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.
David Gushee 0:00
If you had a disciplined social teaching tradition that went beyond the victories of the moment and asked about 100 or 200 or 500 years of Christian witness in the public square, for which our ancestors will be remembering what we said, because it's all written down, and we're accountable for it, I think that the vibe would be different because people wouldn't just be so narrowly focused on right now. They would have a broader backward gaze to the tradition that we're responsible to. And maybe a broader agenda for where we go from here
Seth Price 0:52
Hello, everyone, welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church Podcast. I am Seth, your host. I'm glad you're here. As you are listening to this, my voice is still a bit raspy, but not quite nearly as bad as it was a few weeks ago. By the time you're hearing this and so I apologize in advance for the lack of clarity in some of my vowels and some of my consonants but if you will be forgiving, I think you will really enjoy the guest.
Before I introduce the guest, please stop right now, right and review the show on iTunes and then come right back, I’ll wait the 20 seconds and through the magic of editing. Yay, you're back. Here we go.
So ethics, and what a social teaching is for the church matters. And by social teaching, I mean, what do we use to fall back on as we navigate the waters of politics and the waters of religion and the waters of divisiveness and culture and what we're called to be as Christians? What moral founding besides quote, unquote, the Bible Do we have to fall back on because if we say it's the Bible, we don't always agree, actually, we rarely agree on what those implications are and that causes so much bickering between everyone all the time. And so how do we get past that? I think a big part of that equation is to learn how to lead. And a big part of that equation is to evaluate the ethics behind our thought processes, and the ethics of what we preach on Sunday, and the ethics of what we teach to our children and what we model. And so I sat down with Dr. David P. Gushee, who is the distinguished university professor of Christian ethics and the director of the Center for theology and public life at Mercer University. In both Macon and Atlanta, Georgia. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading Christian ethicists. He has authored or co-authored about 22 books, including some of the ones that I really like the two of which are A letter to my anxious Christian friends, which if you haven't read that yet, add that to the list. It is well worth the read as we navigate the culture of the political climate that we're in right now. It is almost a form of memoir of what it's like to feel like you're being pushed out of your tribe. That was a side note, take that one to the bank. But he has another book coming out as well that you'll hear us dovetail in at the back end, called Moral Leadership for a Divided Age, highly recommend that book based on what I've read from it looks like it's going to help me personally learn quite a bit about what leadership looks like how to recharge as we do it, and how to do it right, like, what value should I be striving for? So I really think you're in for a good conversation, and a good discussion. I look forward to you hearing it. Send me some feedback as you're through. Here we go. Dr. David Gushee.
Seth Price 3:41
Dr. Gushee thank you so much for joining the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I'm thankful that you're here this morning.
David Gushee 3:47
Thank you for having me. I'm glad we could work this out.
Seth Price 3:49
Yeah, I know. We've been working on it for some time, but life happens and that's okay. Luckily, the internet is most of the time always here and so we're able to make it work today. I'd like to start with a bit of your history. I'm not certain I know in in the work that I read a lot of I'm familiar with your work, but I don't know how many that listen would be would be familiar with it. And so I'd like to start a bit of your history and what you do today and kind of how your upbringing in the church has impacted what you do now.
David Gushee 4:21
Sure. I teach Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta and in Macon. Seminary students are in Atlanta and the college students are in Macon. So I go back and forth. I've been here this is my 12th year, which is about half of my academic career so far. I grew up in Virginia to a Catholic family and left that behind when I was in high school and had a conversion experience with the Baptists, which got me into the Southern Baptist world in the 70s. (I) pursued a call to ministry at Southern Baptist seminary back in the day ended up getting a PhD in Christian Ethics at Union Seminary in New York, and graduated in ‘93, with a dissertation on Christians who rescue Jews during the Holocaust, which was published as my first book called The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, and that kind of got my publishing career going. And I guess we're averaging almost a book a year since then, since 1994. And I've been I've taught at Southern Seminary at Union University in West Tennessee for 11 years. And now in my 12th year here at Mercer.
Seth Price 5:30
How far away is Macon to Atlanta I'm not familiar with Georgia well, not enough to be able to say that.
David Gushee 5:39
It's a 90 mile drive one way
Seth Price 5:41
Oh man.
David Gushee 5:43
It gets a little old I listen to a lot of things on the podcasts and you know, books and so on made a lot of phone calls on that trip.
Seth Price 5:52
Yeah, my drives only 15 minutes but it's still my podcast, I listened to about two a week that way, you know, half hour round trip, so I'm curious. So what changes have you seen from the 70s version of Baptist faith to today?
David Gushee 6:08
Massive changes. And I write about it in my memoir, which is called Still Christian, the Baptist that I encountered in the late 70s for the first time. I mean, they were very diverse as I was part of them in the Southern Baptist Convention was where I, you know, encountered Baptists. And you know, you mainly though they are characterized by an emphasis on evangelism, personal morality, and world missions.
So they wanted people to have a personal relationship with Christ. They wanted people to live a good moral life, and they wanted to share the gospel. And that was really what I was trained in as a new Christian in my last couple years in high school. There was a lot of diversity. The convention had not fallen apart, yet. You had the whole range of opinion that now has gotten splintered among three different denominations. That is the Alliance of Baptists, Cooperative Baptists, and the Southern Baptist.
And they were far, far, less political, that is worldly political, then they eventually developed with the Southern Baptist especially. So it was a good moment for me to meet Jesus in that particular community of Baptists. And I'm always going to be grateful for that experience while (I’m) sad about everything that has changed since that time.
Seth Price 7:40
Yeah, well, I wonder. So I went to liberty and I know they were founded in the early 70s. And so is that kind of, is the 70s about or maybe the 80s about where things began political?
David Gushee 7:52
Yes, the fundamentalist side of the Baptist world had withdrawn From what they would have called secular or worldly politics for, you know, most of their history. But if you think about the period in which you have the fundamentalist, modernist controversy of the 19, teens and 20s, when the fundamentalist kind of got routed in that controversy, they was retreated to their churches and Bible colleges and families and so on.
A lot of hunkering down waiting for Jesus to come back. But in the 70s, people like Jerry Falwell, and others decided that they needed to reengage politics from a fiercely conservative perspective. And they developed a strategy in partnership with activists in the Republican Party, to basically take over the Republican Party and then take over the country. And this happened at the same time as the Southern Baptist Convention controversy where it was a similar stretch where you take over the convention apparatus and eventually take over the denomination; or retake frol their perspective.
Seth Price 9:06
Yeah, I read not long ago about the convention and I forget what year it was. It was right after Reagan I think signed in the Mulford Act, isn't that what it is in California and gun rights? Maybe it's not the most attack where the Black Panthers showed up with shotguns at the courthouse and everybody was like,Whoa, you can't…you can't do this”. And there was a vocal minority in the NRA that came in and basically at the convention and basically just overnight changed the face of the NRA from what it was to what it currently is. Yeah the more I learned about the Baptist faith and the divisiveness every few decades, it really is said, I wonder how much good we could have done as a people if we’d just stopped arguing with each other…
David Gushee 9:49
Baptists, because we don't have authority and we don't have a hierarchical structure, it's probably inevitable that there's this fighting and division and so on but, but it is sad and it has it has cost us quite a bit and cost us in terms of mission too. I think the Baptist brand name, you know is very much damaged and it's one reason why even a lot of Baptists that are starting churches right now don't even use the name Baptist. It just it's it's been dragged through the mud enough that that's just not helpful.
Seth Price 10:22
yet no, I get that. So when I tell people that I go to church, and I'm like, well, where and then when I say I go to a Baptist Church, they always recoil as similar to when I see people say what to do for a living and they say that they're a pastor, sometimes people recoil as well. And then I always have to caveat with no no no let me tell you a bit about our church. Here's what we do. And I'm like, Well, that doesn't sound Baptist at all. It's like, well, maybe maybe that's the problem. But we are a Baptist Church and here is what we're doing.
I've heard you say, or I've read you say in the past that evangelicals, specifically I guess, in the West suffer from a lack of social teaching and social conditioning. What do you mean by that?
David Gushee 10:58
The story that I just told about Baptists is a could also be seen as a story about evangelical Christians, more broadly, theologically conservative, I'm speaking mainly theologically conservative white Christians. And in the 20th century, they came out of fundamentalism. And so they started off from a place of separatism. When they started to engage the world after world war two during and after World War Two, with people like Carl Henry and others. They just started to engage the culture and start writing about politics and writing about specific social issues and so on, but they didn't have a tradition for dealing with the issues of the day.
Meanwhile, other Christian communities do. There's a Catholic, it’s called the Catholic social teaching tradition, that at one level is about 125 years old now, but at another level, it's as old as Catholicism. And there's a mainline Protestant social teaching tradition, an ecumenical Protestant teaching tradition that goes back to the early 20th century at least, but evangelicalism didn't have that. And so they were just kind of making it up as they went along.
And partly what I think they ended up doing was having pretty shallow engagement with politics. And they were easily co opted by the Republican Party because they didn't have a bigger or separate vision. They just kind of embraced whatever the party talking points were, in many cases, and essentially were indistinguishable from a political group. That is certainly been true, at least, I would say in the last 20 years.
Seth Price 12:35
And so for those listening, what does this social teaching, like what the Catholics have or what mainline Protestants have and by that, I assume you mean like Methodist maybe what what denominations would you mean by mainline?
David Gushee 12:48
Methodists, Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal Church…
Seth Price 12:51
So what what are some of the tenants of a social doctrine like that look like?
David Gushee 12:57
It is a combination of theological principles that inform public engagement, like justice and human dignity and solidarity with the oppressed and love of neighbor as self and hospitality and whatever else they you know, these traditions have worked with from the Bible. And then decades and decades of specific documents that have been released by authorities and these bodies I'm thinking of the Catholic documents released by the Pope's and by Vatican Council II and by the bishops of different countries, and by theologians and ethicists. And then on the mainline side, it's not as well known, but the World Council of Churches in the National Council of Churches has, as well as individual denominations have been releasing documents, you know, for a long time. So it's scholarly, it's well grounded most of the time and it's directed at Helping to form the consequences and attitudes of Christians that they're addressing. So those traditions provide a kind of a base of operations for thinking about any new issue. You're not starting from scratch, you're starting on the basis of a tradition.
Seth Price 14:12
Yeah and then so weekly or however often it's it's congressionally that you're engaged in that so your pastor or your priest, or whoever is the one that's administering, here's what we're talking about, here's how we're thinking about it.
David Gushee 14:28
And the interesting thing about these churches that have social doctrines or social teaching traditions is they don't feel the need to address these issues every week. It's usually in special moments where there's an issue of concern like, like now we need to think about immigration. And so they draw on the history of teachings on immigration, or war or whatever the issue might be, that is pressing. But one of the things that has happened, at least in some Protestant, Baptist and Evangelical churches is like, every week somebody preaching politics about something, you know. And that actually is not a good idea because it reduces the Christian message down to something political or something about a major controversial issue every week. And that's not real good either.
Seth Price 15:16
Yeah, this is same problem that we have. Well, you see it when I can't think of any Paige Patterson or Jim Jefferies, that’s probably the wrong name…but Jerry Falwell Jr, who I wouldn't call him a pastor, but he's definitely influencing those that will become pastors. And, and so how do we hope to engage in a conversation with those that do want to make everything political? When I know I'm often accused of doing that when someone says something political, and then I say, Well, Jesus said this, which is when you said earlier, you know, social justice and how we talk about immigration and how we treat our neighbor. It's basically the New Testament. But I find when I engage in that with people, they just call me a liberal number. McCray, which I may be liberal, but I'm definitely not a Democrat, nor republican if it even matters. But liberal is probably a fair assessment. So how do we, how do we engage in a good way with people that are so divisive and also not become divisive ourselves?
David Gushee 16:17
I think there's a time and place for every conversation. Maybe because I do this kind of work for a living, I don't feel the need to have an argument with people every time I go out for dinner or end up in a conversation with somebody. Sometimes I'll just say, “No, I'm not going there today. I'm not I'm just not interested in that conversation today”. Come to my class, or you can read this article or maybe another day, but but I don't. I think people get boring and pretty old pretty fast if we're always laying the politics on them, you know.
But on the other hand, we have to preserve space for articulating our deepest convictions and and our deepest convictions for are derived from Jesus in the New Testament. And they do have at least principled implications for politics. An emphasis on, you know, justice and mercy and dignity and compassion and love and hospitality and solidarity with the oppressed; yeah, you can derive an awful lot of political implications from those principles. And it's when you move to that level, you know, I think that love of neighbor requires “x” right now, then, you know, people might say you're getting into politics, but you can just as easily say, I'm trying to apply my faith in real life.
Seth Price 17:35
Yeah, no, I agree. What is it like being a Christian ethicist in the middle of Georgia, in the south because I find that at least and I'm in Virginia, now I live close to Charlottesville. And so especially around the annual anniversary of what happened in Charlottesville last year, and since then, I find that I don't want to have that conversation with people because I feel like I come from a position of arrogance or moral high ground even if that's not my intention. And so what is it like being a Baptist ethicist in the south part of America?
David Gushee 18:11
In a lot of ways the South is, and always has been a battleground for the soul of this country, the home ground for slavery and Jim Crow. Certainly not the only place where racism was a problem in America or is a problem. And now the politics of the South is beginning to change with the growth of African American political consciousness as well as growing Latino population in Georgia. Like right now, we are looking at a governor's race that is kind of Old South versus New South. It's kind of a, a white guy who was known for voter suppression efforts going against a black woman for the first time in a governor's race in Georgia and that's just, that's just fascinating.
So, you know, I'll pick gender and race politics and whereas faith I mean, both of these candidates proclaim themselves to be committed Christians. And so what do you make of all of that even though the politics are completely opposite the history of the white churches in the black churches in Georgia, so different, supposedly the same faith, but always very different politics. So it's it's endlessly fascinating (and) there's always a lot to do. It's always controversial. But that's just what I was called to so it’s what I do.
Seth Price 19:29
Over the course of your teaching career do you see a change in the mentality of students that are coming in? Like, has there been a shift in foundational objectives before they come to school? Or is it pretty much still the same thing?
David Gushee 19:43
Students always reflect the cultures out of which they come, though. Sometimes they are in Critical reaction against them. And the thing that's a little bit tricky for me to speak on that as my context have changed, like, these are Southern Seminary in the 90s Union University and then Mercer, they're all Baptist institutions, but they're very different Baptist institutions. And Mercer is a pretty progressive Baptist institution compared to the other ones.
So my students are changing, but it's also because of where I am now. In general, students tend to be more progressive than their elders tend to be in a position where they're asking questions about the world that they are inheriting. And, you know, thinking critically, usually about, about that inheritance and what they would like to make of it. And right now, I think that our students are living and they're coming of age politically in the Trump era, which is, I think, fundamentally different from anything that has gone before. And so they're going to be marked by this in a way that I don't even know if we can predict what the consequences are going to be 20 years down the road.
Seth Price 20:55
I'm genuinely fearful for what the consequences of not necessarily the Trump administration because I'm sure there's things that he'll do well, just because hopefully Congress can figure out what they're doing, and he just has to sign the law or not do something. I'm hopeful, but I am genuinely fearful that in I mean, 10 years, my son is voting age and I have no idea what the landscape of either religion or politics will look like them, and I really hope that they're more separate than they are now.
David Gushee 21:25
I'm hoping I hope so too. And I, I think the current marriage of the conservative Christian activists with somebody like Trump is so obviously wrong to so many people that maybe it will bring a change. On the political side, I hope the Republicans will demonstrate a little bit more sanity and who they pick next time and and that the the discrediting of theCchristian right people will clear the field for some new voices.
Seth Price 22:44
I'm curious, and this is not a question I plan prior because the events of when we first started planning this have changed since then, but I don't really care who the Supreme Court nomination is—whether or not it ultimately still becomes Kavanaugh or it's someone else. That’s way up above my pay-grade. But what I do continue to see is Christian leaders specifically and by proxy a lot in their congregation, victim blaming sexual abuse, specifically from people that are supposed to be Christian. So how do I approach that? That is something I feel like I have to pick a lane, (and say) this is the line in the sand and a weird I have two daughters like, how do I navigate those waters in a way that isn't political, but also isn't what Franklin Graham is saying? And also isn't name calling at that? How does that…how…what is this…I guess what I'm asking is what does a sexual ethic look like? And then what's the accountability behind that?
David Gushee 23:41
You might say that the events of the day that we see on TV and that our daily background noise of our lives, they do provide like the the background to everything that we experienced but they become moments where values are tested and clarified. Right. And I think that it is a good moment to clarify, you know, what we believe about how men and women are supposed to relate to each other and how we're supposed to relate to our sexuality. And I do think right now everything is is damaged by politics. I know for a fact that if this were a Democratic nominee, the christian right people like Franklin Graham would not be taking the same tack, they would be taking the opposite tack but conversely, probably so would many of the Democratic Senators.
People's arguments are so deeply corrupted by their politics that is almost like the arguments don't mean anything intrinsically. They just reflect who they want to win. But a Christian voice oughta get beyond that to say, well, when you know, here's what we do when somebody has been victimized, you know, and we need to stop that victimization and we need to not duplicate it and reimpose the pain by doing victim blaming and stuff, you know.
So if you can step back and say here are the principles that are at stake here, here's what we need to be telling our young people, maybe some value can be drawn from this horrible, horrible moment that we're living through.
Seth Price 25:14
Yesterday, I saw two things. One that gave me pause. So one was a political cartoon on that. And it has a gentleman, I think he's watching a news channel, which I can infer what channel it would be, but it basically he says, boys will be boys. You're talking about Kavanaugh, but his daughter sitting to the left of him playing on a book or whatever, playing on an iPad probably in and she says, Would you say the same thing if it was me saying that? And then the cartoon doesn't give any answers. It just, that's the end of it.
And then I saw another thing that said, if it was Judge Cosby that was being nominated, since Bill was convicted this week. What would you say? And both of those have so much tension in them. I didn't answer any of them, but they both logically make sense. And what I heard you saying earlier is we have to really check our confirmation bias. We're we're reading our politics the same way that fundamentalist read the Bible with here's the goal that I need to prove what Scripture can I find to make that mesh?
David Gushee 26:18
And I mean, it isn't just that Republicans want their nominee conservative Christians want what they believe to be pro life anti abortion nominee, and so it's about winning and it's about winning with specific goals. And I mean, this like, we've already laid the foundation to do total compromise here, or they have, if they're already giving themselves away to Trump. Kavanaugh even if everything that is he's been accused of credibly were to be true, it's still a better picture than what we have with the current President of the United States. And so it's like the threshold has already been lowered.
Seth Price 27:01
Yeah, what is that called in philosophy, the Overton window? Isn't that what it's called where we gradually move things to one way or another so that the new normal is 10 years ago(s) extreme. Maybe it's not called. I think that's what it's called.
David Gushee 27:13
I forget what it's called. But yes, and the reason for the continued alliance with Trump is because he helps them to accomplish things that they believe in. And the odiousness of everything that we know about his life and his character and behavior. It doesn't matter. You bracket that off, because it's practical in achieving your goals. I think the same thing is happening here.
I think it's a tremendous, so that's the kind of thing where, if you had a discipline, social teaching tradition, that went beyond the victories of the moment and asked about 100 or 200 or 500 years of Christian witness in the public square for which our ancestors will be remembering what we said; because it's all written down, and we're accountable for it. I think that the vibe would be different because people wouldn't just be so narrowly focused on right now, they would have a broader backward gaze to the tradition that we're responsible to and maybe a broader agenda for where we go from here.
Seth Price 28:22
And what I hear people talking about specifically at the Supreme Court Justice is that Christians want to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the more that I think about it, I don't think that the church, or our country, is really ready for what the implications of that would look like. I don't think that we are set up in a way to deal with a reversal of something-and the reason I say that is I don't believe that most Christians are actually pro life-at least they don't act that way. They they might be anti abortion, but I don't see it because if they were pro life, they would view immigration differently. They would view social helping and social webs to catch the least among us to feed them to shelter them.
And so I don't believe that if they're honest with themselves, they are pro life. And so I just don't think that the country is ready for a seismic shift like that.
David Gushee 29:12
I think that that's probably right. And I have written for a long time that we have grown dependent upon abortion, culturally, in the sense that we have a sexual revolution culture in which sex has become completely uncoupled from marriage. So we depend on birth control, or if birth control isn't used or doesn't work, we depend on abortion to underwrite our sexual practices. One out of five, or even one out of six pregnancies ending by voluntary abortion that's not an exception. I mean, that's, that's a lot that's a practice right?
The only the only way one could imagine a post Roe v Wade. Culture would be, well, unless there were a dramatic change in our mating and dating and sexual habits. There's going to be an awful lot of underground abortion or people obtaining abortions just like in the past if they have the money, they can go get it. And if not, then they do do it yourself with all those disastrous consequences.
So another thing is that generally once a “right” is extended, like a right to social security in old age or a right to disability insurance, or to Medicare at 65, or whatever, right almost never our rights reversed. What has been understood in our country is a right to access to abortion under most circumstances. And that right has been contested, but it has been a part of the law for 45 years. People build their lives around the understanding of what the rights are rarely, the free people voluntarily choose to roll back their own rights, you know.
But if we do in this case, a lot of people are going to feel like their rights are being violated by this change of law. And I would expect a fierce backlash against the republicans for for that development. And I find it hard to imagine a major change in cultural and sexual habits and part of on the part of Americans that would make that even feasible. Does that make sense?
Seth Price 31:35
No, it does. Yeah, and I agree. And I would say the same thing for you know, gay marriage. I have quite a few friends that are either lesbian or gay. And I don't really hold. My view of Scripture doesn't hold that in. As long as they're married. I don't really see an issue with it. I don't. I know I'm a minority there. I know that I'm a minority there. I'm certain that I am, the tribe that I was a part of yells at me whenever I talk about that.
I am curious, though, do you is there can't be anything wrong with tribalism because that's the way that humans are built to function and work in a in a group to protect themselves. But I find that my views on faith doesn't always align with Baptist. But it doesn't always align with many other things, either. I feel almost like I need a new denomination and there are many like me, do you feel like denominations either have to merge or we'll merge sometime in the next 10 to 15 years, or something in the church will break in a way that can't be repaired?
David Gushee 32:44
To your comment on tribalism, it is true that human beings are group creatures and that we find our identity among us, whoever we define as us. And it is also true that a lot of our tribes are they're either breaking apart or they're ship or they're shifting right now. That's true and they're religious in the religious world. There are a lot of people who feel disillusioned with their tribe right now.
Disillusioned Catholics think about everything the Catholics are dealing with with the sex abuse scandal. Disillusioned Moderate Baptists say who either wish the church would go ahead and be fully accepting of LGBT people or would not but get it resolved. Disillusioned Southern Baptists, who think that the nomination has become too political and too conservative on politics. Disillusion Evangelical, and so on. So there's a lot of ex people right now, ex Catholic, ex Baptist, ex Christian, ex church going or post they've left something they don't know where they're going. And, you know, I think I speak to and for a lot of those people, actually right now in my own writing.
Seth Price 34:01
That's why I wanted to talk to you. I definitely agree. Do you think that there will be a new denomination or we’ll just fall away from the church and all that will be left are the extremes on both sides? Because I can't see if it's still the way that it is now, and if my son is a mirror of me, and he probably will be at least when he's 18, or the exact opposite of me, because that's I think how kids work, you know, total rebellion. I can't see him re-engaging in the same battle just for giggles, like which I need to know where the fences so that I know which side of the fence I'm on. You know, I can't see my generation or generations kids wanting to invest that kind of effort.
David Gushee 34:46
I don't see it. Um, I think that the nondenominational churches are in the denominational churches that pretend they're not denominational, you know, so and so. A church that doesn't have a Baptist or whatever in the name, are the ones that are showing some some attractiveness. So right now, the Methodists are about to fall apart over LGBT issues and this has worked its way through a lot of other nominations, too. I we do see a steady trend towards people being less interested in church and less interested in denominations, and certainly not interested in investing their lives fighting. They're just not going to do it life is hard enough, right? So I think that you know, the 30 somethings and younger with the churches can't get their act together and stop fighting over whatever politics especially they'll just stay home on Sunday morning.
Seth Price 35:44
Yeah, or whatever morning it is really do. You have a book coming out Moral Leadership For a Divided Age and I think divided ages and apt is an apt description of not only our country, but you know France and Spain and Brexit, there are many countries that are “divided” today. So I guess my question is, what exactly is moral leadership? Because if I asked 10 people, I'm going to get 10 different answers?
David Gushee 36:13
And what what we do in the book is profile 14 great moral leaders of the past. And one of today Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan. And so in a sense, we reflect on the lessons to be drawn from great lives of the past. And, you know, in the book we we talked about, you know, what is leadership and then what is moral leadership? And essentially, it's the ability to mobilize large numbers of people to pursue a transcendent moral goal that makes the world a better place. And so moral leaders are people who, because of the impact of their lives, leave the world better. Liberate a group of people articulate a moral vision in a way that is very powerful and needed to stand up for or with the oppressed and change the world.
So the people we cover in the book include William Wilberforce and Florence Nightingale, Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, Oscar Romero, Mandela, Martin Luther King, John Paul II and Malaya and also Abraham Lincoln. And kind of one of the reasons we wrote this book was to speak to this moment where we can't agree on anything in this country, including Who might qualify as a good leader. And we hope that by telling the stories of these folks, we might have the potential of inspiring people to say, well, we may not agree on anything right now. But we do agree that Romero or Bonhoeffer or Mother Teresa was an inspiring leader. And there are elements of their lives that we would like to imitate.
I think that moral leaders give us models. It's one thing to argue about, like positions or perspectives, or principles. But models…models touch us in a different place models are like, I want to be like that. And I teach a class on this right now at Mercer. And I really love that moment when I hear somebody in class say, I want to be like Ida B Wells, you know, or I, I now have a clear idea of what I want my life to be about. So models give us a sense of direction, inspiration and vocation. And that's what I think we need really, really very badly right now.
Seth Price 39:03
So I hear that and here was my question as I read through portions of the book. So if the goal of a leader is to, you know, bring people together and hopefully leave the world in a better place, and they found it through inspiring people to change. The the people that were change, don't agree that that was a good change. And so that they would argue maybe that that was not a moral leader. And so like the people that speak against what Martin Luther King did, because they don't like that social change. And so, who gets to define what successful change is?
David Gushee 39:38
Yeah, well, we talked in the book about a kind of a moral intuition you know, a good moral leader when you see one. But it is also true that in almost every case of the people that we study in the book at the time, they had fierce opposition.
This is part of the human condition. We see through a glass darkly and we don't even always know who has it right at the moment. We just have to choose, we listen, we perceive, we follow or we pursue whatever path we think God is leading or what is best. And then we just have to leave it with God. And so yes, like, at the time of his death, for example, Martin Luther King had like a 40% approval rating. And now he has like, everybody loves Martin Luther King, at least they say they do. So the best one can say is that a kind of gradual, sometimes grudging, almost consensus emerged, that this was a good leader who led in the right direction.
It wasn't nearly as clear in 1967 as it is in 2018. But now we honor him and you might say that an image might be like a military battle where the territory is shifting who controls what you might say that moral leaders take a certain bit of terrain and stick a flag there and say this is right or alternatively, that is wrong. Slavery is wrong. Jim Crow is wrong, and we will end it. And in the end, a society says, okay, you're right, we're with you. But never does that process happen without a fierce struggle. And a lot of times a lot of blood on the ground, literal and metaphorical.
Seth Price 41:40
Are moral leaders, in your experience, or in your research do they have to be post humorously? Are we intelligent enough as a culture to recognize leaders today as opposed to just recognizing the tribe that we want to be in and hope that we picked the right fight or is it always years later that we realized, Oh, they were on to something?
David Gushee 42:06
I'm looking at my list. In some of the cases, the moral leader was widely recognized in their lifetime as having made a great contribution. I'm looking at like Florence Nightingale. What she did on the medical side with nursing and military medicine was widely recognized at the time as a huge contribution. Though still there were people who didn't like it, but mainly people who, who felt like they were being criticized. Um, Mandela, in his lifetime recognized as a transformative figure in South Africa. But, you know, treated as a terrorist for much of his adult life.
Óscar Romero becomes a passionate advocate for the poor of El Salvador towards the last few years of his life. (Was) deeply honored by the people who stood up for and hated by others gets assassinated while celebrating mass.
Bonhoeffer he's you know, he's a traitor in a criminal took it took a long time for him to be properly honored for who he was. So it's usually contested, but there's almost always some people in the lifetime of the person who honor them and get them for what they were at the time.
Seth Price 43:25
Last question on that. And then I'll give you back your morning. So for those that now are our leaders and whoever they are, I won't try to name one for today's history. How do they make sure that they are feeding themselves and maybe one of them is listening or maybe one of them will listen in years to come? Because I think to be a leader, when you're always gravitating people where the change needs to be, I think that can be exhausting. And so as a leader, how do you shelter or protect yourself from becoming just overwhelmed?
David Gushee 44:04
That's a great question, Seth.
I mean, one of the things that the book tries to do is to talk about the personal lives and well being of each of these people and being a leader in any significant way is exhausting. And partly because being a leader in the moral arena usually involves wrestling through conflict. To take care of themselves and the normal rhythms of self care getting enough rest, if they can, retreats, breaks from the struggle. I mean, not every minute can be devoted to whatever the cause is, you know, you got to be a human being you gotta gotta have some balance in your life. But this is something we wrestle with in these classes where we talk about these leaders because hardly any of these people would anybody say, oh, here is a model of self care. You know, I mean, like, Martin Luther King was not a model of self care, or family care, he was going, going, going going all the time for his cause, and was exhausted by the time he was killed at the age of 39.
But for most normal people who are not leading international movements or whatever, there is the ability to say, you know, I'm going to take a break, I'm going to take the weekend off, I'm going to go on a vacation, I'm going to get enough sleep. And I'm going to remember that I am a human being and I have limits.
My students sometimes who are most morally engaged report deep feelings of burnout after a while, you know, it's like, I can't do this anymore. Especially if they keep losing. Right, right. If it keeps losing, it's burnout plus disappointment. And we need a sustainable pattern of life that can keep us you know, going day by day and year by year.
Seth Price 45:58
Where can people engage with You either online and I mean your books are available. Obviously at Amazon, you also get links to those books on your website. But where would you send people to engage in this material and interact with you
David Gushee 46:13
On Twitter at @dpgushee and I have a fan page on Facebook where I usually post stuff. So that's David P Gushee. And people, you know, I, I'm happy to dialogue with people to the extent that I can by email, they can send me an email at Mercer at my Mercer email address, which is gushee_dp@mercer.edu. I try to be available to people and, you know, in various times, I get inundated. I can't always be as fast but I do try to respond to people who have serious desire to engage me, and that's part of what I think I'm called to do.
Seth Price 46:54
And one last thought for people listening so So the moral leader book it is not inherently religious or Political or theological, it is more just leaders, just leaders overall.
David Gushee 47:06
Yeah, a lot of the most of them were religiously motivated. And we do look at their religious convictions, but they were not of the same religion.
Seth Price 47:12
I mean that in such a way to say, this isn't quote unquote, church leadership, this is as you read it, this can impact your day to day you can impact your marriage, it can impact whatever, whatever avenue that you lead in as lessons that can be scaled.
David Gushee 47:28
Yes, that can be scaled and so I'm hoping this book will be like, studied in businesses and considered in, you know, medical ethics classes or being a Bible study at church because because I really, I think it's, it's accessible to everybody in that way.
Seth Price 47:44
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you again, Dr. Gushee. I appreciate it.
David Gushee 47:48
I’m glad we could work this out. And maybe we can do it again sometime.
Seth Price 47:53
I would love too!
There we have it, there is there's a big connection between ethics and the way that we think about things before we speak about them. And I think that people like Dr. Gushee and people like Collin Holtz, and other people that are speaking in what I would call a prophetic way, really have something to say about the future of our church. And I would highly encourage you to engage in the thought processes of what the ethical implications are of the way that we live, and the ethical implications of the faith that we say that we believe in. If we don't actually engage, I highly encourage you to get his new book called Moral Leadership For a Divided Age, I've read portions of it. It is fantastic…so much to be learned there, from both a historical and from a personal level on how I can better use my voice for change. How I can better posture myself in a way that I influence those around me in a positive way in a way that will influence the world for a better place for everyone.
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The music and today's episode is by Canadian artist Reanne Kyla. You can find more information about Reanne at reannekyla.com.
You'll see links to that in the show notes of the show. And as always, you will find the music specific to today's episode on the Can I Say This At Church, Spotify playlist by the same exact name.
I'll talk to you next week.
Be blessed everyone