Episodes

Episode 13 – Budde and the Sin of Empathy

February 20, 2025 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

Photograph of Bishop Mariann Buddy at the pulpit.

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 13 - Budde and the Sin of Empathy

00:00 /

In this episode, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the controversy surrounding Bishiop Mariann Budde’s sermon delivered at the prayer service attended by President Donald Trump on the day after his second inauguration.

Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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

Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe (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 [00:39] So a friend messaged me the other day and said, things are wild right now. I hope they calm down soon. And I told her with complete honesty, I don’t think they will. I’m gonna be very honest with you. We are not living in a democracy right now. Many people, and probably I include myself in that,

DDM [01:04] in that,

MET [01:05] would argue that we have not been living in a democracy for quite some time. I could throw around a bunch of big words like oligarchy or whatever, but that’s not the important thing at this moment. So one of the founding fathers, John Adams, famously quipped that we should be a government of laws, not men. And he did use the word men, but you know.

DDM [01:32] Of that period.

MET [01:33] Right, John Adams. But that is supposedly what a democracy is. People come before a blind set of laws and they are judged fairly based not on their person, but on the criteria the law establishes, and this has nothing to do with the private whims of those in charge.” Now, obviously that has never happened, right? But that is the goal. What we have now is basically a government of aggrieved white masculinity. I’m going to drop some names for you just in case you’re interested. There’s a scholar named Paul E. Johnson who has written on the rise of populism and white masculinity as victimhood.

MET [02:15] And a person named Jennifer R. Mercieca has written about the current leadership’s rhetoric as structurally fascist because it is centered in the personality of a particularly aggrieved leader. and not at any kind of process of law. Now, I do not expect you to go out and read any of these people, but I am putting their names out there. I will try to put a link somewhere in case you want to look these

DDM [02:43] these

MET [02:43] people up. But this is just to say I am not the only person who’s thinking about this kind of thing. There are people out there. But all of that is to say the law is basically just an afterthought right now. And if you think I’m overreacting, just look at the executive orders that are coming through. Even a basic understanding, and I mean like a rudimentary surface reading of a few lines of the Constitution, would tell you that the orders of the current president, are wildly unconstitutional.

DDM [03:21] And that’s why we’re seeing all those challenges.

MET [03:25] Yes, that’s right. There’s going to be a bazillion suits come through. This is going to take forever to figure out. But there are so many people right now who just don’t have any interest in maintaining democracy. And the goal seems to be to reproduce personal power. And this personal power seems to be centered in the conviction that white men have been victimized and they need to reassert their superiority. I say all of this not to get you worked up, but honestly, who amongst us is not worked up right now? But I do want to provide a tiny bit of context for what happened in the week or so after the inauguration that should be important to every Christian, but specifically to Episcopalians.

MET [04:11] And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, oh, we are about to go on a journey. Trump organized a prayer service for the days after his inaugural. It was called One America, One Light. All right, so we don’t even need to get into the weirdness of a secular state having a national prayer service and the appropriateness of that, whatever. We can talk about that all day and night if you want to. I’m guessing the excuse is that it was Trump’s service and not a federal one, but that line can be blurred in any number of ways.

MET [04:49] But this year… To go to the prayer service, you had to donate to Trump’s coffer, and not just a little bit, either. The tickets ran about $100,000. Yeah. So these were not your salt of the earth deacons at your local church, Christians. These were the wealthy and the elite, right? These were the oligarchs. Truth be told, these are the folks Jesus would have told, you need to give some of your stuff away. When Jesus said some people would have more trouble than a camel through the eye of a needle, like, these are the people, right, he’s talking about.

MET [05:29] So, you have all these rich people who ostensibly support this rhetoric of personal power of fascism and in an environment which very much supports the orders that have been coming out, that absolutely, without argument, oppress, discriminate, and dehumanize the most vulnerable among us. So, that’s the environment in which we are looking at this situation. And honestly, there’s no denying any of that. If you try to make an argument that that is not the scenario, you’re just being dishonest. That is what is happening. And the executive orders that are being passed right now literally benefit no one.

MET [06:09] They do no good, but they do harm a lot of people. The orders that are coming through right now do not help the economy. They hurt it. They do not protect or make progress in terms of rights. They scale them back. They do not do anything to make citizens more safe. They make some citizens much more unsafe. There’s absolutely no good that comes from any of these orders unless your goal is to cause harm to certain people. And if your goal in governing is to cause harm, then you are not governing, you are simply oppressing.

MET [06:46] And I hate to tell you folks, but this is what fascism looks like. When the laws are being bent not to do anything for people, but solely against people, when your government is literally only working to hurt its citizens, then you have moved beyond stable governing and into a place where only direct action can make a difference. And this is where Bishop Budde decides to make her intervention. So there’s your context.

DDM [07:17] So we have a special relationship with Bishop Budde here, both as Episcopalians, but also as Rochesterians, because she graduated here in the U of R in the 1980s. So she was very much shaped by this Rochester broader area. She’s also one of our own bishops in the Episcopal Church, serving now as the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. I thought it was interesting, Elizabeth, how just a snippet of that sermon went viral, but I do think it’s important to look at the message of the whole sermon. It was essentially a plea and a prayer for unity.

DDM [07:57] Now, the minute I say that, I find myself thinking, well, unity is a very interesting word, because we can be united in many things.

MET [08:06] Yeah.

DDM [08:07] We can be united in hatred.

MET [08:08] Sure.

DDM [08:09] We can be united in bullying. We can be united in fighting a genocide. We can be united in theft. Unity of itself is not necessarily a good moral quality. The question that makes it either good or bad is, what are we actually united in? Are we united in love? Beautiful. Are we united in truth? Noble. Are we united in bigotry? Not so good, right? So, it’s what are we united in? And so, I think any calls for unity mean we have to ask, united in what, in order to know whether this is a biblical moral value of goodness or an ethic that is not of God.

DDM [08:53] So it’s interesting in her sermon that Bishop Marion went on to speak about rooting our unity in, and she specifically names certain qualities, in respect, in honesty, in humility, And then, of course, the famous YouTube snippet in mercy and compassion. But what she was asking us is to be united in these very beautiful biblical qualities of valuing and respecting the sacred dignity of each other, of pledging to be honest with each other, because without honesty there can be no trust and therefore no unity. to be humble with each other, which means to know that I don’t have all the answers, that I don’t know everything, and that I need to learn from you, just as you don’t have all the answers and you need to learn from me.

DDM [09:43] And so we learn… And so we learn.

MET [09:45] That’s a lesson I need to learn. That’s a lesson for me, Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe, right there.

DDM [09:50] I think it’s a lesson for all of us, you know. We have to learn from our neighbors, and we learn most from those who see things differently from ourselves. And then she ended with the last value, which created the social media storm of mercy and compassion, which is really just being united in our ability to show compassion or mercy to each other, especially the more vulnerable members among us. So, let me start off by saying that mercy or compassion, it’s present in the Old Testament, but it is really in the New Testament that it becomes a central theme on which the entire life and teachings of Jesus is built.

DDM [10:32] You cannot speak of Jesus without speaking about love, mercy, and forgiveness. These are literally central to every miracle, every teaching, every action of Jesus. So, to have a problem with mercy or compassion is literally to have a problem with Jesus. Now, you can have a problem with Jesus, that’s no problem, right? You know, everyone decides to respond in their own way to Jesus or not to respond. You know, you can say, I don’t like this Jesus, I don’t like His teaching, I don’t believe in His values. Absolutely. But then you cannot go on from there to call yourself a Christian, because to be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus, which means we all, even though it is hard, are trying to model our lives and actions and values on those of Jesus.

DDM [11:32] So, at the heart of what happened for me is the bishop preached the gospel of Jesus, and people took offense, because they do not like the values of Jesus. and do not want to follow the way of Christ.

MET [11:48] So, I think that is a thousand percent accurate, and I’m actually going to come back to that myself in a little bit. But for the most part, I’m going to let Deborah cover the theology of it all, not because I don’t think it is important, just because I think this is an example of kind of our expertise speaking, if you will. So, I’ll talk about kind of the legal political aspect

DDM [12:11] aspect

MET [12:12] of it and let Deborah cover most of the theology, and that’s just by virtue of who we are and where we’re coming from. So, let me say this. You know what, I’m just going to make some bold claims. The current administration has pretty much gone to war with mainline Protestantism in the last week or two. People on the right, some people have been demanding that Bishop Budde apologize, and then, and this is so wild to me, there are those that are demanding she be deported.

DDM [12:48] I heard that.

MET [12:49] Can you imagine the scale of that persecution? She’s an American, born here, raised here. And because she preached a sermon that touched on, as you noted, the fundamentals of her religion, there are people who want to deport her. If that doesn’t terrify you, then you are not now nor have you ever been interested in democracy, fairness, or equality. If you are not enraged by the response to Bishop Budde, then you are not nor have you ever been interested in religious freedom or free exercise. You have just been trying to install a very specific theocracy. And I’m not going to retract those statements.

MET [13:37] And then we can’t ignore the movement since then. Musk and Trump have since made movements to cut the Episcopal and Lutheran advocacy and charity groups off of the knees. I will entertain arguments that those groups shouldn’t be getting government money because of church-state issues, and that’s okay. We can have that conversation, but that’s a different conversation, because what I will not entertain is that church-state concerns is why these groups are being targeted. The administration is being very open and honest. Episcopalians and Lutherans are being targeted because they are seen as antithetical to Trump’s agenda. This is not an attempt to separate institutions.

MET [14:23] This is an attempt to shut down religious advocacy and charity groups because they help people Trump doesn’t want helped. And if you see, like Mike Flynn and some of these people have been tweeting very specific, X, whatever we call it now, been talking very specifically about this is because Lutherans help migrants. This is because these church groups help migrants. So the administration is cracking down on them. It is irreligious, it persecutes specific groups, and it is politically motivated. And as I said, if this does not enrage you, you are not interested in religious liberty or the faithful and charitable work of the church.

MET [15:09] And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the narrative being spun out there about the sin of empathy. In the wake of this controversy, there was a line of thought being tested among Christian circles that Bishop Budde was engaged in what was called the sin of empathy. And the thinking here is that you love and accept people and feel for them, but that is a sin because it leads you to extend grace to those that God has condemned.

DDM [15:41] You mean the wealthy that can’t get through the eye of the needle?

MET [15:43] Right, yeah. 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The people who are there. Like, oh yeah, how do we even start? If your God is so hateful, so judgmental, and so dire that you see grace and love as a sin, once again, it’s like you were saying, you are not now nor have you ever been a follower of Christ. And all of that is really important to think about on the heels of things like, our episode on Christian nationalism. There is a philosophy of Christianity that has perverted and bastardized the faith that is quickly becoming the face of Christianity in America.

MET [16:18] When people think of Christians, they all too often think of the people who support this kind of heresy. And quite frankly, if we don’t show them there is a different way, that’s on us.

DDM [16:31] Absolutely, and I think the test of the church is really, can we remain faithful? Not to any political mandates, but to the mandate given to us by Jesus. And I think we’re seeing now the consequences of preaching our faith. But you know, as a priest, I think I’ve become, over time, less interested in how people respond than if we ourselves are being faithful to God in how we preach and live out God’s Word. You know, as a bishop or a priest, we are called to faithfully preach the gospel of Jesus, when that is popular and when it is unpopular.

DDM [17:08] And if people take offense, if people are angry or engage in persecution, I’m not in control of their response. But I am responsible for what I choose to say, and maybe more importantly, what I choose not to say. I think the other issue for us to always look at is how the person who is preaching themselves live out that message. You know, it’s one thing to call for something, but the question is, are you doing your best to embody that particular message that you preach? I mean, that’s integrity, right? And I think we see this integrity in Bishop Budde.

DDM [17:41] When Matthew Shepard, for some of you who may have forgotten, in the late 1990s was tortured and murdered in a hate crime for being gay, his parents were literally too scared to find a resting place for their son because they were scared it was going to be vandalized by anti-gay protesters. And when Bishop Budde heard about this 20 years later, she offered the cathedral to his family for his ashes to be interned, both as a safe place, but also as a sacred place for us to reflect on the sacredness of all human life, irrespective. So the question I think for all people of faith is for us to try our very best to make sure that what we say is matched by our actions.

DDM [18:29] And secondly, to make sure that those that we choose to follow show integrity, that their actions match their words. And so we have to ask, what values do they hold up in their speech and in their lives? I always think it’s interesting in the Gospels that we’re always reminded that we will know real believers in Christ by their fruits, which is another word for by their actions. You know, claiming to follow Jesus without actions that back that up is simply words. In one part of the Scriptures, Jesus says, many will call Me, Lord, Lord, and I will turn to them and say, I do not know you.

DDM [19:07] I’ve

MET [19:07] I’ve always thought that was one of the most terrifying verses in the Bible.

DDM [19:14] Yeah. Well, it really is. It really is. Because when you’ve had this whole ideology of who you think God is, and you think you’re following, and then Jesus turns to you and says, I don’t know you. Because when I was naked, You didn’t clothe me. When I was hungry, you didn’t feed me. When I was a stranger, you didn’t welcome me in. And what you didn’t do for the least of these, you didn’t do for me. And I think that is the heart of the gospel, and if we miss that, we’ve missed the entire gospel.

MET [19:44] So, let me tell you, I’ll get to something else I was going to say in a minute, but this is just like, talking about kind of unearthing my religious trauma when I was young. I don’t know if you’ll find this funny or appalling.

DDM [19:59] Probably a bit of both with most of the stories I’ve heard from you.

MET [20:02] So, when I was young, you know, I told you that verse terrified me. And you know, I had kind of a Hellfire and Brimstone upbringing, right? And I remember thinking about that verse, Not Everybody Who Calls Me Lord, Lord. And I remember thinking, my understanding of that means either way more people are going to hell than I think are or way fewer people are going to hell. So I don’t… that verse gave me like some…

DDM [20:34] And you know you’re speaking to a priest that like is kind of like, no, no hell, no hell. Let’s not go down that road.

MET [20:43] That was a sticking point for me as I started to think through, like, what is all this? Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, but I thought you would appreciate. That was a turning point in my theology for me, because I was like, does this mean more or less? What does this even mean for that part of my theology?

DDM [20:59] But I think what it is saying is that a lot of people that believe they are in relationship with God are not. Because John, in his last writings, when he’s an older man, the apostle John says, you can’t claim to love God, whom you’ve never seen, if you can’t love your brother or sister that you do see. And I think that that’s what that verse is really, you know, it’s not about hell, but I think it is about, you know, a lot of people claim to follow God, and yet, by their very actions in their lives, it’s very obvious they have no idea who God is, and therefore are not in a real transformative relationship with God.

DDM [21:46] You know, it’s a card we pull out to prove our belonging in a certain club or when it suits us, you know, but it’s not really a lifestyle of faithful following of Jesus, of Nazareth.

MET [21:58] No, I get that. I just wanted to share that.

DDM [21:59] Absolutely.

MET [22:02] My weirdness with, okay, so that’s neither here nor there, but aside, I do wanna, Let me explain kind of where I’m coming or some of this. I have always been one to keep my church doctrine and my legal doctrine separate, but that is not to say I keep my politics and my religion separate. My politics are very influenced by my religion, and you may remember I said on the first episode that one of the ways my religion shapes me is by way of Jesus’s radicalism.

DDM [22:39] I remember that.

MET [22:41] Yeah, we talked about that at length. I am very much who I am politically because my religion informs my ideology. That being said, just because my religion affects how I see policy does not mean I dictate my religion as policy.

DDM [23:01] Absolutely.

MET [23:04] I am, as anyone knows me will tell you, a big believer in the separation of church and state. And that is because I do not want the state telling me what to do in church, and I don’t want any church telling my government what to do. which is why, for me, what we have going on right now is so seriously messed up. The state is trying to mandate religious doctrine and activity. The state is trying to tell ministers what they can and can’t say. And the state is trying to make religious leaders apologize for their religious speech.

MET [23:48] But what is just wild to me is that the state is doing it in a context of religious trappings. And I want you to think about that. The state held a religious ceremony, then tried to make the religious figure apologize for what she has said. And, okay, my producer just gave me a note. Today, Today while we are recording this, the House made official that they are trying to censure Bishop Budde because of her speech, and there are 22 people co-signing this. That is an official censure from the House of Representatives for religious speech at a religious ceremony.

MET [24:38] You all, this is a level of religious persecution and unconstitutionality that we really haven’t seen since like the Alien and Sedition Acts right after the revolution. This is unconscionable. And if you, this is the state pretty much announcing, hey, we’re religious, but only a particular kind of religion. And if you listen to our episode on Christian nationalism, you know what that entails. This should terrify you. When a government starts approving and disapproving religions, as this administration did in its first term, then any religion is in danger. because I will not let you forget that Trump tried to ban Muslims from entering this country.

MET [25:30] And some of us tried to warn you, if he bans one religion, all are in danger. And now Episcopalians and Lutherans are on the chopping block. This is a complete and total disintegration of the First Amendment. I don’t know what else to tell you. Our Constitution is null and void.

DDM [25:51] And all I’ll end with is, thankfully our faith is not.

MET [25:59] 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 26:29 – 26:30 Music by Audionautix.com

Episode 12 – Christian Nationalism

February 6, 2025 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

Photograph of an American flag flying from a flagpole with a cross at the top.

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 12 - Christian Nationalism

00:00 /

In this episode Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe define Christian Nationalism. They discuss how religion has played into America’s history, both as a legal framework and a narrative. Rev. Deborah compares that to South Africa and notes how different the impact of patriotism and religion is in other parts of the world. The consider the impact of Christian Nationalism in America today.

Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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 [00:40] So here’s a fun tidbit. I know the words to every American military war hymn except for Space Force. But I do not come from a military family. How, you might ask, do I know the words to all the war hymns if I don’t come from a military background? Because we sang them in church every 4th of July. I know I say this and people often get kind of this horrified look on their face, but I was 100% raised in an environment where militarism, patriotism, and religion were all rolled up into 1 big ball. And it wasn’t really until I was much older that it occurred to me that this was weird or problematic, right?

MET [01:26] You know, whole Prince of Peace or so loved the world stuff. It was just kind of a matter of you love Jesus, you love America, so you love Jesus and America together. And all the churches I went to as a kid went all out for Fourth of July and sometimes even Memorial Day, never Labor Day. I mean, honestly, can you imagine? Sometimes even Flag Day, whatever excuse they could to bring out the red, white, and blue. Looking back, I don’t know that I would say I was raised as a Christian nationalist. I don’t think I would have gone that far, but I was certainly adjacent.

DDM [02:04] Yeah, sounds like it. It’s an incredibly different background from my own because there really is not that same sense of patriotism where I grew up in South Africa And I wonder if that is because we are not a military culture in South Africa, you know So we may be proud of our culture our sports teams But that national patriotism as you find it here in the USA It’s simply not there and and I think that’s healthy certainly from a faith perspective we don’t struggle with that very toxic fusion of the military, patriotism and faith. It’s just simply not there.

DDM [02:45] Although what is interesting is that under apartheid there certainly was the co-opting of the Christian faith to support the apartheid regime and policies. But the broader church certainly termed that heresy and deeply sinful and problematic. So it’s certainly the post-apartheid church, I don’t think struggles with this particular issue at all. For instance, we would not even think of flying a national flag in the church. Yeah, because the church is global. It belongs to all nations and all nationalities are welcome and belong equally. But I also think in South Africa, living in a pluralistic faith nation, certainly that helps.

MET [03:30] Yeah, I would agree with that. That’s probably a pretty astute observation. I do want to talk about what Christian nationalism is. Let’s get, you know, define your terms like all professors, you know.

DDM [03:45] But I think it’s helpful so we know what we’re speaking about.

MET [03:47] Yeah, I think that’s really helpful. You hear the term thrown around a lot these days. It’s really popular in political discourse and people like to bandy about as kind of a devil term, and I can define devil term if you need me to, but it’s probably self-explanatory. People label that as somebody who is in the wrong on the political spectrum a lot. However, on the other hand, some people wear it like a banner. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Boebert and some of that ilk have proudly adopted the title of Christian Nationalist. So I want to talk about what that means.

MET [04:26] Christian Nationalism really is the merging of state and religion. It is when you subsume your national identity to your religious 1 So when you can’t keep your state and religion apart what you end up with is theocracy a Christian nationalist believes not just that it is good to be patriotic, or that America is a blessed nation, but that God should be at the heart of America’s laws at the expense of all other things. So all other religions, all other ideologies, right, they are below these things.

DDM [05:05] Classic idolatry, right?

MET [05:06] Right, right, right. Christian nationalism is exclusive and restrictive, but I also want to point out it is very specific. Christian nationalism is not just Christian, it is white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And not just any Protestant, right? It is evangelical. That’s not to say you won’t find any Catholic or Black Christian nationalists, but the innervating ideology at the heart of Christian nationalism is very white, and by that I mean it is racist. It is a very specific brand of Christianity, and it demands adherence to a particular kind of dogma. So, you’re not gonna find too many progressive or gay-friendly Christian nationalists or paintings of black Jesus in Christian nationalist churches, right?

MET [05:51] Christian nationalism is a particular brand of faith that elevates a restrictive brand of Christianity, and it basically boils down to – I’m going to use the word hegemony, and I know that’s a big academic word that we don’t like to throw around, but I mean, it’s kind of 1 of those things that you say it and it’s kind of just a really basic observation that just means that there are structures in place that oppress people, right? It’s not a complicated idea, it just means some people have it harder than others. And it’s really important to understand that because it’s hegemonic, it’s patriarchal, and it’s all about power, not Christ.

MET [06:30] That’s what the heart is of that movement. And there are militaristic aspects of nationalism. Christian nationalists are not interested in Jesus as the Prince of Peace, they’re interested in expansion of the state. It’s authoritative, it’s hierarchical in that way. It doesn’t, so Christian nationalism purports to spread democracy, but there’s nothing democratic about it, I mean it’s fascist at its worst.

DDM [06:57] It’s interesting Elizabeth, because it’s almost like there’s nothing Christian about this and there’s nothing democratic about it. Like, what are we doing here? Right, right. It’s a very unique form of ideology that’s emerged in the USA.

MET [07:09] And I think when you say idolatrous, like that is the word, right? It takes a fundamentalist approach to religion and scripture, and they want to apply that to government. And it’s directly oppositional to the tenets of a liberal republic. And I don’t mean liberal in terms of progressive, I mean liberal in terms of a liberal democracy, which is what we’re supposed to have. And some people want to make this a conversation about the separation of church and state, but that’s not it. That’s a part of it. But theocracy is bad and we don’t want that.

MET [07:41] It’s much bigger than that. It’s a culture of militarism, whiteness, patriarchy, and politics.

DDM [07:46] You know, Elizabeth, may I interject? Yeah, absolutely. I remember the first time I befriended somebody in my community who lives where we do and I got on their Facebook page and the front picture was of this woman half clad on a motorbike and it was emblazoned on the top, God, guns and glory. And I was like, God and guns and glory? Like I was trying to integrate those 3 words together and then this half-naked woman on a motorbike. You know? I mean, it’s a form of, I don’t even want to say Christianity, but that has developed that is not found almost anywhere else in the world.

MET [08:23] Yeah. Oh, yeah, we’re doing our own thing.

DDM [08:25] It’s unbelievable. Yeah, carry on. Sorry.

MET [08:28] No, I was headed in that direction, right? I mean, Christian nationalism is about spreading the faith, it’s about spreading the empire. And you may recall that when Jesus was tempted with empire, his response was, get away from me, Satan.

DDM [08:42] Right, right, right.

MET [08:42] So it’s really important to clarify all this because Christian nationalists are not just people who want to put prayer back in schools – and I have all sorts of issues with that

MET [08:51] or find our moral center again. They’re anti-democratic, authoritarian, racist, militaristic, and it is polarizing, right? These forces are intent on drastically changing up our nation’s laws. This is not about wholesome churchgoers who want to see our nation become more charitable and more Christian. This is dangerous. And these are people who are willing to be violent to get what they want. And you may say, oh, that’s an exaggeration. But we literally saw a coup attempt on January 6th. Yeah. These are not people who are kidding around.

DDM [09:30] Right, right. So let me interact a little bit with what you’ve shared.

MET [09:33] Absolutely, I want to hear it.

DDM [09:34] So you know you spoke firstly of how Christian nationalism is when your national identity overtakes your religious faith-based identity. I think this is a huge problem for the Christian Church because our identity as Christians first and foremost needs to be through our baptisms. You know firstly before anything else we are always baptized children of God, beloved and belonging to the body of Christ. And so no identity is ever to come before this. And so even Paul, for whom we may have many issues, even Paul says there is no longer male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free.

DDM [10:20] I’m sure he would add white or black, right? All of those divisions within Christianity and the gospel are done away with. And we are literally brought into a new community. And that community is first and foremost, the family of God. So within our Christian faith, that has to be our primary identity. So when we start to bring in these other divisions of American versus Mexican, or American versus Russian, What we’re doing is we’re placing our national belonging over, as you said, our faith belonging. And that is clearly within Christian thought, both a heresy, but also a sin.

DDM [11:04] So at its absolute heart, Christian nationalism really is a contradiction in terms, because Christianity is about creating a new community of many nations, many cultures, many races, and genders that are all bound through baptism into a new faith family. Secondly, the notion that America is more blessed or chosen than other nations, I think that’s simply nonsense, right? Because if you go back to Scriptures, there is absolutely no mention of the USA.

MET [11:39] What? You mean Jesus wasn’t a white American? I’m shocked by this information.

DDM [11:43] America doesn’t feature, right? We are all part of the Gentile world that in Scripture is literally grafted into the body of Christ. And the Scriptures show that God is more interested in how you live and follow Christ, in loving God and loving your neighbor and yourself, than in what nationality or race you belong to. And so blessing in Christian scripture is because of righteousness, living in right relationship with God, ourselves, the earth, and 1 another, rather than what cultural group you belong to. And it’s interesting that we talk about national blessing because in the New Testament that is precisely what the Jewish community are struggling with because there was this ideology that they are more blessed, that they are chosen simply because they are Jewish.

DDM [12:36] And Jesus says, I could raise up ancestors from these stones. There is no merit in your culture, race or gender, according to Scripture, but there is in our character, in how we live our lives, and also in the relationships we build. And so I think, you know, you really hit the nail on the head when you said Christian nationalism has so often been about white masculine power and that co-opting of the Christian faith for power and military strategies. There is such a violence embedded at the heart of Christian nationalism that honestly we can only call it out as a heresy and deeply sinful.

DDM [13:19] But I think in the USA we have a terrible problem on our hands because Christian nationalism is really becoming the face of Christianity. And it could not be further from the truth, but for many people in the USA, this is what Christianity is. And for many of us who take our faith very seriously, I think we’re just simply not speaking out and teaching enough about the heresy that this is, and how it completely undermines the gospel of Jesus. So we really have a contemporary problem on our hands, a battle you might say for the soul of Christianity in the church.

MET [14:00] I think that’s a really good observation. And I also think it is important to understand that Christian nationalism is becoming not just a prominent movement, but a lot of people associate Christians with that idea. So when discussing Christian nationalism and really any kind of understanding of America’s relationship to God, which is kind of what you’re talking about, or church-state issues, I think we have to look back a little bit. Okay, so the first European, of course, I’m gonna give you a history lesson, like what else am I gonna do? The first European Americans were religious settlers, and we have like these whole narratives about them, right?

MET [14:47] But the question is, were they looking for religious freedom or something else? The truth is, the pilgrims who came to the New World weren’t looking for religious freedom as we think of it. They were looking to start theistic colonies. What they started here were pretty much the opposite of religiously free societies. The colonies they started were strictly ruled by religious law and dogma and were not accepting of outside religions. So while they were searching for religious freedom for themselves, when they got here, they established colonies that had no religious liberty. Now, there were some places that eventually expanded into more welcoming places, but when we got here, that was not the goal.

MET [15:29] So when we say the first settlers here were looking for religious freedom, we have to be careful because that is in some ways a misnomer. And the religion was nothing like any religion practice in America today. I love how evangelicals are like, we need to get back to the religion of the founding fathers. I’m like, okay, so do we all need to become Episcopalians? Because that is 100% what the founding fathers would have been. But at that point, Easter and Christmas were outlawed as pagan festivities, for example. The church was the organizing factor for everything, social, commercial, political, familial.

MET [16:08] So we can’t really use the American Christians, the first America Christians, as examples or guides, because their goals and ideas were so radically different from ours.

DDM [16:18] And it’s interesting you say that because I actually think we’re seeing some real resurgence of this in conservative Christian circles.

MET [16:25] I think that’s an interesting conversation.

DDM [16:27] The resurgence of Easterist paganism, Christianist paganism, This Christianity needs to guide all our familial, cultural, political systems. It really seems to be resurging.

MET [16:39] Yeah, I think we could do a whole thing on that right there. But in short, they didn’t want religious freedom so much as they wanted theocracy. It’s why we get such radically different ideas from the founding fathers as we get from the founding colonies, actually. In Congress on July 4th, 1776, we got a very different take on religion and public. The unanimous declaration of the 13 colonies of the United States of America was, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for 1 people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

MET [17:34] Okay, what a lot of people don’t realize, especially people who claim that America is a Christian nation, is that God is not mentioned in the Constitution at all. Not once. Now, I just read from the Declaration. He’s mentioned in the Declaration, right? Nature’s God. But the founding fathers wrote purely secular laws. Our Constitution is founded actually in the idea of what’s called natural rights. Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, so they are universal, fundamental, and inalienable. So the idea of human rights derives from theories of natural rights.

MET [18:20] This is all complicated, but you need to understand where we’re coming from. So people rejecting a distinction between human rights and natural rights view human rights as the successor that is not dependent on natural theology or Christian theological doctrine. This is where the Founding Fathers come from. So, there’s a reason for the secular grounding too. The thing is, Americans were specifically rejecting the divine right of kings.

DDM [18:47] Ah, the monarchy.

MET [18:48] Yes. The divine right of kings was the idea that a person was king because he was ordained by God. If a person was ordained by God, then they couldn’t be challenged because then you would be challenging God’s will and thereby challenging God himself. You couldn’t get to be king unless God wanted you to be and then you couldn’t be questioned because you were chosen by God. The founding fathers flatly rejected this. They were specifically trying to get away from this thinking when they broke from England. So the Constitution is a particularly secular document. America’s beginning is literally a challenge to the king.

MET [19:27] Anything that smacked the divine rights obviously had no place in our laws. So America then is very much an enlightenment experiment. It is the result of new and developing ideas that were breaking away from theology and the church and striving to establish ways of thinking outside of religion. So the goal was to ground authority not in God, but something else. Now 1 piece of this puzzle that a lot of people don’t know is actually something called the Treaty of Tripoli. We don’t think of treaties as being particularly founding documents, but it tells us a lot.

MET [20:00] It was signed in 1796. It was the first treaty between the United States and Tripoli, which is now Libya, and it secured commercial shipping rights and protected American ships in the Mediterranean Sea from local Barbary pirates. This document does not sound interesting in any way, right?

DDM [20:19] And if you’re African, I’m getting a little interested.

MET [20:24] It was ratified by the United States unanimously without debate on June 7th, 1797, and it took effect on June 10th with the signature of President John Adams. What is particular interest in this obscure bit of policy is Article 11 of this treaty. It reads, 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 Musselman [sic], and as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [sic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between 2 countries.

MET [21:19] Obviously, this is outdated language.

DDM [21:21] How that has changed in contemporary history.

MET [21:24] Right. So we proclaim we’re not a Christian nation, and we will never fight with Muslims. So, we have come far.

MET [21:35] Right? That’s part of our founding documents history. So the US made it pretty clear in foreign relations that this is where we stood. There were domestic laws that seemed to imply God was more important, but the outward-facing part of the nation was claiming to be entirely secular. And then you combine that with Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. Now, Jefferson was the guy who said that our rights come from our Creator, which a lot of people use as evidence that America is a Christian nation. But we forget the Declaration is not a legal document.

MET [22:15] It’s a manifesto at best, but really more of an angry breakup letter. It’s not the law. Jefferson also wrote convincingly that religion and law should be entirely different matters. I’ve got these quotes from the Danbury letter, but I’m not going to read it to you. But he’s the 1 who first used the idea of the wall of separation between church and state. In this letter to the Baptists, he was like, we’ve got to have a wall of separation. This is literally where we get that idea of separation of church and state, at least those words, right?

MET [22:47] The separation of church and state is in that First Amendment, but these are the words we get from Jefferson. So we set up the framework for us to think about how we should think about religion and government.

DDM [22:58] Sorry to interrupt.

MET [22:59] Yeah, go for it.

DDM [23:00] You know, it’s so interesting that phrase wall of separation. You know, When I’m thinking about how they were creating this literal wall of separation between faith and the secular state, and yet now how those have in some ways almost collapsed. But now we have physical walls of separation but being built between ourselves and for instance, the Southern border. Right. I mean, sorry, my mind was just going off at a little tangent there.

MET [23:29] I think these are all applicable ideas. And it has to be emphasized that almost none of this history and fact stuff matters in the least when you compare it to the national narrative, because that is what people tend to rely on more than anything else. Absolutely. So here’s a story. There was this group of people, and they were thrown out of their homeland and forced to travel the world over because everywhere they went they were religiously persecuted until finally they came to a place that was rich in natural resources and they knew it was meant for them because God had blessed it and them.

MET [24:13] So God told them to conquer the people that were living there and cultivate the land and start a new place for his people to live and thrive. Okay, who am I talking about?

DDM [24:22] Well, can I tell you, I have to be honest, I immediately think of 3? I think of the USA. Yeah. I think of Israel, the so called nation. And I think of South Africa. You know, the axis of those 3 countries.

MET [24:35] You’re exactly right, because you could be talking about any of those people, because that is the narrative.

DDM [24:41] Founding narratives, absolutely.

MET [24:44] Yeah, so like and for Israel and the United States, these are important narratives because they mean we are blessed and chosen.

DDM [24:53] Which was also why under apartheid, Elizabeth, America and Israel were so hugely supportive of the apartheid government. Yeah.

MET [25:03] Yeah, so these are important narratives because we have from the beginning said, we are the new Israel. Right. And that narrative is so much more important than that secular constitution. I’ll give you an example. In 1763, going back again, this guy named Samuel Haven preached a sermon called Joy and Salvation by Christ, his arm displayed in the Protestant cause. And it’s basically about how Americans are blessed like the new Israel, and that’s why they are called to violently blot out the natives. That’s the Protestant cause in question. In case you need some textual evidence for any of this, you can legit Google this sermon.

MET [25:47] It is famous. And I say this as somebody who grew up around Protestants and was surrounded by this narrative. It is violent and it is exclusive.

DDM [25:57] And you know, it doesn’t then surprise us that America then foundational in this chosen mythology has genocide at its founding. Or Israel has genocide of the Palestinians at its founding. Or in South Africa and Africa, there is so many narratives of genocide of peoples. So I mean, it’s interesting how genocide is so woven into almost the bedrock of these forms of narrative.

MET [26:24] Yeah, and we’ve been telling this story for generations, right? I remember it was part of Reagan’s campaign. We’re supposed to be a shining city on a hill. We heard in every political speech. And I could go through the wild and complicated legal history, but honestly, I think I’ve done enough to emphasize, right, this is part of who we are.

DDM [26:44] It’s incredible. It’s incredible.

MET [26:45] I know, right?

DDM [26:46] Yeah, you know, and I think unless, particularly as Americans, we can begin to unpack the absolute danger of these ideas. I mean, I know as a parish priest, I sometimes have people asking me, can we sing these nationalistic hymns on a particular day and Sunday in church. And consistently, I’ve just had to say no, no, because of everything that it signifies. But again, the question is, is are we unpacking this enough for our people for them to actually understand how dangerous this form of ideology is, because it’s not Christianity. I mean, to have these narratives that just breed genocide and human rights abuses, you know, We really can’t hold those in line with Jesus, right?

MET [27:35] So I want to give you an example that is not terrifying, like this is not genocide, because we could talk about things that aren’t genocide. But an example of something that is indicative of how we relate to God in America. So in 1954, under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. People younger than my parents are very often shocked to find out it was not originally in there. But the truth is the Pledge of Allegiance was written in the 1860s by a socialist Baptist minister.

DDM [28:11] Oh my God. Interesting.

MET [28:12] Yeah. And was way more about the unity of the nation and was probably a response to the Civil War more than anything else. The undivided part was the focus. The under God stuff didn’t get slipped in until decades later, and it wasn’t put in why you think it was. The arguments for adding under God to the pledge had nothing to do with being a Christian nation and everything to do with our enemies being communists. Communists, lawmakers reasoned, were atheists. And there was this panic that we were not doing enough to separate ourselves from our enemies.

MET [28:46] So 1 response was to add under God to the pledge, because if we were a nation under God, then we couldn’t be godless communists. And I am absolutely not kidding. I have read the congressional records. The whole reason under God was put into the pledge was so that it was clear we were separating ourselves from the Russians as far as possible. There was a guy who tried to rewrite the pledge to be specifically Christian and bring Jesus into it because he wanted to acknowledge that we are a Christian nation. This is also in 1954. But it was such a deeply unpopular move that it literally never made it out of committee.

DDM [29:22] Yeah, I’m not surprised.

MET [29:23] Yeah, so consider all of this together. America was designed to be a secular nation, but we talk about ourselves in a very different fashion. And how we talk about ourselves is often much more important than what is factual. It’s hard to have an honest conversation about God in America. And as for Jesus, you can just forget about it. And the narrative that has sustained us is rooted in exclusion and violence, as we’ve gone over in many ways. So bring us to the current day. The narrative has morphed into 1 of political authoritarianism and militarism. So in short, Christian nationalism has nothing to do with the Christ of the Bible and everything to do with a hackneyed story of empire.

DDM [30:05] Absolutely. And I think as Christians, we need to be very careful about that pledge of allegiance. Because once again, the primacy of our Christian identity as people who are Christian and hold this to be our faith, we are called to pledge allegiance to God alone, right? To Christ alone. So the idea of pledging allegiance to a flag or a nation state, That’s actually just an abomination.

MET [30:31] That’s a very international approach to it because like in America, we all grew up saying the pledge every day in school. Every morning.

DDM [30:40] But did you know not everybody did because your peace churches, so I’ve heard this from my wife who comes from the peace churches, in the Shenandoah Valley in the middle of Virginia, those who grew up in the Mennonite churches and all of your historic peace churches never stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance.

MET [30:56] In public school you do it every day.

DDM [30:58] Yeah, and they would sit. They would sit or walk out of the classroom because they were taught and they believed that their faith did not allow them to pledge allegiance to anything except God alone. And so I actually think it’s something that as Christians in this country, we need to start seriously thinking about. To what do we pledge allegiance? Where is our ultimate allegiance, you know, to? And certainly how can we pledge allegiance to a flag?

MET [31:32] That’s rough stuff.

DDM [31:33] Mm-hmm. I think honestly, you know, I think for Americans this may sound pretty radical, but if you were a Christian in any other part of the world, it’s really a no-brainer. Pledging allegiance to any state, any political ideology, any flag, any sense of nationhood. It’s a very, very dangerous, very dangerous slope for us to go down as Christians. So I do think It’s something that Christians within America definitely need to start grappling a lot more with. And perhaps we need to be a little bit more reluctant about standing up and saying that pledge.

MET [32:11] Wow. Okay, I’m going to ask you to do something because I’ve been talking a lot. I would love for you to tell me about sort of your first impression and thoughts about Christianity in America. Like, where do you see it going? What do you think? How do we respond to all of this

DDM [32:35] in relation specifically to Christian nationalism? I think for your average Christian the boundaries have Not only become so blurred if you think about the ocean line, where the ocean is coming up onto the shore, the ocean has come so far up onto the shore now, where most people, they’re just seeing the water, which is Christian nationalism. They’re not able to actually, I think, see Christianity clearly anymore because it has been literally overtaken. And you know, for many Christians, this is not, you know, even necessarily some right-wing ideology. It is so crept into the mainstream narratives of Christians that I think in America it is very hard to disentangle the 2 anymore because they’ve become so woven together.

DDM [33:31] We’d almost have to, if you think of a cloth that’s been woven, you’d actually have to go back and start unpicking it and let it unravel. And I wonder if in some ways maybe that’s why the gospel calls us to love our enemies. Because who are our current enemies? And often those that we term our enemies ironically hold the missing pieces for us. And I think in some ways, if we’re wanting to dismantle Christian nationalism, it may end up happening as we begin to start listening to voices and dialoguing with people who have traditionally been called our enemies.

MET [34:18] Now, we have to be honest. This episode is carefully timed. We’ve had an idea to do an episode on this topic for weeks, but this seemed like the ideal and important time to address this particular topic? And the reason I say that is because in the last week or so, we have seen Christian nationalism go to war with the Episcopal Church. We’re going to devote a set of time to the National Prayer Service and the Sin of Empathy narrative in the future, but right now a few things need to be said. Christian nationalism is the opposite of the teachings of Christ.

MET [35:00] It eschews love, mercy, grace, and peace. It is a philosophy of bigotry, judgment, hate, and militarism. So when a bishop of the Episcopalian Church asked American leaders who were highly invested in Christian nationalism, or at least had ridden that wave into office, you saw a clash of philosophies. The Episcopalian Church endeavors, though it does not always succeed, to stay true to the word of Jesus. Christian nationalism is an abomination of it. So when Christian nationalists were faced with Christianity in a church, no less, The Nationalists became hostile. That is not Christ-like. That is not what the faith asks of us.

MET [35:54] That is not biblical. So look around you and ask questions of your faith and your church. If your church is ready to go to war over a call for mercy, you need to think about your church. So we will leave you with these questions. Does your faith challenge you to work for mercy or judgment? Do you believe God calls you to love or to ostracize? How do you recognize Christ’s message in the midst of false teachings? And how can you work to combat the harmful narrative that Christ came to condemn the world, not to save it?

MET [36:42] 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 [37:11] Music by Audionautix.com

Episode 11 – Brief Intermission

January 30, 2025 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

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The Priest & the Prof

Episode 11 - Brief Intermission

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We are taking one week off of production. We had our church’s annual meeting, other new year tasks, and the start of the college semester in short order. We will be back next week with a new episode.

Episode 10 – The Body

January 16, 2025 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

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The Priest & the Prof

Episode 10 - The Body

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In this episode about the body, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May shares her love for the physical world, while Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe is a bit skeptical. They explore how their attitudes impact their relationships and their faith.

Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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 [00:39]: Hello and welcome. Today could be kind of interesting because we’re going to explore 1 of Reverend Deborah’s favorite things.

DDM [00:47]: Puppy dogs?

MET [00:49]: Maybe. And 1 of my least favorite things. Okay, I have to tell you. So I came up with the idea for this topic and I was like, oh, Reverend Deborah, we could do this. And over the past time that we’ve been working on this, she has been getting increasingly more excited and I have become increasingly regretful that I suggested this. So, it’s going to be a…

DDM [01:12]: Sorry, Elizabeth.

MET [01:14]: No, no, no, it’s fine That’s why it’s a good idea, right? Mm-hmm. You remember the creation episode where we came at things from a very different perspective? Today we are taking it up a notch. We are talking about bodies, which, as you will see, Reverend Deborah sees as holy and essential to the faith and I would just as soon do without. If I could be a Cartesian brain in a jar and skip the whole body thing entirely, I think I might. So we thought it would be a good topic to explore together to see if we can get to the bottom of this juxtaposition and help each other see where we are coming from.

MET [01:50]: So I am gonna let Reverend Deborah start us off, if you don’t mind.

DDM [01:54]: Not at all. So you said it, Elizabeth. I mean, I love bodies. I love my own. I love other people’s bodies. Is that okay to say? I love my puppy dogs’ bodies. I love my goats’ and my fishes’ bodies. I love the earth’s body. I feel at an emotional level, bodies for me radiate love, companionship, deep warmth. But let me also equally say that has not always been the case for me. You know, as a teenager, bodies were highly traumatic for me. You know, sexual assault, being beaten, hated developing breasts, oh my God, you know the body was like a minefield of trauma and anxiety for me.

DDM [02:40]: And I think so like many other young people I struggled with bulimia and anorexia, cutting myself, really not feeling safe or at home in my own body or with anybody else’s body. And so in my own journey, I just escaped into music and the arts and through those things, I mean, eventually discovered spirituality. But in the beginning stages of my faith, it’s interesting because I loved spirituality, but if you, Elizabeth, could be the brain in a jar, I could be the spirit in the heavens. I could also simply bypass the body. And so in those early years of my faith, I could spend hours in trance or in prayer, visions of Mary and God.

DDM [03:28]: As a young person, you could say I had either the gift or the curse of seeing those on the other side, hearing and communicating with them. And so in some ways spirituality seemed the perfect fit for me. Bypass the body and soar into other worlds in the spirit. But thank God as we’re being shaped and formed for priesthood, we have spiritual directors. We have to have a spiritual director. And the idea is, is your spiritual director has this wisdom and whose task it is really to keep us rooted on a healthy path. And my spiritual director was like, no, no, you have to root girl.

DDM [04:10]: You’ve got no problem with mystical prayer and visions, but you cannot bypass the body. And so she really encouraged me to walk, to swim, to garden, to find ways to root my physicality in this world. And so doing that and going obviously into long-term therapy over time really led me back into my body. And it took a lot of lessons to learn, a lot of having to avoid bypassing, but now at age, I was going to say 50, but it’s actually 52. Now at age 52, You know, for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling so rooted.

DDM [04:54]: In fact, I’m feeling so rooted that honestly, if you found moss and mushrooms growing out of me, I wouldn’t be surprised. I know. But I am so much happier and healthier now that I’ve been able to in some ways deeply integrate the body and the spirit into 1. So that’s kind of my context. But let’s just, did you want to say something? You’re staying well away from moss and mushrooms.

MET [05:26]: This is all foreign to me.

DDM [05:27]: But in terms of spirituality and our faith, you know, we are for this lifetime born into a human body. Now that’s not accidental. We could have been simply placed here by God as little spirits floating around but God didn’t. God places us in bodies and not just us but every other living being is given a body. Dogs, given dogs bodies. Butterflies, given butterflies bodies. Elephants in these huge bodies. The earth itself Is God taking time and care to fashion and create every living thing in a body? So this can’t be accidental for God to have taken so much time physically creating not just each thing, but also with this amazing diversity that we see.

DDM [06:21]: But I think if we watch in Scripture how quickly the story unravels. After the fall, we see human beings beginning to eat other animals, to kill them. We see human beings beginning to kill each other, we see men beginning to dominate over women’s bodies, we see violence being acted out on other bodies by those in bodies, and over time disease, which is if you split that word, dis-ease, simply no longer being at ease or at peace in our bodies, as disease begins to root in us physically, we now see people dying and beginning to die at earlier and earlier ages.

DDM [07:01]: And so by the time Jesus comes again, we see God again choosing a body in which God enters physically into this physical world. But it’s interesting that God comes as a tiny baby born through a woman’s vagina, born in blood and water and mucus. And so God enters into our world in this most physical way. Now if you think about it, I mean, God could have chosen to enter this world In any way. Why this way? And I think for me it’s because God does not see the body as being unclean, but as beautiful, amazing, a miracle.

DDM [07:44]: You know, God creates blood and water and mucus, each playing their own amazing function. But the problem is as human beings, we are so un-at-ease with our bodies, and especially women’s bodies. I mean, think about it, Elizabeth, we don’t even like to talk about vaginas or menstrual blood or mucus, right? But why? Our bodies are walking miracles. And then if we look at Jesus, I mean, Jesus was incredibly physical. Most of Jesus’s ministry is about healing the body, helping those who have been cut off from society because of bodily issues find their way back into wholeness.

DDM [08:24]: Jesus heals in public out loud the woman who has been menstruating for years. I mean private bodily issues that need healing are for Jesus just part of his public ministry. But by the New Testament we see how quickly people began to spiritualize again the gospel. It became about heavenly salvation, about the Spirit, and the body became something to discipline, something to control, because it was seen as the root of sin and temptation. And so bodies shift from being these miraculous creations of God that can see and hear and touch and taste and smell this wondrous world into which God places us, now into sources of temptation.

DDM [09:13]: And so bodies become imprisoned, bodies become mistrusted, bodies face discrimination and hatred, and we become alienated not just from our own bodies, but from the bodies of each other and the bodies of other creatures, and therefore, the body of God. And I think alienation for me is just 1 of the best words I can think of to describe sin.

MET [09:37]: Okay. Bodies are very difficult. It’s a difficult topic for me. And that is because in my early life, I was definitely taught that bodies are shameful. My body was always something that had to be controlled and covered, right? There were definite rules about how much skin could be showing at all time. And there were people in my life who I was very close to who constantly commented on other people’s bodies in some sort of judgmental way, right? There was always some comment to make about how attractive or unattractive somebody’s body was. And that was generally the value of a body, specifically a woman’s body, whether it was attractive or unattractive.

MET [10:20]: And of course, that was a matter of how thin somebody was. And like many people, and like I said, we talk about women specifically this way, But it’s a larger people problem. I’ve never liked my body. On the 1 hand, I have a number of health problems. I tend to think of my body as a Judas, which is a bit of a double bind. Yes, my body presents me with any number of huge problems, but I have also survived a dangerous pregnancy and childbirth, meningitis, and brain surgery. So my body is a fighter, but I have a hard time seeing this body as something beautiful or as a blessing that has borne me through this life, so much as a traitor that keeps throwing monkey wrenches my way.

MET [11:14]: And Then there’s just the body image unhappiness. I was happy with my body once. And it was when I was treating my body so poorly that the only reason I stayed healthy is just because I think I was young and resilient. I was eating once, maybe 1 and a half times a day and working out about 2 hours every day as well. It was unhealthy and it was obsessive and I was driving myself to do things that nobody should. And yet that was when everybody told me I looked my best and was my healthiest.

DDM [11:48]: The irony of that.

MET [11:50]: Yes. The other time I was kind of happy with my body was when I was in grad school and I was so poor I couldn’t eat. My hair and nails were brittle and breaking all the time because my nutrition was so poor. So even I recognized at the time that my dress size was maybe secondary to my health, but hey people love to tell me how good I looked.

DDM [12:11]: But you know Elizabeth, could I just interject here, you know it’s always struck me as so ironical that men are told to make themselves bigger. And as women, we must shrink and become as little as nothing. And I’m always like, there’s a deep misogyny and hatred in this whole thing.

MET [12:28]: Well, I say all this to emphasize that it’s not just me, as you say, that has an unhealthy relationship to the physical self. It’s that all of us have an unhealthy relationship to the physical. Because we don’t know what healthy is. We don’t know what’s good for us. We have made the physical completely aesthetic, which is 100% a classed thing, and as such, bodies are commodities. We trade them for influence and money. I laugh at the people who get so wound up about sex work because people are quote-unquote selling their bodies. But honestly, what do you think we’re all doing every day all the time?

MET [13:11]: If you don’t think an oil hand is selling his body just as much as a stripper or a football player, or a kindergarten teacher, you’re just freaking out about some purity fetish and like, whatever, get over it. And besides the obvious, we’re all trading our physical bodies for profit or influence or attention. And I think that’s why, even as I learned to be more okay with myself, I kind of still bristle at a lot of investment in the body sometimes, because in this world in which we live, our bodies aren’t just where we live, they are capital, and I’m kind of uncomfortable with that.

DDM [13:53]: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the sad thing as well is that in so many of our traditions, women’s bodies, gay bodies, bodies of color, bodies who are incarcerated, Palestinian bodies, they’re still not seen as being as worth as much as the white male Western wealthy body, you know. And That sense of shame you speak about, I mean, Elizabeth, it’s really real, you know. And it’s interesting that shame is the first thing in the Christian tradition Adam and Eve feel after the fall. You know, so that shame, I think, It’s deep and it’s ancient. But we have to remember that there was something before that for me.

DDM [14:36]: It’s not the way we were created in the beginning to feel and to create it to live in. I know for myself, the issues that always most affected me as a woman were the ones that I was told, please don’t speak about publicly, deal with it privately, you know, as though they should be a source of shame. And so we don’t speak about menstruation, we don’t speak about rape, we don’t speak about anorexia and all the other issues that actually affect us and affect many of us. But what is interesting is that at the heart of the church, every time we come together, certainly as Episcopalians, we have communion, that physical, bodily receiving of the body of Jesus through real bread and wine that goes into our mouths, into our stomachs.

DDM [15:26]: And this act for us becomes the heart of worship. It’s this real tangible sacrament, taste and see in your body, become 1 with yourself, with each other, and with the body of God, that I think in some ways is so subversive of everything else that we’ve been taught.

MET [15:46]: I have really tried to unlearn these negative things that were kind of my input about physical presence, but it’s an evolving, ongoing process. And the issue of communion is particularly poignant to me. In the tradition I grew up in, communion was not emphasized at all.

DDM [16:05]: Interesting, yeah.

MET [16:06]: Like, we didn’t even call it communion, we called it the Lord’s Supper. And it was relegated to an evening service when very few people showed up and it was just every few months. There was really no emphasis on the physical. It was a purely symbolic thing, you just took a little cracker and the grape juice, I mean, not wine, can you imagine? It was definitely grape juice. And Jesus was there in spirit with you. They weren’t called sacraments, They were just representative. And I’m not gonna lie, to this day, the idea of transubstantiation just seems ludicrous to me.

MET [16:40]: Consubstantiation, I can get, but the idea that the bread and the wine actually become Jesus’s body and blood are just total nonsense to me. I am completely unconvinced of that physical part of the sacrament, but thankfully I am not Roman Catholic.

DDM [16:57]: Some of us Episcopalians believe that too, but carry on! Right, right, right.

MET [17:02]: But it’s not required.

DDM [17:03]: No, definitely not, definitely not. I don’t think Episcopalians require much.

MET [17:09]: Right. But I have been thinking about the physical expression of identity, and that makes sense to me in the framework of communion. Jesus said, here I am, I am the sacrifice for you, here I am, broken for you, that I get. It’s a physical representation of an essential truth. And actually, the thing that helped me make sense of this was something really random and seemingly unrelated. Again, I do that. But bear with me, I’m going to make a really random connection to something we talked about much earlier. So do you remember we did an episode on women and gender in the church and I talked about the first wave of feminism?

DDM [17:52]: Yes, yes, yes.

MET [17:53]: 1 of the things I mentioned is that the first part of the women’s movement was pretty exclusive. It was kind of this middle to upper class affair, like white women. In fact, I mentioned a work by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I gave you 1 reading by another. I gave you 1 way to look at it, like, oh, I can retreat into my solitude, which is very much a privilege of the wealthy. And a lot of people read that not so much as the I have my rights, but as like, I’m retreating into my white woman solitude.

MET [18:27]: Around that time, there is 1 figure of the first wave that stands out as someone very different than that kind of retreating into her white womanhood. And her name was Sojourner Truth. Sojourner Truth is pretty much the opposite. She was an ex-slave who became a celebrated speaker in the women’s movement. She was 1 of the few black women who really became kind of a cause celebre in the first wave. And she was an important link between the abolitionists and the first wavers. Her most famous speech was, “‘Ain’t I a Woman?” And it was given at a women’s conference in Akron, Ohio.

MET [19:09]: And the reason I bring it up is because I have learned from Sojourner Truth that arguments can be physical. Truth’s speech is about how she is a woman, just like all of these white women who are arguing for equality, but she points to her womb, which has born children, and she argues that she has worked as hard as a man and deserves the respect given to any worker, and she points to her arms and back and describes the strength it takes to do the labor of the field. So what she does is Sojourner Truth couches her argument in her physical self.

MET [19:51]: Her body is her argument. Her presence is her proof. And I find that really profound.

DDM [20:00]: Absolutely

MET [20:01]: She takes that Cartesian dualism – like, I want to be a brain in a jar. She does the opposite, right? She takes that Cartesian dualism that we’ve been laboring under for a few hundred years and she’s like, nah, sis, we’re not doing that anymore. This is really brave and profound And I could talk at length about the theoretical or rhetorical importance of that, but the truth is, what happened is she made herself, not an intellectual process, the basis of her pursuit for equality. Her person is the proof, which means if you’re going to argue with her, you have to argue with the strength of her back and arms, not her appeals to logos and pathos, and that is a completely different creature.

DDM [20:41]: Wow. I mean, that is powerful. That is powerful. You know, the body, not the mind or spirit, although of course they are woven into the body, but this whole body is the basis for equality and sacredness. And I think that’s why in our faith there is this emphasis on, you are a part of the body of Christ. You, together with others, are the body of God. I think in the Western world there’s that strong temptation to want to privatize spirituality between me and Jesus. You know, me as an individual and Jesus as an individual, which I think is so ironical, given that even Jesus is part of a trinity, you know, part of a community.

DDM [21:22]: But that’s not… because it’s not what Scripture presents. Scripture roots our relationship with this communal God in a communal body, in a corporate body, a body made up of others that are very different from me, see things differently, express things differently, love differently, act differently. And I think there’s a real messiness in that, Because communal bodies are not easily controlled, they’re not easily owned, it’s harder to make them 1 thing. And so I think there’s a lot of wisdom in God rooting our relationship with God in a body, and a body that is a communal body made up of other bodies.

DDM [22:06]: But again, if we look at Scripture, Jesus locates his body while he is here on earth in the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, the child, the lamb. And so we have that iconic passage, when you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visited the prisoner, you did this to me. And so Jesus directly locating his body in those that are hungry, naked, imprisoned. And if we take these words and the life of Jesus seriously, then these bodies need to be always central. These bodies in some ways in our society should be seen as the most sacred and these bodies should be the most loved.

DDM [22:48]: But instead, I think in the Western church, we’ve so spiritualized the message of Jesus. And so we’ve managed to push these groups to the outside, making them no longer sacred bodies, but once again, shameful bodies. And that for me is sin.

MET [23:09]: So, you know, I talk a lot about old speeches and theorists and philosophers because I intellectualize. But, as I’ve said before, the truth is my specialty is free speech and the law. I can talk about the First Amendment longer than any person should. I say this to make 1 final pass at this subject, and that is to posit that for me, 1 of the ways I am learning to appreciate the body is to understand the body as expression.

DDM [23:42]: Nice.

MET [23:43]: I’m really interested in speech and identity, and that’s actually how I got interested in the law. There’s this theory that the law is 1 of the ways in which we write our national identity into being. And I’ve been thinking about the body recently in regard to this. I could give you a bunch of theoretical or philosophical foundations for all this, but what it comes down to is I have come to understand the body as a kind of speech. Our bodies say who we are out into the public. We say something about how we relate to the world and how we want people to understand us by how we comport ourselves physically.

MET [24:26]: Our bodies or our physical presences speak our identities out into the world, right? Like my person, the way I am physically, here I am, says something about who I am. That actually really helps me think of a body as something more than just like meat or a walking carcass and as a statement. It is constitutive, it is expression, it is speech. And we know from earlier episodes how much I value that.

DDM [24:54]: The word became flesh. I love this, Elizabeth. I love it. Right.

MET [24:58]: A body is 1 way in which we establish our personas. And if we think of the body as speech, then many of the laws out there that are trying to restrict bodies, like anti-trans laws, for example, or anti-drag laws, aren’t just disciplining the body, they’re infringements on speech.

DDM [25:15]: Right.

MET [25:16]: Now, I am a person who values free speech to a fault, probably. But for me, then these laws that aim to discipline bodies are immoral in ways of magnitude because they are infringing on people in a variety of ways. There is the most basic, right? These are people. Their lives matter. They deserve to be able to live their lives unmolested and unfettered as much as anyone else, right? That’s just the basic. But there is also the expression part of it. People should be allowed to speak and express themselves and the body expresses identity. When bodies are disciplined, that ability to express yourself is denied.

MET [25:57]: And I think that is 1 of the most basic and fundamental speech rights. I’m actually writing a book chapter on this right now in fact.

DDM [26:03]: in fact.

MET [26:04]: The body speaks ourselves into the world, so laws that discipline the body are censorial. So, you know, if you want to email me, I can just go off on it for however long you want me to. This issue cannot be understood outside the current political climate either. There are 2 things you have to bring to bear on this conversation, the Dobbs decision, which is the decision that overturned Roe and the fact that 1 of the campaigns was pretty much fueled by anti-trans and anti-immigrant sentiment. The Dobbs decision is fundamental to understanding the place of bodies in the public eye right now.

MET [26:46]: And just in case you think I’m exaggerating or making connections where there are none, within 24 hours of the election you could buy sweatshirts online that said, your body, my choice.

DDM [27:00]: You know, I heard about that, That was frightening.

MET [27:03]: Yes, the election was and still is about control of bodies. There was a concerted effort in this campaign to control bodies, specifically women’s bodies, queer bodies, and immigrant bodies. People want to control health, sex, gender, space, and access. And all of these things are about freedom. The people who are affected by these efforts to control bodies are already marginalized. These are the people who chafe under both policy and hegemony to begin with. These are bodies that are already disciplined in some way. But politics as it is, is literally premised on the notions that some bodies absolutely must be locked down tight and not allow the freedom of motion or expression that other bodies are privileged to have.

DDM [27:53]: You

MET [27:53]: You know, if control over your body means freedom, then there’s a big portion of the country that wants to make sure a large swath of the population is not free.

DDM [28:02]: And it

MET [28:02]: And it would be really easy to point to 1 campaign or 1 person and say, yeah, that’s bad, don’t be like them. But the problem is much more widespread than that.

DDM [28:10]: Absolutely, far deeper.

MET [28:11]: Yeah, people on all sides of the aisle have devalued Palestinian bodies, for example. And in that same vein, there is an ever-growing strain of virulent anti-Semitism that wants to curtail the physical lives of Jewish people. We’ve discussed before about segregation, But newsflash, that’s not history. We still live in a segregated society. Redlining worked. White flight absolutely realigned social stratums. Private schools and homeowners associations 100% created whites-only spaces. To the point that in many places in America, we are more segregated now than we were in the 1970s. And if you don’t believe me, shoot me an email and I will respond with the stats and references.

DDM [29:02]: Elizabeth, what you’re saying is resonating because I remember when I first came from South Africa, having lived and grown through apartheid, and I came here to the USA, and I was like, this is more segregated than we were under apartheid. It stunned me when I first came to this country, just how segregated it is. It is. Unbelievable.

MET [29:24]: Yeah, I think people live under this notion that that’s a time past, but we are still 100% a segregated country. The disciplining of bodies keeps people oppressed, and we are really concerned with people’s bodies. If you doubt me, listen to the LGBTQIA episode we put out. I lay out the legal history of how we have restricted bodies in the most literal sense. And the church has played a big part in this. I spent years of my life believing God wanted me to drive every natural instinct out of my body and clamp it down so I never sinned, strayed, or tempted anyone to do the same.

MET [30:08]: Because the Church has, for hundreds of years, been teaching us that the body is corrupt and it is our job to control it, and that 100% shows up in our public discourse.

DDM [30:19]: It’s frightening, but you’re 100% right. And for me, the real sin is not seeing our bodies and the uniqueness and the senses that God created us with as being pathways for that fullness of life that Jesus came to remind us of. You know, because this is our birthright. It’s everybody’s birthright. And so much damage has been done, as you say, by clamping down the body and our bodily instincts, because we literally then are shutting down pathways to sacredness. I mean the senses, if you think about it, have always been used to connect us with the divine.

DDM [30:58]: Music, dance, sex, touch, taste, I mean these are pathways for the spirit to experience unity, ecstasy, sacredness and in all of this, God. And so to wrap up this episode today, where has this episode touched something in you? Where are you in your relationship with your own body? How are you relating to bodies that you have been taught are worth less than yours? How could you explore your body as an amazing gift and blessing, not just to you, but also to this world.

MET [31:40]: 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 [32:15]: Music by Audionautix.com.

Episode 9 – Language

January 2, 2025 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

A zoomed in photograph of an open dictionary.

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 9 - Language

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In this impassioned episode, Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth discuss their love and exploration of language. They talk about the cultural differences in how they approach language, and the challenges of translation and interpretation.

Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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

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

[00:11] 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. So Elizabeth, I thought it would be amazing to do an episode on language. And I’ll tell you why. Because the other day on Facebook, the Aramaic form of the Lord’s Prayer, which is translated by Neil Douglas Klotz, was circulating on Facebook. And some people were reposting and absolutely loved it and found it so helpful, and others in the comment section absolutely hated it.

[01:11] DDM: And 1 of the biggest reasons was because it was not the Lord’s prayer that they knew, and so they felt it was not, and I’m putting in inverted commas, biblical. And I was fascinated by this discussion just happening on this Facebook post that was circulating and it got me thinking, How did an English translation of the Lord’s Prayer that’s not even actually well translated, how did that become the biblical version and the actual Aramaic form that was the language Jesus actually spoke the Lord’s Prayer in, became seen as unbiblical. Like if you think about it, isn’t that crazy?

[01:55] DDM: And so here’s the issue for me. The whole of our Scripture is about language. It’s through language that we learn about God. It’s through language that often we communicate back to God. Language is so central to our relationship with God. But The problem is that the language of the Bible was not English, it wasn’t Spanish, it’s not Latin, it’s not even predominantly Greek. It’s ancient Hebrew, which is not the same as modern Hebrew in the Old Testament, and then it’s Aramaic and an everyday form of Greek in the New Testament. So to understand what the Bible actually says to us we have to rely on scholars of those ancient languages and secondly translators who can then translate them into our language, whether that’s English, Zulu, Russian, whatever.

[02:56] DDM: Now scholarship of ancient languages is always improving because as they discover more scrolls or even secular documents at the same time, they can then correlate these words, see how these words were used in other shapes and forms and contexts. And So in some ways, when we have a Bible, our translation of our Bible should be reflecting the newest scholarship around whatever those particular words or phrases meant. But that’s often not the case. Often we’re using scriptures that actually were from biblical scholars from like decades ago. And then the other problem is that our translations that we have into say English for instance, they are so affected by our own cultural attitudes towards gender, towards race, towards sexuality, towards a hundred thousand things.

[03:59] DDM: And so some of these translations are simply incorrect because of our own biases. So it’s not just that we’re wanting the most accurate translation available, but we also need ones that are really working in some ways very consciously to not shape their translation by our own cultural lenses and viewpoints and trying to keep our translations more in line with actually the biblical worldview.

[04:31] MET: Okay. When you first said you wanted to do an episode on language, I was so pumped. So, if you don’t know about my history at this point, I have 2 degrees in English and 1 in communication. So, language is probably one of the top three things I am thinking about all the time. Like, you can ask my producer, like, it’s probably not healthy. In fact, so when we were talking about this, I got interested in something the other day and I looked up something that speaks to this. Supposedly, you can’t read in dreams. Okay, whatever.

[05:14] MET: But I have read in my dreams many times. Sometimes it’s really challenging or slow and arduous, and I have woken myself up, because I’m struggling with words. But there are times when I have read whole pages or sometimes in really weird dreams subtitles. So I looked this up, why can I read in dreams? And apparently there is a small percentage of people, I mean small, like 1, maybe 2% of the population that can read in their dreams. People like writers and poets, but people who think about language and words a lot. And it isn’t just how they communicate, but it is a part of our lives.

[05:53] MET: People who are immersed in words and our lives revolve around them can sometimes read in dreams. It’s not just a matter of, oh, I read and write a lot. It’s like, because a lot of people read and write a lot. It is a very small part of the population that is intimately engaged with words and language so that it drives us, it shapes us. We think about words and how they work and why. It’s not just choosing the right word at the right time. It’s about crafting your life this way. So I say that because I want you to know that is how intimately connected I am to words and language.

[06:29] MET: So if I get maybe a little bit too excited about this episode. I need you to understand this is a way of life for me. But as we talked about this and as we got ready for this episode, I thought I should indicate, like, I might be part of the problem here when you’re talking about kind of Western versions of language and translation, etc., because my approach to communicating is very Western-centric. I know this, and I tell my students this, and we have to acknowledge this in classrooms. But I wanted to talk about how there are reasons for this.

[07:14] MET: I am specifically Western-centric when I talk about language because I’m a rhetorician, and rhetoric is a 100% Western idea.

[07:24] DDM: That’s so interesting.

[07:25] MET: Yeah, I want to explain that a little bit so you can kind of understand where I’m coming from and then we can talk about like language kind of overall. But I want to give you a little bit of insight into this like specifically Western approach that I come from and then we can broaden out from there. But for example, the first graduate thesis I advised was about the idea of rhetoric in China, and half of the paper was about how this notion of rhetoric as we understand it just doesn’t exist outside of the West. Now, we can argue all day about whether that is because of geography or context or whether rhetoric is just inherently exclusive.

[08:05] MET: And I actually think there are good arguments for all of those. But some of it is just kind of the nature of the beast in terms of its development. And I’m not going to give you a lecture on this weird esoteric subject. I’m just explaining why my perspective is the way it is. But rhetoric was developed about 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece, specifically around Athens. And the particular point I want to make is that rhetoric was developed at the same time in the same place and sometimes by the same people as democracy. I won’t go into the whys and wherefores of it all, but if you know much about either rhetoric or democracy, that actually makes sense because democracy runs on persuasion.

[08:48] MET: Rhetoric is only useful if people are in a position to have a choice to make a decision between options. So, to be persuaded, if you will. So, this thing that I study and talk about all the time, rhetoric and democracy, go hand in hand. They don’t really exist without each other in this kind of Western perspective. So the way this all comes together for me when we talk about language is that we use language to move and shape the world around us. Language isn’t just transactional, right? It creates narratives, it’s constitutive, that just means it creates us, or at least who we are, and it in many ways powers our world, right?

[09:29] MET: You’re talking about that’s how we know God, it’s not just a spiritual thing, right? It has impact in so many ways. There are whole theorists in my field who argue that truth and reality don’t exist without it. We might talk about that later. So to say I’m invested in this is pretty lightly. But as I said, this is a very Western perspective because we’re talking about how language can be used to grow and even heal democracy. And these are pretty lofty ideas. And honestly, they may even be moot at this point. At the same time, 1 of the things that is particularly powerful, rhetorically speaking, is narrative.

[10:10] MET: And I could go on and on about people like Walter Fisher and Kenneth Burke and all these people that there’s no reason for you to have heard of who wrote about the importance of narrative or drama or whatever. And the thing about those is that they transcend cultural boundaries, right? Like narrative is important.

[10:28] DDM: Absolutely.

[10:29] MET: Whoever you are, wherever you go. Now, originally my field was very Greek and very Roman and very organized and very classical.

[10:36] DDM: Hence, Persephone the cat.

[10:39] MET: You should know I have a cat named Persephone and we can talk about why she’s named that, but she’s adorable and everybody should love her.

[10:45] DDM: And I, who had no Greek training, called her “Persa-phone.”

[10:50] MET: Absolutely. But since we’ve moved on from the Greeks and the Romans, things have gotten, I don’t want to say messier, but it has gotten less traditional, less rigid. And as we think about things like narrative and identification, we start to consider not just public speaking, but whether things like folktales or music or any of those other things are rhetorical. So we’ve opened up the field and started to think about just, is this a proper way to build an argument? But this is powerful. How and why? And those are different questions. And that’s a much more apropos question for approaching something like scripture as opposed to just like the State of the Union Address or whatever.

[11:33] MET: So it also gets to some of that slippage that comes from translation issues. For example, you could speak to this way better than I could, but I know throughout the Bible there are many times in the original where it talks about a man and a woman doing something, but when it’s translated to English, the words husband and wife were used. I’m not pointing to specific verses because it happens so often. On the 1 hand, that may not seem like much of a difference. On the other hand, this is a huge difference, because that’s putting some cultural baggage on those verses that weren’t there to begin with.

[12:09] MET: And it’s creating this narrative of biblical marriage that people have used for generations just to beat down women and the LGBTQIA population until they’re really just a shell of what they could have been. These are translation issues. They’re just small words that really can create whole cultural shifts.

[12:28] DDM: Absolutely. I mean, the words we use matter. And you know, you touched on this a little bit with the husband and wife issue, but you know, it’s, for example, we have instances in scripture where the actual name of a person was feminine, And they would change that in their translation to a masculine name. Because when they read the feminine name, they said to themselves, but hang on, this can’t be because only men were in leadership, so this must be a grammatical error. And so they changed the name to a masculine name.

[13:02] MET: Yeah, of course.

[13:03] DDM: Yeah, you know, but I mean, that’s an incredible. And, you know, again, you know, you said the husband and wife issue, but in the Old Testament, there’s so many places when the text actually is referring to a temple prostitute, to temple prostitution, and when the translators saw that, they changed it to homosexuality instead of temple prostitution.

[13:28] MET: Really?

[13:28] DDM: And so a lot of biblical stances against homosexuality were fueled, of course, by these translations. And then in the New Testament, instead of translating concepts like paedophilia, which is sexual acts with a minor, When these words appear, once again they translated them to homosexuality. So that again fueled that whole comparison of homosexuality and pedophilia that we now have in society. I mean, if we go back to the husband and wife issue, the entire headship argument of men in marriage is based on a mistranslation. The word kephale actually comes from the source of a river. So the scripture was saying just as Christ was the source or the spring of life for the church, so man was the, and generic man, was the source from which Eve emerged, right?

[14:28] DDM: Had nothing to do with power or with authority. It was about this word source. But again, poor translation. We’ve ended up with this authoritarian headship model. And so I think really we need a lot more energy to be invested in developing far better translations of our texts and scriptures for our ordinary everyday common people to have access to.

[14:54] MET: That is fascinating.

[14:55] DDM: Yeah, because I mean your average person sitting in the pew or sitting at home is not going to be studying these, you know, going back to the ancient Hebrew or Greek words. It’s just probably not going to happen. But unfortunately, I also think it’s more complex than that, because you speak about rhetoric being such a Western concept. Well, in the Western world, we value accuracy, right? And so language has become so precise that it’s almost like a science. You know, we search for the right word to describe most accurately what we are trying to say.

[15:31] DDM: And so English has become a precise but also a literal language. And so we read the Bible paying attention to precise words and interpreting them literally. The problem we have when we come to scripture is that Middle Eastern languages were not precise languages. In fact, you might even say Middle Eastern languages still are not precise languages and they never wanted them to be. If English has thousands of words, Middle Eastern languages ironically actually have far less words. But their words instead of going broad and wide in terms of number, their words go deep. Now what do I mean by that?

[16:20] DDM: So Middle Eastern Semitic languages work from what is called roots. So you will have a root three-letter word from Which many other words, almost like a family of words, stem. But they’re all related to that root. So you can use a particular word, but anybody within that cultural framework knows, by its root, how it relates to all these other words. So for instance, the word for salvation comes from the root for wholeness. So what that means is that you cannot therefore understand salvation outside of the concept of wholeness. So words form patterns that relate to 1 another.

[17:06] DDM: No word ever stands on its own. But unless you know the root of that word and therefore know what words it relates to, you wouldn’t know how to translate that word within the body of those other words.

[17:22] MET: Interesting.

[17:23] DDM: Isn’t it? It’s a completely different way to understand language and to understand words. It’s also said that you really don’t understand a Middle Eastern word or phrase unless you’ve discovered at least seven layers of meaning. And so words were almost like throwing a stone into a pond and that word would ripple out into different ripples, each unique but related to the original stone that fell into the pond, right? So if we take, for instance, the Lord’s Prayer, spoken by Jesus in Aramaic. We simply have in the beginning, our father, right? But it’s nothing like that in the Aramaic.

[18:07] DDM: So in the beginning, our father is in heaven. It’s Abwoon d’bwashmaya. Ab refers to all fruit, all germination of seeds and life, everything that comes from this original source of unity. So it’s the very life forms that are emanating or coming from who God is. Ab, from which we will get Abba or Abun, Ab has nothing to do with gender, with mother or father or daddy as people commonly say, right?

[18:42] MET: I hate that.

[18:43] DDM: Oh my god, I mean it’s like where did we get these, right? Ab has much more to do with this cosmic birthing from that which is good, that which is the source and unity of all that is, right? And the rest of that word, “abwoon,” right, for which we say our father, “abwoon,” if you actually say that word with your mouth, like “woon,” “woon,” right, it refers to the sound that the air makes as we make that word. So it’s the flow of spirit coming from God. It is the flow of blessing of oneness. And then as it goes “wooN,” the “N” is when it’s taking material form.

[19:32] DDM: Like in Christianity, we say when it’s becoming incarnated, when that spirit takes physical form. And for all of that that I’ve just said, we say our father, Right? Can you see how inadequate that translation is? And also how misleading it is? But also how poor it is. Now, let’s be honest. The Our Father means a lot to a lot of people. Because it’s the 1 prayer that children have been taught from the time they’re tiny and it’s probably 1 of the last prayers they’ll say in their lives right? So we know people love the Our Father.

[20:10] DDM: It means so much to them. But is it biblical? Well it’s a very poor translation in our English of a far deeper and richer concept. And what we’ve done is really stripped it down to a gendered, individual, personal name for God. So I don’t know, like, I mean, maybe we’re not making anything easier for anybody, but this is where translation does become so difficult. And that’s also why I think that clergy should be doing a much better job of really studying what the original words and phrases used are and what the best scholars and translators are now saying about these.

[20:58] DDM: Because if we do a better job of teaching, We end up, I think, with much better, richer theology and an understanding of God and our own faith.

[21:11] MET: Okay. That is fascinating, and I’m going to be thinking about it forever. 1 thing I want to, I’m gonna, it’s a Western thing, but I’m gonna, I think I’m gonna bring this home a little bit and show specifically how language affects us as a society in ways that are clear outside of translation as well. Because it’s easy to point to translation issues as example of how words have created slippage, especially cross-culturally. But I wanna point out how even in the context of just the West, we have to understand that words shift and change. Because I think it’s really important to understand how this isn’t just like, oh, kind of this esoteric out there, translation matters, like this matters to us in the local.

[22:10] MET: Those shifts don’t just mean we talk differently, we behave differently. So there’s this philosopher theorist guy who wrote about the history of madness. Now that in and of itself seems kind of macabre, I guess, but it’s actually pretty pertinent to all of this. Now there’s a problem with the word madness to begin with.

[22:30] DDM: Any woman knows this.

[22:33] MET: Problematic word. But what this guy says is that people haven’t changed that much even if the word has. And what I mean by that is madness for all the problematic things implies has changed over the centuries, but the people haven’t. So the people who are afflicted with madness are actually the same throughout history. People have the same problems with the same illnesses and a lot of the same traumas in many different times and places, but what we have called madness has changed drastically. So 100 years ago, somebody with PTSD or postpartum depression syndrome or even extreme ADHD might be labeled as mad and institutionalized.

[23:20] MET: Now we recognize that these are treatable things and we help these people and they are generally okay, right? Like these are functioning members of society. But we think about that word madness. The diseases haven’t changed. The people haven’t changed. But our definition and our relationship to that word has changed. And that has real repercussions for people’s lives. People gain and lose their freedom based on how we define that word. And depending on when and where you live, The definition of that word can be the difference between a life on your own, living at home, or a life of institutionalized torment.

[24:07] MET: Right, 100, 150 years ago, you were mad, and mad people got put away. Now, you are anxious, and you take a pill, and you go to therapy, and you are a productive member of society. Mad means something very different now. That’s a word that is used to discipline us as people. It keeps us in line. And in the past, it was much more disciplinary. And I think this is a telling example because in 1 sense, it is very separate from what Reverend Deborah is talking about, because she’s getting at the way language slips from culture to culture and how we take a very Western approach to translation and language.

[24:47] MET: But what I’m telling you is even if that you stay in 1 language, even if you are just a 100% Western centric, English speaking, an I don’t care about anyone but me kind of person, You have to acknowledge that language affects how you live your life. We are made by the things we say. Well, you know, that’s the concept I’ve devoted my life to anyway. I don’t know.

[25:13] DDM: Absolutely, but it’s so true. Absolutely. I mean, I mean, language definitely shapes how we understand ourselves. You know, how we understand our gender, how we understand our relationships, how we understand our faith, and even how we understand God. I mean, I don’t think any of us can say that there is anything that is not shaped by language. But what that means is that we really need to pay more attention to what we are saying, how we are saying things, what we actually mean, and maybe what those words now mean. But I also think, and when it comes to faith, it means we need to be a lot more humble in what we think the Bible says.

[25:59] DDM: Because unfortunately, in many case, it’s not what it says. And I think being a lot more humble about our faith might be a good place to start.

[26:10] MET: I am going to jump right in with something that just seems so wild, but I’m actually going to take us back in time. I’m going to tell you about some of the first people to really think about how language affects us in kind of a philosophical sense, I guess. There were these people called the Sophists. This is like 2,500 years ago. We’re talking a long time ago. They were some of the first rhetoricians, but they do have some ideas that I think play into this conversation. So I’m not gonna give you a lecture on the Sophists, though I really think you’d enjoy it.

[26:50] MET: They were wild, like crazy hair, crazy clothes, they got thrown out of places a lot, golden statues, like there’s a whole narrative I could give you that is wildly entertaining. But I do want to tell you a little bit about their ideas about truth. The Sophists believed in an idea called Kairos. Now, As we are talking about it now, Kairos doesn’t necessarily translate perfectly, which sort of fits into what we’ve been talking about all this time. But the way I’m asking us to think about it for today is the idea that truth is made in the moment.

[27:35] MET: At that time you had Plato doing his thing and he hated the Sophists. Plato was a capital T truth kind of guy. He believed in transcendent truths that really couldn’t be questioned. They were not contingent on anything on this earth. No real word on what those truths were a lot of the time, but that’s neither here nor there. There was a lot we could say about Plato, to be honest. One, Christianity borrows a lot from Plato, like a lot. Early Christianity is not surprisingly influenced quite a bit by Rome, and Plato is one of the aspects of Rome that they borrow most heavily from.

[28:18] MET: And the reason I bring this up is because if you’re going to talk about translation and cultural issues, you have to acknowledge that our religion is moving around culturally a lot. You know, We have the religion of the Hebrew people, and a branch of that eventually became Christianity. But it was kind of a mishmash of Judaism and Platonic and Greek thinking. So the cultural and philosophical touchstones kind of become hard to pin down sometimes. I’m sure Reverend Deborah could talk extensively about all that. We can make four or five episodes on it one of these days.

[28:55] MET: Plus, when you take Platonic thinking to its natural end, you get things like fascism, which should give you pause when you think about the connections between Rome and Christianity, but that’s another four or five episodes someday. So, Plato thought the Sophists were dangerous because they taught this concept of kairos, which was pretty much the opposite of those big T truth ideas. Truth, according to the Sophists, is the best thing at that moment. So you create truth using the best ideas in that context at that time truth happens. And that’s a pretty powerful position because it means A, truth is contextual and contingent, and B, people are truth makers.

[29:41] MET: And the reason I even bring this up is because for the Sophists, this happens via language. The truth was basically what you convinced people of. So language wasn’t just pretty, it wasn’t just style and poetics, it was the means by which you created the truths that governed your life. I bring all of this up to point out that these notions about language being a powerful force in the world, a force that moves and shapes us, like really changes the world, these ideas are not new. We tend to think of things like language is truth and language is reality as these sort of newfangled postmodern ideas, but this actually goes back thousands of years.

[30:20] DDM: No, absolutely. And you know, if language was how you created the truths that governed your life, I think the biblical worldview was a little different. And when I say the biblical world view, I just want to clarify, because you were speaking a lot about Christianity borrowing from Rome, and that’s when we start to see really the development of the New Testament in Paul’s period, right? So kind of after the Gospels, you start to see a lot more of that integration of Rome and empire and that kind of thought. When I’m speaking about the biblical worldview, I think I’m very much more speaking about the ancient Hebraic worldview.

[31:04] MET: Absolutely.

[31:05] DDM: And then also the Aramaic, Galilean grassroots people from which Jesus emerges, right? And so I think it was a little different for them, largely because it was such an agrarian society. And so, I mean, we dealt with how words are used very differently in those contexts, But it wasn’t so much words that governed their lives or shaped their lives. It was the seasons. It was the soil. It was the cycles of life and birth and death, not just for humans, but for their livestock. Right? And so in many ways, the biblical world, we underestimate what a physical world it was.

[31:55] DDM: And listen, Elizabeth and I are going to be doing an episode on the body coming up and I think we’ll go more into this, but the biblical world was a very physical world. Truth was that seeds fell and reproduced plants, that small seeds could produce huge trees that would shade birds. Truth was that light was needed, especially in the dark, to be able to see and find what you need. For them, truth was that without a shepherd, the flocks would scatter and be eaten. And I think what we’ve done is we’ve kind of reduced Jesus’ teachings very often to these intellectual concepts of thought.

[32:40] DDM: But actually, Jesus’ teaching was very rooted in the earth and in the truths or realities that emerged from the earth and from the body and from cycles of life and death. And I wonder if we would see scriptures in a different way if we started to really reconnect with the earth, with our own bodies. If we started to listen to the earth and our bodies and other species’ bodies in the same way as we listen to our our minds and our thoughts, and I wonder then maybe what words might emerge.

[33:18] MET: So I think you make some really great points. And especially I think it’s fascinating to think about how Christianity comes to us, right? Because you’re talking about how, the culture of the faith started in this agrarian society, but then we think how it comes to us through a kind of Greco-Roman, like Paul was a word guy and a military guy. And Paul is-

[33:46] DDM: Law, he was trained in the law.

[33:47] MET: Yes. And that’s how Christianity gets filtered down to us. So, like, the topic at hand could not be more essential, right? Okay. So, I’m gonna do something that you may not be very excited about, but I promise I can make it all come together. I’m going to talk philosophy for a second. You had to know this was coming, right? We’re all here, this is who we are now. There are about a jillion theorists and philosophers I could talk about when it comes to the power of language. I could talk about sign, signifier, blah, blah, blah.

[34:24] MET: I could talk about reference, narrative paradigms, but I know good and well, you don’t want any of that. But I am going to do something you may not be expecting, so just bear with me. I’m going to talk about Nietzsche. Okay, we can laugh about that, right? That’s weird. And I know a lot of Christians are really uncomfortable with Nietzsche. Like maybe it’s the whole God is dead thing or there’s no truth, right? That’s problematic. I can see how either one of those positions could make people of faith uncomfortable. But I want to talk about one of his more foundational claims that allowed him to make these kind of big conceptual things.

[35:08] MET: So I want to talk about metaphors. Nietzsche wrote, and this idea was picked up later, that all words are metaphors, which at the most basic level is true. So for example, if you hear the word table or see the letters T-A-B-L-E, You probably think of a platform with legs that you can put things on. But why? Why is that thing a table? What is inherently “tabley” about it? What is “tableness?” Is there such a thing as “table-ocity?” Right? Like, obviously that is ridiculous, right? There’s that thing, and for whatever reason, it is called table. Honestly, there’s no inherent connection between the sounds we make with our mouths, the keystrokes that produce the image, or the thing we are referring to.

[36:05] MET: We have just kind of decided that is a table and so it is. Now, obviously, there’s a whole history to the etymology of words. It is much more complicated than that. But conceptually, the example serves its purpose. There is a sound and an image and a thing, and the only reason they are all the same is because we say they are. That is what is meant by words are metaphors. Words don’t inherently mean much, except for things like onomatopoeias. Words are just symbols for other things. A table is easy. We can point to a table and say, that’s a table.

[36:45] MET: But what if the metaphor is more complicated? What if it’s something like justice or fairness? Truth? We can see how this becomes complicated quickly. And the thing about metaphors is they require interpretation. Metaphors are by their very nature symbolic. So what this means is every time we communicate, every single time, we are involved in interpreting metaphors.

[37:17] DDM: Even when we’re in our own language, we are constantly interpreting.

[37:21] MET: That is what that means.

[37:22] DDM: It’s not just interpreting a foreign language.

[37:24] MET: Every time we’re communicating with somebody, we are interpreting some kind of symbol. Consider that level of complexity. If you want to say something, you have to figure out which tapestry of metaphors most closely approximates your meaning. And if I am to understand you, I have to interpret those metaphors as you have intended them, even though I come from a completely different context.

[37:47] DDM: And isn’t that the problem we’re facing in our society today, Elizabeth? It’s where people are using words, but we’re interpreting them in such radically different ways.

[37:57] MET: That’s what my degree is in! Yeah. So you see how things like interpretation and cultural paradigms make that even more wild, right? If words are metaphors, then you have to think of them as culturally specific metaphors and metaphors that link differently depending on time and place and language. So, even somebody as Western-centric as me can see very quickly that trying to read something from a non-Western culture in English that has probably been through a few linguistic shifts along the way isn’t just picking and choosing words. You are literally recasting metaphors and trying to take the symbol of one culture and change them into the symbol of another.

[38:37] MET: The metaphors of Hebrew and Aramaic aren’t the same as Latin, Greek, or English. So our understanding of the language and honestly the culture literally doesn’t easily translate. So actually that’s how Nietzsche gets to the whole there’s no truth thing because the truth is just how we organize metaphors.

[38:57] DDM: It’s very interesting if I can just add here that Jesus when he deals with it he locates it in relationship where he says I am the truth.

[39:07] MET: Yeah.

[39:07] DDM: You know, the way the truth of life. And I just always think that’s interesting, where it’s not just a heads concept, it’s like come into relationship with me and discover truth together, you know?

[39:17] MET: Okay, So how does all this atheistic philosophy help me understand my faith? Okay. We know I grew up thinking of the Bible as something that was holy, but not just holy, something that really couldn’t be questioned. But as I grew up and I started to understand the world around me, it’s not that I started to question the Bible, it’s that I started to think about it more fully, not as black and white words on a page with no history or context, but as a fully fleshed out text with the same depth and veracity as any text I studied in school.

[39:55] MET: And I started to understand that the Bible is scripture, myth, history, and literature all at once, which is a much richer text than what I was led to believe. And that’s actually how this particular philosophy has helped me with my faith. If I think about a word as a metaphor, then I know that some original author, be they somebody who spoke a story into being or even wrote it on a piece of parchment, had a particular symbol in mind. That symbol had to be understood in their context, and that includes their culture, their time, and their geography.

[40:29] MET: And Even then, it is still a symbol, so it has to be interpreted to be understood. What I have is a translation, which means somebody at some point said, well, this symbol is a close approximation for this other symbol. So good enough. Not only has the meaning changed, it has been lifted out of that context which gave original listeners or readers the ability to interpret that symbol. So for me, to claim that I have some monopoly on scripture is just kind of silly to be honest.

[41:02] DDM: Yeah, yeah. And you know, when you were talking there, it got me thinking about Islam. You know, you can read the Quran in English, but that is not how it’s supposed to be done. If you become Muslim, you learn Arabic and you recite the Quran in Arabic because they don’t want these issues of language translation. But of course, it’s again, what are we signifying? So that was a lot. That was a lot. Where do I start? So truth. There are many things, as you say, that we claim are truths, but I really do love what I was saying a little bit earlier, where Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

[41:46] DDM: Jesus was obviously not a concept and so the understanding in that verse is that we discover truth within relationship. And I think that’s so important. You know, what does it mean to locate any of these things always within the web of relationships in which we live, and obviously specifically within our relationship with Jesus or with God. So, truth, I think, within the Scriptures really should not just be some propositional statement or fact, but something that we discover through our relationship with God, but also, I would say, through our relationships with each other and in creation.

[42:30] DDM: And so, maybe truth is something that actually requires relationship. And if it requires relationship, it requires therefore a specific context, specific people, a specific time period, a specific culture. I’m really myself not sure that truth can ever be found outside of specific lives and context because it’s so enmeshed in the discovery in our own human actual lives. But I’d loved your thinking around metaphor because in many ways that’s precisely what we are speaking of when we spoke of Semitic languages stemming from a root and then spiraling out from there because it is, it’s this rich, dynamic, creative, constantly in a way new way of using language but it doesn’t make translation easy in the least.

[43:23] DDM: But it does raise how hard it is to translate a Middle Eastern gospel when we do not really know, understand, and live within that culture. Just as it would be so hard for a Westerner to understand an African praise song without really knowing the language, culture, symbols, and ways of communicating particular to that group of people within Africa. And that’s why I think we have so much Misunderstanding but also false assumptions about each other and our faith.

[43:54] MET: Oh, yeah for sure Okay, well friends we got a little heady on you. But obviously, this topic is near and dear to our hearts. And if you want to email one of us, we will gladly send you a thesis length discussion on whatever you want to know about language, because I really feel like Reverend Deborah and I could go on forever.

[44:26] DDM: I think Elizabeth will respond to you.

[44:29] MET: Oh my gosh. I mean, it’s just, like, it’s just so important to us.

[44:34] DDM: Well, it’s crucial. I think it’s crucial. It’s really crucial because it’s the, what is that thing they say when it’s the elephant in the room? You know, we’re using words all the time, but we’re actually sometimes doing a really bad job at communicating because we’re not on the same wavelength in terms of how we understand these words or how we understand the words in scripture, you know?

[44:55] MET: Yeah, so, you know, it’s just, it’s so important. And, you know, I hope we didn’t get lost in the weeds for you here, but gosh, it was so exciting for us. So we have a lot of thoughts and some are clear and connecting and some are individual to our own perspectives, but that’s appropriate for a discussion on language because language is an individualized thing. You know, I wanted to make this last comment because I was really fascinated by something Reverend Deborah said about the difference between the way English works with thousands of words and Middle Eastern languages work with fewer words but deeper meaning.

[45:40] MET: And this speaks to the way I use language. I want to give an example of how that difference plays out. My students and family kind of give me a hard time because they’re like, oh, you use such big words. I don’t use big words, I use the right word. And I know, I have an extensive vocabulary, when you read as much as I do, that happens. But for me, it’s not about using an impressive word. It’s about finding the exact right word that I want to use at that moment. And I was thinking about why that is so important to me, and I realized it is because that is my way of asserting my agency.

[46:34] MET: If I can, in that moment, say, this is exactly what I mean, this is precisely what I want to say, like I am exacting control over that situation. I am asserting what I want, who I am. When I can say precisely what I want and like this is exactly what I mean There’s not any question like And that doesn’t mean everybody understands what I mean. There can be interpretive questions. But when I say precisely what I mean, I am asserting control over my environment. And when you were talking about the difference in languages, I was like, That’s exactly what it is right there.

[47:19] MET: Anyway, so that was my final comment, but I want to hear what you have to say about that.

[47:22] DDM: I think that’s so interesting. You may pick this up as Elizabeth and I have these conversations, is that our approach to language is wildly different. Because if that’s Elizabeth’s perspective, me coming from Africa, which is a much more oral culture and a not as precise a culture, when I use words, I’m painting a picture, and I want you to feel. So my wife gets crazy, because she’ll ask me, how many people were there? And I want to communicate there were lots of people. So I’ll say like 300. And then somebody will say, no, there was like actually 246.

[48:00] DDM: And I’m like, are you being serious? You know, because we’re not always using language precisely. It’s like we want to convey the feeling and the emotion, you know? And so it’s a much more evocative way of using language. So if at times on this podcast, I do not use the precise word, the accurate word, please just rather listen to me and paint pictures in the sky with me and feel what I’m saying, rather than necessarily hearing the accuracy.

[48:32] MET: That’s so fascinating. Okay, so I want to leave you with a few questions then. How do you know what other people mean? How do you know what a text means? How do you communicate your ideas clearly? And what does all this mean for your life of faith?

[48:55] DDM: Beautiful.

[48:56] MET: And we’ll leave you with those questions. Thank you. 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.

[49:32] DDM: Music by Audionautix.com

Episode 8 – Post Election

December 19, 2024 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

Photograph of a person holding an "I Voted" sticker in front of a "Vote Here" sign with an American Flag on it.

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 8 - Post Election

00:00 /

In this episode, Reverend Deborah and Elizabeth try to work through their feelings about the election and its aftermath. They discuss not just the politics of the last year, but different perspectives on parties, global and local relationships, and the media.

Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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

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

[00:39] MET: So the election has come and gone, and there has been a lot of analyzing and punditry and the blame game about what went down. Republicans are of course elated, and I want to note that I say Republicans and not necessarily conservatives because by my calculation they are not necessarily the same thing anymore. There is a lot of infighting on the left. Institutional Democrats are mad at the left flank and the left flank is furious at the center. Now I, and I think I can say we, are not here to tell you who is right and who

[01:19] MET: is wrong. Honestly, I think that is an infinitely more complicated question than anybody is making it out to be in the think pieces in the media, right? Like this is, this is huge. And honestly, often I would say, oh, maybe go to like BBC or Al Jazeera or any of those places. But I think this is 1 of those where nobody in the foreign press is getting it particularly right. Because I think outsiders usually bring in a really good perspective because they remind us how right-wing all of our politics really are. But in this case,

[01:55] MET: I think the truth is foreign media just doesn’t really understand the nuances and the finer points of American politics. It’s the same reason you wouldn’t go to an American source for real deep analysis on the inner working politics of a different country. That being said, institutional media in the US is only giving you a partial picture too. So it is very difficult to know what’s going on out there. Okay, ultimately all of that doesn’t concern specifically what I wanna talk about today. What I wanna talk to you about is the response to the election. That’s kind

[02:33] MET: of where Reverend Deborah and I want to kind of want to center today. So let me save this as an observation and this is an observation I make as a person who is a professional in political studies. The new administration came in basically on 2 or 3 strains of rhetoric. Racism, and I mean hardcore racism against immigrants, the dehumanization of trans folks, especially kids, and lambasting the Democrats’ record on the economy. Now, I could give you a whole podcast about the third leg of that stool, but for now I want to focus on the first 2

[03:22] MET: There is no way around the fact that the Trump administration rode in on a campaign of bigotry and hate and I’m gonna be very frank. Maybe you are a Trump voter and you say, well, I’m not bigoted or hateful, but what you’re telling me is that bigotry and hatred are not eliminating factors for you. Neither is rape or neither are felonies. Now we could play the same game with the Democrats If you voted for Biden in the last election or Harrison this 1, genocide was not an eliminating factor for you. But there wasn’t a choice, right?

[03:58] MET: Yeah, the Dems are gonna support genocide, but Trump is too and probably in spades. So, you know, choose your warmongering, right? Like at what level? And because all of this is going on in the background, because we have such monumentally immoral choices to make, people are having all kinds of feelings about it. And what I want to say to you today is this. Your feelings are justified. A lot of you are feeling angry or confused or hurt, and that is all a sensible reaction to what is a very wild turn of events. You don’t have to

[04:41] MET: feel guilty for being emotional. You don’t have to feel embarrassed for thinking this is a big deal, and there’s no reason to try to ignore what you’re going through. This election was not like others, and you can see that in just the vitriol of the campaigns, right? This was This was an extension of what has come before. So there were more things that hung in the balance. And if you’re having an emotional response, that’s not inappropriate. That’s a normal response to an abnormal situation. So don’t let people belittle you or diminish you. If people are dismissive

[05:18] MET: of your feelings, that says something about their callousness, not your right to be upset. So I’m going to go into something different in just a second, but I didn’t know Reverend Deborah, did you want to respond to any of that? Absolutely.

[05:31] DDM: I mean, I think so often we’re taught not to take seriously what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling. We’re always told, don’t worry, there’s professionals dealing with this. But these issues, they impact our lives. They impact the lives of those we love. And maybe more significantly, they impact the lives of those we don’t know, those we’re not in relationship with, because those are our blind spots.

[05:55] MET: Absolutely.

[05:56] DDM: And you know, we’re in a very difficult position in the USA, I mean, in so many different ways. And for better or for worse, we function as a leader in the world. So everything that happens in our country is going to have global implications.

[06:14] MET: Absolutely. Okay, so this may seem a little bit tangential, but as I often do, I promise I will bring it back. I want to tell you a little bit about Aristotle for a second.

[06:24] DDM: I love the way you always go off, like way off where we’re not expecting.

[06:26] MET: I promise I can bring it all to a head. You just have to give me a second. You should hear my family laugh at me about the way. They’re like, my child says, you have a train of thought, but it’s just off the tracks. So like this is a common thing for

[06:50] DDM: me.

[06:51] MET: So Aristotle was sort of the first guy to kind of systematize how we make an argument. So the stuff that you learned in fourth grade all the way through freshman comp about how to write persuasively that was Aristotle. And one of the things he wrote about was the notion that there are different kinds of proofs or appeals. So there are artistic and inartistic proofs. And inartistic proofs are the outside proofs you bring to the party, like your evidence. That’s your research you add to the argument. But artistic proofs are the stuff you make on your own.

[07:27] MET: The artistic proofs you may have heard of are appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos. Those are words a lot of people heard in their education going through, but if you didn’t that’s fine. This may seem very far afield from where I started, but I want you to think about this. Aristotle said to make a solid argument you have to have 3 kinds of proofs. You have to in some kind of balanced way appeal to logic and reason which is logic, character which is ethos which is like ethics, and emotion which is pathos. Path is where we

[08:04] MET: get sympathy and empathy. And the reason I point this out now in the middle of this conversation is because too many people get caught up in the idea of being reasonable at all times. And now I am not saying you should be unreasonable. No, you should strive to be reasonable as much as you can. But reason is not the absence of emotion. Aristotle’s description of a good argument requires that you appeal to the whole person, their emotion, their intelligence, and their character. And he asks you to argue from there too. And I say this to segue

[08:46] MET: into something I think we all need to hear sometimes. You don’t have to quash your emotion to partake in public discourse, right? The very first person who said, here’s how to make an argument, said, you argue from the whole person and that includes the emotional core of you.

[09:03] DDM: You know, it’s so interesting as I did have not heard those before because obviously I was in a different system of education and we didn’t, you know, deal with Aristotle. However, it’s just interesting how so often that has been an argument against women participating in discourse.

[09:19] MET: I’ve got a whole thing I write about that in later places.

[09:23] DDM: If you want to talk about that.

[09:24] DDM: Too emotional.

[09:25] MET: Oh my gosh. Seriously, I’ve got a paper I’m presenting on that exact same thing in March.

[09:33] DDM: And I like that because there’s a significance of emotion because I think even if you look at the US elections, there was a lot of emotion on both sides going around. And so much I think of our decision making is actually being rooted, not in facts, but in emotion. You know?

[09:48] MET: Oh my gosh. If you, I can talk about this for hours at a time. I’m not going to right now.

[09:53] DDM: Yeah, sure.

[09:54] MET: I will not subject you to that, but I could definitely talk about it. I do want to, I’m going to give us an example of something that I think is pertinent. So here’s my historical example for the day. Cause of course, like why wouldn’t I have one? I want to talk about Frederick Douglas. He’s one of the most amazing historical figures of the 19th century and his legacy and the work he did is the stuff of legend. We are in the area of Rochester, New York, and you really can’t get away from Frederick Douglass if you’re

[10:22] MET: up here because this is kinda his area that he kinda landed in towards the end of his career, and we are so proud of him up here. He’s buried in this area. This is Frederick Douglass Central. But when he gave his speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, he addressed this idea of civil discourse, even if he didn’t use those words, because Douglass understood something essential about democratic dialogue. And that is, if only 1 party is arguing in good faith, then the whole thing is a wash. Douglass knew that rational argumentation only goes

[11:00] MET: so far. If you have presented over and over again your sound and thorough arguments and the opposition is just refusing to listen and responding with ignorance and bigotry, then what are you supposed to do? Sometimes you just can’t argue hate reasonably. So Douglass said, “The time for such argument is passed. At a time like this scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. Oh had I the ability and could reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm and stern rebuke.”

[11:43] DDM: I’m guessing that’s Frederick Douglass, not you.

[11:47] MET: Yes. That’s just on my syllabus, right? That’s just how I start out first day of class.

[11:51] MET: No, no, no. That’s Frederick Douglass. He’s one of the greatest orators of time. He was a friend of Susan B. Anthony, and he was one of the greatest leaders of the abolition movement, and he says sometimes you just have to get salty. Am I saying you should yell at anybody in a red hat or with a Harris sign? No, that’s a good way to get hurt. But I am saying there’s no reason for you to take all this lying down. It’s okay for you to be angry. It’s okay for you to be upset. It’s okay for

[12:21] MET: you to be frustrated. And it’s okay to be open about these things. If people get mad because you are holding them accountable for their actions, that is their problem, not yours. Because at this point, emotions are justifiable. It is not wrong to be angry at things because they are morally wrong. The question is not can I be emotional or angry? The question is what do we do with this anger?

[12:49] DDM: For sure.

[12:50] MET: So for now it’s important to feel it and walk through it. The people, okay, the problem with people who are constantly positive is that they don’t process their emotions, right? And you have to do that. And I don’t think that means we have to stop feeling anything. We just have to find a way to make things productive, right? What are we gonna do with this anger? How are we gonna make it work for us in the world. How do we behave as righteously angry people to make the world a more just place?

[13:23] DDM: I have to tell you, I love the use of your word righteously angry because, you know, in Trinity here, we always emphasize how righteousness is about right relationships. So how do we exercise anger in a way that doesn’t burn, burn relationships, burn bridges, you know?

[13:40] MET: And that’s exactly what I was about to say, right? Some of you may be like, Oh, Elizabeth, you’re a Christian. How can you like argue for this sort of thing. But I will remind you, Jesus got angry, right? He got so angry that he took the time to make his own whip.

[13:56] DDM: Little premeditation there. Exactly.

[13:58] MET: And drive out people from the temple and knock over tables along the way, right? It literally, you’re right, it was premeditated. It was intense. He took action. He was righteously indignant. And I don’t think he would begrudge me the same thing. The truth is you may feel like your country has failed you on both sides of the aisle. People feel like their country has failed them. And not just now, and in this instance, I’m gonna guess Reverend Deborah’s probably gonna give us some much needed perspective in a minute about how this did not happen in this

[14:29] MET: single moment. And it’s okay for you to be heart breaking about that. It’s okay to be furious or shattered that your friends or family betrayed you by voting in a particular way. These things don’t seem congruous and I don’t know how to tell you how to handle that. I’m struggling with it too. But know that your anger is not wrong. If anything, it is the right response to a terrible situation. Your heartbreak is warranted and nobody, I mean, nobody has the right to tell you that now is the time to be quiet, be thankful or play

[15:05] MET: nice. So go ahead and flip those tables.

[15:10] DDM: I love you, Elizabeth. Thank you. So although Elizabeth and I share, I’m sure most of the same values. I think we see this election and electoral politics differently and I’ve no doubt that some of that is because I was not raised in this country and so have obviously been shaped by a very different social and political context. Now we all have our own political thoughts and feelings, I have my own personal political thoughts and feelings, but I want to respond today as a parish priest. And as a parish priest I am so acutely aware of how

[15:49] DDM: polarized our society has become, to the extent that we are even struggling to have civil conversations anymore. And I think that’s why Elizabeth and I, when we were first dreaming this podcast into being, decided to use conversation as the basis on which these podcasts would happen. Because We’re losing leaders who can model for us healthy, creative conversations. And so we’re losing, even at a local community level, even in our own families, the capacity to really listen or hear one another. And I think when we get into these places, it’s so much easier in times like this

[16:38] DDM: to label each other, to claim the higher moral ground, and then simply to dismiss the other. And I think we can see how each side, even in our own electoral politics, views their own group as all good and the others as all evil or morally lacking. But the reality is things are seldom ever this black and white. And if we are always the ones who in our mind are morally right and our neighbors or those on the other side are always morally wrong, maybe as scripture says, we’re not seeing the log in our own eye. So

[17:15] DDM: I think for myself, I’m not a historian like Elizabeth is, but I do know a little bit about history, especially growing up in the South and in what used to be called the Third World, which is really the majority world. We’ve often had to really watch what happens in America because when America sneezes, as they say, the entire country has the flu. So we’ve watched and we’ve experienced some of America, but this country was founded on genocide. And we see how even today we continue as a nation to fund and support genocide. This country was founded

[17:54] DDM: on slavery and we see how racism and the desire for cheap labor and cheap products continues to shape the USA. This country was founded as many others, most others on patriarchy, the rule of men, and we see how misogyny continues to shape every aspect of our society. And so these three things in some ways continue uninterrupted, no matter who is in power, in a very deep structural way to play out in USA policies, irrespective. Now, I believe as a parish priest, as people of faith, we have to speak out against these things no matter which government

[18:37] DDM: is in power. As people of faith, I think we are called by the gospel of Jesus to stand firm around certain values. All people are created by God, equally loved, equally sacred. Human rights are therefore God-given and our duty to work for. The poor, the most vulnerable, that is where Scripture calls us to primarily see the face of God and to respond to those groups of people as we would to guard God’s self. So immigrants, refugees, ironically are singled out repeatedly in scripture for us to protect, uphold the rights of, and offer hospitality in our communities

[19:28] DDM: too. So these are for me not political values, they are biblical values that when, sorry, yeah.

[19:36] MET: Can I interrupt really quickly? This reminds me of our first episode when we were talking about what we like find in our faith and we were talking about Like I look for an ideology and we were talking about what that ideology means. And this is what exactly what I was talking about.

[19:53] DDM: You’re right, Elizabeth. You’re right.

[19:54] MET: This harkens back to one of the first things we talked about. Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

[19:59] DDM: No, Elizabeth’s got the better memory than I have. I’d forgotten that one. You’re right.

[20:03] MET: That’s exactly what we were talking about.

[20:04] DDM: And so these biblical values, when they are being violated, the church cannot be silent. And so we are called not just to speak, but to stand with these communities, no matter the cost to ourselves. And I think we are called by scripture to use any power or privilege we may have to work for the full rights and inclusions, inclusion of these groups of people that are marginalized or more vulnerable. So for me this is what hasn’t changed. Our mandate by Jesus has not changed. This is the work of the church, the calling of the church.

[20:45] DDM: I think the problem for me is when we as the church start to do these things selectively. So for instance, we stand for gender rights, but then we say nothing when Palestinian women are being slaughtered. We stand for the poor, but we say nothing when our country bombs and decimates other countries, leaving nothing but famine and hunger behind. You know, there’s one thing I learned in South Africa, it’s that if we only stand up for human rights when those rights are our own, we’re not really standing up for human rights, but really we’re standing up for

[21:22] DDM: our own self-interest. So as the church, we always have to self-reflect on how are we holding governments equally accountable, whether it is the government we voted for or the government that we didn’t. And I think for myself, you know, I’ve watched how the church has largely been silent on drone warfare, which is really nothing but targeted assassinations in other countries in violation of international human rights. I’ve watched how the church has often been silent around some of those movements internationally of violence against black and brown bodies, and yet we are then enraged by the racist speech,

[22:09] DDM: and rightly so, of some parts of the right-wing movement here in the USA. So we have to ask ourselves where is the consistency? The Church must stand firm against all forms of war, racism, sexism, ecological destruction, the oppression of the poor or immigrants, no matter where these policies or statements come from. And the church cannot become the theological mouthpiece of either the Republican or the Democratic party. And that means we have to stand against Christian nationalism, which is a contemporary heresy. But again, we need to self-examine where we ourselves are upholding an unhealthy relationship with religion

[22:58] DDM: and patriotism. So, you know, to people of faith, I would agree that there’s nothing wrong with constructive anger. But we need to say, is our anger consistent? And can we let our anger first lead us to self-reflection and awareness of where we have contributed to these sins or been silent in the past. And I think the other thing is that we need to be cautious that our anger is always directed towards policies, not people. Because our neighbors are not our enemies. But racism, sexism, militarism, xenophobia, oppression, these are the enemy.

[23:39] MET: So I actually really appreciate what you said about policies there, Reverend Deborah. I think you’re 100% right that the focus of our energy, regardless of our political paradigm, should be on policy. I agree that if we get caught up in the trap of conservatives believe this, so that’s what I believe, or liberals believe this, so I do too. We are setting ourselves up for disaster really quickly because like you, I think both sides have some pretty problematic positions. So the goal has to be not to align with a side, right? Not left or right, but

[24:18] MET: to consider the policy in question. Now, you might say, but didn’t you just talk about how angry you are about the campaigns? Is that policy? Well, but yeah, they are. In a campaign, the administration previews what their policies will be like.

[24:36] DDM: And I think in some ways the election was very poor this year in doing that on both sides. Yeah, yeah.

[24:41] MET: Absolutely. We are concerned about policy here. And the promised policies of the new administration is going to marginalize and hurt and I mean physically, emotionally, and financially hurt some people. So if you’re gonna make it about policy then the policies need to actually be good ones And that’s what I’m getting at. I’m not just angry that the guy who won is a bad dude. I think most people who are in charge are bad dudes.

[25:12] DDM: Yeah, we agree on that one.

[25:14] MET: I’ve been studying politics for 20 years. Like I’m not impressed with any of these people. I’m angry at policy.

[25:20] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. And like you, you know, I agree that our current political leadership across the board is not serving any of our people anymore, other than the most wealthy. You know, our political system is just no longer working and something new is needed and I think people sense that. But how we get there? I have no idea. But something new has to be birthed from the ground up And for that to happen, we as local communities need to be speaking to one another. We need to be caring for one another. We need to really know and

[25:56] DDM: be there for our neighbors, whoever our neighbors are. Because I know from working in local communities, there is a lot of goodness out there in our people. People care, people want to make a difference and for myself that is where I will choose to place my hope and my energy. So I guess in wrapping up our episode for today, the question is, is where do you find hope? With whom do you find hope and strength? And as always, if you are looking for a faith community that doesn’t have all the answers but gives you space to

[26:35] DDM: ask the questions and feel what you are feeling, Trinity is always here as a place where you can belong and be loved. And if you are in need of a priest, Just remember that we are here for you.

[26:53] MET: 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.

[27:23] DDM: Music by AudioNautix.com

Episode 7 – LGBTQIA+ and the Church

December 5, 2024 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

Image of a progressive Pride flag that is folded over itself.

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 7 - LGBTQIA+ and the Church

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In this episode Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth talk about the relationship (and tension) between the Queer community and the Christian community. They discuss their experience with the church and how it has treated the LGBTQIA+ community and the history of the Queer movement in America, and how that has differed from the international community.

Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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

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

[00:11] 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. Action. So today we’re going to be looking at gender and sexuality and transness and for myself I think it’s 1 of the most interesting concepts to look at theologically. But a little bit about, so we name where we come from. I myself am lesbian, but honestly I’ve always wondered if I’m trans and

[00:58] DDM: again like we were saying Elizabeth, you know if 1 had different options I wonder whether I would have chosen something different. You know, I grew up in a culture where it was illegal to be gay. Many of my friends were jailed simply for being gay. Grew up listening to the hate speech and violence directed towards the gay community. And honestly, it was frightening as a young person growing up. So I married at 18, had children, but as I grew older and funny enough, it was primarily through prayer and spirituality that I really got to know myself

[01:32] DDM: so much better and it just became increasingly clear that I was not a heterosexual woman. I divorced at 32 after 14 years of marriage, but the church was not in any way ready to hear the voices and experiences of gay people. And so I remained closeted as a priest in South Africa for a number of years until that option became internally impossible for me. I was doing human rights work over in the West Bank in Bethlehem. And I met my wife-to-be, we got married and have now been married for 15 years.

[02:10] MET: First off, I cannot imagine the internal fortitude that took, so props to you. I have a much more ridiculous story. I’m gonna start with kind of a funny observation. And that is when I was growing up, my parents were absolutely horrified by the topic of sex. Like I could probably count on 1 hand, the number of times I have heard my mother say the word sex. The reason this is applicable is because on the 1 hand, I grew up in a tradition that is completely and 100% hostile to the queer community, right? Like Southern Baptists do

[02:58] MET: not like queer people. But my parents were so terrified to even mention sex or sexuality in my home that they never got around to instilling in me a hatred of homosexuality. Right? Like they just couldn’t mention it. So they were so averse to talking about sex that like they didn’t even, they couldn’t even talk about the fact that there were people who were same sex attracted. And I just like didn’t absorb that for my overall religious environment for whatever reason. So I just didn’t learn to hate gay people. And I distinctly remember 1 time when I

[03:40] MET: was in junior high and a friend made some disparaging remark about gay people. And I said, there’s nothing wrong with being gay. And this group of church people turned on me and they were like yes there is and they kind of really attacked me and started yelling at me about the bible and this verse and gay people are going to hell and I was so confused because the Bible as I understood it was all about love and not judging people. So I didn’t really say anything, but I was like, what is going on? And now I

[04:09] MET: run in very different circles and a number of people that I am very close to are queer. And I look back to that kid in junior high that I was, and I’m actually pretty proud of her. Like I knew at the age of 13 or 14, that people are people and deserve our love and respect. And I just had to get away from the others who were confused about it.

[04:30] DDM: But you know, I was thinking as you were sharing about your parents, my heart kind of felt, oh my God, I felt sorry for them, you know, because it can be so hard in these cultures. But it’s interesting how that puritanical western upbringing really created these very unhealthy understandings of and relationship to our own bodies. Right. And, and I think as well, you know, I wondered to what extent that shaped this very unhealthy reading of scripture, right? Because you know what always amazes me on this issue is when you actually go back and look at scripture,

[05:04] DDM: scripture itself, Old Testament, the New Testament, you don’t find that marriage is the primarily that Western concept of 1 man, 1 woman.

[05:14] MET: I always laugh about like biblical marriage or traditional marriage. I’m like, yeah, knock yourself out with that in the U S today, buddy.

[05:21] DDM: Polygamy is the dominant form of marriage in the scriptures, right? Yeah. And you find other forms of quote unquote, legitimate sexuality. I remember the first time I ever read, and I wasn’t in the church, but I had been given a Bible, and so I used to sometimes read it at bed at night. And I remember the first time I turned to the book of the Song of Songs.

[05:44] MET: Were you shocked?

[05:45] DDM: I was. I was like, oh wow, this is all in the Bible. A lot about breasts and

[05:50] MET: breasts are like gazelles.

[05:52] DDM: I know. And I was like, you know, I was really pleasantly surprised. Right. But again, that speaking of sexuality in very explicit terms. And so I think in some ways, if we’re honest, the Bible does not reflect the discomfort that the West has around sexuality. The West is uncomfortable with sexuality and they’ve transferred that onto scripture. It’s not there in scripture. And so I think many of the Western churches attitudes to bodies and to sex is actually far more cultural than it is biblical. But if we go back now to looking at gender plurality, right, and

[06:35] DDM: the full diversity of human sexuality, I think it’s so important always to go back to that Genesis creation story, right, because in the very beginning, Our translations say in the very beginning God created Adam, but the Hebrew doesn’t. The Hebrew says God creates the Adama. And Adama is translated as earth creature.

[07:01] MET: In my mind, I like that God created the earthling. Yes, the earthling. That’s what

[07:05] DDM: I wanted to say. The earth creature, the earthling, exactly. And so this Adama that comes into being in the Hebrew Genesis story is both fully male, fully female, and fully everything all around that, right? So God creates this earth creature or earthling in, and then this is important again, in the Hebrew text it says in their image, not in his image or her image, but in their image. And you know, again, the West always thinks of God as individual, as singular, right? And I think that’s again, that transference of Western individual culture onto God.

[07:50] MET: Can I interrupt you really quickly?

[07:51] DDM: Absolutely.

[07:52] MET: That is so fascinating, thinking about what we talked about in our very first episode, when I was talking about like my tradition being like hyper individualized. Yes. And making like that connection to what we talked about in our first episode. Oh my gosh, I’m like so fascinated by what you’re talking about.

[08:08] DDM: So God is not individual in the Hebrew scriptures and singular, right? God is their, them, our, God is community, God is plurality, right? And I think in the same ways that the being of God, if this earthling is created in the image of God, it is fully male, female, and everything else that weaves in between that. So again, the West, from this individualistic, very binary kind of concept, tends to transfer that onto God. And so the debates of, well, is God he or she? God is both and more, right? Because God

[08:48] DDM: is plurality. And so, you know, 1 thing when we talk about this issue, I think we’ve got to remember is that others cultures and traditions don’t see people or sexuality in the same way as the West. Unfortunately, where missionaries and the church got imported as a colonial strategy in colonialism, I think you do see the damage that it’s done to indigenous cultures and the way in which they relate to their own bodies and sexuality. But the image in scripture is definitely of God being imaged as plural, right? And so what does it mean to be created

[09:26] DDM: in the image of a God who understands themselves as plural? What would it mean to begin to see ourselves perhaps more in terms of plurality of being? And so secondly God creates this original earthling encompassing all of maleness, femaleness in one being and so that Earth first Earth creature is beyond binary right holding all forms of gender and sexuality in 1 and so I really think that Genesis story holds a very radically different way of understanding who we are as human beings. We’re not singular, we’re not binary, we all are so much more and beyond what

[10:10] DDM: any of us have maybe previously thought or known ourselves to be. And so I wonder if in our current thought patterns, I mean, if you listen to our current dialogues, there’s a lot of stress on, well, which box do you fit into? Are you male or you female? Are you bi or are you trans? I find myself wondering from the scriptural perspective, if this is still far too confining and narrow, asking for us to be 1 thing instead of the space for many. And I think really scripture has been co-opted by Western conservative culture to say

[10:47] DDM: things that it doesn’t say, right? It’s being used by the Western church as a tool to control people’s bodies and sexualities in ways that scripture was never intended to be used. And I think unfortunately that distorted use of scripture has really been used in highly oppressive ways, limiting human fullness, rather than ways of opening up new ways of being and exploring who we are in a far greater, more expensive way.

[11:19] MET: Okay. Can I ask you a question? And if you’re not ready to just like launch into this discussion, that’s fine. I’m asking you a question you may not be ready to talk about. This is not a personal question either. I’ve heard you talk about translation issues with largely like Leviticus and kind of those clobber passages. Could you give just like a brief overview of those kind of like, why, why do we freak out about some of these issues? Why do we freak out about some of these verses that seem to imply these behaviors are

[12:04] MET: so bad. And what is your response to that?

[12:08] DDM: Right, so largely I think it’s that whole lost in translation issue.

[12:14] MET: Yeah, I’d love to hear your take on that.

[12:15] DDM: So we’re dealing with scriptures that are written, first of all, in a context that is thousands of years removed from ours, number 1. So we’re dealing with a vastly different cultural context. We’re dealing with cultures that had very different worldviews and ways of understanding things, but they also had very different ways of understanding language. Language was not used and understood in the same way that it is in a western English approach. We’re also dealing with in the Old Testament scriptures that are written in Hebrew. In the New Testament we have Aramaic and Greek.

[12:54] DDM: And so when in the past people were translating these scriptures, very often they translated them from their own cultural perspective, which we all tend to do unless we’re acutely aware of it. And even then it’s going to impact it. But they also translated them with their own cultural prejudices. And this affects many issues in the scripture. So 1 of the issues would be obviously the issue on sexuality and homosexuality in specific. Just like I said to you, God didn’t create Adam, God created the Adama, right? Which is a huge difference, right? In the same way, when

[13:35] DDM: the, in the, in the Hebrew Old Testament scriptures, when they’re speaking about temple prostitution, because there was this concept much like tantric Hinduism, right? Where you would go to the temple there would be a temple prostitute you would sleep with that person and through that sexual act of union find union with God and Whenever they use the term for for temple prostitutes. They very often replace it with Homosexuality It had nothing to do with homosexuality, it had to do with with temple prostitution. So that’s a huge 1 in the Old Testament that you constantly find being

[14:14] DDM: repeated. And in the New Testament, the issue there is around what is, when they’re speaking about Paul is speaking about culture, he appeals to the argument of culture. Well, this is culturally done. Well, you know, in the West and in Greco-Roman culture, yes, women have long hair culturally, so perhaps that’s appropriate for them. In Africa, long hair is not appropriate. To have long hair, we’d have to straighten it and, you know, do kind of all kinds of techniques to try to make it grow long. It’s not natural for us. So, you know, appealing to what is

[14:53] DDM: natural and what is cultural is a very flexible concept. But then also In the New Testament, again, we find a mistranslation where Paul is speaking at 1 stage in what some Western, at a cursory glance, looks like homosexuality, but the words used actually arserecoitai and malacoitai, it’s referring to the sexual act of an older, more powerful man having sex with a young prepubescent boy.

[15:30] MET: Which would have been hugely important for Greco-Roman.

[15:34] DDM: Which was common in their day, but now in a Western culture, we wouldn’t consider that would be pedophilia Yeah, and we wouldn’t and you know, that would not be accepted obviously in our culture. So again, it wasn’t it wasn’t the consensual relationship of 2 adult men having a lifelong nurturing relationship. It was a more exploitative practice. So unfortunately, right throughout scripture, we find these places in scripture where there’s just has been horrendous translations. And it’s just kind of been in this catchall phrase of homosexual, which which the original text was not referring to at all. So it’s a pretty

[16:14] DDM: dishonest, you know, debate.

[16:17] MET: That’s fascinating. Thank you for that. I’m so glad I asked that. Okay, so speaking of cultural context and kind of where we are and who we are in this, I want to provide a little bit of background for our listeners about kind of what the queer movement has been for the last few decades in our cultural moment, at least here in the U.S. And it’s important to know that the queer movement in the US has been influential in other parts of the world. It has kind of spilled out across the borders and had a

[16:55] MET: difference in other places. So I am gonna focus on the queer movement here in the US, but acknowledge that it has, like the queer movement is vibrant and happening in other parts of the world. Absolutely it is. But I’m just going to focus on the movements that have happened here because that’s the context in which we’re working. I do want to note though, that for example, in a lot of places in the world, they have like pride celebrations and that kind of thing. In the summer months, That is because of Stonewall. Stonewall was something that happened

[17:38] MET: in the 1960s in America. So it is important to note that like the American queer movement has had impact worldwide. So let’s talk about that.

[17:49] DDM: That’s definitely true. That’s definitely true Because I remember my first time coming to the USA and I went to San Francisco. I knelt down. I placed my hands on the ground and I was like, I am finally on holy ground. Because San Francisco, for many of us living in other countries around the world, had become, it was the holy land, you know? It was the place that captured all of our visions and dreams of being free, you know?

[18:17] MET: Yeah, So actually, so let’s talk about that. Let’s go back in time a little bit. Let’s talk about, let’s start with Stonewall. In 1969, it really wasn’t okay to be out, if you will, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t gay bars. The thing about the gay bars, mostly in New York, was that they were kind of this open secret and a lot of them were actually run by the mob, if you can believe it. I know, right?

[18:49] DDM: Interesting.

[18:49] MET: It was a bit of a scam. You knew the bars were a front for the mob and they were laundering their money there, but it was the only place that queer people could go. So you couldn’t really complain about the drinks that were overpriced and watered down Because that was sort of all you had And the cops were well aware of this situation, but many times they were on the dole So they just let things slide and that was kind of the only queer community that you had in New York at the time.

[19:20] DDM: I’m sure some of the cops were in there too darling.

[19:23] MET: Yeah for sure village people all over the place right?

[19:28] DDM: Absolutely.

[19:30] MET: But for whatever reason on June 28th in 1969 in Greenwich Village at the Stonewall Inn, the cops weren’t having it anymore. There’s some background to that. In the early 1960s, the mayor of New York went on this crusade to shut down all the gay bars. So in late June, the cops went undercover and many of them were sent to smoke out these supposed reprobates in Greenwich. So on the early morning of the 28th, 2 cops tried to start arresting people at Stonewall. And what happened was the patrons fought back. They just weren’t having any of it.

[20:11] MET: The cops tried to line up and cart out a bunch of the patrons, but there were over 200 people there and they just pretty much said, no, we’re not going. And the story is that Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman of color was the first person to throw a brick. And that’s what happened at Stonewall. Marsha P. Johnson said, I’m not going, I’m not having it. And she threw a brick at a cop. And that is what started Stonewall. It spilled out of the bar and into the streets and people from all over the neighborhood, which

[20:45] MET: was a very queer friendly place just came flooding out and this bottles were thrown and Like windows were broken and bricks and rocks were being thrown and people were out there screaming queer power and gay power and it turned into a multi-day riot Okay, this leads me to a few observations before I move on. For 1 thing, we have to acknowledge that the movement for queer rights and acceptance, and I am making a generalization here, people usually think of it as starting with Stonewall, but there were things like the Madison society and other attempts to make progress

[21:20] MET: for the queer community that had existed previously, but for a lot of people they think of it starting it as Stonewall. This movement was anti-cop, anti-establishment, and riotous from the beginning, right? Like this was an anti-establishment movement and pride and the gay and trans rights movement has a long and storied history of being what you would call like extra rhetorical or extra legal, right? It moved outside of normative means. It was radical, that’s how it started. It was violent in many ways. And this also speaks to the nature of things like Pride or pro-queer movements today.

[22:08] MET: So for example, there is an ongoing debate about the appropriateness of family-friendly Pride or pro-queer events. On the 1 hand, the queer movement has always been about fighting the establishment, celebrating sexuality, and even celebrating sex and the body and free will.

[22:30] DDM: That’s what I was thinking of, sorry to interject. Yeah. You said that because again, that ties in family, quote unquote, family friendly, is that again, our aversion to dealing with and engaging with the body and sexuality. Exactly. Normative. Yes. Right.

[22:46] MET: Yes. Well, and that’s exactly what I was about to say like this celebration of the body and sex doesn’t necessarily lend itself to what we would think is kid-friendly events and There’s a lot of people who think maybe we shouldn’t demand that queer people make their events into something that they were never intended to be. On the other hand, there are a lot of 11 and 12 year old kids out there that know they are gay or know they are trans. And it would be really nice to have events where they could go and find a

[23:24] MET: community and have a safe place. So this is actually a conversation that happens, you know, every summer, like who gets to be involved, where do we get to go, who gets to be included, that kind of thing. So all of that is to say the fight for queer rights started out as this radical fight against the establishment But what is interesting and that in the last few decades? Queer Activists and allies have absolutely co-opted the tools of the establishment to advance their cause Specifically what I want to point out is that much of the advancement in

[23:55] MET: the queer rights in the last 20 years Has come through the court system Okay, I’m gonna warn you This is 100% up my alley In my other life. I am a free speech and legal rhetoric scholar, and I spend a lot of my time with things like Supreme Court opinions. Let me tell you something. I am such a nerd about things like this, but like years ago when the Obamacare decision came out, I remember exactly where I was. We were at the Children’s Museum that day, And I was so glad that my child was well behaved

[24:32] MET: because that meant I could pull up the Supreme Court decision on my phone and read it while my child played with foam blocks. So like reel me in. Okay, my producer is nodding right now. He remembers. Yes. Okay, so I’m gonna give you a quick rundown of queer rights in the last few years. I actually am going to take us back a few decades to 1967, which sounds like a long time ago, but it kind of is to Loving v. Virginia. This may seem not completely relevant, but it 100% is. Loving v. Virginia was what you

[25:10] MET: would call a miscegenation case. Basically it was about interracial marriage. There was an interracial couple that was arrested just for being married in Virginia and the Supreme Court decided that You have a right to marry who you want in 1967 right like in many ways that should have been the end of the discussion. The Supreme Court decided you have a constitutional right to marry the person of your choice. The end. What we argued about for the next, what, 60, 70 years, I guess, was what marriage means. So we know you have a right to get married

[25:53] MET: and we know you have a right to marry who you want. What people argued about was the definition of marriage. Does marriage automatically mean between a man and a woman? And people argued about that forever. Okay, fast forward to 1986, there was this really important case called Bowers v. Hardwick. And it’s like, I’m gonna tell you these things, you’re gonna be like, people cannot think this way, but they do In 1986 the Supreme Court decided that there is no protection for homosexual sex Like can you imagine being the people who present these arguments in front of

[26:30] MET: the Supreme Court? But the Supreme Court decided that you do not have a right to have certain kinds of sex. Right, you’re looking at me like this is nuts. It is nuts.

[26:45] DDM: It’s incredible how the government can feel it can overstep into your bedroom.

[26:51] MET: This got shaken up in 1995 with Romer v. Evans. This was a really complicated scenario, but basically what it boiled down to was Colorado passed a law that said you couldn’t discriminate against gay people. Then there was an amendment passed that said you couldn’t have a law that said you couldn’t discriminate against gay people. And then the Supreme Court came in and said that amendment is discriminatory so you can’t have that amendment. It was very complicated, but basically they said, no, you can’t say, you can’t have laws that are like against gay people. So progress, right?

[27:34] MET: The big turning point was in the early 2000s with Lawrence v. Texas. And I have to tell you a personal story. I remember when Lawrence v. Texas came out because I was at a party, I was, you know, 2021, maybe a little bit older than that. And we’re all sitting around at this party, standing around with our red solo cups, we’re like young adults, you know, cheap beer, whatever. And Lawrence V. Texas came out and Lawrence V. Texas overturned Bowers. And Lawrence V. Texas said, basically, you can have sex with who you want however you want

[28:06] MET: right like anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional and I remember standing her off my friends drinking our cheap beer and talking about how this changes things right Like Lawrence v. Texas is going to change the lives of people we know and love. And it was kind of 1 of the first moments where I had this realization that like the stuff that happens out there in the political and legal world, literally changes lives. And I don’t think I had recognized that outside of, you know, presidential elections before, but I realized this Supreme court decision, which seems so foreign

[28:45] MET: and out there and not related, was literally going to change, you know, my friend Bob’s life. Like his relationships would be different from here on out after that. And that was huge for me. Then in 2013, you had the US v. Windsor decision that was the DOMA decision that basically said there is this Definition of Marriage as being between a man and a woman in federal law and that was struck down, which led the way just 2 years later for Obergefell v Hodges. And that is the decision. It’s pretty simple. Some folks wanted to get married, so

[29:27] MET: they went to court and they won. So in 2015, gay marriage was made legal. There have been any number of cases come through since then that was like the Bostock case that dealt with trans rights. And there are a number of cases coming through the courts right now dealing with gender affirming care. But what people are really worried about right now is that Roe v. Wade has been struck down. That may not seem pertinent, but what most people don’t know is that Roe was decided on the merit of privacy, not abortion. You had a right to

[30:02] MET: abortion not because you specifically had that right, but because you had the right to make private medical decisions between you and your doctor. That right to privacy is very much in question now. And without the right to privacy, which is very much at the heart of the gay rights cases, there is a lot of anxiety about whether queer rights can be rolled back. This cannot be overstressed in the wake of the election. The incoming administration has tried to be very cagey in the last few months on abortion and Dobbs. Trump has tried very hard to distance

[30:41] MET: himself from past statements on this. He’s tried to make his position something like abortion should be a state issue, but that has not been what he’s been about in the past. He has been very proud of the fact that his court overturned Roe. That is huge for gay marriage Because gay marriage is predicated on the rights codified in women’s health cases, specifically a case on birth control, the Griswold case, and Roe. When the court overturned Roe, Clarence Thomas specifically said if he had his way they would come for gay marriage next. And it is very tempting

[31:24] MET: to say, oh that’s settled law they can’t do anything about that. But folks that is what they said about Roe. And another case to consider is a case that nobody ever talks about, which I mentioned just a few minutes ago, the Bostock case from a few years back. Bostock established trans rights as protected by rights that prevent sex discrimination. That has largely gone unenforced and states break it all the time. It doesn’t really have any teeth. But with the anti-trans legislation being pushed through in multiple states and the Trump campaign largely being ushered in on anti-trans

[32:01] MET: rhetoric, we can largely kiss that goodbye. Bostock will be overturned within a year. Okay, so what is the point of all this? I just dumped a ton of information on you. What am I getting at? What I am saying is that the movement for gay and trans rights has evolved a lot over time. It started as something radical and outside of the legal system and grew into a movement that utilized the law for its own ends. However, we are seeing the downside of that too. The movement used the law, but the law has turned in

[32:39] MET: a completely different direction after decades of conservative leadership. And let’s be honest, some of the Dems who have been in charge have been pretty conservative. So where does the movement go from here? So we’ve seen the movement encapsulate some really interesting positions, even binaries, if you will. It started as something radical and has kind of become institutional. The question is, will it need to radicalize again? And that’s sort of a question for any movement that wants to make a difference. The church itself could ask that question. We didn’t start as an institutionalized body. We were outside

[33:20] MET: the norm in the beginning. The early church was persecuted. Then as the church grew, it became institutionalized. Like all movements and organizations, there comes a time to ask, was that the right move?

[33:36] DDM: Absolutely, and the cost and what we’ve lost in that process of becoming institutional. But you know, I think the problem for me is that institutions always want us to fit into categories, because we’re so much easier to manage and control that way. But from a scriptural point of view, how do you make the miracle and the magnificence of a human being, an earthling, right? Fit into a category. I mean we were never created for that by God in the very beginning, you know, and even liberation movements I think often tend to want to create new categories

[34:12] DDM: into which we must fit. But why that constant need to define and to name who we are again going back in singular ways. You know, like I think to scriptures, God is both light and darkness. God is the still small voice and the thunder. God is male and female and them. And this is the garden whose image we are created. We are not 1 thing, but everything. And so much more than we realize and know right now. And I think so often it’s not just society that is constantly seeking to limit us. I mean, that whole

[34:49] DDM: story you were telling about the legal definitions and arguments in court. I mean, it’s a constant need to define, categorize, and box, right? And once we’ve nailed down this little box, now we’re gonna turn even to the definition of marriage. Right. I mean, I always laugh when we want to even as the church define marriage. Marriage is this very amorphous concept in scripture. Right. I mean, it really is, you know, and how much of our definitions of marriage are actually just more cultural definitions with a little smattering of of of of of kind of sort of

[35:22] DDM: theological sprinkles on the top.

[35:23] MET: And I have to tell you like when you talk about this, there’s a part of me that gets anxious because you know in my job what do we do? Define your terms, define your terms, state your claim, define your terms. So like, nebulous, amorphous, oh no.

[35:37] DDM: And yet I think that’s the movement of the Holy Spirit.

[35:40] MET: You’re 100% right. I’m just like, that’s just my context.

[35:43] DDM: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think part of the problem for me, just as a priest and as a human being, just kind of watching what’s happening in our world today, is that I feel like the LGBTIQ, whatever letters you want to use in that, that community of people have really become weaponized in the political debates, which we see playing out in the legal courts, right? Gay people and especially nowadays, I mean, if we’re talking about the last 6 months, trans children being used as a political tool. It stuns me that as communities, we are

[36:15] DDM: prepared to use our children and our children who in some ways are most vulnerable as a political tool in these political games that we’re playing today. I mean, for me, the abuse that is inherent in what is happening is absolutely appalling, right? But it’s such an easy community to target as scapegoats. So we can get our communities to focus on gender alternatives rather than on the massive wealth transfer that’s taking place at the hands of our leaders or the ecological raping that is taking place in our culture. So rather than focusing on those issues, Let’s scapegoat

[36:57] DDM: our young children who are grappling with issues of identity. When has that ever become a crime? When has that ever become a problem in our society? But I also have problems maybe with the way in which we are doing that to some extent because instead of asking our children to name themselves sexually at such young ages, why not just simply give them the space to explore the fullness of who they are? Give them space! Give them space for self-discovery. But I feel like already at such young ages, we are wanting to box children and put pressure

[37:35] DDM: on them to name themselves. Sometimes before they ready. It’s different if a child is clearly able to articulate and name themselves. Wonderful. We should be supporting and encouraging that. But I think there’s a huge pressure to kind of where do you fit and to name that, you know?

[37:52] MET: I feel like I have a lot of confidence in sort of the youngest generation that’s coming up right now. Yes. They are so much more chill about that kind of thing. Absolutely. Like people my age, you know. Absolutely. I see young

[38:13] MET: teens just being

[38:13] MET: cool about that kind of thing. And I remember when I was in junior high and high school, Like gender roles were rigid and sexuality was defined. Like these were hard and fast rules. And young teens that I know are just, They’re just chill.

[38:43] DDM: Trying to live their best life.

[38:44] MET: Yeah, they’re just, they’ve got, you know, they’ve got social media bullying to worry about. They’re not, they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna let gender binaries be the thing that stresses them out.

[38:59] DDM: Right, right, right. But I think for myself, you know, we’re just as a clergy person and as a gay person, you know, that threat of violence for me still is a huge concern, targeted violence against gay community and trans people. You know, I mean, when I was leaving South Africa, I hardly knew a gay woman who had not been raped. And again, if you’re talking about the private, you know, what are the private stories that we’re not hearing? You know, what are the private stories of what people are actually going through to try to forge

[39:31] DDM: a space of Integrity for themselves and at what cost you know And you know so from a church’s perspective I mean if we were to talk about what should the role of the church be in this shifting sea of sexuality and gender identity. I mean, for me, the biblical viewpoint is that we always need to be standing in solidarity. You know, What does it mean to stand in solidarity with those who are most vulnerable in our society? What does it mean to create spaces and space for healing and for transformation? And what for me is the

[40:09] DDM: irony of that word transformation, which we all seem to love so much, is that you don’t know what you are going to become when you are being transformed. You may become something that you had absolutely no idea of. And you know, for all we know when we’re talking about sexuality and gender, we don’t know what transformation is going to mean in another 10 or 20, you know, years time. But for me, when you were talking about institution and destabilization, the Holy Spirit of God, always there to destabilize. If you look at the role of the Holy

[40:39] DDM: Spirit, right? The Holy Spirit is never the aspect of God that has brought stability. The Holy Spirit is always the 1 who is blowing and changing things and enabling us to see and experience things we’ve never encountered before. And so my question is really how might the Holy Spirit be blowing and shaking up our old categories of sexuality, of bodies and of human beings because those old categories have damaged and limited all of us, right? But if you think of that concept of Ubuntu again, I am because you are, I can only be whole if I

[41:16] DDM: give space for you to become whole and isn’t that what God does in creation you know God creates space and says let there be and out of that space everything becomes right so for me sexuality and the full spectrum of sexual expression, it’s not really just about gay people or trans people. It’s about human beings. It’s about earthlings, earthlings loving their bodies, loving their sexuality and trying not to fit into nice little neat boxes because we are so much more than that.

[41:51] MET: Okay. Before we go, I do want to say something specifically to our listeners before we sign off. Depending on where you are in your life, this episode may have hit you a little bit differently. Some of you may be coming from a place of hurt or pain because of something you may have experienced because of churches that you have been to before. Some of you may be trying to figure out how to be the best ally you can be. And some of you may be just confused because this is all a little bit strange to you

[42:32] MET: and maybe you don’t know how you fit into this narrative. The thing we need you to understand above all else is that you are loved and if you have questions or concerns about any of this feel free to reach out to us or to your local church community and if your local church community isn’t supportive let us help you find 1 that is. This podcast comes to you from Trinity Episcopal and at Trinity Episcopal we celebrate diversity. If you need some of that and you think we can help you, let us know. But most importantly, this

[43:10] MET: is a message of hope and inclusion. If God’s love encompasses all, it is incumbent upon us to do the same. So if you are hurting, you are not alone. 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 priestimprof.org/donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope

[43:57] MET: you have enjoyed our time together today.

[44:00] DDM: Music by AudioNautix.com

Episode 6: Election Note

November 22, 2024 by Carl Thorpe Leave a Comment

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 6: Election Note

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Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe shared this brief note about the election: “We at the Priest and the Prof acknowledge that the election occurred, and it was a major event in American politics. However, Reverend Deborah and I have not had the opportunity to record new episodes since the election because of travel and work schedules. We will address this as soon as we are able.”