Episodes

In this very spirited episode Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth discuss their very different understandings of death. Elizabeth recounts her fearful understanding of death because of its connection to sin and damnation, while Rev. Deborah describes it as a beautiful transition into something better.

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Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service.

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

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

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

[00:39] MET: Okay, so listeners, I’m going to tell you a funny story about the creation of this episode. Reverend Deborah said to me, hey, I’d love to do an episode on death and dying. We could talk about the transitions of life. And I said, sure, if we talk about death, then we could talk about sin. And she looked at me as if I had said, sure, we could also talk about five-legged, solar-powered plaid cats. Like, she honestly thought I had lost my ever-loving mind. I wish you could have seen the look on her face. But what we realized at that moment was that this was then a pretty essential conversation to have. Like if we were coming at this from such wildly different perspectives, then we needed to talk about what these things mean because it could have a pretty big impact on how we understand things spiritually.

[01:36] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. Because in my mind, I had never even thought about the issue of sin in an episode of death. My mind had never gone there.

[01:47] MET: Right. And that’s like my immediate reaction. So I know you’re used to telling, me telling a long, like historical context story or some legal history, But this time, things are pretty simple. I have a very clear association between sin, death, and damnation in my head. And this is just because of, you know, who I am, where I come from. Death isn’t the next step. It isn’t, as Pan said, an awfully great adventure in my mind, and like I’m working through this. I recognize this is a spiritual thing I need to figure out, but as I understood death as a child, It is where you go to meet your maker and if you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and prayed fervently and penitently for forgiveness and salvation, you will go to hell. If you have accepted him as your Lord and Savior you will go to heaven But you need to be very aware of the fact that you don’t deserve to go to heaven You deserve to go to hell,

[03:00] DDM: you know Elizabeth That is such frightening theology and I mean if you talk about a fear-based theology, I mean, I mean that’s just classic

[03:08] MET: Yeah, well, I mean you are a sinner and sinners deserve damnation. I was even taught that when the Bible talks about death, it doesn’t mean just like your body dies, it means eternal death. In other words, damnation. And I really cannot emphasize to you how strong the connections between sin, death, and damnation were in my childhood. So this impasse between Reverend Deborah and myself cannot be overstated. What she sees as a liminal space to transition from one state of life to another, I literally see as the threshold to hell.

[03:45] DDM: But I mean, Elizabeth, doesn’t that then create a huge amount of fear around the death and the thought of dying?

[03:54] MET: Like I was thinking about that, and I had kind of a light bulb moment. Like many people, I have kind of always wanted to be famous right but I was thinking about why that is and I think it’s because I’m afraid of dying right like if I disappear from this earth completely that’s terrifying to me And I think that’s because some part of me is afraid of death. Just, I don’t know if that makes any sense at all, but I think that’s just like my mind working to figure this out. I know that’s weird. Okay, I’m gonna back up a bit. I want to tell you a little something about Bible drill and the Roman Road You’re gonna love this Roman Road the Roman Road. Okay. Yeah When I was in grade school I was in something called Bible Drill for a few years. And I’m going to tell you what this was and I’m going to ask you not to dismiss me as a total weirdo. Bible Drill was competitive Bible memorization. And every year you are given a set of something like, I don’t know, 50 verses and about a dozen Bible references or Bible passages to memorize for that year’s competition. So you have to memorize all the verses plus something like the birth of Jesus, Luke 2, 1 through 7. I know that was an actual passage because I still remember it. You’re also given an official Bible drill Bible. It had to be a Bible drill Bible because you had to be able to look things up at a certain way in a certain time. Throughout the year, you move through levels of competition at the local, regional, and state levels. And there were 3 areas of competition, verse memorization, passage reference, and books of the Bible. So for every category you were given 10 seconds to recall a verse or find a specific book or passage. I don’t know if you can tell, but Southern Baptists take their Bible very seriously.

[05:53] DDM: Well, at least in the in the head.

[05:57] MET: That’s fair. I do want to make a quick note about liturgy too, just in case you don’t understand how these things work. In most mainline Protestant churches, there’s a basic liturgy that priests or pastors follow, so there’s a pattern to the year. Southern Baptists have no calendar or liturgy, so the pastor just kind of chooses what he wants to focus on and that’s the direction of the church. So the scripture is very selectively chosen for a narrative and that narrative has profoundly impacted the way I see things like death. So things like knowing the Bible and knowing where things are become very important because you kind of have to understand where the church is going in terms of understanding the scripture. All right. So honestly, even as I’m saying this, like I know how wild it sounds, but Let me make it even weirder for you. I always used to get frustrated with my dad because he called Bible drill the wrong thing and so did my grandmother and that annoyed me. You know kids get annoyed when the details are wrong. They called it sword drill. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood why. When my dad was young, that kind of activity was called sword drill, not Bible drill, because they referred to the Bible as the sword. When scripture tells us, I think it’s in Corinthians, but I’m not sure, maybe Ephesians, when the scripture tells us to put on the whole armor of God, Baptists really get into the militarism of that. So they spent decades teaching young kids that the Bible was literally a weapon, and the best way to know how to use it was to know it backward and forward.

[07:35] DDM: You know, I have to be honest when you said that the weight that entered into my chest was quite something. It almost makes me want to cry, you know, because the thought of scripture, which is something so sacred and is meant to be so life-giving is then used as a weapon against other people. It is such a violation of the intent of sacred scriptures. And in a way I’m just I’m so sorry for your experience but I’m also desperately sorry for anybody who’s had the experience of scripture being used against them as a weapon, because that is nothing but spiritual abuse, and it is so wrong.

[08:18] MET: So I would like to affirm to you at this point that I am a functioning adult with a job and a family and a reasonably healthy outlook on life.

[08:26] DDM: I know, despite, despite.

[08:29] MET: And I say this to you to emphasize that I was raised to understand that scripture is sacrosanct, like that’s why I went through all of this. It was my job to know as much of it as possible and to use it whenever I could to advance the will of God. There’s a whole lot of spiritual and psychological work being done there to assume that because I memorized some verses and the books of the Bible I would know the will of God but whatever hence sword drill.

[09:01] DDM: And you know Elizabeth I just want to disagree with you here. And it’s not you personally, but that worldview, because if scripture really was viewed as sacrosanct, I think a lot more energy then would have been put into understanding it in context, understanding the original languages into which it was written, understanding the problems we have with translation, understanding the way in which text was understood in completely different ways from the way we understand text today and that most of these were actually from oral based cultures and so the idea that despite all of those issues you can simply pull out a few verses string them together to justify an agenda that’s so un-Christ-like and unlike the Jesus of the Gospels, I think for me shows that deep down there really isn’t a view of scripture as being sacrosanct.

[09:58] MET: Well, one day we’ll do an episode on biblical inerrancy And we will just blow some minds.

[10:07] DDM: Yeah, it would be interesting to do an episode, I think on text.

[10:10] MET: Yeah. Yeah, okay. So producer, write that down. Okay, one of the many things we had to familiarize ourselves with in scripture, not necessarily in Bible drill, but in like Sunday school and Bible study, which I did as well. And it all had the same kind of fanatical approach to scripture was something called the Roman Road. The Roman Road is a set of verses in the book of Romans that young evangelicals are encouraged to memorize because supposedly the entirety of Christian theology or the gospel, it can’t be the gospel because it’s in Romans, but they like to talk about that, or whatever can be distilled into these verses. And all of this may seem like a roundabout way of getting to a discussion on death, but I promise it is all coming to a head. Okay, so have this in your background. I grew up with a view of scripture that honestly was almost idolatrous. The Bible was almost more important than Jesus in some ways. And the Roman road, or at least some of the verses in Romans were specifically chosen to shape our understanding of the biggest questions about our faith. So we’re going to look at what the Roman road has to say about things. We start with Romans 3 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Okay, so we’re all sinners, but that’s not all of it. God is glorious and because we are sinners we are less than God. Got it. Robbins 5 8, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Okay, cool, this is fixable. We know God loves us because Christ died for us. An observant reader will note that we are only two verses into this and we can see death is not a good thing and it is definitely my fault because I’m a sinner. Romans 6 23, for the wages of sin is death but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Couldn’t be too much clear. We’re all sinners and sin equals death. We will die for our sins. And I would like to reiterate that it was impressed upon me that this meant eternal death. So I wasn’t just gonna die for my sins, I was going to be damned for them too. However, God gives us the gifts of life through Jesus, so this is important to understand. Jesus conquers death. Jesus is the opposite of death. Romans 8 1, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. So if you ask Jesus into your heart you can avoid all this condemnation stuff, which according to everything we’ve learned from the Roman road means avoiding death. Hooray for eternal life. Romans 10 9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him, I just lost it, God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Okay, so this is the evangelical part of evangelicalism because it’s not enough to love God or clothe the naked or feed the poor. That’s all good. But you have to actually tell people that Jesus is Lord. All those folks going on mission trips and standing on street corners, they’re just doing as they have been commanded as part of their Christian duty.

[13:38] DDM: You know what I just think is so interesting about everything you’ve shared? It’s all from Romans. And Romans is number 1, not the gospel. Number 2, Romans is in some ways trying to make sense of the gospel through the mind of Rome, which was the mind of empire, the mind of colonialism. And it also is through Paul, who himself was a military man. So it’s interesting for me the amount of military language in that which is in some ways very, very unlike the language of Jesus. But carry on. Sorry. I don’t know.

[14:15] MET: That’s fine. I mean, I feel like I’ve established myself as a crazy person at this point. So it’s fine to move on. But I want to consider this for a moment. So here I am an Episcopalian. I’m living in the Northeast. I’m generally a respectable person. Now, if you saw me, you might take a second look because of the hair and the piercings, but I’m not operating wildly outside of normal means of operations. So what I need you to understand, you and Reverend Deborah, you and listeners, really truly understand Is that when somebody in America says they are a practicing Christian it is very likely They have some version of this narrative playing in the background of their head Self-professed evangelicals make up the majority of practicing Christians in this country There are more people walking around who think like this than we care to acknowledge and I know because I’ve been to all their baptisms

[15:07] DDM: You know Elizabeth and you know when you say that I almost don’t even know where to start with With all of that because there’s a way in which I feel a little breathless Perhaps I want to be honest at the horror of what has been done to our faith. So let’s go back to scripture, but not just a few verses pulled out and strung together, but a more broader overview of scripture. In the Hebrew understanding in the beginning of creation, we’re told that all things, everything that is, is created through the Word. Not meaning scripture, right? But the Word meaning Jesus. So already, I would say from the very beginnings of Genesis, we have this very different understanding of what is the Word of God. As Episcopalians, the Word of God is Jesus. The Word is the embodied incarnation of Jesus. It is not necessarily scripture, right? But then we’re told that every human being, each other species, let’s, you know, even non-human beings, right? Everything is created by Jesus and through him. So everything that has life holds this sacred life of God within these bodies of ours. And so in some ways we begin with this original concept of everything that is is sacred and holds this blessed life of God within it. That’s why scripture understands the body to be as sacred as a temple or a church. And I mean if you think about it, that’s why we bury people. We treat dead bodies with great dignity because the body we understand to be a sacred temple, this vessel for the sacred Spirit of God. But you’re right, at some point in the narrative, whether it’s a collective narrative or our own individuals, we turn away from God. We become alienated in our relationship from God. We become alienated in our relationship to creation. We become alienated from ourselves, and we become alienated from each other. And so in theological tradition, sin, if you want to use that term, Sin is simply a breaking of the relationships. Right? And so it’s this concept of being alienated from one another, alienated from ourselves, alienated from creation, alienated from God. And so from this alienation, yes death does enter the story, but death is not a punishment, it’s more a consequence. And I think those two things are very different. What you were describing, it’s almost like death is a form of punishment. Whereas in scriptures death is a consequence of this breakening and in some ways this destruction of relationship. So in some ways yes as human beings we are inescapably caught up in broken relationships and alienation. But scripture is very clear that this was never how God intended it. And so a lot of scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, is a description of how this plays out in future families and cultures and generations. And it’s showing us in the Old Testament how devastating the effects of broken relationships actually are for us as human beings but also for God and at some point in human history God decides according to Christian theology to take flesh to literally become a human being to show us in the flesh what it means to live a holy life. And that holy life as we see in the life of Jesus was nothing like the priests had been teaching. That holy life is radical, turned their religion and their ethical laws upside down, it broke down the barriers between all the categories of us and them. And so the result of living a life like this God shows us will invariably end up in death, because the life of God in the flesh is so destabilizing both to the powers at that time but also the powers in our own life that the world’s response is often to eliminate it and so in some ways on the cross what we see is what we as human beings do when we’re confronted with truth, justice and integrity in the flesh. And so yeah in some ways you might say the wages of sin or death, the consequences of alienation and our need to preserve our power does result in death, but none of this is the will of God. It’s the invariable outcome of a world obsessed with power and the self. But I think that the New Testament is clear that from the time of Christ’s death, that death was meant to be once and for all. And I think this is the problem. Because all actually has to mean all. Christ died for all, whether we understand it or not, whether we deserve it or not, whether we accept it or not, right? And in fact it’s an interesting concept this because in South Africa in the Diocese of Natal, which was my birth diocese, In the mid 1800s we actually ended up with two bishops. one was Bishop Colenso and one was Bishop Macrorie. And the church actually split at that time Because Colenso believed that Christ died for all. That you didn’t need to accept it, you didn’t need to understand it, you didn’t even need to have heard about it. This was something that God did for all. So from that moment that Christ dies on the cross, literally all people are saved. Now at the time, Colenso was declared a heretic. Ironically though, his understanding, I think of Christ’s death, has become more common understanding that all are saved through the life and death of Christ. That this is God’s gift to us. And if you think about it, a gift, you don’t do anything to earn it, to deserve it, to make it happen. It’s simply the impetus of God or the impetus of the gift giver, right? So in fact, all already are in Christ, and yes, there is no condemnation. So when God looks and sees our brokenness, it’s more in our understanding, as Julian of Norwich, the mystic, says. That When God sees our brokenness and our wounding, God doesn’t look on us with judgment, but with compassion, right? Because God sees the pain. And if we look at the Gospels, that really was the way of Jesus. Each time God sees the wounding, the human being hurt and responds always with compassion. And it’s that compassion, ironically, that ends up being what heals and saves. I think the other problem as well with a lot of this talk is that salvation, we need to remember, comes from the root word for wholeness. So to be saved is actually to be made whole again. Whole within ourselves, whole in our relationship to other human beings, whole in our relationship to the more than human world and whole with God. So to die is to have that sacred breath that was breathed into us in the very beginning when we were born, leave the sacred body and return to the one from whom the breath originally came. So we say that the spirit returns to the heart of God. And so to die is then simply to return to the one who knit us together in our mother’s wombs, to return to the one who breathed that gift of life into us, and to return to the one who sustained and loved and longed for our wholeness and joy our entire lives. So as Paul then says, what do I have to fear? Because nothing, and nothing must mean nothing, can separate us from the love of God. So Paul, same Paul, right? Is clear that we should not fear death. And he says, mockingly, death, where is your victory? Where is your sting? So death in scripture is simply the gateway, the passage from this life to the next, to what is called resurrected life. And as we were born into this world, so death is our being born into the next. But I have to tell you honestly, as a priest being at the bedside of so many people dying, it strikes me almost every time how much dying is like labor. You know, you watch as a person’s breathing changes, the focus changes, so often they’ll see a loved one come to meet them. You know, it’s hard work dying, just as it’s hard work laboring and birthing a child. And this is something that we all will face because no one who is born through labor into this world escapes the labor of being born into the next. And so I don’t want to minimize the grief around death because really death is about birth. It’s about being born again into that greater wholeness and love of God. And it can be something both painful and beautiful just as our own births were into this world. And so for me the question is how do we begin to see death not as something to fight, which I think our culture spends a lot of time doing, but as something that is so natural. How do we come alongside those who are dying, like we do those in labor, and help them with this transition into the next life? And how do we make space for grief, but also deep peace, knowing that those we love are enveloped in this expensive unending love of God. And for me, those would be some of the real questions that I think death asks of us.

[24:59] MET: So What we have heard today are two very different approaches to what is kind of an integral part of like, we are not getting around this subject, right? At the end of the day, we’re all facing the same thing. And that’s why I thought this would be such a fascinating discussion, because all the world over, people have such different ways of approaching this. And I just wanna leave us with this. Reverend Deborah said something about Julian of Norwich. And if you’re not familiar with Julian of Norwich, honestly, there’s no reason why you should be unless you’re like a medievalist or a theologian. But if I’m recalling, Julian of Norwich told us that all would be well. And I feel like ending with Julian of Norwich is kind of an optimistic way to sign off today. Because if you’re talking about death, there has to be some hope. Otherwise it just becomes overwhelming. So we’re gonna leave you with Julian of Norwich today. All will be well.

[26:20] DDM: And all manner of things shall be well. Thank you, Elizabeth.

[26:28] MET: Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof, find us at our website, PriestAndProf.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@PriestAndProf.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at 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.

[26:58] DDM: Music by Audionautix.com

In this episode Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth talk about the history of the women’s movement and the connections between their faith journey and feminism. They talk about their experiences as women in church, and how that has shaped them.

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Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service

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

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

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

[00:39] MET: Okay, so when I was in college I was part of this college youth group at the church that I was going to And we spent some time talking about the spiritual gifts in first Corinthians. And of course, as Southern Baptist, like really specific and kind of literal about it. So, you know, these are the spiritual gifts and you have one of them.

[01:01] DDM: Only one.

[01:01] MET: Yeah. Maybe you have more, but like they were very specific. So, there was a lot of talk about, Oh, which spiritual gift are you imbued with? And everybody kind of danced around the idea that I may have the gift of prophecy. Now I am not here to say whether that is or is not the case or even what that could possibly mean. But I do remember thinking like, if that’s the case, what a terrible waste it was. Because even if somebody like me did have the gift of prophecy, nobody was going to listen to a woman.

[01:42] DDM: Oh, wow. And what age was that?

[01:45] MET: That was when I was like 19 or 20. Because, and it’s not like a woman couldn’t be a prophet. It’s just that the way I grew up, that was just the way it was. Nobody was going to listen to a woman. Women couldn’t be leaders. And then in that same youth group, I remember one of the church leaders talking to me about ways I could help serve God. And he told me, I think you could have a real knack for preaching. And I laughed because as a Southern Baptist, that basically meant nothing because women didn’t lead that way. And I look back and I think if I had grown up in a different tradition, there’s a possibility that my life would have taken a very different path. If there had been opportunities for leadership outside of children’s ministry in my church, I think I might have found a different calling. My parents always assumed I’d grow up to be a missionary or something as it was. But that’s just not where my place was. You know, there was no place for women with my skills in my tradition. You know, missionaries went out into the world and served, but they weren’t preachers. They weren’t scholars. They weren’t the things that I was gifted at. You know, the best we could do for somebody like me was enter some speaking competitions as a teenager and then maybe marry a minister or maybe go out and do kind of like nursing kind of things, which is not what I was good at. So it was kind of like, well, you have these gifts. Congratulations. You’re not good. Not able to use them. Yeah. So like, you know, I wanted to be a servant of God, but there was just no, there was just no place for me there. So I don’t know. I was just very kind of a conflicted position.

[03:48] DDM: A lot of tension within that. I’m sure. I’m sure. It’s interesting. You start this discussion around the topic of spiritual gifts because in some ways that was a little bit like my experience, but in a different way because I came into the church only in my late teens. And honestly, the church was not the place at which I was familiar. I hadn’t grown up in the church. I was much more comfortable sort of in the quote unquote world and much more rooted, I would say, in issues of social justice and medicine, funny enough. And I think for me where it began was a minister actually came up to me once after a service and said to me, I really believe you have the gift of preaching. Well, I almost fell over. But actually, and I didn’t share this with anybody ever before, but I actually had started just getting these bursts of like inspiration and I would write them all down and then put them in my desk drawer in my bedroom, not having any idea what I was ever gonna do with them. So when that priest came and said, I think you have the call to preaching, there was a resonance within me, but doing anything in the church seemed very daunting to me. But luckily enough, that was a particular tradition that actually welcomed women’s gifts. And so I started exploring preaching, I started doing lay preaching, and really pretty quickly in that journey realized that a lot of my deepest passions that I had always lived out in the world really came together in ministry, which was exciting for me. But what there was, I think, was a difference in the sense that it was fine to do ministry as a woman, but to be ordained was still for men. So there was that distinction where, yeah, a woman could do full ministry, but ordination and especially around the sacraments that was still reserved for men. And I remember just absolutely loving theology, just beginning to fall in love with, I think we spoke before about the kingdom of God and that alternative vision. And so I started studying theology as a seminary student, actually not having any idea why I was doing it, because I couldn’t become a priest, right? And like you, sometimes the idea was, well, I guess I could go into mission work, but I actually had no desire for mission work because I think of the colonial sort of imperial baggage that comes with that. And it was only later in my diocese that they actually started studying women. So for me, going to seminary really was a step of faith, not knowing where it was going to end up. But then as a woman, I think I had some pretty harrowing experiences in the seminary. You know, I mean, I remember women preaching and men, male students, literally standing up in the chapel and just walking out because they believed coming from other traditions like you were sharing yourself, that a woman should never be preaching. The sexual harassment in the seminaries and the rape, that was ridiculous because it was such a male environment. And so honestly, really it was a pretty hostile environment to enter into as a young woman. But I remember that call to ministry I think being so strong, but if your conflict was I have these gifts but my tradition doesn’t allow me to use it, I think mine was well I can use my gifts but at what personal cost to myself, my sanity and my body, because this male structure and environment into which one was entering was highly dysfunctional and unhealthy.

[07:30] MET: So I think that speaks to a huge difference in character between us because I was told, oh, there’s not a place for you. And I was like, well, I guess I’m out. And you were told, oh, there’s not a place for you. And you’re like, I’m making a place.

[07:43] DDM: Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it has a huge impact on you because I remember just prior to ordination, realizing how much I had internalized that misogyny because I remember in my ordination retreat the issue that I was still struggling with is if I consecrate will it be authentic or will it just be a joke?

[08:12] MET: Oh my gosh.

[08:13] DDM: And I remember it was only as I was grappling with this, should I go through with it? And I was still at my ordination retreat thinking, am I still gonna actually go through with this? I had this vision of Mary and Mary came to me in that little room that I was like sequestered into for praying for that week. And she came into this room and this is Mary the mother of Jesus by the way. Just in case there was any doubt, the main Mary. And Mary came into the room and I remember her saying to me, who do you think first produced the body and blood of Christ? It was me. And if I can do it, you can do it too. And I remember her just very clearly answering that question. And from that moment onwards, I had no internal doubt, you know? But it just shows you to what extent we grapple with that culture of misogyny when we internalize it ourselves.

[09:08] MET: So I think it’s really interesting to think… So the Mary conversation is so fascinating, And we could absolutely talk about Mary and how she fits into the conversation about women in the church for like hours at a time in and of itself. One of the things that I think is really interesting in terms of women in the church is how the conversation about women in the church is part and parcel with women in public, right? This is not just a conversation about women in like the priesthood, there has been a long conversation about what is a woman’s role in public, right? Like this is not specific to ecclesiastical studies, right? Like we have not known what to do with women in public. So, and I can, okay, I could go on and on and on about the women’s movement and feminism. This is my jam. But what I wanna do is kind of give you an overview of what women have been doing in public for just a few minutes, because I think that gives us a little bit of a background about how this has played out and kind of the interplay between public lives and religious lives and that kind of thing. So I want to kind of make some connections really quickly. So I want to talk about the women’s movement. And let’s see if we can kind of draw some some connections really quickly. The women’s movement and this is as we understand it in America, and then by extension in Europe, I’m going to talk about it in a kind of Ameri-centric way. And some of that is because a lot of the women’s movement has been a little bit Ameri-centric, like it didn’t really spread out into other parts of the world until a little bit later. It’s just been sort of a Western thing in many ways. So, and some of that Is cultural and some of that is political and there’s a lot of reasons for that. So if this seems kind of Ameri-centric it is But the women’s movement is Kind of organized into what’s called waves and I’m gonna tell you what those are. So there’s the first wave which basically deals with women’s suffrage and you can kind of pinpoint the dates on this one right like it pretty much started in what 1848 with Seneca Falls and it deals with the right to vote. There are other things that go on, but basically these women and a few men were interested in the right to vote because it doesn’t get much more basic than that, right? If you’re going to be a citizen, You need to be able to vote And that wave pretty much ended when the 19th amendment was passed right women got the right to vote That was pretty much over. We’ll get back to the first wave in a little bit The second wave is a little bit more complicated the second wav it’s got its precursors in the 1940s, but it really gets going in the 1960s. And it was a very kind of pragmatic political wave. You get people like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem involved, but it focused on like the political and legal parts of equality, equal pay, equal protection, equal rights, that kind of thing. And it was very much a movement to establish and maintain those legal and political things that you can point to as like, this is a thing we can say, this has to be established, right? This has to be like, we want this equality. The thing about the second wave though, is it was kind of limited and who was involved, right? It really focused on middle-class white Americans. Yes, there were other people who were involved, but it tended to be a little bit exclusive in that way.

[13:21] DDM: Was the suffragette movement also a little exclusive?

[13:25] MET: Yeah, for sure.

[13:28] MET: Also. Those 19th century white women were like, that’s, that’s kind of a given, right? The second wave was also exclusive. And you can also point to like the second wave, there was a big victory, right? Roe v. Wade, they say, yeah, that was like, we did that. But you can also say the second wave kind of failed when the ERA didn’t pass. That’s the Equal Rights Amendment. It kind of fizzled out when the Equal Rights Amendment didn’t pass. And what a lot of people don’t know is that to this day women are not guaranteed equal rights legally in the United States and it’s not in the Constitution and that like people have tried to change that seriously up until the last two years People have been trying to change that and it has been defeated over and over and over again and the argument for that is Specifically, oh women don’t need to be guaranteed equal rights because it just says equal rights and that covers everybody But then you get people like conservative hero Justice Antonin Scalia saying things like well since women aren’t guaranteed equal rights we don’t have to give them equal rights so a very clear picture emerges here in terms of how we feel about women legally whatever okay so Equal Rigts Amendment fails Later on we get to the third wave Third wave is really interesting because it tries to kind of address some of the limitations of the second wave. One, it becomes a very international approach. So you start moving into things like thinking about indigenous rights and moving beyond the limitations of European and American understandings of what it means to be equal. There’s a lot of emphasis on the value of domestic work and thinking in terms of women’s labor is What powers economies and we need to value that so it’s not so much like women deserve To work it’s that women deserve to have their work valued. And that’s kind of a, that’s a nuance switch. If there is a motto for the third wave, it is that “Women’s rights are human rights.” That also includes, something called intersectionality, which a lot of people think is some kind of like really woke liberal indoctrination thing. But I think it’s actually just really a good observation. And that is the idea that our identities are a mishmash of a lot of things, right? Like I am a straight white woman. That means I understand the world differently than a black queer woman. And that means I don’t understand the world just as a woman or just as a white person being a white woman means I understand the world differently than a white man or a queer white woman or I mean these are just and our relationships to power are different because of these different parts of our identity.

[16:38] DDM: So would you say that intersectionality is really around understanding that we really function from multiple identities?

[16:44] MET: That’s exactly what It is. That’s exactly what it is. And specifically the way we relate to power is different because of we’re made up of all these different things. And because of that, we also have to consider things like men relate to things differently. Right. The third wave comes along and says, yeah, the thing about gender roles and intersectionality means that like men are screwed in all of this patriarchy too, right?

[17:11] DDM: Absolutely.

[17:11] MET: I mean, the third wave says we’ve got to include men in all of this because men are just as oppressed by things like toxic masculinity and gender roles as women are, which is why that human rights thing becomes important. There’s a fourth wave, which is basically just kind of the mediated part of it. You think about #MeToo, that kind of thing. And some people say we’re in a fifth wave. I honestly don’t know enough about it to talk about it. Anyway, that is a long story. But the reason I go through all of that is because it’s really important to understand what is going on in the world to understand what is happening in the church as well. So there’s your background to think about how women are functioning out there to think about what are we doing to function kind of in this ecclesiastical liturgical space. I don’t know. So you can probably speak more to what the church is doing within that environment.

[18:15] DDM: Right. So it was interesting in South Africa because for traditions that ordained women prior to the Anglican church in South Africa, like the Methodist church actually started ordaining women prior, there was a sense that they ordained women but really didn’t understand the implications of what that actually was going to mean. So for instance, it was a great idea to include women or deign women, but what was that actually going to translate into? So I’ll share a silly little story that might in some ways illustrate that. I remember the first inclusive retreat that we went to male and female clergy together. Of course, the place at which the retreat took place was an all boys school, predominantly urinals, rows and rows of all boys urinals, one or two little stalls sectioned off. But I remember the male clergy and trying to be very welcoming to us, a small little handful of female clergy had done this beautiful pink sign and it said woman and then they put it on one of these doors and I remember as a woman I opened the door and I walked in and literally all I saw was rows of urinals and I thought to myself you know that in some ways for me was a silly little story, but it summed up the struggles. Because there is this attitude of we want you here, we want to be inclusive, but our structures, our ways of doing things are literally all geared towards men. So maybe in some ways ordination was the first step like your first wave for voting but then that second wave was really about the church starting to grapple with okay what is ordination actually gonna mean? Maternity leave and policies right? We’d never had to face those issues before. Woman menstruating in the sanctuary. That was huge, right? Because we come from a tradition where, especially in the West, theologically women’s bodies have been unclean, even though the idea of a blood sacrifice of a man is what saves us, right? I mean, think of the irony there. Woman’s bodies and blood is unclean, but it’s a male blood that is actually what saves us. I remember the first time I saw a woman priest with her baby in the sanctuary and she unbuttoned her cassock and started breastfeeding, right? That was a first, a first visual, visceral, bodily image in South Africa, beautiful images, but ones that you don’t forget. You’re not going back after those images. But the church still, I think, has a lot of work to do on this issue. I think there is still so much of dismantling of patriarchy that is needed. I mean, we’ve come a long way, but there’s still a lot of issues. But I think like in that secular wave, second wave, that women really had to grapple then with their own diversity. So as we began to name where the structures were hurting, limiting, causing damage, we started to realize that amongst ourselves, there were different perspectives. And so that diversity in race and culture, in economics, who was going to speak for us women, right? If it was simply educated white privileged women speaking, well then we weren’t really addressing women’s issues. And so of course, womanist theology develops and some aspects of the women’s liberation theology I think was very helpful in naming the problems. So it wasn’t just good enough in some ways to try to dismantle patriarchal power and methodology, but we really also had to focus on dismantling the specific racism experienced by women of color, the economic disparities for women of color, the specific oppression and violation of their bodies and how that was manifesting in society. And if we couldn’t engage these issues, we really were not transforming the system for women, but just for white women. And I think to be honest on this issue, we are far further back. I think the church has not yet paid nearly enough attention to women of color or indigenous women’s voices and I think the church has really not been open to allowing those perspectives to change the structure and the way we do church. Honestly, I mean, in the Episcopal Church right now, I take encouragement that ironically, we’ve had this whole new wave of women bishops, but also a whole new wave of black and indigenous women being made bishops. And, you know, I really pray that in some ways they will be able to help facilitate maybe a next wave of change in the church that’s desperately needed. But of course, again, there’s always the question of why place that burden of transformation on their shoulders and not on ours as a collective body. And I think for me the real question is does the church really want to be transformed and to deal with the consequences of wanting to be transformed? And I’m not always sure that the answer is yes.

[23:21] MET: Wow, okay. So much there and I love it all. Okay, so what I’m gonna do Is I’m gonna take us back in time for just a minute and I’m gonna tell you why You were specifically talking about how women and specifically women of color Are dealing with issues that like we’re just this is a brave new world We’re in right now like women women of color in the church, etc. So I am going to take us back to that first wave, the 19th century. And I’ll tell you why. These were women who were not good on race. Right? Like, I mean, they, for most of the women in the 19th century, it was a different thing to support women than it was to support women of color. And that’s why, you know, someday we’ll talk about Sojourner truth and some of the other women of color who were, you know, fighting for abolition, like supporting abolition. I shouldn’t say fighting abolition, right? Supporting abolition, that kind of thing. But I want to look at two women who made completely different arguments for women’s rights, even though they left. It’s interesting because it’s like they’re making arguments for equality, even though they kind of leave out certain women. And it’s interesting because it’s like, well, they’re making arguments for equality, even though it’s not for women of color, but it’s also interesting to see these arguments for equality. These are from the 19th century. How have they carried through? How have we progressed? So I’m going to take us back to the beginning and see what has changed. Does that make sense?

[25:02] DDM: Yeah, sounds great.

[25:03] MET: Yeah. Okay. So the first person I want to talk about is Susan B. Anthony. Okay, we are in Rochester, New York area. And if you are from this area, you know all about Susan B. Anthony because Susan B. Anthony is from here. And like she’s everywhere, right? Like if you can’t get away from Susan B Anthony, if you’re from this area, I have my students read this speech by Susan B Anthony called, “Is It a Crime for a US Citizen to Vote?” And it’s so funny because I assigned it to my students and they come the next day and they’re just completely glassy eyed and they’re looking at me like what did you do? Because it is the most boring speech in the history of speeches. It’s, It’s long, it’s dull. And the first thing I do is ask my students, okay, why on earth did I have you read this? Because it’s awful. And they look at me like, what? I’m like, no, I recognize this is a very long, it is very boring, like, why on earth would I have you read this? What could you possibly get out of something this long and dull and hard to read? And they’re shocked because like how many professors come in and admit to you, I just had you read something that was terrible. And I don’t even like reading it like what what are we doing here? The speech is 100% like logical syllogistic it’s based on the most foundational form of logic it’s a syllogism: All citizens deserve the right to vote. I am a US citizen. Therefore I deserve to vote. And the whole thing is just pages and pages of that kind of foundational logic punctuated by some appeals to ethos, right? Some name dropping and that’s all it is just logic logic logic and we talk about why on earth I mean it’s just dull right like you can’t write pages and pages of pure logic without putting your audience to sleep and we talk about why she would do that And what we get to is the stereotype about women then just as now is that women are overly emotional.

[27:12] MET: And Susan B. Anthony knows that. So she gets up in front of wwell this is the speech is being made like in community centers and You know town squares and she gets up in front of a group of men and does the exact opposite of what is expected She is not emotional She is not overworked. She does the exact opposite of what they say women are supposed to do and is 100% rational, logical, no emotion. The other thing you have to know about this is Susan B. Anthony has been arrested for voting. Women are not allowed to testify in court and women are not allowed to be on juries. So Susan B. Anthony is about to be tried and she can’t defend herself and there’s no women on the jury. So Susan B. Anthony is going around from town to town, giving us 100% logical speech, defying all of the stereotypes about women. She’s seeding the jury pool. So she’s playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers is what it comes down to. And when you put it in that context, my students are like, oh my gosh, that’s so brilliant. And I’m like, I know it’s brilliant. It’s just boring. Right? Like I admit it’s boring. But like when you think about what she’s doing, like this is, this is smart stuff. And then they like they get really into it. They’re like, Oh my gosh, let’s look at it. Let’s read it. I’m like, yeah, I know. Like women can be smart too. But it’s just it’s a very simple. We have given citizens the right to vote. I am a citizen. I deserve the right to vote. It is not hard, right? Compare that to this other person I would like to talk about. And that’s Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elizabeth Cady Stanton does the opposite kind of reasoning. It is not a logical argument. It is a very kind of, I don’t know, spiritually oriented argument, but still kind of Western in its thinking. She wrote something called “The Solitude of the Self.” And basically she says, when it comes down to it, we’re all kind of alone in this life. Not like alone and depressed, but in the sense that nobody can carry your burdens for you. And that is especially true for women, right? Like you birth your children, You do your laundry, you do all of these things that we are required to do and nobody can do it for you, right? Like you carry your worries for your children, you do all of these things. And ultimately, you are the only person who can do that. You go through this life on your own. Nobody can understand this world. It’s kind of like that intersectionality thing, right? Like you understand this world as you understand it, and nobody can do that for you. So ultimately we live in solitude. But that is the thing that ultimately unites us because we all live that way together. Right? Like, And that is ultimately her argument for equality. We ultimately experience the world that way together, right? You understand the world your way. I understand the world my way. And because we are individuals and we experience the world that way, we deserve to be treated as individuals that way. And it’s this very like because we experience the solitude of the world, we deserve to be treated the same way through that world. And it is like this really kind of nuanced, wild, like I’ve never heard anything like that. Yeah. Like 19th century. You don’t expect that. And it’s coming from a woman and people are like, what is this? It’s very strange. And this is the arguments that get carried through to the 20th century and they progress. Anyway, this is how we start the arguments about equality and think about how they get carried through to like intersectionality and the third wave. It’s just wild. Right?

[31:16] DDM: Right. Anyway, so interesting. It’s interesting. Cady Stanton’s perspective, you know, because I think when you were speaking, I was finding myself struggling a little bit with that kind of solitary sense of self-concept, because I think in South Africa and in Africa there is that alternative always worldview of kind of Ubuntu Which is “I am simply because we are” without without you without us There is no ever even capacity for that solitary sense of self. But again, that concept of solitary sense of self, how can my being have any meaning except in relationship with others? Because it’s the community that gives us our sense of humanity and our sense of identity. I love in African philosophy and particularly within Ubuntu, there’s this concept that humanity is what we owe to each other, which I think is such a profound concept, you know, and maybe in some ways the community and the community of the church owe women their full humanity, and men in the society will never be fully human until women are fully human, you know, because I think stripping each other of equality, full inclusion, equal access to wealth, power, it really just diminishes in some ways our collective humanness. But I think the other side is that from the church’s perspective, I think part of the real problem in the church is that often we’re working from sacred scriptures written thousands of years ago, you know, where women were seen and viewed very differently, You know, I mean, we can’t even correlate 3,000 years later, sort of, you know, the role of women, you know. There was a large aspect in which, in the scriptures, women were there for procreation. They were there to build that ancestral patriarchal family line. And so that really is in some ways the dominant narrative around women. But then you also find these subversive elements woven through scripture. You know, God who, God’s self is portrayed in feminine language, right? The El Shaddai, the many-breasted God, the Shekinah, the feminine face of God. You know, the Holy Spirit is Ruach, or the wind of God always with a she pronoun. You know Deborah the judge, Mary the birther of God. You know there’s these glimpses and narratives of women and womaness breaking through almost that patriarchal concrete but they are definitely not the dominant. And I think if we can begin to try to understand scripture as really part of that progressive revealing of God’s self and who God is in relationship to us in creation. I think the danger is that we tend to very often in the church stop theological thought and development in the first century AD, right? And that’s why some church communities literally function and teach as though they still living in the first century AD.

[34:32] MET: And that’s so interesting because, you know, it’s like I was just saying some people want to stop those reasons for women’s rights in the 19th century, right? Like we have to move forward.

[34:42] DDM: Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s a continual development. And I think we’ve also got to understand that just because some books of the Scripture were canonized into what we have today as the Bible, that does not mean that God is still not speaking, that God is still not revealing God’s self, that God is still not actively leading us deeper and deeper into a transformation of who we are both as individuals and communities, even today in the 21st century. And so our understanding of God needs to be growing, shifting, just as momentously as it did for those early disciples who in some ways literally turned their whole world and their understanding of Judaism completely upside down And I think we do see that many church communities are trying to do this You know Women’s ordination may have been practiced in the early church, but I think the understanding was different from what ordination is today. And I think ordaining women has been a big shift in theological consciousness and understanding and practice. It’s ironical that we’re doing this episode today because just this weekend we actually consecrated in Rochester our first woman bishop in this diocese. And I mean, that is huge. As I sat there in that service, I thought, I’ve never had a bishop who looks like me. And I went home, this you’ll find interesting Elizabeth, I went home that Saturday night and I dreamt of our new bishop, Kara. And I dreamt we’ve just gone out and we were talking about dishes and we were talking about kids and we were talking about, she literally felt like a friend in my dream. And I woke up and I thought, I’ve never had a Bishop dream like this in my entire life. Right. It’s, it’s that, Oh my God, there’s so much that we share simply by being woman, you know? These are big changes in the church. But I think the real question is, is if we don’t change the structure, if we really don’t change the way we do ministry, the way we think and act and relate in the church, then we have to ask the question, are women simply being co-opted, even if they’re clergy or bishops, into a patriarchal system? And then we actually just become a part of the problem.

[37:02] MET: So here’s what I think is incredibly cool about this conversation. We’re talking about women in the public, we’re talking about women in church arguments for why women should or should not be in these spaces. And we’ve talked about wildly different ideas, you know, Ubuntu and “Solitude of the self,” like different ideas from different cultures, different times in history, all of this stuff. But substantially, it all comes down to the same thing. And that is God recognized this humanity of women too. Right? That is what we’re getting at. And that, you know, it’s because of their citizenship, because of the burdens they carry on their own, the importance of community. There are a number of reasons we have given here, but all of the people and cultures that we’re talking about here have latched on to one of the myriad reasons why the Holy Spirit says, “Hold up, you do not get to diminish part of my creation.” That is what it comes down to. Each of these arguments or concepts in some way is somebody’s attempt to show that women literally half of the population deserve to have their humanity recognized. And this is a really fascinating conversation because for people like us, this is a spiritual thing, right? There is a spark of the divine in all of us and that has to be acknowledged It’s kind of like how we talked about with the creation stuff the other day. And thinking about Ubuntu, it is that we share our lives with each other, right? So we have to love and respect and acknowledge each other to keep ourselves whole. The first way there’s those first savers talked about (Susan B.) Anthony and (Elizabeth) Cady Stanton, they made very secular arguments. We deserve to be treated as whole people because we’re citizens or because we share the same personal and legal burdens as men, right? Like these are all arguments we’ve heard. And I think it’s fascinating and telling that regardless of where or when you’re coming from, people come to the same point, and that is that women are deserving. So projects like what we’re doing right now are really fruitful because you can see that it is not the concept of equality that is wild at all because people are coming to the same conclusions. It is the opposition to that that makes no sense.

[39:27] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the biggest fear maybe as a woman is that the visual optics will change so we’ll start to have women coming in as lawyers, women coming in as priests or bishops, women as educators, but if the culture of patriarchy remains intact what than have we actually achieved.

[40:00] MET: Thank you for listening to The Priest & 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/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.

[40:23] DDM: Music by Audionautix.com.

In this episode Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth talk about the miracle of creation. They discuss their very different attitudes toward time outdoors and how our conversations about nature are a problem not just for politics and science but for the faithful as well.

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Transcript

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

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

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

[00:37] MET: We are so happy you were joining us today. We are going to be talking about something that I know is particularly near and dear to Reverend Deborah’s heart. I am excited because it’s fun for me. We’re talking about creation. This is, it’s fun because Reverend Deborah and I are very different people in a lot of ways. We’ve talked about this. I am what you would call an indoors person. I like, you know, when I go on vacation, I want to go to a museum and, you know, sample the ethnic food. I’m like, When I was relaxing, I stay inside and have a glass of wine and put my feet up and watch TV. Whereas Reverend Deborah, what do you do when you have spare time?

[01:25] DDM: Oh my gosh, I wanna get into the barn. I wanna hang with my goats and my sheep. I love to go hiking and camping. If I had my way, I’d never live in a house and I’d live in a tent. Unfortunately, we live in Western New York and there’s way too much snow for that. But I love to sleep on the ground. I love to swim in ponds. I might even say that I sometimes even like the feeling of mud between my toes.

[01:51] MET: Right on. So when she said, let’s talk about creation, I was like, this is going to be fantastic. But the reason it’s going to be fantastic is because we have such wildly different attitudes about the great outdoors. I think it’s going to be fun because we actually come to pretty similar conclusions about some of this stuff. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about kind of our approaches to thinking about creation and how we think about this thing, this planet that we are floating around on. Anyway, so there’s our intro, if you will. Reverend Deborah, please tell us about our relationship to the world.

[02:33] DDM: Well, you know, let me start by sharing a story. And I wasn’t planning on this, but when you were speaking about it, it kind of made me think about it. When I was about 18 years old, I remember going on a retreat. It was 1 of your traditional, you know, clergy going on retreat. It was a silent retreat. And the 1 day I was, it was a hot South African summer afternoon and I didn’t have a towel. You know when you normally lie on the ground, you put a towel down, always something between us and the

[03:00] DDM: earth, right? Have you noticed that? And I didn’t have a towel with me and I thought oh I’m too lazy to go back and to the room to get a towel and so I simply laid down with my chest facing the ground you know how you do and you put your head on the ground mostly you’re lying on a bed and I could hear you know when you’re lying in the sun on the earth and you start to hear your own heartbeat, and I could hear my heartbeat. And at some point I started to hear a second heartbeat. It wasn’t my own. I could hear my own heartbeat. I started to hear another. And I thought, where is this beat coming from? And I realized that it was the earth. And I thought, does the earth have a heartbeat? And as I lay there and just listened to the difference between my own heartbeat rhythm and hers, right? I heard this voice and it said why do you hurt me? Why are you hurting me? Honestly, if I tell you from that moment onwards, my life changed. Because I suddenly, for the first time, realized creation isn’t just a thing. It’s not just material matter. That there actually is an essence of being that is distinct and individual, that feels pain, and that in some ways can we relate maybe if we if we quieten ourselves down enough to hear. So that’s just a little experiential story to kind of share, you know, really what was a fundamental shift for me in my own relationship to creation. But in terms of the church in September, what we call the season of creation. Now that liturgically was not always there historically, right? Let me just say upfront, this is a new introduction to the liturgy in a response, the church’s response to I think the incredibly severe catastrophe of the environmental crisis that we’re actually in and walking further and deeper into. So the season of creation really, I think has been instituted by the church in order to try to educate us around the importance of creation and our relationship with creation. But for myself, whenever I hear the church speak about the season of creation or just creation in general, There is a deep ambiguity for me in this, right? And so I may be a priest, but I’m not always an apologetic for the church, okay? Just upfront. So if you go back in our scriptures to the original Hebraic understanding, right? So if you look in your early chapters of Genesis there is this understanding that God creates everything number 1 right everything is sacred it’s this world of beauty and diversity and whose relationships are primarily named by Shalom, by peace, right? And so this understanding of all matter being sacred is really important in those beginning chapters of Genesis. There’s not this distinction between the spirit and matter. And so in the Hebraic original understanding it’s almost like spirit is so woven through matter almost at a cellular level that only God can birth spirit into matter and only God can pull spirit out. So you think about a child being born, right? God breathes spirit into that child and at death, the breath returns to God, right? But we can’t separate that deep intertwining and interwovenness of spirit and matter. That’s an important point because that’s going to shift hugely by the time we shift to the New Testament. But in the Old Testament still there’s this understanding that everything has a name. Everything is named and naming is so important because when I know your name, I know something about you, right? To be nameless, I think is 1 of the most terrible things, right? To never be named. And so for everything to be named means that it is there to be known, it is there to be related to. The irony is in the early books of and the early parts of Genesis animals are not even killed for food, right? Only fruit and seed bearing plants are given for human consumption, not even other animals at this stage are killing other animals. And so it really is this image of complete integration, wholeness and that Hebrew concept of shalom, peace. But as Christianity emerges out of those indigenous roots, we start to see a very different way of relating to creation. So in the New Testament ironically it’s an interweaving between the Hebraic understanding but now the Greco-Roman understanding starts to come in, right? And that worldview was far more dualistic, meaning that things were always separated, right? So spirit was seen as sacred, matter was seen as defiling or polluting, right? And I mean, they went on to say, you know, male is like the divine, female is unclean and polluting, right? And they would divide everything. The mind was superior and the emotions in the heart, certainly inferior, right?

[08:40] MET: That gets picked up in like enlightenment thinking later. Cartesian dualism.

[08:44] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. And that really comes out of that whole Greco-Roman tradition. So you start to see that worldview now being imprinted onto our relationship, not just to creation, but even in some ways to human bodies, particularly female human bodies, bodies that are in some ways perhaps seen as quote unquote deformed, all right, or the poor, right? So you see that dualistic viewpoint really being implanted on. But by this stage, if we’re to be honest, by this stage, even the indigenous worldview of the Hebraic people had also shifted and devolved into the clean and the unclean, polluting and non-polluting concepts around matter. Concepts around matter. And then of course if you take Christianity further by the time it becomes the faith of the empire in Constantine’s time, right, we have such a hierarchical, I would almost say militaristic view of Christianity developing that that original wholeness and integration by this stage is really literally shattered. And so it’s very interesting because you see these contrary views even within the Christian tradition. So we have these aspects of the Christian tradition that are phenomenal in terms of creation. But later on, we see the Christian tradition really becoming a part of the problem of the destruction of creation, and so emphasizing the spiritual that we start to have very little regard for the material and the physical.

[10:29] MET: So I’m going to use that to kind of transition into a conversation that’s going on in my field, not specifically about creation, but also kind of about creation. Right? So you’re talking about the church kind of being a problem. As you know, I’m in the field of communication, specifically on rhetoric. The field of science communication is a huge thing right now. It’s like a burgeoning field. And it’s specifically because of these problems that you are talking about, right? Like my discipline recognizes that these issues of what we are talking about creation, But these issues of what do we do about climate? What do we do about all these things that we’re talking about are specifically things that we need to be concerned about. So we’re asking about how do we communicate about science and how does science communicate to us, which if you’re a person of faith is a question about creation as well. So I’m going to kind of tell you about what’s going on, where I’m coming from and see if we can make a few connections if you don’t mind.

[11:48] DDM: Nice. Yeah.

[11:52] MET: So I’m going to tell you a little bit about my personal experience. I actually taught, Okay, let me go back a little bit. I actually taught a class in scientific rhetoric a couple of semesters ago. And I think that was a little bit surprising to my students because you don’t think of science is particularly rhetorical, right? Like science is about facts, right? There are facts and they’re not facts. But when I present this idea to my students is science rhetorical, they’re like, no, science is not rhetorical. And I’m like, well, let’s choose an example. And when I choose this example, Reverend Deborah, I’m going to make some wild generalizations, but then I’m going to acknowledge the problems with those generalizations. But I said, okay, let’s take vaccines. Okay. Right. Right. Vaccines. Many people would say that vaccines are a good thing. Many people would even argue they are a universal good thing. Like vaccines save lives. Like we can point to the fact that vaccines save lives. Now, we have to acknowledge there are some cultural things there, right?

[13:16] DDM: I was going to say Africa has a very difficult relationship with vaccines.

[13:19] MET: I am sure Reverend Deborah could point to the fact that vaccines have been used to cover up a lot of ills in various parts of the world. Like vaccines have been weaponized in certain places. Western medicine has been weaponized in various parts of the world, but we can point to the fact that vaccines have been like saving a lot of lives for like we eradicated polio, right? Like smallpox is not a thing in many parts of the world. And I feel assured in saying that a lot of the people who are doing this anti-vaccine rhetoric are not thinking about what happened in South Africa and Palestine, right? Like they’re talking about different conversations. Yeah, They’re talking about, oh, it causes autism and oh, COVID vaccines didn’t save any. That’s nonsense. Like none of that is true. So the question then is why are we debating vaccines? Like Why is America having a vaccine debate? Right? Like the people who are anti-vaccine are not concerned about Tuskegee. Right? That is not what they are arguing about. We could have a discussion about Tuskegee. It would be a important and good discussion, but that is not what we are talking about. So what is happening? Science is rhetorical, right? Like that is what I am saying. We don’t argue about facts anymore. The fact is that vaccines save lives. That is not what we are talking about in public anymore. We are arguing about who has the best argument. And that is an important part of thinking about creation at this point. The reason I bring that up is because if you’re gonna talk about climate, which is essential to creation, we have to think about this as a rhetorical maneuver. And it is wild to me because I think about like when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, this wasn’t an argument, right? Like the world was getting hotter. There was a hole in the ozone layer.

[15:28] DDM: I remember that.

[15:29] MET: We just did something about it. Like as a planet, we just decided, well, the world’s getting hotter. We should do something about it. CFC is we’re going to fix it. And we did it. And like, the ozone got fixed and like, we’re like, okay, problem solved. It wasn’t until much later that there was this rabid vitriolic anti-science narrative. And that is 100% a capitalist issue. We can talk about that all you want to later, if that’s your jam, but this anti-science narrative really picked up. I don’t even know if I could put a date on it, but it is a rhetorical problem as much as anything else, right? And 1 of the things we talked about in my class is that the both sides-ism of it is hugely problematic, right? Like there is consensus on why this is a problem. There is not a question in the scientific community. Climate change is a problem and humans caused it. That’s the end of the story. But it has been such a misguided narrative in the public. If 99 scientists agree this is the problem, this is why it happened, and 1 scientist disagrees, And you have 1 scientist who says it is a problem and we caused it. And then the 1 scientist who disagrees, and you put them in conversation, you are not representing the debate. That is, That is a misrepresentation of what is going on. That is not democratic or egalitarian or whatever it is you’re trying to do. And in America, we are so obsessed with, oh, we have to have a democratic debate. That is not a democratic debate. That is a misrepresentation of the issue. And we have like, there are people of ill will who have used this, oh, we have to be democratic to misrepresent the debate. And the reason I bring this up is because this idea that science is rhetorical and the both sides of it, we have made the discussion about creation sinful. Science is rhetorical. And we are making the discussion sinful in my mind because we are lying about it.

[17:57] DDM: Right, right.

[17:58] MET: And that’s not what I taught in my classes, obviously, because I don’t preach the word when I’m teaching.

[18:05] DDM: Elizabeth, it’s so interesting you use the word sinful, because when you said that, I was trying to unpack in what way you were meaning that, because the root of sin is to alienate us from 1 another. And so when you’re representing the climate catastrophe that we’re in and facing, in a sinful way, it’s a way that actually does alienate us from 1 another because we no longer can even agree on the facts, but it also alienates us from the reality of the context that we’re actually having to face. 100%. Yeah, it’s very, it was an interesting choice of words, you know, because I always like to unpack theological language, you know?

[18:43] MET: Right, and like, this is, once again, this is not how I teach this concept in my classes, but in my mind, the climate debate is sinful because we are misrepresenting what we know about it. It is. It is a lie. And I have, it is 1 thing to say, Oh, I disagree with this argument. It is quite another to say, I am going to lie to you about what is being said. For sure.

[19:18] DDM: I mean, That is an unethical position to take.

[19:23] DDM: Absolutely.

[19:25] MET: And so I think the creation argument that’s out there is, As it’s purported right now, it is a state of sin. If I can be so judgmental, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s just my, whatever. The other thing, I don’t know, did you want to jump in?

[19:47] DDM: No, no, I was fascinated just by that.

[19:49] MET: The other thing that I would say is there are ways that creation talks to us, right? Like we talk about creation that way And there are ways creation talks to us. I’m gonna talk about, there’s this article in my field and it’s so funny, because I absolutely hate it. But I keep coming back to it. By this guy named George Kennedy and it’s called “A Hoot in the Dark.” And in my mind, it’s just nonsensical. But whatever, I’m going to talk about it.

[20:24] DDM: Okay.

[20:25] MET: And it’s, he claims that rhetoric predates speech. And the way he makes this argument is he says animals have been making claims and arguments way before we were talking and he uses owls as his examples, right? A hoot in the dark. So he’s like owls and other animals, like they are out there in the wild and they’re marking their territory and they’re saying things like, don’t come my way and I’m looking for a mate. And like, and he’s talking about, owls are out there in the twilight in the middle of the night and they’re telling you things. He says, so animals make arguments, they make claims, like they stake out their territory. They are out there making noise, telling you things. So he says that this is rhetoric. Animals are involved in rhetoric. I think that is a nonsensical definition of rhetoric. But he then goes on to talk about, if that is the case, then rhetoric is this force that enlivens all of us. So rhetoric is not this argument. It is not identification the way this guy Burke talks about it. It’s not this Aristotelian like make your claim, provide your proof, blah, blah, blah, which you learned in fourth grade, you know, persuasive writing, whatever. Rhetoric is an animating force at the heart of all of us that leads us to announce I am here. I have wants. You know, I am. Right. Okay. That’s interesting. But in my mind, that’s not rhetoric. That is like creation. You know, that’s the divine spark at the heart of all of us. That’s for theologians, not people in my field, which is why I keep coming back to this Kennedy article because I’m fascinated by the idea that there is something we all share that is at the heart of us that is spark of us. But I don’t think that’s rhetoric. I think that’s something much more divine. I don’t know, so that’s my…

[22:48] DDM: But you know, it’s interesting you say that Elizabeth, because you know, that divine spark in all of us, how interwoven that divine spark in us has to do with communicating. Like if you look at it, I mean, the first thing God does when God creates is begin to communicate. And the first thing we do is we start to communicate. I mean, think about a child and a parent. The first thing we do is we start to communicate. I have no idea on the definition of rhetoric. I have no idea. So whether what is rhetoric and what isn’t, I have no idea.

[23:20] MET: Like when I tell people what I do, that is a 100% conversation killer.

[23:25] DDM: But I love that concept of, of that, of, of that big, that’s something that is alive within us and within creation. You know, I mean, for me, spirituality is always essentially about being known and knowing another, right? I mean, theology is not essentially about concepts, laws, right? You know, concept essentially is about is about relationship and that expanding relationship.

[23:56] MET: That takes us right back to that first episode where we talked a lot about relationship versus rules. I think that’s going to be thematic for us.

[24:04] DDM: Absolutely. And so it’s an expanding concept of knowing God, knowing myself, knowing other human beings and knowing all of creation, but in this deeply relational way, right? And what does it mean to even be known by creation? You know, like, I mean, it’s something I think we seldom think about, like, how does creation know me?

[24:31] MET: That is a great question. You know,

[24:33] DDM: You know, how does the earth know me? Like, does the earth know my footprint and my steps on her body? Does the earth know the sound of my laugh? You know, What impact does my physicality in this world have on the earth and how does she feel about it? And I’m sorry, I’m just using the pronoun she. I guess that’s just my own experience. That’s my own experience with God, you know. I think what’s also so interesting is in theology, there is this concept of, it’s not like we have creation and it simply is and how do we save it but there really is this concept of in latin it’s called creatio continua right but this understanding that God didn’t just historically create, but that God is consistently creating new life every single moment of every day. And I love this concept, right? That in a way that divine spark is manifesting every single time the skin cell on my body regenerates or the hair cell on my body regenerates. There is creation happening within me at this very moment and there is creation happening within the soil at this very moment and there is creation, you know, new species are being born and so I love this idea of creation not just being a thing, so we talk about creation like as a thing that we, how do we deal with or relate, but creation as this living dynamic, constantly evolving being that has life, you know? And so constantly literally is alive at the heart of everything. So I just think that’s incredibly beautiful. I think the other thing that I love about a theological perspective on creation is really that that naming That everything is given a name and you know, I think about for myself the difference between I’ll tell you a sad story tiny little 1 right now I’ve just got a new flock of sheep and I named my animals I and I know a lot of people would laugh and in farming right I name every 1 of my animals because it’s a way of saying, I’m gonna get to know you and your little personality and what you like and what you don’t and how you relate. I’m gonna give you that dignity of really relating to you, not just as a member of a whole flock of sheep, but you as little Rosie, for instance, right? But I have a little sheep right now that is going to become lamb. And it’s very interesting that I haven’t named that sheep. He’s simply, sorry to Chanel, but he’s, he’s sheep number 5, right? He’s sheep number 5. Right. And there’s a way in which I’m reluctant to name him because I’m scared to build a relationship with him knowing that that’s going to be the end of that relationship.

[27:33] MET: Isn’t that what they tell all the farm kids, right? Don’t name the ones you’re gonna…

[27:37] DDM: And what does that say? Is that I’m not able to enter into a relationship with you. So naming is essentially about relationship. And, you know, I think like, I mean, we think about the Genesis, the naming of everything, but I think to myself, like, how do we relate to trees around us if we don’t know their names? Because a tree is not just a tree. There is an oak and there is a maple and there is a locust and they’re very different and they have their own energies and their own medicinal qualities and their own relating to their own tree kin folk, right? And so, you know, I feel like there is a duty for us as human beings to actually start learning the names of those that we share this planet with. What are the names of these birds? What are the names of these trees? What are the names of these flowers and these herbs? And start, because we can’t start to build a relationship with them if we don’t know their names. And so I think there’s something very profound about making the time and the effort and the energy to learn the names of those that surround us. And then the other thing that I love also in theology is this concept of God so often coming in non-human form. You know, we live in this world where we’ve literally made God in our image, right? I mean, 100%, we’ve made God in our image. And yet, if you go back and you look at the scriptures, you know, God comes as a burning bush. God comes as light. God comes as a pillar of cloud or as fire by night. God is the dove or the lamb, you know, and, and I think we’ve, we’ve in many ways in the Christian tradition forgotten that God chooses equally to reveal God’s self in non-human form as God does in human form.

[29:29] MET: Well that relates directly to what I was talking about with that ridiculous article, right? Like, right. If there is something within us, then God can communicate, like creation can communicate to us in any number of ways. And I say this as somebody who is not out there in creation that frequently, but I am well aware that creation can speak to me as well. I mean, and if I can be receptive to a message from creation, anybody can. And like I say this jokingly, yes, I am not an outdoorsy person, but rest assured, I am well aware it is beautiful out there and we should be doing everything we can to conserve it because this is the existential crisis of our time. I have a child and if we don’t do what we can to preserve this miracle of creation, the world is not going to be habitable for my child. Like, just because I am not an outdoorsy person doesn’t mean I recognize this is the crisis of our time. Right? Like I can, I can talk all I want to about race relations? We can, you know, we’ve talked about poverty, we’ve talked about so many things, but This is it. This is the thing that’s going to face us all in the next 50 years and is going to be the thing that decides whether our planet is livable.

[30:54] DDM: Right. And I think part of for me, the essence of the problem is that we’ve lost the capacity to see creation as sacred. So we no longer see our forests as sacred, they’re commodities. We no longer see our rivers as sacred, they’re commodities. We no longer see the the animals that we share this planet with as sacred beings in their own right, they’re commodities. And so I think for me at the heart is we’ve lost the sacred worldview, to see ourselves and everything around us as sacred. And so what would it mean for us to really begin to reclaim that sacred worldview that says everything holds the life of God. Everything has a life and has a right to be and to flourish in this world just as we do as human beings.

[31:41] MET: And I think that’s why for me it was such a profound realization when I was thinking about like the way we talk about creation, these conversations are not just a rhetorical contrivance, right? Like when we talk about creation and we misrepresent the debate, it’s a sin. We were talking earlier, I have a bad relationship with that word because of the way I was raised, but sometimes you just have to call it out, right? Like, this is a misrepresentation of God’s will.

[32:16] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the other side as well is to really recognize, you know, like for instance, there’s this beautiful book called, and I’m going to forget the name of the title now, The Life of Trees, I think it is. And I mean, it’s all the scientific research on trees that actually communicate. Oh, right. Trees feel emotion. Trees have compassion, you know? And it was really fleshing out almost the inner life of trees, right? And so what does it mean for us as human beings to actually begin to say, hang on, I’ve actually got to learn to begin to see how do these other species communicate? How do these other species forge a life for themselves that is about wholeness and integration, right? And yeah, I think we need to be called much more back into relationship with creation.

[33:30] MET: Thank you for listening to the Priest & the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have an questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org/donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

[34:00/span> DDM: Music by Audionautix.com

In this episode Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth explore poverty and how it is a policy choice. They describe examples from South Africa and Jim Crow America as illustrations of how poverty is enshrined into the law and ask what is required of us as people of faith because of that.

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Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service

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

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

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

[00:39] MET: Hello and welcome to our second edition of The Priest and the Prof. We are so glad you have joined us again. I am Elizabeth.

[00:47] DDM: I am Reverend Deborah.

[00:49] MET: And we are excited to be here. Today we are talking about something that is near and dear to people of, well, we hope it’s near and dear to people of faith because it is so important to the Gospels. And what we want to do is approach this from the perspectives that we particularly bring to it in our professional lives, but also as people of faith. So today we’re talking about poverty. It’s not a dark topic, but it’s a serious topic. And we want to handle that with the, the reverence that it deserves because this is something that affects people in their daily lives, in their spiritual lives, in their physical lives. And we think it is important to understanding us both as people and as a society. I don’t know, does that kind of intro?

[01:47] DDM: Absolutely, Elizabeth. You know, and you know, my experience of poverty obviously was hugely shaped by living in South Africa, you know, because I think I kind of watched the way in which poverty dehumanized people. I almost felt, you know, looking back, you know, you become more and more aware of how poverty almost was a tool that the apartheid government used to almost reinforce the notion that people of color were not fully human. So you could blame poorer communities for the lack of refuse removal. People don’t mind living in this dirty manner, never unpacking the fact that there was no refuse removal. The lack of education, lack of access to running water, bathing, you know. I think I kind of watched that be used in a systemic way to literally dehumanize huge segments of the population. And I think for me one of the saddest things is that like if we’re speaking about South Africa, that legacy still remains today, you know. And that’s the problem with poverty is when you start to create generational poverty, right, It’s not easy to rewrite that and change that. Unless you are going to have intentional radical action, poverty doesn’t just necessarily change in one generation, and sometimes just tends to naturally, if it’s just left on its own, become worse generation after another. So one of the really interesting things in South Africa is that if you go to South Africa now, it is still one of the most unequal countries in the entire world. This is 30 years post-liberation. Around 50% of our population are still living in abject poverty. I mean, think about that, 1 in every 2 people. And yeah, I mean, I think somebody said the other day that the discrepancy between rich and poor is worse now than it was under apartheid. Now this is with a whole government, you know, a liberation government supposedly wanting to dismantle poverty and actually uplift our communities. It’s not working, it’s not working. So the legacy of poverty, it’s tenacious. It’s tenacious to break it is something that requires huge concerted effort, You know?

[04:22] MET: Yeah. My personal experience with poverty is nowhere near as insightful because I grew up, I did not grow up impoverished, so to speak. Now we didn’t have everything we wanted. Looking back, it’s one of those things where I don’t know how my parents did it, right? Like We spent a good chunk of my childhood living on a single income of a Texas public school teacher. And if you know anything about Texas or public school teachers, you know we were skating by the skin of our teeth.

[05:02] DDM: We don’t value education in our society.

[05:05] MET: That’s not a great way to live. Right. But at the same time, you know, I remember we had vacations and like, I got a cabbage patch doll when they were hot, right? Like, you know, it’s, we didn’t struggle. I didn’t go hungry. But I do remember things like one Christmas. And I remember my dad would say things like, well, it’s gonna be a small Christmas. But he said that every Christmas. There was one Christmas where I knew my parents were struggling and I decided I wanted to help in some way. I was 8 or whatever. And I got my sister to, we got all of the money that we had, which, you know, she was 6 and I was 8 or whatever, maybe younger. And that amounted to a couple of handfuls of spare change. And we took whatever boxes we had access to. And that was, you know, a happy meal box from McDonald’s. And we put our spare change in the boxes and we put it under the Christmas tree because that was, you know, all we knew to do. And that was our parents’ Christmas gift. And it did my parents in, right? Like they were just boohooing on Christmas morning. But we like, all we knew was that our parents were struggling with money. And we were like, well, we have money. We’ll give it to our parents. You know, a couple of pennies in some quarters. It’s a, you know, we didn’t know. But. I didn’t go hungry, And I knew that my mom was working with kids who did. My mom worked in some really rough schools And she kind of did some behind the scenes work for some of her students. Like we gave our clothes to our students. And I knew at some of her schools, cause I think I said we moved around a lot and moved around a lot. At some of her schools, there were kids in her classes that didn’t have electricity or didn’t have running water. So I was cognizant enough as a child to recognize, yeah, I don’t get to go to the movies every time I want to go, but I am warm. So I knew I didn’t have everything I wanted to all the time, but I was well aware that I was in a good position. Does that make sense? So my experience with poverty was like I was aware it was out there and I was aware we struggled but I put us in a pretty, I didn’t know the word privilege, but I put us in a pretty privileged middle position even if looking back maybe we weren’t.

[07:50] DDM: Sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think for me, poverty raises some pretty big theological questions, right? Because you know, we live in this world and I think capitalism has particularly designed it this way, that we always feel like we need more, and we always feel like we don’t have enough, right? I mean those are your two marks in some ways of capitalism. And so we almost begin to operate psychologically but also spiritually from this mentality of scarcity, right? And yet that is the complete antithesis of the biblical view. So the biblical view is that God creates a world of abundance. There is an abundance of water, there is an abundance of food, there is an abundance of everything that we need, and there are plenty for all people, not just for some. Right. Now the irony is, is that the facts actually support the biblical worldview. Like if you actually go in and look statistically, they say that we have absolutely enough to sustain all people in our world. With food, with shelter, with land, there is enough, right? We produce already in our world enough food to feed everyone. And yet the irony is hunger is still on the rise. So we have enough food, the problem is political will to distribute it. Right? And so I think we need to remember that theologically, God asks us to start not from a place of scarcity, but a place of abundance.

[09:38] MET: That is powerful.

[09:39] DDM: Yeah. And I mean, imagine if we could rewrite our own even internal scripts. There is enough, not just for me, but for all people, because in some ways, poverty is really the result of greed right it’s it’s some people wanting more than their fair share or they’re just simply so used to having more than their fair share that they think this is normative. And yet it’s not, right? Some of us are living way beyond our own legitimate share of world resources. Right? And so in some ways, we need to, if we were talking theologically, we need to almost name poverty as theft. Poverty is the sin of stealing. It is the theft of resources by the wealthy and powerful of another person’s right to what is not just needed to survive but to flourish. Because I think so often we kind of, if we want to address poverty, we think, well, how do we bring people to a level of kind of survival? God never intended us simply to survive. You know, I came that they might have life and life in all fullness, abundance. These are the words that Scripture uses, right? And so I think, you know, from a theological point of view, there really is a deep violence embedded in poverty because when poverty is present the most basic fundamental human rights are literally violated on on a daily basis for people and for communities. I have some problems with Gandhi, I don’t think Gandhi is always the saint we make him out to be. But Gandhi said poverty is the worst form of violence, which is an incredible statement giving that he was coming out of an incredibly violent colonial regime, right, and went through the whole kind of civil war of India, of independence. But for him, poverty was the worst form of violence because we can kill somebody quickly, or we can kill somebody slowly through poverty, you know hunger malnutrition inadequate health care inadequate housing sanitation access to clean water you know those things don’t just lower life expectancy, but they they hugely lower the day-to-day quality life quality of life of individuals and communities. So I think for me if we’re going to look at poverty as people of faith, we need to understand how sinful poverty actually is because it’s destroying on a moment-by-moment basis the beauty and the dignity that God has created and has given to human beings And so it’s a sin not just against one another but it’s actually a sin against God, God’s self. Because when we allow poverty or tolerate poverty, we actually begin to no longer see each other as sacred. And I think that’s one of the biggest sadnesses of our world, you know, run by capitalism is everything and everyone is simply an opportunity to make money. You know, and that’s the antithesis of why we were created.

[13:02] MET: So it’s interesting that you put it in terms of like systems of capitalism, because when I think about poverty, I think of it in terms of policy choices. And that’s just because of who I am and what I do. Because I’m gonna say this, you’re gonna be like, but let me finish my sentence because I 100% see poverty as a choice, but not as an individual choice, as a societal choice.

[13:31] DDM: Absolutely right.

[13:32] MET: We put in systems that make poverty happen, right? As a society, we choose to make poverty a thing. And There’s history to that. Let me give you an example, right? So we all know what Jim Crow was. Well, I hope you know what Jim Crow was. I don’t know. Maybe you live in Florida. So there were places that had things like curfew laws. And if there was a curfew law, it would say something like, in this town, a person of color, usually specifically a black person, cannot be on the streets or in public past 7 p.m. Okay, that in and of itself is horrendous enough. But very often in those same places, black people could not get a job during the daytime because they did not want black people to be in public facing jobs during the daytime because they did not want black people to be in contact with white people because you know, segregation. So what you happen, what happens is black people can’t get a job during daylight hours and they can’t be out of their houses during dark hours. So what happens? Black people are forced into poverty. They can’t afford food. They can’t get a job. They can’t get health care. Right. And that doesn’t even get into things like the separated nature of things like waiting rooms that basically force black people to just sit there with their broken limbs or their flu out in the cold. I mean, there’s so many things, right? Like just that’s an example of a curfew law that is a policy choice that forces poverty on a group of people. That’s one law that I can point to that was a systemic choice that was enforced poverty.

[15:25] DDM: I’m so glad you’re explaining Jim Crow, especially for our international followers.

[15:29] MET: Yeah. Right, like, I mean, so there’s, like most people think, oh, segregation, that was when black people were separated from white people, but it was not. It was a systemic policy system of choices That was to keep people oppressed and poverty was a part of that.

[15:49] DDM: Again used to disenfranchise communities. Yeah Right.

[15:53] MET: Absolutely. So when you have people like MLK who are out there working against segregation It’s not just a fight against segregation. It is a fight against poverty So when he does things like his March on Washington, it is a march against Poverty and he was very open about that. That’s why LBJ in the 60s declared a war on poverty right in the 60s. This was a thing we were fighting against then in the 50s and 60s you get this like really adamant we’re gonna do something about this and it’s not until later that you get this really kind of acerbic change in narrative about how we view poverty. Things really change in the eighties. Now for your reference, the highest tax bracket, today, like if you make a bazillion dollars, the highest tax bracket today is 37%. And let’s be clear, absolutely nobody pays 37% of their income to Uncle Sam. First, there’s the difference between things like your marginal tax rate and your effective tax rate. I won’t go into all of the differences of that. And then there are things like all of those loopholes that so many people who pay 37% can get,

[17:20] MET: like we all know about billionaires who don’t pay their taxes, right? That’s a common story. Well, Amazon. Right, yeah. Companies. And then there’s all the things about like, oh, you don’t pay it on your full income, you pay it on this top of your income, right? I’m not going to go through all of that, but nobody pays 37% of their income. And you think about like in the fifties and sixties, the marginal tax rate and the effective tax rate were things like 70%, 80%

[17:46] DDM: Are you serious? Wow!

[17:46] MET: Yeah. Like, wow. We have lost 40% of our tax.

[17:51] DDM: How, how, I mean, how was the community in terms of those issues? Cause I hear the complaints nowadays about…

[17:56] MET: No, no, no, no. Like there was a time when our tax rate was 90% on the top earners in our nation. Yeah. Like when I say the problem began in the eighties, like I want to say, Oh, it’s a nuanced set of circumstances that led to no, the problem began in the eighties…

[18:14] DDM: And that would have been with Ronald Reagan?

[18:16] MET: Yeah, like, Reaganomics is a serious problem. I can’t like automatically say, oh, all of our problems again in the 80s. But like if you look at a graph of quality of life, economic disparity, like all the markers of, you know, social safety net and who we are as a nation and how we take care of each other. The graph takes a huge jump and like 1982, it is a real problem.

[18:43] DDM: It’s so interesting.

[18:44] MET: I know. I know. Nobody wants to talk about that except, you know, people in my position, but it’s like a real issue. There is this sub Reddit called antiwork, and I promise I’m going to bring all this together in just a minute. And it’s not necessarily what you think of. Yeah, there are some people who like get on there to just gripe about their jobs. But for the most part, it’s where people go to talk about class oppression. So it’s really interesting. And somebody on that subreddit a couple of weeks ago made the comment that they don’t think people are so much anti-work as they think people are anti-American because they get on that subreddit And they’re like, I see people complaining about what you put up with in America. And I just, I can’t imagine. I mean, the systemic oppression of the working class in America, it’s off the charts and other countries don’t put up with it the way we do. And I think going back to the MLK discussion, we have to acknowledge that this is an intersectional problem. That is not to say this is a strictly race problem, right? We can’t ignore the way poverty has decimated rural white America, right? Like rural white America is falling apart. So I’m not going to sit here and say, Oh, black people are the only people who are affected by poverty. No, no, do not hear me say that.

[20:23] DDM: And wasn’t there that concerted effort as well to break labor unions? And was that in the eighties as well?

[20:32] MET: So yes, I mean, there’s a long history of that, but it really started once again. Reagan was very anti-union and that has been going since then. Okay. I’m going to give you kind of a long history of this. After the Great Depression, there was this dude named John Maynard Keynes. He’s basically the economist who got us out of the Depression. There was World War II and John Maynard Keynes, And they were like, okay, we’re going to fix the depression. And FDR was like, great. John Maynard Keynes, his approach to economics was wildly different than what anybody was doing out there. And it involved a lot of government intervention and regulating the market. And he was instrumental in things like the works projects and social security and a lot of those programs that FDR put in. It cost a lot, but you know, it saved the economy. Right. And he was known for saying, well, you know, in the long run, we’re all dead. So he was all about putting the investment in now and like take care of your people now, and then we’ll pay it off when we can pay it off. This approach was not popular with those laissez faire economists who were just like, oh, no, just let the market take care of itself. We did this kind of Keynesian economics for a couple of decades and we were great. And then like the 70s and 80s, Reagan and his family came in, his family, I say his family, his cohort came in. They’re like, oh, just kidding. We like laissez faire economics. And we did that for the next 40 or 50 years. And basically what happened is the economy crashed over and over and over again. And the only time we saw any real progress is after the 2008 crash when Obama came in was like, okay, seriously, we have to fix this. And then when Biden came in after Trump and was like, no, seriously, I have to fix this and did a lot of work to instigate government regulation that had been slashed. So we don’t really know what kind of economic principles work because we just keep having to pick up the pieces after one crash after another.

[22:55] DDM: Right, right, right. And that is the problem with America. There never seems to be a consistent policy. Yeah, It’s just constantly changed depending…

[23:02] MET: We know what can get us out of trouble…

[23:04] DDM: Yeah, absolutely.

[23:06] MET: But that then like one side comes in and is like, oh, ha ha ha, just kidding. Get rid of that. All of that is to say, I know nobody wanted that discussion of economics, but there you are. All of that is to say, we keep putting policies in place after these, like after we get out of trouble, we then instigate those policies in place, those laissez faire economic policies that are systemic policies that will keep people poor, Those austerity policies that will keep people poor.

[23:36] DDM: Right, right, right. And I mean, I think that’s the reality is that you cannot speak about poverty without speaking about structural issues. You know, I mean, it’s so interesting because if we go back to the theological perspective, you know, you get certain churches that emphasis individual sin, right? But I think if we focus on individual sin and never speak about structural sin, institutional sin, we’ve really got a problem because, you know, individual sin has implications. But when you multiply that by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of individuals, and sin becomes institutional and encoded into law, the impact of that is so great compared to, say for instance, individual sin. And I think for me, one of the most powerful movements within the Christian tradition is ironically liberation theology. Because liberation theology really deals with structural sin, you know, that the most damaging sin really is that which is structural, institutional, because of the power that it holds. And liberation theology really recognizes that poverty is invariably due to those structural injustices that you’ve been kind of unpacking, you know, in this nation, but obviously every single nation has them, that privilege those few over the majority. But what I also like about liberation theology is that it goes further than just saying we need to focus on structural sin. But it brings in this theological concept of God’s preferential option for the poor, which is a very interesting, interesting statement. You know, we like to think, well, God loves all people, right? Like, do you remember when there was the Black Lives Movement and then there was the, well, like, All Lives Matter, right? Right, so we like to think, well, God loves everybody. Of course, God loves everybody. That goes without saying. However, in the scriptures, we see very clearly that God has this preferential option for the poor. So if you look wherever God chooses to be found, it’s always in the marginal, amongst the poor. I mean we see this in Jesus right in the New Testament Jesus choosing to be born into a poor family. Jesus choosing that life of radical simplicity. I mean to the extent of saying no place to lay his head. If you look at the miracles most of the miracles were for those who were disabled, for those who were struggling, for those who were marginal and had almost been pushed out of the economic realities for whatever reason of the society. And so I think it’s a fascinating concept to unpack. Like what would, structurally, a preferential option for the poor look like in public policy? Right? You know? And especially as people of faith or as Christians, if our call is to stand in solidarity with the poor, I mean, you think about when Jesus speaks, he says, blessed are those who are poor. He’s not saying blessed is poverty. He’s saying blessed who find themselves in a situation of poverty because God’s presence is especially close to them. I always often wonder to myself what would a society look like if we took these faith-based perspectives and found a way to actually give them tangible shape and form in policies. I think we’d create an incredibly different society, right? I mean, it would be radically different. You know, if we go back to sharing stories, my only personal experience of poverty was when I decided to go and study theology. Had to give up our jobs, moved into seminary with a whole bunch of other people. I happened to have a couple of kids at that stage And they pay you a stipend that is consciously lower than what you can actually live on. So I remember when I was a seminary student, I mean, you’ve still got seminary student fees to pay, right? I mean, you’ve got all your student fees to pay, but they would give us a start-end of, I think it was like 500 Rand a month, right? You could not live on 500 Rand a month. Like that was way beyond poverty line, right? And I remember for the first time in my entire life, I didn’t have enough to eat. I remember we used to actually, if I tell you this honestly, Elizabeth, we used to, we made sure for the babies we always had milk, bottled milk, right? Because kids need milk when they’re growing, the little ones. But for the rest of us, once we were older, you know, the older kids and ourselves as adults, We used to eat once every 3 days and it was always a blend between tinned beans. Sometimes we used to throw in a tinned sweet corn and then we used to go and forage, forage greens that we would kind of like fry up and put into the beans or the sweet corn. I can’t tell you how bad it tasted. It was horrible. It was horrible, right? And I remember shame. I mean, sometimes as a mother, my heart used to break because my kids would be like, the older kids, they’d be like, mom, is today number 2 or number 3? Are we gonna eat today? But the children survived, the kids survived. I mean, as human beings, we are incredibly resilient, right? We are resilient. But that was my only experience. And then obviously once I got ordained, I became a priest and had a normal salary. But I remember like for instance, our car got stolen. We didn’t have money to in any shape or form replace it. And so we had to walk everywhere and you know carrying grocery bags and trying to carry a baby on your hip. I mean, I remember my arms feeling like they were stretching to double the length, right? And I’d have to walk all the way home. But it was, it was a very formative experience for me because it’s one thing to know about poverty in our heads. It’s a very different reality to know it in your stomach. Right? You know, it’s one thing to know about the problems of transportation for people in our heads or, you know, but to know it when your feet are throbbing, you’re trying to carry a baby and your arms just feel like they’re going to literally rip out of your sockets and unfortunately for too many of us we haven’t experienced it right and so and so there isn’t that real understanding of of that every moment of poverty not just in the in our spirits or in our minds but in the body right I mean poverty has a huge toll on the human body, huge. And it’s often made me think about this concept of voluntary poverty, because you see this in the spiritual traditions, where people will choose to enter into some form of a simple, very simple lifestyle in order to in some ways be in solidarity with the poor. I think there’s a lot of merit in it because I think we all should be reducing our lifestyle. We all should be simplifying. We all should be, you know, in some ways stepping down from the level and the standard of living that we’ve just become accustomed to. But voluntary poverty in no way is ever real poverty, right? Because for most people who choose to engage in voluntary poverty at any point in time because of your education privilege, because of maybe your race privilege, whatever, your family background privilege, you can normally opt out of it when you choose to. For people who actually live in poverty, there’s no capacity to opt out, right? You don’t have a choice. And I think that is such a huge fundamental difference. So you know I think for myself in concluding maybe this episode, you know, I mean I think some of the questions you know we need to ask ourselves is quite honestly do you see God in the face of the poor? When you actually physically look into those who are living in poverty’s faces, do you see God? Or have we, in some ways within ourselves, begun to blame the poor, despise the poor, or maybe judge the poor, just like the dominant culture. Do we in our lives genuinely side with the poor, like a god, or do we find ourselves automatically siding with the wealthy? What would it mean for us as communities to become so much more generous, but from a place of recognizing that we actually have more than our own fair share? And so using that opportunity to redistribute wealth or access to things really as a part of justice, not as charity, if that makes sense. And how are we on an ongoing basis actively supporting public policy groups that are lifting up the voice of the poor and really working to end poverty?

[33:32] MET: Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, PriestAndProf.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at 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.

[34:02] DDM: Music by Audionautix.com

In this introductory episode, Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth describe their different backgrounds and how they have affected their outlooks on Christianity, and the Episcopal Church, specifically. They explore the difference between a rules based faith vs. relationship, and the different ways they connect to the Church.

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Transcript

Transcription provided by automated service

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

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

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

[00:38] MET: Hello and welcome. This is our inaugural episode of The Priest and the Prof. My name is Elizabeth, and today we just want to have kind of a getting to know you episode. Reverend Deborah and I are going to talk about kind of our faith journeys, where we’ve come from, and how we got to where we are, just to kind of ease us into further discussions about where we are as Episcopalians and what it means to be people of faith in this world. So welcome and we’re really glad that you have come with us on this little journey of ours.

[01:19] DDM: Absolutely. And I’m so excited to be sitting here with Elizabeth. It’s not often one gets an opportunity to sit down with another amazing, intelligent, faith filled woman and just get to be able to discuss our lives, faith, the world around us, and how these things impact and shape who we are. So I’m super excited to be starting this journey with Elizabeth, and for you to be coming along with us. So, yeah, so today what we’re going to be doing is really just sharing some of our own stories and journeys and what has shaped us and the perspectives that we come from so that you get to know us a little bit more in this journey.

[01:57] MET: Alright, so I’m going to start. I grew up in Texas and I grew up all around Texas. I actually grew up Southern Baptist. Now there are a lot of different kinds of Baptist. Baptist are weird. So if I tell my story and you’re like, that sounds odd. There’s a reason why it sounds odd. Let me tell you a little bit about kind of Baptist at large. And then I’ll kind of get a little bit more into specifics about Southern Baptist. Anecdotally, let me give you this. The first time my husband and I saw an American Baptist church, we were so confused because we were walking around, and I think it was Massachusetts, we were visiting Harvard or something. And there was this American Baptist church and outside of it, there was a sculpture of a dancer. And on the sign outside, it said something like, all are welcome. And we were so confused because my understanding of Baptist was that there was no dancing and that absolutely not everybody was welcome. And my husband and I were like, what is this? This is not Baptist. We do not understand what we are looking at, because Southern Baptists did not operate that way. I grew up in a church, well, one of the churches that I grew up in, I grew up in a lot of churches, but one of the churches I grew up in, to be a deacon in the church, first off, you had to be a man to be a deacon. But to be a deacon, you had to take a pledge that your children would not attend dances. Right. Now, none of the men took that seriously. Like they all sent their kids off to the, you know, cotillion or debutante balls or whatever they had in that oil, like wealthy oil town. But like you weren’t supposed to send your kids to dances. And I was also a teetotaler growing up. Like that was the most unforgivable sin was to have a drink. Wow. But in many ways, when you think of families that get made fun of on TV for being religious, like, kind of, like that was what I knew growing up. So it was very restrictive in a lot of ways. And even then, growing up Southern Baptist is different than growing up from a lot of other Baptist communities. Like I said, the American Baptist Church that we saw in Massachusetts was very different. But you have to understand, Southern Baptists actually grow out of slavery. And that’s not something that I think a lot of people really understand. The Southern Baptist Church is Southern because of the Civil War, the Southern Baptist split and said, ha ha, just kidding, we want to keep our slaves. And the American Baptists and the Universal Baptists and Northern Baptists were like, No. We don’t think that’s a good idea. So the Southern Baptist split and institutionalized slavery.

[05:10] DDM: So you’re saying, Elizabeth, that the Southern Baptist Church really emerged as its own entity, primarily because it insisted on keeping slaves.

[05:21] MET: Yes. Yeah. And it is the largest Protestant organization in America today.

[05:31] DDM: Wow

[05:31] MET: I know, right?

[05:31] DDM: God, that’s frightening.

[05:32] MET: I know. Yeah. Okay. Like that is the bellwether for evangelicalism in America today is an institution that grew out of slavery. Wow. Yeah. And I don’t think that’s common enough knowledge.

[05:46] DDM: No, no, no.

[05:46] MET: So, and the other thing that is very important to understand about specifically Southern Baptist is one of the differences between a lot of mainline Protestant churches and Southern Baptist is when you think about Baptist, specifically Southern Baptist, is it is a very individualized faith. Like people kind of joke about it sometimes, but like, so if you’re an Episcopalian or a Lutheran or whatever, you get baptized as an infant. If you are, I can’t speak to all Baptists, but if you’re a Southern Baptist, you, it’s, I say this and you’re like, that sounds very weird. It does sound very weird. To be saved. You pray a prayer to ask Jesus to come live in your heart. And then you are saved And then you get baptized. Okay. All of that is very strange. But what that means is you have an individual relationship with Christ. So you’re not baptized as an infant. You are baptized when you ask Christ into your heart.

[07:02] DDM: So salvation really begins with the human choice rather than with God saving and love.

[07:09] MET: So on the one hand there’s this like dogma that you are saved through faith and grace. But on the other hand, you have to take an action to be saved. So there’s this kind of counterintuitive part of the faith that I, like I didn’t really understand the contrast of it until I was much older. And then I was like, that’s a little bit weird, but I didn’t, I just didn’t put too much thought into it. That also means there’s something called an age of accountability. So like I was baptized when I was 6, which is very young for a Baptist, but they were like, okay, well, she seems to really understand the theology and the symbolism or the whatever of it. So they let me be baptized. But there’s this idea of the age of accountability, which means it’s really kind of macabre. But if a three-year-old dies, they don’t think the three-year-old is going to hell, that three-year-old is probably going to go to heaven because they aren’t old enough to understand that they should have asked Jesus into their heart at that point. They aren’t old enough to be held accountable.

[08:16] DDM: Wow. I know. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

[08:19] MET: It is very different.

[08:20] DDM: Very different from Episcopalian.

[08:22] MET: Yeah, very different because it’s all about like your individual relationship with Christ as opposed to that kind of communal approach to the faith. And because of that, one of the things that I know is very different from a lot of mainline Protestant religions is there is very little emphasis on things like rites, communion, et cetera. It is all about how you relate to God. And that also means there’s not a lot of church hierarchy, right? Like you don’t relate to God through the priest or through the hierarchy. It is all autonomous.

[09:00] DDM: Wow. Very different. Yeah. Very different.

[09:05] MET: So if I still seem confused about what’s going on around me, that’s why.

[09:10] DDM: Yeah, it’s so interesting. Well, it’s interesting that you speak about, you know, how, you know, being Southern Baptist and that emerging out of slavery, because my journey was obviously beginning in South Africa. I was born, my grandparents are from South Africa. And for myself, it was growing up under apartheid. And I know for many people apartheid is a concept right but for those of us who are living in South Africa apartheid affected every aspect of our lives. It affected where you walked, it affected what transport you could take, it affected your school, it affected your jobs, it affected who you could marry, it affected, I mean there was not an aspect of your life that apartheid literally didn’t control. And you know I didn’t particularly even grow up, funny enough, I didn’t even really grow up I would say in a particularly religious family, we would go to Christmas services on Christmas Day, and we tend to go to whichever church was sort of nearest. I don’t think we had any particular sort of commitment because we basically never went to church. And so I think growing up, I never really thought about the church at all. The church just didn’t really feature into my thinking. But when it did start to was when I kind of got to the sort of mid teens and I started to feel like my entire worldview was unraveling. What my parents had taught me, what the culture and society around me was teaching me, really just started to absolutely make no sense at all. So for instance, we were taught to really fear people of color. There was this little phrase, Swartkhfar, which basically meant black danger. Wow. And literally, you were taught from a very young child to be afraid of people of color. And it was almost as though people of color were contaminating. This is a big issue, you know, like a kind of like clean, unclean, purity sort of things. You know, people were contaminating. So I remember as a little child, and if I tell you, I must have been 5, 6 years old. And I was in a shopping center and the ladies that tend to pack the groceries, you know, they’re often tended to be people of color. And I’d gone to go and get the grocery bag from this elderly woman. And she reached out and she, you know how you take a little child’s cheek and you’re like, you know, just to say, oh, you’re such a cute little child. So she took my cheek and she kind of did that. I was horrified because I’d been told that if somebody of color touches you where they touch you would have a big black mark like a birthmark and I remember rubbing my cheek so hard all the way on the way home that it actually started bleeding I’d rub through the skin because I was just so scared that I was gonna end up with this big birthmark, you know? And so these were the kind of things, but then you don’t end up with a birthmark, so you start to ask yourself, did it was just because I rubbed really hard or actually would I not get a mark? You know, I mean, this is even as a kind of a little child. And then I think as I grew older, I mean, I remember one of the clearest stories was when I was about 12 years old, my father used to work in medicine and he was taking a patient, transferring a patient who had been, he was having some sort of brain damage. He’d been in an accident and so was transferring him to a hospital that specialized with brain surgery and I was always interested in medicine and was going to go into medicine. And so my father said, well, why don’t you come back on the back of the ambulance, sit with the nurse and she can kind of teach you and kind of go through things. So I did that and I remember halfway through They hadn’t given him enough sedation and so he pulled out the IV and so blood was like spurting all over the back of the ambulance. So we got to the hospital about an hour later, we got to the hospital they were transferring him to. They took him in And I remember, and this particular person, this patient, happened to be a black man. Took him into the hospital and again in a partita, this was a hospital only for people of color. And I remember we were all standing around and they stripped his clothes, stripped everything off of him and he just lay there and it was my actually to be honest It was my first time ever seeing a naked man and I remember at the time thinking why is nobody putting a sheet over him? Why is nobody covering him? There wasn’t there was no desire to do that, right And that for me was absolutely horrifying. I was like, why are you not protecting his dignity? Why are you not covering him? They were so rushed. My dad then sent me back to the ambulance and he said, Debs, please, we don’t have, we’re short staffed, please just take a bucket of water and clean out the back of the ambulance, the blood. And so I went back and got a bucket of water from one of the staff members and started cleaning out. And I remember the smell of the blood. And as I cleaned, I was looking at this blood and I thought, it’s red, just like my blood. He bleeds just like me. Therefore, he must feel pain. And you know that for a South African growing up because you were literally taught black people don’t feel pain, which is why when they were going to hospitals adequate pain medication was never given, right? And so at age 12, it was like this realization that what I’ve been taught is completely untrue. It’s just not true. So my entire worldview almost started to, I would say started to unravel and just this feeling of betrayal, being betrayed by my culture, being betrayed by my family. And I think it really set me where I just started to feel like what was true anymore in my life, like what is real, you know. And so there was actually some churches that used to actually go into what was called the townships in South Africa, you know, under segregation, and they used to go in, and it was more kind of like preaching and that kind of thing. But I started going because I wanted to see with my own eyes what was happening on the other side. And literally once I started going into the townships, the entire worldview just collapsed because I started seeing police brutality, I started seeing unimaginable poverty, dehumanization. And I think for me it was the utter horror of what my community was doing and the lies that my community was telling, not just the world, but telling even to their own children. You know, That’s a really deep sense of betrayal. And so ironically for me, I think my entry into the church was really, I want to say through politics, but not through politics as an ideology, but rather politics as a movement for human rights. And so what I found in the churches, and this is, I need to say, not all the churches, but in your kind of Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, you know, those kind of churches, they really held up this vision of a completely different way of being. And it was a vision of a community and a way of relating as people that I had never experienced in South Africa, right? So it was really that another world is possible. And it was something that so inspired me, something that I thought, oh my God, like we can do this, like we could create a world like this where every person is loved, every person is seen as sacred, treasured by God. And so I literally fell in love, I would say, first and foremost with the vision of the kingdom of God. That’s what inspired me, you know, is that another way is possible. And so I went to seminary and I think in South Africa, I really experienced for myself a really beautiful blend between personal faith. Because like you know how you speak about the Southern Baptists, you know it’s not that we didn’t have personal faith because we were undergoing so much violence so much suffering so much utter pain that I don’t think human beings could have stood in their own strength or even as a community. Like I remember the number of times like just in absolute worship like people would just open their hearts and just be like almost like fainting and collapsing and just praying like “God give me the strength because we don’t have it to get through what we’re going to have to get through,” you know? So there definitely was, I would say, a very strong sense of personal faith in the sense of really needing God to sustain us with God’s strength. But at the same time, I think there was also that very deep sense of the Spirit of God inspiring and strengthening us to build another world.

[18:12] MET: I think, first off, that’s an incredible story. And the fact that the faith led you to do that kind of cultural unlearning is very inspiring. And it says that the faith is still doing the kind of work in the world that like I want it to do. That’s amazing. The other part that speaks to our project today…

[18:45] DDM: Right.

[18:45] MET: So the idea that that personal relationship can be so fulfilling and refreshing. When my background led into that personal faith, the way it happened was so individualistic, right? Like the way Southern Baptist configure that personal faith leads to a very, almost liberal market kind of personal faith, right? Like it’s a very, I mean, the, that’s why so many evangelicals fall into that kind of politically conservative, trap really, because when you think about my personal faith with Jesus, it becomes all too tempting to think about it in terms of my personal faith at the expense of everybody else. And that is a danger.

[19:51] DDM: Such a distortion of the gospel.

[19:53] MET: Yeah, right. And that’s one of the reasons why I eventually left that part of my faith behind. I remember, so this story is nowhere near as inspiring as what you just shared with us. But I remember when I was like, I don’t know, 18 or 19, and I was at the church that I had gone to throughout junior high and high school. I had come back from college and I was at the, you know, college age Sunday school class or whatever. And they were reading Acts or something, one of the chapters from Acts, and it was the class discussion part. And the church was living in common and sharing what they had and whatever. And I remember sitting there and I’m kind of looking around the room and I’m thinking, does anybody else, I mean, everybody else is reading the same thing I am, right? I raised my hand and I was like, this is Communism, right?

[20:45] DDM: I mean, that’s what- Yeah, yeah. Socialism, communism, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

[20:48] MET: You know, your church, they were a bunch of Commies, right? And the response was, “We don’t need to hear from you anymore.” Are you joking me? Like, okay. And that was when I was like, I don’t think I am welcome in my own faith anymore. And that’s when I started visiting other churches because I thought my parents told me to read the Bible and take it seriously. And I did. And when I did, it became clear that I was not welcome in my home church anymore.

[21:20] DDM: Oh my God. And that’s a hugely painful experience.

[21:24] MET: Yeah. I mean, people talk about religious trauma and I never thought that applied to me until just recently and I started thinking about it. I was like, oh, I do think I’m a little bit messed up.

[21:36] DDM: Yeah. I mean, it leaves very deep scars. It leaves very deep scars. You know, you say about the South African situation, coming out of the early church with that incredible beauty of that blending of the prophetic tradition and its deep spirituality. You know, but there is a second part to that story, because after we came out of liberation, it was almost like the church went into a time of crisis where they were really having to ask themselves in South Africa, why are we here? We’ve now got liberation. We’re building this kingdom of God, this society of full equality. So what now is our role? It just so happens that in South Africa at that point in time, the HIV/AIDS crisis was, it was a pandemic, right? And so the churches threw themselves into that movement. But unfortunately, in engaging with the whole HIV AIDS situation, what you started to see in our churches was there started to be that personal morality creeping in. Right? Where it started to become, I would say, almost like a kind of a puritanical theology started emerging, which we hadn’t had prior to liberation, right? But prior to, like under apartheid and that, this was not a focus really of the churches at all, the mainline churches. But then suddenly post apartheid, it was almost like, well, who are we now? What is our role? And so they started to almost be this like moral, I don’t want to say moral police, but moral beacons maybe with a lot of judgment thrown in, you know, in our communities. And I think what started to happen is we almost started to place this puritanical view of sexuality on our communities that had actually never seen their sexuality through really that lens in quite the same way, right? And so for me, it was quite horrifying to watch how churches that had been so liberating and life-giving, inspiring and transformative, started to morph into something that actually really, ironically, started to dehumanize people again, because it was a way of almost teaching a theology where you couldn’t accept your full sexuality, who you were, right? And so it was almost like, well yes, you’re on the path and on the journey as long as you abide by these kind of moral, moral kind of requirements. And that was something new that really started to creep into the church. And then of course that spilled out into the homophobic teaching, you know, that kind of really wasn’t there when I entered in the church. I mean, it was not even an issue, you know. And unfortunately now it’s grown into a very unhealthy focus that I just think betrays that vision of God we were given under apartheid, you know, and in scriptures. And of course, that’s why I ended up here. So, you know, I think for me, there was this incredible beauty that drew me in, but then as time moved on, I also saw how as circumstances and context shifted, unhealthy teachings really could begin to emerge again. I guess that shouldn’t surprise us because the church really is a community of human beings seeking to follow the Spirit of God and build the kingdom. But we’re humans. Do you know what I’m saying? We’re the same human beings that are in our families or in the churches. You know, so none of us are perfect. So, you know, I guess always in the life of the church, there is the stories of beauty and inspiration, and then there’s the shadow side. You know, and how do we as people of faith, but also people who have critical thinking capacities, how do we navigate that so that we stay in a healthy relationship, not just with God and our faith, but also equally a healthy relationship with our communities, and particularly with people who are being dehumanized or marginalized in our society. Yeah.

[25:56] MET: It’s so interesting that we came from such radically different places. And we are both Episcopalians because we wanted a place of relationship and we wanted a place of wholeness and we wanted a place of love and authenticity. And yet we appreciate such very different things about the faith and Episcopalianism. And I know we’ve talked about that kind of offline before about like what we pursue and what we want out of our relationship with the church and with the deity, however, that may be revealed to you. So I wonder if we could take a few minutes to kind of talk about like, what, what grounds you in this thing that you are doing? And I can follow up with that. But I know that’s something that we will probably explore throughout this project because I think it’s really important for people to see that this faith is multifaceted and there’s many ways to plug into it.

[27:19] DDM: Absolutely. Oh, 100%, 100%. I mean, so for myself as well, I mean, it wasn’t like I came into the Episcopal Church. I started off in the Methodist Church, but very quickly I found myself joining the Anglican seminarians, and Anglican is obviously the Episcopal church and the rest of the world. And so I found myself going with the Anglican seminarians, funny enough, to the offices, waking up, and I mean, I was in my 20s, right? I was still clubbing, right? But I would get up and be at church at 06:00 every morning for the morning office, and I’d be back at 05:00 for the evening. And I think for me what the Episcopal or the Anglican tradition gave to me was the beautiful gift of a rhythm of prayer. So it didn’t matter whether I was exhausted, it didn’t matter whether I was a little hungover, it didn’t matter whether I was feeling really devastatingly sad, all right? It didn’t matter whether I was going through a depression, it didn’t matter whether I was going through a depression, it didn’t matter whether I was feeling great. There was this rhythm of we joined together and it wasn’t individual prayer. We’d all gather together and we would pray together. And sometimes you just say those words and other times those words jump off the page and your heart just bursts And at other times you’re like, what am I doing here at 6 in the morning? You know, but but prayer for me became It became almost like breathing It almost became like a spiritual breathing, you know, because we don’t just breathe when we’re happy, right? We breathe through everything, right? And we can’t sustain without that breath. And so prayer for me really became that spiritual breath, that spiritual breathing, and doing it in community, doing it with others. So, you know, that’s been, I think, the offices and the hours of prayer, that for me is just a beautiful gift in the, not just in the Episcopal Church, but in the other traditions. The other thing that I love about the Episcopal Church is the stress with symbols. You know, like I think and what I love about the Episcopal Church is that it’s not ideological. I don’t experience it, let me say. I don’t experience the Church, Episcopal Church, as ideological, right? It’s much more about symbol. And what I love about that is symbol is so open-ended, you know? So when we speak about symbols, I mean, for instance, the chalice, right? I mean, the chalice can hold the blood of Christ, but it can also hold my blood in the places where I’ve been wounded. It can hold the blood of anybody, the shed blood of anyone in our communities who’s been violated. The chalice can be the womb, the womb out of which the blood is shed and new life is born. I mean, there’s so much richness just in one symbol. And then we’re surrounded by light. And we’re surrounded by so many symbols that can speak to us in different ways, but I think can also even speak to an individual throughout their lifespan in so many different ways. You know, and a symbol isn’t interpreted in a right way or a wrong way. There’s just many ways. So, you know, that’s one of the things that I love about the Episcopal Church is just that openness to genuine diversity, you know, not just diversity in our bodies and genders, but diversity in our thoughts, you know, and in our experiences. And I think the Episcopal Church betrays itself when it tries to become ideological and no longer embrace that diversity. So I think those are some of the things I love about the Episcopal Church. And then of course, for myself, I just love that emphasis on, you know, It doesn’t matter whether you’re a male or female, you can become a priest. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sexually active or celibate, you can become a priest. It doesn’t matter if you are transgender, gay, anything in between or none of the above, black or white. I mean, I love that intention to be all inclusive. Now, obviously we’re a human community. We’re not always getting it right, but there’s that intention. And I think that for me, that fits. It feels like a community I can live into. So I think those are some of the reasons for me why I find myself in this tradition and not getting blisters on my feet. Most days.

[31:51] MET: And so that’s really interesting. And this is going to be a fun project because for me, the reason my faith is important is because it does provide an ideology and a philosophy for me. Not like really dogmatic, but like the reason I pay such close attention to my faith in Jesus is because I appreciate him as a political radical.

[32:15] DDM: Right? Right.

[32:16] MET: Right. Like Jesus said, feed the poor. I take that seriously. That feeds into my ideology, right? Like Jesus challenged systemic power.

[32:26] DDM: Yep.

[32:26] MET: For me, that’s a really important part of my ideology, right? I’m not saying Jesus gives me a political system to follow, but for me, when I think about my faith, I think about it providing me a framework through which I understand the world. And that’s what I mean by it providing me like an ideology or a philosophy. I don’t mean like Jesus tells me to be a Democrat, first off, he wouldn’t tell me that. But secondly, that’s a whole other episode.

[32:56] DDM: Absolutely. I’m looking forward to that one.

[32:59] MET: That aside, But my faith does provide me with an ideology and a framework. Right? Like my faith tells me don’t bow to empire. Right? Yes. Like that’s an important part of my faith because Jesus was the first person to be like, yeah, I give to Rome what’s Rome, but also maybe like pay attention to relationships instead. Right? Like that’s an important part of my ideology and I get that from my faith. Does that make sense?

[33:28] DDM: A hundred percent. And I wonder if it’s a way in which we’re defining ideology.

[33:32] MET: Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it.

[33:34] DDM: Yes, because I think without a doubt, there’s no way you can take the gospel seriously and not have this inspiring vision of another world and another set of ethics, 100%.

[33:46] MET: Yeah, and that’s what I mean by a philosophy and ideology.

[33:49] DDM: I think my problem with the word, for me, the problem with the word, my problem with the word ideology is when people co-opt that vision and ethics into some form of a political ideology that often then ends up becoming something other again than the gospel.

[34:06] MET: No, no, no. All I mean by that is, I appreciate Jesus as a radical.

[34:11] DDM: Oh, absolutely.

[34:12] MET: And I 100% believe if we don’t think of Jesus as a radical, then we lose an important part of the faith.

[34:21] DDM: 100%. I mean, there’s no way he would have ended up on the cross if he wasn’t a revolutionary radical.

[34:26] MET: Right? Like, this is something I talk about in my classes, right? People who are loved universally don’t end up crucified, assassinated, right? Like choose your political leader. Absolutely. Like Martin Luther King Jr. We love him now, but he wasn’t a super popular guy. Right? These are the things that happened.

[34:44] DDM: Gandhi. Gandhi.

[34:45] MET: Like maybe that’s crass, but like we have to think about the reality of the situation. We think of these great historical leaders and we’re like, oh, he was so great or she was so great. But I mean, they are not universally beloved and we can see that in their end story. Anyway, sorry, that’s…

[35:03] DDM: No, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

[35:06] MET: That is what I mean by a philosophical or ideological connection to my faith.

[35:12] DDM: Yes. And what I love about the Episcopal Church though, is that even in the midst of all that, there’s always that sense of, let’s just keep the diversity of the opinions, the discussion, the debates on the table. I like that. I like that openness because I think it’s so easy to get, like I watch in this country, how people have got stuck in frameworks, you know, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican or, you know, they tend to be after a while pretty confining, you know, and maybe quite damaging, you know. Yeah. Elizabeth, this has been a wonderful conversation.

[35:56] MET: Yeah, yeah. I feel like we’re off to a good start.

[35:59] DDM: Yeah, looking forward. So I should also just say to anybody who is going to be listening to this, if you have any interest in any subjects that you’d like us to speak about or just to hear some about perspectives on them, please don’t hesitate to be able to share those with us because we’d love to engage with you in whatever ways possible.

[36:21] MET: Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, Priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

[36:53] DDM: Music by Audionautix.com,