"The Dangers of Christian Practice" with Lauren Winner
Shownotes:
A reality that the Church continues to grapple with is the way that it has inflicted damage upon individual lives in manners that are unfaithful to its calling. Even essential practices of Christianity, such as prayer and the Eucharist, are subject to being tainted by toxic intentions of participants. Responding to this reality can produce two extremes; ignorance and rejection of the Church’s issues out of refusal to accept imperfection or an outright rejection of an institution that is perceived to be irredeemable. How can the Church come to terms with harm inflicted while also recognizing the beauty that remains within God’s gifts of Christian practice?
In this episode, Chris and Eddie are joined by Rev. Dr. Lauren F. Winner, an Episcopal priest, historian, and scholar of religion who teaches at Duke Divinity School. Lauren is the author of the book “The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin.” In her work and in this conversation, Winner challenges the assumption that the church possesses a set of immaculate practices that will definitionally train Christians in virtue. She reflects on examples of history where practice failed to produce virtue and what should be learned as the Church pursues a more faithful future.
Resources:
Get to know Rev. Dr. Lauren Winner:
https://divinity.duke.edu/faculty/lauren-winner
Check out Rev. Dr. Winner’s books on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Lauren-F.-Winner/e/B001K892MS%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Full Transcript:
Eddie Rester 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight podcast. Today we're here with Lauren Winner, who is Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School. She wrote a book a couple years ago entitled "The Dangers of Christian Practice." And it's a very interesting conversation about what happens when the church does damage.
Eddie Rester 0:28
When it does damage sometimes through the things that help define our lives as Christians. It's just a marvelous conversation about how often those things that when people talk about the things that Christians do--prayer and worship, and Eucharist, or Holy Communion, fasting, and those things--instead of bringing us closer to Christ and making us more and more like Christ, actually deform us. And she offers a perspective that I don't think I've ever talked about, because typically when I, as a pastor say, "You need to go read Scripture. You need to pray. Y ou need to do these thing," it's to open people's lives to Christ. And yet, there are times and great examples, and she writes about them and talks about them, where actually sometimes those things lead us into more brokenness instead of into healing.
Chris McAlilly 1:19
I think I, as I was kind of reflecting on her work, I was reminded of that 2015 film "Spotlight" that talks about the Boston Globe's long investigative reporting on on the particular kinds of sex scandal that were happening in the Catholic Church, in the Boston diocese. And I think what's interesting to me is that she kind of takes a similar tack. She wants to kind of go and probe and look in this investigative historical mode of things that have happened, and then to understand the particular ways in which things went wrong, so that there's a kind of lens of attentiveness moving forward, and an awareness. The thing I think that she doesn't do, though, is to go in and say, "Christians have got it wrong. And things have been damaged. And so now it's time to kind of hang it up."
Eddie Rester 2:16
She burned it all down. No, she didn't say that. I think Instead, she offers us a lens to say, okay, here's how we understand that and what we do with that. and I think sometimes that's what's missing. And she talks early on about, either we act like everything is okay, or everything's terrible, when the reality is, at the same time, things are okay and terrible. And how do we live in that moment? I think...
Chris McAlilly 2:38
It's human.
Eddie Rester 2:39
It's human.
Chris McAlilly 2:39
Ultimately, being human means that we're all the best and the worst parts of humanity. All of these things find their way into the church and into the church's practices, and...
Eddie Rester 2:51
We're saints and sinners.
Chris McAlilly 2:54
Yeah, and I think that, what we're going to try to do with this conversation is set up a series. We're going to be talking not just about this. This hopefully will lead us into a conversation that we're calling Bad Religion, about ways in which the church and religious communities have gotten it wrong through time, and maybe, you know, I guess our hope would be that it might give you a different way, a different lens, or a different way into the conversation.
Eddie Rester 3:20
Because so many people have experienced that. They have seen the damage at times that Christians can cause. In fact, you talked about the movie "Spotlight," I mean, that highlighted a long-running problem within the life of the church that did incredible damage to families and individuals for generations. And so if that's you, these conversations may be helpful, maybe to help you see, honestly, the church but also not just the damage, but maybe the hope inside the church as well.
Chris McAlilly 3:54
I mean, I think, you know, I think listening to the conversation, you just become very aware of all the ways in which the church isn't perfect. Our church is not perfect. We're not perfect pastors. We're not perfect people. And there's damage that happens potentially, just like that. So.
Eddie Rester 4:11
Just like Cody dropping his phone, right here in the middle of the intro.
Chris McAlilly 4:15
Yeah, it you know, Cody does damage to the audio quality of the podcast. Unintentionally.
Eddie Rester 4:21
Unintentionally.
Chris McAlilly 4:21
But characteristically, I will say. And so anyway, we hope you enjoy the podcast. And we...
Eddie Rester 4:28
Make sure you like, share, subscribe, all those things.
Chris McAlilly 4:33
Absolutely. We're grateful that you're with us today.
Chris McAlilly 4:36
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 4:43
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 4:46
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 4:53
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 5:05
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 5:21
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 5:23
Again, we're here today with Lauren Winner. Thank you for being with us today, Lauren.
Lauren Winner 5:28
I'm very happy to be here with you.
Eddie Rester 5:30
Yeah, we've actually been trying to get this conversation going for a month or so.
Chris McAlilly 5:35
It sounds like you're still trying to get it going. [LAUGHTER] I'm sorry.
Eddie Rester 5:39
Man.
Chris McAlilly 5:40
I'm so sorry. [LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester 5:41
Chris recently had a birthday so he feels like he gets a free pass or something. Well, we're gonna start, and you bring a really unique perspective to the conversation about faith and practice. Your father was Jewish, your mom a nonpracticing Baptist. So, as we started, how did you make your way into the Christian faith? How did that happen for you?
Lauren Winner 6:04
So I did not have a sort of dateable conversion moment. I grew up... So my mother was a lapsed Baptist and my father is a is a reformed Jew. But I grew up very much identifying as Jewish and very engaged with Jewish practice. The synagogue that I was a member of as a middle school and high school student is the institution that I still think of as sort of the most robust, internally diverse, rich, religious community that I've ever been part of. So it was actually a wonderful community, and I learned a lot of really formative lessons about life with God and life in community.
Lauren Winner 6:47
And then I went off to college and sort of intellectually fell in love with the study of American history, the study of the history of American religion, the study of history of the American South. And I just think you can't study the history of the American South without pretty deeply diving into the history of Christianity. So I had this intellectual attraction to Christianity before I had any other attraction, before I had any thought that I, myself, might want to go to church or become acquainted with life as a worshipping Christian.
Lauren Winner 7:24
So there were some things that happened in college. There was a dream I had that I understood to be a dream about Jesus, there was a novel I read that really gave me a vision for life and Christian community that had a deep effect on me. So those things started getting my more holistic attention to Christianity, as opposed to just my nerd self attracted to the subject matter. And then I moved to England when I was 20 to start grad school, and I started going to church at a little Anglican Cambridge college chapel there, and I was baptized there.
Lauren Winner 8:03
So it's not, in some ways, it's not a very narratively satisfying story, because there isn't this sort of single, single "aha" moment. And I have a pretty high view of baptism. So I do think that it's a truthful statement that I became a Christian at my baptism. But I think I've sort of continued to becoming a Christian. And I hope--I'm 44--I hope if life is long, that I continue continuing to become a Christian. So it's not I know, I know, Christianity has pretty well established kind of narrative shapes that we often give to conversion stories. And I respect those, but I think my own conversion, aside from my baptismal date, I don't, it doesn't have like a narrative turning point, if that makes sense.
Eddie Rester 8:54
Yeah. Well, I think that's the story of maybe a lot of folks that, I mean, it's... People advertise the big moment, but I think it's much like you've described, just kind of this journey: journey of faith, journey into faith, even.
Chris McAlilly 9:11
I think another thing that I hear in your work, and particularly in a book that you wrote a couple of years ago that we want to have a conversation about today, is kind of the kind of the other side of that narrative there. There's the narrative that people tell, converting to faith or coming to Christ or becoming baptized or becoming part of Christian fellowship in Christian community. Being a pastor in in Mississippi in the American South, I've heard a lot of stories of friends who grew up in the church and have found their way in the opposite direction, often, oftentimes, because they've experienced some form of Christian community that was damaging or hurtful to them. And I know you're very attuned to that dimension of Christian community. I wonder if you could just maybe talk a little bit about where that awareness began for you. I could tell stories for myself as well. But I wonder kind of how you got interested in the dangers of Christian practice and the damage of Christian community at times?
Lauren Winner 10:16
Well, I think my answer reflects that I've been pretty lucky in my own life. So personally, I haven't had perfect experiences in Christian community, and they're, you know, I could tell you something outside of times that a pastor or a fellow congregational member said something to me that was awful, and really unsettling. But in the main, I have had a pretty seamless experience in Christian community. But I did study history for a long time. That graduate study I was doing in England, and that I then came back to the US to continue and complete was graduate study in history and against judging the history of the church in the United States, principally.
Lauren Winner 11:09
And I don't think that you can study church history honestly without beginning to see pretty quickly that there are many moments where the church does terrible things. So I did have a moment when I was maybe 23, and so I was maybe two or three years after I was baptized, and I was reading a book that became very important for me, a book called "Gentile Tales" by a medieval historian named Miri Rubin. And it was a historical study of the ways that anti-Jewish polemic and anti-Jewish discourse got intertwined with theory and practice of the Eucharist in the Middle Ages that led to a lot of Christian, anti-Jewish violence to Christians, murdering Jews and Christians burning down Jewish buildings. And I read this book and was just stunned.
Lauren Winner 12:12
I mean, I had known that in some generic and abstract away, there was a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment in the church. But I didn't actually know very much about it to be frank. And I certainly didn't know any of this history of the ways that anti-Judaism was sort of placed alongside the practice of the Eucharist, the practice of the Lord's Supper. And the way that that led to some very particular incidences of pogroms and murder of Jews and destruction of Jewish communities.
Lauren Winner 12:47
So I read that and was, I mean, like, sick to my stomach, like, really had this feeling of what have I done? Like, how can I have grown up Jewish, loved Judaism, received so many riches from Jewish community, how can I have sort of unknowingly joined this other community that has done these particularly violent, horrible things in the name of the Eucharist to Jews? So that was really the beginning for me of a an intellectual journey and a spiritual journey and a theological journey to try to know what to think about and how to make sense of what I actually now think is a Christian inevitability, which is that, of course, the church is not perfect. Of course, the church does all kinds of violence. Of course, the church does all kinds of harms. That's not all there is to say about the church. The church is also a blessed, transfigured community that is the body of Christ on earth.
Lauren Winner 14:01
So figuring out, figuring out how to live with that complexity is probably a lifelong task for Christians and for the church. And I do think... I just remembered something, but I'll pause right here that I'm starting to ramble. But I do think that there is a tendency for Christians to sort of go to one extreme or the other. Like, either the Church must be perfect and we can sort of turn a blind eye to its many manifold imperfections. Or the church is horrible, and because it's horrible, because it does these horrible things, then it's hypocrisy and I don't want to be a part of it. And it seems to me that neither of those is the right place to hang.
Chris McAlilly 14:47
In reading about your experience, studying the history of Eucharistic practices and the way in which they were harmful and led to violence against against Jews, I had a kind of a corollary, in my own, kind of coming up in Mississippi, grew up, I was a son of a pastor, and grandson of United Methodist pastors. When I moved to Nashville, I met a whole host of folks who had been involved in the Civil Rights movement in Nashville, and then also started reading about the history of race in Mississippi really, for the first time, and came to a realization that at Galloway United Methodist Church in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, right across from the Capitol, there were, you know, groups of white and Black students from Tougaloo, led by Ed King, who came Sunday after Sunday, you know, on Communion Sundays to be received to the table, and the doors were barred to them.
Chris McAlilly 15:49
And of course, like that particular church has been through its own kind of journey of dealing with that part of its history. But for me, it was a kind of a similar, kind of jarring experience of the church had been a place of nourishment and love and grace for me growing up. And then now I'm... It was very disorienting in my 20s to come to a recognition that the church had also been--the one that I had loved and had formed me--had also done these things that had been de-formative and harmful to others.
Eddie Rester 16:23
And I think what you're kind of pointing us to is more nuance in the conversation, that we don't have to veer one way or the other. We can hold with honesty the brokenness of the church, be honest about it, but also begin to sense that there's still something more that we're called to in something more that we're drawn to as well.
Chris McAlilly 16:42
I think it's also... I think it's interesting that you engage the question as a historian, and you're coming at it, you're looking at particular historical examples of what the church has been or what the church has done. Can you just talk about that? What does it mean for you to look back at history? And then how do you think about that in relation to what's happening today?
Lauren Winner 17:06
Well, I don't actually often identify any longer as a historian. I feel in awe of people who are sort of practicing historians day-in and day-out. I have a great love of reading history and doing historical research, but sort of the particulars of my career path have taken me away from that. So I don't actually feel like I get to do it very often. And I don't think I'm great at it, but I love benefiting from the great historical work that others have done. But I do think that I was attracted to the study of history, in part, because it means that I don't actually have to talk to living people very often, and I don't actually have to always do the hard work. Of course, there are many connections to be drawn between the past and the present and the future. But I don't always have to do the hard work, I can just retreat to thinking about, you know, the 18th century or the 15th century.
Lauren Winner 18:10
I do think that historical study does give people some skills that are helpful and thinking about the present, skills about discriminating among and between different kinds of evidence, for example, and sort of when do you look at trees and when do you look at a forest? And I do think that, as a Christian, and as an Episcopal priest, so serving a very specific particular Christian community, a particular local church, I do think that it's incumbent upon Christians who are engaged in particular Christian communities, to learn the history of their community, and to ask to ask the Holy Spirit, frankly, to help them see the ways that that history can be brought into the present, can sort of fund and nourish directions of ministry in the present.
Lauren Winner 19:13
So I think maybe this is true of any institution that one is part of. I think some version of this is probably true if one is part of a university or a garden club or some other institution with the history. But particularly if the institution that one is part of is the church. You know, that being part of an institution means you have a past, you have a history, and that history blesses you in particular ways. Maybe some person 200 years ago gave you gave the institution land and a building and so you have this land and this building that is a gift from the past.
Lauren Winner 19:49
But maybe it also comes with burdens. It inevitably also comes with burdens, right? Maybe the person who gave you that land and that building, earned his money in sinful and unscrupulous way through the slave trade or through exploitation of free labor, etc. So right there, right there in the picture of, like, a church with a building and some land that has been given, was given 150, 200 years ago, 75 years ago, you've got right there, the blessings of history and the burdens of history. And I think Christians in particular have an obligation to learn that history and to prayerfully ask, okay, now what? What is the present day ministry of this group of people in this place? How can I best respond? Not only to the history, there are other things to respond to, too. But how can I respond to this particular history that we have?
Eddie Rester 20:46
Right. It's that conversation of how do we own what is good, but also own, maybe what is broken or sinful or not what God calls us to be? And I think one of the reasons I like your book, "The Dangers of Christian Practices," is that you bring that into something that we are taught, from the time that we come into the church, that we are confirmed, whenever we preach sermons about what do you do to be a good faithful Christian. Well, there are these practices that you take on that help shape you and make you. And you make the arguments that sometimes the brokenness of our lives and our world inhabits those practices that are made, that were given to draw us close to God. So I want to talk about that. But before we get that, let's cover something more basic. When you talk about Christian practices, what are you talking about? What do you put in that category?
Lauren Winner 21:47
Well, I could give you, like, a fancy academic definition. There's this definition from Alasdair MacIntyre, that people often quote, but I don't, I would have to look it up to give you that definition.
Eddie Rester 21:58
People can Google that. Yeah.
Lauren Winner 21:59
Exactly. So I've been very influenced and have been influenced for sort of the 20, 25 years that I've been a Christian by conversation, I think maybe, particularly among Protestant Christians, so not so much from Catholics, not so much from Eastern Orthodox, but pretty much in all other Christian communities that have said, you know, we, you know, as you just said we're taught from the earliest days that there are things we are supposed to do as a Christian, to be a good Christian. But of course, a lot of people aren't taught that from the earliest days. They are taught there are things we're supposed to believe. And if we believe these things, that's really where your Christian identity lies, in what you believe or in what kind of emotional experience you've had with Jesus.
Lauren Winner 22:47
Now, beliefs and emotional experiences are also important. But I've been very influenced by a lot of Christian writers and thinkers, probably going back in sort of recent times to Richard Foster--"Celebration of Discipline" might be a book that some folks have read--that have said, like, no, exactly, you do also do some things. There are a constituent of things you do as a member of this community. So if you're a member of a soccer team, it's not just that you believe that soccer is great. You also, you know... I don't actually know anything about soccer. Make goals, kick, run, play soccer, right? If you're a member of a cooking club, your conception of identity is not just about believing that cooking is a good thing, but is actually the practices of reading cookbooks and chopping, making a brew and so forth.
Lauren Winner 23:51
So I very much think that the habits of Christian doing are a big part of what constitutes us as Christians. And in fact, in my own life, I will say, my belief kind of comes and goes to be honest. If you wake me up in the middle of the night and give me a truth serum and ask me what I believe about the virgin birth, on any given day, you might get a different answer. My emotions, my affective orientation, changes and waxes and wanes. And we're talking in February, I actually had over Thanksgiving this, like, few days of just intensely felt intimacy with God, which I hadn't felt in like a couple of years and that lasted for a few days. And I thought, "Great! I'm being given this gift, and I'm just going to experience this feeling as long as I have it," and then it kind of faded. I loved it. It was delicious. I hope it comes back. It was something. But you know, the feelings wax and wane. Habits and practices also wax and wane. I'd be lying through my teeth if I told you that I, you know, have quiet time with the Bible every blessed morning or say morning prayer every blessed morning.
Lauren Winner 25:19
But maybe if we think of those three things as things we layer on top of one another, you know, there's your belief cloth, your effect or feeling cloth, your practices cloth. Maybe it's a good year in the Christian life if one of those, it always seems to be firing.
Eddie Rester 25:39
That's a good way to think about it. Yeah.
Lauren Winner 25:41
So super mixed metaphor. Sheets don't fire, I think, but you see what I'm getting at. So I've been thinking a lot about this during COVID, to be honest, because I think one can think about individual practices that you might do as a Christian, but then they're also what are the practices we do as a community of faith. And, you know, my church where I am the pastor, we have had three in-person services since March. And it is February. So in almost a year, we have gathered together for corporate worship three times. Well, there are reasons for that. But corporate worship is a constituent of, arguably the constituent, of practice. Like that's how you know you're a soccer team if you actually get together and play soccer. So you know you're a church if you actually get together, preferably on the Lord's day, and worship our Lord together. We haven't been doing it. So I've been thinking a lot about this question of, like, well, what are the practices that make the church the church? And what are the practices that make me a Christian, when I was just a woman in my house, Zooming my church services? And so we can talk more about COVID if y'all want to, but I think, you know, prayer, I would say Eucharist. I know that for not all Christians as Eucharistic constituent of practice, but I would name it as a constituent of practice.
Eddie Rester 27:14
And for folks who may not be Episcopalian or even Methodist, Eucharist is the Lord's Supper or Communion. It goes by multiple names for folks.
Lauren Winner 27:25
Right.
Eddie Rester 27:26
Yeah.
Lauren Winner 27:26
My favorite name, one we don't use anymore much, is viaticum. That was the name that they used to give... So, viaticum, like you hear the word "via" or "way" in that, so like, it's journeying language, going on the way or viaticum. So the viaticum was the term they used to give to the Lord's Supper that you would receive on your deathbed, as you're, like, accompany them for the way that you are about to traverse, the journey you're about to go on. That's my favorite name, but no one knows what I'm talking about.
Eddie Rester 28:02
I've learned something today. I'm writing that down to do more research on that one. So, you were saying prayer, the Eucharist, worship is listed in some of the practices before I interrupted you.
Lauren Winner 28:13
I think, for some people. And then I think, you know, there are lots of practices that some Christians do and work on two different ones, as individuals and as communities. Service, you know, what the Catholics call corporal works of mercy, so embodied acts of service, whether that's giving away food at a food pantry, or whether that's, I mean, I think taking a casserole to your friend who's had surgery is an embodied act of service. Concrete acts of pursuing justice in the world I think can very appropriately be understood. Those are obviously things that non-Christians can also do, whereas non-Christians aren't going to take the Eucharist. So some of these practices are places of overlap, and we might approach them as Christians, but I don't think we would say that prayer or, you know, protest is only Christian.
Lauren Winner 29:06
Silence, intentional keeping of silence. Singining. And we can keep going all day. But I think the interesting diagnostic question is, you know, if you identify as a Christian or if you are part of a Christian community, or if you have been part of a Christian community, and no longer are, do you ask, again, let's go back to the soccer team. So the way you know a soccer team is a soccer team is that it gets to the guy and plays soccer. What are the practices that help mark you as a Christian, that sort of make you into the Christian that you are? What are the practices of your Christian community that you may have been a part of or currently are part of?
Chris McAlilly 29:55
Yeah, I think that in the book "The Dangers of Christian Practices," one of the things that I think is interesting is that you describe practices, but then you describe them both as very human--they are things that human beings do--they're also gifts from God, that have been given to us to foster in us a certain kind of life or holiness or goodness. And then, but the place where you put the attention is on the way in which these gifts from God damage us, or there's something... And I think it's really interesting the way in which you talk about this, because it's, you kind of make the distinction between it's not that God is not perfect, or the gifts as given is not a good gift. But it's that there's something about receiving these gifts, that in the process of the reception, we, because of the kind of creatures we are, tend to, I don't know, it's like we...
Eddie Rester 30:57
Bend them.
Chris McAlilly 30:58
Yeah, we bend them. We break them. We don't receive them well. It's like we've been given this precious, you know, bowl and we just drop the thing as soon as we have it in our hands. And I just wonder kind of, just talk a little bit about that the way in which, what do you mean when you say damage? What is it? Why is that an important category for you as you think about how Christians bungle practice?
Lauren Winner 31:25
Well, the word "damage" is important to me, because it's part of how I think about what Christians usually call the story of the fall. It's part of how I think about sin. So I think that's pretty elemental to Christianity, that the way a Christian looks at the world, if a Christian is looking as a Christian, and of course, the Christian can look at the world and not sort of have one's Christian eyeglasses on, but then if we're looking at the world as a Christian, we can notice, and indeed must notice, that the world is good and beautiful, and abundant, and excessive and gorgeous. And we simultaneously notice that the world is broken and damaged and full of pain and anguish and suffering and blight. "Blighted" is a good word, I think.
Eddie Rester 32:25
Yeah.
Lauren Winner 32:27
And Christianity accounts for that. That's what we're doing in Genesis 1, 2, 3. Right? Creation of the world is good, and yet some damage has come into the world and whether or not one, like, literally believes in Adam, Eve, and the tree or not, what Genesis 1, 2, 3 is getting at, in that famous story is exactly the world is beautiful and kissed and blessed and blighted. So I think that's true of everything in the world. I don't think there's a single thing in the world other than Jesus about whom that is not true. And it's true of people. Like I'm gorgeous and excessive and lovely and wonderful and completely broken and blighted and not as I would be if I were my perfected self. That's true of people. It's true of things. But I think it's also, even though it's a little more abstract to say this, I think it's also true of practices.
Eddie Rester 33:36
So, as we think about that, how does, let's just take prayer, and I know that you talked about intercessory prayer...
Lauren Winner 33:42
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 33:43
in your book is one of the three...
Lauren Winner 33:45
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 33:46
three things. How does that blindness impact the practice of prayer, which is often this beautiful thing that draws us to God that changes us, that changes others, as we pray together? But how does that blightedness damage prayer? What happens?
Lauren Winner 34:03
Yeah, that's a good question. So I think one could talk about all different kinds of prayer. But if we just want to focus in on what Christians call intercessory prayer, petitionary prayer, more broadly, so where we're petitioning God, we're asking God for something. So on the one hand, as you just said so eloquently, that's a beautiful thing to do. It's an amazing, it's an amazing thing, that God has created us such that we are capable of offering some communication to God. That is itself amazing. And the really beautiful part of petitionary prayer is not sort of, in my mind, it's not like whether you get what you're asking for. Sometimes you do. It's that you are showing your desires to God. And as I think we all know from our intimate human relationships, whether that's a close friendship or a parent-child relationship or a friendship with a spouse or a beloved, that there is real powerful intimacy in just showing what you want to someone, even if the person already knows what you want, right.
Lauren Winner 35:17
Your best friend reveals to you after several weeks of beating around the bush, that she has a huge crush on someone. And you, of course, knew that already. It was totally, blindingly obvious to you that your best friend had this crush. Nonetheless, the friend's choice to reveal her desire is itself productive intimacy, in itself it draws you and the friend closer to one another. So that's like a main thing about petitionary prayer. When I actually, even though of course, God already knows what I want, when I unclench enough to show God what I want, that can yield some powerful intimacy between me and God. And it's almost always, potentially, inevitably, maybe damaged because most-- maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, let me not say most--much of what I want is probably the wrong thing to want.
Lauren Winner 36:15
So the example that I give in the book is of slave-owning women in the South in the 1850s, pious women, deep Christian women, petitioning God to make their slaves obey them, and to make their slaves stop. Their favorite word was stop being impudent. Stop resisting them. Stop acting like human beings. So that's the wrong thing to want.
Chris McAlilly 36:50
Yeah, and it seems like it's a way in which our desires at times are misshapen, or they are curved in on themselves or culturally bound in ways that we may or may not be aware of.
Lauren Winner 37:04
Of course, yeah.
Chris McAlilly 37:05
Or we get entangled in certain economic or social or political entanglements that deform, you know, what otherwise would be pure practice. I mean, I think that as I read your book, and think about it, in light of my work as a pastor, my desire to follow Christ in my own life, I think, what I gain from those historical examples is a kind of attentiveness. Or I guess, you know, it's not as if, in coming to an awareness of these dimensions of Christian practice, it will be possible to avoid them in every case. I mean, I think that's part of part of what I hear you saying is that part of what it means to be human, part of it, what it means to be this kind of creature, receiving these kinds of gifts from God is that at times, inevitably, we're just not going to handle those things well. We're going to damage one another in the process. And yet, there are things that we can do. I mean, one is... What I find interesting as well, is that you kind of lay out the diagnosis and the takeaway, is not, okay, like...
Eddie Rester 38:28
Stop praying.
Chris McAlilly 38:29
You stop praying. Stop taking the Eucharist. Like, let's wipe our hands.
Lauren Winner 38:33
Well, we would have to stop doing everything. There would be nothing, you know. There's no pure place to stand. There's no pure group to be part of. There's nothing to do that isn't touched by this damage. So. So just stopping would be perhaps an unhelpful prescription. I find it useful... Let me say I think you're exactly right, that things will inevitably go badly some of the time. But, and, in addition to the recognition that things will inevitably go badly some of the time and that some of the--you know, this is what that powers and principalities language gets out so well--some of that going wrong actually is beyond our control.
Lauren Winner 39:21
Nonetheless, that's why I use the language in the book of characteristic damage, so that sometimes things go wrong in predictable ways, in ways that are characteristic. So we can all ask that about ourselves, right? We are inclined to basically certain bad habits and not other bad habits as individuals. There are people out there who are in real danger of exercising too much. I am not one of them. [LAUGHTER] It would be very surprising if I suddenly became a person who was exercising way too much, but I have that, and then I think exercising way too much actually is a deformation, not a bad thing. There are deformations that are characteristic of me, perhaps exercising too little is a deformation that is characteristic of me. And I can know that about myself. And knowing about it is not, like, a fix, you know, just knowing about it doesn't fix the thing. But I can be on the lookout, this analogy is going to break down pretty soon, but you know, I can be on the lookout for my own propensity is to go wrong in particular ways.
Lauren Winner 40:44
And I think we can look at cultural forms and religious forms in much the same way. So it's just is characteristic of petitionary prayer that we're gonna sometimes ask for the wrong thing. That's part of what petitionary prayer is about. So we shouldn't be surprised when it goes wrong like that. So knowing that, knowing that there are characteristic damages, characteristic ways that things go wrong, you can be on the lookout for them, which may mean you can do them a little less. If you're on the lookout for it, you might be able to notice in advance that the bad thing is coming down the pike, and you may be able to change course. Or you may be able to notice more quickly that you have done the bad thing, the characteristic bad thing, and then repent of it, or lament the fact that you keep screwing up in the same way over and over again.
Lauren Winner 41:42
So if my little local church has a long-standing history toward, say, benefiting from structural racism, because we're a predominantly white Episcopal Church in the South, if that is characteristic of predominantly white Episcopal churches in the South to benefit from structural racism, well, knowing that doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to stop, stop. But it does mean that we can maybe bring that lens to bear when we're thinking about things or discussing things or making choices. And then if we bring that lens to bear, because we know it's characteristic of us, then maybe occasionally we'll be able to avert some of the problem. And maybe we'll be able to notice more readily when we didn't avert it. And then maybe we might be able to try to confess our particular sin or try to do some repair work.
Lauren Winner 42:41
So I don't think knowing your characteristic flaws is a fix-all. But it can help. I mean, Christianity is characteristically anti-Jewish. There is a lot of anti-Judaism woven into the fabric of Christianity from the get go. Knowing that doesn't make it go away. It does mean that we can be on the lookout for it, though, and then respond if we notice it.
Eddie Rester 43:12
Yeah, I think that one of the words that you used was repent. And I think one of the gifts that we don't avail ourselves of enough, and I speak to myself on this, is just the idea of repenting, turning, admitting, admitting the truth about myself. And to go back to your example about prayer, admitting maybe on the front end as we pray to repent on the front end, "God, I know that often when I pray, I'm going to tie this up in my politics, my wants, my needs, my view of the world." It maybe allows us to enter into that practice more honestly.
Chris McAlilly 43:55
I think that limit being the other side of that. That there are times where you're repentant and it may be something that's so far beyond your capacity to do any repair that, but there needs to be some response. And that response can be, in that case, lament.
Eddie Rester 44:17
I know we've got.
Lauren Winner 44:18
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 44:18
Go ahead. I'm sorry.
Lauren Winner 44:19
No, no. You go ahea.
Eddie Rester 44:20
I was just gonna say, I know we've got a few more minutes. And we've been in this season, you addressed it earlier, this COVID season where some of the practices that have really defined the church, like gathered worship, communion, corporate prayer, those things have been scattered and put on zoom and all those things. I wonder if you've done much thinking of how this conversation has applied over the last many months of the pandemic, and what practices maybe have been brought forward and maybe helped by some of the time apart, but what other practices have you seen us kind of maybe settle into the least common denominator portion of it or settle for something that is deformed or blighted?
Lauren Winner 45:08
Mm hmm. Well, something that I've heard a lot of Christians say about church life during COVID. And I've said it myself, and this is maybe this is the flip side of being on the lookout for damage. That there are specific goods, specific good things that have come for churches out of the COVID situation that never could have come otherwise. And I'll give you one tiny example of my own little local church. So we have been gathering, those who want, it's usually only five or six people, gathering for end of day prayers on Wednesdays at 8:30 on Zoom. By "gather," I mean Zoom.
Lauren Winner 46:00
So this is a particular prayer service in the Episcopal church called compline, which is a word that comes from the same Latin word as the word "complete." So they are the prayers that you say at the completion of your day, as you are segueing into tonight. It's a really lovely service of prayers. So we've been, like, hopping on Zoom at 8:30 on Wednesdays, and it's mostly a handful of women in their 70s and me and then one friend of mine in another state whose father died of COVID on a Wednesday morning, and I invited her to our Wednesday night prayer. She's been hopping on even though she lives in another time zone.
Lauren Winner 46:45
And one of the older women who comes to this compline service was widowed a year ago, so right before COVID began her husband for over 50 years died. She's often literally sitting in her four poster bed saying these nighttime prayers. Now I don't want to sentimentalize this, I can already hear my tone of voice that I'm sentimentalizing it. But this is, it's a wonderful thing. We never would have done this. And I mean, we just weren't gonna like go to church at 8:30. In fact, you can't actually be in your four poster bed and be at church simultaneously. So it just literally wouldn't have happened had it not been for COVID.
Lauren Winner 47:25
Now, that's, it's a small thing. But I do think there have been small things and I will say, as an Episcopalian part of what I like about this particular good small thing is that it's a turning back to the resources of our particular tradition. This is a particular prayer service that maybe not all Christian traditions have immediate access to, (but if anyone would like a compline service, email me, and I'll be happy to send you one.) But so it's like a particular re-acquaintance with some of the riches of our particular tradition.
Lauren Winner 48:02
You know, on the other hand, just to say with the example of my same church, we're having Sunday worship twice a month on Zoom, we don't even have Zoom Sunday worship every Sunday. So that's a radical diminution. Like, obviously, people can go do something else, they can Zoom onto the National Cathedral or your church or some other church on, you know, on off Sundays. But, like, that's a pretty sizable, significant thing for a worshiping community to just actually not gather at all on every other Sunday. That's a real step away from a core practice. So there's a both-and, which there just always is, as a Christian. There's always going to be a both-and.
Chris McAlilly 48:53
Yeah, I think that, I think part of my takeaway from this conversation, and then also from the this thrust of your work is that it's important to hold these things together, that there can be good gifts that are given by God, gifts that we receive just by being people in the world and through creation are also specific gifts they're given for Christian communities, and those things can go terribly wrong and terribly bad. When that happens, you don't have to never do those plans again. Yeah, like just kind of hang it up and say, we're never going to do that again. But what we can do is we can lament that fact that there's been this real deep shift in the pattern of life and it really is taking something away from us, or there's this core practice of the church that's been deformed in a particular kind of way that needs to be, you know, confessed and lamented and still, you know, that doesn't mean that we need to give up on it. We can reengage it. In fact, in the case of compline, perhaps you go looking into the memory of the tradition to find new resources that can be brought forward in creative and nourishing and life giving ways. That's that's also a possibility.
Lauren Winner 50:11
Yeah, I do want to add to this sort of confess and lament piece, because I think we don't always say it. You know, we're sort of taking it for granted. One cannot always do reparative work. Sometimes you do some damage. And there's no reparative work you can think up to do and there's no reparative work that any trusted, wise person in your life can think of for you to do. But often, often, there is some reparative work you can do. And reparative work is complicated. It sometimes has unintended consequences. The more complicated it is, the more likely it is to have unintended consequences.
Lauren Winner 50:46
So I don't mean to be blase about reparative work, but I do think that part of what we are to ask ourselves and our communities when we are in the midst of noticing that something has gone badly wrong, and we are confessing, you know... Part of like part of a traditional confession in the Catholic Church, if you go confess to God in the company of a priest one-on-one is the priest is very likely to ask you about whatever you're confessing about. Is there some way that you can make restitution to whoever you've wronged? And sometimes the answer is no. But it's a question that I think does need to be asked, heard, wrestled with. And if the answer is yes, then you know, then we try to go do that thing. That seems to me as part of the kind of choreography that follows when you notice that something has gone off course, gone wrong.
Eddie Rester 51:47
Yeah. Just kind of a dance of the faith, how you move and adjust rather than just stay the course because it is the course.
Lauren Winner 51:57
Right.
Eddie Rester 51:57
Dr. Winner, thank you so much for your time. For those who are listening, the book is "The Dangers," "The Danger of Christian Practice." I'm not looking at the title right now. She has several other books you may want to check out as well. "Girl Meets God," "Mudhouse Sabbath." So go, Google her, check her out. We just thank you for your time and your witness today.
Lauren Winner 52:21
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I loved the conversation.
Eddie Rester 52:24
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 52:28
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Eddie Rester 52:40
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]