When the Warnings Come True: The Big Ugly Bill, ICE Funding

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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Convocation Unscripted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is a podcast where religion, culture, and politics intersect in real time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of your hosts for this episode, Jamarta's B and I am joined by Diana Butler Bass.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's really good to see you today, Jamar.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Likewise, and Kristen Dume.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, Jamar, great to see you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we are missing our resident sociologist who is traveling at the moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we will be eager to hear Ravi's insights on the next episode.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But as always, this is a podcast where we're scholars, in this case, three historians, so we can geek out all we want and no data scientists is going to try to intercede.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we explore how religion shapes America's past and present.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we don't exactly know what we're going to say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We hop on, we hit the subject and that's why it's called the convocation unscripted and this episode is now in session.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So folks, we were talking just before we press record and kind of the universal theme is, I don't know what words you would use, but for me it's
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[SPEAKER_00]: kind of exhaustion, discouragement, in particular, it's around the fact that we study this stuff all day every day, and it hasn't just been since the election, it hasn't just been since the inauguration or since the latest headline.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We've done it for years now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, the exhaustion is around when you are constantly trying to alert people of a danger that's coming.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then the danger comes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and then the cycle starts all over again where you alert the next danger and then not enough people listen or respond and danger comes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are you all feeling that?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, where do you find yourself at this moment?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, tomorrow I think we're texting about this over this past week and I mentioned that a couple of years ago I watched the movie don't look up, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And that was such a traumatic experience
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[SPEAKER_02]: For me, I'm not joking.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I affected me more than any other film I've ever seen.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought it was kind of a stupid movie.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know, artistic merit.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it has a lot.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a film critic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not saying it's the greatest film ever.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's just the way it hit me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was watching it with my husband.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we rarely watch a movie together because we have.
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[SPEAKER_02]: kids and we're watching their shows with them are we're doing things or I'm working on the book and for some reason we had a little time and I just want to, you know, I've heard about this movie I want to see it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It took me three nights to get through that film.
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[SPEAKER_02]: My poor husband was I, you're just telling like, I can't, we have to stop this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But then I had to go back and see it through and then like too much, just turn it off and he was looking like, what is your problem?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, don't you see like this is my life?
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[SPEAKER_02]: This is my life, it's not an asteroid, it's authoritarianism, it's coming and I feel just like this and I'm watching the media in the movie and it's reminded me so much of what I was seeing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm watching citizens go about their lives, entertain themselves, play their games, and I watch these, you know, part like scientists trying
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[SPEAKER_02]: to use every means necessary to alert the public, to their impending doom.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, this sounds very dramatic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I realized that was my trauma watching that film.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was horrifying.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I have to say that in these recent months, since the inauguration,
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[SPEAKER_02]: watching all the things unfold.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm brought back to that space of watching the movie, not able to watch the movie and my little basement TV room.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just brought back to that moment, that dread, that frustration.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Seeing pictures of what is it that X-Color operation in the LA Park.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, oh my gosh, like could you imagine?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Really, you know, could anybody anticipate that this is what we would be living through in this moment?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this was our kind of worst nightmare.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we aren't all the way there, but this is part of that worst nightmare, and we are on track, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yes, a lot of trauma in terms of an idea that we're kind of lightly, but there's something deeply emotional
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[SPEAKER_02]: sense of dread that this is what we saw and futility.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like nothing we say has the power to stop it, not even to stall it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: appreciate that honestly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And just for folks who can see in the movie, don't look up the scientists figure out an asteroid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's headed straight for Earth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's enough time to do something about it if people believe them, which they don't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then the ones who do give an ear, they don't respond with the appropriate urgency or anything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was originally supposed to be about like the commentary on climate change.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: but it has so much to do with like you said, not afterwards, but authoritarianism.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I saw that and I think the ending unfortunately was spot on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that sense of futility.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Diana, how are you feeling at this moment?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm feeling, you know, a lot of the same things that you two are articulating.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's really hard to see what's happening right now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the
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[SPEAKER_01]: I I've spent a lot of time fighting despondency and you know right all along the edges of despair and there's been a couple of things that sort of have helped me a little bit this week.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One is the fact that I've been sort of at this thing with mainline Protestantism for
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[SPEAKER_01]: almost twenty-five years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So twenty years ago I was warning them that everything was changing in their religious space and that they had a huge opportunity to do something really different that could shape the future well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: rather than in a sort of haphazard fashion and laid out some potential pathways for renewal and for stronger patterns of spiritual practice and social justice and just told them, you know, basically the asteroid is about to hit you demographically and if you don't pay attention to that, you're going to wind up in a place you don't want to be.
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[SPEAKER_01]: in the not too distant future.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there were people who absolutely demonized me for saying that kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There were some people who listened to me, but not enough.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to the point where I felt like I was going to events.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And talking to pastors and church leaders who were essentially using me for religious entertainment or theological entertainment and then just ignoring everything that I said and so I basically stopped doing that work because it was so wearing to be.
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[SPEAKER_01]: ignored when you were saying something that was very important.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm not complaining.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They're like I said, there was there was a lot of people who did read my books and who took what I said seriously, but there was never enough of a sort of
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[SPEAKER_01]: massive people who took them seriously enough to do something about it, except in their own individual lives, and occasionally in some congregations who really to take the work seriously.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm kind of used to living with people ignoring what I said.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I am a parent also, so I do have sex.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But, yes, that kind of, you know, on this scale.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and a part of what I was doing then was tied up in my fear about the directions that I could see white evangelicalism going into.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it was so obvious that so many white main liners thought that white evangelicalism was the answer to all their problems.
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[SPEAKER_01]: that if just emulated white evangelicals theologically or in terms of their church style, then their churches would be fixed and they'd have the biggest churches around.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was literally throwing my body in the middle of that street to get run over by whatever trick came by and say, no, believe me, that is not the direction you want to go.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That will not work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so
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[SPEAKER_01]: So part of my work was sort of, I think, an early warning device about Christian nationalism and the bad things that we've seen around white evangelicalism.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But then the other part was this real desire just to see this religious tradition not cave in to what I could see as really bad trends.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, they did.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And not all of them, but many of them did.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so all that is to say something very simple.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In this last week, I've kind of gone back to the lessons of those couple decades.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there was a place where I got angry at the people I was working with and I just decided, you know, I don't want to ever do this again.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to write about completely different things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Who cares what happens to their churches?
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[SPEAKER_01]: There was a lot of bad impact on me until I realized that I had done my work exactly as I was called to do my work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that was the moment right now that I remembered.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that is what I have to hold on to now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many things I can't fix.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I can't even fix my own denomination.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's a much smaller thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So many things I can't fix, but what I can do is I can do exactly what I have been called to do and do it with courage and do it with the kind of commitment and beauty and craft and all the things that I bring to my work.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that is an effect living into the serenity prayer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll find hope and deeper.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Lord, give me the ability to change the things I can and to let go of all those things I can't change.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so this week, while it's been really a hard week with that despondency and despair, temptation hanging out there, I was able to go back to this earlier part of my career and say, what happened there?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I realized that I had learned those lessons of that neighbor prayer and that I needed to embrace those and a newer and deeper level regarding now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't say that I've done it successfully, but I'm aware of it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think being aware is lifted just a tiny bit of the fog.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I love it when we get past your diet.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I get more.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking about YouTube, I was talking because you have been in this game for a long time too.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, your first book, kind of calling people to attention, to accountability, trying to set people on a better path, appealing to Christians through scripture.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Again, you know, to their better angels.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And, and here we are, how are you handling this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've been in this game publicly since.
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[SPEAKER_00]: two thousand eleven when I launched what became the witness and also a African-American recruiting program at my seminar.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I start getting the public pushback because I'm writing about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm speaking about it set for several.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I stopped doing some stuff that was futile.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So like talking about racial reconciliation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now I talk about racial justice, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because
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[SPEAKER_00]: the idea of getting different kinds of people together.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The way evangelicals interpreted that was let's just get different cues in the pews.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get everybody under the same roof and our work is done and it wasn't the work of confession or repentance or repair.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I started talking about justice to get it that, but also to get it the fact that this is systemic and not just individual.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just your personal attitude towards someone who was it whether you use a racial slur or not.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's the way we've set up society.
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[SPEAKER_00]: to give advantages to some and dish advantage others.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I saw the futility of certain conversations with certain groups of people and I'm just had a point where I'm not going to engage in that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I always say like the I think it's the red roof in will keep the light no it's motel six will keep the light on for you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Which is to say, if you have a moment of humility, where you actually want to learn, I'm there, I'll have that come.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But as for me, you know, hitting my head against the wall, there's this, there's just this thing, I think, in evangelicalism, that scene as more likely.
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[SPEAKER_00]: to keep doing stuff that doesn't work, like you're marrying your cross.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not so convinced of that anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's that that relieves some of the burden in some of the, I'm working with a coalition of the willing by and large.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But there is this bigger thing in this case now, our political situation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's so large that no individual and even, you know, groups of people are going to struggle with it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think what discourages me most is as I travel and I talk to actual Christians, actual churchgoers, congregation members.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It still hasn't risen to the level of urgency that it requires and I'm like, what more
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[SPEAKER_00]: Can we say express?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What new station do we need to be on?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's subsequent?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What do we need to write?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What do we need to say in the darn podcast show?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like bewildered.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are we living in the same reality?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not talking about like manga Christians.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just talking about like regular everyday folk.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, really leaning on community.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It seems so cliche, but it's sort of like when the big picture feels so dismal and untenable, you start to notice the little things that keep you going, whether that's beauty in the world, like flowers blooming or sunny day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: or a good conversation with a friend or trusted associate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I mean, I think there's truly something to that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I just think, like, this is not y'all, like, a well as me segment here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We just wanted to be transparent with people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we're always the talking heads and experts who seem to have all the, we don't, we don't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the answers that we do have are warnings that often go unheated and there's like a real
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[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, of that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we just wanted to like be human for a minute, and we thank you for indulging us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when you have to be historians in the room, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was just rereading it to be these nighters on tyranny, because I'm doing an event discussing this book with a good friend of mine, Bruce Bergland, who's a historian of Eastern Europe.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And as I was rereading this book, I a couple of lines really jumped out at me and one was Snyder said a back in twenty fifteen a lot of observers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Political observers, journalists, and so on.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We're just telling everybody to calm down.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The institutions are going to hold.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The institutions will save us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, there is a group of observers who said, you know, absolutely not.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And who were they?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Historians of Eastern Europe and Eastern Europeans themselves.
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[SPEAKER_02]: because there are lessons from history.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if you have eyes to see, but you are seeing all of the things, all of the bad things unfold as they unfold.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so those of us who are historians who have looked into the history of the twentieth century, the history of authoritarianism.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We have eyes to see, and it was a striking reading Snyder recognized that as well.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, you try to share that as much as possible.
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[SPEAKER_02]: One of his points, Snyder's points is of the twenty lessons is, you know, entails read books.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Read books like the wisdom that can be gleaned from the past and, you know, about contemporary issues too.
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[SPEAKER_02]: cannot be contained in a tweet, in a meme, in a sound bite, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: You need the richer understanding, the context, and you need to be carrying that around with you in order to interpret what is happening today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's why a historian's tend to be on the front lines and have been for the past decade or so, because we're carrying that with us, and that's the lens, it shapes the lens with which we see everything unfold.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's actually a really great point because history does a couple of different things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It does what what you just said.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This week I happen to have a number of different conversations with people who reminded me of some pretty tragic events in the past.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was talking with Beth Allison Bar about the Middle Ages and anybody who thinks the medieval period was all about romanticism.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was really, it's a miracle that any of us who are like Anglo-Saxon descendants are even alive because
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[SPEAKER_01]: Our ancestors were under threat in a million different ways from disease and war and just interacting, killing of one another and horrifying weather calamities.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We were talking about that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then I asked her, you know, like, well, who were some of her medieval heroes that helped her kind of get out of that horror of the medieval?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And she just came up with this list of remarkable courageous, interesting, all women whose lives really spoke
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[SPEAKER_01]: powerfully then and continue to now and so I mean that was a really interesting moment for me that hope piece can come through history as well as the information piece and then today I was talking to somebody from northern Ireland and we had a very interesting conversation about that history.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just so happens that my daughter is in Scotland right now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this morning, first thing she sent me some photographs from a hike she's on in Glencoe, which is the Highlands area.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The photographs are beautiful, beautiful day in Scotland.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So green, beautiful, the fox glove are blooming everywhere.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The creeks are running, the mountains are gorgeous.
19:38.578 --> 19:46.044
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was looking at the photographs and I was thinking to myself, oh my gosh, this is the location of one of the worst massacres ever in Scottish history.
19:46.705 --> 19:58.575
[SPEAKER_01]: Once upon a time, those clearer little creeks that she was forwarding with her friend were full blood and they were full of blood of other scots because they were all killing each other in the Highland Clan Wars.
19:59.035 --> 20:07.102
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yet here we are, five hundred years later and it's one of the most idyllic
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[SPEAKER_01]: Then like places probably on earth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's that beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That beard of justice coming through.
20:14.905 --> 20:19.490
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always a remnant willing to fight for justice and hope.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I think, you know, today into the news a bit when we talk about exhaustion part of it is this big ugly bill.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there's one of the things that we've warned about, right?
20:31.400 --> 20:36.504
[SPEAKER_00]: As a matter of fact, a lot of people were warning about the inhumanity of this bill.
20:37.024 --> 20:48.693
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the scenes that struck me Benny Thompson, who's the congressperson from Mississippi, he posted a picture in the US Capitol building showing Republican
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[SPEAKER_00]: Congress members praying before the bill was being passed.
20:54.729 --> 20:55.709
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was setting it up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some of Benny's awesome was saying, you know, look at them praying for this horrible ugly thing that's going to cost people lives when they lose medical care and things of that nature.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just so jarring to see Christians praying for an in favor of this
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[SPEAKER_00]: horrible bill with its horrible impacts, particularly on the poor, thinking that was Christian.
21:21.008 --> 21:23.751
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, not of the big ugly bill has passed.
21:24.171 --> 21:32.280
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the things that really concern you or as we raise the alarm again that you want to sound the alarm on?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you start?
21:36.993 --> 21:51.178
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the one thing I want to hold out is something I was reading this morning and I think it's very important for us to remember is that the bill is structured in such a way that all of the worst things happen after the next election cycle.
21:51.798 --> 21:56.340
[SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of right now when we say, oh, this is like the worst bill ever.
21:57.482 --> 22:00.624
[SPEAKER_01]: people are probably not going to feel it for another eighteen months to two years.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that will mean that we will have elected another Congress between them and now.
22:06.286 --> 22:12.669
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's going to be very difficult to not sound like chicken little in other words.
22:12.830 --> 22:23.195
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're protesting about this bill and not only draw the bad things happen in another eighteen months to two years, but some of the good things happen before that.
22:24.035 --> 22:29.276
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, for example, there's going to be a one thousand dollar gift to everybody in the United States.
22:30.517 --> 22:37.158
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess everyone who's only approved list in the United States who has a baby in the next two years.
22:37.258 --> 22:38.658
[SPEAKER_01]: And that starts right away.
22:39.078 --> 22:46.940
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're going to get a, if you have a baby, you're going to get a check from Donald Trump saying congratulations and here's your one thousand dollar Trump savings bond.
22:46.980 --> 22:50.001
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm supposed to be surprised if he doesn't send it out in Bitcoin with his name on it.
22:50.541 --> 22:54.967
[SPEAKER_01]: And so people are going to get that and go, hey, wait a second, this isn't bad, this is great.
22:59.551 --> 23:11.893
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a couple little things like that in this bill that do look good in advance, but then turn very quickly once we get to the other side of these dates.
23:12.133 --> 23:14.313
[SPEAKER_01]: That's when all the worst effects will be seen.
23:14.473 --> 23:19.814
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's going to be really hard to work with going into the next election cycle.
23:19.914 --> 23:23.755
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to, so there's a kind of an evil structure.
23:24.847 --> 23:45.741
[SPEAKER_01]: built into a bill that has a lot of really evil ideas, but it's very manipulative and people won't get it until, you know, it's kind of too late, maybe, unless we figure out a way to work with it better than we have been in warning people.
23:48.057 --> 23:50.518
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a great point.
23:50.638 --> 24:07.107
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the citizenry and voters and people in society did their homework as you're supposed to do, that's part of your responsibility in a democracy that's quickly fading wouldn't be such a big or heavy lift that these things are timed as they are.
24:07.827 --> 24:12.289
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen, when that bill passed, what did you just have a heavy sigh about?
24:12.309 --> 24:13.870
[SPEAKER_02]: You know,
24:15.110 --> 24:21.013
[SPEAKER_02]: the income readers redistribution from the bottom to the top.
24:21.393 --> 24:24.614
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just don't think that gets enough attention.
24:25.575 --> 24:29.857
[SPEAKER_02]: And this isn't, let me just say that the right has
24:30.597 --> 24:35.719
[SPEAKER_02]: Perfected their talking points for more than half a century, right?
24:35.779 --> 24:45.782
[SPEAKER_02]: They have done the messaging studies and they have been indoctrinating generations now into ideas that taxes are theft.
24:50.043 --> 24:55.325
[SPEAKER_02]: And that, you know, God blesses those who are obedient with success.
24:55.405 --> 24:59.386
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't succeed financially, then it's your own fault.
24:59.506 --> 25:00.066
[SPEAKER_02]: Get with it.
25:00.526 --> 25:03.247
[SPEAKER_02]: And those really rich people, they did things right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And God has rewarded their good behavior.
25:06.268 --> 25:17.431
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you study American history, you know that this was a deliberate, deliberately crafted shift that started in earnest.
25:19.072 --> 25:25.915
[SPEAKER_02]: in the nineteen thirties, although there were certainly corporate interest before then really working on that messaging.
25:26.255 --> 25:31.657
[SPEAKER_02]: But in the early twentieth century, this isn't really how people saw the wealthy so much.
25:32.337 --> 25:40.420
[SPEAKER_02]: And they saw a government actually as much needed restraint to rain in the greed.
25:41.080 --> 25:44.986
[SPEAKER_02]: and the power of the wealthiest in society, right?
25:45.046 --> 25:47.049
[SPEAKER_02]: That was American tradition.
25:47.149 --> 25:55.700
[SPEAKER_02]: That was kind of how things were done and you're not without debate certainly, but that was a kind of overwhelming view.
25:55.781 --> 25:57.022
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in the nineteen thirties,
25:58.126 --> 26:03.750
[SPEAKER_02]: When FDR was bringing in the new deal, a lot of corporate interests thought this is not good for us.
26:04.691 --> 26:14.098
[SPEAKER_02]: And that suspicion against, you know, corporate interest and against the wealthy grew into a deeper resentment as people's plight became more dire.
26:14.118 --> 26:25.007
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there was a partnership forged between big business and conservative Christian pastors.
26:25.307 --> 26:30.912
[SPEAKER_02]: and not just conservatives, let me add, mainliners were in this too, but the conservatives really took it and ran with it.
26:31.333 --> 26:49.509
[SPEAKER_02]: So that coming out of the depression, we had this like, New Deal liberal consensus era for a bit, but the seeds had already been sewn and that kind of anti-government, pro-business ideology to cult.
26:50.270 --> 27:05.253
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so much longer history there, but the language, like when I'm reading those documents from the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, I am hearing them repeated on Twitter today by right wing operatives.
27:05.273 --> 27:17.275
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, that any taxation is theft, the welfare is evil, and welfare recipients don't deserve that any assistance only the deserving, but then that group gets smaller and smaller.
27:18.135 --> 27:21.677
[SPEAKER_02]: And those who have money deserve it and deserve even more.
27:22.157 --> 27:29.561
[SPEAKER_02]: So this ideology has just been baked in and particularly inside conservative white Christian spaces.
27:30.522 --> 27:32.283
[SPEAKER_02]: And we are seeing the fruit of it now.
27:32.823 --> 27:39.447
[SPEAKER_02]: The problem is you can believe all that as an ideology, but what happens when you can't pay your bills?
27:40.163 --> 27:42.183
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, are you to blame?
27:42.324 --> 27:46.344
[SPEAKER_02]: It's easy to blame that other person, especially if the other person doesn't look like you.
27:46.785 --> 27:56.407
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we're going to see happening in the years ahead is the effects of this bill ripple through and the economy, a ripple through our society.
27:56.927 --> 27:59.508
[SPEAKER_02]: And what ground do we have left to stand on?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And the more money that the rich gather up, the more power they have.
28:06.769 --> 28:09.830
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just worry that we have already kind of
28:10.350 --> 28:37.787
[SPEAKER_02]: gone beyond the turning point that yeah I don't know how we pull back from this the rich keep getting richer and in this moment with their technology media control the algorithms all of that how do we pull that back in and income if not equality but not such extreme income disparities is absolutely essential for a functioning democracy and they know that yeah
28:38.580 --> 28:52.444
[SPEAKER_00]: And that income disparity is one of the key indicators that a huge rupture is about to occur in society when that gap gets so large that people at the bottom will no longer tolerate it.
28:53.345 --> 28:54.085
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen
28:55.705 --> 28:56.005
[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's because I friend of mine who teaches ethics in the early Christian tradition, a point out to make a couple years ago that the income gap in the United States now is actually greater than the income gap was during the high point of the Roman Empire between the emperor and the poorest people in the empire.
29:18.362 --> 29:21.864
[SPEAKER_01]: So right now Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are
29:22.978 --> 29:28.241
[SPEAKER_01]: substantially richer in terms of distance from the poorest people in the world.
29:28.261 --> 29:38.868
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that Roman Emperor was from peasants in the medieval in the in the classical world around the Mediterranean.
29:40.293 --> 29:56.440
[SPEAKER_00]: And then just to put a fine point on that, so many segments of white evangelicalism, bless and baptize capitalism as God's sanctioned economic system, and they'll go through theological arguments that say, this is why it's the best which
29:57.300 --> 30:07.768
[SPEAKER_00]: in practice means what you were saying, Christian, that the rich people in society have just done something right and well, and they deserve their riches.
30:08.409 --> 30:16.675
[SPEAKER_00]: And the poor in society, well, there must be lazy, morally corrupt, substance abuse, whatever it is, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's all part and part and part and the way it also plays out is I've seen on so many Christian college campuses,
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[SPEAKER_00]: these huge business departments.
30:28.717 --> 30:32.518
[SPEAKER_00]: while the humanities get systematically shut down.
30:32.738 --> 30:48.841
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it's the economics of higher ed in general, but also when you believe in the blessings of businesses as Darren Grimm's book is titled, well, then you're going to invest in it not just as a financial bottom line thing for your institution, but as a part of your theology.
30:49.061 --> 30:50.461
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's part of what we're seeing.
30:50.881 --> 30:56.283
[SPEAKER_00]: And with all the white Christian nationalism in the White House and in government, it does stand a reason.
30:56.563 --> 30:58.003
[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of the reasoning behind this.
30:58.902 --> 31:09.251
[SPEAKER_00]: income redistribution, as you pointed out, what concerns me is the hundred and seventy billion dollar redistribution to ice and border control.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why this is such a big deal is because it puts the power of the sword on supercharge.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there's been just countless red lines across already.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But when the leader of a regime has access to an armed paramilitary force, they will use it.
31:41.349 --> 31:46.953
[SPEAKER_00]: And they will not use it to promote democracy or equality.
31:47.973 --> 31:56.619
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is chilling to me is we have all these cell phone videos of ICE agents abducting people, whoever.
31:57.872 --> 31:58.772
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're masked.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So they're anonymous, which means they're not accountable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they're armed and not just with bear spray or pistols.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They have long guns.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They have automatic weapons and rifles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they can be deployed by the president.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty much at will at this point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And what's again, you know, warning people, waving, standing in the street and waving.
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[SPEAKER_00]: what they want to do is provoke a violent response from the people, which it seems almost inevitable, seems almost only a matter of time because when you're violently ripping people off the streets and people are trying to intervene out of common humanity, then somebody's going to get
32:48.998 --> 33:05.543
[SPEAKER_00]: Roughed up physically is already happening, but all it takes is one of these low level, not trained, impulsive ice agents to pull a weapon and fire, which then the people will riot or what I would call an uprising.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then that gives this regime every excuse to impose something like martial law, curfews, different policies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: which they will say is for public safety and for law and order.
33:20.411 --> 33:25.014
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the next thing you know, all of our basic civil liberties are stripped away.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And even elections put at risk because, well, for public safety reasons, we have to suspend our regular election cycle or severely limited for the sake of maintaining order is what they'll say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: but not, I mean, a hundred and seventy billion dollars, I read somewhere that's more funding than all the fifteen countries in the world have for their entire military.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's more funding than any US, any other US law enforcement agency, more funding than the Marines I heard.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just, yeah, that's what's getting me like, oh,
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you wrote this in your newsletter, not your mark.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I love that you wrote about ice this this last week, but one of the things that's been disturbing to me is seeing the language of demonization about ice that's coming from the administration.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that you're saying that, oh no, we have to have masks on these people because they're being demonized and they're being dogs and so they're turning the ice agents into the victims rather than the being or the real victims.
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[SPEAKER_01]: of this horrifying crackdown that is unconstitutional and is violating everybody's due process.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So
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[SPEAKER_01]: That seems to me a part of what you're saying, too, is not only do you put the money into it, but you turn the ice agents into the heroes who are being hurt by these wild out-of-control people who don't deserve to be here anyway, or those young socialist who voted for people like Mondami in New York City, and Californians, you can't trust them.
35:11.426 --> 35:22.491
[SPEAKER_01]: So you turn the people who are fighting four human rights into the bad guys, and you turn the ice agents into the protectors of liberty.
35:25.012 --> 35:25.432
[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.
35:25.793 --> 35:27.954
[SPEAKER_00]: That language is so important.
35:28.214 --> 35:36.838
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're hearing things now, like alligator, alcohol crisis, criminal illegal aliens, all of that.
35:37.618 --> 35:57.805
[SPEAKER_00]: is the precursor to genocidal practices, concentration camps, any kind of historic atrocity that you want to look at, began with that dehumanizing language, which for people of faith of all faiths should be a non-negotiable.
35:57.905 --> 36:01.926
[SPEAKER_00]: Like no one can talk like that about other human beings, period.
36:01.966 --> 36:04.827
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're wondering what to do or sort of where to
36:07.188 --> 36:10.130
[SPEAKER_00]: get into this struggle at the very least.
36:10.890 --> 36:15.653
[SPEAKER_00]: If you see that language, you push back and say these are people, right?
36:16.114 --> 36:20.156
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we've got so much with this regime.
36:20.616 --> 36:26.040
[SPEAKER_00]: IRS has just said churches can endorse political candidate.
36:26.060 --> 36:29.562
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then when you saw that news, did you just roll your eyes?
36:31.892 --> 36:49.748
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you know, I I was not at all surprised right and I honestly had a hard time taking interviews on this particular issue because in part I thought it's it's not being observed by so many churches already as it is and it would not be enforced.
36:50.268 --> 36:54.750
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, during this presidency, so while guests, it is not a good sign.
36:55.691 --> 37:02.894
[SPEAKER_02]: And while, you know, as a Christian, I do not want my pastors endorsing political candidates from the pulpit.
37:03.175 --> 37:11.039
[SPEAKER_02]: When if I share their political views on this particular issue, I just thought, yes, of course, of course, this is where we're at.
37:11.499 --> 37:15.621
[SPEAKER_02]: And we should expect to see much more of this more overtly.
37:16.201 --> 37:19.423
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of me is, and this is probably a mistake.
37:19.584 --> 37:21.465
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll probably be proven wrong here.
37:21.485 --> 37:23.386
[SPEAKER_02]: I've ever heard of how things out in the open.
37:23.566 --> 37:36.175
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, it's been, I've had to explain for years to journalists how these endorsements actually work when they, you know, claim not to be endorsing a candidate.
37:36.215 --> 37:39.417
[SPEAKER_02]: They claim not to be talking politics at all in these spaces.
37:39.617 --> 37:41.439
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, you know, here we are.
37:41.659 --> 37:43.320
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought one really important
37:43.380 --> 37:46.802
[SPEAKER_02]: work is a book in several years ago by Lydia Bean.
37:47.523 --> 37:59.692
[SPEAKER_02]: Sociologists, I believe she's a sociologist or anthropologist and she did a comparative analysis of two evangelical churches, one in Canada and one in the United States just across the border.
38:00.592 --> 38:08.779
[SPEAKER_02]: And give a really beautiful description of how, when you would ask the members of these churches and do like, no, my pastor's not political.
38:09.280 --> 38:10.941
[SPEAKER_02]: No, you know, not at all.
38:11.441 --> 38:17.787
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, when she was embedded there, she saw all kinds of politics, particularly on the American side, right?
38:17.807 --> 38:19.848
[SPEAKER_02]: That that was just part of the era they breathe.
38:20.009 --> 38:28.335
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, they were promoting candidates and they were promoting issues and all of these things quite overtly, even though there was this kind of, you know,
38:29.384 --> 38:31.666
[SPEAKER_02]: plausible or impossible deniability.
38:31.766 --> 38:35.509
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, part of me is like, let's just not pretend anymore.
38:35.669 --> 38:39.313
[SPEAKER_02]: And let's be very clear who is saying what into what ends.
38:39.373 --> 38:41.254
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, hold folks accountable.
38:43.616 --> 38:45.578
[SPEAKER_00]: Diane, did you see that news and how did you react?
38:46.859 --> 38:52.244
[SPEAKER_01]: My response was so much for all of our care about the Johnson and met last year.
38:55.203 --> 39:14.628
[SPEAKER_02]: I was actually, they had a journalist who covered our faith in democracy to reach out to me and in screenshot from the article he had written where he quotes you and me, Diana, talking about how careful we were and how we respected that.
39:15.108 --> 39:24.370
[SPEAKER_02]: And we weren't preaching, we were just part of a non-profit and respecting the law and the intent of the law.
39:25.328 --> 39:31.658
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so just to fill it in for folks, we did our first and only so far, convocation on scripted tour.
39:32.560 --> 39:39.791
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the funding for it, we were so careful, as a nonprofit, not to mention.
39:40.812 --> 39:57.240
[SPEAKER_00]: political candidates in the in the in the sense of endorsing them and so there were you know there was a ton that we left unsaid because we wanted to follow the Johnson amendment in turns out we were far more scrupulous than a lot of pastors or church leaders
39:57.820 --> 39:59.941
[SPEAKER_00]: have then on that on that topic.
39:59.981 --> 40:08.286
[SPEAKER_00]: And my concern is twofold one, the financial aspect where these churches can essentially become unregulated political action committee.
40:08.326 --> 40:16.751
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can accept and even solicit donations and these tax exempts non-profits don't have the same reporting requirements.
40:16.771 --> 40:17.992
[SPEAKER_00]: So they don't have to disclose
40:18.672 --> 40:20.212
[SPEAKER_00]: who or how much.
40:20.892 --> 40:33.415
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can have all this sort of shadow funding and along with that, you have churches in the pockets of particular politicians with whom they want to carry favor and all of that stuff, right?
40:33.455 --> 40:37.395
[SPEAKER_00]: It reminds me of the money changers and Jesus flipping tables, right?
40:37.435 --> 40:38.415
[SPEAKER_00]: That's similar dynamic.
40:38.455 --> 40:47.237
[SPEAKER_00]: The other part that concerns me is that left or liberal leaning church leaders would take the bait and say, well, now that it's allowed, I'll start endorsing
40:48.063 --> 40:52.607
[SPEAKER_00]: candidates who are clearly better than what the other side is putting forward.
40:53.287 --> 41:08.079
[SPEAKER_00]: And my encouragement is not to take the bank because it is not the quote I use for was from Martin Luther King, Jr., which says the church isn't the servant or the master of the state, but the conscience of the state.
41:08.620 --> 41:12.583
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, we need to have a sort of prophetic distance from
41:13.710 --> 41:20.516
[SPEAKER_00]: political candidates and partisanship in order to have the perspective to be the conscience of the state.
41:20.736 --> 41:33.127
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the far right has been doing this and even some leftening church, I've been doing this, but I would advise church leaders that not everything that is lawful is why there are a piece of that, of course, is
41:34.551 --> 41:40.353
[SPEAKER_01]: If people did participate in that from the left, it would be very interesting to see how long it would hold.
41:40.373 --> 41:52.977
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it might be perceived, say, for example, in a small town, you have one candidate running on an overtly Christian nationalist platform and you have one running, say, on a platform of full inclusion or something like that.
41:53.118 --> 41:59.020
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're the Presbyterian Minister, you get up and you say, no, we don't support Christian nationalism.
41:59.360 --> 42:03.041
[SPEAKER_01]: See, that could actually be perceived as an attack on Christianity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so the anti-Christian discrimination task force, whatever that thing is, the attack could come from somewhere else beside the IRS.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And you could still run a foul of, I think, legal entities and the Trump administration.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you were saying, hey, the IRS says this is legal now, but they'd find some other law you broke.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would be a little concerned about that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think too to build on what you were saying tomorrow, the separation of church and state is
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[SPEAKER_02]: In large part, to protect churches.
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[SPEAKER_02]: To protect the integrity of churches, protect churches from being coerced by the state.
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[SPEAKER_02]: By other churches that carry favor with the state, I fear that that is being lost entirely because people have been blinded by power.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And and the more they see that power is for sale and that they can grab it, you know, it's just it's the classic temptation of wanting power instead of trusting God and taking up your cross and doing what is right and watching it all play out so vividly
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[SPEAKER_02]: almost in kind of caricature form is just setting it's like didn't we didn't we read all those Bible stories?
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of words about what we're living through right now and a lot of warnings and you know how is it that you know one of the things I wrote about this week on Substack was Mike Johnson celebrating the passage of
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[SPEAKER_02]: of the big beautiful bill and the host reconciliation with Bible verse about the ministry of reconciliation.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, that was terrible.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What did he say?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Solidio Gloria to God alone be the glory.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then he has this quote, all this is from God, all caps, who reconcile us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Come on, Chris.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, as in reconciliation bill.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was to celebrate the reconciliation bill.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, like, first of all, stupid.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And second of all, you know, where, where is the Christian outrage?
44:20.165 --> 44:28.348
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course it's not coming right for this for the abuse of God's word for taking God's name and vain like this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and then called us all heretics, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Right, where are the heretics?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Right, heretics.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So that was bad enough, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, OK, I got to write on this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was I was borrowing some of the insights from Emily Snowk who's new to Sub-Sack.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And she had a beautiful piece on it, too, having grown up.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Southern Baptist.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Having grown up in that tradition and said, this is not what I was taught.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I took this seriously.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You said, respect the authority of the scriptures.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is what it looked like.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is not what you are all are doing.
44:57.949 --> 44:59.550
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was already writing that piece.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I would just had to, you know,
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[SPEAKER_02]: final edits wrap it up and then Homeland Security puts out this piece of propaganda with another Bible verse on here in my send me a God spoke to me and this you know biblical text again ripped entirely out of context and the backdrop we have our border patrol officers armed and with
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[SPEAKER_02]: presumably immigrants in their sites, a night vision, and this militarization.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then there is a song playing in the background, which is a sooner or later, God will cut you down.
45:43.162 --> 45:47.485
[SPEAKER_02]: My goodness, right, this is that conflation that we're talking about.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This is not healthy to say the least, understatement here, not healthy for faith, for Christianity.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It is distorting and it is just unrestrained right now.
45:59.834 --> 46:03.117
[SPEAKER_00]: We would be happy would be pulling out this hair listening to this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If we didn't mention
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[SPEAKER_00]: that the public religion research institute did polling on that and it said seventy five percent of Americans opposed allowing churches and places of worship to endorse political candidates while retaining their tax exempt status that was twenty twenty three and it says public opinion has remained largely unchanged over time seventy one percent opposed in two thousand seventeen
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[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, finding show that Republicans, white evangelical Protestants, and Christian nationalism adherence and sympathizers are the most likely to favor endorsing political candidates in places of worship.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So Robbie, that one's for you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We know you've got a wrap here, but let's end on somewhat positive note that your Episcopalian Diana and the right Redmond Sean wrote.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us about that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this was, this was one of those moments this week that actually made me think maybe something I said actually did make a difference because years and years and years ago I wrote this chapter in a book where I talked about the establishment and over of mainline churches and that the biggest problem in mainline why Protestant mainline churches is that they still thought like they were the church of the presidents that they were the churches that were in charge of the culture and that they never gotten over
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[SPEAKER_01]: that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so this was what I called the establishment hangover.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I sometimes wondered if the silence was deafening.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I paid attention.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not saying that John wrote paid attention to that particular thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it was amazing because just this last week, he came out with a letter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That means he's the big Kuhuna bishop and our denomination, the guy who's ostensibly in charge.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he wrote a basically a pastoral letter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he said it was time to move past.
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[SPEAKER_01]: this idea that the Episcopal Church, it blesses the established order as the Church of the Presidents.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But instead now the Episcopal Church has to think of itself as the Church of the Resistance.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I almost fainted.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, literally, I
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the most surprising thing that he could have possibly written because I have seen that very thought be so belittled by so many people in that denomination.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then the second thing that happened in relationship was that to that was because it came from the presiding bishop.
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[SPEAKER_01]: all these people at least said.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is so brave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is so wonderful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I sat kind of on the edge of this.
48:53.165 --> 48:54.045
[SPEAKER_01]: I said nothing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, I just looked at it and I went, thank you, God.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe twenty years ago when I wrote that, it was too soon.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can show up to an idea too early, but maybe he showed up to the idea at just the right time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And now our people apparently have the ears to hear it and for that I'm deeply grateful and I was pleasantly
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[SPEAKER_01]: moved by my own denomination, not only saying it, but seeing other major leaders in the denomination back it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that, of course, gives courage to pastors and my people who are working for a different, more loving kind of world and who see what's happening around us now is nothing short of cool and anti-Christian.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love the idea of just the right time, maybe, maybe just the right time Diana because it is not too late, right?
49:50.270 --> 50:01.161
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not like an eye trying never to fail to appreciate how difficult it can be for people with an immense amount of power.
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[SPEAKER_02]: to risk that power, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's one thing for those of us who kind of come up doing this thing, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: That this is, you know, I was a nobody and what prominence I have came through trying to raise the alarm, right?
50:15.285 --> 50:20.886
[SPEAKER_02]: I had no institutional weight, really, I, you know, no platform to speak of.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's in some ways, I mean, people say, oh, it takes a lot of courage.
50:25.847 --> 50:28.228
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the risks are growing, it takes some courage.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I won't deny that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't underestimate the costs that people who enjoy positions of great power and prestige.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The risks that they are opening themselves up to, to lose that power.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's one thing you've never really had to power anyway.
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[SPEAKER_02]: For people who have that power, that is a rare thing.
50:51.299 --> 50:52.920
[SPEAKER_02]: And I am always
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[SPEAKER_02]: just glad when I see it and I do not underestimate the costs for those with power who risk power.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It gives me so much inspiration to be honest.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We need more.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We need more people institutions with power to be willing to risk that power and I guarantee it will be contagious.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the Episcopal Church for the fact that it isn't in charge of the culture any longer.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's worth saying that it still possess a considerable amount of power mostly through its wealth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As it is one of the wealthiest denominations actually in the world in terms of its real estate holdings, its pension funds, it's a very, this is a group that has the power of the purse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All of this is an encouragement, not only to speak up, but to encourage the people who do speak up, because that's part of this too.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you all for joining us on this episode of the Convocation Unscripted Remember, of course, to subscribe to Convocation.substack.com, but also to our individual publications where we go much more in depth about some of these thoughts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you soon at the next Convocation.