0039 - The Weight - Joe Gunby - The Church is Political
Shownotes:
When we look at the Christian witness in the political spectrum, we find two major extremes: hyper-obsession or complete apathy from an attitude of escapism. In this election year, Christians must question how to engage politics without being consumed by it. Whether we like to admit it or not, the church does not exist outside of the public life, and for the sake of our neighbors most impacted by political policies, we must find a way to engage in politics without selling our souls to it. How can we achieve this at the local and national scale?
In this week’s episode, Joe Gunby joins Chris to talk about what it means to get involved in substantive change in the world while also considering what God is doing right next door. He argues that if we spend as much time researching political candidates and reading headlines as we do serving at places like the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club, we may find the true, Spirit-filled satisfaction that sparks our optimism for bringing about healing and justice. Pastor Gunby challenges us to ponder the place for Christian witness as both our presence at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and food pantries and our engagement with larger, structural policies and laws. Though we cannot depend on political progress to rescue us from all of our obstacles and barriers, we can attempt to live out our witness on the ground in our spheres of influence.
Resources:
Learn more about Pastor Joe Gunby here:
http://colbert-umc.org/about-us/meet-the-pastor/
Find more information about Jubilee Partners here:
Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight podcast today. Eddie Rester's out today, and so I decided to do something a little bit different. I called a buddy of mine that I've known since seminary, Joe Gunby, who is one of my best friends in the world. I couldn't do ministry without Joe. We met in Atlanta at Candler School of Theology when we were in seminary together. Joe's a pastor in in Georgia and we kind of have this ongoing weekly conversation about preaching and theology and about the church in the world today.
Chris McAlilly 0:34
This is a conversation about what it means to be Christian engaged in a political life after an election. I think that we're all kind of wrestling with what it means to be faithful as, in our public witness, as Christians, as the church. In this conversation, we talk about friendship and history. We talk about an irony as human beings act in the world, both sometimes faithfully and sometimes not so much. We talk about some of the books and the authors and the theologians that have been helpful for us.
Chris McAlilly 1:14
We hope the conversation is helpful to you and we look forward to hearing from you what books or authors or resources you found helpful as you navigate this moment as well. Listen, share, like the episode. We would love to know what you think about it. We're grateful for you listening today. And I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
Eddie Rester 1:39
[INTRO] Let's be honest, there are some topics that are too heavy for a 20 minute sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.
Chris McAlilly 1:47
We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church,
Eddie Rester 1:58
If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it, too. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 2:05
Alright, so today on the podcast, I have the pleasure of bringing in one of my best friends in the world, somebody who I've known since seminary, and I'm so glad to have my buddy Joe Gunby with me. Hey, Joe.
Joe Gunby 2:21
Hey, Chris. Glad to be on your show. And yeah, excited to talk about this stuff. I feel like we're sort of letting the world in on a conversation that we've been having for years and years.
Chris McAlilly 2:34
I know. We could also, maybe in another episode, do our our parody SEC football coach conversations.
Joe Gunby 2:43
[LAUGHTER] Do you ever have these, you know, bonus features, because that would definitely...
Chris McAlilly 2:52
[LAUGHTER] Yeah, that's it. That would be another one, channeling your inner Kirby Smart on the podcast. But that's for another day.
Joe Gunby 3:01
That's for another day.
Chris McAlilly 3:02
Why don't you tell the story, Joe, of how we met, where we connected for the first time?
Joe Gunby 3:07
Oh, man, I, you know, I had met our mutual friend, Zack Thompson in a class that I was in with Zack. And he was telling a story to great hilarity in the class that I shared with him about his tennis match with you, wherein you got a little bit tangled up with the ball and the racket and managed to hit yourself in the face with your own racket.
Chris McAlilly 3:34
Hey, I didn't bring you on this podcast to share that story.
Joe Gunby 3:39
But Chris, I owe it to your hearers. Everybody laughed and we had... Well then, maybe the next week, I found out that it was Zack's birthday. And I said, "Well, I, you know, I don't know you, but you seem like a good guy. It's your birthday. And it's lunchtime. You want a beer?" He said "Great." I said "Great." And he said, "Why don't I invite my buddy Chris?" And then we got into all sorts of things. And it's just been a one long conversation from then until now.
Chris McAlilly 4:11
So Joe and and Zack and I met in Atlanta at Emory University. We were all students at Candler School of Theology, and training to be pastors. And we, I guess the best way to describe it was--and I think this is a case of school in general--but it particularly was the case for theology school for us. We went to class and read the books on the syllabus and learned from the professors. But I felt like the real theological education happened in our friendship at breakfast and after class having a beer, hanging out over at y'all's house. It was friendship that was really the center for us.
Joe Gunby 4:53
Absolutely, I mean, yes, so many fun theological points were honed over silver dollar pancakes across the street there. I remember one day in particular when we were all just either high on coffee or high on theological aesthetics and theology. And we were walking back up into the main part of the campus there, and Luke Timothy Johnson, the famous New Testament professor was walking down to maybe get his silver dollar pancakes, and he saw us, and we were just gesticulating and gesturing and he just rolled his eyes in bemused delight. I'm sure he had seen the likes of us a hundred other times, but he just, it was fun to be seen by him, enjoying one another's theological acumen.
Chris McAlilly 5:45
No doubt about it. It was always that we were high, high in passion and intensity, for sure. [LAUGHTER] And I think that's one of the things that drew me to you. I, you know, the way I remember meeting you, Joe, was we were in... I can't remember what the class was. But the conversation had gone completely stale. And we weren't talking about anything. And I remember, you know, you got increasingly frustrated with kind of the state of the conversation. I remember, I can't remember what you said before this, but then you said, "Do you not understand that there are some things that dog our days right now?" I was like, "I wanna hang out with that guy."
Joe Gunby 6:30
That's pretty typical.
Chris McAlilly 6:31
You know, it was in theology school that I learned that I was a mainline Methodist. I didn't know that before that. And I also learned that you came out of kind of a more holiness, Wesleyan tradition. Tell folks a little bit about Indian Springs Holiness Camp Meeting and kind of how you were formed and how you came up.
Joe Gunby 6:54
Yeah, so I guess in that respect, Chris, I was a lot like you. We, for most of my upbringing, the church we attended on Sundays was, you know, sort of your downtown, county seat First Methodist Church, not as big as the one that you serve now. But you know, the same sorts of people. The town characters were all there. And it was just, you know, a mainline upbringing in that sense.
Joe Gunby 7:20
But I also had this other identity from sort of my grandparents' generation on down of going to camp meeting. I don't know if any of your listeners would know what camp meeting is, but it's basically, golly, how to even describe it, Chris. It's basically an open air tabernacle with maybe four services a day, and people there have cabins that they live in just for one week out of the year. And it's just church on overdrive. But I guess the distinctive thing that I gleaned from it in a positive way was an experience of God's love that does not stop once you get saved, but a serious discussion of what it means to live as though God were real throughout the rest of your life, and a continuing work of grace, that encountered the Christian.
Joe Gunby 8:31
I think, you know, as I grew older, one of my frustrations with this, and this will sort of lead us to our topic to today, of today. One of my frustrations with that became sort of seeing this of altar call theology where you go to church, you hear the sermon, you hear a convicting word--and that's the good part about it--good, convicting preaching was wonderful, and it marked me. But then the response to that was often some version of, "Okay, I'm gonna go down, I'm gonna," I don't know, like, our Baptist-y friends might say, "rededicate my life to the Lord." Our holiness friends would say, you know, "pursue the higher call." Whatever it is, and you go down, and you have this moment with God. And if that happens in the first week of August, it lasts almost into the second week of September. And then what?
Joe Gunby 9:30
How is that embodied? How is that lived out? And I think, for all the good that I took from that, I realized that there was a much deeper tradition that you and I cut our teeth on in theology school, there's a much deeper Wesleyan tradition of how that gets lived out in community, through spiritual practices, growth in study, commitment to the local church, and etc., all those things.
Chris McAlilly 10:01
Yeah, I think one of the things... one of the things that drew us together beyond SEC football and a love for barbecue and just kind of thinking about what it means to be Southern, in the American South, was trying to find or discover or rediscover a way of embodying, expressing, talking about Christian theology and the Christian life over against, or maybe kind of in contrast to, both a particular set of brands of conservative and liberal or progressive theology that were kind of in the water, both in our upbringing, and then at the seminary.
Chris McAlilly 10:01
And I feel like one of the things that I heard from you often at that time was just kind of a frustration that the Christianity, kind of the holiness or kind of evangelical strands of Wesleyan or Methodist theology, that it didn't go deep enough. It wasn't self-critical enough on questions of economics, or race, or whatever. And I think for me, I think on the other side, I came to Candler and to Atlanta from Nashville, and I had encountered a bunch of progressive or liberal Christianity that was very... that was really helping me think through the history of the white Southern church around matters of race.
Chris McAlilly 11:52
And I think, you know, and I think one of the things that we were kind of discovering at the same time, were just kind of some of the deficiencies in, I mean, some of the good things, but also some of the deficiencies, in the Christianity that we had been given growing up. And I think it gave us an opportunity to really... We were coming at it from two different angles, but we were able to engage the questions in a way that I think were mutually beneficial.
Joe Gunby 12:21
So I got two examples of each one of those. You know, since we started talking about our other mutual friend, Zack, that reminds me of that time. Do you remember that time we went down to that... Some friend of Zack's that worked at the Carter Center. Zack used to work at the Carter Center. He had a bunch of buddies over there, maybe one of them was having a goodbye party or birthday party. It was this pub in Decatur, you know, this story I'm about to tell?
Chris McAlilly 12:46
Mmhmm. Yep. I remember it.
Joe Gunby 12:47
Okay. All these nice people from the Carter Center. As you know, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, it's also attached to a sort of international NGO staffed with wonderfully bright, young people in their 20s and 30s. I mean, these are, like, Type A people with a conscience. And they're all just bright, smart. But I remember sitting there, drinking my beer and trying to figure out like, "What's wrong here, as I talk about what these people do, as I hear their stories of what it's like to work on the Angola desk or whatever it is they do?"
Joe Gunby 13:35
And it took me a long time to figure out. And at first I started saying, "Well, these people, they don't have a dark side. They've never done anything in their life that they regret it." And then I thought, "No, it's not that, because it's something, somehow about the issues. It's about the world." I realized later, it's that these people have no sense of irony. They all think that the work they're doing is completely uncomplicated and completely unmarred by sin. And I think that's the thing that growing up in a more conservative religious culture, or certainly a holiness environment, it's like, it's always gonna mark me with this understanding that, you know, as the Apostle Paul said in Romans, it's not just that when you go to do something good, you realize you still have mixed motives. Paul actually says there's something that comes between you and your good intentions and their outcome in the world. And that is sin. It infects, not just our bad, it infects us not just with bad motives, it also infects something in the world that's between us and our best activity.
Joe Gunby 14:59
And I think so much Christian political action fails to account for the fact that, golly, sometimes we try our very best. And there is an irony to political history that sometimes the things that we thought would be the best turned out to have some terribly unintended consequences. So that's sort of the critique of that moral liberal notion or positivistic notion of human history.
Joe Gunby 15:30
The other funny thing that I thought about when you were talking about holiness campground is, you know, a non-critical engagement of sin in that own tradition. I mean, I remember the year that they decided, you know, the campground has this giant tabernacle at its center. It's tin roof, and, you know, it's just wonderful in the summertime when it rains on that roof. And you can hear the praises of the people coming up, and the rain smattering down on that roof. And it's just, it's wonderful. But they realized, at some point, they had to get things up into the modern world. And people weren't going to keep coming to campground unless, you know, they had some modern conveniences, but they didn't want to lose the old nostalgic feel of the old tabernacle. So they decided to air condition,this open-air tabernacle that holds maybe 750, people. Had huge 20-ton air conditioning units up in the ceiling, without enclosing it at all. So it's an open-air air conditioned space.
Joe Gunby 16:34
And you just want to step back and say, "Now, wait a second, folks, if we're serious about seeing here God's holiness, do we not want to celebrate the holiness of God's creation?" And it, you know, as you say, I think so many of the best parts of Christian theology, when you really get into them deeply, they're mutually--hopefully--I think they are mutually critical and mutually instructive and can provide so many avenues of really thinking deeply and holistically about what it means to be God's people. Does that makes sense?
Chris McAlilly 17:20
Totally. And just to go back to that night at the pub with those folks from the Jimmy Carter Center. You know, I think what I remember about that night, and being around those folks is just, in a good way, how deeply they cared that the world would be made right. That it would be, that justice would manifest itself in a particular kind of way.
Chris McAlilly 17:47
Sometimes you hear a kind of a particular kind of liberal, progressive Christian talk about being on the right side of history. The problem, I think, oftentimes, that I encountered, or one of the things I just kind of watched some of these characters move about the world, is that inevitably, you're going to come up against some intractable reality that you can't solve on your own or with your own work or action. It's high on, you know, it's a particular kind of understanding of Christian activity that's very high on our capacity to shape or change history. And, you know, I think that how you read human activity within kind of the the political and cultural and socio-economic realities of the world, it really matters. And if there is this kind of ironic and tragic dimension to human activity, if it's true that even our best intentions or our best work is laced with the poison of pride, or human failings and sin, then it just makes things more complicated.
Chris McAlilly 19:08
And I think, you know, one of the things that you have to kind of come to terms with or come to grasp with, as you think about what it means for Christians to... how we as Christians engage with the world around us and how we move in the direction of a public or political witness that would be faithful, you have to just come to terms with that. And I think that was one of the things that that we were struggling with, or at least that that I was struggling with at that time. I mean, it was a time that was not unlike the year that we've gone on, we've gone through right now, where there was a big economic crisis and a political election happening. But I don't know, there was something about the whole conversation that we were having at that time, that kind of pushed, I don't know. I got a little bit less optimistic about what I could do in the world. How do you remember that conversation, or this kind of dimension of it?
Joe Gunby 20:11
Well, I think it's generative to this this word you're using about... often it is framed in terms of "How optimistic should we be about the degree to which we can be successful or effective in the political sphere?" And it kind of recalls to me that famous book of H. Richard Niebhur of "Christ and Culture," where he's saying there are different types of dispositions in the church toward the responsibilities that Christians have toward the nation state. There's, you know, some believe that the culture is absorbing the church and that that's good or bad. Some believe that the church is absorbing the culture. Some believe that the church is transforming culture.
Joe Gunby 21:08
If you set up the typology that way, just about every church is gonna, if you say, "Which part of that typology do you think Oxford University United Methodist Church is?" everyone is going to say, "Oh, we are the kind of church that is the transforming culture." No one is ever going to say, "Actually, at our church, we believe we're being absorbed into the culture," right? Like, that's a dead end street in some ways.
Chris McAlilly 21:37
Right.
Joe Gunby 21:39
You know, I think if I, the way that we have continued to struggle with these things from that time, I think, was shaped by the events that started then, which, if I recall, Chris, weren't you at my house the night we watched the election returns when Barack Obama was elected?
Chris McAlilly 22:03
Yeah, that's right. You lived in that neighborhood that was really close to Piedmont Park.
Joe Gunby 22:10
Right.
Chris McAlilly 22:11
In Atlanta.
Joe Gunby 22:11
Right.
Chris McAlilly 22:11
Yeah, we were there taking in the election returns. And I remember it was probably 10, 10 or 11, when the election was called for Obama, and I was serving a little country church, down in the southwest corner of Fulton County, Campbellton United Methodist Church, and all my people out there were gonna vote for McCain. You know, all the guys had their trucks
Joe Gunby 22:37
Sure, sure.
Chris McAlilly 22:37
and bumper stickers. And then at Emory. You know, folks, were jubilant about the possibility of an Obama presidency. And I just found myself kind of caught between these two realities and these two worlds. And I remember, you know...
Joe Gunby 22:56
Well, first of all, I remember when we were sitting there. I remember my wife's reaction. She was just surprised that it had actually happened. And the moment that the whoever it was, NBC, whatever we were watching news announcer--remember network television? That's what we were watching. The moment the newscaster called the election, you could hear a shout go up in my neighborhood. Jubilation, and it was really kind of wonderful to feel yourself a part of this historic election. And that was kind of cool.
Chris McAlilly 23:37
No, it was for sure. And there was a, you know, that was just north of kind of the epicenter of Black Atlanta, the neighborhood that MLK was raised in.
Joe Gunby 23:49
Oh, right. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 23:50
And so my path down to the interstate was, you know, shortly after that, after it was clear what was going to happen that night, I left and I drove right past Ebenezer Baptist Church where MLK's father was pastor. And I felt like it was, you know, what I imagined. Los Angeles would be like, after the Lakers win the NBA championship or something. People were spilling out into the streets, honking their horn, going nuts and crazy. And I was, you know, swept up in that as well.
Chris McAlilly 24:24
But what I remember about that journey home that night is after I pass this throng, this crowd of people in the streets, I was right there by the interstate, stopped at a red light, and it was a cold night, I remember. And there was a woman, clearly a woman who was homeless who came and rapped on the window of my car. And she was carrying a baby, and she had on... she didn't have on any shoes, and it was incredibly shocking to be accosted in this way. And you know, I looked around my car, you know, what I had on hand and gave her what I could from my vehicle. But I remember the rest, just not listening to the radio, driving home the 40 minutes just in silence, kind of just thinking about that woman's life and how far removed it was from Grant Park where Obama had been speaking, or from the whole conversation around, you know McCain's platform, or Obama's, the Republicans or the Democrats, and it just struck me that if Christians are going to be engaged in a political conversation that somehow, you know, I was gonna have to, we were gonna have to account for that woman and her life. And it just felt like the the conversation happening at that moment. And then, you know, just 12 years later, nothing's changed. Nothing's changed for her, it seems to me.
Joe Gunby 25:59
Mm hmm. Yeah. So let me play devil's advocate, then. Someone could interpret that story as your attempt to say, "Well, it doesn't matter what happens in a national election, what matters is we just help people."
Chris McAlilly 26:18
Mm hmm.
Joe Gunby 26:20
Now, I know, that's not what you're saying. But that's often the pushback I get when I make those sorts of points that, "Hey, folks, politics is also local. "You know, and I realize there is a tremendous complexity in something like, let's take, you know, my earlier analogy of environmental policy, creation care, whatever you want to call it. You have to have people, like down the road and one of my neighboring counties, the church where I serve a lot of Republican people, diehard Trump type people, who have come out against Georgia Renewable Power burning creosote. Believe it or not, in Georgia, we're crazy over here, we allow people until very recently to burn creosote to create steam to create power.
Joe Gunby 27:21
But that creosote leeches into the soil, and it was just interesting watching the sort of, not-in-my-backyard local reaction, that in some ways transcended electoral politics. So you got to have that local, which is, I think, what your story is pointing to. You gotta make a hand-to-hand, eye-to-eye contact. But then, you know, the state House had to take up legislation about whether or not creosote burning is legal in the state of Georgia. And then, you know, you have national level discussions, and then you have things like the Kyoto Treaty, because it's meaningless for the United States to cap carbon emissions, or whatever it is, if China and India don't also do, as hypocritical as that is, right. Like, "We got ours. Thank you. I'm living in a house in the hills, but the Chinese people better watch their carbon emissions." Right. But nevertheless, be that as it may, you got to have all of those levels. So it seems like the question is, what is the nature of the Christian's relationship to the nation state and also the Christian's relationship to local politics? And what counts as politics?
Chris McAlilly 28:39
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think at that time, I didn't have you know, I think this is the case for a lot of young people. I didn't have a well-formed and articulated way of thinking about any of these things. So they were playing themselves out in real time, in our conversations and as we kind of watched the election unfold. I saw a tweet from Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Joe Gunby 29:06
One of these people who I don't know who he is, but I know that I'm supposed to know. Like, he's famous for something. He's, he was an entrepreneur guy? Who also owns a basketball team or something?
Chris McAlilly 29:18
That's right. He tweeted,
Joe Gunby 29:19
Chris, why are you paying attention to Mark Cuban's tweets? Golly.
Chris McAlilly 29:25
That's a good question, man. But it I think it follows up on the point that you're making. He's actually saying, "Why are people giving so much money into this run-off election in Georgia, you know, on either side when there are people who are going to be in deep need, in soup kitchens and homeless shelters." And I think...
Joe Gunby 29:46
Okay, so maybe Mark Cuban's smarter than I gave him credit for.
Chris McAlilly 29:48
I think that you need to, no, you don't need to pay attention to Mark Cuban, but I do think that this question of is the place for Christian political witness or public witness, is it in kind individual encounters in soup kitchens and homeless shelters and food pantries? Or should we be engaging and trying to shape the larger kind of structural and political law and legislative practices and policies?
Chris McAlilly 30:31
I think that those kinds of questions are very difficult to sort through. And once you move in that direction, as a Christian, and engage in that larger political conversation, or the public policy conversation, you are attaching yourself to a set of powerful dynamics that may or may not be aligned with, you know, your values or the kinds of character that you would really want to espouse. And I think you've seen this play itself out, both on the left and the right, as folks have attempted to navigate the the decline of Christian power or influence over the culture at large. How are you thinking about that right now?
Joe Gunby 31:27
Well, I'm with you and Mark Cuban, I think, to large extent. Anything that we might say out of any wisdom that we might draw from the complex legacy legacy of Christian tradition, in all of its variegated wisdom and diversity on this topic, it all depends on where we find ourselves, vis-a-vis the nation state, the Empire, whatever. And in 2020, given social media, ad buys, and all of that landscape, I feel like the word to my congregation, and to my Christian friends, is, "Hey, folks, for all of the time that you spend worrying about the outcome of a horse race between two old white guys who are both espousing what's pretty much a pro-corporate policy. What if we took all of the time that all of the Christians in our churches devoted to reading stories about Donald Trump, and if we devoted every single one of those minutes to the local Boys and Birls Club?"
Joe Gunby 32:45
Or some other local small... Go volunteer to coach. I guarantee you, the average person spends more time reading about the election on their internet feed, than it would take in aggregate to coach a team down at the Y. In my town, the Y is one of the most integrated social institutions in the town. It ain't the churches. You want to get little white kids and Black kids together, pulling for a common cause and learning how to get along with one another and how to work through the team? Or whatever. It could be the Lions Club for crying out loud. I just wonder about that as a thought experiment, that yeah, the money that goes into political elections, it might not be more in total than Americans spend on chewing gum, but it's still significant.
Joe Gunby 33:43
And it's not, in saying that, I mean, you could push back on me the way I push back on you in saying that. I'm not saying national elections don't matter. I guess what I'm saying in 2020, people are crazy, man, about...
Chris McAlilly 33:58
[LAUGHTER] Yeah.
Joe Gunby 33:59
They are crazy. And the anxiety, I can't tell you the number of friends that I've talked to who, either leading up to the election or after it, have literally been in tears, or have said that they are no longer going to go to their parents' house for Thanksgiving because their parents voted for the other party and they just think that that's, you know, fill in the blank. And I want to say, "Folks, let's just dial it down a notch." It's not that I think national movements don't matter, as I was saying earlier in my environmental analogy, they certainly do. But I think the word for us now is, Everybody settle down. Commit yourself to the rebuilding of the virtues and what it means to be human. Things that you can agree with and work toward with non-believers.
Joe Gunby 35:03
You don't have to say "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," every five seconds. Work toward the good of the city with other people who care about what it means to be alive and to love your neighbor. And I guess, as a shorthand for that point, I guess I'm pointing to things like Robert Putnam'"s work Bowling Alone" and other essays that he's written. Yuval Levin's book called "A Time to Build," where he talks about the importance of institutionsas character shaping, character forming. They're not just a platform for individual self expression, but they should be a forming tool to allow us to become the kind of people who are worthy of democracy.
Joe Gunby 35:54
I mean, you know, one of de Tocqueville's big points in observing American democracy was the Democratic Republic, like what we have, is made possible by the fact that the people who inhabit it, and who inhabit its institutions have a certain amount of self restraint and humility and fellow feeling. And without those things, we can't depend on our political process or institutions alone to save us. And so that's why I say go down to the Lions Club and get to know your Trump loving neighbor. Go down to the Boys and Girls Club and volunteer with people who aren't your same race. Does that make sense? And I'm making sense here?
Chris McAlilly 36:40
Yeah.
Joe Gunby 36:40
And I knowI am, because we've had this conversation before.
Chris McAlilly 36:42
I know we've had this conversation 100 times. I mean, I think at that time, I was really worried about do I vote, or do I not? You know, should I engage in the process at all? And I think I got really excited about the possibility of thinking about politics, not just as I vote up or down for this party or that party, this person or that person. You know, I think voting is important, and policy matters are really important, but I was seeking a form of life at that time to give myself over to. I think you've, you've moved the conversation, I think, in a helpful direction, because I think, you know, one of the things that we talk a lot about, we've talked a lot about, is just what are the other options available for Christian political imagination? What are the ways in which we can engage? And we can engage locally and with the Boys and Girls Club and with the Y and with matters that arise out of the soil of the place where we are. But also, I want to circle back around to, you know, I think a really important writer, thinker, that we connected over was the work of Stanley Hauerwas, particularly "Resident Aliens," and I think we need to circle back around. Just tell folks who may not be familiar with Hauerwas's work. Just kind of give the thumbnail sketch.
Joe Gunby 38:18
Yeah. So apropos to this conversation, Uncle Stanley would say something like, you know, "The church doesn't have politics. The church is God's politics." And what he means by that is that politics are not external to the life of the church. It's not that in church, you hear all the Jesus talk and get your soul saved, and then you go out and do some political action. Rather, that in the life of corporate worship, we see prefigured what the life of the city should look like. So when we gather in worship, it is heresy--it's not merely bad form. It's heresy, that the 11 o'clock hour is the most segregated our American life. It's heresy, and it's bad worship.
Joe Gunby 39:20
You know, the apostle Paul says in his discussion of the Eucharist, in the book of Corinthians, "you say that what you're doing is the Lord's Supper, but your action, your practices, your exclusion of one another based on class, and socio-economic lines invalidates your practice of the Lord's Supper. It's not the Lord's Supper at all." Now that is powerful, when Paul says that, because it keeps us from this sort of easy, coziness with God through worship, like "Oh, well, as long as Pastor Chris has his robe on," right? "As long as Joe holds his hands a certain way in the Eucharist, as long as we get our doctrine correct, and don't say anything wrong, then we're good with God."
Joe Gunby 40:11
And Paul says, no, what you're doing is political it by its very nature. And so, you know, the examples go on and on. What we're doing when we say the Apostle's Creed, for instance, I think Hauerwas or someone like him would say we're not saying what all we know with certainty. What we're doing is exercising our minds through the glory of the Lord. We're orienting the power of our intellect toward what is holy and good and true and beautiful in in Jesus Christ. And that we could look at any aspect of our worship and see there is some political implication. Eucharist is not just hoping for the world to come, it also should be enacting "thy will be done on earth, as in heaven." It's a sharing, it's a literal sharing of bread.
Chris McAlilly 41:12
Isn't it the case, though, I think, especially on the other side of the Protestant Reformation, that the kind of unity and shared common life: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, that it almost feels quaint to talk about it today. I think about going to Europe for the first time, not the big cities, but some of the small villages where the the entire community would be oriented, its art and its architecture, the city would be shaped and built around a cathedral that would be the center of the common life of the town. And now, you know, this idea that we could we could come together in that kind of way around the Lord's table and suffer and find a shared common life together, it just seems impossible.
Chris McAlilly 42:04
You know, 20 years ago, we would say it was impossible, because people had different worship preferences. They wanted to worship with a particular set of instruments or whatever. Now, it's, you know, here's the church that is wearing mask, and here's the church that's not, you know,
Joe Gunby 42:24
Sure. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 42:25
You know, I guess I'm just lamenting the fact that this vision of communal life, you know. There is an optimism. And I wonder what you think, if that optimism is not well founded, that just
Joe Gunby 42:44
Sure.
Chris McAlilly 42:45
in Hauerwas's vision
Joe Gunby 42:47
Yeah. In Hauerwas's vision, right? I mean, that's the knock on Hauerwas, that, you know... My wife came to Duke and studied with Hauerwas after living in a l'arche community, which is a place, it's a home where people with and without profound developmental disabilities live together in community. It's modeled around the Sermon on the Mount. And she was often very incredulous about Hauerwas's theology from the standpoint of like, you know, you keep talking about the church, the church and these practices that we do, and I'm coming from community where people have a 30 word vocabulary, and they're doing good to literally keep their pants on in church. Where is this church?
Joe Gunby 43:34
You talk about Hauerwas and that's the number one angle of attack. And really, it's the main question we should ask of Hauerwas's theology is like, is this church for real?
Chris McAlilly 43:51
Yeah.
Joe Gunby 43:52
I guess, I guess, even though it's hard to find examples, and it does seem like an idealized vision, I guess my point would be like, what's the alternative? The alternative to me, it seems like, the church is just whatever people kind of want it to be. The church is a place where people come for comfort and guidance and a sense of the intellectual tradition of which Western civilization is founded on. And they come there to meet friends and make business in the church.
Joe Gunby 44:25
The alternative is, the church just becomes whatever it happens to be. The strength of Hauerwas's vision is that the church is what God says it is, and that it is sinful, and broken and staffed by people like me, who are not very good at their job most of the time and who makes mistakes, and it attracts people who couldn't get along down the Lions Club. So they came over here to the church. And that's exactly as it should be. Because this is a place that God ordained and we're gathered by God. And if that's idealistic, then so be it.
Chris McAlilly 45:10
And I do think that what cuts against that idealism is the attempt to live it out on the ground in a local place. I do think church, just like all politics, is local. All, you know, ecclesiology, or all attempts to live out the church on the ground is local.
Chris McAlilly 45:33
We're kind of coming to a close of of our time today, man, but I want to just want to end by kind of giving folks some, you know, if you want to kind of reengage or kind of take a look at opportunities to engage politics or the church locally. Talk about some of the places that you've seen your imagination kind of come alive in seeing Christians attempt to live it out. Talk about Jubilee Partners a little bit.
Joe Gunby 46:15
So I am fortunate enough to serve a church that is right down the road from Jubilee Partners, which is an international service community that was founded as an offshoot of Koinonia Farms in many respects, Koinonia Partners, Clarence Jordan, all that if, you know, your listeners know what that is. It's a place that for years since the early 1980s, has been a welcome center for refugees, has found resettlement options, whether that be in Canada, asylum, helping people process asylum cases. So it started, well, I won't go into the whole thing, but it's a place where, you know, if you ask--this might be a bit of a generalization--but if you ask somebody at Jubilee Partners, like, "what do you think about politics?" I think the answer that you would get would be something along the lines of "Jesus Christ is Lord."
Joe Gunby 47:33
You know, people at Jubilee Partners have seen the ways that Democrat and Republican presidential executive branch both mistreat the orphans and the refugee. It doesn't matter. Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall, but blessed is the name of the Lord. And I'm sure that they vote. But you know, one of the other things that I would hear, have heard people at Jubilee Partners say is, you know, a lot of people ask, "What is God doing in the world?" And I think Jubilee Partners is trying to ask, "What is God doing in Comer, Georgia?" And I think that's a great question for all of us, living between the times of this world and the next, what's God doing near me? Not as an abstract, not as an abstract at all, not as an overly spiritual question at all. This is not a way to spiritualize and put distance between you and your neighbor. It's a way to get close to your neighbor, to be close to them, to live your life with them over the long haul in such a way that you can bear witness to the way that God is already present with them whether they know it or not.
Joe Gunby 48:55
And I guess my, it's either a closing statement or a parting shot, to use the words as Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love, I guess my closing statement would be, I would encourage humility and hope. In 2020, political landscape humility, that we never know the outcome of world history and national politics. Be real circumspect about the promises made by the kings of this earth, as regard the possibility of Christ's kingdom.
Joe Gunby 49:39
But on the other hand, hope for Christ's kingdom to come on this earth, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and partner with and work with those people who don't have hope, who think that they know what is good and true and beautiful. And they maybe lost heart. And as Christians, we have a valuable role, valuable service, as we partner with people who are discouraged. And we don't have to, as believers working in the political sphere, we don't have to look to the outcome and efficacy of our action. Because we know that God orders all things well. And again, that's not a way to over spiritualize. It's a way to have a deep trust and what God is doing right next door.
Chris McAlilly 50:35
I think the only thing I would add to that is that if you find yourself disillusioned by the moment, and either the church or the world, I think of something that Adrienne Rich once said, "The more I live, the more I think two people together is a miracle." Find yourself one friend, you know, and engage the conversation. Attempt to live out the Christian life with a community of two or three gathered together where you are. Or form a neighborhood association. Just engage at the at the smallest possible scale. And, I think it's a way of embodying both that humility and the hope that I think you're talking about Joe.
Chris McAlilly 51:27
Thanks, man, for joining me today. This is a lot of fun. It's fun to have the conversation that we've been having for years in this format. I just want to also as we wrap up here, just publicly express my gratitude to you for all of the ways in which I couldn't do what I do without your friendship and your grace and your love toward me. So I'm grateful for you, man. Thank you for your time today.
Joe Gunby 51:57
Well, same to you. I appreciate the conversation you've been willing to have with me for all these years. So thanks for having me on. And I wish all your listeners the best.
Chris McAlilly 52:10
Thanks, bud.
Joe Gunby 52:11
See you.
Eddie Rester 52:12
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.
Chris McAlilly 52:24
This wouldn't be possible without our partner, General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. We want to thank also our producer Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight. [END OUTRO]