David Gushee is an influential Christian ethicist who famously changed his mind about LGBTQ Christians. His 2014 book Changing Our Mind (now in its third edition) has been celebrated and widely recommended as an honest and forceful reckoning with the ethical issues surrounding LGBTQ Christians and the church's complicity in their exclusion, neglect, and abuse. It is a powerful and well-researched chronicle of David's journey from a traditional stance to an inclusive one, a journey that he completed while remaining theologically conservative. We are honored that David agreed to speak with us about this important book, and we look forward to more conversations about his many others in the near future!
The bourbon we tasted in this episode is Hardin's Creek Clermont.
To skip to the interview, go to 11:32. You can find the transcript for this episode here.
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Cheers!
David Gushee is an influential Christian ethicist who famously changed his mind about LGBTQ Christians. His 2014 book Changing Our Mind (now in its third edition) has been celebrated and widely recommended as an honest and forceful reckoning with the ethical issues surrounding LGBTQ Christians and the church's complicity in their exclusion, neglect, and abuse. It is a powerful and well-researched chronicle of David's journey from a traditional stance to an inclusive one, a journey that he completed while remaining theologically conservative. We are honored that David agreed to speak with us about this important book, and we look forward to more conversations about his many others in the near future!
The bourbon we tasted in this episode is Hardin's Creek Clermont.
To skip to the interview, go to 11:32. You can find the transcript for this episode here.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
NOTE: This transcript was auto-generated by an artificial intelligence and has not been reviewed by a human. Please forgive and disregard any inaccuracies, misattributions, or misspellings.
Randy 00:06
I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle is a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.
Kyle 00:15
We also invite experts to join us, making public space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.
Randy 00:24
Thanks for joining us, and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Kyle 00:37
So today, we're talking with Dr. David gushy, who is a Christian ethicist at Mercer University's Alright, written apparently 29 books or so something like that. Very influential in the Christian ethics space, also influential in the wrestling with the LGBTQ issue, in particular in relation to evangelical Christianity, because he wrote this book that we're going to be talking about today called Changing our mind, I think it was published in 2014 15, something like that. This book has been recommended to me a bunch of times, when you go looking for what should I read about LGBTQ Christians? This one is usually on the recommendation list, I finally got around to reading it for this interview. And it's excellent. It is, it's I understand why people recommend it. It's a great place to start, especially if you're coming from a conservative perspective and wondering what you should think about this. And so even though he's done, who knows how many interviews about this, and his years past, having written and defended this work, he was gracious enough to let us talk to him about it, even though he's got other new stuff. He could be talking about
Randy 01:40
tons of new stuff, and we'll get to that new stuff. I mean, this, this is the first of a couple of interviews with David in the, in the coming months, and in maybe years. But yeah, this was a book that I wanted to get to, but I knew that I would be rubbing shoulders with David and it Dr. gushy and I have grown in friendship. And he's part of the post evangelical collective, which you've heard from Carrie Ladouceur, the executive director, and we've collaborated with Brian McLaren on an events so there's been a smattering, and I've gotten to know Dr. gushy through that post evangelical collective, and I've just grown to enjoy him highly. He's just a wonderful person. I really, really love talking about really important stuff with him and about really not important stuff like baseball, and all sorts of fun stuff. But this book really is important, I think, I mean, he wrote this in 2015, we read the third version, which I would highly recommend that you get because of some things that are in the end, that's really important. But I do want to say this episode is not for, can I say it's not for queer people. This is this is like, this conversation is a prickly conversation. It's a tender conversation. It's a personal conversation. For many, many people. And this this specific conversation with Dr. gushy about his book, changing our mind is for mostly for I would say, straight Christians, straight people who follow Jesus, who are wrestling with the idea of should I be affirming or not? I would say, this is for people who have heard many opinions don't really know what to think Dr. gushy does a great job of bringing the biblical scholarship going into the Greek talking about what some of these words mean, talking about the real context of some of these verses, debunking some things, and then giving us some really practical guidelines for how to think about sexuality as a follower of Jesus. But again, I just want to say where it's easy for three straight guys, three straight white guys to talk about sexuality in such a way that's detached from everyday life that queer people have to live with that we don't know anything about. Yeah,
Kyle 03:49
yeah. So LGBTQ people probably don't need this episode. But many of them will find it interesting. Many of them have found the book interesting, if nothing else for the interesting surveys of historical scholarship on the Bible, and science of human sexuality. And I think it's interesting just to see how a conservative ethicist still self described as conservative I think, approaches other conservatives on this issue, even just totally from outside of that, I find it fascinating to watch the dynamics of that conversation. And so it's not to say LGBTQ people don't listen to this, but no, no, that yeah, if if something is left out of the conversation, it's because we were targeting it in a specific direction. And we're, we're aware of what is not here.
Randy 04:31
Absolutely. I mean, my hope for this conversation is that in particular, people involved engaged in the church in particular people involved engaged in the church in leadership ways, will be able to listen in without bias and be able to just listen and I even more than listen, I want to recommend that you read this book. This is a book that I really, really want to move people towards, especially if you're straight and considering whether or not this is something that you you're wrestling with. With this or maybe you're queer, and you're you've heard all sorts of things from your church, from your parents from your family, and you're confused, based on your your lived experience in reality. This is somebody who loves the scriptures, who loves Jesus who takes his faith very seriously. And who has changed his mind about this. And I think it's a really, really good example for us all.
Kyle 05:29
So one of the things we'd like to do around here is shout out our top shelf supporters. So Marvin Foster, thanks so much for being a Patreon top shelf supporter. We really appreciate your support. We couldn't do it without you. Cheers,
Randy 05:40
Marvin. Another thing we'd like to do is read reviews because we love when you post reviews, we, whether they're good or bad, we'll take them all. And particularly if they're good ones, we're going to read them out. And thank you for reading them. This is from SR. Julian. Julian says, I just dropped by via a reference by a friend. She posted your link. Wow. Wow. Wow, great podcast, great information, great opinions. And it's nice when you have a guest. Thank you for talking about the things I've wondered about. Well, we love talking about the things that you wondered about Julian because we like to think about these things as well. So thanks for the review. And please, if you're listening and you enjoy and have enjoyed this podcast, if you could hit pause and get just go leave a review and a rating we would be eternally grateful to you. So our podcast is called a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar and we take the bar apart seriously around here is part of our show, we sample alcoholic beverages just to set the table for great conversations. We also have a patreon supporter and just a friend of the show, Tim who has his own show called power of bourbon. He supplied us with incredible whiskies. And we invited him to do the tastings with us. So welcome back, Tim.
Tim 06:53
Thank you so much.
Randy 06:54
We don't know what we're tasting here, but let's dive in. Yeah,
Kyle 06:57
I'll say of all the ones we've tasted with you so far, Tim, this is the nose that gives me the most hope. Or the most promising, I
Randy 07:06
think, what does that mean?
Kyle 07:07
I don't know. Like I'm gonna be let down if it's not amazing. No, yeah, it's the nose tells me it should be amazing. Yeah,
Tim 07:12
it's it's a classic caramel vanilla bomb with some oaky notes and it really
Randy 07:19
is. Like, I smell this and I smell money. This to me is what like an old expensive prestigious bourbon smells like and it's probably going to be old. Yeah, it's
Kyle 07:31
gonna be hilarious when it's cool.
Tim 07:36
Yeah, this is just some wild turkey one on one that I put in a barrel and stick around for six months and there Yeah, Mo
Randy 07:43
moly. Yeah. This is amazing. I'm sorry for pounding the table. Man, it's worth it. There was so much happening in my first in my first sip. I can't even articulate it. I have to take a second sip to start tasting the particularities of it. Yeah, so
Tim 08:03
I get like tobacco some like cherry skins not like the actual fruit of the cherry but the skins of it. There's some like vanilla notes in there and then on the finish, it's just oak for days. Okay,
Randy 08:18
so Tim, you said cherry skins. Now? Yeah. That was more like a base of STEM. No, I want to trust your you know your wisdom and knowledge and you know, bow down to your experience. But one Have you ever tasted just cherry skin?
Tim 08:38
Well, no, you taste the whole cherry but like it's not I don't know, the flesh has a very different taste than the skin is a little more. It's a lot more tart. Yeah, tart. I don't know I almost will say juicy type of thing. And it just invokes the feeling of the skin of the cherry. Okay, all right.
Randy 08:59
That's that's a good answer.
Kyle 09:04
I just love it. It's it's proved really well, I would guess barrel strength, whatever very slightly under
Randy 09:10
Yeah. If if I'm going to be if we're gonna be fools about this. I'll be a fool if this if this is not good stuff, but this is really good. Yeah, if
Kyle 09:18
this turns out to be something common, I'm gonna be happy because then I'll go get some Yeah.
Randy 09:22
But I don't think it will be Tim tell us what we're drinking.
Tim 09:26
So we're drinking this year's release, which is hardens Creek Claremont. So what Jim Beam is doing is they took 17 year old so they took distillate 17 years ago. They put a whole bunch at their three campuses, so Claremont, Frankfort and Boston. And they're redoing special releases this year. So the Claremont is only barrels from the Claremont campus, then they'll do a Frankfurt release, which is only the Frankfurt one and they'll end it with a Boston one. So you You get to truly see how aging bourbon and different care wars affects the flavor of the bourbon. So
Randy 10:06
it's like so cool. So it's like a multi Campus Church.
Tim 10:10
Yes, exactly.
Kyle 10:15
We stream the same sermon every week. It's just the
Randy 10:17
same I don't know enough about bourbon to know like, is this a really really special bourbon? Or is it kind of just like you can find it anywhere? What is this? So
Tim 10:26
this is the is a very special limited release only going to come out this year. And really only came out in the early part of the summer, so June, July, and then they're switching over to Frankfort in July and August. So yeah, it's 17 year old and it's priced at $180. Which anybody that knows bourbon $10 A year is a steal anymore. So it's a really good for value and you guys have tasted it now know that it is an amazing
Randy 10:56
product immediately. You smell it in you know
Kyle 10:58
and you you claimed on your channel that the Frankfort is even better than the Claremont so now. Yes, I have to have that.
Randy 11:06
Nice. Well, Tim, one more time. What are we drinking? We
Tim 11:10
are drinking hardens Creek. Claremont edition,
Randy 11:13
cheers hears the term. Dr. David gushy. Thank you so much for joining us on a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar.
David 11:37
It is my pleasure, Randy and Kyle. Good to see you guys.
Randy 11:41
Yeah, absolutely. We're going to jump right into it. You are a Christian ethicist, which in a minute, I'm going to ask you what Christian ethicists do and why Christian ethicist are important. But you and I have, you know, we've spent some time together. And so I know your background a little bit, which excites me for who you are in the fields that you're thinking and talking and just working in. But you have both a pastoral and academic background. Can you just tell our listeners a little bit about your background, how you got to where you are right now, David?
David 12:11
Sure. I was raised by a devout Catholic mother, and a non church going, scientist father, who worked for the federal government doing policy analysis. So Dad was more head mom was more hard. I was raised in the Northern Virginia area in the kind of the Civil Service DC community. I left Catholicism behind the religion that mom was trying to raise the sin. When I was 13, I converted in a born again, Southern Baptist context when I was 16. When I was 17, I felt called to ministry. And I've been pursuing that calling ever since. When I went to seminary, I discovered that I not only had a pastoral calling out an academic calling in the field that I love the best was Christian ethics was so why Yeah, because I thought it brought it all together. Christian ethics is about helping Christians think about practical matters of how we should live this life. It's not airy, abstract, doctrinal speculation. It's the way of life of followers of Christ. It's also about what we say to the world, to government, to culture. And I thought that Christian ethics, you might say brought head and heart together that also brought scripture and you might say daily real life together. And is it almost it almost like it brought together both the the public policy, real world gritty stuff that I was raised with from my dad, and the born again, Christianity that I picked up when I walked into that Baptist Church and high school and I've been pursuing? I'd say, I tell people I've been pursuing three callings since I, since I was in my 20s. To follow Jesus to pasture the flock. And to be a Christian ethicist. And they all go together. They never really separate from me. And I've never been free to lay that calling down. It's been almost 40 years.
Randy 14:37
So what does it look like to be called as a Christian ethicist and called pastoral Lee? You know, I mean, I'm assuming one led into the other but do you see yourself still, you know, practically in both both worlds?
David 14:49
I do. I have actually served as along the way children's pastor youth pastor elder pass Mr. interim pastor, you know, preach, preach, you know, 1520 times a year wish it was more. And I think I have a kind of a pastoral sensibility when it comes to religion to my students and to, to the people who, who I write about or write for. And that's actually very relevant to the change jeremiad book that we're about to talk about.
Kyle 15:24
Yeah, that that comes through strongly. Absolutely.
Randy 15:27
Yeah. Yeah.
David 15:28
Thanks. Pastors shepherd the flock. Emphasis, help Christians think about what it means to follow Jesus faithfully. So academic emphasis, Christian emphasis, at least should be serving the church should be equipping pastors and laypeople helping everyone think about difficult questions, difficult discernment challenges about following Jesus in our time. So you might say, I mean, I believe that academic theologians, ethicist, church historians, and so on in Christianity, they exist to serve the church. Yes. And pastors need to be soaking up as much as they can from these academics. But it's a lot easier if the academics are trying to speak to the pastor's writing in an accessible way. But anyway, I combined both of those identities and so it's kind of seamless for me to do both. Yeah.
Randy 16:31
We had Samir and shared yet have on twin brothers who one's a theologian who worked with Stanley Howard was and the other is a pastor is going to Baylor now just Yeah. So that to the other twin is a pastor in Sherrod, who is the pastor said, Samir, works for me, just so you know, like the theologians work for the pastor's to be able to help us communicate what is actually, you know, Christian theology doctrine, and how do we live then. So you're very much in line with with those guys, let's dive into changing our minds. You wrote this book in 2000, or released the book, at least in 2015. David, it blew up your world I know, and blew up a lot of things. I mean, it started sparked a ton of conversation. We're getting into it later in this podcast. But I think it's really relevant these questions about sexuality in the church, and how we think about these things, and how do we arrive at conclusions are super important. I know our listeners really care about that in our processing that's for, but let's get after those questions about changing our minds and our mind and thinking about that. Kyle, you want to start that?
Kyle 17:38
Sure. First, are you just sick of talking about this? It seems like a lot happened to you. And I just want to be sensitive with the questions I'm gonna ask. So going in, what's your, what's your headspace like around the level of
David 17:52
energy for it? If I were still doing it every day as I was for about eight years, I might not be up for this conversation. But in many ways, the conversation has moved on. And I've been doing other things on so yeah, I'm not I'm not sick about sick of talking about it. I'm ready to roll.
Kyle 18:09
Yeah. Great. You got a lot of pushback. I read a couple of the critiques that shall remain nameless. You had a whole section at the end, which honestly, was my favorite part of the book, which was just a response to critics. I know, there was a lot, what, three, three editions at this point or something like that? Yeah,
David 18:28
the first one was pretty brief. But yeah, the third edition, that won't be anymore, I felt I needed to pull together the most significant critiques and engage them. I think that's something you have to do as a scholar. And so. So I think I did that. And nothing significantly new, I think has been added since then. Yeah,
Kyle 18:47
yeah, good. Okay. So the first big thing that I want to discuss, and again, we're going to ask a bunch of questions that would require, like full length semesters to fully unpack. And I know that going into it. And so I'm going to ask things that you have already described and even answered in your book, but I'm doing it for the listeners who I know are interested, and maybe in future conversations, we can revisit some of this stuff. But first, how do you see the role of personal experience, and this is bigger than just this issue? LGBTQ Christians, obviously. But it's a huge focus in this book is a very important part of this larger conversation. And it's a place where your critics really slammed you from from what I read. They they accuse you, for example, of overweighting your personal experience or your relationship with your sister, for example, and underweighting, your interpretation of the Bible, or maybe they wouldn't say your interpretation, maybe they would just say what the Bible says. So how do you see the role and that balancing of in any ethical decision, but specifically this kind of ethical decision of here's what I'm seeing in the lives of people in front of me, and here's how I'm understanding the Bible.
David 19:58
I think you've gone to me Wheatley to a huge methodological question. And Christian ethics and theology, it's to what extent? Okay, let's say we talk about a theology of divine revelation. Let's say that we want to know God's will. And we are hopeful that God wants us to know His will. And that God is speaking to us in a variety of ways. The Christian tradition has privileged scripture, as depending on what branch of the Christian tradition, the only or the primary way in which we listen for God's will, or God speaks to us. The more magisterial traditions like the Catholic and Orthodox would say, Scripture as refracted through the teaching tradition of the church. The more Holy Spirit oriented traditions would say, be sure to be listening for the Holy Spirit, who speaks through Scripture through tradition, but also in other ways, like through worship, through prayer, through moments of divine encounter, it has really only been in the last century, I would say, or less that strands of Christian theology and ethics have said, just personal experience, should also be understood to be maybe not a co equal source, but a significant source of knowledge, relevant to discernment, especially when you listen to the liberation thinkers, they would say, Efrain of critical vein, that social location, class status, race, gender, position in society has always been a factor in shaping how people think. But that the Christian tradition, like a lot of other religious traditions, has tended to obscure this, under the authority of the tradition or the magisterium, the leaders of the church, we, the leaders of the church, almost as if we are disembodied humans who do not have experiences or interests, or social location that matters. I don't want to I mean, I think there's, there's a lot there. And it's also quite readily apparent when you really think about it, that there are things that can that can be learned through experience, that cannot be learned any other way. And it's also the case that experience, hard experience, failures and so on, have been interpreted by the church in such a way as to lead to changes in in doctrine and practice. A good example is listening to the experiences of abuse spouses, especially women and children, beginning, especially in the 60s and 70s, helped to change, church practice about divorce. There was not a doctrine that said that abuse was grounds for divorce until we began listening to people who had the experience of abuse.
Randy 23:44
And there's no verses that say, abuse is grounds for divorce, correct. Now there
David 23:48
isn't. You have to intuit it from the you can maybe take Paul in First Corinthians seven and get there but it's not explicit. No, it's not. I talked in the book about how centuries of Christian anti semitic teaching and practice were only seriously corrected after the experience of the rotten fruit culminated in the Holocaust. And so, yes, I take seriously what the experience of LGBTQ people has to say. That experience must be brought into dialogue with Scripture and tradition. And it also is brought into dialogue with what psychiatrists and psychologists and anthropologists and sociologists say about sexuality in human nature and human culture. So I do not back down from resisting the idea that all the truth that we need, is drivable from reading of Scripture and tradition apart from engaging the relevant human experience in
Randy 25:03
let's be honest, no one does that. Even if they say they do no one does it, it's pretty much impossible. And I also do want to say, just to just for our listeners who haven't read the book, that critique is extremely unfair, because the book is just absolutely loaded with very rigorous biblical scholarship, looking at all the verses that could have any tie to sexuality and sexual orientation and homosexuality. It's extremely, like remarkably fair to both sides of the conversation. I mean, you don't, you don't, you know, turn a straw man into the the opposing argument, you really give it some fair contextualization, and you don't condescend, it's, it's a really generous way to write a book about a contentious issue. So well done, David.
David 25:54
I appreciate that. I mean, it could have been, it could have been five times longer with a lot more detail on every every passage or whatever. But I really, the book began as a series of blogs, basically. So I was aiming for 2000 words, per blog, which ended up being essentially the basis of chapters. And I really talk about, here's a spirit claim, I really feel that the Holy Spirit inspired me to write essentially, what got written the way it got written. I mean, there was editing. But in the end, what resulted was the kind of book you could hand to a 17 year old, conflicted young person, and they could actually read it, or they can hand it to their parents, you know, so. So that's the way the book has functioned, and why it has sold so well, because because it meets a pastoral need and has adequate scholarship, at least from my perspective, and from a lot of other people's perspective.
Randy 26:49
I think for most layman's perspective, it's quite rigorous. And for most people who try to have an opinion on the matter, and try to say that the Bible is clear, it's far more rigorous than most people have, you know, put in any biblical scholarship into trying to figure out what the Bible actually says about sexuality and in homosexuality and all of it. God, yeah, yeah.
Kyle 27:14
And one thing I really appreciated about the book, especially the biblical portions, was that it preserved the ambiguity. And the unresolved nature of the biblical stance, or stances would be more accurate about the whole web of LGBTQ related issues, rather than which I see, honestly, from conservatives, but also sometimes from liberals, of which I am one, claiming the authority of the text in service of like kind of a pre existing agenda. I think that's actually acceptable in some circumstances, but maybe in this book, wouldn't have been the best tack. And you didn't do that. And I really appreciated it, because the Bible, just as it was just saying, it's not clear, and it is ambiguous, and there is room for disagreement, I think, reasonable disagreement about issues like this, and acknowledging that forces you to take in other kinds of evidence, which I think is absolutely crucial in this in this conversation in particular. So let me back to that methodological point asked a moment ago. Let me pose a hypothetical. Just to get more concrete about this. For some of our listeners, let's say you had been convinced in your study of the biblical passages, that they did support the traditionalist ethic, would you have still made the transition that you did? How would you have waited it against all of the other lines of evidence that you are exploring?
David 28:27
I would say, I appreciate the way you described, the wrestling that appears in the book, you know. Now, one of the one of the aspects of kind of an errand test doctrine is that the Bible can be defined as clear, like perspicuity, as part of the dogma, right. And so to say, it's not clear, is itself a challenge to the doctrine of inerrancy as a doctrinal challenge, but I do think it's, it's not clear, partly because if you weigh cultural background seriously, it complexify as the reading readings of the texts. And if you weigh what we know about sexuality and gender today, and the testimony of suffering on the part of millions of LGBTQ Christians and ex Christians, it makes it even less clear, it's more complicated. And so, in a sense, the book succeeds. If people are are motivated to enter into this as a wrestle rather than as an open and shut case. Either way. I do think that any kind of just liberal dismissal, oh, you know, obviously, the Bible is either wrong or the Bible is not relevant, or the Bible should be read in an inclusive way. That would be way too simple also, right. But the way you framed your question, I don't think I would have published book on the subject. If I became convinced in the biblical study, that the traditionalist position was correct. Plenty of people have written that book. And I don't think it would have been needed. I think that the reason a series of blog posts became a book was because I became convinced by the end, that a better reading of Scripture and a better better reading of the overall evidence picture had emerged for me. And that hasn't changed in 10 years, I'm still convinced that a better a better reading of the overall pattern of evidence that we must discern today leads to the covenantal fairly traditional vision that I offer that just includes LGBTQ people on the same terms as everyone else.
Kyle 30:52
Yeah. One more quick follow up on this and then I promise I'll stop. So I don't I don't know your theological background. I don't know what denominational context you do ministry in but you at one point, quote or cite approvingly the Wesleyan quadrilateral, right. And this has been helpful to me while I'm more liberal than Wesley, I will take it further than he did. It was helpful to me when I first encountered it and coming to terms with my, at the time, just kind of a temptation to consider other kinds of evidence as heavily or maybe even possibly more heavily than how the scripture was seeming to me at the moment. And so I wonder if that would lead you to a place because what I'm really trying to get at is not would you have written the book, but what would you have chosen? If it seemed to you that in every case except the Bible, this was the correct ethical choice, because for me for a while, that was the case. And I can't pretend that my reading of the Scripture wasn't impacted by that. I later came to be convinced along various different hermeneutical lines, about, you know, different views about the importance of the scriptural texts. Our listeners know about that, because we've talked about it before. But even if that hadn't been the case, even if I had remained convinced, as I once was strongly that the scripture supported a traditional ethic, I would have still chosen to go against them, because of the other lines of evidence, which probably makes me a little further than Wesley would have, but it at least puts a crack and opens the door for that kind of thing, right? Yeah,
David 32:18
Wesley himself, I'm pretty sure that scripture, tradition, reason and experience, the main kind of experience he was interested in listening to was religious experience. Oh, it is true that when he was dealing with slavery, his writings about slavery took seriously the experience of enslaved people. And when he wrote his thoughts on slavery, he brought that in hard, and he appealed to the human and Christian sympathy and empathy and love that we're supposed to have as Christians. So anyway, what what he meant by experience is kind of debated, you know? But it's a great question. It's really hard for me, my background is Southern Baptist. I am today more moderate Baptist with of a deeper appreciation than I used to have of the great tradition of the church that you see in Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. And so on the the grand magisterial traditions that, that have the longest trajectory I take very seriously. And I don't, I don't easily, I don't dismiss them. I want to be in conversation with them. As a Baptist as a Christian and as an ethicist. I don't think I could have felt free to say the Bible says this, and I just reject it. And to continue in my column, either as a pastor or as an ethicist,
Kyle 33:47
I just think of the analogies that you use, right? The abused spouse analogy, or my god, the Jewish analogy. And it's easy for me to imagine being in a place of ministry at certain point in history, and just not having the evidence available to me to have reasonable alternatives to a very anti semitic theological interpretation of the Bible, not being able to see outside of that as what the Bible says or means. And yet seeing the evidence in front of me of the suffering, and knowing it was wrong. And knowing that because of its very obvious wrongness, and what the Holy Spirit is clearly saying to the communities of the churches at that moment, the text that I took to be a moral authority, either I'm misunderstanding it, or it's not that moral authority. It's just seems I'm forced to make a choice. If that is in fact, and I don't think that should be your framework. But if that is, in fact, your framework, and some people are trapped in and unfortunately for historical circumstances beyond their ability to get out of there still there's still a moral obligation there.
David 34:52
Yeah, we have learned that the biblical text It contains elements that even on their most obvious reading, are actually dangerous. Joshua passages talking about killing every man, woman, child and animal in a city. How many times have people said, aha, well, there's our warrant for genocide or for holy war, write certain statements about women. The pattern of what the theologians historians call the teaching of contempt towards Jews, the handful of most, most negative statements about same sex activity that are there. And so these are like hand grenades embedded in the Scripture, those of us who are responsible for interpreting the scripture, and have that calling, have a responsibility to teach patterns of interpretation that diffused the hand-grenades. But not on the basis of external criteria, I would say, on the basis of the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus and the implication. So in other words, that criteria comes from within, not from outside, we
Kyle 36:12
have methodological differences here that go deep, but that's for a later conversation, I think, but I appreciate that glare. That clarity. Yep. Yeah, keep going. Oh, okay. I was gonna hand it over to Randy, but he gave me permission not to. So here we go. So you just mentioned something that reminded me of another thing I read in one of the critiques. And this seemed to be a very common objection, not just to your book, but to any kind of even more inclusive, not even outright affirming, but just more inclusive stance of LGBTQ people. And that is that the church has had has been univocal on this, and the scriptural tradition has been univocal on this. All the way back, it has been one thing, who were you to change the church's sexual ethic on this issue? So how do you think about that claim that the spouse or the church or whoever tradition has spoken with one voice about this for 2000 years or maybe even longer? And therefore, a traditional view at least if nothing else, has the burden of proof?
David 37:09
Yeah, it definitely I think that I would say that the argument of revisionists does face the burden of proof. And I attempted to provide it in the book. I do take seriously when I gave a paper over the weekend at society, Christian ethics, I talked about the bulky, weighty mass of the Christian tradition. It there, it's just there like a big old tree, and you have to engage it, you have to understand it. You have to engage it critically, you have to know that it's there. There have been various efforts on the LGBTQ question to propose that the unit the unit vocality is not as univocal as people say, No, I think it was John Boswell's early work on like same sex partnerships. In Europe, it's been a long time since I looked at the idea that maybe there was a little more breathing room and then eventually emerged. I wouldn't say that. That's, I mean, that certainly did not become a part of my argument. It is a big deal. To say, you know, this great, big, bulky, massive tradition turns out to have been wrong. Yeah. It's a big deal. Yeah. I gained comfort. And I hesitated on that brink. I really did. Because I knew that that was a big deal. And I knew that I would be slammed for it. Yeah. But it helps that a lot of my work in ethics has been historical. And I've done enough reading in the church fathers, to see many ways in which they were wrong.
Kyle 38:46
Sure, you know, in many ways, I think in which the university is an illusion, like, read write any medieval historian. I mean, it's just an illusion and things things that's not how debate works amongst serious theologians and philosophers are, right.
David 39:03
So I mean, the biggest example, was the history of Christian anti Jewish teaching, which, arguably, the time bombs with the grenades are right there in the Scripture itself, especially in the Gospel of John. Certainly, just the little nuggets that you find, you know, I mean, his blood be on us and on our children and Matthew 27. They are of their father, the devil and John eight, etc. You put him to death by murdering him, even though that's said to the Jewish leaders, but it's wrong to crucify us, you know, all of that. And then you have some of our most revered church leaders, Latin and Greek, and then later into the medieval period, and then you get into the reformation is the same thing with Luther was among the worst, repeating the anti Jewish tropes for century after century after century. A blessing or at least looking the other way at pilgrims and exile and eventually in killings, and eventually, the Holocaust itself. My dissertation was on how Christians acted toward Jews during the Holocaust. I had specific stories from all over Europe of church leaders, preaching and demanding that their people not help the Jews, because the Jews were, quote, only getting what they deserve for killing Jesus. So Jewish baby and Poland in 1942, is going to be only getting what she deserves for killing Christ. That's 2000 years of tradition, that tradition was wrong. The Vatican and said as much in the you know, it's hard for the Vatican to apologize directly. But Vatican two, nostra Tata, essentially reenact outside entire body of tradition, the Lutheran has renounced Luther on this. And then there's a lot of work being done. I listened to some papers, it's cited christian ethics on slavery. And there's some reassessment of what Augustine said about slavery. Agustin took slavery for granted and built it into his theology. Of course, he did. So it isn't that slavery was just kind of a southern thing as a deeply embedded pro slavery thing was in the tradition, history of misogyny and Christian teaching. And of course, if you take seriously liberation theology, womanist theology, the Latin Americans were saying, in the 1970s, that, that the bulk of the tradition, blessed conquest, genocide, and the subjugation of the indigenous populations of South America, North America, James Cohen was saying that white Christianity was a heretical, but long, long, centuries long reification of whiteness and the name of Christianity, in other words, the dudes who are making the argument for the kind of infallible tradition and who used to challenge it. People of Color women were people, they never make arguments like that.
Randy 42:08
Yep, yep. Yeah. And that's something that struck me as reading your book, David, is, we're not saying God gets things wrong, right. We're not saying that divine, life gets things wrong. We're saying the church gets things wrong. And that's just, that's just, there's no debating that. I mean, the church was burning people at the stake for believing for saying that maybe, you know, our universe doesn't rotate around the Earth, you know, right. There were things that were verifiable empirical things where the church was wrong and devastatingly wrong and violently wrong. And, and that's just natural that a human institution that's commissioned by God, but run by humans is going to get it wrong. And we're going to have to course correct in that things that we say and do now, our kids and grandkids are probably going to have some course corrections for us and say, our the church got it wrong, and are the ones who passed it on to us got it wrong. It's just how things go. It's called whatever, I just don't understand that. Completely the the argument but you say in the, in the book, you said this little statement that just stuck out to me say every generation has this hot button issue to confront. And it made me think of it actually comforted me because I like you take the Scripture seriously. And I like you take church tradition seriously. And I this is a weighty topic that has caused a lot of fear and trembling in me and many, many other countless people. But the fact that this is not new to the journey of following Jesus and being the church is really comforting. Can you give us just read us a little bit historically, what are some of these, for example, some of these issues, these hot button issues that every generation has had to wrestle with? Well,
David 43:46
I'm old enough where my career started, where the hot button issue was women and ministry 1990s. And Southern Baptist seminary, where I studied and where I began my teaching career. In 1985, when I studied at Southern, there were women, theology professors and women preparing to be pastors. By 1995, that was banned. God must have changed God's mind rather ferociously in a 10 year period, right? power shifted. And so the rules changed. You never forget that when you live through it. So women in ministry, in the 60s it was integration, some rights. In the 40s, though, there wasn't much debate. I mean, there were pacifist still saying no Christians allowed to kill so they couldn't go to war. Or how about the debate over the legitimacy of nuclear weapons? On the 30s government intervention in the economy, in the early part of the 20th century, the progressive movement and social gospel versus more of a fundamentalist evangelism only kind of vision Hmm. 1850s as the abolition versus the pro slavery argument, how about 1776? Is it okay to rebel against Great Britain? Because after all, Romans 13, right. Treatment of the Native Americans, there was a debate on the part of the Spaniards as to whether the indigenous populations had souls where they had to be treated according to the laws of war and the laws of humanity with which Europeans had to be treated. So do indigenous people have souls? big debate? Still sit? You know? Yep, keep going. Right? Yep.
Randy 45:37
Yeah. And it's easy for us to just slide through these topics, because obviously, we know that they were all wrong. But these were real live debates with a lot of contention, a lot of passion, a lot of, you know, holding to scriptures and pointing to scriptures for both sides. I mean, these weren't just opening, closed shut cases, right?
David 45:58
They weren't. A couple of times I've considered writing a book, there would be about the way scripture was used on both sides of debates like this. But Mark, no, the historian did a book like that. So I decided I didn't need to do and it does lead to a fair amount of hermeneutic of suspicion related to the way the Bible is. When you see the arguments from scripture, some of them absolutely appalling. I mean, the way the curse of Ham was used to justify segregation and slavery. Yeah, that little bit of fragment from what is that Genesis nine, to justify African slavery for centuries? And so on. So yeah, there's always a hot button issue. Churches are always dividing. People always argue with each other, if they have the chance, some people are putting other people to the steak or to the prison or to the rack. And, and so it is exhausting to have to engage all these controversies. Some of us might like to be able to escape the controversies to a beachfront somewhere, but, but they're there. And that's just goes with the territory, unfortunately. Yeah.
Randy 47:10
So speaking of one of those moments, when the debating how to treat human beings is reflected in our exegesis of the scriptures. You said it Bonhoeffer in regard to this objection that people give to an affirming stance, which says it's, it's violating the created order, right and appealing to Genesis one, one and two. And you say, Bonhoeffer is an example of someone who rejected using the created order as an argument for contemporary ethical dilemmas. Can you bring us into that a little bit? How did Bonhoeffer do and why do you think it's live to this conversation?
David 47:43
I'm actually teaching a Bonhoeffer class again this semester. And so I will be revisiting those texts, but both in his little book called Creation and fall, and then more clearly, as I recall, in his ethics, fragmentary book, in a chapter on, I think it's the one that's on natural life. He says, arguments from creation are problematic, because we live on the other side of the fall, we can't get back. Let's say we even accept, we accept creation, fall redemption, consummation as our central paradigm of salvation history, which I think it's hard. It's hard to descend from that entirely and be within the Orthodox Christian tradition. So but he says, We live on the other side of the fall. Everything is refracted through the fall, including what we understand to be natural. And so he says, at one point in his effort to define what is natural is something like the natural is the created and fallen yet oriented towards the coming of Christ. And the unnatural is the created and fallen yet rejecting the coming of Christ. So he was looking at the Nazi regime and a lot of the stuff that they were doing, and this was his way of understanding they were making arguments from how the world should be. But what they were doing was unnatural. And sometimes they were actually arguing from their theology of creation, it was a hierarchical theology of creation. In any case, what I, what I mainly took away from Bonhoeffer was to look forward to the redemption that is coming in Christ to have a forward looking, what does it mean to lean into the coming redemption, rather than a backward looking? Let us go back to the myths of the Garden of Eden and draw our ethics from the picture that we have, that we have created for ourselves about what that is about. So like when people make the argument from creation, see, look, Genesis two, you know, God made them male and female and Adam and Eve and men leaves father and mother And please to his wife and so, therefore there's only maleness and femaleness and therefore there's only legitimate heterosexuality and that resolves it. But there's so many problems with that. I don't think Genesis one and two is supposed to be read in that way. Anyway, I enlist Bonhoeffer as what do we do with the real human beings who are around us, not the mythologize idealize human beings of the garden, but the actual human beings that we meet in Milwaukee or Atlanta? What does it mean for these people as they are seeking to follow Jesus baptized believers with the sexuality that they have been given? To follow Jesus faithfully? What does that look like for them? They can't go back to the garden. Yep. Yeah, nobody. Nobody can go back to the garden.
Kyle 50:57
Yeah, it always struck me as odd back when I was reading Reformed theology in college, that they were really big on the noetic effects of the fall until it came to their own theologizing just seemed to like, not be relevant anymore somehow.
David 51:10
Right? We know exactly how God designed everything. We know everything. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So this is also a pastor, really motivated thing. You take a 20 year old gay man who knows himself to be gay and has known himself to be gay since he was 10 or 12. And you say, Okay, Bill, here's what you got to do. You got to conform to Genesis two, as we have read it. Find a wife. Have sex with her make babies? Yep. Be heterosexual. This is redemptive. This is the only path that is redemptive for you. Yes. And if you can't do that, then you are confirmed and your reprobate pneus. That is, that is absurd. And unworkable and cruel? Yeah, I believe.
Randy 52:07
Yeah. Yeah, no disagreement here. Yeah,
Kyle 52:10
I'm gonna do that thing, at least, like probably 3% of our listeners really likes, which is when I throw in a philosophical reference that nobody cares. Yeah. I was struck by the similarities. For anybody out there who hasn't read Bonhoeffer, or who can't quite get beyond the theological notion of a fall. There's a totally evidential version of that same kind of point in John Stuart Mill. When he's writing interestingly about the subjection of women. He says, I deny that anyone can know the nature of the sexes, so long as they've only been seen in the present relation to one another. In other words, we simply only have one kind of evidence, we have nothing to compare it to, because it's always been this way for as long as anyone can ever remember. And so who are you to tell me what the nature right? When when you're working with the same evidence set? I am so you don't need to fall to make that point.
David 53:01
Yeah, that's a good thought. And it's interesting. I say this in the book, how often arguments from creation have been used to ratify and reify humanly created patterns of injustice and oppression. Yeah, absolutely.
Kyle 53:14
Yep.
Randy 53:15
So later, in the book, you cite Lisa Cahill, Catholic ethicist and she said something, you paraphrased her, and I'm going to paraphrase your paraphrasing of her. So please clarify where I where I get this wrong. But she said something to the effect of any sensible sexual ethic is to route these ethics in the real world, and that we should counsel followers of Christ to follow the more the most morally commendable course of action, concretely available in their particular circumstances. Do we need to say that again?
Kyle 53:47
I got we got it, we can rewind that good. Can
Randy 53:50
you flesh that out for us? Because it seems very, very, like of the ground of the earth. That seems very basic, and I can understand that. I like that. But can you get get at a little bit of what Cahill is getting at what you think and how you interpret that?
David 54:03
You know, I'm increasingly convinced that there's a latent idealism and idealism is a bad word for me and ethics. There's a latent idealism in how many Christian traditions approach moral issues. In other words, and this is a nice follow up to the last question, you posit an ideal, like, how about this ideal, the heroic sacrificial husband, who is the head of the family and of the graciously submissive wife, who subordinates herself to the husband? Okay, so how many times have we heard that be taught as the vision right, okay. And this is the ideal that some people present and then there's no real accounting for for example, the time totally predictable effects of inequalities of power, or the way in which the subordination of one person to another and marriage can distort the power dynamics and, and the decision making processes and even the May the way male and female children are treated in the family or whatever. In other words, there's an idealized vision and no ability to account for the real world. Or how about marriages for life. Marriage is parallel to the relationship between Christ and his Church Ephesians five, the relationship between Christ and his Church is indissoluble. Therefore marriages into valuable Oh, well, this guy just this guy routinely holds a gun to the head of his wife. Well, but marriage is indissoluble. I think that the real struggle in ethics is to have norms that have some some some meaningful implications that that set limits on our behavior. But that they're offered to real people, real fallen people in the real world in their concreteness. And so I'm essentially proposing in the book that a demanding norm, the very demanding norm of covenantal lifetime marriage. It is reachable but hard. For real people. That is the norm that should be offered to lesbian and gay people. That reachable but hard norm, the norm or to say that oh, by the way, what's also in that norm is they have to become heterosexual. That's not reachable. That's impossible. Or they have to live a celibate people their whole lives, even if they have no call to that. That's not reachable. That's impossible. And so, I think Cahill's quote, helped to reinforce my idea that ethics has to respond to the reality of human human nature, human experience, human limits, not by surrendering moral norms, but by applying them to people in their reality.
Randy 57:18
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle 57:19
There's a lot of philosophy I want to talk about here. But we don't have time for it. Well, you said just reminded me a lot of Bob Adams is theory of ethics. And I'd really like to talk more about virtue theory, maybe maybe at a later date, we could go down that rabbit hole. Yeah, I am going to ask a philosophical question, though. And it's something that's come up on our show several times in various contexts. And now that we have an emphasis on the show, I want to get your take. And I know that there's an entire philosophical literature on this. So just dip your toe? Under what conditions do you think a belief is immoral? Or to put it differently? When does one become culpable for holding a belief that has harmful effects? It has obvious implications for this conversation.
David 58:05
Yeah. I think that the effects of the belief are, what is culpable. And the effects of a belief are revealed by by successive iterations of those effects. So what's interesting about this issue is take the traditional belief on sexuality. I mean, the average Christian conservative who holds the traditional belief has no idea in the beginning, that if there's anything that could possibly be harmful about just being biblical, yep. Just trying to follow the text. And, but then, it is only when they listen to their own queer kids are people in the church who can document the harm? When you say this, it increases my mental distress. The more intensely you say this, the more often I feel like hurting myself. When you did this, this person went out and killed themselves. The thing that is so striking about the traditional belief is it is predictably, it has predictably harmful consequences for LGBTQ people. And by now it has predictably negative consequences for those who are who care about LGBTQ people. In other words, if you routinely preach a negative message, you are creating alienation from God, church and whatever. For those who are listening to the message, who are allies or friends. Jesus said, You will know them by their fruits that traditional teaching bears persistent bad fruits that matters. So I think that's what you have to pay attention to. And that is what people end up paying attention to when they change their mind. Parents who say, Wow, every time I said this, I thought I was following the biblical script. And I was creating more damage in the soul of my child and in our relationship. Yeah, it is so detectable as if you hit a hammer. If a hammer hits a nail, it's going to drive the nail in. It's just cause and effect. Yep. And
Randy 1:00:26
I think that kind of ethic is taught to us by Jesus. I mean, we've said this on this podcast before, but I mean, Matthew seven, when Jesus says, Look, guys, here's the way to tell if it's of the kingdom or not. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit. And a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. It just doesn't work. Look at its fruit. I think that's Jesus just telling us what is the fruit of your belief in your the system. And if it's leading to death, homelessness, self hatred, self harm, you fill in the blank, we've got to rethink this, right? Towards the end of the book, David, you, you outline three sorts of sexual ethics that culture holds, from an ethic of consent, on the kind of the more meager end ethic of love and commitment, which I think is probably the biggest sexual ethic that our society holds right now. And then on the other, more traditional side, an ethic of covenantal lifelong marriage. You say you hold to that, that third one, that covenantal lifelong marriage, which I'm excited to talk to you about, because I think there's this misnomer out there that says that if you are affirming of homosexuality is just you just adopt this anything goes sexual ethic, you have nothing to say on the matter whatsoever. And I want to say no, that's not the case at all. Can you tell us why you still hold to that covenantal marriage, you know, ethic of sexuality, and what that modern affirming stance has to do with that? Yeah.
David 1:01:55
One thing I appreciate is that most of my smarter critics have understood that that is what I say in the book, and they have accepted that oh, okay, so, so he's not an anything goes liberal in that sense. So I'll take what I can get. And so I'd take that right. Yeah. I would say, it goes back to my answer about a hard but reachable norm that appeals to the best that is in us. I wrote a book on marriage, and I think it was 2001 called Getting marriage right? In a more Evan Jellicle stage, nobody knows even knows about that book anymore. I have a friend who says that's part of the gushy deep tracks back there. And I say that most human beings historically, have felt both the need and the difficulty of bonding with another adult, sexually and romantically and making a family with that person. And family formation of this type is what is what creates the passing of the generations because sex happens and babies happen, you go from one generation after another, the institution of marriage has been until recently, the both religious and cultural normative structure for this family formation process. Young people move into adolescence, they develop sexually, they start yearning for sex, they are also yearning for love. And the society, including the religious institutions. Help them to understand that the the best way to deal with these strong yearnings is to move towards finding a partner for life and marrying them. And then they are instructed in the nature of that relationship. And I think the best structure is not so much sacramental like marital indissolubility. But covenantal, the two of us make a sacred covenant with each other. We ask God to help us keep the covenant we exchange promises as to what we are going to commit to each other. And then we seek to live out those promises faithfully all of our life. I say in the marriage book, that covenant is a rather shrewd recognition, both of the potential of the human being to make and keep promises and have the need for boundaries on our behavior. Because what a covenant says is, I find myself on this day that we're getting married to you alone. No matter how I feel on a given day, no matter whether somebody else attracts me, no matter whether I'm bored with you, no matter how frustrated I am. In other words, there has to be a serious cause to breach a marriage covenant. That's the tradition and that the stability and permanence of a healthy marriage covenant is good for The adults is also good for the children. I follow Luther in the agreement that sex sexuality can be a chaotic force if it is not harnessed and directed in this way. Just doing what we feel like, tends to bring heartbreak on unwanted pregnancy and so on everything that goes with it, right. So all I argue in the book is that this grand tradition needs to be renewed both for heterosexuals, and for non heterosexual, we're not doing very well on the heterosexual side, either. And so I actually make make an argument, hey, let's be pro marriage. Pro covenant, let's fill out the content of that. Let's just invite everybody into that norm.
Kyle 1:05:49
But you would acknowledge I would think, based on our previous conversation to this point, that it's not because of the grand tradition, that it needs to be renewed. It's because of the evidence that always undergirded that tradition, correct? That's
David 1:06:02
right. Yeah. It's not just it's not just because the tradition says so because the tradition can be wrong. Right. All right.
Kyle 1:06:08
So you would then in principle, be open to new lines of evidence based on new expressions, new experiences that weren't here to four possible,
David 1:06:17
I would be open to it. But every time somebody makes a proposal to me about, I mean, other possibilities? I'm not usually very persuaded. But yes, I would be open to listen to the evidence, right, because I listened to the evidence. Awesome. So I do say my after evangelicalism, that consent needs to be honored. And actually, my feminist friends say this call it enthusiastic consent, not just consent, that consent should be honored as a floor. Yeah, we're not all below and doozie asked to consent, because that's about coercion, and rape and harm and abuse. So that's a floor. But I think covenant marriage is the ceiling. And so we want to teach our young people, this is this is the ceiling, this is where we're going this is what we should be aspiring to and building towards, but never fall below the floor.
Kyle 1:07:09
That's helpful to understand your view, which I disagree with.
Randy 1:07:13
Talking about it more later. Yeah. Which I think is helpful to keep in mind, though, when we say we're affirming of homosexuality, even just those words seems so kind of flat. But they're not because we all mean different things. When we say we're affirming of homosexuality, I think you and I have a David have a very similar sexual ethic of still grounded in covenant marriage and that marriage is I've had friends, even pastoral friends who say, okay, if I'm if you're affirming that that must mean that you think marriage is kind of up for grabs done. And that's a no, no, no, not at all. As a matter of fact, I can actually pastor my folks better, I believe, because gay people are in all of our congregations, where people are in our congregations, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. The reality is, is that me being affirming now means that I can kind of invite them into this, you know, what has been kind of sick, sectioned off for a year, it just doesn't apply to queer people. Now I can say, Come on into this covenant marriage relationship that we see this beautiful picture of in Christ in the church, this is for you, as well. And we're going to call your sexuality to be submitted to the church. I mean, really, James Jennings has told us basically, when a couple goes to a church to get married, they're submitting themselves in their relationship and their new lives over to the service of the church. And I think that's a profoundly beautiful picture that I don't want. You don't even have to give it up. When you go affirming, you actually, I think, have this stronger ethic of covenant. Marriages actually are important biblically, and it actually works out. Perhaps it works out in practically in everyday life, but
Kyle 1:08:49
of course it does. Of course it does. I just don't want to say, by the way, a
David 1:08:52
sample of something that I would want to be sure to flag. People are worried that liberalizes are perfectly okay with every cultural trend.
Kyle 1:09:00
Right? Yeah, that's one of my biggest pet peeves To be honest, is that as a liberal, yeah,
David 1:09:07
you know, so therefore, if gushy is okay with gay relationships, and he's okay with child abuse, obviously, or he's okay with whatever. I think that the, that the institution of marriage has fragmented and deteriorated in ways that are not good for people. And so I would like to see it renewed. But I agree with you, Randy. That's the best way to renew it, is the way we're talking about. Yeah. And, and so if you don't have to have a message of exclusion Hey, the main thing I want to say about marriage is you're not invited. Yes. Right. That's not much of a message, right? Yeah. But if you can say to everybody, here's the beautiful, hard path in which you can be trained to to learn how to say See that? Not it not 100% on every 100% success rate, but this is what we're striving for. And so I do not bless every cultural trend. I don't I don't bless pornography, I don't I don't bless people dropping in and out of marriages like they used to drop in and out of relationships in high school. It's not the same thing. So but yes, I am pressed from my left from people who say that's not liberative enough. But yeah, but that's not my standard. You also mentioned something about language about welcoming and affirming. I saw it in your questions. This is why I don't really like that language. Welcoming, sure everybody's welcome. But the question on affirming is, what are we affirming? I'm affirming that LGBTQ people should be treated exactly the same as non LGBTQ people in the life of the church, and playing by the same rules. That's what I'm affirming. Yep. I'm not affirming polyamory or multiple partnerships, or a consent based sex ethic is the only ethic. So there's a lot that I'm not affirming. Yes, but this is what I am affirming. So I always want to be able to define my own terms and that way. Yep.
Randy 1:11:02
I know, that's hard for you to just pass by without
Kyle 1:11:05
it is, and you're witnessing personal growth happening at this moment. I'm not commenting on that. I'm so proud of you.
David 1:11:11
Thank you, man. Good self control.
Kyle 1:11:13
Can I ask one more question to be my last one? Yeah, yep. Okay. And it's kind of related some of the stuff we've been talking about. So you guys are involved together in a new ministry effort called the post evangelical collective, which our listeners at this point will have heard about? How do you I know that includes people from a lot of different traditions and a lot of different persuasions. And there would be disagreement among a lot of those people about some of these issues. How do you approach being in religious community with those with whom you disagree about moral issues? Both to the right and to the left? What where do you draw the boundaries of fellowship?
David 1:11:47
That's a great question, essentially, is convention to see what kind of community emerges under the banner of the post evangelical collective? I mean, there are some broad lines of agreement among those who are affiliating, I think, on sexuality, it appears to be non negotiable inclusion, in the way that I've described it in changing our mind appears to be non negotiable. Whether there will be options further off to the left that I'm that I'm not accepting or not embracing. Probably within the community, I'm not sure. It wouldn't be decisive for me, for for my sense that the Post's evangelical Collective is doing something significant in providing space for the millions driven out of or exiled from heaven. Jellicle communities, there are boundaries and communities. Every community has a center and margins, every community has boundaries, the tightness of those boundaries, who defines what they are doing? I mean, who if anyone enforces them that never goes away? Those questions never go away in community. I can't imagine PC developing any kind of authoritarian structure that is going to be egalitarian and conversations together about all these matters. But I do want to flag that. Yeah, every community has its boundaries. memory that your question Randy about like, every generation has its issues. By returning to the study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on returning to the period in 1933, through 35, when the German Protestants were deciding how much to allow the Nazi Party to determine what their theology and practice was going to be. And Bonhoeffer was, at that point, one of the, you might say, radical conservatives in the sense that he said, we should allow the Nazis to have zero effect on what we preach and what we do. And they ended up moving into schism with the other Protestants who were giving up from his perspective, too much ground to the Nazis. I mean, that's an argument long law 100 years ago, most people don't know anything about it. But those people were in community, and then they weren't because they couldn't agree on that. Yeah, I have no illusions that somehow we're going to be able to create a new community that doesn't have to run into tough discernment challenges in the future. I like what I see so far. It's a sweet first year too. In traditional Christian communities, you never encounter a gay person because they're not allowed to be out. Once I wrote this book, and in the process of writing, but then especially after when hundreds of LGBTQ people came my way, so many transformative encounters a whole community people said, Let me tell you my story. Yes. One by one by one. And everything they wrote in the book, I would just say magnified 100 times after after the experience of meeting all these people. So I'm very peaceful with what I did and what the book has meant to people. And people tell me I save lives. I believe that up. And I stand by. I'm glad y'all wanted to talk about it today. Yeah,
Randy 1:15:04
yeah. Thanks for for going down an old road for you, David. But it's a it's such a crucial, essential conversation. Now I'm going to, you know, annoy probably three quarters of our audience and one half of our hosts here by asking a sports ball question, but I know that you that baseball is like your love language, David and I was just, I was hurting for you this fall. What the hell happened to the Braves this year?
David 1:15:33
The Braves didn't have enough pitching for the playoffs. Is that right? Yeah, their most experienced starting pitcher was hurt. Their second most experienced was just getting off being hurt. And then they choked in terms of being able to hit in the clutch. So two years in a row to the Phillies. It was heartbreaking. But there's always next year.
Randy 1:15:56
Yep. And Chris sale. So
Kyle 1:15:59
that's right. I don't know who any of these people.
David 1:16:02
It's gonna be a long, cold winter until baseball comes back to us. pitchers
Randy 1:16:07
and catchers report in a couple of weeks.
David 1:16:10
Oh, that's right. Our basketball teams sucks. But very soon pitchers and catchers report spring happens. I think God invented baseball. And I will stand by that. I
Kyle 1:16:22
will say this much. I actually played baseball in high school, believe it or not. And if there were any sport I was going to watch there isn't but if there were, it would probably be baseball. And part of the reason for that is Stanley Hauerwas convinced me that it that it can like be useful virtue training.
David 1:16:39
I believe that I usually I often use sports examples when talking about training and virtue. Yeah,
Randy 1:16:44
I'm sure that goes over well in your progressive Christian circles, David, but I agree. I'm, I'm thankful that you're still talking about sports because I get the stink eye for talking about sports whenever it happens. So yeah, baseball is a romantic, beautiful game. Dr. David gushy. Thank you so much for writing this book, changing our mind in one of 29 Thank you for spending this time and we look forward to more time with
David 1:17:06
you. It'll be great to see you not too long from now in Milwaukee and doing the next round. Absolutely.
Randy 1:17:18
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Kyle 1:17:34
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Randy 1:17:42
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Kyle 1:17:50
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Randy 1:17:51
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Kyle 1:17:52
Cheers!