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.
Seth 1:29
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast! I am Seth, your host, huge thank you to the Patreon supporters and to those that are emailing the show with feedback at Can I Say This At Church at gmail com interacting with the show on Facebook and Twitter. I very much appreciate every single item of feedback and especially those that have submitted names that you would want to hear. Those are working out quite well and I can't thank you enough. I found names that I didn't even know existed. And it is a pleasure to increase the the bubble of of knowledge that I'm able to try to try to intake. For those that have not yet pledged that support, please consider going to patreon.com/Can I Say This At Church and a buck a month for those of you that are supporters on Patreon. Thank you so much. I have a few things coming up that I think will help make your patronage a bit more enticing and entertaining. I'd like to do some smaller bits, some miniature versions of the podcast that I think don't fit a full episode but do work well. Regardless, and I would love to be able to share those in a way that they would have good engagement and I think you would enjoy them the guest today. I was able to speak with Professor Soong Chan Rah, who is from North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago Soong Chan has had many hats in the faith and the church that we all are a part of what you'll find in today's conversation with Soong Chan is a ease that comes with his history. And so what you'll find in today's conversation is a discussion of lament. Apparently, there is a book called Lamentations in our Bible, and I am as guilty as anyone else of passing right over that because I don't want to feel sad. And I don't want to believe that I'm not doing it perfect or at least trying too.
And so when we look at lament, what does that do to how we view our world? What does that do to how we seek to do justice to our communities? And what does that mean for the future of our church? And I mean that quite literally, you'll hear us reference, some articles and some new research that showed that the future of the church if we don't learn to do things differently, to do things prophetically, to do things intentionally, that the church is is at a tipping point, it's on a razor's edge and I firmly believe that and so, enough of me, let's get into the interview.
Seth 4:15
Professor Rah thank you so much for taking the time to join the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I know this has been a long time in the making and so I'm glad that we finally got it to work out.
Soong Chan 4:26
Thanks good to be on here.
Seth 4:30
So for those that are unfamiliar with either you your work or you know, North Park, the institution you work at what would you tell people about yourself kind of your story what brought you through what was your journey through life that brought you to do what you're doing now? What influenced you?
Soong Chan 4:44
Sure. I mean, we can go way back to I was born in Korea, and I was born into a family that had actually a pretty long Southern Baptist tradition in Korea. I believe was either my great grandfather, my great great grandfather was one of the first people who helped to find the First Baptist Church and in Korea, which was actually in Pyongyang, which is now the capital of North Korea, ironically, much of the Christian movement in Korea actually began in Pyongyang, which is the North Korean capital. So I come from a Christian family, actually a long history of in a Christian family. We moved to the United States, mainly because of my parents separation, we ended up living in kind of a rough neighborhood in Baltimore. And one of the things they noticed in that neighborhood was that there was a pretty strong division between three different groups, poor blacks, poor whites, and poor recent immigrants. And I often kind of struggled with “Well, we're all poor, we have that in common and yet, we really can't get along.” So that's been kind of something that I've been working through in my academic work in my church life, trying to figure out why when we have more in common that brings us together in the case of where my neighborhood was when I grew up in poverty and feeling like oppressed and alienated from the rest of society because of our poverty. And yet because of racial division, we were not able to get along. We were actually hostile to one another.
In fact, in elementary school, we sort of got along in junior high school, the racial tensions started to flare up by high school, we had full blown gangs split along racial lines. So that's been something that I've been kind of working through. Urban ministry has been a key part of my formation and my work, because I grew up in an inner city neighborhood, went on to college. For our family, the way out of the hood was actually through education. So my mom really stressed education for us.
So I went out and just got a degree after degree after degree. And that's been where my kind of energy has been, in so many ways, but also in ministry. I was a pastor for 17 years, a church planter and senior pastor. And for the last 11 years now I've been teaching at North Park Theological Seminary in areas of evangelism, justice, urban ministry, cross cultural ministry, etc.
But most of that is informed by my academic work, but also my time as a pastor that was a church planner, senior pastor of a church plant in the Cambridge Boston area. But for now 11 years I've been focusing more on the academic piece here at North Park seminary.
Seth 7:19
Do you know at all it's that church in North Korea still there? You don't ever hear about Christians in North Korea, at least not in a good way.
Soong Chan 7:28
Yeah, most of the churches, if not all of the churches that either go underground or were were destroyed. What actually happened is that during the war, many of the North Korean Christians fled to the south. My family and I were just in South Korea in Seoul over the summer. And we actually met with a 90 year old man who is actually kind of a well known personality in in Korea. He's kind of a public theologian. He comes on TV he has a PhD from Boston University, taught at Seoul National University he's in his 90s now retired but we got a chance to spend time with him. Mainly because my dad was the bus driver or the Jeep driver that helped him flee the border from North Korea to South Korea.
So those narratives are still very much in place and he was very committed Christian. My dad was part of that church. And like I said, most of that community ended up fleeing to the south and started a very large Baptist Church in Seoul. It's called Seoul Baptist Church. I think it's the largest Baptist Church in Korea.
Seth 8:24
Really? That's, we don't ever hear that much about that part of the world. That's why I don't know. We do a disservice to ourselves, I think in in much of the West and to insulate ourselves from that. So you wrote, not long ago a book and if people follow you on either Twitter or Facebook, you speak often to lament, and a call for the church to lament. And I've heard you use the words prophetic lament. I've spoken with Mark Charles, who also says that the church needs to enter a season of lament. And so what does that mean?
Soong Chan 9:04
Yeah, so that's a great question. Actually, Mark and I are currently working on a book. We've been working on this for a couple of years now, we hope to be done sometime this year. And so Mark’s work in the area of the history, especially with our Native peoples, and the way that American society and the government has suppressed and oppressed native communities. And I'm working on the lament, historical, theological piece.
And hopefully, this book will be out sometime next year, early next year, and I'm pretty excited about the content that's being pulled together. But I wrote a book called Prophetic Lament few years ago and it was a commentary on the book of Lamentations, which of course, was automatically a best seller because nobody wants to book of Lamentations. It's one of those books of the Bible that everybody kind of skips over.
Seth 9:51
It's right next to Song of Songs. It's right there.
Soong Chan 10:00
It’s about as popular as Leviticus you skip that you get the Lamentations, you skip that. So it's kind of funny that I wrote a book on Lamentations, which you know, my wife still jokes, five years to write this book four copies sold is kind of the mantra in our household that this is not a popular book of the Bible. And why is that? It's because lament as a discipline, as a spiritual practice, even as a topic or content to engage is pretty much absent in our in our church life.
So it was sparked by for example, when I started looking at worship life in the church. And there were a couple of different studies. One study was done by a Old Testament professor in the DC area, and she was finding that lament was absent in much of the liturgical tradition. And then Glenn Pemberton did a study on hymns and found that in the Baptist and Presbyterian hymnals you had such a small percentage of those hymns being lament hymns, and then I looked at contemporary worship songs and examined why so few of our contemporary worship songs are not laments.
Lament is 40% of the Old Testament Psalms, which means that the typical worship life of Israel almost half the time, Israel was practicing lament, was expressing lament. And lament is a cry out in the face of injustice. lament is a cry out in the midst of suffering in the midst of pain, when things are not going the way they're supposed to go, that's when lament is brought up. And for American Christians, if we don't engage lament, we don't see injustice as well. If we don't practice lament, we have no outlet for crying out against injustice.
And so that's part of the the reasons that kind of motivated me to write this book, in a context, in a social reality that we're in for American Christians have excessive sense of exceptionalism and triumphalism. The corrective of lament is missing, which further exasperate this problem and leads to even greater injustice.
Seth 12:00
So I know Mark speaks to exceptionalism, at least in his Doctrine of Discovery, which I found fascinating, infuriating, and fascinating, but more more infuriating than anything. So what is what is try… I can't say that word what is triumphalism?
Soong Chan 12:20
Triumphalism. Well, exceptionalism and triumphalism are related terms exceptionalism is the belief that, particularly American Christians are exceptional. And you see this language in politics a lot, and it actually crosses Democratic / Republican party lines. both Republicans and Democrats use different language but claim and exceptionalism. Republicans claim Make America Great Again, meaning there is an exceptionalism that needs to be reclaimed. Most Democrats are saying America is great and will continue to be great, which is kind of tapping into the narrative exceptionalism. This is very problematic for us as Christians, because America as a nation before God is not exceptional.
There is no kind of inherent value to the United States of America. Unfortunately, it's a very, very prominent narrative in our world right now. And this is part of the education that's needed. And as we were talking earlier about the church in Korea, America is not even the largest Christian nation anymore.
America is not the most prominent or, or dynamic Christian nation, those nations are in places like Korea, and in Africa, and China. China, probably at this point, has more actual number of Christians than possibly in the United States, because of the huge number of those who are committed and involved in the underground churches which are harder to track.
So what we're talking about is a Christianity that is not centered in the United States anymore. But when we have this narrative of exceptionalism, America is blessed by God, American churches are blessed by God. Number one, it doesn't match up to the reality. God is blessing Africa, with church growth more than the United States God has blessed in Korea with church growth. God's blessing China with church growth more than the United States. So America is has never been and never will be an exceptional nation before God; that is reserved for Israel and nobody else in the Bible, no other place in the Bible is mentioned.
So we also need to recognize is that because of that exceptionalism, this belief that American the nation is exceptional, American churches are exceptional. It leads to this triumphalism. Which means that we are going to conquer the world with our exceptionalism. We are going to go out and save the world and kind of the, the Messianic complex of American Christians. I'll give you an example of this. I was on sabbatical a few years ago from my school, I went away for a year did some further studies down in North Carolina came back after a year and I just had piles of junk mail on my desk and if you're a pastor, you know what I'm talking about. You go away for a week, all the junk mail that you get. So I had two huge piles of junk mail like ironically many of them were pretty environmental agencies asked me to say paper. So I get all these piles of paper. And I'm trying to cut through all this junk mail. And one of them was a DVD, instructional curriculum, from an American based NGO that said, the poor you will not have with you. Jesus said the poor you will not have with you, which of course is not what Jesus actually said.
So I looked through the material, and it was this very triumphalistic, exceptionalistic narrative coming from an American based NGO. Which said on one hand, which I agree with, which is we need to confront the issue of extreme poverty in the world. But the second part of it was we the exceptional, triumphalistic American church needs to be the one that saves poverty in Africa.
We have the education, we have the know how, we have the resources. Now I'm not against confronting extreme poverty in the world. I'm part of an international board, an NGO myself and I want to see extreme poverty come to an end. I don't believe that American churches are exceptional and triumphalist to solely be the ones that save the poverty in Africa. That's a triumphalism. That's the belief that we are such a unique and special people. We are especially ordained and blessed by God, to go out and save the world, and to do whatever it takes to save the world to save poverty in Africa to save the African continent.
By the way, that's the reason that point of view. And that assumption, self-assumption of exceptionalism is how Africa got its problems in the first place. Because the Europeans said, those poor Africans in Africa, we got to go save them, we got to bring our democracy, we got to bring our materialism, we got to bring our-all the things that's going to save Africa and ended up raping the land and taking resources from all over the place. And that's why Africa is what it is because of an exceptionalistic-triumphalistic rEuropean colonial powers.
Now, we're doing that through the church, American churches are exceptional, American churches are going to be triumphalistic. So let's go save the poor people in Africa. That's part of the problem of an exceptionalistic and triumphalistic narrative.
Seth 17:00
How do you do that then without I can. I can hear me saying that. You know what, let me put this way if I was the missionary coming back to the church asking for money. And I then tell you, I need you to give me money, but I'm probably not the best at this job. Like, how does the church relegate that? Or how do you how do you? How do you measure between, you know, lip service and platitudes versus “No, of course, I'm the person that has to do this. This is what I'm called to do. I'm great, because I'm do this.”
Soong Chan 17:32
Well, I think the best missionaries and the best servants, global evangelism servants, in the 21st century are going to be those who know how to work on the ground with the people that they are serving. So I once heard of a horrible sermon about how suburban churches can help poor inner city churches. First of all that is just not the way that works. But that was the description how these rich suburban churches gonna help these poor, urban churches and the speaker was saying, “we don't want to give handouts, we want to give a hand up.” Now what I said respond, right thought in response was, actually, I don't want your hand up either. Because if you're giving me a handout, you're at least giving me something. When you're saying I'm going to give you a hand up, which you're assuming is that you're at a better place, you're exceptional. And you're pulling me up to the place that I need to be at. Don't give me a handout, don't give me a hand up, give me a hand across. Reach a hand across the table and say, I might not know exactly what's needed in Africa, because I'm not there. I'm at a cushy executive office in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and I don't have the know it all to be able to go and fix the complex problems in Africa. What I need to do is reach a hand across, build the relationships with those who are suffering with those who are in pain and say what can we do together. So here's maybe an American solution to the need for water. We ship bottled water, and we ship bottled water over there so that the 50 kids that we sponsor can have bottled water. Well what we need to do is we need to drill wells, we need to drill wells and train the community to manage their own wells and to care for their own wells.
These are the things that we need to do. And so that comes from reaching a hand across not looking for a handout or a hand up. And so I think what lament does go back to this concept of lament, what lament does is it legitimizes and it gives voice to those who have been previously voiceless. So if those who have been silenced, have the opportunity to speak up and all probability to speak out and lament because they are the marginalized suffering voices. If we hear those voices, we will do better outreach because we're getting a sense of what it means to hear from those voices that are marginalized.
Seth 20:20
How does a church then…So much of American capitalism not to get political but I don't know a better word is geared around feeling good. And you'll see and I hear people all the time I lead worship at my church. Most Sundays I help lead worship at my church most Sundays and they just want to feel good. They don't really want to be pressured much. They want to leave feeling better than they left or they want to leave. Like they, you know, just, I don't know they want to leave like their team just won the Super Bowl. And so how do you preach limit and pull it off in the long term without your church shutting its doors because people just I don't want to be depressed.
Soong Chan 21:04
Yeah, I hear that. So I was a worship leader for many years and I was a senior pastor for many years. And as a church planter, by the way, and I write this in my book that the first sermon series, the full sermon series that I did a book of the Bible was actually in the book of Lamentations, which is a little bizarre if you think about it, right? So if you think about the church that needs to draw as many people as possible, and attract many people as possible, it's obviously a church plant, because you're getting off the ground, you're getting started. You want people to come to you rather than scare people away or, or, you know, depressed people to the point that they don't want to come back next week. What I found fairly interesting and fascinating was that even though we did a six week sermon series on Lamentations, which many would admit, and I would admit it, he was even one who wrote a commentary in the book. It can be kind of a downer, I mean, talks about really, really devastating, horrible things that you don't want to talk about on a typical basis.
First thing I found was that it actually did resonate with people, because you can fake good feelings at the end of each service. You know what, I've been a pastor long enough. I'm enough of a communicator, to be able to pull that off every Sunday to say something, sing a song, do something that makes everybody leave feeling good about themselves.
After a certain while though, a pastor has to get a really hard realistic look and say is this real discipleship? The church, most members of your church have 45 minutes to an hour and a half with other Christians every day of the week. That's that Sunday service that's an hour an hour and a half long.
And if every time what you're saying is affirming a sinful / dysfunctional life that they're leaving leading, then you're not doing your job as a pastor, which you are as a cheerleader for a dysfunctional team. You are a cheerleader…you're the press secretary to the President. You have to keep affirming the lies, you have to keep dancing around the truth. So what you end up doing is you end up not communicating the gospel, but communicating something that will keep your church going.
I think…I hope pastors are in this not to be popular, but to actually minister to people. Sometimes that's not popular. But we actually need to minister to people and sometimes that means lament. Now, I'm not saying, you know, lament every single day of the year because the Bible, like I said, is 40% lament and 60% praise. But when when it's 5% lament (our churches), now you've got a problem, because you are under representing a significant portion of Scripture. And your discipleship is inadequate, because your discipling only in certain ways, not in other ways. And that's why I am saying lament needs to be reintroduced, because without that lament, we're actually going to end up with a dysfunctional church.
Seth 24:08
You were talking about…America is not even the predominant christian nation just a little bit ago, and I saw a survey or a research study, and I don't remember who did it, let's say Pew Research, but it probably wasn't done. So I will put that caveat in there. I'm not editing that out. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. It's fine.
But it said basically, not only that, but implied that not only is America not the most Christian of all Christian nations, Christians aren't even the majority in America anymore.
Soong Chan 24:37
Yeah, I think you were referencing a study by PRRI. And it was actually a pretty much, much more specific than what you're saying, which was, I believe that if we're looking at the same study, it was that white Christians are no longer the majority. Now, what I wrote about in my first book in 2009, and this is almost 9-10 years ago, but it's it's it's it's even more true now than when I wrote it is that not only is Global Christianity becoming diverse, and where the center of Christianity is now in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In fact, the largest church in the United States doesn't even sniff the top 10 churches in the world. It doesn't even come close to being the top 10 Church in the world. The largest church in the world right now is in Seoul, South Korea, it's about half a million to 750,000 people, depending on depending on when it's raining or not. I don't know how much it fluctuates. That's how large largest church in the world is. It's the Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea.
My denomination, which is one of the fastest growing denominations in the United States right now is about 350,000 people. So one church is larger than one of the fastest growing denominations in the United States. So we've got to understand the scale of what's happening in American Christianity compared to global Christianity. But I wrote about this in The Next Evangelical, which was my first book, saying, come on, folks wake up that American Christianity is no longer dominated by white evangelicals. We've always thought the white evangelicals was the majority population in America or white Christians at least were majority population. Couple of trends.
One trend is that white Christianity is in sharp decline. In the mainline church, they've been hemorrhaging membership every 10 years about 25%. That's…that's, that's horrible. That's, you know, you're not going to survive. evangelicalism, white evangelicals are also losing members in large numbers. But the only reason that white evangelicalism, you don't see it in terms of numbers, is because there are enough immigrants, evangelicals of color to back up the numbers of evangelicalism, the United States is and so is that the fine line…
Seth 26:40
Is that decline because of, sounds crass, is that decline because of death? Is the church just not resupply…and not not training a child in the way it should go? Or is it just people just checking out?
Soong Chan 26:51
Well it is both, it is a combination? So one combination is that the more churched groups are the boomers, right, so the boomers were very churched post World War Two, they are very steeped in the church. It's when kind of the height of evangelicalism when the boomers are going to coming of age, but the boomers are now in their 60s and even in their 70s.
So they are dying off. They are retiring. I mean, think about two of our most prominent Boomer pastors, Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. You know Hybels has already announced his retirement. Warren, I'm sure it's not too far behind. We're talking about the builders of the mega church, the Biggers, the builders of these Boomer churches. They're now in their 60s and 70s. So the next generation, which would kind of fill in that population gap, there's a population drop. Right. So that's the busters, millennials, you have a little bit of an uptick, but what you're talking about is that this glut of retirees, mostly white, many evangelical, but the numbers are kind of dropping off because as they die off, the Gen-Xers and the millennials, there's, the numbers don't add up. But the other problem that you're alluding to is not only are the older whites dying off, but you're getting millennials leaving the church and huge huge numbers. So you get a population drop, as in there a less white people and but now a demographic change and that whites are leaving the church, younger whites are leaving the church. And the only reason these numbers are relatively stable is because you had immigrants coming into the church. You have African American churches growing, Asian American communities growing, Spanish speaking congregations flourishing.
Without these immigrant churches. Christianity would be kind of on its last breath. And the only reason Christianity is surviving into the 21st century in America is because of these non-white churches. We would probably be similar or close to the numbers you're seeing in Europe right now, where you see this ridiculous drop off in church attendance within a generation, and you're seeing that in the majority white population, but you're not seeing that in the immigrant churches, which is why, to me this cut and I don't know if you want to go down this right but this conversation about, you know, slowing down immigration for white Christians that is the last you should be asking for because without this influx of immigrants, the church will die in the United States.
Immigrants are saving the church in America and that's why it's so stunning that Boomer, white Boomer Americans are the ones who are saying, We don't want immigrants, when actually without immigrants, the church in America would die. So the question I would ask for white Boomer Christians, evangelicals is; do you care more about the church, or do you care more about America?
So you want to preserve America Make America Great Again, in the process of doing that you're going to destroy the church?
Seth 29:34
Yeah. So let's I agree with all of that. And I'm a banker by profession. And just a side note, don't really want to discuss it, I don't see a way that the country can survive with our entitlements without immigrants being allowed to come and pay for it because when people don't retire, and you have a well educated person working at Starbucks after college, paying on debt there's no way for a person to pay into the system at $15 an hour even the FICO taxes to pay for it, but I could talk banking all day I won't, I won't do that. won't do that.
Soong Chan 30:04
The same concept…does it apply to does that apply to the church, right? So I'm with you I mean I've been I'm not a numbers cruncher on this but I can just you know, my sociology work I've noticed in wait you got the boomers who are retiring and huge numbers population glut. They're living 20-30 years past your time it they don't have a good sense to die at 70, they're living to 80-90 years old.
Seth 30:22 (with sarcasm)
Selfish.
Soong Chan 30:25
So now you've got people on social security for 25 years. You have a population bust, the Gen-Xers can't pay for what Hey, you and I, hey, we're exits, right? We don't have we're not making enough to pay for them. There's not enough of us to pay for the, for our parents retirement and our kids there with their Starbucks jobs, they're not going to pay for our parents retirement.
So the only way you can actually pay for that is actually bringing in people who have fake social security numbers, who will pay social security taxes, but never take any of that out, who are pumping money into the system and paying for now what I'm saying is take that same parallel and think about the church. The boomers are dying off, they're retiring there. You know, that's why the churches in Arizona and Florida are growing because that's where all the boomers are moving to busters is too small to take over the boomer churches. That's why churches like Crystal Cathedral is shutting down.
Huge mega church for the boomers they shut down. They sold their building to a Catholic, Spanish-speaking congregation. So that's kind of the trend going forward. You have these Boomer churches where the buses can fill in the seats, and the millennials are gone. They don't they're not in church anymore. The only way to keep these churches going is if you have immigrant, ethnic, minority churches, multi-ethnic churches, take over these white Boomer churches.
Seth 31:44
I think, and I'm a lobby for this right now. I don't know what your next book will be after the one that recently came out. But I think it should be called “Busters” and you should you should write an entire book specifically about that and maybe get a licensing agreement from Fast and Furious or whatever. So building off, and I try not to get too political, but I don't see how not to. And so how, how do I say this? I don't see how the last presidential election did not break the word evangelical. You have on one hand, the church say “no, this is a man God ordained”, but it's fine that he's a liar. It's fine how he treats women, even though I wouldn't let them date my daughter. It's pastors endorsing “Well, it's he's the president, but the rest of you shouldn't really get around with prostitutes“. So how is the current president disrupting the church as we know it and then how do we address it, lament about it and move forward without…because it's going to happen for three more years. So yeah, if we wait three years, those those drastic drop offs like people in my generation, I just don't have time for that. I don't want to argue every day.
Soong Chan 33:00
Yeah, yeah. Well, the word evangelical is clearly in trouble; and some of that is we allowed a small subset of the evangelical population to define that word for us. So I consider myself an evangelical and I'm debating now whether I turn to my card or not. And, you know, disavow that whole movement or not. I know I've written a lot about evangelism. I mean, that's kind of my one of my books is called The Next Evangelicalism. Another project I have is looking at Black evangelicalism and 1960s and 70s. So I’ve written a lot of know about the history of like of evangelicalism. If as I had written nine years ago, evangelicalism was defined more as a theological, ecclesial movement that had kind of some very strong, important theological foundations such as: a high view of Scripture, high view of Jesus is an active type of faith, a concern for the last in the world and in all forms. So those kinds of foundational theological ecclesial factors drew me to Evangelical faith. I love an act of faith. I love the centrality of Scripture. These are the things that make me an Evangelical, but over the last 40 plus years, especially with the rise of the religious right, I have angelic realism is now first the sociological definition and now almost purely a political definition that's tied into sociology.
So we see this because the President and the election is a clear marker of that. So, evangelical leaders getting behind someone who clearly is not an evangelical. I don't know how much mental gymnastics you have to do to even come close to defining this person as an evangelical; and if you do that you lose your witness altogether. And the whole thing about him sleeping with a porn star and then an evangelical pastor actually saying this is okay. I mean, this is insane. This is how crazy this world has gotten where evangelical pastor gets on Fox News and defends the President's actions of immorality. So what we're talking about is a label that has become so politicized, it has nothing to do with the Christian faith.
So if it were about the Christian faith, even if you didn't agree with his, with his policy, you could still affirm. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm going to go the other way. Even if you didn't agree with his policy, you still can't agree with his lifestyle. And so what we're ending up with is this, our evangelical identity is so politicize that many of us who don't fall into that political sphere, are saying it may be too late.
I'm kind of in the middle right now. Because if Evangelicals of color, who do hang on to the spiritual and the ecclesial reasons for our faith, and prioritize that many of us not all of us, but many of us, then that is what could be redemptive, versus what is now defined as evangelical right now, that would might be difficult. I'll give you one more thing about the about abandoning that term so easily, and this my concern about abandoning the term.
I was at a conference with the Native American theologians A few years ago, and a white academic said, maybe it's time for us to abandon the word Christian because there's so much negative connotations, we just abandon that word altogether and say, you know, find a new word or find a different way to describe it so we don't talk about ourselves as Christian anymore. A native elder stood up, and he says, it, in my words, his description, this is a cop out. Because once you abandon that word, you are walking away from its history, both the good and the bad. And by walking away from the negative history, you are now absolving yourself the responsibility of the negative connotations of the word. So I would actually challenge white evangelicals not to abandon the word evangelicalism, but you've got to take responsibility for what the misuse of that word has led to. The terrible anti-evangelistic witness that word is now become. You've got to take responsibility for that. So to walk away from it so easily is actually an expression of privilege, rather than being able to say, this is a problem. And now I've got to confront and address that problem.
Seth 37:09
Yeah, you gotta stay on the same football field. You can't just peace out and go play soccer because you're not happy with what the score is.
Soong Chan 37:17
Exactly
Seth 37:51
So to call the church to own that, and to try to redefine the word evangelical, it's going to require justice and so what should that look like for our communities?
Soong Chan 38:00
Yeah, I mean, I go back to the the whole lament piece where lament is when you hear the voice of the poor and the marginalized. And again, if you think of the word, evangelical, you don't think of people who care about the poor, the downtrodden, the immigrants, the refugees. I mean, sadly, that name is taking on that negative connotation. But what would it mean for white evangelical churches to take a stand against racism and mass incarceration, The New Jim Crow, against ice raids against against the treatment of refugees against the demonization of Islam, all of these things which are horrible negative witnesses to the gospel? What would it mean for the white evangelical church to actually demonstrate the gospel and not just proclaim it? I mean, we’ve got volumes and volumes of books that talk about the proclamation of the Gospel. We are taught how to do the four spiritual laws, how to do the bridge illustrations the Romans way. We've got chapter after chapter on how to evangelize in words and Proclamation.
Most churches right now can do that well, or at least claim to do that well, and have zero going for them when it comes to the demonstration of the Gospel. So don't tell me you're going to evangelize to a Muslim in Syria, when you told that very person not to come to your country and be your neighbor. So yeah, you can talk all you want about the love of Christ, but if you are not demonstrating the love of Christ, then you are a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. And so what I think is the problem with our evangelism is that it is so devoid of justice, that it has actually become a counterproductive witness.
Seth 40:00
Well, I can tell you when and I found that recently, the more that I do episodes of this show. And the further I get to a, I don't know, muddy version of whatever I was, as a Christian I'm much more willing to be graceful when I talk with people I don't agree with; which I think is good but I also didn't just get accused of not standing for anything but i do i just usually don't tell people what I stand for because I realized they don't really want to know.
I've found that the when you try to say things to people that way that they just get so angry and quick to defend whatever their constitutional right is, to do whatever they want to do, and I think they they become a Christian after they become an American or a Christian after they become a Russian or a Christian after they become a Canadian or whatever the country is. I do have a question. It's a hypothetical I asked it on on our Facebook page not long ago. is America the new Babylon?
Soong Chan 40:58
Well, let's go to the Book of Revelation where the church is roundly condemned. And the leaders of the church are soundly condemned by God for doing what? For having committed harlot tree and prostitution with Babylon, and there is a weeping and gnashing of teeth as Babylon falls, and there is a call to come out of Babylon.
I think there are multiple Babylons. I would say that for a number of people in our country right now who identify as evangelical America is clearly one of those Babylons. Because there has been, I think, among some white evangelical leaders, put a blood prostitution with the nation of America. You have sold your soul, you have sold your integrity, you have sold your value system for a few pieces of silver for a seat at the table. What you've done is committed prostitution with Babylon. Because Babylon is what?
Anything that replaces God, and what many white evangelicals have done is elevated Babylon above Jerusalem and elevated Babylon above, above God above the Kingdom of Heaven. And so, when I think of when the the end comes, and Jesus establishes his reign, will there be white American evangelicals, who are weeping and gnashing their teeth because Babylon has fallen?
I would say, based upon the evidence I've seen, yes, there will be; because America has become a Babylon, that when it falls, people will weep and gnashing of teeth.
Seth 42:51
Sure. Yeah, I know we're running short on time. So I have two final questions and one will be much more much more fun, I hope. So I'm guessing, as any theologian has, you must have certain people in church history that you really like. And I know that you were recently entered into a March Madness bracket, against theologians of time immemorial. And so my question is, do you, do you now still like the same people that you used to? Because from what I understand you were you didn't bust any brackets?
Soong Chan 43:22
Yeah, no, I got trounced in the first round first. First of all, I'm kind of like, I don't know, St. Mary's Catholic School for Girls. I mean, if I got invited to the big dance, I mean, I would be stunned and say, hey, how did I end up here?
Yeah, playing Kentucky, Kansas and Duke and I, you know, we've got we've got the St. Mary's Catholic School for Girls. So to be even on that list of the 64 people that are worthy of this tournament I just found amusing and very, very amusing and I went up against Saint Athansius and got trounced it was, you know, a 90, you know, by basketball scores like a 92-20 victory by St. Athansius. S I thought it was really, really, ausing what they did. Now, I was thrilled that two of my faculty advisors were also on the list and Emmanuel Katongle actually made it out of the first round, send it for Emmanuel, he was my advisor down at Duke. He's now at Notre Dame and Willie Jennings, who was also one of my advisors down at Duke. He's now at Yale was also in the bracket. So that makes me feel good that I learned not only from these others through books, but I also learned directly from two of the finest theologians at our time period, which is Emmanuel Katongle and Willie Jennings.
So I would say that right now, I would still give very high props to their influences, kind of living theologians who are continuing to write and do work that is phenomenal, challenges the church, so much of my theological formation comes from them, so I'm rooting for them. I'm hoping they get far.
Seth 44:49
To invert that I assume you no longer allow any coursework to be related to Athansius at all. It's thrown out.
Soong Chan 44:54
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he is off the syllabus. He shall not be named!
Seth 45:00
You don't even speak his name anymore.
So then in closing, I know you have many works coming out over the next little bit. So where would you point people to get involved as they seek to…not to steal from Micah 6:8 just do justice like as they seek to do this? So yeah, where would you point people to either engage with yourself, works that they can dig into, ministries that they should support?
Soong Chan 45:28
Yeah, well one of the the best lessons and teachings I heard on engaging and works of justice, was my mentor at Gordon Conwell Eldin Villafañe and he talks about kind of a three stage process. One is understanding the context. Second is a theology that speaks to that context. And then third is actually thinking of methods of confrontation. So I would take that kind of approach to say, maybe the first step is to know the world we're living in and see what the problems are. I don't want people to miss diagnose, and say, “Hey, I'm going to go and solve this problem and it turns out that's no problem either you can't you can solve your problem that's not even there“. So I call that cliff or Villafañe and Holland, he will call this clarification, understanding the context.
So I would just say do the research, know what's going on in the world around you. If you want one of my books that might help you do that The Next Evangelicalism on InterVarsity Press might be a good starting point to understand the world that we're living in. The second in terms of theological concepts, I would recommend the book Prophetic Lament, which talks about the theology of lament as a necessary theological corrective to the world that we're living in. And in terms of conversation, there's a number of different books that you can look at a lot of conversa, though, I think it's not so much coming from books coming from experience and the integration of the social reality you're in, as well as the theological concepts you're engaging in.
The book that Mark and I are working on tentatively titled Truth be Told, will be also out on Intervarsity Press will be coming out sometime next year. And so look for that. And then the next book after that will be my dissertation that will be published on black evangelism.
Seth 47:00
Black evangelicalism…are you allowed to talk about black evangelicals?
Soong Chan 47:04
So it's more of a historical look. And there's kind of modern expressions of it, and I can I can get into that but more it's in the 60s and 70s, at kind of the when the the current of Evangelical movement was coming into the forefront. You had the Billy Graham's and the, you know, Chuck Colson and kind of these evangelical leaders coming up to the front.
There was a significant group of black evangelicals who were, who were theologically lined up almost exactly with where white evangelicals were, but on certain social issues like race and poverty, and I can watch just justice and injustice issues. They didn't quite line up. And many of them were were not allowed to be in the evangelical movement. So I kind of question that and what happened there now maybe some lessons that we can learn for the 21st century.
Seth 47:51
Well, it sounds like then I'm just gonna get you on air. I'm gonna have to have you back on we'll discuss that.
Soong Chan 47:55
Get both Mark and I when that book comes out, there'll be an incentive for us to get that book done.
Everything else not enough of an incentive the money?
Seth 48:06
I would think money would do it so well. Thank you. Thank you again for your time Professor Rah, I enjoyed this. All right, good.
Soong Chan 48:13
All right, good to talk to you.
Outro 48:38
Music from today's show was used with permission from the album typography by Brett Lee Miller. You can connect with Brett BrettLeeMiller.com you can find all the links to Brett in the show notes as well as you will see him featured on the Spotify playlist entitled Can I Say This At Church will talk to you next time.