Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Mark 0:00
The church is intrinsically a political reality. I mean, that's people get weird about it like, when they say politics, what do they mean? They mean the state, the apparatus of the state. And so then we let our imagination be co opted and think the only way of being political which is organizing with other human beings for a greater good, or for greater, taking care of each other and ourselves. That somehow the state is the where that happens. And then there's this thing magically outside of the realm of politics called the church. And that's just a horrible way of framing.
Seth Intro 0:52
Hello, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Can I Say This At Church podcast. Before we get started, brief announcement, thank you to the handful of you that are continuing to support the show on Patreon. That means so much and I can't thank you enough. I had a blast talking with Mark van steam it today about Empire, politics, religion, government, all the things that they say you really shouldn't bring up because you'll lose friends. You know, you can't talk about religion. You can't talk about politics. We talked about it all and blend it together and it was very fun. And, and so a bit about mark. So for nearly 15 years, Mark has been sowing subversive seeds of spirituality throughout North America. He co founded the Mennonite worker in Minneapolis, with his wife in 2004. Mark is also an author of The Holy Anarchist, the Unkingdom of God, and A Wolf at the Gate, which is geared more towards a child audience. He also works specifically with the Center for Prophetic Imagination, based in Minneapolis, which serves as a purpose of integration with spiritual formation between political action, education, and nurturing leaders in a call to embrace God's vision as opposed to Empire and calls us to live and grow prophetically as we witness to the world around us. It is hard work, the work that the prophetic imagination center is doing. I think the work that they're doing, though, is something that will impact our children's children's generation, which I think we can all agree is the hope for our future. And so that's enough of me. Let's get into the conversation.
Seth 2:53
Mark, thank you so much for making the time this morning to come on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I've been looking for quite a few weeks. So I appreciate you being on.
Mark 3:02
Yes. Good to join you. Thanks, Seth.
Seth 3:04
For those that are unfamiliar with you, can you give us a quick crash course on what you would want people to know about yourself?
Mark 3:14
Oh wow! Well, most of my work is involved with figuring out how do we embody kind of a radical take on the way of Jesus. But beyond that, that's, that's already difficult to explain to folks. But the shape it takes is I live in an intentional community that my wife and I started about 15 years ago. I do a lot of speaking and writing around things. I put together conferences. And lately though, since I hit 40, and I'm trying to come into my..my burgeoning wilderness, I've been doing a lot more spiritual direction and retreats, and more teaching type stuff is is going going deeper instead of wider
Seth 3:57
is 40 the age that we become ready to be “in elderness” because I'm quickly approaching and I don't know that I'm ready for that yet.
Mark 4:04
Well see I had the almost cliche midlife crisis where I got depressed and I you know, things were, I bad health and all that sort of stuff. So for me, it was the turning point, like I need to. This is the age where I have to start focusing on what I'm planting in the world. And so that took me to more of an elder in place. I suppose. I'm not like there yet, but I'm like, okay, I could be dead at 65. So my grandpa died. So I got 25 years to kind of pass on what little scraps they have.
Seth 4:37
Yeah, I agree. I feel like yeah, my many of my family died at a younger age as well. And, and I always I joke it at my work all the time, like, well, I'm halfway there. I'm halfway to dead. So I need to do something.
Mark 4:49
You need to get your shit together. Yeah, (laughter)
Seth 4:53
Yeah. Make it make it happen. I just, yeah, I just, I've just been slovenly with the time that's been allotted me so…
Mark 4:59
Well, that's just grim! (Laughter)
Seth 5:00
I know. It is what it is. So you're many things. So you're an author and you run your center. Tell me more about this, this community that you've built, what is this?
Mark 5:13
Which one like the intentional community or the Center for Prophetic Imagination?
Seth 5:17
The one you and your wife started?
Mark 5:19
Yeah. So 15 years ago, actually, we started as an emerging church. But within the year, we kind of killed it and then it morphed into an intentional community. Really we are in the Catholic Worker tradition, we called ourselves miss your day, then the Mennonite worker, and we recently are calling ourselves the wildflower worker now, because hardly any of us besides me are Mennonites at this point. But we do hospitality. We have two community houses. And we do a lot of activist sort of stuff. It's all like out of the Catholic Worker playbook. In fact, the Catholic Worker community, the Minneapolis Catholic worker, is like a block away. They have got a couple houses, and we do a bunch of stuff together there for a while we did church services, but now we're not doing that anymore. It's just times of prayers, meals, hospitality. disrupting Empire is kind of our our “M O”.
Seth 6:12
Well, it's like you know where you're going. That's a beautiful segue. So for those that have yet to encounter you, I encourage people to reach out, Mark is easily accessible on all of the social media platforms. But you have a specific
Mark 6:26
Yeah, all of them.
Seth 6:28
I haven't found you on Snapchat, but that's my fault. I'm not on Snapchat, and I refuse to be so I won't find you on that.
Mark 6:32
The Gauntlet is thrown down.
Seth 6:35
I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. If it's Yeah, just not doing it. I don't understand the icon, the logo that they use, and I just don't want to I don't want to do it. Anyway. that's a that's a rabbit trail. (Laughter)
So you have a pretty different stance on Empire and government and systems of government and how people interact with that. What, what are you like? So some people will say they're Republicans, some people will say they're a, I don't know, a Marxist or a libertarian or a…I don't know, there's so many different terms. So what are you what is your type of government that you see the church and are involved in or its relationship together?
Mark 7:15
Well, I tend to not…generally, the word I'd probably use and others would use for me is some sort of anarchist. But that word is constraining and tends to be centered in kind of the white, European narrative, but it fits. Basically, the idea of anarchism: anarchism was kind of backward Marx and others were talking about what socialism should look like, they quickly differentiate into kind of two paths. One that was top down, we need to seize the government and kind of bring about socialism and the other one was a bottom up, sort of approach where we need people need to organize apart from governance, in their unions, farmer collectives, and that was called anarchism. So anarchism isn't the absence of structure, it's just bottom up. We don't need it to be enforced from the top down. So I'm a socialist, who's also anti-authoritarian?
Seth 8:11
How does that work in America? And I will say, I often allude to what my job is. So I run a bank. And so there's a part of me that hears that. It's like, Oh, my gosh, I'll lose my job tomorrow if this type of government happens. So I, that doesn't mean I agree with it or not agree with it. I just I just have a family to feed. So are there both? So one is a government push down to socialism? And the other one is a people rising up to socialism? Is there any other difference between the two?
Mark 8:41
It gets into lots of nuances. This is the thing when you're around leftists of any sort for long you find out that there's like it's worse than being Baptist. There's like thousands of little mini fractures. And so there's an anarco cynicalyst, which is like the international Workers of the World where we think the things need to be organized around like syndicates of union organizing. There's the primitive is to think we should go back to hunter gatherers. I tend to be to me I'm, I think of anarchism, rather than the end goal as the process we do now. So anything that brings us more into radical democracy, where the people are having direct say, over what happens is more anarchistic. And so how it works is more ground level neighborhoods organizing to get what they need. And we live within the reality of governance right now. So it's not like the government's going away. So we have to figure out how to challenge the government without reaffirming its power, which is always the anarchist dance. So do I believe in universal health care? Well, if you're relying on the government to do government to do that, what do you do like so then there's all these conversations within anarchism, like how it gets to be complex? And I have no, there's no answers, quick answers, we just have to keep organizing in a more anarchist way where people are directly laying claim for what they want need.
Seth 10:11
So not to beat on the Baptist metaphor, but I have found being in a Baptist Church and being involved in leadership and one that if you're relying on people to do things, people just don't volunteer if there's no self interest of self vested interest in so for something like a universal health care, the government's going to have to administrate it unless they're not allowed to, in which case, the people would need to do that. But so how do you how do you hold people accountable? How do you even get them motivated to want to do that? Because I know, most people would not admit that they're lazy.
Mark 10:46
No, and I tend to look at it, I'm a less cynical about people's self interest. I think people will do stuff that's collaborative, and we'll share it help each other. Because if you move away from like the self interest economics, there's the self interest in security and prestige within a community, knowing that people need you and like you, is usually how traditional societies kind of work. Like people aren't like greedy, selfish bastards at heart, they want to be useful and cooperative. Right? And the problem is, we have all these myths that say, like, okay, there's a reason, for example, we had so many millions of people voting against their best interests with the Trump election, for example.
So they believe in these lies. And they think that the possibility of having neighborliness has been taken away from them. And so part of it is just reframing it, but then also looking at, we can actually support each other and have healthier ways of being, and most people will opt into that. That's why churches exist. There's very little in self interest with a church unless you unless you really believe that most people go to church because they don't want to go to hell.
Seth 11:53
Well, I think I think a lot of people believe that I don't believe that. But I do think a lot of fire insurance.
Mark 12:00
Yeah, but a lot of us don't. And we do it because we want to be a part of something that's meaningful, that aligns to what we think is ultimate truth. And we like being a part of something where we're all building something better.
Seth 12:11
So what is the church's role in politics? What should they be involved with? The not be involved? You know, the Moral Majority comes to mind. And then there's the inverse of absolutely not, we can't be involved at all. So how do we? I don't know, I follow so many people on Twitter, like a Brian Zahnd that says political things all the time and other other people saying, No, we shouldn't be involved in politics at all. We shouldn't vote, you shouldn't even be part of a party. You should just do church.
Mark 12:41
Yeah. And I mean, my way of cutting through all that is, the church is intrinsically a political reality. I mean, people get weird about it. Like, when they say politics, what do they mean? Do they mean the state, the apparatus of the state? And so then we let our imagination be co opted, and think the only way of being permitted which is organizing with other human beings for a greater good, or for greater, taking care of each other and ourselves. That somehow the state is the where that happens. And then there's this thing magically outside of the realm of politics called the church. And that's just a horrible way of framing it.
Now, if you start saying, well, the church is a political reality, which in certain leftist circles and traditions, you might call that pre-figurative, like the church is a is a pre-figurative political reality, where we try to live and embody how we want the world to go. Okay, so we're a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God. Now, very rarely, we actually see a church embody that. So all these people that claim to have more radical values, but then in their church, like the best they have as $1,000 a year they set aside for a Jubilee fund. That's not pre-figurative. That's nice, that's helpful, but it's not fully embodying it. So because of that, it's also I think, important for the church to embody the prophetic role where we actually speak out and challenge the systems. I don't think we can make the government “Christian”. But we can challenge it to be just according to our understanding of what justice is, and we can do our best to embody the witness that we're calling the rest of the world to move towards. And I don't think the church is very good at either of them. Because we've so bought into this idea that we're not political. And that somehow, and the voting thing, like we act as the voting is our sacrament, where it's the one political thing we actually do is actually one of the least politically effective things that we can do. And we make too much out of it.
Seth 14:43
Yeah. Well, yeah, I agree on that the way our Electoral College system is set up, doesn't your vote, it matters in a pie in the sky type of thing. But it doesn't matter overall, as far as you know, who represents me, so…
Mark 14:59
No, the choices are mostly made for us before we get a chance to vote. And then we're, I mean, we should use it like I wish we would have used the people would have voted to not have Trump in office. But let's not kid ourselves. It's not…That's like, that's a very impotent amount of power that we've been given at that point. We should use it wisely or not use it, I understand, I was in nonvoter for years for kind of out of a political protest. But then I thought, it's not like I'm going to become compromised if I vote every once in a while..so
Seth 15:31
every decade, yeah, so what what is the what is the line then that we as a Christian community should draw in the sand of the difference between culture and politics. Of what we can speak prophetically to versus what we can speak against? What is that? What how do we find that line through a lens of Christ?
Mark 15:54
I think we have to discern it like so to me, I'm really, I'm a big believer that Jesus this meant it when he said that he would send us the Spirit to guide us into all truth. And that part of our mistake, especially in the Western tradition, has been to assume that we need hermeneutics to understand what the Bible said, and then apply it to culture as though it's some sort of disembodied intellectual exercise. And I think communities need to engage in the discernment.
I think there's reasons why the Quakers were such bad asses when it came to abolition and suffrage and all these things in the past and still have a strong peace tradition is because they still embody a practice of discernment, rather than coming up with disembodied external sort of principles. And I know that's not that makes it seem messy, and makes those of us who would kind of maybe are more reformed in our orientation, afraid of thinking about how messy that is, but then you look at the reformed tradition and think, well, you guys have sucked so? (Laughter) Well, it's not like we're going to do worse if we start trying to really be discerning and mystical about it. And so that's how we find the line communities have to discern together where the line is.
Seth 17:10
Yeah. What would you say? And and I don't know how I said with this, and I've struggled with the phrasing of this question over the past few weeks. So what would you say to someone that says, “Well, Mark, this is naive, this is never going to work, especially in the system that we currently live in, where people have become so interdependent on all forms of government, for many things, and if you take that away, the whole thing will collapse, like Rome will burn”, what would you say that this is just a naive view of of government?
Mark 17:43
Well, I mean, if I had a magical wand, I’m not saying that I would make all forms of governance and Civil Services disappear. Although I'd be curious, interesting thought exercise. I think once you, once you start organizing, if you're an organizing circle, you start organizing for some sort of change, that is replacing the existing corrupt, top down money sort of structure with a different one. So it's really not about this idea of anarchism as the absence of something as being a no governance or no structure is kind of, we need to replace that. No, it's a wonderful structured way that it's just, it's just bottom up. And then I don't know of any serious anarchist thinker who doesn't think about what kind of structures replace it with.
So this is one of the ways that they talk about this is dual power, you create an alternative structure within the shell of the old and you try to push it out. I mean, I would love it if like churches started thinking in terms of dual power, like, how do we meaningfully, if we see an injustice in the world? How do we meaningfully build a counter response to that, at the same time, as I'm calling up the injustice of it? So health insurance, like, there's no reason that churches can't, like denomination can't do universal health care, for example.
Seth 19:09
That the denomination provides?
Mark 19:14
Or the people that organize for themselves, like it's, if you in six friends can't really do insurance, but if there's a million people in a system, you can start thinking about all the kinds of things we could do instead. And not do it in an Amish way where we're disconnecting from the system. This is where I think some of my Anabaptist friends get a little bit too carried away. We're not detaching from the world, we got to embody it. And then that gives us some heft. When we say, hey, you need to get your act together Empire.
Seth 20:08
I feel like so much education would have to happen. So how do you do that? How do you re educate people in a way that doesn't make them feel ignorant of what they don't know? That doesn't make them defensive? Because I find lately, as I engage with any doctrine that I used to hold in, especially on Facebook, that I no longer hold, then I quickly they get blocked on followed called a heretic, or many other words, so how do you engage in that conversation without just being laughed right out of the conversation or dismissed altogether?
Mark 20:46
You know, I don't know. All I know is
Seth 20:49
That's discouraging.
Mark 20:52
It is. I mean that's what we're trying to work at, like with the Center for Prophetic Imagination is starting a trend to do especially with Christian folks. But I do know, like, for example, 100 years ago, a large number of rural Minnesotans, this is where I live in Minnesota, were either part of the Farm Labor Party, or there was a lot of them that were socialists, so rural Minnesotans were tended towards socialism. Okay, so this is only a couple of generations where all of a sudden, now you have this conservative Moral Majority kind of way of thinking about things and that's anchored in rural America; so it's possible.
And I think there I know, there are different tactics that I'm just kind of skeptical of like some groups like Sojourners and Red Letter Christians are trying to engage with an evangelicalism to bring about an evangelical left and look at the tactics that evangelical right has used, and try to do those same sorts of things to challenge the narrative. I think there's something to that, I think. But I don't know. I mean, there's so many ways out there, and I don't none of them ever really gotten at it. Because I mean, this is where it gets really, the problem is, is conservative, Christian, evangelical Christians and conservative Christians have more money to spend than the kind of the leftist ones. It's kind of what it comes down to. So that's the big problem. And I don't know how to get past that yet.
Seth 22:17
Yeah. I do want to talk about the Center for Prophetic Imagination. But I have one more question about sharing the gospel in relation to Empire. And, and so as I read Scripture, as I begin to reread Scripture, I've come to think that, you know, obviously, the Gospel, the good news of Jesus is for everyone. But it seems to always begin with the poorest, with the most broken, with the most handicap with the most disgusting of humanity, and it works its way inward to center. And I don't see much of a room there. For someone that is affluent, you know, as I sit here on a Macbook on high speed internet, you doing that? So how, how does the gut is the gospel only for poor, poorer people? That's not even a there's a good way to say that that's very hateful, which is the gospel only for the the least of us, because there doesn't seem to be much there for an affluent person.
Mark 23:10
It's not only but it starts with, like, so to me, reading the gospel of Luke, that's how I got radicalized. Like, right after 911, I was disillusioned with how angry everyone was. And I read the gospel of Luke and I went from being a fundamentalist to a pacifist in a period of a couple weeks, it is really mind bending. And then when you read through Luke, there's all these opportunities for wealthy or affluent people to be a part of the gospel, be a part of the kingdom, but it comes through the relationship with the poor. So from a Christian perspective, the engine of the Jesus(ey) sort of revolution is the poor, disenfranchised. And then but others, the good news for us who have more power, is that we can be a part of it too, if we align ourselves in solidarity with those who are oppressed. And so that's the good news. The idea that somehow, the idea that wealthy Christians can accept the way of Jesus and it doesn't affect their wealth is a lie that we tell people so that we can get their tithes. That's basically it.
Seth 24:21
I read you say something similar to that on Facebook not long ago about what is how I'm going to say it wrong. Something about it's, it's immoral for x, but it's also immoral to be a billionaire or millionaire. And I'm saying that wrong.
Mark 24:36
There's no there's no moral justification to be a millionaire or a billionaire.
Seth 24:40
Yeah. Because of something like that. Because I should give the money away. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Or that I should? I don't know what am I…say i inherit that money what am I supposed to do with it?
Mark 24:54
Well, I mean, the interesting thing is like, it's not about giving it away, it's about the power over the money, and the way that that money causes you to see the world. So a lot of people look at Warren Buffett or Bill Gates as examples of ”just” billionaires. My problem with that is they're still using their money to enforce a way, the way they want the world to be. Even if they're doing it charitably, it's still an expression of wealthy power.
What I see happening with Luke and Acts is this giving up, and it's not about just becoming poor ourselves, and I don't think that's the goal is lyst actual Jubilee, where the wealth that we are given has become part of a shared process for determining what is God doing in the world, and then our money should go towards that. So it's really, if we've got wealth and assets, we should ask, by what criteria would decide what to do with this and who has a say, if I, if we somehow think it's justifying to be able to tide some of it away, then we're still reinforcing this idea that the wealthy white people get to inflict their vision for the world upon the world. We need to challenge that. So what do you do if you inherit a billion dollars? I don't know. Like maybe develop some sort of discernment counsel with some oppressed folks and pray about it and let them have a say.
Seth 26:13
What if I wanted to give it to the Center for Prophetic Imagination?
Mark 26:17
I mean, you can we can help you…(laughter from both) go through that discernment!
Seth 26:23
Yeah. So the Center for prophetic imagination? We talked around it. So what exactly are you doing? What are we what am I prophetically imagining?
Mark 26:36
So what we're doing, we're trying to figure out ways of forming people, especially mentoring young leaders, to engage in a more prophetic posture in the world. So what does that mean? If you look at seminaries and any institutions of higher learning, they train church folks to be pastoral, which is ultimately a way of maintaining pastoring as a ministry of continuity. Like how do I maintain the integrity of this group?
Being prophetic is a ministry of disruption, it disrupts things. And there's good reason why seminaries don't train people for disruption. Because it doesn't keep the denomination and seminary life. So we're trying to figure out like, what does it mean to equip people for this, and we don't have a lot of money, for obvious sorts of reasons. But what we do is mentoring, we have a conference coming up in September. That's kind of the anniversary of Walter Bruggemann’s 40 year anniversary of Walter’s book, the Prophetic Imagination, which was part of the inspiration for a name. So he's coming out and some others, we do lots of retreats. And really, the big question is, how do we mentor people through a prophetic way of engaging the world?
Seth 27:50
So when I went to your website, I saw you've got these seven core principles. The first being foremost, Jesus is the center and ultimate example for your life. There was one on there that I'm confused about. And so it says, hold on, let me find it. I got it written down
Imperial structures and myths.
And that's the part I'm confused about
seek to alienate us from one another, from the rest of creation and from our Creator.
So what do you mean about myths and imperial structures?
Mark 28:19
Structures can be institutions, myths are just the stories that we believe; that give our lives in our society meaning. So an imperial structure would be, like the government, the big banks, sorry, sorry, dude,
Seth 28:38
I work I work at a small bank.
Mark 29:39
Oh, that's good, then you're golden.
Seth 28:41
I say small, it's about 100 branches. So I don't know if that's small. But it's not Bank of America.
Mark 28:47
Yeah…no, there's there's a difference. And so there's different structures the way like when we start talking about white supremacy, for example, we know that it's an institutional reality. Right? We see that within the banking and redlining and stuff, but then also like policing, Congress, there's all these ways that whiteness gets reinforced the prison industrial complex. But the myths are these ideas that could be any from from a small kind of little light, like the idea that black people are more violent, which that's a big lie but it's small in its simplicity, like it's a very simple idea. Or it could be a bigger one, the idea that, that the the myth of democracy, which we say like, for example, everyone in the United States thinks that we're, not everyone, but a lot of people think we're in a democracy. And the reason we get involved in places overseas is to spread democracy. That's complete bullcrap. That's not true. None of that's true at all.
So these are all myths that we believe in that keep us kind of trapped into assuming that the way things are is the only way things could ever really be. That democracy and the fact that soldiers when they die, it's a sacred thing. All these sorts of ideas, we just take them for granted. It's not even provocative to think them. It's just assumed. And so these things, if we buy into them, we end up being alienated from God from one another, and from the land. It's like our whole way of seeing the world is tainted.
Seth 30:19
Yeah. You know, I think, well, especially that part of us spreading democracy throughout the rest of the world. I had an online conversation not long ago with a friend from high school that I don't think we agree on a lot anymore, but we we do still respect each other. And he had said, you know, we should hold Russia accountable for meddling into the…yada, yada, yada. I said, Well, great. What do you want to do for holding America and accountable for all of the places that we've meddled? He's like, we haven't. And so I give him the list and how he like, he's like, well, they should, they should handle that. And they should prosecute us. It's like, well, great, how we spend more money on guns, and own more of everything than anyone else. So how do you want them to do that? How is Venezuela or any other the “vokias” or, you know, anywhere South? How are we supposed to? How are they supposed to prosecute us? And he he quickly change the topic.
Mark 31:08
I mean, it's not like the like the UN is going to be able to hold us accountable.
Seth 31:15
It's in America.
Mark 31:16
Yeah, we've got a grip on it.
Seth 31:17
Yeah. The ambassador lives downstairs or could if she wanted to, so, um, I had, I want to give you the opportunity to plug your podcast. I have enjoyed the Deep Roots podcast quite a bit specifically the one. Oh, man, I'm going to say his name wrong. It was related to Martin Luther King.
Mark 31:35
Byard Rustin.
Seth 31:37
Yeah, I can't I can't say that. Especially not with, not with these braces in my mouth. There's too many weird consonants in the wrong spot. So plug the podcast, what are you trying to do? And how does it relate to your ministry now?
Mark 31:51
Sure. One of the things that I know like Walter Bruegemann them bring them in talks about and prophetic imagination is one of the markers of a prophet is that we live in, in a sense of living memory, that we're a part of a tradition. And part of the thing I'm trying to express is that the prophetic tradition didn't just stop with John the Baptist, that Jesus embodied the fullness of the prophetic tradition. But then throughout church history today, we see the prophetic kind of ministry live. And it's not just the way we use the word prophetic in our society, if you're, if you're like a charismatic, it's someone who sees the future and speaks in tongues, which is my background. That's not really what the prophetic thing is. And it's not just people that are social justice(y). Like the idea of spiritual people who just do social justice as being prophetic, that doesn't get at it either. But a prophet is a type of mystic, somebody who's experienced with God is such that they actually feel the divine pathos, those they grieve God's grief. And then that propels them to challenge what they see around them.
And so I'm trying to tell the story of different prophetic movements or figures, through history to kind of like re re center our sense of the tradition that we're drawing from and also inspire us to be do likewise today. So it's, it's a history podcast. Everyone I've talked about has been dead except for one. I did one on Ernesto Cardinal from Nicaragua.
And the other piece about it is I'm also the thing I'm enjoying about the podcast is I share people's flaws as well as their…these aren't like hagiography is they're not just stories about awesome people who didn't have problems, like Ernesto Cardinal was part of a revolution that ended up failing in a way; he had it back out of it. Simone Weil did one on she had some, some self hatred and starve to death of her own will. Byard Rustin after MLK died, he started slowly shifting more of neoconservative and his Zionism ended causing him to give up on some of his earlier principles. But with each of these stories, you see the brilliance of God working through them. And that's part of the story to the amazing things they did and how they saw the world and their legacy.
Seth 34:22
You were talking a bit about feeling grief with God. And I spoke with Mark Charles not too many months ago, and I asked him, I said, Well, what would you do for the nation? And he said, “we need to enter a prophetic season of lament and not a service, not a month, we need to sit in limit long enough for God to show up because he will, if we would just stop believing we're better than everybody else. We are not exceptional”.
Which I don't know how to do. I have to it's hard to set aside your pride to enter into that because I want to be good. I mean, good not in a moral way. I mean, good is in a better than way. So that's, that's my worst me. So, I wanted to end on this because I want to see if you're serious, but I also like your ideas. So you are apparently running for for president in 2024.
Mark 35:19
I'm not that serious. But I might be funny. I mean, if there was a way to do it. Maybe I do it. But like I don't see me getting any traction for that.
Seth 35:30
Well, I don't know a lot of these ideas. You see people younger than me talking about. So you know, you got things in here like a student and health debt jubilee. I'm all about that being that I have student debt. I am curious on some of the things you stay in there, because I want to see what your minds coming. So you said cancellation, a third world debt. You don't know what they owe America or what they just you don't know anybody anymore? Like how do you enforce that?
Mark 35:56
Well, what do America so like? I mean, here's the thing, if you're President of the best you can do is you can determine how the United States enforces. You can also determine things like, yeah, enforcing of treaties, movement of troops. So a lot of these things, the things on the list, are all reasonable things that I think a president could initiate, but it's still up to Congress. But I think things like forgiveness of federal debt, what's owed the United States, pulling out of troops, issuing executive powers to kind of give guidelines for how you want, like Sallie Mae and all these other, like, all the I don't even
Seth 36:43
I don't even like people named Sally anymore.
Mark 36:46
So I mean, here's the thing, a lot of this, a lot of this stuff, like student debt is kind of managed by the executive branch, like you can't change the laws if you're President, but you could tell them to stop enforcing that. So it would be a functional kind of Jubilee, even though like maybe four years later when I'm, if I didn't make it, I got elected, I wouldn't even make it past the first year and probably so that you can definitely challenge some of that stuff.
Seth 37:10
The thing you didn't put in here is how do you how do you take back down the wall that we built by then?
Mark 37:18
You send in the National Guard, that you just pulled other parts of the world and then its like, everybody take him a break.
Seth 37:28
I laugh out loud on that. And one more, and it's one and I know you spoke with him, Josh, from he's a buddy of mine from from the Awkward Rhino podcast. He all the time talks about reparations. And so in how you view the world? What does that look like? Because I we have argued about that for years. How do you see reparations even working?
Mark 37:52
I don't know how it would actually end up working. But it's to me, it's a sin that a President hasn't at least formally said, we're going to start talking about reparations. We've screwed up. You need more than an apology. Let's talk about reparations and then bring people to the table. I mean, that's just common sense. And of course, there's too many players to like be able to like, it's like the President can declare, “okay, we're going to give whatever” reparations would be revolutionary. Unless it's unless you're talking about a token, some of like, $500 bucks or something, it's going to be revolutionary, because you're gonna have to start looking at not just redistributing some wealth, but also what generates wealth. I mean, that's the thing like land reform, breaking up monopolies, and giving some you know, like, but you gotta start talking about it, and at least start a national debate about it. So that something ends up happening, because that'll be more than anything, that that's the best chance you we'd probably have, before some sort of revolution to actually do reparations would be a President, or someone high up enough to to begin some conversation.
Seth 39:05
I would think if you would run on just that alone, you would have the the vote of everybody that ever wants that. So you could probably win, it would be fine. So enough about that?
Mark 39:15
Wow…President Mark
Seth 39:17
Yeah, why not? Yeah, you know, Making Reparations Great Again.
Mark 39:20
Do you want to cabinet position? I could try to work that out for you?
Seth 39:25
I don't know. Are you paying me? Because this sounds like a lot of this stuff. I'm not allowed to make much money.
Mark 39:29
Cabinet positions? I think they get paid.
I don't know. I haven't really looked into it. But I mean, you get you have a job. It could be like, I don't know, what's the what's the part of the government that oversees like finances or secretary of finance I don't even know.
Seth 39:48
I’m sure there is, I don't know all the cabinet positions
Mark 39:51
The Department of Interior or the Department of Labor, one of those two.
Seth 39:56
Probably the Department of Labor. But that sounds like more work than I want to do so. So for those listening, where would you point them to? And I will say you've written and we didn't talk about any of the books specifically, but you've written the Unkingdom of God, which I would recommend, I own that book. You've written the Holy Anarchist. And you also have a children's book correct. A wolf at the gate in that it's geared towards children?
Mark 40:17
Yeah, it's kind of a middle grade book with pictures.
Seth 40:20
Yeah. Well, where would you point people to to engage with you, Mark, I've enjoyed this, but I want to give you back the rest of your morning. Okay.
Mark 40:29
You can look at Mark van Steenwyk on Facebook, I'm there a fair bit. My own personal website is MarkVan.info. You can also look me up there. Those are probably the two easiest places.
Seth 40:46
Thank you Mark, I’ve enjoyed it.
Mark 40:47
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Seth Outro 41:02
Man that was a lot. I know if if you heard that, like I did. There is a lot that can be desired when we think about how church should play a role in our government. How we then should do things in place of the government and honestly how we should put our money where our mouth is. So what can we do? What can you do? Take a minute take today think about that? What is one thing that you can internalize in do in the community around you to in a subversive way, do the work that you trust the government to do but do it with God and mind and do it with the kingdom in mind as we begin to try to subvert the polarization that has become American politics and American Christianity. If even one of you listening felt impacted by any of the episodes that you've heard, please consider supporting the show for $1 and month@patreon.com. slash Can I Say This At Church. I cannot stress again how thankful I am for each of you that does that. This show is quite literally not possible without you. So thank you.
All the songs that you heard in today's episode were from artists Krum based out of Dallas, Texas. You can check his music out at IAMKrum.com. links to that will be in the show notes. And as with each and every episode. The specific songs featured in today's episode will be on the Can I Say This At Church Spotify playlist, which if I'm bias is a fantastic playlist.