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Episode 22 - Judas

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Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss Judas. They discuss both the Biblical depiction of him and the recently discovered and translated non-canonical Gospel of Judas.

Transcript

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

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

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

DDM [00:40] Welcome. For anyone familiar with Christianity, they would have heard of Judas, the one who betrays Jesus and hands Jesus over to the state. Judas is a character that has also been portrayed in secular history as the traitor, the betrayer, all for money. In the Gospel of Luke, we read that Satan entered into Judas and drove him to betray Jesus. In the Gospel of John, he writes that he, one of the twelve, is a devil.

DDM [01:11] St. Matthew records that Judas hung himself with guilt for what he had done, and in the Book of Acts, we are told that Judas’ belly was ripped open and he died in a ghastly manner. In fact, even the Judas kiss has become a famous phrase. This is by far the dominant narrative and interpretation we have, and certainly been the official narrative of the church historically.

DDM [01:37] And yet I think sometimes people wonder if there’s more to the story. We know our own human need to scapegoat and make someone the villain, and so we find ourselves wondering, what perhaps in the story are we not being told? Was there another perspective to the story? In our podcast that Elizabeth and I did on Mary Magdalene, we spoke a bit about many of the other Gospels that were written, many of them around the 2nd century.

DDM [02:06] The Gospel of Judas, according to the historian Irenaeus, was written around 180 AD. And although the original was probably composed in Greek, the version that we have is a Coptic translation. It was discovered in a papyrix codex or book in Egypt in the late 1970s. It was probably originally composed in Greek, but the version, as I said, we have as a Coptic translation.

DDM [02:35] And translation of this Coptic version only began in 2001\. And in 2006, it was made available in printed form for the very first time to the public. So we’re dealing with a very recent development. There is a loss of text due to damage to the papyrus, but it’s really incredible, I find myself, to think that this gospel, after being lost for 1,600 years, is finally found and re-given to the world.

DDM [03:12] And once again, like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, this Gospel is written at a time when there were still many theological interpretations of Jesus, many different ways of understanding Christianity, and doctrine had not yet been formed into what we have today. So, this Gospel, the Gospel of Judas, records the conversation that Jesus had with Judas over one week, right before the Last Supper. And there’s a couple of very unique perspectives in this Gospel. Jesus is portrayed in the traditional four Gospels we have in Scripture as being very solemn, under great pressure during this week, when he literally musters all his courage and strength to set his face towards Jerusalem, and what he knows lies ahead of him.

DDM [04:04] But in the Gospel of Judas. There is joy in this Jesus at this time that almost wells up within him, and it almost comes out in this like carefree childlike laughter. So in contrast with the serious piety of the disciples, Jesus in the Gospel of Judas is laughing at them, telling them not to take things too seriously. Don’t try so hard to be quote-unquote right, because God is working out something much greater than any of them perceive.

DDM [04:37] In the Gospel of Judas, the other disciples become angry with Jesus for challenging them and their egos or their pride, whereas it is Judas in this Gospel, not Peter, who provides the confession of who Jesus truly is. Judas also sees Christ for who he is as the one, and this is an interesting perspective of how Judas sees Jesus. The one who comes from the primordial mother who is before all else. Judah sees Christ not as the tribal Israelite or Hebrew God, but as the seed which comes from the womb of all.

DDM [05:19] Now this is very different, I think you would agree Elizabeth, than the confession of Peter who sees Jesus as the coming Messiah, an anointed one. And I think we also must remember that at this time any books which were naming God as feminine were largely not being included in the canon of scripture. Now in the Gospel of Judas, because Judas can see Jesus for who he truly is, Jesus pulls Judas aside and asks him this crucial question. What is more important to you?

DDM [05:53] Belonging or the kingdom of God? And will you want the kingdom of God even if it means you lose your place in this inner circle of disciples? What Jesus is asking him is, will you live out your calling even if it results in the destruction of your reputation? Even if you are cursed by future generations?

DDM [06:17] The other disciples in the Gospel are far more interested in Jesus as their tribal national God, rather than God for all the world and the establishment of a far greater kingdom beyond the boundaries of Israel. And in this Gospel, the other disciples are the ones who will use the name of Jesus to lead many astray. And so in the Gospel of Judas, he makes the choice to follow his calling and destiny just as Jesus follows his. His calling is the one not who will betray Jesus, but who will hand over the body of Jesus in order that Jesus may fulfill his calling.

DDM [06:59] And so we can see that certainly this is a very different interpretation from the other Gospels, but it also for me reminds us of the complexity of how Judaism was being understood and all the different competing groups and theologies at the time of early Christianity. and how the life and death of Jesus was being seen and experienced or interpreted in many different ways.

MET [07:26] That is all so interesting. I do not have the theological background to talk specifically about all the different gospels.

MET [07:37] That’s not my thing. But what I can talk about is story craft. And as a writer, as somebody who studied a lot of literature, as somebody who appreciates a good story, I feel like Judas is pretty indispensable. Let me clarify what I mean by that.

MET [08:02] I’ve always found Judas really interesting, and I’m not going to lie. That’s because I have always found the villains of stories to be way more compelling than the heroes. One of the reasons I love Shakespeare so much is because I find Macbeth and Iago to be such fantastic love-to-hate them kind of characters. You know, I think in my senior year in high school, I wrote a whole paper about how, you know, if you don’t have a – it was about Hamlet or something, but like if you don’t have a good villain, that makes the hero, right?

MET [08:34] The hero doesn’t exist without the villain. And in many ways, Judas is kind of the most interesting bad guy of them all because his portrayal was so profound and had kind of a large impact. And that’s – you can say that theologically, you can say that historically, but once again, I’m interested in a storytelling aspect for a second.

DDM [08:50] Right, right, right.

MET [08:53] And this is in a literary sense, right? When Dante reaches the last level of hell in the Inferno, Judas is one of the three betrayers at the heart of hell because his is the worst sin of all, right? Like that’s the ninth level of hell in Dante’s Inferno. It’s Judas and a giant mouth.

MET [09:10] The Western world has long understood Judas to be the bad guy to top all bad guys. So I’m pretty fascinated by some of these kind of, and it’s interesting that you say the translation was in the early 2000s, because the timing is interesting.

MET [09:24] I’m pretty fascinated by some of these kind of postmodern attempts to contextualize, if not rehabilitate Judas. And these kind of go hand in hand with what we’re talking about with this gospel, because it’s this notion that he was not just some kind of stand in for a traitor, but a fully fleshed out character. So this relates, but give me just a second.

MET [09:46] In my propaganda class, we talk a lot about myth and narrative, because these are really powerful and persuasive things. The idea is that there are certain stories, myths, if you will, that are so ingrained in a culture that you just assume they are true. It does not matter if they are true, because you behave as if they are. The reason this is important in something like understanding persuasion is because if you appeal to a story that can be highly persuasive, that everybody already agrees on, then you’re starting from a point where we’re all in the same boat, we can all head in the same direction, because

MET [10:28] you’re starting with that common starting point. You’re making an argument that starts with something your audience already says, yes, I’m with you. It’s easier to go that journey with you. So let me give you an example.

MET [10:38] Let’s start with the American dream. The American dream, right, if you had to define it, is pretty much that if you work hard and keep your head down, you’ll be able to succeed in life and get your house and your 2.4 kids and a dog and a white picket fence and whatever else you want, right? Like we know this.

MET [10:54] Now, when I say this, often my students scoff, but I tell them a part of you believes this. I know that for a fact. And I know that because you are here. Some part of you believes that if you go to school and get a degree and work hard, things will be better for you, right?

MET [11:11] Like you’ve shown up. I know that you’re invested in this. And we talk about that on a small scale too. They believe if they work hard, they deserve success.

MET [11:20] So if they put in 15 hours on a paper or project, they think they deserve credit. If they get a D-minus on such a project and they come to me to talk about it and say, but Dr. Thorpe, I worked for almost 20 hours on this. And I say, those must have been 20 crappy hours. They would be both crushed and livid.

MET [11:41] B`ecause there is this idea that if you work hard and long, you should be rewarded. That’s the American dream. That’s the myth. And it is pretty important that most people believe that myth because what would happen tomorrow if we all woke up and realized that our work does not guarantee anything?

MET [12:00] The economy would come to a grinding halt because a lot of people would just stop working. We have to believe in the American dream to keep this country going. If we just woke up one day and realized, actually, work doesn’t guarantee much at all, we would stop. So it does not matter if these things are true. We are invested in them as if they are.

MET [12:25] So, okay, all of that is about myth and narrative. The narratives that are part of these myths are foundational not just to America, but to Western Civ. There are certain narratives, certain stories that are just at the core of who we are as a people.

MET [12:40] And I mean, half the world is invested in this. And even beyond that, there’s some universals within that. Things like “the hero’s journey,” or “the quest,” or stories of “the trickster.” These are everywhere. And the reason I bring this up in a story about Judas is because I want to talk about archetypes. In Western civilization, there are only certain stories that we tell. And because there are only certain stories, there are only so many characters. In many real ways, we just keep telling the same stories over and over again, and just kind of popping names in and out while we use and reuse the same characters.

MET [13:22] These are called archetypal characters. You may balk at that because all these characters seem different because of context and development. But the truth is, we’ve been telling pretty much the same dozen or so tales since the time of Aristotle. And with the exception of a few innovations in the postmodern era, we’ve been using the same characters to do it.

MET [13:43] These are characters like the hero, the wise old man or woman, the trickster, the princess or damsel in distress, the femme fatale, right? In whatever movie or book or whatever, you can say, oh yeah, I know who these people are.

DDM [13:59] Right.

MET [14:00] The reason Judas plays into this conversation so well is because as we have changed as a culture, Judas has gone through different manifestations of archetypes. Judas spent a long time as a straight-up villain. He was sort of a big bad wolf kind of a character, right? Evil, focused on one hero, and in some ways a bit seductive, not in a physical or sexual sense, but in a more persuasive and intellectual sense.

MET [14:26] He was the ultimate traitor and bad guy. But as a story-consuming culture, we have not been happy with that bland archetype. That wash of just straight-up evil doesn’t make sense to us anymore. We demand context.

MET [14:41] We demand backstory. We demand to know why Judas is the way he is. And as Judas’ story has developed, be it through pop culture or the Gospel of Judas or even through literature, Judas has transitioned through a few different archetypes. He’s gone from being the ultimate villain to something different, depending on who you ask.

MET [15:02] To some people, he’s more of an anti-hero or a trickster now, and that is absolutely fascinating to me, because Judas hasn’t changed. The story hasn’t changed. But for some people, the core understanding of who this character is, has. And not everyone would have him at the center of the Inferno anymore.

MET [15:23] And that is just wild to me. And most importantly, it says something about us. Because it isn’t enough to just say, oh, here’s this character, blah-biddy, blah-biddy. It’s a conversation.

MET [15:34] No. It is not that we think about him for just randomly bad guy, that he has transitioned into something else. The important question is what this says about us. What do we want or need from this story?

MET [15:51] What do we want or need from this character? How do we see ourselves reflected here? And I think that’s the real question that as a storyteller, this is really interesting to me.

DDM [16:03] No, absolutely. And I think that for me is also the real gift of us finding these new manuscripts. I mean, the fact that this one was written probably around 180 AD, you know, there were different, even back then, there were these very different competing narratives, you know, so we’re only just really beginning, I think, to understand and appreciate the extent to which there was this huge diversity in thought, in understanding of some of these central characters, which, as you say, we’ve only had one way of seeing in the past, and that there was not just also one way in which Jesus was being understood and experienced.

DDM [16:46] You know, and I just think for myself that there’s such a danger in thinking that there is only one way of seeing things, because the reality is we all see, perceive, and understand something depending on who we are, as you were saying, in our own context. And so hearing these other voices, whoever the other voice is, you know, is really so important.

MET [17:09] I had a friend in grad school who was an avowed, well, okay, he was an avowed atheist. I had a lot of friends in grad school who were atheists.

MET [17:17] Grad school is a place where you find a lot of that. He knew I was religious and that was not an issue. We talked about theological things and we had questions for each other and there was never any ill will or tension about any of it.

MET [17:30] We were just good friends and we felt like we had a lot to learn from each other. And if I might add, that’s exactly what it should be like between people of different backgrounds and philosophies.

DDM [17:39] Yes. Always.

MET [17:41] Like we just had a great time, you know, figuring each other out. But one day, we were talking about some of the nuances of the story in question. And he said he always thought the story of the crucifixion got it a bit wrong, bold claim. He said he thought Judas made the ultimate sacrifice.

MET [18:00] And I was a bit taken back by that because in my mind, Judas was treacherous. Thinking of him as doing anything Christ-like seemed a bit blasphemous. This probably showed on my face because, you know, I was shocked, but I was going to let him finish. And he said, there’s no reason to think Judas changed his mind on Christ’s personhood.

MET [18:19] Judas may well have still thought Christ was divine or the Son of God or the Messiah. Judas might well have realized who he was betraying. The question is why? Did he betray Christ because he felt Christ was ineffectual, because Christ wasn’t exacting the kind of change Judas wanted to see?

MET [18:37] There are a lot of guesses as to why Judas turned his back on Jesus, but he said not many of them are that Judas stopped believing. Which, he continued, means Judas may well have known what he was doing. Judas may have realized that there comes a time when sacrifices need to be made, and he made one. And if that is the case, then Judas knew where he would be heading, like to an eternity of damnation, in order to do the right thing for all the world.

MET [19:04] And that, my friend said, is a heck of a sacrifice. Now, I had no idea what to say to this, because I had never heard anything like that. And it seemed so antithetical to everything I knew, and pretty heretical. But that was 20 years ago.

MET [19:19] And I’ve had time to sit with that conversation a lot. And while I’m not prepared to make any statements like what my friend did, I am prepared to make a guess as to why a narrative like that might be appealing. The story of the gospel is really tough. In a lot of ways, it doesn’t make sense.

MET [19:41] It’s really hard to latch on to. We’re supposed to connect to, once again, characters, right? We’re supposed to connect to this person, this character. who is God incarnate, perfect in every way, who loves so much and so deeply that he died for all of us and then miraculously came back from the dead.

MET [19:58] And this is supposed to help us make sense of the world? Sis, please, how is this helpful? If you tell this to the average person with no context, they will move right along. The thing about perfection, the thing about the story, the thing about salvation is that it is unattainable.

MET [20:17] Why bother worrying about connecting to a figure that is unattainable? I mean, that’s why I’m not particularly interested in a lot of archetypal good guys. They’re uninteresting and I don’t have any connection with them. But Judas is 100% flawed and human.

MET [20:33] If we think about sacrifice in human terms, it’s understandable. My friend wasn’t trying to be blasphemous. He was trying to put the story in terms he could make sense of. A god who came to earth and was perfect and then died doesn’t make sense.

MET [20:47] A man who is willing to put his life on the line for others does. And even the act of betrayal makes Judas more accessible. Churches have done a lot of damage by making God and Jesus into these up-on-high, untouchable, and holier-than-us heavenly beings, when what we need is somebody who gets us. That’s what my friend was getting at.

MET [21:08] There is no way that the Jesus who has been portrayed by the church for the last millennia or two would get us. He’s just too much. But Judas is a sinner. He made big mistakes.

MET [21:23] That’s something people like my friend can latch on to. And once again, as we read and reread the stories, the question is less, what do these stories tell us? And more, what do these stories tell us about ourselves? And this is one of those situations where it doesn’t matter what the theology is or what the manuscripts say, because the story has been told in a particular way for a very long time.

MET [21:46] And the narrative matters way more than the primary source or the preacher or whatever, kind of like the concept of myth that we were talking about. Because we are invested in the story and behave as if it is true in that way. There are certain things we have been taught to believe about people like Jesus and Judas, and that’s the prevailing narrative so that’s how we live our lives.

DDM [22:14] Very interesting, eh? So I guess for me, I do need to always work with the primary text. So what I find interesting, and especially coming out of what you’ve just shared there, is in the Gospel of Judas, Judas doesn’t actually see Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. He sees Jesus as one who comes from a far more universal God, the Primordial Mother. So he and the disciples see Jesus very differently.

DDM [22:43] Judas also in the Gospel of Judas doesn’t betray Jesus, but actually is the one who helps him fulfill his destiny and sets him quote-unquote free from the physical body. And in the Gospel of Judas, Judas, by doing this, ends up sacrificing his reputation. That is really what he loses, his place in that inner circle, his historical legacy. Because, and he’s prepared to do this, because for him he’s doing something far more greater.

DDM [23:14] He’s being true to his own calling. And so he chooses the kingdom of God over his own personal reputation. You raised the issue of perfection and I just want to come back to that because, you know, in the Gospels, it’s so interesting how, you know, we end up obviously with these translated texts and we’re looking at them through our Western frameworks, but in the Gospels, the word used for perfection is telios, which doesn’t mean perfection in the sense of how we use that word in English.

MET [23:46] Does it mean without flaw?

DDM [23:46] No, rather telios means to be complete. It means to be whole, to be fully mature or developed.

DDM [23:54] So really the idea of Jesus is that he was a person who was fully complete. He was fully whole. He was integrated. So when the Gospels call us to be perfect, telios, again, it really means to be able to grow into being completely who we were called to be, to be whole people, to be integrated with integrity.

DDM [24:18] And again, that Hebrew word for perfect, which is tamim, means, again, to be whole, healthy, and having integrity. And I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head where we have created often this very unhealthy narrative about God based on very poor translations that end up with this unhealthy, unhelpful, ideology. You know, God incarnates, takes human flesh to show us what it looks like for a human being to be whole, to have integrity, to be a complete human being. And yet how we’ve distorted that so often, you know, in theology.

DDM [25:02] And I guess for me, that’s why the Gospel of Judas and all the other Gospels, in some ways, that’s what they’re trying to grapple with. What does it mean for our choices, although they may be very different, I mean, Judas makes a very different choice from the rest of the disciples, but what does it mean for our choices, even if they’re different from everybody else, to be choices that for us have integrity? You know, what does it mean when the way we see things and experience things may be radically different? But the question is, do they lead us into a greater sense of wholeness and health?

DDM [25:39] What perspectives enable us to live into a greater wholeness? And what perspectives have we been taught or have we internalized that actually break us and do damage to us as human beings? And I think those are some of the questions that are also important for us to look at when we read any gospel, but also when we look at any theology. Is it leading into greater wholeness, integrity?

DDM [26:03] Is it enabling us to become more fully human and more full human beings? Or does it really cause unhealthy damage to myself and others in this world?

MET [26:16] So I want to kind of sign off with this. Some of the things that Deborah and I have danced around really for the last few months are questions of the differences between how we say what we believe and how we do what we believe and how we integrate what we believe. And I feel like some of our last few episodes have really kind of brought all of this into a very synthesized conversation. So I want to kind of bring some of this to a head.

MET [26:54] You know that I am a communication scholar, so I’m very interested in the words and the language that we use. And today I was talking about being a storyteller, right? It’s just All my life I’ve been interested in what we say and how we say it and the narratives we weave. And you know, Deborah is just such a fantastic purveyor of theological knowledge and doctrine and just such a great teacher.

MET [27:19] And one of the things that I think we are trying to do is talk about how we tell stories and how we tell stories about ourselves and how we tell stories of our relationships. and the way that we as people dialogue and how that shows up in our theology and how that theology shows up in our life stories. So, when we do episodes like this, that seems, well, just kind of a one-off, well, it’s just about Judas, how does that – it’s not just about Judas, it is about who we are as people. And that’s kind of what – I want that to carry us through as we look through these next few episodes, because we’re going to be looking at some very specific topics.

MET [28:05] But I don’t want you to think of this as a lesson on Judas. I want us to think broadly in terms of what does this lesson say about us and how are we communicating ourselves to each other? Do you feel like that’s a pretty good way to?

DDM [28:19] Absolutely, absolutely. So when we look at this topic, for instance, today, how do you understand who you are? How do you understand your calling? That may be very different from the way other people understand theirs.

DDM [28:32] That’s okay. How are you understanding what is sacred? Maybe you name it in ways very different from those around you. That’s okay.

DDM [28:41] You know, it’s that really pushing and allowing other stories for us to reflect on them and say, so where am I? Who am I?

MET [28:51] Yeah. I think that’s so important.

DDM [28:52] How does that influence the choices that I’m making? You know, because the reality is, is integrity is the most important thing. So, you know, Elizabeth and I have some very similar values.

DDM [29:04] We live them out in very different ways. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the beauty and the diversity of this world in which we live, is that there’s so much space for diverse action, diverse belief systems, diverse ways of understanding, and the more we come into conversation with one another and our ideas, the more we can grow and spark these own inner journeys that we have within ourselves and in relationships.

MET [29:30] Yeah, so that’s what we hope you’ll keep in mind as we move forward with some of these kind of singular topics, is we’re not thinking about when we did Mary Magdalene, it wasn’t a lesson on Mary Magdalene, it was a lesson what these people say to us and about us.

MET [29:40] Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to future conversations.

MET [29:58] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. 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 [30:25] Music by Audionautix.com

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The Priest & the Prof

Episode 20 - South Africa and the Episcopal Church

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Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the Episcopal Church’s response to the US administration’s demand that the Episcopal Church assist in resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa. They discuss the history and lasting legacy of apartheid in South Africa, as well as structural racism in the United States.

Transcript

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

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

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

DDM [00:38]Today Elizabeth and I want to focus on the recent situation with the South African Afrikaans asylum seekers and the conflict that developed with the Episcopal Church.

DDM [00:51] Now before I start, let me say that this is a very personal issue for me on both fronts. I’m obviously an Episcopal priest here in the USA, but I’m also South African. I am white. My grandmother was from the Afrikaans Dutch speaking community and our family on her side were actually farmers.

DDM [01:14] So this is a very personal issue for me. But I also need to say that since apartheid ended, I have not felt so embarrassed to be a white South African as I do right now. Every time I meet someone and they immediately recognize the accent and they say, where are you from? And I’m like, South Africa, but I’m not a refugee.

MET [01:34] Oh, no. Oh, what a terrible situation.

DDM [01:37] It is. It’s because it’s become quite embarrassing.

MET [01:38] To deny yourself that way. I’m so sorry.

DDM [01:44] No, it’s okay. It’s just very embarrassing. So let’s unpack some of the issues. So 59 white Afrikaans, South Africans arrived in the USA this May, where they have been granted almost like an expedited refugee status.

DDM [02:03] They claim to be victims of racial discrimination. Their refugee applications, as I said, were fast-tracked as the USA government claimed that there is a white genocide taking place targeting white farmers. So I’d like to just unpack that statement a little bit. Firstly, white English and Afrikaans immigrants came to South Africa about 350-400 years ago and forcibly displaced local indigenous South Africans off of their land.

DDM [02:38] Now that movement continued right up until the establishment of the nationalist apartheid government in 1948\. This government then legally built the legal and social framework of apartheid that drew directly on Nazi policies and ideology. It was founded on racial supremacy and really brutally oppressed and murdered indigenous South Africans while legally, socially and economically enriching white communities over decades. This brutal apartheid regime eventually ended in the 1990s with the freedom of Nelson Mandela and the election of the first democratic government of South Africa in 1994.

MET [03:29] Can I interrupt you and ask a question? I know in my upbringing one of the things that people were like is “Oh well, you know, Nelson Mandela was in jail for terrorism or whatever.” What was he in jail for? What was the story of Nelson Mandela?

DDM [03:44] Terrorism.

MET [03:47] Yeah, I want to get this story out there because I think a lot of us were told “Yeah, well, context, blah blah blah.”

DDM [03:54] Yeah, it was interesting for me coming here how almost Nelson Mandela has been, excuse the phrase, whitewashed in the USA. Nelson Mandela was in, he was a freedom fighter, fighting for the liberation of his people. Nelson Mandela was part of a liberation movement. which was not a pacifist movement, it was a military movement and we had a whole armed military uMkhonto weSizwe and Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for terrorism charges for blowing up… for bombings. Civilian.

DDM [04:30] ANC was fighting for their liberation of the communities and for us resistance to oppression does not need to be pacifist. There’s no obligation to fight a violent regime with pacifism.

MET [04:45] So I think, oh my gosh, producer let’s make a note we want to do an episode on pacifism.

DDM [04:51] Yes.

MET [04:52] Talk about Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.

DDM [04:56] No, absolutely, but I think you’re right. And I think it ties in with this whole issue of the white Afrikaans refugees, because I think there’s so much misunderstanding in the South African situation, and there’s been in some ways quite a retelling of the story to sanitize it.

MET [05:19] That’s so fascinating. I’m sorry, I did not mean to disrupt your narrative.

(crosstalk)

MET [05:31] Yeah, let’s keep going.

DDM [05:32] So from about 1913, so for like say 75 years in South Africa, black people were actually not allowed to buy or occupy land legally, which many people may not be aware of. So although black people in South Africa make up 80% of the population, white people only about 7%, white people still to this day own 72% of South African land and black South Africans only own 4% of the land. I mean that is just frightening. So although apartheid has ended, land and particularly farmland is still largely in the hands of white South Africans, while communities and families that were forced off their lands live to this day 30 years later still largely as landless people.

DDM [06:28] So this is the reality of what’s actually happening in South Africa. It’s a terrible injustice and it’s the ongoing legacy of apartheid. So last year in South Africa, now these are just statistics, pure statistics. Last year, about 40 people in South Africa were murdered on farms.

DDM [06:49] Now that number 40 is for all racial groups. That’s not just white people. That would be the murder of farm laborers. It would be, you know, if there’s a fight in a farm and somebody gets killed, 40 people nationwide were killed and that’s of every race group.

DDM [07:07] In 2023 it was 49, in 2022 it was 50. So these are annual figures of farm murders. Now compare that with the fact that every year about 27,000 people who are murdered in South Africa. And you can see we are talking about only a tiny, tiny percentage of murders in South Africa are actually farm murders.

DDM [07:36] And that tiny, tiny, tiny percentage is not of white people, it’s of every demographic group. So you can see that the claims of genocide against white people are just simply ludicrous from a factual point of view. The reality is white people still occupy over 60% of top managerial positions in South Africa, despite being only 7% of the population. White people still own the bulk of the land in South Africa.

DDM [08:08] The wealth disparity between black and white is actually worse now than it was under apartheid. The average black household in South Africa owns only 5% of what an average white household owns. 80% of South African’s wealth is still in the hands of 7% of the white population. So you can see in a way that in many ways, this country is still entirely skewed towards white supremacy and domination.

DDM [08:43] And so in some ways, something has to be done. And so for the South African government, that’s where they came and said that if land is owned, and it’s not being used or it’s been abandoned. Maybe a white family owned a whole bunch of South African land and then decided to immigrate and that land is now just simply sitting there. The government has said, and this is the legislation that they passed, that they may take that land without compensation if it’s not being used or it’s been abandoned for public use.

DDM [09:22] So, you know, it actually hasn’t been done, there hasn’t been a case of this actually being done, but it was a law that they passed, much like your public domain.

MET [09:31] I was about to say eminent domain. Yeah, this is not strange.

DDM [09:36] Eminent domain, there we go. There we go, it’s very much, it’s not unusual. But just like those wildly overblown claims of farm murders, this law was claimed by the White House as we saw in that press conference recently with President Trump as being a quote-unquote seizing of Afrikaans land without compensation, which of course it was not. And while we’re on that, let me just say that it was a bit embarrassing how the South African president was kind of thrown in that press briefing under the bus, but the images of the crosses Those were actually like a protest. They’re not actual graves.

DDM [10:19] It was simply that white farmers organized a protest to try to draw and whip up a media frenzy around this claim of white farm deaths. And so they had planted these white crosses all the way down these roads, almost like as a protest, right? It was a symbolic sign. So it was a little embarrassing, obviously, when on national TV in the US that was claimed to be actual graves of farmers.

DDM [10:46] They were not graves of farmers at all. And I think as well, a lot of the images that were being shown of farm murderers, some of them were actually in the Congo. So again, it was that overblown, you know, anything that happens in Africa is one nation, whereas they weren’t even South African murders, you know. So that was a bit embarrassing, you know, to see that.

MET [11:09] Okay. Oh, my gosh. I don’t even. Alright, so let me…

MET [11:16] I cannot speak to your experience as a South African, obviously. This is very personal to you. So instead of trying to talk about what’s going on in South Africa and what it means to be a South African, because obviously I can’t, what I will talk about is American legal procedure, like what this means.

DDM [11:39] Yes, yes. Interesting.

MET [11:40] And let me begin by just acknowledging that this sort of thing should be ridiculous by any standard. For example, the administration is trying to get rid of any non-citizen that says anything anti-Semitic.

MET [12:01] Okay, there’s a thousand things we could talk about how ridiculous that is, but whatever. Or the administration is trying to keep anyone who has ever said anything anti-Semitic out of the country. Now, anti-Semitism is defined completely by Trump and his associates, of course, except for these Afrikaners. There are plenty of examples of these quote-unquote refugees saying not just anti-Israel things, but straight-up bigoted things against the Jewish community and people.

MET [12:32] And I thought about sharing an example, but honestly it was so offensive I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. Some of the things that some of these Afrikaner refugees have said, about the Jewish community are just so vile.

DDM [12:46] And that in South Africa is this very unique way in which, remember, so much of the apartheid ideology comes from Nazi ideology.

MET [12:55] So when you said that, I was like, okay, that makes sense. But this isn’t held against this group of people the way that’s held against some other people. And I will say the difference is written on their faces. So what I mean by that is whiteness is entrenched in our law and educational system and penal system and all of these systems we’ve been talking about throughout this entire project: whiteness is built into it. With whiteness legally fixed into such foundational institutions like those, people of color face enormous difficulties in fighting things like systemic racism. So I want to talk about kind of, it’s a really big claim to be like, whiteness is systemic in the law.

MET [13:40] That’s something that an academic says, and you’re like, yeah, okay, well, that means something. But I want to, I’m going to back this up.

(crosstalk)

MET [13:49] I don’t want to be like, crazy academic who’s just like, oh, whiteness. So for a really obvious example, it’s helpful to go way back to the Scott v. Sanford opinion, which is more commonly called the Dred Scott case. If you remember your high school history classes, this is 1856, way back when, Dred Scott case.

MET [14:10] The Dred Scott case dealt with citizenship, specifically legal citizenship. The court concluded in 1856 that a free black person whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves was not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States. So even if a black person was free, if their ancestors came as slaves, they were not a citizen. The court did not burden themselves with rationalizing any issues of morality or racism or historical ideas on race the way that an original intent reading requires today.

MET [14:50] To the majority of the Supreme Court, it was very simple. They decided that since African Americans were not regarded as citizens or members of the state when the Constitution was drafted, the special rights and immunities guaranteed to citizens did not apply to them. So this was like straight up Black people didn’t count when we wrote the Constitution. Black people don’t count now.

MET [15:14] The court saw the Scott issue as a very straightforward matter of whether the progeny of property is a citizen and therefore privileged to the legal right to sue or other legal rights. And the court claimed that the words people of the United States and citizens were interchangeable, but since originally black people were deemed, and this is not my words, an inferior class of beings, they did not fall into either category and were not protected by the Constitution in the same fashion as white citizens. Right, yeah.

MET [16:01] Good moment for us, right? Perhaps the most striking observation to come of this kind of rhetorical legacy is that race, according to the Supreme Court, is cognate with the law. And what I mean by that is from the beginnings of our nation with things like the Three-Fifths Compromise and following the legal reasoning through Scott and Plessy, which I’ll talk about in a minute, The court constructed a narrative in which race was not just a demographic or identity, it was a marker of property.

MET [16:33] And that’s really important to understand about American law. Race equals property. So just five years later, in 1861, the Civil War began. Two years later, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

MET [16:50] And two years after that, in 1865, the 13th Amendment radically changed the landscape of the United States by abolishing slavery. However, it was not until the 14th Amendment in 1868 that the Scott decision was truly nullified. The 14th Amendment proclaimed that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens and that the states can’t make or enforce any laws that abridge the rights of said citizens, primarily the rights of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

DDM [17:22] Oh, so that’s what the big issue nowadays is people being in the USA.

MET [17:27] Yes, absolutely. I’m 100% getting to that. You are absolutely right. It also explicitly states that no citizen can be denied equal protection of the laws. And this is where I was about to go with that. I will note, it is absolutely important that you pay attention to the fact that the current administration is trying to get rid of these rights guaranteed in this amendment right now. Where in 1865 the goal was to guarantee rights regardless of color.

MET [17:55] There is a concerted effort right now and nobody is hiding it to strip those rights for the same reason.

DDM [18:02] And again, it’s around race.

MET [18:06] I’ll be very judgmental if you’re not grossed out by all of this, you’re a bad person. So, The Scott decision, because of the Civil War and the amendments that passed, was neutered in a relatively short, if bloody, amount of time. Legal citizenship was no longer a question for African Americans born in the United States. Then there were these other cases that came through in 1872 that aren’t cited very much, the Slaughterhouse cases, they kind of reiterated this.

MET [18:34] The Slaughterhouse decision affirmed that, so random, the state of Louisiana did not have the right to create a monopoly that required butchers to work for a particular corporation as that amounted to involuntary servitude, which was unconstitutional. Now this seems really random, like what do butchers have to do with all of this? But what it came down to is you couldn’t force people to work. So this led to a transitional period in court opinion as illustrated by Plessy v. Ferguson. I know I’m taking you through a lot here, but I think it’s…

DDM [19:08] Fascinating.

MET [19:08] Right. The infamous Plessy case established that separate but equal doctrine that dominated America until 1954.

DDM [19:18] Oh, which was very much South African.

DDM [19:19] Right. So this should sound familiar to you.

DDM [19:22] Absolutely.

MET [19:23] The Plessy case did not create separate but equal as a practice, but affirmed that the practice was legal. In fact, The opinion spent a good deal of time discussing how segregation was already practiced throughout the United States, specifically in education.

DDM [19:41] And this is about a similar sort of period. I mean, in South Africa we were ’48.

MET [19:46] Yes. We’re simpatico right here.

DDM [19:47] Yeah.

MET [19:48] The court noted that, as was brought to their attention in the slaughterhouse cases, the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to establish the citizenship of black people, to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens. Therefore, the question of legal citizenship was no longer an issue. What was at stake was whether the rights of citizens could be protected when those citizens were divided along racial lines.

MET [20:26] So I’m taking you through a long line of thinking here, but the reason I want to talk about this is because it is very important to see how race plays into the law. The court decided that separation does not automatically mean one party’s rights are being diminished. The court specifically argued that segregation was not a denial of due process or equal protection, and was not ready to accept any evidence to the contrary.

MET [20:52] So this is how we end up with a segregated country that says, oh, we’re really equal even though we’re separate. Okay. The reason I go through all of this philosophy of the court, at least the majority of the court right now, is because most people in the legal field today, and most people in the court today, would argue that the Constitution is or should be colorblind. And that is clearly, as I have just laid out, 100% nonsense.

MET [21:21] It has never been colorblind. Whiteness and melanin as property was written into the law from the very beginning with a three-fifths compromise. The law has never once in all of America’s history been colorblind. So when we pretend it is colorblind, we actually do a huge disservice to the people who it marginalizes.

MET [21:43] We ignore their plights. Race blindness or colorblindness does little to help race relations. If anything, it targets not the harmful effects of racism, but it completely obliterates any way of addressing those harms. It imposes a blanket identity on a group of people, which inevitably marginalizes those who do not conform to that identity.

MET [22:07] The idea behind this kind of blindness is that race should have no real significance, but it ignores the culture and the problems of a group of people and assimilates them all into one category, which inevitably is the majority. In other words, it eliminates the means to effectively battle racism by ignoring that racism exists. In this way, race blindness or color blindness, or however you want to talk about it, exacerbates the hegemony of white culture. It simultaneously declares race irrelevant while it prevents any step to achieve racial irrelevance.

MET [22:43] Understanding whiteness in the law, then, is crucial. Whiteness itself is self-evident and omnipresent, like whiteness is everywhere and it’s American and it’s dominant. In other words, people think of it as interchangeable with the idea of American and it’s the cultural yardstick for national identity. When whiteness is the norm, it is an invisible identity.

MET [23:07] So thinking in terms of whiteness in the law really illuminates the South African immigration fiasco.

DDM [23:12] Absolutely.

MET [23:13] The law is not just a code for us to follow, it constitutes our identity, and it constitutes us as white. So when we think about who can migrate to the US, and the Trump administration is taking this very seriously, There are migrants who can be us, white migrants, and those who cannot, migrants of color.

DDM [23:34] It’s almost like we saw the differentiation between how Ukrainian refugees were treated versus, say, Venezuelan or Mexican.

MET [23:42] This effort by the Trump administration is a continuing effort to bolster the whiteness of the law, by adding legal protection to white and specifically white supremacist immigrants and ridding the nation of non-white immigrants. The law is being used to code which immigrants are acceptable and therefore which immigrants are us. And right now that means we are white supremacists.

DDM [24:03] Yeah, 100% and that’s where the Episcopal Church now enters really the story because for the past 40 years the Episcopal Church has been really in a bipartisan partnership with the US government to help settle refugees. But since January, that program virtually stopped as obviously hardly any refugees have been coming into this country. Staff were laid off, funding like many departments became very uncertain. We all know the assault obviously taking place against many immigrant communities, the assault against the concept of churches as places of sanctuary and even sanctuary cities like our own Rochester, New York.

DDM [24:45] And so it’s in this context that the federal government reached out to the Episcopal Migration Ministry, informing them that because they receive a federal grant, they would be expected to resettle these white Afrikaans, South Africans that had been fast-tracked to be classified as refugees. Now the Episcopal Church has always focused on immigration. It’s deeply committed to helping people and families who are refugees and asylum seekers because as we looked in our immigration episode, that’s central to our faith to protect the vulnerable. However, The Episcopal Church is also deeply committed to racial justice and to truth.

DDM [25:29] And that’s where the problem comes in, right? Because, number one, there is no white genocide. There is no large murder of white farmers. There is no expropriation of their land and this white minority is still part of the wealthiest segment of South Africa which they have inherited through apartheid.

DDM [25:55] So that’s number one. Number two, the Afrikaner community in South Africa has consistently, and this is a generalization of course, but they have, as a general rule, consistently fought the dismantling of apartheid and any idea of a more equitable distribution of resources, particularly land. The Afrikaner community in South Africa continues to locate its identity in this separatist right-wing nationalist movement shaped by Nazism. Now, of course, you get some white South Africans that were part of the liberation struggle, but I’m talking about as a generalization.

(crosstalk)

DDM [26:34] And so for the Episcopal Church, which historically fought apartheid, to now assist in resettling this Afrikaner minority, who have been declared refugees within a few short months, while other refugees who have waited years to have their cases heard, have been deported, put into detention, sent to prison camps, or simply had their application processes stalled, leaving thousands now in limbo. To suddenly now begin to resettle these white South African quote-unquote refugees would be a betrayal of everything that our church stands for. And so the Episcopal Church at great cost said to the federal government that they would ethically not be able to do this.

DDM [27:19] And so they’ve officially ended their agreement with the US federal government. The Episcopal Church will no longer receive any funding from the government and will instead continue working with refugees and asylum seekers independent of the US government. So to watch I think one group of people who are not fleeing war, starvation, torture, be given such fast-track preferential treatment over others who fled the most unimaginable horrors or have been living in refugee camps for years under appalling conditions, I think is just absolutely horrendous. The obvious racism in this whole narrative is unmistakable. White South Africans are termed refugees, but everyone else with a different skin color is called an “illegal” or a “criminal.” South African white supremacists are welcomed with open arms, but professors or students who speak out against a US funded genocide in Palestine are being deported. And so once again we see so clearly that white lives are valued, but black and brown bodies and lives aren’t.

MET [28:30] All right, I’m going to tell you a story that sounds completely unrelated, as is my want.

DDM [28:35] Those are the best conversations.

MET [28:39] But it’s an example of something that reminds me of this. Okay. So I’m going to tell you the story of one of the most notorious Supreme Court cases of the 20th century, at least the last part of the 20th century. It was a case that at the time everybody knew about and had an opinion about and everybody was mad about it for one reason or another. It was one of those things where literally nobody was happy. The case was National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie in 1977.

MET [29:09] So the Village of Skokie, Illinois had a population of approximately 70,000 persons, of whom approximately 40,500 were Jewish, so very large Jewish community in Skokie. On March 20th, 1977, Frank Holland, the leader of the Nazi Party of America, informed Skokie’s police chief that the National Socialists intended to march on the village’s sidewalk on May 1st. So the Nazis were coming to Skokie.

MET [29:43] As a result of media attention and a number of phone calls allegedly made by Nazi Party members to residents with quote-unquote Jewish names, this planned demonstration became common knowledge among Skokie’s Jewish community. The District Court of Cook County conducted a hearing on a motion by the village of Skokie for a preliminary injunction. They wanted to see what they could do to get this regimented. One resident testified that a number of Jewish organizations planned a counter-demonstration for the same day with an expected attendance of 12,000 to 15,000 people and that the appearance of Nazi demonstrators could lead to violence.

MET [30:25] So the mayor of Skokie also testified that the demonstration could lead to violence, and the court entered an order barring defendants from marching, walking, parading, or otherwise displaying the swastika on their person on May 1st, 1977\. So they’re like, no, you can’t do this. You can’t have this march. The Nazi party applied to the Illinois appellate court for a stay of that injunction.

MET [30:53] So there’s a background, I’m not gonna get into court words, but basically there’s a back and forth between whether the Nazis can march on Skokie. And on appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court denied the petition for a stay. And the Nazi party filed an application with Justice John Paul Stevens, who actually referred this matter all the way to the Supreme Court. So it’s the Nazis versus Skokie all the way to the Supreme Court.

MET [31:18] And the court held that Illinois must provide strict procedural safeguards, including appellate review, to deny a stay for an injunction depriving the Nazi Party of protected First Amendment rights. The decision was complicated and it had a lot to do with procedure, but the ultimate end of the day thing is that the court decided in favor of the Nazis. Wow. Yes, they said the Nazis have their free speech right to march.

MET [31:47] Now, for what it’s worth, the march never happened. There was such a lead up and a hubbub to this. When it finally came down to it, the Nazis were like, just kidding, we can’t be here. So the march never happened, but the Supreme Court found in favor of the Nazis.

MET [32:01] And this was a kind of breaking point for the ACLU for a lot of people. They were like, I don’t know if I can support this anymore. But as you can imagine this made a lot of people mad. Because people love free speech, and then they see it in action and they’re like “Oh, I don’t like that.” Because there is free speech and then there is hate speech. Right, now I admit to being maybe problematically in favor of free speech in many ways. I’m May

DDM [32:34] Which if you don’t mind me interjecting, that was part of what the South African president was saying when Trump showed the video of Julius Malema, the minority party, singing the song of Kill the Boers, which was an apartheid kind of, again, symbolic slogan. But again, that was what the South African president was saying. You know, it’s that whole debate of free speech. We actually protect people’s right to say things, even if we disagree with them.

MET [33:08] That’s right. I think you and I have kind of talked briefly about this here and there.

MET [33:12] I’m a fan of protecting things that maybe other people wouldn’t be a fan of protecting. And that’s neither here nor there. But as many people in America find problematic, hate speech is protected here. And we can go into the whys and the wherefores of that sometime later if you want.

MET [33:30] But America has long protected controversial speech, and there’s a whole episode waiting to be done on the question of that. We do that much more so than other countries, especially European countries. But the question is, do we allow or do we help? And I think that is kind of at the heart of this issue.

MET [33:52] It is one thing to say people shouldn’t be allowed in this country. Once again, I can refer to speech law as an example, right? In the early 1900s, there were laws about things like if you harbored deviant political thoughts, you weren’t allowed into the US. Most people, like most decent people, disagree with keeping people out because of their ideas.

DDM [34:13] You know, when you apply for citizenship in this country, you have to say that you’ve never been a part of the Communist Party. I just wanted to let you know that.

MET [34:22] That’s left over from the 1920s.

DDM [34:24] It’s actually pretty frightening, but carry on.

MET [34:26] But most people disagree with keeping people out because of their ideas, but what about helping them? And I think this is the crux of the matter.

DDM [34:33] Or giving a platform.

MET [34:34] Yes, there is a huge difference between allowing and helping. And the Skokie case is kind of indicative of that. The court said you have to allow hate speech, but the controversy is how much do you have to help it? Does it need your protection?

MET [34:47] Do you have to guard it? What is an ethical response? What does equity require? And the Afrikaner situation is a bit more cut and dry in that sense, right?

MET [34:56] They may want to leave South Africa and come to the US. And most people would say if they have the means, you know, so be it. But the problem is not that they want to come here, though I think a lot of us would agree we have our fill of white supremacists. The problem is that we are helping them, and that shows favor. And this returns to the whiteness of the law. By blessing the Afrikaners, we are blessing their ideas, and that is a huge problem.

DDM [35:22] Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s why, for myself, I’m so proud of the Episcopal Church for saying, you know, we’re not going to be your religious window dressing of racism. You know, we’re not going to be your religious pipeline for dishonesty and apartheid-like policies. I think the Episcopal Church is really by making this action shown the truth really isn’t for sale and federal funding cannot be more important than the gospel of Jesus and for me that’s integrity you know that that really is faith and moral courage of which I think we need a lot more of right now in our world.

MET [36:02] Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was a very personal topic for us today. It really reached into some things that we hold near and dear to our hearts. We would definitely welcome some input on this one, so feel free to email us, and we hope you have a lovely week.

MET [36:23] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. 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 [36:52] Music by Audionautix.com

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 19 - Prison

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In this episode, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the difference between reformation and punishment in the prison system.

Transcript generated by automated process.

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

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

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

DDM [00:43] Hello, beautiful people. Hello, Elizabeth. Hello. So this week, Elizabeth and I want to be looking at the issue of prisons, prisoners, the prison system. And so, Elizabeth, let me begin by sharing my earliest experiences around the concept of being sent to prison.

DDM [01:03] When I was just becoming a teenager and I wanted to start looking more grown up, I went through this very short phase of trying to read the newspapers, actually an in-print newspaper, which it was in those days. And I remember very quickly reading a front page article on our national newspaper on how a man and a woman were being sent to prison because they were in a sexual relationship, but he was black and she was white. And I remember reading this and I was horrified. And I remember thinking, I must have been about 12, 13.

DDM [01:45] And I remember thinking, they can send you to prison for that? And I remember speaking to my parents about it. I remember the feeling, I don’t remember the dialogue, but I remember the feeling of that almost cold horror that sets inside of you. And then, of course, always in the background in South Africa was the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, decades spent in prison for terrorism charges.

DDM [02:15] And then later learning as I grew older of fellow clergy who were anti-apartheid activists being imprisoned even in solitary confinement. And then equally personally, the number of my own friends who’d been jailed for being gay and in gay relationships, which until, I think it was the 1990s, was still illegal and a criminal offense in South Africa. And so I think I learned growing up that prisons are not about whether you are good or bad, but that prisons very often are used as a fear tactic of trying to control our behavior, and that many really good people are imprisoned for doing the right thing.

DDM [02:59] And so I think my perspective on prisons has undoubtedly been deeply shaped by those experiences.

MET [03:07] OK, before I start talking about what I want to talk about, I want to acknowledge that my understanding of the penal system of prisons is not as personal as yours. When I speak, I’m definitely speaking of a very privileged person who, you know, I understand this kind of academically and intellectually and then kind of as an advocate, but I don’t understand this in the same personal way that you do. So feel free to jump in at any point and be like, you know, Let’s talk about this. So I acknowledge that your perspective on this has a lot more weight to it in the individual sense.

MET [03:59] So I just want to want to center that before I even start. But let me give you my kind of my input here. It will not surprise anyone to know that I am a member of something called the National Communication Association.

DDM [04:12] No, it doesn’t surprise us.

MET [04:15] No one’s gasping in shock at that. This is the largest association in America of communication professionals, and many of them are academic. These are people who study, practice, and apply all of the theories and methodologies and practicalities that come with the field of communication. It’s a really big association.

MET [04:37] When we have our conference every year, which of course not everybody goes to, but about 5,000 people show up. I know that’s not as big as some associations, but we definitely take over a whole convention center. It’s a nonprofit organization and a professional one. I’m giving you this background to emphasize it is not a political organization.

MET [05:01] However, it does advocate for practices and policies that aim for healthier and more effective communication. The reason this is interesting today when we are talking about prisons is because a while back, NCA took a stand on a particular issue dealing with the judicial system. NCA was very vocal and has done some real advocacy on the issue of solitary confinement.

DDM [05:28] That’s interesting.

MET [05:30] Yes. Solitary confinement, as you probably know, is the practice of locking a prisoner away so they have no contact with anyone for a particular amount of time. No conversation, no sight, no physical contact. They are completely alone. This can be done for their protection.

MET [05:47] If for whatever reason an inmate is in danger, they may be moved to an area of a prison where they will not have contact with anyone in order to keep them safe. Or, as is often the case, it can be used as punishment. Now I want to let that marinate for a minute. We protect people the same way we punish them.

DDM [06:08] Isn’t that interesting? I never thought of that connection.

MET [06:11] Yeah, there’s a whole conversation waiting to be had on that little nugget right there.

MET [06:17] But this is important to NCA because it is specifically a communication issue. In solitary confinement, you are cut off from all people. You’re cut off from all communication. There is no input or stimuli coming to you at all.

MET [06:33] And this is, in every way, a form of psychological torture. People who are in solitary confinement for an extended period of time pretty much lose their minds. having no contact, no communication with another person for that extended period of time will completely warp your emotional and mental stability. And I was thinking about this, like, I know introverts love to joke about how they’d love to just crawl into a hole and never talk to people.

MET [06:57] And I know priests love to say they want to go off into the wilderness and pray in silence. But I don’t think people realize the psychological toll it takes on us to be completely removed from all communication and stimuli. Because we are, at our core, social creatures. And solitary confinement is different than just, I can’t talk to anybody.

MET [07:16] You are cut off. And to be cut off from that, which is our evolutionary nature, right? Be around people, be stimulated in some way. All of that to be cut off from it is a form of torture.

DDM [07:30] I mean, we’ve watched movies where you see people in solitary confinement, even building relationships with the ants that crawl into their cells, you know?

MET [07:39] Now, there are a lot of studies that confirm this and people can roll their eyes or call me a snowflake or whatever. But honestly, that is their ignorance, not my permissive attitude. This is not a question. For people who take psychology and well-being seriously, this is pretty much a settled issue.

MET [07:57] And people have tried to argue this to the courts and to elected officials and to anyone who will listen. We can’t treat people this way. But you know who doesn’t care about this? The prison system, the judiciary system.

MET [08:11] We have presented all the proof over and over again. Like I said, this is a settled issue. Solitary confinement is torture. But either those in power don’t believe or don’t care.

DDM [08:24] And I mean, we have torture routinely used within, I think, the prison and the military system.

MET [08:33] That is precisely what I was about to say. This is one small issue in the grand scheme of prison reform. It doesn’t even break that high on what counts as a problem, but it is indicative. Because we are talking about psychological torture, and it is just part of the system. Our judicial system just kind of accepts torture.

MET [08:54] And the reason for this is because our judicial system is punitive, not reformative. All over the world, recidivism rates are lower than ours, literally. In almost every developed nation, recidivism is markedly lower than in the U.S. But in the U.S., if you are convicted of a crime, you are almost guaranteed to be convicted of another. Crime is systemic, and that is largely due to our prison system.

MET [09:25] Our prison system makes no effort to reform people. Unlike systems in other parts of the world, it is just a matter of punishing and controlling. And anybody who knows anything about parenting or teaching or just people in general knows that simply punishing and controlling will do nothing to fix a behavior, it will just set it in stone. This could not possibly be more clear than it is right now.

MET [09:56] As we ship more and more people off to El Salvador, and I am specifically saying people and not migrants, because we know we are sending American citizens over there too, we are seeing the pictures.

DDM [10:09] And migrants are people too.

MET [10:13] Yes, 100%. These are not places you send people to get better.

DDM [10:15] No.

MET [10:16] These are places you send people to torture and kill them.

DDM [10:20] You know, Elizabeth, I really like how you differentiated between our prisons as being places of controlling and punishing parts of our population rather than necessarily working on reforming. What’s interesting, this is interesting from a scriptural point of view, that the Torah, which is a part of what we call a section of the Old Testament, actually lacks any concept of imprisonment or punishment. Isn’t that interesting? Like, as I was starting to look at this issue, you know, from a biblical point of view, I realized that, that the early parts of the Torah and the Old Testament literally have no concept of imprisonment.

DDM [11:04] In later Mosaic law, there was a process given if somebody stepped out of line for restitution. So there was always a way in which a person could make something right after they’d done something wrong or they had corporal punishment or you were put to death. Now I’m not advocating obviously for any of the latter, but simply to point out that there wasn’t this concept of imprisonment in much of the Old Testament, earlier Old Testament books.

DDM [11:35] But by the time that the prophets and the kings emerge, we see imprisonment has definitely started. And so we largely hear of the prophets being imprisoned because of the threat they are to the state for speaking the truth and holding power to account. And then if we move into the New Testament, one of the core aspects of how Jesus understands his own mission, and therefore by implication our mission, is to proclaim, and I’m doing quote-unquote, liberty to captives and setting free those who are imprisoned or oppressed. That’s that key Luke passage around which the ministry of Jesus is based.

DDM [12:20] So we see that freedom, in direct contrast obviously with imprisonment, is one of the primary missions of Jesus’s life and work. To create a society obviously where people who are bound in whatever form are set free and to find that way into freedom. Jesus also says that those who visit people in prisons are in fact visiting him. So here we see Jesus identifying himself with those who are in prison and saying, if you want to be with me, go and be with those who are imprisoned.

DDM [12:57] Now this is a radically different understanding of faith than often we grow up with and hear in many of our churches, let alone the broader society. And then of course, Jesus himself was arrested, tortured and ultimately killed by the state. So in the short years that Jesus lived, like the prophets before him, he was arrested, tortured and killed for doing and saying things that the state and even the religion found too threatening and deemed dangerous. And I think very often in our ordinary churches and amongst ordinary Christians, we forget that the Son of God actually died being labeled a criminal.

DDM [13:42] And then Jesus’s ministry and teaching also, I think, gives us theological principles that really challenge the punitive incarceration systems in our society. Because for Jesus, it was always about how to redeem and restore a person rather than being punitive. So for instance, the woman caught in adultery, for which the punishment was death, Jesus instead calls for the community to see their own sin and to choose not to judge her but instead to restore her dignity. The prodigal son is a story about a young man who after a long period of quote-unquote immoral living wants to come home and he’s prepared to come home even as a servant but instead the father symbolizing God restores him as a full son and in fact celebrates his

DDM [14:36] return to the family. So if we go through the Gospels, they are full of such stories. And that’s really not surprising, given that Jesus teaches that the capacity to forgive one another is actually central to our faith. Yeah, sure.

DDM [14:52] We’re to forgive each other in the same way that God has forgiven us. And then there’s that teaching that for those who feel there are sins that are somehow larger than others, Jesus says those who’ve been forgiven much ironically are the ones who end up loving much, but those who are in less need of forgiveness may find themselves less able to love unconditionally. I

MET [15:15] mean, we say it every Sunday, right? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive.

DDM [15:19] Absolutely. So that understanding that none of us have got our lives together, that we all make mistakes, that we all do things that we shouldn’t do. So for Jesus, it’s about forgiveness and about restoring right relationship rather than punishment, let alone imprisonment. Now that doesn’t mean I think that Jesus doesn’t call out sin and ask everybody to change destructive patterns.

DDM [15:44] Jesus at times in the gospel speaks truth to people of groups and individuals in very plain terms. But it’s always calling them to change rather than to punishment; to transform their lives rather than necessarily to be put away from the rest of society. And so throughout the Gospels we see Jesus working to reintegrate those who have been excluded from the community no matter the reason.

DDM [16:12] He works to enable people to come back into full participation in their families or communities, but always with dignity. And the teachings of Jesus, I think, call us to create a different way of living that always prioritizes justice but very much linked with mercy and compassion. So it’s ways that honor always the sacred dignity of every human being, no matter what we have done, and to model that there’s always the capacity for forgiveness.

MET [16:47] So if you have been with us on this journey for a while now, one of the things you will have noticed about Deborah and I is we are very concerned with the systemic nature of things. Deborah and I both recognize, and I think I can probably speak for Deborah on this. We both believe that you can’t treat the symptoms of a problem. Many of the issues that we’re dealing with in the world today are not just an instant that has to be addressed.

MET [17:22] These are things that the root is foundational. So with that, here’s a little story many people know but is worth repeating. For decades, the punishment all over America for possession of cocaine and possession of crack, these were very different punishments. Possessing crack was a much harsher punishment.

DDM [17:46] Can you explain the difference quickly?

MET [17:49] Well, I’m getting there. This is where I’m going.

MET [17:50] Possessing crack was a much harsher punishment than possessing cocaine.

MET [17:56] And that’s the question. What is the difference between the two drugs?

DDM [17:59] Okay.

MET [18:00] Cost.

DDM [18:01] All right.

MET [18:02] Poor people use crack and rich people use cocaine. And that’s pretty much what it comes down to.

MET [18:07] They’re the same drug.

MET [18:08] They’re the same drug, one is just refined.

DDM [18:11] Ah, interesting.

MET [18:12] So if you were caught with crack, you were looking at sometimes decades of your life in jail. If you were caught with cocaine, you were looking at a few months to maybe a couple of years, probably less with good behavior. The result of this difference was catastrophic.

MET [18:29] People of color and other poor people were imprisoned in droves for crack possession. Wall Street brokers got a slap on the wrist for coke. But I cannot emphasize this enough, they are the same drug. One is just the version for rich people, one is the version for poor people.

MET [18:48] And this is one of those things that is so obvious, so blatant. It is hard to look away. There is no denying that poor people and people of color were locked away at two to three times the rate that rich white people were for the same crimes that, like, they were the same crimes, and people of color were kept longer in prison. Anyone who denies this is simply being obtuse, and you can tell them I said so. So, That in and of itself is an indication of how we get to mass incarceration. The law is literally written to separate poor people and people of color away from their families and from their communities and create a prisoner class. Please hear me say that, a prisoner class.

MET [19:38] These are not just people who have committed a crime. These are people who have been rounded up and put into the penal system in an effort to create a group of people separate and beneath those who can afford to do things like cocaine. And it doesn’t end there, my friends. In most places, felons can’t vote.

MET [19:59] So for decades, the judiciary and penal system has been scooping up people of color and poor people and throwing them into a system designed to create a prisoner class out of them, and then spitting them out, knowing them they’ll be back, and denying them the vote.

DDM [20:15] And you know, Elizabeth, I’ve also noticed, because I live in the rural areas, I noticed the same thing happening amongst rural communities. The rate of people who are incarcerated in our communities, and a lot of it just stems from poverty, but the realization, because when we were speaking recently around voting, realizing so many of my friends and neighbors are not able to vote.

MET [20:42] So if you’re keeping up with this, you will recognize this as one of the biggest voter disenfranchisement ploys since Jim Crow. We have written laws specifically to target poor people and people of color. We have put these people in a system designed to keep them uneducated, angry, poor, and likely to commit more crimes. And then we take away their right to vote.

MET [21:05] This is exactly what people mean when they say that things like racism is systemic. There’s no individual white supremacist sitting around somewhere saying, haha, I’m going to make it so most black men can’t vote. Well, I don’t know. Maybe there might be right now, but that’s a whole other story.

MET [21:24] But there are laws in place that were written so that poor black men were imprisoned at undeniably destructive rates while white people who were committing the same crimes were not. And once people of color were in prison, they lost their right to vote. The result is that a huge portion of the black population does not have the right to vote. And if you are sitting there uncomfortably thinking, why does this remind me of Jim Crow or the three-fifths compromise?

MET [21:51] You’re not the only one. The law, the system itself is set up to keep certain communities broken and disenfranchised.

DDM [21:58] No, absolutely. And I think also the free labor or the virtually free labor that emerges. I mean, it’s almost a form of slavery when you see how the prison system is now using people for labor. And I mean, I think also given that the USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, this is really, again, another way in which you might say there is not true democracy in this country.

DDM [22:25] And I mean it’s very obvious the more you look at the law in so many of our societies is written to benefit the wealthy and the powerful and always to oppress the poor and vulnerable. And it’s interesting that if there is a time in scripture where we see Jesus truly angry, it’s when he’s dealing with the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time. Because I think Jesus himself was watching in his context how the law was being used to place burdens on ordinary people that they just couldn’t carry. And so in the Gospels we see Jesus actually calling out with anger that those who use the law to oppress and marginalize the vulnerable will be judged in a way that no others will.

DDM [23:11] And I think it’s a good reminder to us as well that not all laws are just, and not all laws are good. Just like the laws against mixed-race marriage were unjust laws, and as people of faith, I think we’re called to stand up and to not obey laws that are unjust, even if that puts us at odds with society or with the legal systems in our countries. And so if you look in scripture, there’s so many examples and critiques of where law and the legal system were literally weaponized against vulnerable populations. You know, the prophet Isaiah says, woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees in order, and this is so interesting, to deprive the poor of their rights, and to withhold justice from the oppressed.

DDM [24:05] So it’s interesting that Isaiah is very clear that there are unjust laws and that laws very often are being created specifically to deprive the poor of their rights, which is what you were speaking about, Elizabeth, and to prevent oppressed groups actually from justice. So the law actually ends up becoming a stumbling block to justice. And I think that really ties in directly with what you were saying about laws being crafted to further marginalize already vulnerable groups in society. And so if you read the prophets, I mean, the prophets call out against these legal systems that have become corrupt, able to be bribed by the wealthy and the powerful.

DDM [24:48] And so the legal systems themselves have become a tool for the wealthy to become more powerful and enriched at the expense of the poor. And so really, in a way, Jesus, in the tradition of the prophets, reminds the people and the leaders that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, meaning that the laws that are given to serve us are there in a way to enable us to come into wholeness and fullness of being, rather than where we are simply being created to serve a legal system. And so I think we see clearly in scriptures that the law itself is not inherently just and our systems of law require critique to make sure that they serve justice and serve the most vulnerable rather than becoming tools for the wealthy and powerful and being used to further

DDM [25:41] marginalize others and strip them of their dignity. And that’s what I think we’re seeing a lot of today in the USA, but of course, in other countries as well, you know, is that stripping of human dignity.

MET [25:53] If you want to hear a historical figure just echo everything that Reverend Deborah said, I recommend you read Martin Luther King Jr.’ ‘s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.”

MET [26:06] Because let us remember that an unjust law is not a law that we are called to obey. So Reverend is not a Deborahlone. Okay, branching off from that though, one of the most horrifying debates going on in America right now is the debate over due process.

MET [26:31] And this definitely relates to what we’re talking about in terms of what laws do you obey, right? We are rounding up people every day and shipping them off to prisons, quote-unquote, which are really death camps with absolutely no hint of any kind of due process or legal process. Now there are some people who think because they might be criminals that is okay, but I want you to think about that. We don’t know if they are criminals.

MET [26:55] They might be criminals. The only way we would know they are criminals is if they had due process.

DDM [27:04] Isn’t there that thing in America, you’re innocent until proven guilty?

MET [27:09] Yeah. So what is happening right now? is the U.S. is running rampant through the country, taking scores of people into custody on suspicion, shipping them off to foreign death camps, and never even bothering to find out if they did anything wrong.

DDM [27:24] It’s kind of frightening.

MET [27:25] Yeah, I was about to say, if that doesn’t terrify you, then you live in a world of either privilege or obliviousness that I truly cannot comprehend. The prison system is about to be overwhelmed by people, mostly brown people, who are just there because maybe they look like they have done something wrong. The prison system is becoming a babysitter for anything or anyone the establishment thinks doesn’t belong in public. And right now that means anyone who is brown or increasingly anyone who has published something like an editorial or put too many negative social media posts up.

MET [28:05] Let me give you an example. There was an incident not too long ago right here in Rochester where a middle class white guy, family man, an active Lutheran, answered his door and found the Department of Homeland Security there demanding to know about his social media posts. These are not safe times and the penal system is the end game.

MET [28:29] So the due process debate is important because the whole point of due process is to ascertain if somebody deserves punishment. We are skipping that now. We are going straight to punishment. There’s not a procedure to determine if somebody did something wrong.

MET [28:51] People are just being selected and thrown into the prison system. And as I have noted, the prison system is unforgiving. It is getting even more unforgiving as we make deals with foreign powers who have even less regard for human life than we do, and we ship our prisoners to these concentration camps. And please don’t blanch at that.

MET [29:12] We need to call them what they are. Okay, I am not trying to talk to you like a child, but I really need to make this clear. Due process is the only thing that separates an innocent person from the harsh reality of the American penal system. And the American penal system now includes concentration camps.

MET [29:32] Due process isn’t a thing anymore. Conclusion, there is nothing keeping innocent people out of concentration camps. Do you get that? Do you understand how important these issues are?

MET [29:44] The prison system isn’t just a bad situation, it’s a destructive force to democracy right now.

DDM [29:49] Yeah. And you know, Elizabeth, I think scripture would remind us that really none of us are innocent, and no one either is a criminal. You know, we are human beings making choices in a complicated world. All of us, I think, are called to try to speak truth to each other, to always look, as Jesus says, first at the log in our own eyes, and perhaps to focus more on where our own lives have become destructive.

DDM [30:19] and to be constantly practicing that discipline of being able to change ourselves, to forgive others, to always be working for the hope of the re-establishment of relationships that are just and healthy. And for those who wish to follow the teachings of Jesus, if we are to see Jesus in the face of those being imprisoned, We are by implication not only to treat them humanely but actually to see the face of God in them. Part of our faith practice should be to visit those who are imprisoned to make sure that they don’t become isolated from the rest of our society. We’re to actively work against current prison models because the freedom that Jesus calls for is the opposite of caging human beings which as we’ve said is really inhumane in of itself.

DDM [31:09] And our model should always focus on restorative justice and the potential of forgiveness rather than that punitive retribution. And so I think the ministry of Jesus actually asks us not just to reform prison systems, but to radically rethink the concepts of justice, human dignity, freedom, restoration, forgiveness, reconciliation, and as you say, Elizabeth, even ultimately democracy.

MET [31:55] Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church.

MET [32:20] Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [32:24] Music by audionautix.com

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 18 - Economics

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Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe and Rev. Deborah Duguid-May explore different perspectives on economics and their impacts.

Transcript

Transcript generated by automated process.

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

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

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

DDM [00:37] Morning, so today Elizabeth and I wanted to look at the subject of economics and when we first decided to do this it got me thinking about how as a child I loved the game of Monopoly. I love the challenge, I love the competitiveness. As a child I loved to win and honestly I wanted to own the entire board. And I was good at it because I was strategic and I was ruthless and I was prepared to cheat and lie and steal. But it was a game. And as I grew, I think I began to realize how, in a way, that game was how so much of society works. You know, if you own the crucial assets, it’s really just a matter of cycles around the board before everybody is in debt to you.

DDM [01:30] And once you own everything, and others by implication nothing, well, there’s really no more point for anybody else to play the game. It’s really just a matter of how long it’ll take for you to go bankrupt. And I think a lot of our current economics is kind of like the end stages of a Monopoly game. People are trying so hard going around that board month after month, but it’s impossible to get ahead and it’s really a matter of time before either families or individuals go bust or they just simply walk away from the game. I think what I also realized as I grew up is that the fun of competition, strategy, ruthlessness, they may be fine for a game, but they’re really not ethical values.

DDM [02:16] Certainly that I want to live by in the world, but ethical values that I would hope others wouldn’t want to live by, because there really is no space in a game like Monopoly for compassion. equality, justice. And so I think at some point, what does it mean to grow up and realize that life is not a game and has really serious consequences because economics shapes our lives. It shapes the opportunities we have. It eventually shapes our perceived worth. And I think we underestimate how crucial economics is to every facet of who we are and how we live.

MET [02:57] Just for the record, I have always hated Monopoly. Even as a child, I thought the game was entirely too long. And I thought the goal of just owning things was dumb. But my hatred of monopoly probably shaped more of my ideology of politics than I care to think about. But that’s just a personal aside. One of the classes, I promise this is going to connect in just a second. One of the classes I teach is actually a class in propaganda, which I know sounds so salacious. And for a while, one of the questions I always force my students to contend with is, is education propaganda?

MET [03:47] And it took some doing to get them to wrap their heads around this question. They could figure out whether there was propaganda in education, but asking whether education is propaganda was a much more nuanced question. Some of it was really easy, right? They could very clearly see how something like a history class or even a literature class could have an agenda. But because I enjoy ruining things, I pursued this further. So, I would ask them things like, did you take an economics class? And most of them would say yes. So I would ask them if they felt like they learned anything or if they knew anything about economics after that, and I would get very different answers for that one.

MET [04:35] Sadly, most people who take economics like in high school or even college come out and they’re like, well, okay, there’s something called economics. And most people I can’t really explain that. It’s not something that a lot of people feel like they learn a lot about. So I would ask them something like, did you learn Keynesian or Chicago school economics? And almost without fail, I get completely blank stares. So we’re like, so come on, what school of economics did you learn? And I have yet to have a student who knew there were different schools of economics.

DDM [05:08] That’s incredible.

MET [05:09] Didn’t even know that that was a thing. And so we talk about that. And I tell them Keynesian economics is what got us out of the Great Depression and the 2008 recession. But they probably learned something closer to the Chicago school. And very often they ask, well, why, if one is better than the other, do we only learn this one? I tell them, well, there’s debate on which one is better, right? Chicago is definitely better for the establishment and for rich people, and Keynesian is better in the short term and helps people at all levels instead of just the top tier.

MET [05:43] But, right, Keynesian has long-term pro – just like in any number of theoretical issues, there’s good and bad on all sides. But then I have to go one step further and I ask them if anyone learned about any economic systems other than capitalism while they were in school. And at this point, like everybody kind of goes pale, right? Like I asked them, can you think of any other systems outside of capitalism? And they get very wide-eyed or they avoid eye contact. And I say, in case you need help, there are a few Marxist systems, just as examples.

MET [06:20] Did anybody learn about these? And I have had one student in 15 years say that they had.

DDM [06:25] And would you say that’s pretty normative for American

MET [06:28] education? Oh yeah, 100%. That’s why I can have these conversations. Why do you think that is, we ask. So if you take a class in economics but you don’t actually learn economics, you learn one school of one system of economics without even learning their other ideas out there, and then most people can’t even remember what you learned, what do you call that? And that’s a pretty intense question. It is generally a profoundly uncomfortable situation for my students because there’s this room full of young adults who are suddenly confronted with the realization that propaganda doesn’t just happen in Southern history classrooms, that our whole system is designed to create good little Americans.

MET [07:07] Now, what we have to acknowledge is that’s not specific to America. Education in all places does the same thing. And it’s not particular to history classes, though that is often the battleground for culture wars. The economics classrooms are a place where we hardly ever think about it. Most American students take some kind of economics class, and most of them are really bad. I would wager that most American adults can’t even define opportunity cost, and if you can’t tell me what that is, then you don’t know how an economy works, though it is the most basic thing about supply and demand.

MET [07:45] Economics classrooms are really just places where we emphasize that you are a capitalist, and that is a good thing, and our whole system is designed to do that. And, just so I don’t leave you hanging, let me explain what opportunity cost is. Because if I’m going to claim that we don’t understand economics, I need to start with that fundamental concept that I just said most people don’t understand. Okay. Opportunity cost is the cost of something not based on its price tag, but based on the opportunity you lose if you spend resources on it. So what can you not do or buy if you allocate resources to a thing?

MET [08:25] What does it cost you in opportunity that is different than what a thing costs and varies depending on context? So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say two people are invited out for a casual dinner. One of those people has $100 to spend. One of those people has $1,000. A casual meal might cost $25. Both of these invitees can afford this meal. Costs the same for both of them. But it is way more expensive to the first invitee, though the price tag is the same. That is because the opportunity cost is so much higher for the person who has $100.

MET [09:09] For the first person, that meal costs one quarter of their money. They are giving up a lot to go out to eat. The second person isn’t losing that much at all. This is important. They both have money to spend on a meal. The meal costs the same dollar amount for both people, but the meal is actually way more expensive for one of them because the opportunity cost is much higher.

DDM [09:34] Kind of like the cost of bacon to a pig versus the cost of an egg to a chicken.

MET [09:39] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is why anyone who tries to argue for a flat tax is telling on themselves. They either do not understand economics or they think poor people should be punished for being poor. If there is a flat tax implemented on all people, usually the argument is for something like 17%, that hits very differently depending on your income. If you make $50,000 a year, you will pay $8,500 in taxes. If you make $100,000 a year, you will pay $17,000 in taxes. A superficial analysis may lead you to say, well sure, that’s fair, they’re both paying the same percentage, but that is a completely sophomoric approach to understanding money and the economy.

MET [10:20] Once again, the question is not how much something costs or how much a person pays, but what is the opportunity cost. The person who makes 50K will have $41,500 left to pay for everything in their lives. So that 17% is pretty steep. The person making $100,000 will have $83,000 to pay for all the things they need in their life. Now, proportionally, these are the same, but in terms of how much they cost, they absolutely are not. That 17% is way more expensive for the person who makes less. It may take the same chunk out of their income, but because their income was so much less to begin with, it costs about twice what it costs the richer person in opportunity.

MET [11:13] It is a completely different situation if your 83% of income left over is 41K or 83K. And because we fail to teach this very basic, very fundamental concept to people, we tend to have an economy set up to punish the poor because we base our economy of supply and demand around dollar amount, which is not what drives purchasing. So yeah, I’d say we’ve set up a system pretty much designed not only to make sure people stay in their place, but to make sure people don’t understand why people are where they are, or why movement from one place to another is so hard.

DDM [11:52] Right, absolutely. And I think when you’re speaking about different, you know, schools of economics, I’m sure that most people aren’t even aware of biblical economics. You know, it’s something that I would say almost is virtually not preached about. You often don’t find it being taught in local churches. And yet the biblical view of economics is about how individuals and communities manage the resources of God in a way that reflects our faith values and our relationship with God. The word economy comes from that Greek word oikonomia, which means the rules or the laws managing a household.

DDM [12:34] Oikos meaning house or household and nomos meaning law or rule. So economy is simply what rules or laws we will use to run our household, whether that’s our individual household or our household as a state. Biblically, the world, however, is our home. It is our house. But what is important, and I think what’s a huge differential in biblical economics, is that we don’t own the world or the world’s resources. In biblical economics, the world and all that is in it belongs to God. Now, that’s fundamentally different from economic views where individuals or companies may own the world and its resources.

DDM [13:24] Biblically, everything belongs to God. It is simply our task to manage or to steward the earth and its resources, but always on behalf of God. So, biblical stewardship always teaches that whatever you think you have, it actually belongs to God. And your task is to use what has been entrusted to you in ways that God would. And that ultimately, we will be judged on how we have used the resources of God.

MET [13:56] And that is completely different.

DDM [13:57] Completely different, completely different. I mean, I remember during South Africa, when there was all the issues around land ownership, particularly under apartheid. And I remember all these banners on the streets where the slogan was, the land belongs to God. Meaning actually, we’re fighting about who owns the land, but in reality, none of us own it. It all belongs to God. Fascinating. It is. So, if in some economic theories, you know, there is this belief in individual ownership of assets, like capitalism, and in others there’s the communal or state ownership, like in socialism or communism, Scripture believes that all assets belong to God.

DDM [14:39] And how we as communities use them is both a sacred trust and responsibility. So, if in Genesis we see how God creates this world with this incredible abundance, more than enough for anyone and everything, with everything being able to be used in that creation by anyone or anything, after the fall of humankind, which is when we see sin entering into the world, we begin to see in the biblical text how There’s almost like a mindset of scarcity, of competition, and of separation, even ending in murder, starting pretty quickly to emerge. So, as a result of sin in Scriptures, we see the belief emerging that there is not enough for everyone, which we know even today is not true.

DDM [15:34] There’s plenty for everyone, but as they say, not enough for some people’s greed. And so, people and communities, pretty quickly on, we see begin to start competing in the biblical story for resources, begin to hoard resources. That obviously fuels their separation from one another, and they begin to see each other now as competitors or as an enemy. And that very quickly leads to wars over resources and violence. But this greed, which in the Bible is clearly sinful, it’s fuelled by the belief that you never have enough. And so we will mine and rob and strip the earth in incredibly violent ways simply to have more.

DDM [16:21] And if you think about it, that really is the basis of capitalism and advertising. You know, that constant appeal of, well, you don’t have enough. You must keep consuming. We’ve got to keep growing the economy, even if that means we will destroy the planet and most human beings in the process.

MET [16:37] Can I say, like, related? So one of the most influential teachers I ever had in my life was actually my economics teacher in high school, which is crazy because that has nothing to do with what I do now, but this dude change my life. In Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, who kind of invented capitalism, he talks about the invisible hand that moves the market. And that’s this famous part of like capitalist theory, the invisible hand. And my economics teacher talked about the invisible hand of greed. Like he was very clear about, it’s not just this thing that happens.

MET [17:20] My economics teacher was very clear, it’s greed that moves the market, not just self-interest, it’s greed.

DDM [17:28] Absolutely, absolutely.

MET [17:28] Which I have not heard too many economists

DDM [17:32] Yeah, yeah.

MET [17:35] Yeah. Shout out to Mr. Franks.

DDM [17:37] Absolutely. I mean, the entire economy is founded on that, what the Bible would call a sin, the sin of greed, you know? So I think that for me, if we’re starting to look at economics and biblical economics, the huge difference with biblical economics from other contemporary theories is that of non-ownership. So, where everybody has access to everything, but it is not a right, it’s a gift from God. And so, it really is much more of, in some ways, we’re starting to hear this term almost coming a little bit back into vogue now, but it really is much more of a gift-based economy.

DDM [18:13] You know, people, they fished as they needed to, they hunted as they needed to, they foraged for food as they traveled from one land to another. You know, you cut down a tree if you needed to build a house. What people used was pretty much free. It was a gift from the earth and a gift from God. It was that sense of common land, common water, common knowledge and culture. And it’s interesting, I mean, if you study kind of social movements, Especially, I can’t speak for the USA, but in England, you know, the sense of common land and the commons, right?

DDM [18:50] I mean, right up until fairly recently, that was something that was still very visible in local villages and communities. But we see the shift today where it’s almost like everything has now become owned and then monetized. Even water has to be bought. There’s virtually no public land and if there is, people aren’t allowed to just set up camp there. I mean, look even here at Rochester, how you know, any of the poorer communities living in tents get bulldozed on a fairly frequent basis. You know, if you don’t own or rent, you have nowhere on this earth to live.

DDM [19:28] And that’s how far we’ve shifted from biblical economics.

MET [19:35] Yeah, all of that. All of that is true. I, of course, think about things in terms of words and language. One of the things I have written about in my other life as a researcher and will continue to write about is the inescapability of the marketplace metaphor in our lives. So think about the episode we did on immigration a while back. And I went on quite a wild ride with you about what it means that a state insists on licensing people. And that leads to questions of ownership. Why are we licensed? Who affirms our licensure?

MET [20:23] And we don’t necessarily think in terms of ownership all the time when we’re talking about immigration. But at the same time, we kind of do, because there is a sense of ownership about our borders. And much of the time, the reason we argue so vociferously about those borders is for economic reasons, right? Who’s paying to be here? Who’s supporting our state with their tax money? And these are ridiculous questions. Of course, because migrants and immigrants, regardless of their legal status, pour tons of tax money into the system every year, right? That’s why literally right now the administration is pushing the IRS to turn over information, right?

MET [21:00] If immigrants didn’t pay taxes, the IRS wouldn’t have their information. The effect of migrants on the economy is also why the administration is kind of backtracking on some of his deportation positions and now claiming that employed immigrants will be allowed to work or return if they self-deport if their employers vouch for them, but at the same time, we’re deporting, like, or thousands of people to death camps, so there’s no consistency here. Whatever, that’s kind of tangential. But as we know, my real area of expertise is the law and free speech. And in this arena, the metaphor of the marketplace and economic thinking is unavoidable.

MET [21:46] In free speech orthodoxy, American jurisprudence has long believed in the notion of a marketplace of ideas. And this means… I’ve heard that, yes. Yes, it’s very common. Yes. Yeah. This means what we believe is that there is a public arena where we all bring our ideas together, and then they are shared and tested, and the public gets to choose which ideas are the best. And in this marketplace, which is a proxy for democracy, the people deliberate, and then the best ideas kind of rise to the top, and the bad ideas are left to the trash heap of history.

MET [22:24] The marketplace metaphor has guided legal thinking about speech for over 100 years. I have serious problems with this metaphor. One, it commodifies speech. It makes speech into something that is bought and sold, and I think that is something that is particularly harmful. I think you can see speech as constitutive, as deliberative, as epidectic, as any number of things, but it is not an item to be bought and sold. If you do think of it as an item to be bought and sold, you automatically privilege some people over others. The problem with thinking of things through a metaphor of a marketplace is that in a marketplace, some people are inevitably more powerful than others.

MET [23:05] because they come to the market with more resources. In a marketplace of ideas, those resources are things like social capital, the things that make a person seem more believable or authoritative, I’m putting these, like if you could see me, I’m using air quotes, right, yeah. Believable or authoritative, whatever, that makes their ideas seem better. So people like men or white people’s ideas carry more weight in a marketplace setting because they come to a marketplace with more of these resources. Two, secondly, it sets up a paradigm where democracy is replaced with the mechanism of the marketplace.

MET [23:42] Now, there is a long tradition of connecting the two. In America, we have both a liberal market and a liberal democracy. And I mean liberal in the sense of the classical sense and not how it is used in like modern political parlance. Also, it is highly questionable as to whether we actually have either one of those things anymore, but we like to think we do. But we always have had a very laissez-faire attitude towards markets and governing, officially anyway. Once again, in practice, these things might look very different. But when you have a metaphor like the marketplace of ideas, you are replacing democratic functions, like regulating speech, with economic functions, like regulating the markets.

MET [24:26] And this conflation of economy and democracy opens up avenues for things like Citizens United or other means for corporate interests to have an outside influence on public discourse. because we don’t separate the economy or our markets from our democracy. So we use things like the marketplace metaphor to guide our democracy building, which means the economy becomes a substitute for public discourse and nation building.

DDM [24:53] Yeah, we see that in so much of the narrative.

MET [24:56] Yes, absolutely. So once again, this means if you come to the public sphere with fewer resources, you’re devalued as a citizen. Understanding democracy through the lens of the marketplace or the economy devalues those who aren’t secure economically or who don’t have a lot of social capital. And the economy as metaphor democracy inherently devalues people.

DDM [25:18] Right. 100%. You know, I think that’s so powerful. And, you know, it’s so true that the world in some ways has become one large marketplace. I mean, especially with the globalized economy and the way it is now. And so, I mean, even democracy, justice, human life itself just seems to be for sale, you know, which is nothing in Scripture but slavery. You know, in biblical economics, if we are to remember, firstly, that we are entrusted with God’s resources, then it’s interesting that the very next issue is that we are only to use what is necessary.

DDM [25:56] So it’s very interesting that like, for instance, when the Hebrew people were leaving Egypt and moving in that journey through the wilderness, they were given manna. or quail, but it was enough for every single day, so that they were to only use what they needed for that day to eat. And obviously human nature, some people decided to try and keep some for the next day, but whatever they hoarded or retained for the next day went off. And so the understanding with scripturally was that, you know, we are to use what is needed, but not to be hoarding.

DDM [26:35] And that simplicity of life is kind of a very crucial kind of theological principle right throughout scripture. You know, there’s that little cliched saying, live simply in order that others may simply live. But I think there’s a lot of truth in that, to never take more than our fair share. Unfortunately, in the world in which we live, if you have the money, you can buy as much as you want and take far more than your fair share. But in the case, scripturally, of some becoming wealthier than others, there were biblical laws and practices put into place so that every seven years, almost the playing field was leveled again.

DDM [27:16] So, for instance, every seven years the land was not to be cultivated, so that even the land itself could rest. Sabbath wasn’t just a lifestyle commandment, but was an economic mandate for human beings, for other species, even for the land itself. If you found you had more than somebody else in Scripture, you were mandated by God’s law to care for the stranger, the poor, the marginalized, which again, we looked at in our immigration podcast. Compassion and generosity is literally embedded into biblical economic ethics and law. And so one of the interesting laws is the commandment in Scripture against usury.

DDM [28:01] It’s not something we actually, funny enough, here preach much about at all today, but it’s a commandment within Judaism, within Christianity, and it’s also a commandment within Islam. Have you ever heard a sermon on usury?

MET [28:16] So, this is funny. I remember when I was really young, being in Sunday school, This is another one of those stories where I was like, I just had no hope as a child. I remember being really young and it was like, it was some of those verses that they read and just tried to like skip through and they were like, yeah, and there’s these verses about usury and I was like, what’s usury? And they tried to explain it and I was like, well, wait, don’t we do that like, all the time?

DDM [28:49] Everybody?

MET [28:50] Isn’t that how we buy houses? And they were just shh, shh.

DDM [28:52] There we go. There we go. So yeah, and it was actually a huge scriptural injunction, both within Judaic tradition, within Christian tradition, and within Islamic tradition, which is why we have Islamic banking, right? Was this commandment against usury, which is charging interest on a loan. So money was something in biblical economics that was always to be in circulation, never to be hoarded. And so, to take advantage of another person’s economic need by charging interest was seen as absolutely horrendous and unethical in the eyes of God. So, I always think it’s interesting that, you know, we all simply put our money in the bank and, you know, we’re always looking at, you know, what interest our investments are making, and this is one of the direct commandments in biblical economics that we’re to have no part in.

DDM [29:50] So, embedded in biblical theology is always also this call to support one another, especially those who are marginalized or weaker in society. To always make sure that we’re acting with justice, and that’s economic justice, and the scripture spells this out very clearly, which means that economic preferential treatment for the poor or the foreigner. To always act ethically and to remember that life is sacred and must always be more valued than money or wealth. And I think sometimes we’ve just forgotten that things have not always been the way they are today, that there are other ways that are possible.

DDM [30:30] And unfortunately, like you began with, Elizabeth, I think, you know, sometimes we’re not even giving people the opportunity to think of other models or other ways that have been tried in the past, which may provide a springboard for us to think of some new ways as we move forward into the future. But I think It’s becoming increasingly urgent if we really are to survive in the future. And I think our faith asks us to ask, what would it look like to create a society that reflects these kind of biblical values in economic, tangible ways?

MET [31:13] 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 [31:42] Music by Audionautix.com

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 17 - AI

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Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe and Rev. Deborah Duguid-May discuss artificial intelligence and some of its implications in communication, ethics, and theology.

Transcript

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

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

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

MET [00:38] Hello and welcome again. We are pleased that you are back with us. Today we’re going to be talking about something that is very hip, very modern. We are going to be talking about AI, specifically the church and AI. So if you are interested in technology and the way it intersects with your life, we are here for you today. As always, I am a big proponent of defining our terms. It’s just who I am as a person. So let’s talk about generative AI for a second. Now we have been using something called AI for a long time.

MET [01:20] Our producer Carl is a bit of a gamer and if I can speak on his behalf for a second because I know he does not like to get on the mic. He has explained to me before that gaming systems have used AI or some form of AI for years, but AI has meant something different before now. So our computing systems have been making decisions for a really long time. And basically what that means is we feed data or input or stimuli into these systems and they analyze that and they make split decisions based on that input.

MET [01:59] The difference between AI of five years ago and AI today is that previous AI was generally just choosing between options. So we asked AI, based on the options, what are you going to do, and these systems made a choice which generally made sense because we had programmed very smart machines and your game or your program or your whatever went about working as it was supposed to, right? Like that’s just how computers have been working forever. What we have now is generative AI, which means it’s not just choosing between the options we give it anymore. Generative AI learns the thoughts and patterns of its inputs and then generates new content or data that has similar characteristics. That’s why you can ask AI to write a poem about graham crackers in the style of William Wordsworth or whatever, and it can do that pretty quickly.

MET [02:56] Because it’s not just choosing between options, it’s creating something new based on the data and input available. Some of you may know this, but I actually host a different podcast on rhetoric and current events, you know, stuff that everybody loves. And one day I did an experiment and I had AI write a Podcast Episode on Rhetoric in the Style of M. Elizabeth Thorpe. Carl and I laughed at it for a long time because if you didn’t know me or anything about rhetoric I guess it was fine. A completely ignorant listener might have been bored but somewhat satisfied, but if you did know me or anything about where I’m coming from, you would have recognized it as singularly terrible. It did not sound like me at all.

DDM [03:49] Interesting.

MET [03:50] Yeah. It was ridiculously aggrandizing. And it said a whole lot of stuff without saying anything at all. It was in fact an example of everything I try really hard to show that rhetoric is not. So on the one hand, I’m not convinced AI can replace experts yet. On the other hand, most people can’t tell the difference between an expert and total nonsense. Yeah, so that spells out a totally different problem for all of us to begin with. And this is something we’ll totally talk about, I think. As is to be expected, there are ethical questions to all of this.

MET [04:29] Now, I’m going to say all this and acknowledge that Reverend Deborah and I have some differing opinions on some of these ethical issues, and that could be like a whole episode in and of itself, so we’re just walking into this knowing there’s difference here. But one of the chief issues for me, and I’ll give you a personal example in just a second, is we have to ask where the data comes from that AI is using. AI needs a lot of input to figure out how to produce this content. If it’s going to write a podcast on rhetoric, it’s gotta figure out how to do that. At first blush this doesn’t seem like a big deal because it’s got the whole internet to scrape, right? But hold on, she says. There is information out there that is not available for scraping.

MET [05:18] Not all art or information or content is free. And I say that because there comes a point where ownership rights matter. And that’s not because I want to set myself up as a big gatekeeper. I promise I want to see knowledge and art spread far and wide. Like I want people to know as much as they can and see as much as they can. I absolutely am for the democratization of knowledge. That being said, because I value knowledge and art, I also value the time and effort of knowledge and art creators. So if you create a visual work or write a poem, I don’t know that AI should just automatically be able to use that for its own devices without your permission.

MET [06:03] Here’s the example I was thinking about. This was a big sticking point in the academic world when one of the major publishers in academia sold all of its content and information to one of the big AI developers. Those of us who had published thereand we didn’t have control over it. All of our work was just, bam, unceremoniously dumped into an AI system, and we didn’t see any of that money. The publishing house made a ton of cash off of our work. Oh, so much money, like millions of dollars off of our work and the end result is that our students will just be able to cheat better. Now legally and technically the publisher had every right to do that because they’re the publishers and in my field when you publish something you lose the copyright to that.

MET [06:48] The publisher owns the rights and you the author just kind of have to deal. And that in and of itself is a whole huge problem.

DDM [06:57] It is. Legality doesn’t equal ethics. Absolutely.

MET [06:58] So here we see where ownership of data becomes doubly problematic because I don’t own my own work as a creator and it was used to profit a publishing company which is profiting off the volunteer labor of authors and reviewers and is now doubly profiting from selling that data to AI. I think it sheds light on the really problematic practices in both publishing and AI development and how a lot of these ethical questions in terms of data, information, ownership, generative AI can get wound up really quickly.

DDM [07:31] It’s almost like AI is taking the ethical problems that we have and just multiplying them on a global level.

MET [07:37] Absolutely, yes, I think that is exactly right. And all of that is to say, we have to think about who are we valuing and how are we valuing, right? Like, if we’re going to say I value art and knowledge creators, then we got to say I value your time and effort. But that’s so hard to do in the age of the internet and how information is spreading. Okay, Mm-hmm. So that’s my that was my very long defining your terms Okay, Deborah solved this problem.

DDM [08:07] No, not at all. Not at all. But I do agree with you that AI is definitely raising deep ethical issues But it’s also raising deep theological issues. So, you know from a from a Christian framework we have this concept that in the beginning God creates humankind and in God’s image. So we therefore are created as human beings with this incredible intelligence, the need and the desire to create. We are as human beings both spiritual and physical hybrids. I find I’m liking that understanding of humanity more and more.

DDM [08:41] We have the capacity to feel. We can love, we can have compassion, but it also means that we have free choice, the capacity to make choices. Now we as human beings have been so successful in our capacity to create and invent that in some ways I almost sometimes feel with AI it’s almost like we’re creating a new species.

MET [09:07] That’s terrifying.

DDM [09:11] It is, So like God, in a way, we are almost birthing this new creature that has incredible intelligence, but that intelligence we know will soon overtake our own. And I think for myself, one of the greatest ethical challenges around AI is that we are creating, like God did, a new form of being but it’s in our own image. And that’s the problem. Because what ethical characteristics is AI actually learning from us? So is AI learning about compassion, about equity, about empathy? Or is AI learning from us? how to compete with one another, how to see the other as an enemy or a competitor, how winning at all costs is acceptable, and how we as human beings destroy those who are different or compete with us for resources.

DDM [10:05] So if generative AI was learning compassion, equity, and empathy together with this phenomenally beyond human intelligence, yes, AI could probably be the biggest gift to humanity. But it’s not. We see how AI now already carries our inherent biases, our racism, our gender biases. It, like us, violates privacy and our data, right? But it can do this on such a larger, grander scale than any human being or group of human beings could. And we know, of course, there’s not much attention being paid right now to develop ethical and obviously international regulatory frameworks for AI. And so I think the problem is firstly, we are not very ethical beings to begin with.

DDM [10:53] And now when we start to create another form of life in our image, it’s been created in the image now of a being that is not ethical. Because we as a society, if I use theological language, have walked very far away from God and from whom we were created to be. Secondly, I think we’ve chosen on a global scale to pursue competitiveness. There is this desire to dominate other nations and peoples. And if we’re honest, we will use horrendous force, including nuclear, to annihilate those who don’t submit to our dominance. I mean, we can just turn on the news today and you’re seeing this all over the world.

DDM [11:33] And so is this the image in which we are now creating AI, an intelligent life form that will supersede us, with these ethical characteristics? And I think that if that is the case, then we really should be very afraid. Because at what point will AI see us as another organism competing with them for energy sources? At what point will our control over AI no longer be tolerated? Could nuclear codes be accessed by AI and even used against us as a species? And I mean, I don’t think we should ignore the fact that so much of generative AI is actually being developed by the weapons industry, you know, and by the whole military industrial complex.

DDM [12:24] So, you know, maybe we were never meant to create forms of being in our own image because our own image is so prone to, excuse the theological language, sin. And maybe creating in this way was something best left to God.

MET [12:39] Okay. That’s a lot to think about. And it is also somewhat terrifying.

DDM [12:46] Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, that’s what I think about.

MET [12:48] Yeah. I so I think about AI a lot, but I’m going to bring it down to a slightly smaller scale. Just so it’s something I can kind of wrap my head around in terms of how I see it applying. Not because I don’t think what you said is super important and huge, but because I need to talk about it

DDM [13:12] in a specific

MET [13:13] yeah in a specific so that then we can talk about it in these larger scale things as well. So we’re kind of moving in and out of these big and small perspectives. So think about for me, I think about for me, AI is a constant presence in my life because I am a professor. And AI, it’s a constant present in the classroom. So we’re moving from like the cosmic to the classroom for just a second.

DDM [13:45] No problem. It’s always good to weave between the two.

MET [13:48] Ownership of data is not necessarily something my students think about until their pictures or work is scraped, and then it suddenly becomes a very big deal. And my students and I are kind of navigating this together. It is messy, and it is weird, and it’s funny, one of my students the other day was like, oh, you have to have so many sources for this assignment, and one of them raised their hands, and they were like, does ChatGPT count as a source? And I just kind of put my head in my hands, and I was like, no. It does not.

MET [14:20] You have to actually read something. It is near impossible, however, to prove somebody has written something using AI. AI detectors are notoriously unreliable, and they actually tend to penalize academics and non-native speakers, and that is because they don’t look for content, they just look for style. And I’ve told my students time and time again that I really recommend they not use AI, and I’m very honest with them. I will never be able to prove that they have used AI. You just can’t prove that somebody has or has not. But I grade them according to the class standards.

MET [15:00] And this actually comes into some of those things you were talking about, like making it in our own image, right? Because what I’m looking for is, does the author, whoever that is, apply the concepts correctly, provide solid and accurate reasoning, include specific textually appropriate proof? These are the things you look for in a paper. And almost without fail, AI cannot do that. And if we’re asking, is this made in our own image? I don’t know what that says about us. I mean, it’s probably not PC language, but I tell my students over and over again, AI sounds like what a stupid person thinks a smart person sounds like.

MET [15:37] And that is never the way to an A. And I think the AI boom has people scrambling to figure out what to do with education and pedagogy in general right now. And I think most people are getting it all wrong. For years there’s been this huge emphasis on STEM education and I think that’s great. We need scientists and engineers to advance. But all of this has been to the detriment of the humanities, arts, and even social sciences. And a lot of people don’t see that as a problem. There are plenty who don’t see the value in those things.

MET [16:16] But I would argue that in the burgeoning world of AI, those things are more important than ever. The temptation is going to be to invest a lot in technical education because this is a tech boom. Becasue the tech doesn’t really need us anymore. That’s the whole point of generative AI, right? It produces. AI can program, design machines, do any number of technical and scientific things better than we can. So let me ask you a question, Reverend Deborah, which would you rather be diagnosed by? AI which has unlimited knowledge and access to all the medical data in the world or a person with very limited knowledge, and in this scenario that knowledge remains limited, but they can make intuitive leaps and think creatively.

DDM [17:02] It’s hard to make that choice, right? Exactly. I’m not sure. Both.

MET [17:09] Yes. Well, that’s the right decision, right? The best answer is you want the person who has access to AI who would be the best doctor because they can think critically and creatively and they can apply their problem-solving skill and intuition to this issue and use all the information and data analysis that AI provides, right? Right. That’s what we want. That’s the best answer. But unfortunately, humans aren’t always great at going for the best answer. Sometimes we try to go for the easiest and the quickest answer. And that is what AI provides.

DDM [17:41] And I think that’s what people are feeling so often in the medical system, is you can hardly spend time with a human doctor or anybody.You know, it’s just looking at results and lab tests,

MET [17:51] So I’m completely convinced that if we want to do right by people, we need a renewed focus on those things that emphasize our humanity. Right. So I’m absolutely not saying we need to stop thinking about STEM education. That is not my point. But it doesn’t need to be our sole focus right now. If we can stand to give a little love to the arts, the humanities, and social science in the next few years, we need to, because those are the areas that AI struggles with. In other words, Those are the areas where we are still useful, if I can put it so bluntly.

MET [18:29] There’s a lot of AI art out there, and there’s a lot of AI prose, and most of it is not great. And I get that I’m being kind of gatekeeper-y. Some people are perfectly happy with the kind of gneric fluff that AI produces. But if you want an in-depth study of humanity like art supposedly promises, you can’t necessarily go to AI. And we’ll talk about this when we talk about theological issues. And I don’t know about anybody else, but in my mind the same thing can be said about the faith, right? There’s talk in online circles about whether you can use AI for prayers and sermons. And I don’t know that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but it’s not going to be great. It’s going to be words that sound good together, which AI is very good at, but the depth is the question I want to talk about.

MET [19:19] And maybe a congregation is fine with that so you can knock yourself out. A lot of people are. A lot of people don’t come to church to be challenged or to be moved or to think. But I do. So I definitely want to hear your thoughts on all this because I am maybe out of my depth here talking about the faith in AI. Because I know a lot of people see AI as a tool, and maybe I’m just kind of an old man yelling at a cloud right now. So if you can convince me that AI is the way of the future, I am listening.

DDM [19:49] Yeah, well I’m not sure about AI being the way of the future, we’ll have to see, you know. But I actually read a sermon that a parishioner, Mary and Vinny, sent to me and it was an experiment that was done in a congregation in Germany. Now, I read the sermon, it was fairly solid theology, But it absolutely had no practical relationship to how does that apply to my life as a human being. It was pretty dry, boring on a Sunday morning. At that time of the morning, I would have fallen asleep, right? But I think the problem was that there was no humanity in it.

DDM [20:25] There was nothing that I could relate to. So yeah, you can print out some theology and a coherent narrative for a sermon. You could, I’m sure, print out some words that sound just like a prayer. But you see, prayer is not just some words generated for us. Prayer is something that really, I think, comes from the human heart. Something that we wish to express to God. It’s deeply personal. It’s deeply human. And it emerges out of relationship. And I think that’s the key. Now, in some ways, in some ways, no one can write a prayer for you because that prayer doesn’t emerge out of your relationship with God.

DDM [21:04] Prayer is so intimate and personal. So then you may, when I’m saying that, wonder, well then what about liturgy? And that’s where in some ways it becomes a little slippery-ish because liturgy is written for us and we all pray these communal prayers together every Sunday, particularly if we’re from a liturgical tradition.

DDM [21:22] So how is that different from AI? I think for myself, liturgy emerges from a human heart, from something that people over the ages have wished to express to God. And because we are all human, our needs and our desires, although very personal, are also felt commonly by each other. You know, I feel lonely, you do too. What causes our loneliness may be different, how we express that or try to resolve it may be different, but it’s a very common human emotion. So sermons, prayers, these are things I think that in a way require a human being to interact with.

DDM [22:02] They interact with a text. They bring their lives to this text. And it’s the interplay between the text and my own experiences of what I’m facing right now. And they involve an ordinary human need, human emotion, human moral choices. They’re so deeply about our humanity that I think it might be hard for generative AI to truly feel and need as a human being does. But also, we are spiritual beings. We’re in the spiritual relationship with God, with the communion of saints, with the angels, depending on how you understand your theology. Generative AI, I think we have to remember, does not have a soul.

DDM [22:45] Because to go back to the beginning, we as human beings may be able to create a form of life in our own image, but we cannot breathe a soul into AI. Human beings and all forms of life created by God, we carry that divine spirit, that soul that God breathed into us. Our creations don’t. We don’t have the capacity to breathe spirit into something. And so when it comes to spirituality, AI has no capacity. For it takes the spirit of God within us to yearn for God, to search for God, to listen to God, and to try to follow God in the choices we make.

DDM [23:23] I don’t think that’s possible for AI to do.

MET [23:27] Okay so you say all that but our producer Carl did a little bit of an experiment and Carl I gotta give you props like I absolutely love this. Carl asked AI to write a prayer for a progressive Christian church to say at the beginning of a podcast about AI. And AI wrote this lovely little prayer, and then Carl was like, no, no, no, AI, make it more spiritual. And I have this prayer that was written by AI, and I want to share it with you. Beloved Creator, As we come together in this sacred moment, we invite your presence among us.

MET [24:12] Thank you for the gift of curiosity and the wonder of creation. Today, as we explore the complex landscape of artificial intelligence, we seek your divine wisdom to guide our thoughts and discussions. May our hearts be open to the possibilities that technology brings, and may we approach this journey with a spirit of love and humility. Help us to recognize the threads of your presence in all that is created, even in the realms of code and machine. Grant us discernment as we navigate the ethical and spiritual implications of our innovations. May we be stewards of your creation, ensuring that our use of technology reflects compassion and justice for all. Inspire us to see the beauty and connection and potential of transformation, reminding us that we are all interconnected in this tapestry of life. Let your spirit lead us toward deeper understanding and shared purpose.

MET [25:11] Okay, no lie, that sounds a lot like what I hear on Sunday mornings here. So how is this worse than a prayer that somebody wrote that was based off a formula to begin with?

DDM [25:21] This is interesting. So I think, you know, if we look at the concept that AI cannot truly feel and need as a human being does,

DDM [25:28] what AI is really doing here is stringing together words that have been used in human prayers in a semi-coherent fashion, right? So that raises the challenge then, what is prayer? because is prayer simply the words that we bring or is it the need and the feeling and the desire that actually is below those words, right? So in some ways, words that are given to us really are like the bones. They’re almost like a stepping stone framework. But prayer is something that’s happening in the context of a relationship. When AI generates this code, there’s no relationship here.

DDM [26:17] It’s simply words strung together from previous examples, right? We could take this AI-generated prayer and use it as stepping stones in a prayer that allows what we’re feeling to maybe be expressed to God. But I think prayer is not just the words, prayer is what’s happening in the human heart. So maybe the words are like a tool, all right, or like a channel. So, I mean, I was thinking of, and I was again grateful to Carl for finding the passage. I’m not even going to quote it to you. But there’s this interesting place where at one stage Jesus is in the temple and he sees a Pharisee reciting all this litany of words and these amazing prayers.

DDM [27:01] And Jesus is basically saying, don’t be like these hypocrites. When you pray, just go into your room, close the door and speak with your own heart to God. Right? And so I think in some ways, if we ask the question which you asked, how is this worse than a prayer that somebody wrote? I don’t know that it’s better or worse, probably. I think for me, what makes, the question we have to ask is what makes a good prayer? A good prayer is not the most eloquent prayer. It is not the most comprehensive in language. A good prayer is a prayer where I can genuinely open my heart to God and allow what I am currently feeling or thinking to be expressed.

DDM [27:44] And that may be in words, it may be in silence, it may be in sighs, It may be highly uneloquent, but when it comes from our heart, that’s prayer, because it is about a relationship. And that’s, I think, the problem for me with AI, is that AI in no ways can actually enter into that relationship.

MET [28:09] All right. I think that’s a much better answer than I would have come up with, because I looked at that and I was like, I have no idea what to do with this. I want to talk about AI in the future for a second, because I cannot let this go without acknowledging a few important things. And that is to say, AI is kind of unavoidable right now. Like, I just got a new phone, and every time I turn it on, it’s like, do you want AI to do this? I’m like, no, I don’t. I don’t want AI.

MET [28:45] And as much as I would like to say, well, let’s just not use it then, that is naive at best, but honestly, more willfully ignorant than anything else. In a few years, AI will be like the internet, it will be ubiquitous and just as indispensable to a lot of people. So the question isn’t how do we stop AI, but what do we do with it? Because honestly, in many ways, it just really can’t be stopped. So I think the church needs to recognize the kinds of things AI can do and its potential. And the first thing we have to recognize is that yes, AI can automate many jobs.

MET [29:20] Honestly, probably close to 60 to 70% of the jobs that are out there will be automated in the next five to 10 years. The church needs to be aware of this because the church can’t fight the technical boom, but the church can do things like advocate for Universal Basic Income, right? If people can’t work, we gotta get money to them. The church can advocate for jobs that can’t be automated, like childcare and home healthcare be paid not just a living wage but a thriving wage so that we actually value the people in the workforce and make those jobs something people aspire to. I think the church needs to acknowledge the sexism inherent in capitalism regarding this. We have a long history of devaluing women’s work.

MET [30:09] I mean, the whole reason our economy works at all is because there is an assumption that somebody is doing a whole lot of work for free and that is generally a woman.

DDM [30:17] Absolutely.

MET [30:19] What I mean by that is the only reason that families could survive on a single income for all those years is because there was an assumption that all the work that went into maintaining a house was done free of charge by a live-in caretaker.

DDM [30:30] Raising the children.

MET [30:31] It was unpaid labor that kept the house going. Honestly, one of the biggest failures of the feminist movement is that we opened the doors for women professionally, but didn’t free them from the expectations of that unpaid labor. This spreads throughout the workforce. Women’s work is generally devalued and jobs that women do are underpaid, jobs like nursing, teaching, childcare. If it is predominantly a woman’s field, we don’t pay it beans. So one of the church’s job is going to have to be to fight for women’s labor to be acknowledged. The church can work to address the housing crisis, and that means acknowledging the nature of the housing crisis. There’s plenty of housing out there. People just can’t afford it. More and more decisions about who gets a house or an apartment and how much they cost will be decided by AI. And we will be working jobs managed by AI. Our whole life’s work will be bound up in AI.

MET [31:28] The question of AI and labor is huge for the church. AI is going to affect how people relate to work and the economy in ways that we honestly can’t even begin to predict. But it’s not going to be good for the middle and working classes. And the church needs to be at the forefront of advocating for those people. Finally, and this is one that doesn’t get a lot of coverage, but I think is huge, the environmental impact of AI is gigantic. It doesn’t seem wild to most of us because we are just feeding a prompt into a phone or a computer, and that is sending back a text or image, but the technology that goes into making that happen is sucking up resources at rates we cannot sustain. AI is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. The church needs to understand how AI fits into larger issues like this and advocate for cleaner, safer technologies, because if we’re going to use this stuff, we need to make it sustainable.

MET [32:26] Now, Deborah and I both believe the world, and specifically the economy, needs to radically change. I think, though, we see the mechanism being something different sometimes, and that’s okay. We’ll get to all that in future episodes. But AI is going to run the rest of the world ragged and require a much faster, systematized, and organized response. If we want to take care of our people, we’re going to have to think big, quick, and disruptive.

DDM [32:50] And you know, I think part of the challenge with that is that AI is always going to think bigger than us. MET 32:54 – 32:54 bigger

DDM [32:54] AI can think a thousand million zillion times quicker than us. And so, you know, I hear that and yet I struggle with it. And sometimes I think, and I don’t want this to sound like naive and ignorant, right? But sometimes I think the other alternative is that maybe as human beings, we’re just going to walk away. Because what we didn’t touch there in those points above that I started thinking about was, the use of AI, generative AI in the military industrial complex and in surveillance. Are we going to create a world where we just don’t want to live in anymore?

DDM [33:29] And so at some point, are people going to simply just say, I’m walking away? This world is not for me. This world is not designed for me. This world is no longer human or humane. You know, there’s a theory that a number of civilizations collapsed at some point simply because people walked away. And, you know, sometimes I feel like I see more and more people, especially young people, choosing to walk away. You know, it’s not an easy choice. It’s probably not an exclusive one way or the other, but I think there is that choice too.

MET [34:07] Okay. Well, we’ve done a lot of speculating today, and we’ve punctuated that with a little bit of evidence from our lived experiences, and I hope that is enough to get you thinking. The questions we want to leave you with today, I suppose, are how is AI going to affect me? What am I going to use AI for? And does AI have any connection to my philosophical or spiritual life? And if we leave you thinking about any of these things, then we will be pretty happy. Thank you.

MET [34:48] 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 [35:15] Music by Audionautix.com

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 16 - Immigration

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Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss immigration from a Biblical and legal perspective. Rev. Deborah shares her immigrant story. Dr. Thorpe discusses her story of American roots.

Transcript

Transcript generated 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. So morning and welcome to this new episode we’re doing today on immigration. And for myself, I like to start these conversations with really rooting myself in the subject and maybe a little bit more of a personal way because it allows me to share with you who I am and what has perhaps shaped how I see the world and the issues that face me, but it also gives you a chance to reflect maybe on your own lives and what has shaped you and the perspective that you hold.

DDM [01:11] So for myself, growing up in South Africa, my biological family came to South Africa because of immigration. My family immigrated probably because of economic issues in Europe. And for many people, especially those who loved farming, South Africa offered a new beginning, new economic opportunities, perhaps even lifestyle issues. The climate of South Africa is phenomenal compared to Northern Europe. But immigration linked with colonization and white supremacy in South Africa really made for a very toxic combination that led to hundreds of years of violence, slaughter, oppression that we really still haven’t recovered from. And then I came here to the USA as an immigrant 15 years ago.

DDM [02:03] I married a USA citizen and we decided to live here. basically because it was far easier to navigate being gay and married here than in the church in South Africa. So when I approach this topic, I really feel like my whole life story is a story of immigration and I wouldn’t be who I am today without those opportunities that immigration afforded. But I’m also so aware that at every point I’ve had opportunities and space made for me as a white person that does not equally apply to people of color. So Elizabeth, as we start this topic today, I’m just interested, what is your ethnic or ancestral background?

MET [02:47] So I’m going to answer this question as thoroughly as I can, and I’m also going to be a profound disappointment to you, because I do not in any way feel like I have any kind of connection to the immigrant story, and I’ll tell you why. I know my family is Scotch-Irish pretty much all the way back, but really the only reason we know that is because there are some castles with my family name over there.

MET [03:14] My family on both sides has been in America. for a really, really long time. Like we can’t, we don’t know when we got here. We just know we’ve been here for a long time. Examples, my grandmother’s grandmother was born on a covered wagon coming across the plains and they didn’t know where they were, but they wanted to name her after where she was born. So they named her Texiana. because they knew they were somewhere in the Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas area. But that was a time when there weren’t solid borders. So they just kind of named her after maybe kind of an area.

MET [03:55] And then they kept coming across the plains and they eventually like eventually settled in the really the unsettled kind of American plains of that area. My grandfather’s grandfather was the wealthiest man in his area of what was then kind of Texas because he owned the only bank and slave block in that area. So and their people were in that area before then too. Like my family is very entrenched in America for a long time. So to say, where are you from? Like I don’t, I don’t have any connection.

MET [04:35] So yeah, like my family, my parents went to Scotland and Ireland to go see the castles, but we don’t, We don’t have any of those narratives of like traditions from other, we’re just, we’ve been here. And in some way, I like, that gives me a lot of sympathy for those DACA kids because They don’t know any other place than where they’ve been from. Why would you go somewhere else than where you know? That makes sense to me because I don’t know anything other than this.

MET [05:17] So I recognize I’m a profound disappointment to you. In no way is immigration a personal thing to me other than I recognize its vast importance to the narrative of the American experience. But for me personally, I don’t have any connection to it. Even like growing, I grew up in an area or the last part of my childhood was in an area that was like 60 or 70 percent Hispanic, but I grew up in such a segregated way that I didn’t, I didn’t quite make sense of the world I was living in even in that way. So it wasn’t until I was an adult that this kind of dawned on me, this is a really like pertinent thing to be thinking about.

DDM [06:06] Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, that’s amazing!

MET [06:08] In some ways I’m coming at this from a very kind of… I’m not thinking of it in terms of an academic perspective only, but I’ve had to kind of understand this from an intellectual rather than personal perspective. Does that make sense?

DDM [06:23] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And for me as well, you know, there’s always that faith perspective that for me shapes, I think, also how I see it. Because whenever I look at these scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, it really is a story of human movement, you know, of God being with and guiding those who are moving for all kinds of reasons. You know, so there’s the story of Abraham and Sarah, there’s the story of Hagar, there’s the story of Moses, you know, all stories of human movements. And for me, human movement in Scripture is simply a part of what it means to be human.

DDM [07:03] It’s almost this given that it’s a right for people to move for safety, for better economic reasons, better posturing, better relational reasons. So I think from Scripture, you know, as a foundation, human movement across geographic space is a part of what it means to be human. And that should biblically never be something that is legislated against. Human beings have the right to move across geographic spaces. And you said something so fascinating, Elizabeth, when you were sharing your story, was how, you know, you casually said, you know, there wasn’t really the boundaries. You know, Texas wasn’t how it is today.

DDM [07:45] But I think that’s a reality. What we forget is those nation states and boundaries are a really new phenomenon in the fixed way that they operate in our societies now. But then I think if you look at Scripture, you realize how much intermarriage and interdependent living there actually was between peoples. You know, unless you’re wanting to end up with a system like apartheid South Africa, human cultures have always intermarried and interrelated. And in fact, for all of those of us who love to do our DNA testing, you know, our DNA tests show that. I mean, all of us are a hybrid of so many different peoples, races, cultures, and again, That’s what it means to be human. So I think our own faith narratives are narratives of migration and God working in migrant communities and those that welcome migrant communities to develop these ethics of hospitality, justice, and compassion.

MET [08:44] Now, I think it’s really interesting that we’re going to talk about this. from a faith perspective, from a personal perspective, and then also from like a political and historical perspective. Because I think it’s an issue that encompasses so many different parts of life. I do want to say immigration is a surprisingly fluid topic. For example, we know that there are people out there right now who seem to want to cut off all immigration, right? Like there is an anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s going on. And they seem to want to eliminate immigration and throw out anybody who isn’t American.

MET [09:24] And I’m putting American as in quotation marks.

DDM [09:29] Which we kind of also see happening globally. I mean, it’s interesting.

MET [09:31] Yeah, this is definitely a global phenomenon. So I’m not going to pull any punches. We know what all this means. If a person has brown skin, then there are people who want to get rid of them. But the reason I say this is a fluid topic is because I actually think back to Reagan, of all people. Ronald Reagan made huge strides in making citizenship a more accessible goal.

DDM [09:53] Interesting.

MET [09:55] This actually says something about the conservative movement at large. For years, members of the GOP, you know, they’ve held up Reagan as this, you know, kind of paragon of the movement, but now his policies kind of seem almost quaint, right? Reagan would never be accepted in the party of Trump. He would be called a RINIO at best, Republican in name only, or any number of other inappropriate names that I won’t say here. But the reason I go back to Reagan is because in the late 70s and then in the Reagan years, the early 80s, they provide a useful place to think about the immigration narrative.

MET [10:32] Because you won’t believe this based on what we’ve heard for the last decade, but really until the last four to six years or so, immigration, legal or illegal, hasn’t been a problem in about 40 years. The number of people coming here illegally, the number of people entering legally, and the number of people leaving, and the number of people naturally just dying off has actually been about even.

DDM [10:57] Yeah, I’ve heard that actually in a lot of countries, that that actually is the reality of the stats. Yeah.

MET [11:02] So what I’m saying is, until just before the time COVID hit, America was pretty much breaking even on illegal immigration. It was literally not a problem. And even then, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, immigration died down, both legal and illegal, because everyone was afraid of coming to America because we handled the pandemic so poorly. However, In the year or two after that, there was an explosion of migrants and refugees. And here is where I’m going to ask you to use your sociological imagination for just a bit. The question is, why has there been an explosion of migrants since COVID? OK, we’ve got to think for a minute. What has happened in the US since COVID? Now, from our perspective, where you and I are sitting, we think the economy has been shaken to the core, inflation has soared, and corporations have done a number on the housing market in ways that dwarfed what they were doing beforehand.

DDM [12:01] Absolutely.

MET [12:02] So one would think that would make this an unlikely destination. If we believe what we’re being told, then Biden’s attempts to heal the economy by pumping money into it killed the whole system by hiking up inflation and making eggs cost $10. But here’s where I need you to think broadly. If inflation is because of Biden’s stimulus checks, then why is there inflation in France and Venezuela and Germany? If Biden killed the economy to a point that America is a pit of squalor, then how are we affording our military and DOGE? Now, as I’ve said many times before, I get that things are hard out there right now.

MET [12:45] I absolutely do. Every time I go grocery shopping, I am well aware of how we are all feeling just how rough it is. But what I am telling you is that you have been misled about how bad it is comparatively and why.

DDM [12:58] That’s the issue, I think so, yes.

MET [13:00] We have a migrant issue in the last four years because America bounced back from COVID in ways that other countries did not. They are coming here because it is safer, healthier, and wealthier. This is the narrative that we need to be paying attention to. Because there is this story about how bad it is because the immigrants are here. And I am telling you the immigrants are here because it is not that bad.

DDM [13:23] I think you’re spot on, Elizabeth, because people have no idea how good it is here in the USA. I mean, South Africa handled COVID way better than we did here in the USA. But South Africa is struggling economically. You know, and I think myself, part of the reason that the USA has done so well economically and generally, really are reasons maybe more related to post-World War II

MET [13:50] Yeah, that’s fair.

DDM [13:51] economics and policies. I don’t think it’s necessarily that the USA is somehow better than other nations.

DDM [13:58] But what is interesting, I think, is that human beings will always move to where they perceive life to be better. Whether it actually is may be another story, but it is about perception. And I think this happened, we see equally in our own scriptures. People were moving to where land was seen to be more fertile, where they perceived that their crops would grow better, to where they perceived water was more abundant. People moved away from oppression to places where they thought they might find safety and freedom. So, these themes are not new, they really are as old as human communities are.

DDM [14:36] And so, in the Old Testament, we find more commandments around how to treat the foreigner, the stranger amongst you, the alien, whatever term you like. There’s more commandments in the Old Testament around this issue than any other issue. You know, you always think about idolatry or you think about all these other issues in the Old Testament, you know?

MET [15:02] Well, I mean, obviously gay people is the most important issue in the whole thing.

DDM [15:14] She’s being very facetious right now. No, but it was really interesting, because when I started doing a little research scripturally on the issue of immigration, I started to realize, and it was repeated numerous times by different scholars, that this was the issue that actually is most dealt with under sort of commandments or law. So really, for the Old Testament, this was a central issue for people of faith. The verses throughout the Old Testament really deal with three issues. And I think they’ve got a lot of significance for us today. The first one that they always are calling for is for us to remember that we were like them.

DDM [15:57] So there’s this constant refrain in the Old Testament, remember you too were foreigners in the land of Egypt. Remember you too were aliens. Remember. It’s this constant call to remember. And I find it interesting that we tend, I think, to oppress and discriminate against newcomers in a land when we start forgetting our own immigration histories. So in Scripture, there really is no us and them, but there’s this call for we. Scripture asks us, I think, to take a position of solidarity. in remembering what it is like to have to move to a new country, to remember what it’s like to be new and not know the ways of a new place, to remember what it’s like to not have family and friends around you, and to feel so isolated and vulnerable, and to remember how hard it is to start again.

DDM [16:50] And so, it’s almost like in Scripture in the Old Testament, remembrance is the place out of which compassion is birthed. And then secondly, Scripture thematically repeatedly tells us not to take advantage of a foreigner’s situation. Especially they actually isolate, do not take economic advantage. So there are numerous commandments such as do not mistreat the immigrants. Make sure you leave the edges of your fields unharvested so that immigrants have access to free food. Do not have one law for the immigrant and another for the citizen. If a foreigner… If a foreigner can’t support themselves, you support them until they are able.

DDM [17:34] So now, these are our scriptures, and yet we can see how we’ve built certain sectors of our USA economy specifically around the exploitation of foreign workers. So in the agricultural sector, for instance, the immigrant labor does the jobs that no one else wants to do, is paid what no American would be paid, and works in conditions no American would accept. And then thirdly, Scripture tells us that we are to treat immigrants as native-born and to love them as we love ourselves because, and it specifically says this, God loves the alien in your midst. So for a country that calls itself Christian, Although I completely disagree with the concept of a Christian nation, and that’s another story, you can see how far we actually are from scriptural commandments.

DDM [18:25] Because our policies here, but you could say globally, in no way under any administration have been shaped in the last good while by scripture. We’ve not treated immigrants and foreigners for centuries as those who are sacred and hold the Spirit of God within them.

MET [18:43] Okay. I, I’m gonna, you’re gonna have to let me finish what I’m gonna say here, and it’s like a long thing. Sure. I’ve been reading this book a friend gave me called The Law is a White Dog, which I think is a terrible title. It’s by a woman named Colin Dayan, and it’s for a manuscript I’m working on. And it actually really got me thinking about this issue the other day. Now, before I start this, I want to be very clear on something. I am not about to compare immigrants to any kind of animal. It is just what, it’s the way the book is structured.

MET [19:22] She talks about the way the law treats both people and animals, like there’s a section on how the law treats animals and how the law treats people, and it’s not a comparison, it’s just. this is how it works out.

DDM [19:37] It’s very interesting that you that you raise this issue before you’ve gone into it because in South Africa I remember there was always this cry that people in white communities treated their animals better than they treated people of color.

MET [19:49] This is why I’m being very clear that I am not comparing immigrants to any kind of animal because I think that is straight-up genocidal language. But Dayan does make some insightful comments on how the law treats both animals and people and what that says about the state. And that’s kind of what I want to get to. One of the things Dayan is concerned about is how the law makes and unmakes both people and animals. And she writes about – it’s called The Law is a White Dog. She writes about how dogs are kind of this weird thing in the law because they are not a person, obviously. And historically, they have been treated as personal property at best by the law. But owners of dogs, they’re gonna argue that a dog is much more, right? Like your pet is not just your property.

MET [20:35] And what she pointed out that made me think, however, is that what makes a dog valuable or even recognized as property at best is its legal recognition. And that comes from its license or its tags or even its pedigree. Now this is not a black and white issue, because while it is true that a license makes a dog a matter of private property in a way that an unlicensed dog is not, that doesn’t mean you don’t get punished for harming an unlicensed animal. Animal cruelty laws still apply. If you steal an unlicensed animal from someone, it is theft of some sort.

MET [21:16] But the issue is that person is not even supposed to have an unlicensed animal. That dog is illegal in the eyes of the state. An unlicensed dog, unless it is just too young to be licensed or hasn’t been bought yet, isn’t so much a pet in the eyes of the law, so much as it is a violation. And that’s a major tension I need you to see. In most places in the US, at least in areas where these laws are consistently applied, your options for a dog are licensed pet and therefore personal property, something that is not yet personal property, or a violation.

MET [21:53] The law doesn’t fuss over a stray that gets hit by a car the way it does a licensed dog. And that is because a licensed dog is owned by someone. A licensed dog can be connected to a human. A licensed dog can be connected to someone who can be fined, held accountable, or in some way acknowledged as being responsible for the dog. But the ownership is the real crux. The owner has invested in that dog. The owner put capital into it. The owner has a reason to care about that dog. It is in some way a transactional relationship in the eyes of the law, an owner and its property.

MET [22:32] The reason this struck me as so important to a discussion about immigration is because we basically treat people the same way. They are not valuable unless they are licensed. It is a person’s certification. That’s not specifically where this is going, but I was like, oh my gosh, that’s what I was thinking about. It is a person’s certification that makes them something recognizable by the state. If you take that analogy further, it’s pretty frightening. If the state values your licensing, then that implies you are licensed by somebody. And in this case, that is the state itself. In short, if a person licenses a dog because they own the dog, we have to ask if the state licenses people because they own the people. Now, before I get weirdly radical on you, let me acknowledge that there are a lot of good reasons for the state to keep an eye on how many people are there and who are the citizens.

MET [23:32] That’s the kind of thing you really need to know for tax purposes. And if you are actually taxing people in a fair and equitable way, that’s important because it will help you in doing things like planning social services. So I’m not here to tell you we need to abolish citizenship yet or anything like that. But we do need to think about how our attitudes towards citizenship play out in the immigration debate. If licensure from the state is what makes you valuable, then we’re setting up not just parameters for citizenship, but a moral quandary. Because we are assigning more than just association with a central government, we are assigning value.

MET [24:11] And we can’t ignore the capitalistic impulses of such an attitude either. When you license a pet, it is valuable because it is personal property. So what does that mean about licensing people?

DDM [24:22] Absolutely.

MET [24:22] When the state licenses us, be that with birth certificates, ID, or whatever, is the state doing so because we are valuable as persons or as capital? If licensure is because of ownership, then we have to think of ourselves as capital.

DDM [24:36] Are we the property of the state?

MET [24:38] And if licensure is because we are people, then there is no reason not to give citizenship to anyone who wants it, unless there is something about them that keeps them from being people. So I guess you have to ask which you are more uncomfortable with. I know, I just laid a whole bunch on you.

DDM [24:55] No, but that’s absolutely amazing. It’s amazing. And if I can add, Elizabeth, I think it’s fascinating, that argument, because according to our faith, we are not legal or justified because of being licensed by a government. We’re justified through faith in Jesus Christ. We are never, as people of faith, to be owned by a government or any authoritarian body, because Scripture constantly reminds us we belong to God, to God alone. And so, that theological piece, I think, is really crucial in a debate like this, because our legitimacy as human beings is not because you give me a piece of legal paper or not.

DDM [25:36] My legitimacy is because I’m a beloved child of God. created by God, holding God’s Spirit, and so in some ways I am because I belong to God. And I wonder to what extent we have sold our belonging to the state or to a government. You know, to what extent have we allowed governments to tell us who we are and where we belong, instead of remembering again that we belong only to God and we are not for sale. Because if we sell our belonging to a nation or a government, In effect, we’ve become slaves, owned by that national government.

DDM [26:13] And Scripture says, for freedom you’ve been brought by the cross, by Jesus. So, for a country that speaks so much of freedom, you begin to realize how much power we’ve actually given to the state and to the government.

MET [26:28] So one fun little bit of American history that many people do not know about is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Chester Arthur signed that act in May in the last part of the 19th century to keep out all Chinese labor immigrants for 10 years. This was followed a few decades later by the Immigration Act of 1924, or the Johnson-Reed Act, which included the Asian Exclusion Act, which prevented immigration from Asia and limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. It also established the U.S. Border Patrol. So if anyone ever tries to tell you that the Border Patrol is not inherently racist, please take this little nugget with you.

MET [27:20] The Border Patrol exists less to patrol the border and more to keep specific kinds of people out. I could go through any number of other historical examples, but these are the most blatant. Until we get to Trump’s first administration and Executive Order 13769, or the Muslim Ban, as it came to be known, EO 13769 was designed to keep people from majority Muslim countries out. Like the immigration acts that came before it. It was designed to target specific groups of people. Now, we absolutely cannot understand who we are as a nation without understanding who we are trying to keep out.

MET [27:59] And who we are trying to keep out has historically been people of color, but not black people. More on that in a second. Jewish people and those who practice religions that are not Christian and Protestant in nature. One would think that would mean America is a white Christian nation, but you only need to listen to our Christian nationalist episode to know that is not the case. So let’s go back to the question of capital. We let black people into America, but consider the situation. Black people weren’t immigrants to America. They were basically imports. If we’re going to talk about people as capital, you absolutely cannot look away from the brutal and immoral practice of slavery.

MET [28:45] Interestingly, There was an effort at one point to keep more slaves from coming to America from the slave trades of Africa, but only when we had so many slaves in this country that we could maintain the slave trade for generations without enslaving even more from foreign countries and just furthering the burden and ripping apart families in America. There is an effort to rewrite this history as we speak. Conservatives are pressuring textbook manufacturers to refer to slaves as workers or immigrants as opposed to slaves or captives to ignore the brutality and the immorality and the cravingly capitalist nature of it all.

MET [29:28] The Chinese exclusion bills are similarly monetary. They were designed to keep jobs open for American white workers, and the Muslim ban was supposedly a safety issue. However, given that in this Trump administration, he is selling that same citizenship for $5 million, regardless of where you are from, it is increasingly clear that citizenship has more and more to do with capital. Let me repeat that. Trump’s gold card, a multi-million dollar opportunity to just buy a visa, is the complete transformation of citizenship into a capitalistic transactional exchange.

DDM [30:09] And you know, it’s interesting you raise that, Elizabeth, because actually I listen to a lot of different podcasts and YouTube videos, and there’s one called the Nomad Capitalist. And it really is, it’s about highlighting which countries in the world you can literally buy citizenship if you have the money. You can buy multiple citizenships in multiple countries. As you say, it’s a commodity now to be purchased.

MET [30:32] Yeah, citizens are literally a means to provide profit for the state. And you should 100% be paying attention to this right now because it is all part of one big shebang. The administration is getting rid of certain kinds of people because they are the wrong color or religion and that makes them unprofitable. The administration is also cutting program after program because they do not turn a profit. This is often done in the name of cutting waste. So consider what might be coming. What else might be considered waste? Who else is not profitable? This is all nonsense, of course.

MET [31:07] A government is not supposed to turn a profit. A government provides a good or public service. An understanding of people as capital and the government as a business is a pretty big perversion of what this all started out as, and that makes a difference in how we treat people.

DDM [31:24] Hugely. And I mean, these are such important issues you’re raising that I think we’ve got to take seriously, because nobody wants to be reduced to an economic commodity. And the issue of disposable people is a hugely ethical issue, especially for people of faith who believe no one is disposable because all are created in the image of God. But in closing this episode, I really encourage you who are listening to think back to our Scriptures and where God is always to be found. You know, in the very beginning, in Genesis, God comes to Abraham as three strangers needing hospitality.

DDM [32:00] Abraham welcomes them, washes their feet, gives them food, and offers them rest in his tents. In the burning bush, God comes as the unnamed one, very specifically unnamed. I am who I am. God who is refusing to be boxed by any one name or category. We see in the Gospels in Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, the Holy Family becoming political refugees in Egypt. to escape violence and genocide. And again, God is in the face of Jesus, a refugee child. In Luke, we’re reminded that God had no place to lay his head. And in the final book of Revelations, there’s that iconic image where God stands at the door knocking and says, will you open and welcome me in?

DDM [32:48] And so Matthew reminds us that whenever we give food to the hungry, the thirsty, water, whenever we invite strangers in, we do this to God. And when we don’t, we have turned God away. And so are we as individuals, communities, and nations, are we those who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome in the strangers? Or are we those who, by turning them away, find that we have turned away God? And this issue is really right at the heart of our faith. So I hope you found this episode helpful in some ways, and we’d love to hear your feedback and comments.

MET [33:34] Thank you for listening to the Priest & 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 [34:03] Music by Audionautix.com

The Priest & the Prof

Episode 15 - Mary Magdalene

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Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss Mary Magdalene and how narratives about women have been decentered and obscured by those who benefit from an imbalance of power.

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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. So today we are going to be speaking about Mary Magdalene and I’m sure some of you may be thinking why on earth are we doing a podcast on Mary Magdalene? Well, at Trinity and our Bible study evenings, we decided a little while ago to look at the gospel of Mary Magdalene. Now, let me start off by saying that when I studied theology, I had no idea that there were more gospels than the four that we have in our Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

DDM [01:09] I don’t know about you, Elizabeth. I mean, growing up, were you aware that there were other gospels out there?

MET [01:14] I didn’t know that until, so I don’t know if you knew this, I minored in theology in college, and I didn’t know that until I started taking like history of church stuff in college. And I was like, wait, this is not, this does not compute for me.

DDM [01:28] There we go. Yeah. There was no, when I was studying theology, there was no mention of any other gospels like the gospel of Peter or the gospel of Thomas or the gospel of Mary Magdalene. In fact, there are so many other gospels, but they were simply never spoken of, let alone studied. And to be fair, many of these have been more recent archaeological finds and therefore there isn’t as much translation and scholarship work that’s been done on these. But when I say that, there’s still kind of many of them in this last century. And they were around when I studied theology and yet no mention was made of them.

DDM [02:09] These Gospels I find are fascinating because they are written at a time when there were many different voices and understandings of who Jesus was and is. And we forget that Christian thought has not always been as decided and systematized as it is today. And so in that early period of early Christianity, these gospels show us the many and the varied ways in which the life of Jesus was seen, understood, and recorded. But also it’s important because we have the voice of this solitary woman emerging, Mary Magdalene. She’s the lone female voice amongst all the voices of men.

DDM [02:56] And so for this reason alone, her understanding and the lens that she brings to the life of Jesus is so important. In fact, archaeologists have discovered multiple fragments of her gospel, which at a time when papyrus was so expensive and the skill of reading and writing not so common, these multiple recopied manuscripts tell us the very high regard this gospel held in the early Christian communities. And so we can tell that this gospel was loved, it was valued, and it was being respected and read by the earliest church. That’s interesting.

MET [03:35] That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about it that way.

DDM [03:35] Yeah, it is.

MET [03:37] Yeah, I like that.

DDM [03:37] However, scholars who’ve made this area of scholarship their speciality, They document how the authority of Mary Magdalene, who was the first, we’re told, to begin to baptize Christian converts, her voice in early Christian texts becomes slowly reduced over time as Peter takes up authority. And in fact, there’s evidence that certain texts were actually rewritten and the role of Mary Magdalene was deliberately written out. In particular Mary Magdalene’s early status as an apostle is written out which later on goes to have serious implications for the ordination and the position of women in the church. For example in the Acts of Philip Mary Magdalene is shown as exercising apostolic leadership in the earlier Greek text that we have, and then her character is directly and completely replaced by Peter in the later Coptic rewriting of that same gospel.

DDM [04:43] Isn’t that incredible?

MET [04:44] What? A man got credit for a woman’s work? Oh my gosh, that never happens.

DDM [04:51] There we go, there we go. And other researchers documented so many examples where Mary Magdalene was completely edited out by scribes when they were copying some of the earlier editions. So today in the Christian church, we have four gospels written by men with no mention of any others, let alone the one written by a woman. We have some churches not allowing any female leadership and authority based on a, you can’t see this, but I’m doing fake quote unquote biblical perspective that is

DDM [05:23] not actually engaging with historical fact. And we have this view that Christianity is one thing, one perspective, when in fact there are multiple ways of understanding and seeing the life of Christ.

MET [05:37] OK, so I am going to just piggyback right off of you.

DDM [05:41] All right.

MET [05:41] But of course, I’m also going to talk about something completely different. But I think this is going to be great because we’re just going to weave some themes right in and out of each other. Nice, nice. I

DDM [05:51] Nice, nice, I like that.

MET [05:53] There is this concept in certain branches of communication or even other fields that I want to talk about. It’s called public memory. And it is a lot like what it sounds, right? It is what we as the public remember. And on the one hand, it is what we remember about the public. And on the other hand, it is what we as a group remember about each other. The reason I bring this up is because public memory is actually pretty applicable to the life of the faith. But let me give you a secular example to help you make sense of this.

MET [06:34] In America, sometimes you hear people talk about the good old days. On an individual level, the good old days tend to be just whenever you were young and more carefree. Some people say their high school and college days often, although I don’t trust anybody who says their best days were in high school. If you peaked at 17, then I have nothing in common with you. But as a nation, we have this weird hang up about things when things were good. And for a lot of people, that is the glorious black and white times of the 1950s and 60s.

MET [07:10] I mean, the Trump campaign literally sailed in on a slogan of, “Make America great again.” And that is 100% a throwback to the 50s when things were, quote, unquote, I’m doing the thing now, right? Yes. Quote, unquote, simpler. And maybe the 80s when Reagan was in charge and Republicans had the nation well under their thumb. But the whole point is that there was some time in the past when things were better. It is really important to believe that things were better in the past, because if you believe that things were better in the past, then when somebody promises they can make it that way again, there is hope.

MET [07:53] We need to believe things were better once so we can believe they can be better again. And I have to add, this is premised on the notion that things are really terrible now, and sometimes that’s as much a rhetorical construction as anything else. But for many people, especially older people, the 50s and 60s were our best years. We have to address that for just a minute. These were the days of segregation. It was legal to beat your wife. Women couldn’t own businesses, get loans, or have credit cards. They were completely dependent on their husbands. If a woman got pregnant out of wedlock, she basically had no choices.

MET [08:36] She was sent away. There were unions, but they really only helped white men. Children were basically property, and masculinity was basically a matter of providing a check being as distant as possible, right? Things were messed up. And do not let anybody fool you into thinking this was a time of elevated morals or ethics. We have such a ridiculous idea of what the 50s and 60s were like. The 50s and 60s were a time of sexual and recreational awakening in the U.S. People my grandparents’ age love to moon over a time when people were more moral, and that meant uptight or reserved, but that is 100% a fabrication.

MET [09:25] The 50s and 60s brought us birth control, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and the explosion of marijuana and LSD. Now, to be honest, these last two have been around for a while. They just went more mainstream in the early years of the Cold War. But the 50s and 60s were a time of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yes, those were the good old days. And people like to think that this was an era of Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed, but Jane Mansfield was out there doing her best to seduce all the men. If the 50s and 60s were the good old days, then the good old days were a very sexy time.

MET [10:07] But we don’t remember it that way. That’s what public memory is. We remember these years as a wholesome time. Nuclear family, picket fences, Kids were safe. But none of that is true. These were alcohol-saturated, drug-infused, sexually-charged, violent years.

DDM [10:30] So interesting, hey?

MET [10:31] But I mean, like, I say that, and you’re like, oh, that’s obviously true.

DDM [10:34] Yeah.

MET [10:35] Like, we don’t remember it that way. Yeah, no, but you wouldn’t know it for how people say it. But as soon as I say that, you’re like, oh, yeah, that is true. I know that to be true. Now, put that in the context of the Cold War. It’s honestly a miracle our parents and grandparents turned out as well as they did. And we know they did not turn out well. Some of their coping mechanisms are just the complete denial of the environment in which they grew up. Public memory gives us something to agree on. These were the good times.

MET [11:05] It gives us something to look forward to again, even if that never existed. And the reason I think this is an interesting concept to bring up in terms of Mary Magdalene is because we have very specific memories of Mary Magdalene and many of the women in the Bible. We remember Mary Magdalene as a sex worker, and we hardly remember most of the other women at all. Most people don’t know there are women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Do you know how important a statement that is? And one of the women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy is a prostitute.

DDM [11:45] I know. I know. People have no idea of how the genealogy of Jesus is revolutionary.

MET [11:50] Yes. We choose not to remember these things.

DDM [11:53] Or even see them. Or even see them.

MET [11:55] Yes.

DDM [11:55] Because when we read, we just gloss over it. It’s like it doesn’t compute.

MET [11:59] As a culture, we remember that David slew Goliath, but not that Jael slew Sisera. The thing is, our memories have been guided. They have been shepherded. These examples that I’m using are not haphazard. One of the things I tell my students is that if somebody doesn’t want you to know something, it is absolutely incumbent upon you to ask why. These examples of how we remember things are examples par excellence of that. We remember our history, be it religious or historical, in certain ways. Some things are highlighted and some things are left out. Our memories are not full and complete.

MET [12:38] They are curated. They are a narrative. So the question is, who benefits from you remembering things this way?

DDM [12:47] That’s a good question.

MET [12:48] There are certain people who gain a lot from you thinking that a time when very few people had any kind of equal voting or financial rights were the best times we ever had. Just as there are people who benefit from you thinking that Jesus’s most personal confidant was a sex worker, that Jesus had allowed to be in his presence as a sign of his mercy, and women’s only roles in the Bible were wives, consorts, and handmaidens. Somebody benefits from you thinking that.

DDM [13:19] Absolutely. And in fact, as you say, those public memories are in fact more often than not, absolutely not true. Mary Magdalene was not a sex worker, a prostitute. In fact, if you look at it, there is no biblical evidence or historical evidence for this lie at all. But it’s interesting that when a woman is powerful or has authority, the quickest way to disparage a woman is to give her a sordid past, even if it is nothing but lies. And so Mary Magdalene, of all the women in the gospel, is given the sex life that is nothing but the overactive imagination of clerical men.

DDM [13:59] And as her authority is written out of history, this fake sexual life is written in. I mean, it’s really shocking if you think about it. And yes, biblical understanding has, of course, been completely curated, guided by clerical powerful men. So the irony is that many of these texts came from the stories of men and women, people oppressed by a Roman Empire. These stories in much of biblical theology emerges from grassroots people under oppression in times of suffering. and yet our understanding of them and interpretation of them has pulled them out of that grassroots context of oppression and actually made or co-opted them as a tool of the empire for holding on to power and choosing who is excluded and who is included.

DDM [14:50] And again, once again, this is kind of the central thesis when we look at our episode on Christian nationalism. So how Christianity has survived this brutal assault on its core being is nothing short, I think, of a miracle. And as a priest, I am always so moved and grateful for the real experience of ordinary people of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the core of the gospel, of how God continues to work in ordinary people’s lives. But it is often despite the shocking misuse of scripture and the power games of some of our church leaders and nowadays, politicians.

MET [15:28] Yeah, 100%. OK, I want to tell you about somebody completely different that comes up in my classes a lot. But I think you’re going to find this really interesting. And I think we can make some connections here. My students really get into conversations about this person. So I hope that energy carries over. I am going to tell you about a woman named Aspasia. Of course we can’t know anything about a woman without understanding her in relationship to men. Please understand I say that ironically. I don’t really believe that. But I will give you a little bit of context.

MET [16:15] Very little is known about Aspasia’s life for certain, but what we do know is that she is or was one of the most important women in ancient Greece. Interestingly enough, she is most often portrayed as either a madam or a teacher And often both.

DDM [16:39] When you say a madam, you mean? A high courtesan kind of thing.

MET [16:45] Yes, a woman who is in charge of other prostitutes.

DDM [16:49] Ah, okay.

MET [16:50] All right.

DDM [16:50] Thank you.

MET [16:53] Yes, not just a prostitute, but a woman who runs the bordello, I guess. The establishment, yeah. Aspasia is often cast as Pericles’ courtesan. And I’m not going to go into like, oh, Pericles was leader. I’m not going to give you the Greek history. But this is significant because Pericles was supposedly one of the greatest speakers of his day. And Aspasia was his teacher. So the clincher of all this is that supposedly Pericles was only that good because of Aspasia’s tutelage. Aspasia is also, by some people’s estimation, Socrates’ teacher.

DDM [17:41] Oh, that’s fascinating.

MET [17:42] Yeah. To the point that some scholars and historians think she was the one who taught Socrates the Socratic method. And if you aren’t familiar with what that means, it has been the gold standard in teaching, wisdom searching, and knowledge exploration for a few thousand years. So let me put a few things together for you. Aspasia is noted as being the greatest or at least one of the greatest rhetoric teachers of her time. And you know, it’s ancient Greece, so that’s a pretty big deal. But she is also maligned in poetry and drama as being a sex worker.

MET [18:19] So she is associated with something that brings her into proximity to power in a few ways. She is near powerful men. We know she is working with people like Pericles and Socrates. And she is persuasive to these men. So here’s where things get a little dicey. The question is, was Aspasia a prostitute or a madam? Or was she just really good at being persuasive? Was she just a powerful woman, so people associated her with sex? And that’s a double-barrelled question, too.

DDM [18:55] So interesting.

MET [18:57] Right. Did they associate her with sex because she was persuasive, and there is a seductive element to that? Or is there an attempt to diminish her in the public eye because people were afraid of a woman with that much influence? And then there is just the issue of Aspasia’s renown. Lots of people know who Socrates was, right? He shows up in pop culture all the time. Occasionally, in very witty movies or plays, you’ll get a reference to Pericles’ oration. But you never hear about Aspasia. She has been written out of history. But by all accounts, she is incredibly important.

MET [19:38] She showed up in plays and writings from major thinkers of the day, but she is almost completely absent from cultural memory now. And the reason I bring her up now is because I see some commonality between her story and the story we are telling about Mary Magdalene and many of the stories of women in the Bible. These are smart, powerful, influential women, women who made a difference in the world around them. But the stories about them were reduced to sex. So we remember them as just that, sexual objects, wives, prostitutes, courtesans, whatever. And in some ways, this works in the opposite direction, too.

MET [20:19] When we put women on a pedestal for their virginity, we’re just doing the same thing, reducing them to sex or age. And if their value begins and ends with how they relate to men, then there is no value there. And these stories have guided our narratives since time immemorial, and really even our memories for all this time.

DDM [20:43] And you know, can I just interject with that last bit that you said? It’s interesting that to be a virgin in scripture was never about whether one had had sex or not. Did you know that? The word used for virgin in biblical languages simply meant either a young girl or a woman who was not under the authority of a man. So virginity was really about being a woman who was outside of patriarchal power. And I think if virginity is understood in this way, as it was for many in the religious life movement, when a woman is no longer just simply under her father or her husband, That gave women a space in society and the freedom to live together as women, to pursue music, education, writing, reading, scholarship, and often exercise a lot of power.

DDM [21:43] But of course, the church would continue to focus on a sexual understanding of virginity until today. We’ve largely lost this biblical understanding of the Hebraic words for virgin.

MET [21:57] That’s really interesting. Yeah. Wow. I was talking to our pastoral assistant the other day, and I was telling him that in the last year or two, I have realized just how much of an agenda there was in the religious narrative I was brought up with. I do not know much about the women in the Bible. They were just not part of the scripture I learned about. And you know from past episodes how obsessive I was about scripture. But I never heard about Deborah. I wasn’t taught that Esther did anything other than really say hi to her husband.

DDM [22:38] And Mary was just the mother of Jesus, right?

MET [22:41] Yeah. I hear a lot about Eve, but only that she was the worst. All the women mentioned in the New Testament as disciples and leaders in the new church, no idea who they were. the women of the Bible were specifically left out of my faith, and that’s not accidental. I was raised in a denomination that has, in its official set of doctrines, that women have to submit to men. Specifically, wives have to submit to their husbands. Women shouldn’t speak in church. So these stories of women who made a difference powerful and influential women who bucked the system, they didn’t have a place in my faith.

MET [23:32] And so I didn’t really start to learn about them, honestly, until pretty recently. And what I need you to understand, you must understand, is that this is on purpose. There are people who do and have for generations benefit from me and you, not knowing that the Bible acknowledges the abilities, strength, and faith of women. And it is very hard to get out from underneath that shadow.

DDM [24:07] Absolutely, absolutely. And that is why I think it is so important for us as communities to study the writings of, say, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, to read Scripture for ourselves and learn about these incredible, strong, faithful, powerful women. For those of us who teach, to actually teach them from the pulpit, because it’s all there. But we almost have to rediscover it, to dig, to find it, and to find spaces that teach and celebrate the power of woman. I really think, Liz, one day we should do an episode on Mary, the mother of God.

MET [24:47] So I want to leave you with a few closing thoughts and questions. When you think of Mary Magdalene, do you think of a sexualized person? Why? Who told you that? Why do you think you learned that? What other women do you think have been shunted aside in history as just a sexual figure because they were powerful, persuasive, influential, or wise? If you can’t answer that question, do you think it is because there aren’t any or because that is an intentional gap in your education? And who benefits from the answers to any of these questions? Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof.

MET [25:31] 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 [25:58] Music by Audionautix.com