued to be developed and expanded until the 20th century, where authors and preachers made these ideas extremely popular amongst the common people.

DDM [06:01] Hal Lindsey and his best-selling book, “The Late Great Planet Earth,” “The Left Behind” series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Now, these works of fiction, and they’re fiction, presented these detailed scenarios where modern political nations play roles in the Battle of Armageddon, and ideas of the rapture were vividly shown.

DDM [06:25] And so millions of readers and viewers came to view this fiction as literally what the Bible predicts. But serious theologians know this is simply fiction, and dangerous fiction, because books like Revelation were really written to encourage Christians living under the Roman Empire. The language is highly symbolic, using symbols people understood in that culture and in that time, and ancient biblical place names don’t even map accurately and neatly onto our modern political countries.

DDM [07:03] But despite scholars and theologians, these ideas became incredibly popular for psychological and social reasons. At times when there is seeming chaos in the world, the rise of violence and what we would call evil, these ideas give people a framework to understand this chaos, this evil, this violence, and a sense that people psychologically need that everything is happening for a reason and moving towards the ultimate triumph of good and their own people over evil, which of course is always the other nation or the other group of people.

DDM [07:42] And so what we call in theological circles apocalyptic literature, of which Revelations is a form, the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament is a form. These forms of apocalyptic literature always arise during times of war and suffering as a way of saying, “Your suffering is not meaningless, but it has purpose, and ultimately, you will triumph.”

MET [08:10] Okay, so I didn’t grow up in a household that was obsessed with the end times the way some evangelicals are, but I definitely grew up thinking Revelation was about the literal end of the world and bought into the Armageddon rapture stuff. In fact, one of the things that Carl and my mother-in-law still give me a really hard time about is when we first got married, I would panic whenever I lost track of Carl in the grocery store or if he left the house without telling me, because if I find myself in the store or the house by myself and I couldn’t see anyone else around me, my initial thought was not, “Oh, Carl went to go get tortilla chips,” it was, “Oh no, everybody got raptured and I missed it.”

MET [08:55] This caused great amusement for my in-laws who had not been exposed to this kind of thing and were also a bit concerned that I assumed Carl would be taken up, but not me. But as I learned more and more about apocalyptic scripture, I began to understand it as something completely different.

MET [09:15] Not as something predictive, but as something descriptive or even argumentative. The closest analog I have to apocalyptic scripture is protest rhetoric. I have taught classes in protest, democracy building, and social change, and in some ways that is applicable and in some ways it is not. It isn’t because the writers of the Bible and literature of that time were not looking to build democracy, and they were not shaped by the traditions of the West.

MET [09:48] If anything, they were giving shape to the traditions that the West would eventually adopt. But really, the West would take as much or more from the Greeks or Romans and just kind of pick and choose from their actual religious roots. But at the same time, there are similarities. Any people wanting to protest against their oppressors have certain things in common, and so will their rhetoric.

MET [10:10] So in books like Daniel and Revelation, I see things I recognize from my own work, like solidification, polarization, definition of terminology, and things like promulgation, all of which come straight out of social movement studies. For one, there is a good deal of work to solidify the group of protesters here.

MET [10:32] The people who are being oppressed are tightly bound in a group of articulated traits. The people who this was for knew who they were and why it was for them. This was a narrative that brought a people together. It brought them together in opposition to a greater power. But that is what good protest rhetoric does.

MET [10:55] People want to believe that good protest rhetoric brings us together, but that’s not completely true. If you want to make change, you have to show that change is necessary, and that means you have to point out a problem. That requires solidifying around an issue, showing how oppression exists. It’s the important first step.

MET [11:16] That actually leads to another important part of the process, which is polarization. I know it’s not pleasant to think about because we like the idea of all holding hands and kumbaya-yaing our way into wholeness, but change doesn’t come because you’re all happy with each other. Change comes because one group of people says, “No, this will not stand.” If oppression is happening, then there has to be an oppressor. You can aim to make peace with your oppressor, but you can’t just ignore the oppression. ultimately has to be a good guy and a bad guy. And a lot of people love to say, “Oh, MLK didn’t think that way,” but that is because they don’t know jack about MLK. Because MLK talked about white moderates being a bigger threat to justice than the KKK and said white moderate people need to just get out of the way ’cause they’re the real problem. He identified who the enemy was, but we don’t like to quote that part because it’s uncomfortable to, you know, white moderates.

MET [12:16] There are also some terms thrown around that the ones doing the speaking, and not the establishment or Rome, get to define. The ability to define your own terms is crucial to guiding the narrative. So when the author starts throwing around terms like The Dragon and Whore of Babylon, he’s also doing more to create solidification.

MET [12:41] He’s setting up a shibboleth. If you don’t understand these terms, then you are not one of us. And all of this is supposed to spread the word. A sermon or plain old letter might not do the trick, but a vision of monsters might. If you wanna talk about how serious things are and get your message out there, put it in terms of the world ending. That’s a good way to go viral.

DDM [13:07] And, you know, for people who don’t see themselves as religious, even still, we cannot dismiss these religious ideas because they are incredibly powerful and strong, and they shape and influence global foreign policy and thinking, especially in the Israel and– especially in Israel and the USA. Remember, this religious thinking was developed in the USA and then picked up and used by Christian Zionists and later Jewish Zionists.

DDM [13:36] It focuses on the understanding that the Jewish people must return to the political state of Israel before the end times can happen. And this thinking has shaped the funding to repopulate historic Palestine with people who call themselves Jewish and try to populate this newly created country of Israel, and especially we see that taking shape in the illegal informal settlements in Israel.

DDM [14:02] But this thinking also equates, obviously, the state of Israel with the biblical Israelites, which is completely inaccurate biblically. But it claims that those who bless Israel as a state will be blessed by God. Organizations promoting this view is CUFI the Christians United for Israel, and they believe Israel has a God-given right to the land from Egypt all the way into Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and they call this the Greater Israel, which is why Israel is the only nation that has not set its borders because they are still reclaiming the land that they believe belongs to them, and why we see the constant destabilization of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and now Iran by Israel and the USA.

DDM [14:53] But what is crucial to understand is that in this thinking, war is not something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced because Jesus will not come again until after the Battle of Armageddon, according to them. So to bring about a global Armageddon is to bring about the return of Jesus, and so a global devastating war is ironically for them, in fact, to do God’s will.

DDM [15:21] And American Bibles like the Scofield Reference Bible actually include commentary explaining all of this and adding all of these political thoughts to the scriptures.

MET [15:36] The Bible actually is the source for a few rhetorical devices and genres. One of those is called the jeremiad. Now, the Book of Revelation is not a jeremiad. I wanna be clear about that. But these things kinda go together in my head because they do similar things. Biblical rhetoric often performs similar roles, and that’s not because it is boring or uncreative, but the audience has similar requirements because of their culture or setting in many situations.

MET [16:10] You could say the same thing about an American audience or a Nigerian audience or whatever. A jeremiad is a form of speech that combines lamentations over a society’s moral decline with a demand for reform and a hopeful prophecy of renewal. It’s named after the book of prophecy in the Bible, Jeremiah, and it follows a three-part structure: denouncing current sins, comparing them to an idealized past, and calling for repentance.

MET [16:43] I’m not actually gonna go over a big example or do a lot of analysis on this one. What I need you to know is that a jeremiad is a kind of prophetic speech. It calls out our bad behavior now and claims that things were better in the past and we can get better again. There’s a lot going on here. First, you have to be convinced that things are terrible now.

MET [17:08] Maybe they are, or maybe things are just different than how you want them. But for a jeremiad to be productive, you have to believe that now is awful Secondly, you have to be convinced that at some point in the past, things were way better. There was some happy, ideal point in the past when things were good and bright and happy, and all the problems that plague you or us now don’t exist.

MET [17:36] It is very important that you believe things were better in the past, because if I can get you to believe things were once so much better, I can get you to believe that they might be again. This is a hugely powerful bit of persuasion. If I can get you believe that things will be like they once were, and I can get them there, you are putty in my hands. If you haven’t put it all together, Make America Great Again is the soundbite version.

MET [18:06] I think this is important to think about in terms of revelation and Christian nationalism and foreign policy because the Trump admin has been promising for over a decade that they are going to make things like they once were. But they are also leaning on interpretation of the Bible that promises a future of war, literally the end of the world. So they’re going to make things great like they once were before, but they are also going to bring about the end times. The end is what is great. I know people say it all the time, but it’s true.

MET [18:44] This is very much a death cult. And that sounds outlandish and polemic and completely unhinged, but they’re saying it right there out loud. The goal is to both make things better and bring about the end of the world, and there’s only so much interpretation you can do with that

DDM [19:02] it’s really frightening. So whatever your view of religion, these ideas are currently being very actively used politically to justify war crimes, environmental destruction, regime changes, and they are now being used openly. They’re not biblical, but they have become dominant teachings in many churches. I think we need to, especially as Christians whose faith is being hijacked for political ends, call these out for what they are, evil heresies to further political empires and their power with no concern for the destruction of ordinary people and even the world in which we live.

DDM [19:43] We need to say out loud and clearly each time these ideas are expressed that this is not what our faith teaches.

MET [19:55] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org/donate. That will help cover the cost of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [20:23]Music by audionautix.com.

Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe describes the way her understanding of rhetorical history shapes her faith.

---

Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

MET [00:38] I had this student once who had the greatest opening line to her presentations I have ever heard. It always made me laugh, but also feel really good about life because this young woman came from a really conservative background, and she had gone to a hardcore religious school, and she had a lot of glass-breaking moments in my class when I informed her what she had been taught by her pastor was not, in fact, true at all.

MET [01:04] But she was a genuinely good person, and she wanted to make people feel good in her presence. She cared about others. So at the beginning of every presentation, this hardcore religious kid would smile as big as she could and say, “Hello and welcome, guys, gals, and non-binary pals.” And it was like some tension melted in the room because we did, in fact, feel welcome.

MET [01:33] She didn’t know it, but she was a master rhetorician. What she inherently understood about audience, pathos and ethos, delivery, and messaging takes years to teach, which makes me think she had been absorbing it over her lifetime, which probably means she had grown up hearing some mighty good preachers.

MET [01:56] This young woman had come up in the tradition of the Black church, so things like audience, delivery, pathos, and ethos would have been incredibly important to a service. So she might never have taken a public speaking class, but had absorbed more about public speaking than half the people with communication degrees.

MET [02:17] Okay, so why am I telling you this? It’s a charming story, and it raises some interesting questions about whether one can actually teach another person to be a good public speaker. But what I really wanted you to notice was a kind of flashpoint. Over the last year and a half, I have talked to you about a lot of different kinds of rhetorics.

MET [02:40] We’ve covered classical theories, the postmodern, political rhetoric, legal rhetoric, religious rhetoric. I’ve taken you on a whirlwind tour. This is an interesting story because it covers so many of them. It is both political and religious. It is invitational and constitutive. It is Aristotelian and feminist.

MET [03:03] There’s just a lot. And I realize as I tell you this, I’ve taken you through your paces and gotten you to where you can recognize all of this. But I don’t know that I’ve ever made my fundamental connections for you. So today, if you’ll give me just a few minutes, I wanna take us back to the beginning.

MET [03:23] Carl and Reverend Deborah were kind enough to let me have the mic by myself this time because I wanted to take you on a journey that is specific to me, both as a person of faith and as an intellectual. So a bit of rhetorical history and theory. I know it’s just what you were thinking you needed today, but also you are here with me, so you had to know it was a possibility.

MET [03:49] Now, there are basically three roots to the rhetorical tree, the Sophist teachings, Aristotle’s theory, and Plato’s critique and elevation. I’m actually gonna start with Aristotle, not because he was first, but because he ended up being the most important. Plato won Christianity, but Aristotle won science and the Enlightenment.

MET [04:15] I mean, I guess we can argue about who was most important really, but I’m starting with Aristotle regardless, mostly because he ended up being the most important to rhetoric. Aristotle began with a few basic assumptions. One, the audience is rational. This is really important to understand. If you assume the audience is rational, it makes a difference in how you make your argument.

MET [04:42] It also lifts some of the burden on you to police yourself, if I’m being cynical, because a rational audience can sniff out problems. A rational audience can be persuaded by a good argument using evidence and reason. Aristotle also assumed that audiences were relatively universal. By that I mean he made sweeping generalizations about the elderly or the young or the rich or the whoever, and said, “These are their characteristics.

MET [05:13] Here’s how you appeal to them.” On the one hand, they were straight up stereotypes. On the other hand, we do the same thing with market research and voting demographics all the time. We just have numbers to go with our claims. I will note that any time I have presented Aristotle’s claims about people to modern undergrads, they have decided he got it about right.

MET [05:39] But this is also important to understand because his audience kind of was universal. It was all landowning male wealthy citizens of one city-state. I mean, if you only know one kind of person and they’re all the same, you’d probably jump to some conclusions too. Finally, Aristotle took these assumptions and said, “Rhetoric is discovering or using the best available means of persuasion in any given case.”

MET [06:10] This means given the audience, so they are old or they are rich, et cetera, what kind of things will they respond to? What is the best combination of proofs? There are inartistic proofs, which is just the stuff you don’t come up with, the stuff you bring into the argument, and there are artistic proofs.

MET [06:31] That’s what you bring to the argument. And this is why it matters that the audience is both, A, rational, so able to make considered decisions and can be persuaded, but also, B, young, so prone to rash decisions or whatever. The artistic proofs are appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos, and that just means how much you depend on appeals to logic, emotion, or your character.

MET [06:56] You are probably wondering at this point what on earth this has to do with me and my faith. I promise I will get there. We’re going the long way today. The second person who is worth talking about is Plato. Plato actually hated rhetoric. He hated rhetoric because he associated it with the Sophists, who I’ll talk about in a minute, who he believed to be dangerous and idolatrous. As far as Plato understood rhetoric, it was completely relativistic and could easily let the wrong people gain power.

MET [07:34] Plato was really certain of two things. There is a right and ultimate truth, and there are right kinds of people, and they should be in charge. For Plato, rhetoric shouldn’t be about persuasion. It should be about what he called the dialectic, a philosophical back and forth and an ongoing search for truth.

MET [07:57] Rhetoric should be a search for transcendence, not a bid for power. And along those lines, Plato wasn’t real big on democracy, whereas Aristotle’s and the Sophists’ versions of rhetoric went hand in hand with democracy. Plato believed what we need are philosopher kings, people of great knowledge, wisdom, and character who will take on the mantle of leadership and basically be a benevolent dictator.

MET [08:25] This is the difference I need you to understand. Plato is at the heart of both Christianity and fascism. Aristotle leads to the Enlightenment and colonialism. That just leaves the Sophists. Here’s what you gotta know. Everybody hates the Sophists. The Sophists were, depending on how you frame the story, itinerant teachers of rhetoric who went from town to town, sharing their knowledge in a radically democratic fashion, or flamboyant rabble-rousers who went to a town and took whoever’s money they could until they were thrown out of that town and went to the next.

MET [09:08] The Sophists were easy to recognize. As I said, they were flamboyant in their dress and hairstyle, and that in and of itself bothered the traditional, more civically-oriented teachers and politicians of the day. Once again, things have not changed. You’ve got the people in charge And you have the folks in edgy clothes and wild-colored hair demanding something different.

MET [09:33] Ecclesiastes 1:9 says there is nothing new under the sun. This is a reminder that in many ways that is very true. There will always be those with institutional power who hate upstarts who look and sound different with challenging ideas. What those challenging ideas were is of particular interest. For example, the Sophists had a very different approach to education than Aristotle, Plato, and all of the other rhetoric teachers in the Greek world.

MET [10:05] The established rhetoric professors, the ones who had their own institutions, were very selective about who they taught. They let in the sons of wealthy, established families who showed great promise in math, logic, rhetoric, and even physical prowess. The Sophist said, “Ha ha, not really,” and would teach anyone who had the cash.

MET [10:29] Now, a couple of things about that. It is at once both a hugely democratizing step in education, but also a sign that money still talks. It is democratizing in that there are no established hierarchy barriers. If you had the cash, you could get the education. Farmers, merchants, whoever. If you could save up the money, the Sophists would teach you. This means that the Sophists were offering anyone access to the education and power that were reserved for the propertied rich and powerful.

MET [11:06] So yeah, there were many reasons and excuses to hate the Sophists, but you had to figure that was one of the biggest. They were opening the doors of education to anyone. However, there were still barriers. Education was very expensive. You had to save up the money. Sometimes that could be close to a year or two’s worth of salary for some people.

MET [11:31] But if you had the money, they would teach you. Then there was what was taught. The Sophists taught about rhetoric, politics, and all the things that people like Aristotle, Isocrates, and Plato were teaching. But they also taught the equivalent of how to do your taxes. The Sophists taught things like how to make business decisions, how to comport yourself in public, and how to account for your money at the end of the day, as well as persuasion politics and democratic theory.

MET [12:05] So the democratization part of their education is vital to understand. Sophistic education wasn’t just about how to be a good senator or whatever. It was about how to be a successful and prominent citizen. Once again, you can see how this would upset those in power. The last thing they needed was for the commoners to have access to knowledge that would allow them to improve themselves and their lives in significant ways.

MET [12:36] Finally, one of the biggest reasons people like Plato hated the Sophists was their supposedly moral reasons. The Sophists had very different ideas on truth. For Sophists, truth was very much a matter of the moment. Truth was something that you created as a matter of context. Truth happened at a particular moment in that particular context at the right time in the right situation.

MET [13:05] You could imagine a guy like Plato, who believed in capital T truth, had a huge issue with the Sophists. But the Sophists believed and taught that truth was a creation of context. That, of course, made rhetoricians particularly powerful, because a person in that context could potentially be a truth maker.

MET [13:29] Now, it would appear that I have forgotten this is a podcast about issues of the faith, and I have taken it upon myself to lecture you about rhetorical history and theory. But actually, I want to tell you about how this comes together for me. Christianity borrows heavily from Plato. We get our notions of truth, hierarchy, and much of our philosophy from Plato.

MET [13:54] Our religion is surprisingly Greek and Roman for being based on an Aramaic Jew. And I don’t necessarily like what we got from Plato. Platonic thinking breeds exclusion. It creates environments where there’s not just insiders and outsiders, but blessed and cursed. And Aristotle’s clinical approach probably shaped Paul’s systematized and rhetorically constructed letters throughout the New Testament.

MET [14:23] Paul, being well-versed in Greek, probably knew all about these folks and had put their theories to good use. A study of the letters in the New Testament as documents and letters instead of theology reveals some pretty classically rhetorical artifacts. It is very easy to point to how Plato and Aristotle have affected Christianity.

MET [14:46] And because our faith is so vested in Plato and Aristotle, especially Plato, we assume that is right. There are ultimate truths, and there are ways to present your case. And I’m not here to contest any of that But I want to tell you for a minute about the Sophists and how I see their philosophy shaping my faith.

MET [15:09] For one, the Sophists opened up knowledge to everyone, or as much as anyone did in that day and time. This radical inclusion is incredibly important to my faith. I wouldn’t follow Christ if I did not believe he was open to everyone. Part of Christ’s revelatory approach to community was that he did not put up barriers.

MET [15:34] He was not a gatekeeper. There were no rules about who he would and would not share his message with or his table. I wouldn’t say Christ practiced radical democracy because I don’t think I would apply any statist theory to his work. But I do think he practiced radical inclusion in community.

MET [15:56] And of all of the rhetorical theorists of the classical age, it is the Sophists who got closest to that. In fact, Plato, who we borrowed most heavily from, was kind of the opposite of that. The Sophists were the ones who came closest to providing a picture of the kind of actions I see in the Gospels. And the fact that those in power hated them just lends credence to that.

MET [16:22] Secondly, the Sophists taught the kinds of things that affected people in their day-to-day lives. Plato and Aristotle were great if you were going to trial or were trying to get a body of legislation to pass a law. But the Sophists attended to your life, your mundane, everyday choices, as well as the grandiose.

MET [16:42] I see that in the Gospels as well. When Christ told a parable, it was often about someone relatable. In Luke fifteen, Christ tells the story of a woman who lost one coin and went searching for it. How many times do we hear about shepherds and their sheep? We also hear about rich men, but very often we hear as much about their servants as well.

MET [17:07] Christ’s lessons were about how to treat your neighbor more than how to relate to systems of power. Jesus wanted you to know how to function in the day to day as much as he did about how to function in the halls of power. Finally, and this is the clincher, the Sophists taught that truth was contingent.

MET [17:30] This is the stickler for a lot of people. If there is one thing we are certain of in Christianity, it is that there are certain truths that should not be questioned. And I’m not here to say whether that is or is not the case But I wanna talk about where I find God. All too often, God is not in the grand walls of a church.

MET [17:54] God is in small moments. God is in the time I spend with my husband and daughter. God is in those moments in the classroom when I know we’ve made genuine progress. God is when Carl, Deborah, and I finish up a podcast, and I know we’ve made a quality product that I think will help people. I’m not claiming I make God or truth, but I do find God and truth in the contextually defined moments of my life.

MET [18:23] It is one thing to say that God is everywhere all the time. It is quite another to know for a fact He is working in your life. Sometimes truth is found minute by minute. Sometimes God shows Himself in the most mundane circumstances. The Sophists taught that truth was a product of context. I am not telling you that God is a product of context.

MET [18:48] But in my life, God is found in those small moments that are defined by context of community, family, and even resistance. In that way, God is a God of context. For while He is always with me, I feel Him most when I am doing His work, and that is something I create. So what is the point of all this? For me, it is a matter of figuring out how we understand God.

MET [19:20] I’m a thinker. I understand the world as an intellectual project, so it matters to me what framework I view the world through. For some people, that isn’t a big deal, but for me it is. So when I consider this thing, rhetoric, that I have literally devoted decades of my life to, it matters how that colors other parts of my life.

MET [19:43] And what I have come to understand is that the connections are not always as clear as tradition would have us believe. Plato is not for me, though he is very much at the heart of Christianity. Aristotle doesn’t speak to me, though he probably did to Paul. But the Sophists, those folks who were accused of atheism, rabble-rousing, and disrupting the very fabric of society, that makes sense to me when it comes to the life of my faith.

MET [20:14] I can see where my mind and my spirit intersect there. So as I close today, I encourage you to think about a few things. How do you see the different parts of your world connecting? The Bible says we are supposed to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. How do you draw connections between all three?

MET [20:37] Where do you find your faith? Is it in big moments in church or in small moments in your life? What is meaningful to you? How do you live that out? Who is included in your faith? Are there barriers or is anyone invited? Consider these things as you move through the next two weeks. It’s your rhetoric homework

MET [21:16] Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.DDM [21:45] Music by Audionautix.com

In this episode, Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe is joined by Producer Carl Thorpe for a brief discussion of prayer and the Bible in public schools and their experiences as educators.

---

Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

MET [00:38] Hello, it is good to be with you. Producer Carl is with me today, and we are here to talk to you about our experiences both as people of faith and as educators. One time, years ago, I had my students in political rhetoric do some group projects on major political and cultural issues of the day. One group got prayer in school. The group got up there and they were setting up their slides and getting ready in general, and then they turned to the class and they said, “Okay, we’re ready.” And one woman who I knew to be pretty conservative and religious said, “Okay, before we start, I’d like for us all to bow our heads and start with a word of prayer.” And everyone in the group clasped their hands and bowed their heads. You could feel the chill run through the room. The rest of the class started shifting very uncomfortably and some of them gasped. I was ready to jump out of my seat and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s calm down here.” When the woman raised her head, opened her eyes wide and said, “Just kidding, but your reaction gets us ready to talk about today’s topic.” There was a collective sigh of relief and many people laughed out loud.

MET [02:00] It was easily one of the most memorable intros to a presentation I have ever had in one of my classes, and I don’t think I will ever forget it. No lie. I loved it. I thought it was perfect. I gave them a ton of points for that. But this woman was exactly right. For most people, the notion of prayer in class makes us really uncomfortable. But at the same time, there are some people who think it is absolutely essential.

MET [02:31] I grew up doing things like see you at the poll, which if you did not grow up in an environment where people were constantly trying to shove religion anywhere and everywhere, it was a yearly event where students gathered before school and gathered around the flagpole to pray. I guess we were supposed to pray for our schools or the nation, but that was never really made clear. We were just kids who were supposed to pray. And we did, and we sang our God is an awesome God and we’re our best evangelical selves. And there were signs up all over my church that said quippy things like, “As long as there are tests, there will be prayers in school.” I was surrounded by folks who generally believed that things would be better if we could shove as much Christianity into school as possible. I did not know this was a relatively new attitude, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

MET [03:27] For just a second, I’m going to ask Carl to give us a tiny bit of insight as someone who was a K through 12 teacher. Carl, can you tell us about your experience as a junior high teacher dealing with religion and school?

CRT [03:40] Sure. Back in Texas, I worked for two years as a paraprofessional at a wealthy elementary school and then three years as a classroom teacher at a low income middle school. Every morning, we had a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegiance to both the American flag and the Texas flag, which is very weird, but that’s something for another day. This was intended to be a time where students and staff could pray silently if they wanted. We were supposed to ensure that our students were motionless and silent during this brief time. Many teachers required students to stand. Now let’s ignore for a moment the students who were not religious in any way. And let’s be honest, Texas most certainly didn’t take any of them into account either.

CRT [04:20] This was supposed to be non-sectarian. However, I often wondered about those students whose former prayer wasn’t respected by this. What about those students whose former prayer were supposed to be audible or who prayed in a prostate position or prayed facing a specific direction? A moment of silence privileges those whose faith allows for silent, private individual prayer. And honestly, even the groups who definitely could and did engage in silent private prayer, such as those who organized and attended to see you at a poll event Elizabeth described, would have preferred audible, specifically Christian prayer if they could have gotten away with it. The moment of silence was the best they could get away with at that time.

CRT [04:59] And speaking of CU at the poll, at the middle school I taught at, this was not a once a year thing. It was at least weekly and at times more than that. And many faculty and staff members participated, including the principal and some of the vice principals of the school. The students who participated were given more leeway in terms of behavior and discipline because they were good Christians who made mistakes. Rumor had it that the administrators who participated often prayed for forgiveness with students who were sent to their office as one part of their punishment for behavior issues and let off the hook, so to speak. Teachers who wanted to participate were excused from before school duties such as monitoring students coming off buses, et cetera, so they could go pray. Administrators and other teachers would say things like, “I haven’t seen you at the flagpole. You know it lets our students know how much we love them and respect them when we participate.”

MET [05:47] I wanna be very clear so much of that is so illegal.

MET [05:51] Also, historically, it hasn’t always been this way. Believe it or not, Baptists were some of the chief opponents of prayer in school for a long time, right up until the time the moral majority, which we have talked about before, took over American politics. And for some people, this seems so counterintuitive. Surely the largest evangelical group in the nation would want prayer in school, right? That’s what so many of us have learned for most of our lives. But no. For most of the Baptist tradition, there was a persistent effort to keep religion out of schools and other manifestations of state.

MET [06:37] So let’s talk about why. Let’s say you decide to make a public prayer at something like a town hall meeting or a school event. That’s a state sanctioned happening, right? Which means the state gives tacit approval for everything that happens. So, the state has a vested interest in what is said, which means the state has a controlling interest in what is said. In short, the state may have a say in what you say in your prayer. If you pray at a state event, the state gets to have a say in that prayer. For example, a lot of places have said you can have a prayer as long as it is inclusive and represents a number of belief systems. A Baptist of yester year might say, “No. When I pray, I pray to Jesus Christ, son of God, creator of the universe, and it is an infringement on my religion for you to tell me I have to pray to anything or anyone different.” In other words, historically, the more conservative religious groups wanted to keep religion out of the state because they wanted to keep state out of religion.

MET [07:54] The problem with combining the two is that it is not a one-way street. Once you inject religion into the state, it is impossible for the state not to become part of religion. And that may be great if you pray to the state, which quite frankly, a lot of so- called Christians right now do. But if you pray to Jesus who rejected worldly power, this is pretty much as blasphemous as it gets.

MET [08:22] Of course, I come with receipts. I’m going to give you a brief rundown of some of the most significant court cases dealing with religion in schools to give you some idea of how this is trending. The first case I want to talk about is Engel v. Vitale. What happened was the New York State Board of Regents authorized a short, voluntary prayer for recitation at the start of each school day. A group of organizations joined forces in challenging the prayer, claiming that it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The question at hand was, does the reading of a non-denominational prayer at the start of the school day violate the establishment of religion clause at the First Amendment? The court held that the state cannot hold prayers in public schools, even if participation is not required and the prayer is not tied to a particular religion.

MET [09:21] In an opinion authored by Hugo L. Black, the court held that respondent’s decision to use its school system to facilitate recitation of an official prayer violated the establishment clause. Specifically, the policy breached the constitutional wall of separation between church and state. The court ruled that the constitutional prohibition of laws establishing religion meant that the government had no business drafting formal prayers for any segment of its population to repeat in a government-sponsored religious program. The court held that the respondent’s provision of the contested daily prayer was inconsistent with the establishment clause. Okay, that’s a lot of complicated words to say that you can’t voice prayers over the PA system or whatever, even if they are voluntary.

MET [10:14] For the record, this would come up again in Santa Fe v. Doe when there was a case over prayers at football games. That’s a complicated question because for decades, it was illegal for schools to have prayers before football games, but schools did it all the time anyway. Then in 2022, there was another prayer at Football Games case about a coach leading his team, and they decided that was acceptable, even though it was quite public. For the record, I have a huge problem with that case and wrote a whole book chapter on it. So if you want my thoughts, send me an email and I’ll shoot you the whole document.

MET [10:54] A second case from 1963 is Abington School District v. Shchempp. The facts of the case are that under Pennsylvania law, public schools were required to read from the Bible at the opening of each school day. The school district sought to enjoin enforcement of the statute. The district court ruled that the statute violated the First Amendment even after the statute had been amended to permit a student to excuse himself. The question was, did the Pennsylvania law requiring public school students to participate in classroom religious exercises violate the religious freedom of students as protected by the First and 14th Amendments? And the court decided public schools cannot sponsor Bible readings and recitations of the Lord’s prayer under the First Amendment’s establishment clause. It’s wild to think of a time when this was a question. At the same time, there are a lot of people out there right now who are trying to shoehorn the Bible into classrooms. So what are we thinking?

MET [12:06] Lemon v. Kurtzman is a particularly important case, both for the test it led to and for how it is largely being ignored by modern courts. Both Pennsylvania and Rhode Island adopted statutes that provided for the state to pay for aspects of non-secular, non-public education. The Pennsylvania statute was passed in 1968 and provided funding for non-public elementary and secondary school teachers salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials for secular subjects. Rhode Island’s statute was passed in 1969 and provided state financial support for non-public elementary schools in the form of supplementing 15% of teachers’ annual salaries. The appellants in the Pennsylvania case represented citizens and taxpayers in Pennsylvania who believed that the statute violated the separation of church and state described in the First Amendment.

MET [13:14] Appellant Lemon also had a child in Pennsylvania public school. The district court granted the state official’s motion to dismiss the case. In the Rhode Island case, the epelees were citizens and taxpayers of Rhode Island who sued to have the statute in question declared unconstitutional by arguing that it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The District Court found in favor of the Appalees and held that the state violated the First Amendment. Okay. So the question in all of this is, do the statutes that provide state funding for non-public, non-secular schools violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment? The court held that a statute must pass a three-pronged test in order to avoid violating the establishment clause. The statute must have a secular legislative purpose. Its principle or primary effect must be one that neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and it must not foster excessive government entanglement with religion. The court held that both the state statutes in question had secular legislative purposes because they reflected the desire of the state to ensure minimum secular education requirements were being met in the non-public schools.

MET [14:45] Now I’m gonna shift gears for just a second. Kitzmiller v. Dover is a case that doesn’t always come up in these conversations, but I think it’s important. The Dover case is actually about intelligent design. I include it here because after evangelicals seem to have lost the prayer in school’s battle, until recently, they turned their eyes to science classes. It is not an exaggeration to say that intelligent design is one big bit of hogum. If you’re not familiar, it is an alternative theory to evolution that some states have tried to shove into science classes and argue that it wasn’t evolution, but an intelligent designer that created the world. And I love that. It isn’t God, just some unnamed, far off, intelligent designer that created the world and absolutely did not follow the laws of established science, but set the world down whole cloth. It is creationism without Genesis. It is garbage, but Christians love to propose it as an alternative scientific theory that fills in the gaps. Friends, it is not scientific, and there are no gaps. I remember a student years ago in a class announced that evolution couldn’t be accurate because there was a missing link. I told them, “The missing link you are looking for is Australopithecus africanus, and we’ve known about it for decades, and just because most people are wildly ignorant of science doesn’t mean we should teach people to be more ignorant.” My students were shocked, offended, and educated. In 2004, the Dover School Board mandated that biology teachers mention intelligent design as an alternative to evolution using the textbook of pandas and people.

MET [16:54] This one didn’t even make it to SCOTUS. It stopped at lower levels. The judge concluded that intelligent design is not science and cannot decouple itself from its creationist and thus religious antecedents. The decision deemed the policy unconstitutional and halted efforts to introduce ID into public school curricula nationwide. One of the most recent ways we have seen all this rear its ugly head is in places like Texas and Alabama, where states have tried to make laws requiring states to place the 10 commandments in classes.

MET [17:32] A case that has come up is Stone v. Graham. Sydell Stone and a number of other parents challenged a Kentucky state law that required the posting of a copy of the 10 Commandments in each public school classroom. They filed a claim against James Graham, the superintendent of public schools in Kentucky. The court ruled that the Kentucky law violated the first part of the test established in Lemon v. Kurtzman, and thus violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. The court found that the requirement that the 10 Commandments be posted had no secular legislative purpose and was plainly religious in nature. The court noted that the commandments did not confine themselves to arguably secular matters, such as murder, stealing, et cetera, but rather concerned matters such as the worship of God and the observance of the Sabbath Day.

MET [18:26] Look, if it isn’t clear by now, this is a mess. The rules change depending on the court and half the time red states don’t follow the law anyway.

CRT [18:36] I don’t know if you know this, but there isn’t just one list of 10 commandments among Christians. The Catholic and some Lutheran versions combine having no other gods and making no graven images into the first commandment, whereas Protestant traditions separate those into the first two. For Catholics and against some Lutherans covering your neighbor’s wife and your neighbor’s possessions are divided into the ninth and 10th commandments, while other Protestant traditions combine them into the 10th, which carries an off-putting emphasis on your neighbor’s wife being one of his possessions. In Texas, for example, they mandate the Protestant version of the 10 commandments as found in the King James version of the Bible, excluding the Catholic version, which again is probably intentional. So even something that claims to be non-denominational most certainly isn’t.

CRT [19:22] Similarly, mandates for teaching Bibles in schools usually privilege one specific translation over others. Again, Catholics and some Orthodox churches include a set of books often referred to as the apocrypha in their Bibles, and they are usually excluded from versions specified in these mandates. So even if you are 100% on board with biblical principles and texts being taught in public schools, students of other denominations of the religion that these laws and mandates seek to privilege are still being excluded.

MET [19:51] Okay. So what does all of this say about our faith? Honestly, I don’t think it’s anything good. If we are so unsure about our faith and insecure about it that we feel the state has to mandate it, then we are not doing our jobs. If we are willing to turn our religion over to the state to take care of its keep because we need the power of the state to keep it going, then we are failures. I don’t think the drive to put religion in schools indicates any great belief in the great commission. I think it represents a profound lack of confidence in your own beliefs. If your beliefs are so small and so fragile that you depend on the state to make them valid, then that’s not faith. That’s bureaucracy. And I do not believe Jesus came to be a bureaucrat. I do not believe salvation comes in the classroom. I do not believe we can depend on the power of the state to justify our faith, and if you do, then your faith is ridiculously weak. We talked just recently about God and the public, and I think there is a place for that, but I would never depend on the state to be the source of my religion, and I am thoroughly convinced that it is an unchrist-like way to approach Christianity.

MET [26:30] Thank you for listening to The Priest and The Prof. find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the cost of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [27:00] Music by Audionautix.

Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe debunks the claim that America is a Christian nation and how God is embedded in our culture and politics.

---

Transcript

DDM – Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET – And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM – This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

MET – I am about to say something that will ruffle some feathers, but here we go – legally speaking, America is absolutely not a Christian nation.

MET – I know there are a lot of you who have been raised, or at least been told, to believe that America was founded as a Christian country, but I am about to explain how that is 100% a fabrication.

MET – On the one hand, there were definitely colonies that were founded on religious beliefs. I’m not denying that. A number of the first European settlements in America were Christian. And I think it IS important to note that they were Christian and not religiously free. The pilgrims and the colonists absolutely did not come here for religious freedom in the beginning. They came to establish religious communities. It really wasn’t until the Baptists were doing their thing in places like Rhode Island and Pennsylvania that there was any notion of religious freedom. So in that regard, I will grant you that the colonists established Christian communities.

MET – But that is not the founding of America. That is the founding of a bunch of disparate, religious colonies with no connection, guiding principles, or system of laws that make up any kind of community or government, let alone a nation. America came late.r

MET – America came once the colonies had formed into something like states, and those states wanted to join into something larger. And even that was contestable. Some of you may remember that before the Constitution we had something called the Articles of Confederation.Those were a failure because they did very little to create any kind of connective tissue between the states. They didn’t create a nation – they created a coalition of separate nation states that were somehow supposed to get along. That, to no one’s surprise, didn’t work.

MET – Which leads us to the Constitution.

MET – The Constitution is what makes America America. It quite literally constitutes us. So if you’re going to talk about the founding of America, the place to start is less with the colonies, and more with the debates about constitutional monarchy and the Bill of Rights.

MET – Which brings me right back to religion.

MET – Here’s the thing more people need to know – there is no God in the Constitution. He’s not mentioned. Not even once. Some people might get all up in arms and say, “What about our rights from the Creator?” but hold your horses – that’s not in the Constitution. That’s in the Declaration of Independence. And the Declaration isn’t a legal document. It’s the opposite, actually. It’s an angry break up letter, at best. But really more of a manifesto or declaration of treason. Yes – treason. So, literally, the opposite of a legal document. It’s definitely illegal.

MET – But even if it were, and I will pretend for just a second, what does it really say? That we are imbued by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. God does not give us our rights. Our Creator does. Look, Thomas Jefferson was a very smart, and very specific guy. If he wanted to say we got our rights from God, he would have said it. But he said our rights came from our Creator. Thomas Jefferson, like the vast majority of the Founding Fathers, was Deist who was deeply invested in Enlightenment philosophy. He didn’t believe in an all-powerful God who commanded the universe, and it is dishonest to put those words in his mouth.

MET – So what does this mean?

MET – Thomas Jefferson believed, like most Enlightenment thinkers, in natural rights. That’s literally what he said – that certain rights are self-evident. They are so inherent and so clear that we can see them obviously in the world around us. Those rights are given to use by Natural Law. That, may indeed, come from a Creator. But NOT God, per se. Nature, the ultimate creator, grans us rights. That is why they are self-evident.

MET – Okay, how can I make such a bold claim? The evidence is in the constitution. The Founding Fathers were looking to separate themselves from the monarchy (and really, the monarchies) of Europe. And the monarchies of Europe were defined by the Divine Right of Kings. The Divine Right of Kings is a fun little tautological idea based on Romans 13: 1-2 and Proverbs 8:15-16. Romans says, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. And Proverbs argues, By me kings reign,and rulers decree what is just; by me rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly. These verses led to the idea that kings are basically infallible. In short, you should submit to the king, because God made him king. And you know God chose him as king, because he is king. You don’t get to be king unless God wants it.So it’s a free pass for any monarch to do pretty much whatever they want because, according to the Divine Right of Kings, their words and actions are sanctioned by God; so to question them is to question God.

MET – What does this have to do with the Constitution and the Founding Fathers? And the answer is – very specifically and intentionally, NOTHING.

MET – By that I mean, the Founding Fathers very specifically and intentionally left God out of the law because they were trying to get AWAY from monarchy and the Divine Right of Kings. We were literally fighting a whole revolution to separate ourselves from kings. We had to eliminate God from the equation, otherwise we would get into very tricky territory about who had power and why.So the Constitution leaves God out. Instead of deriving its political power from God, the Constitution derives its power from the people – literally the government of the United States is supposed to get its authority from the consent of the governed – not a higher power. That’s legit written into the Constitution. So not only is America not a Christian nation, it was specifically designed to keep all of that complicated Christian stuff OUT of the federal government because it disempowers the democratic and republican (small r) nature of the nation they were trying to form.

MET – And just in case you needed that made any more clear, in 1797, right after the Constitution was ratified and the government was established, the Founding Fathers made a very clear statement about..In the last years of the 18th century, the United States entered into a treaty with Tripoli, a Muslim Barbary State. Article 11 of this treaty reads, and I am not making this up, As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. So in 1797 we announced to the world we are in no way a Christian religion and we had no problem with Islamic nations. Weirdly, the Christians of the 20th century missed the memo.

MET – NOW, I am going to complicate this all further by telling you that legally we are not a Christian nation, but culturally, that is a more nuanced question. I will die on the hill that Christians have no legal claim to America. But I am more sympathetic to claims that our cultural legacy is Christian. And that comes down to some of what I said earlier – the first colonies were religious, we have long had a Christian majority in the country, and I will definitely admit there is a difference between the law and the social climate.

MET – But here is something to think about. Let me give you a few facts about church attendance:

MET – Church attendance in colonial America varied significantly, with high, often enforced participation in 17th-century New England (up to 70% in some areas) contrasting with lower, more varied attendance elsewhere. While 18th-century,, the Great Awakening boosted attendance, estimates suggest formal church membership was low (roughly 17–20%) on the eve of the Revolution, despite high cultural adherence.Please note that – in the 18th century, that’s in the 1700s, church attendance maxed out at 20% of the population.That is a very surprising statistic for a lot of people. During the era of the Founding Fathers, we get various estimates. Some historians who study these things believe that less than 10% of the population attended church. Others put that estimate at closer to 50%! So it’s kind of hard to know. But, regardless, it would seem that at the best and most generous estimation, less than half of the population went to church

MET – Church attendance actually hit its all time high in the 1950s. That was when we were at our most churchy – we were the most Christian of our Christian selves at that point. And church attendance hovered right around 50%. That’s it – at the time in our history when Christianity was the most vibrant and had the greatest influence over America about half of the population had any regular involvement with a church

MET – Now, this is obviously a much more complex issue than just who goes to church when. The influence of Christianity is more than just how many people go to church. The cultural impact of Christianity reaches beyond the church walls and into sociological, economic, and political concerns well beyond church attendance.But on the other hand, there is something really striking that I need you to understand. Church people are, and always have been, the minority in the United States. People may identify as Christian because they aren’t atheist or they celebrate Christmas, but actual Christianity, as in, engagement with the faith, is actually pretty rare.So when people say this is a Christian nation, they aren’t making claims about how many Christians there are in the nation – because there just aren’t that many. And there never have been.It is actually a very small part of the population that has any involvement with the faith at all. And people think that back in olden times people were way more quote unquote Christian, but they really weren’t. America doesn’t hit its Christian stride until well into the 20th century.

MET – So when we make claims about America being a Christian nation, what are we saying?

MET – In actuality, it’s a claim about a very small group of people having an incredibly outsized influence over the population as a whole. Because the nation at large doesn’t really have any connection to the church. But the church claims to have a connection to the nation.

MET – More likely, it is a claim about culture. We are not a religious nation at all. There is no evidence to support that we are a particularly religious nation but we have what I will call a God problem.

MET – God is everywhere in our society. We hear about him in our economics, in our pop culture, and in our politics. But we don’t adhere to him. We are a Christian nation in that we insert God into anything and everything, but we are not Christian by any theological, practical, or spiritual definition. We don’t go to church, we aren’t theologically grounded or educated, we don’t adhere to scripture, and we don’t reflect any particular belief system. And yet, God is a huge part of our culture.

MET – My claim, then, is that our God problem is really specific to America – we have taken the trappings of faith, embedded them in our politics and culture, but stripped the actual Christianity out of it. The result is we have politics with the language of God in it, but God gets left out. And I say this not as a political statement as much as a historical one. I have LITERALLY just outlined for you all of the ways God has been stripped out of our public lives. But at the same time, we have added him back in time and time again, but in a way that adheres to our faithless lifestyle. We have God without the God. We have a God of politics and culture – not of faith.

MET – All of this brings me to what you probably guessed was coming – Donald Trump’s antics of the last week or two. Now, I could go on and on about his battle with the Pope. It is abundantly clear that there are people, generally those who support Trump, who feel that the Pope’s brand of Christianity is suspect. Given that the Pope’s brand of Christianity is kind of global and important, that’s a big problem.And there is obviously tension between MAGA Catholics and traditional Catholics.

MET – But what I want to focus on is THE IMAGE. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, stop now and Google it. On April 12th, Trump (and it was Trump himself) posted an image of himself dressed as Jesus, surrounded by divine figures and happy supplicants, with rays of light coming out of his hands, apparently healing a sick man. One of my biggest problems with the image was that the man he was healing looked a lot like Jeffrey Epstein, but that is neither here nor there. Trump has since deleted the image and backtracked claiming it is just evil, liberal media who sees Jesus in this image.It is obviously him as a doctor!

MET – Dear listener – do not let him talk to you like you are an idiot. That was a religious picture of Trump as Jesus and anybody who tells you any differently is insulting you. I mean, really, don’t talk to that person anymore because they have told you what they think of you and you deserve better. It’s Trump as Jesus. It’s blasphemy

MET – But how did we get to a place where ANY politician thought it would be acceptable to portray themselves as a deity? Where did this idea that a person could be a god or a messiah come from? This is our God problem. We are not a Christian nation. But God is endemic to our politics. We have so intertwined God into our politics, and made discussions of God a part of the political scene, that it is common for people to substitute a political leader for God, and God for a political leader. The God problem is not whether we are or are not a Christian nation, the God problem is whether we can tell God from our politics. And the thing is – we often can’t. We have so muddied the water between our politicized faith and our faith of politics that our president actually thought he could replace Christ. Like, he literally thought his supporters would appreciate it if he just supplanted the Messiah.

MET – That is not a God problem; that is a God emergency.

MET – We cannot claim to be a Christian nation if we live in a country where it is possible to substitute a person for Christ. And we cannot claim to be a Christian nation if so few of us are actually involved with the faith. Right now in America the percentage of people who attend church regularly is actually quite high. We’re coming in at about 30%. So in some ways we are MORE of a Christian nation now than we were at the founding – so do with that what you will. But that’s generally not what people mean when people say we are a Christian nation. But what they DO mean is suspect, at best. What they OFTEN mean is that God is at the helm, or that God is at the heart of our nation. And BOTH of those are debatable, at best.

MET – What IS clear is that God is everywhere, even if he is not a driving force. Because God has been politicized. God has been turned into an economy. God has been turned into pop culture. And if THAT is what you mean by a Christian nation, sure, great. There is something about God everywhere you look. But for those of us who take God seriously, that should be a sign of trouble, not joy. Because the God I believe in cannot be secularized by politics and pop culture.

MET – The God I believe in does not fit into the economic models we are working with in these United States. The God I believe in is not the sanitized and cheapened version so common in the public sphere.

MET – If that is what is meant by a Christian nation, maybe we are one. But I don’t know what that has to do with Christ..

MET – Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM – Music by Audionautix.com

We at The Priest & The Prof took a break from production over Holy Week and the week after Easter.  We will return on April 16th with a new episode.