705: Minnesota, Civil Rights, & Contagious Courage with Justin Giboney

Welcome to the Holy Post. The country is on edge after another protester was killed by ICE officials in Minneapolis. Today, Phil, Caitlin, and I look at how different Christian journalists and media outlets are covering or not covering the story, and what the protests against ICE share in common with the civil rights movement, but how they're also different. Speaking of the civil rights era, Justin Giboney is back to discuss his new book, Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around. He believes too much of the American church and our politics have been captivated by the culture war. And learning from the example of the black church, which rejected the conservative versus progressive binary, can help lead us out of it. Also this week, the cows are coming for us. Before we jump into the episode, I've got some good news. The World Born in You, Letters to a New Generation of American Christians, is my latest book. and it's written as a series of letters to my young adult kids about the things that have shaped my faith and advice about what it means to follow Christ in today's diverse, divided culture. I wrote the book as a serial, releasing one chapter at a time, but I'm happy to report that it's finally done. Every chapter is now available both in digital and audio formats exclusively for Holy Post Plus subscribers. I'm super grateful for all the feedback and encouragement that the Holy Post Media community has given me throughout the writing process, and I'm glad that so many of you have found the book helpful. If you'd like to read it too, you'll want to sign up for Holy Post Plus and use the promo code BOOK for a 20% discount. Of course, you won't just get The World Born in You, but everything that we produce at Holy Post Plus, including new content five days a week and the archives loaded with incredible resources, exclusive podcasts and shows, behind-the-scenes videos, and a whole lot more. Plus, your subscription to Holy Post Plus helps us make more orthodox pro-neighbor Christian content. So go to holypost.com and use the promo code BOOK for 20% off your Holy Post Plus subscription today. Here is episode 705. Hey there, welcome back to the Holy Post Podcast. I'm Phil Vischer. I'm here with two other people that go by the names of Caitlin Chess. Hi, Caitlin. Hi, Phil. And what's your name, sir? What's my name? What's your name, sir? Are you asking for my papers? What's your name, sir? Yeah. Oh, no. Sky Jatani. Oh, boy. It's such a fun. It's been such a fun week. It's been such a fun month. It's been such a fun 2026 so far. Where have you been lately? What have you been doing, Caitlin Chess? Everyone wants to know since there's a big event coming up this fall. Oh, yeah. What have you been up to? I got to tell you, there's some weird cognitive dissonance sometimes between everything horrible happening in our world. And then I'm like going to wedding venues and like trying on wedding dress. Because the future looks bright. In that one particular way, it does. That's yeah. Yeah. So that is I'm doing a lot of that right now. Any announcements on the dress pursuit? Announcements? No. No. Okay. I will say that I have a fantastic, I have an amazing picture of my father who he came to one of the appointments with us. And I dragged him because I was like, I want you. My goal had been have him pick out a ridiculous dress, like set him loose in the store and see what he comes up with. And we'll all laugh at how ridiculous that is. He actually picked. Did he know you brought him along just to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I told him that. And then he, I mean, I wanted him to come as well. But like, I just also thought it'd be funny if he picked out a dress and he picked out a really beautiful dress. He also, we have a really amazing picture of him trying. He's like clearly emotional. It was like the first dress that he had seen me in. He was kind of emotional. and he's trying to hide it. And so I got a picture of him where he just looks like he's trying to like, he's thumbs upping the dress. Trying so hard to keep together. But yeah, it was fun. Is he okay with me referring to something he did as sweet? Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. Because he's a warrior. He can be very sweet. He's a warrior. He's got the warrior mentality. I'm, I'm, no comment. Okay. Now it's time for the theme song. What's the news that you like the most? Who's your favorite podcast host? If it's breakfast, get your toast It's Skyfield, Caitlin, and the Holy Post Skyfield, Caitlin, and the Holy Post And sometimes other people This episode is sponsored by Blueland This holiday season, while you're filling up on Christmas cookies it would be nice to know you aren't also filling up on microplastics. That's why we've made the switch to Blueland cleaning products. Blueland products meet the highest standard of clean. They're effective, yet gentle on people and the planet. In fact, Blueland was named an EPA Safer Choice Partner of the Year. From cleaning sprays and toilet bowl cleaner to dishwasher and laundry detergent tablets, Blueland's formulas are 100% microplastic free, made with certified clean ingredients free from chlorine bleach and harsh chemicals. that are safe to use around my grandkids. You'll love not having to choose between the safe option and what actually gets your home clean. 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That's drinkag1.com slash holypost drinkag1.com slash holypost And thanks to AG1 for sponsoring this episode We certainly wouldn't want to say he doesn't have the warrior mentality I can't say anything right now I will not speak either to I can't affirm or deny That's what I was looking for, but you beat me to it because you're so quick Cow astonishes scientists with rare use of tools. Tools? What? Veronica the cow reported an Austrian cow. They're the smartest cows, don't you think? Austrian cows, because they're so cultured. They go to the opera. They read literature. Austrian cow named Veronica has scientists rethinking what cattle are capable of. Is this going to make me feel guilty about eating meat? Veronica was found to use tools with impressive skill. Veronica, a cow living in a mountain village in the Austrian countryside, has spent years perfecting the art of scratching herself using sticks, rakes, and brooms. See, yeah, that doesn't sound very impressive anymore. Like, does she just move up against them when they're on the wall? No, she picks up a, they've given her a broom now, and she picks it up with her mouth and uses it to scratch her back. And then she scratches herself all over with the end of her broom. and she uses the different ends of the broom depending on where she's scratching and whether she wants a brushy brushy or a pokey pokey. Okay. Wow, good for her. You know, I don't think you're really appreciating how big this is. You're right. A cow is using a tool. A cow is using a tool. Veronica. Veronica the cow is using a tool. Yeah. Where is Veronica again? Austria. Austria. Is she exceptionally bright for a cow, or is this normal behavior? Well, if you measure... Oh, whoa. Yeah, if you measure cow brightness, Caitlin is looking at a picture of Veronica. She's now playing a video of Veronica. I think I'm more impressed if it looks like it's... It's covered by the BBC, so it's serious. I mean, impressive. You know it's serious if the BBC... Yeah, okay. ...are talking about it. But here's my theory. The animal kingdom is starting to lose faith in us. So more species are realizing we're going to have to do this ourselves. It's kind of like NATO allies with America. Yeah, yeah. And cattle, you wouldn't expect leadership from cattle. They just don't seem to be clear leaders. But even they're saying, they do move in a herd. No, we've got to do something. Who can pick up a stick? and Veronica said, let me work on that for a few years. And she did. She's got it down. Yeah, she's got it very much down, scratching. She's picking up her broom. She's scratching her back with it. Oh, that's nice. Now what she's really training for is to be able to hold a rifle. Right. That's what no one realizes. So she can take over. Yes, because we thought it was the apes that were going to take over. Right, right, right. It's the cattle. It's the cows. It's the cattle. They're going to take over. It's going to be the bovines versus the primates. The bovines versus the primates. And the bovines have them on weight. I don't know. This is fine. This is good. I'm happy for Austria that they've got a world champion cow brusher. But the cows in India are really smart. Oh, what do they do? Tell me more. Well, first of all, they are generally regarded as sacred. That tells me something about humans, I feel. Don't think they did that. As a result, they tend to roam freely all over the place. And they figured out traffic patterns. They move with cows. They stop at red lights. They do all that kind of stuff. They're not dumb. Okay, so the Indian cows are learning our traffic patterns. Yes. Austrian cows are learning how to handle weapons very slowly. It's not a weapon. It's the beginning. That's how humans started. We started by poking each other with sticks. That's not wrong. And then sharpening the ends. That's what I think, though, they're going to have to collaborate with raccoons. Wait a minute. Because they need opposable thumbs. Cows have horns already. They don't need pokey sticks. They have them on their heads. Not the girl cows. Do they not have horns? I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know. Some cows do. Some cows don't. Right. But I think the picture we just saw of Veronica, I think she had horns. Hang on. Does Veronica have horns? Oh, yeah, she does. She definitely does. Big old horns. But her stick is so much longer than those horns. Right. And it's just a couple steps away from holding a gun. This is the kind of cutting-edge journalism we're doing here at the Holy Post. So there was another shooting over the weekend. It was a rather hard weekend for news in America. Alex Preddy, an ICU nurse in Minneapolis at a VA hospital, was killed by ICE agents. we're not going to like go into what happened who was at fault is you know it's not hard to figure it out by watching all the video but it was an ugly situation here's what i was curious about though because i'm sure you're all following the news as it is i was curious how christian journalists are reporting on the situation because there's a spectrum of christian journalists you would think that we would all see things similarly because we're all shaped by our commitment to christ and his teaching so she would think shouldn't we look at the world somewhat similarly anyway christianity today uh bonnie christian wrote a piece basically summarized it this way uh sorry that's my that's that's me that's me can you put out the do not disturb yeah i am but i I always forget. And then I'll forget that it's on and no one will be able to get a hold of me for the next 24 hours. Bonnie Christian wrote, the Trump administration should be able to execute on its immigration mandate without executing people like Alex Preddy in the streets. I reposted that on Twitter and had quite a few people take exception to the term execution, to viewing it as an execution. And I understand that. But if a guy is on his knees and you shoot him in the back at least three times and overall 10 times while he's on his knees, it's hard not to view it that way. And and Bonnie's point of view was, hey, you don't have to be brutal to execute justice. Justice. What's interesting is at least the polling I've seen, and obviously this predates the shooting this weekend, a majority of Americans agree with the Trump administration's policy to secure the southern border and to deport violent, undocumented immigrants. But at the same time, a majority of Americans also disagree with the Trump administration's management of ICE and what they're doing in various cities. So it's an interesting needle to thread where if if opponents to ICE come out too strongly against immigration enforcement, they're going to find themselves at odds with the majority of Americans. But if you come out too strongly in favor of ICE and these ridiculous tactics that they're using, which are unconstitutional and cruel, then you're erring on the other side. So it's just it's frustrating to me that our politics has lost all common sense. Yeah. Yeah. Religion News Service sent someone there. Jack Jenkins is reporting for Religion News Service from Minneapolis, and he's filed quite a few stories covering it. Now, Religion News Service isn't a Christian organization. It's just an organization that covers religion, all religion. Much of the staff is Christian. But they've taken a more – they've been reporting on the hundreds of clergy nationwide that traveled to Minneapolis to both protest and also to learn. They were taught how to resist ice, which I think is an interesting movement. There were more than 100 rabbis that flew into Minneapolis to learn how to resist ice. Most of the Christians there appeared to be mainline Christians. Didn't see a whole lot of evangelical representation, which is an interesting story in and of itself. We do not want to resist ice. Probably because of Romans 13, I'm going to say. That's why we don't believe in. I don't think that is exactly why. We don't believe in resisting. So quite a bit of coverage from religion news service. The National Catholic Reporter quoted a cardinal, Cardinal Tobin of New Jersey, saying, Pray, mourn, and say no to ICE funding. So pretty strong statements from the National Catholic Reporter. Also reported on the hundreds of clergy descending on Minneapolis. Sojourners Magazine, a more left-leaning evangelical journal, as of this morning, hadn't yet covered the pretty killing. Top stories were about the Rene Good killing, the cowardice of the Trump administration, and the false god being preached at the Pentagon. So that's Sojourn's take. And then I went to the Christian Post, which is the more conservative evangelical journal, to see how they were covering the pretty shooting. And the answer is they didn't mention it. Really? No. Still even now? Yes. We're recording this on Monday afternoon. Yes. Not mentioned. Wow. And I didn't see any stories about Renee Good either. The most recent story about terrible things going on in Minneapolis was about the protesters that invaded a church service a week ago on Sunday. Which was in response to the Renee Good shooting. In response to the Renee Good thing. So for the Christian Post, it was like the shootings never happened. Okay. Yeah. So that's wild to me. Is it, though? Going from, is it really just all about we don't want to displease our audience? So Sojourners is red meat for blue people, blue hats, and Christian Post is red meat for red hats. Is that really what it all boils down to? Or is there some theological distinction that explains, is it all politics? Is there some theology? No, it's also economics. It's not just politics. Almost all of many of these people would be upper middle class, lower middle class. What are you saying? Okay, go back to 2020, the election in 2020. Yes. Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden, and there was this massive uproar. Tons of people, Fox News audience people were angry and they switched over to start watching. I forget what it was. One America Network or one of those Newsmax, one of their more conservative channel. Fox News realized, oh, we told our audience something they did not want to hear and we are losing revenue. We're losing audience share because of it. And in the aftermath, they retracted calling Arizona. They fired the analyst who correctly called it for Joe Biden and they learned the lesson. and it then tainted the whole aftermath of the election, which led eventually to January 6th, that we are not going to report things our audience doesn't want to hear because we will lose audience, which means we lose revenue. And so on the flip side, there are certainly blue outlets that will really dominate news that makes Trump look terrible or the administration looks terrible. So do we think Sojourners is doing the same thing? I don't know. Just reporting the stories that their audience wants to hear reported? Are we doing the same thing? I think a lot of outlets that depend on audience aggregation for their revenue have an incentive structure, which makes it harder to stick to your principles. And it's a lot easier just saying, let's not talk about that. Yeah. Because why would we want to lose revenue and fire people by making our audience angry? And that's unfortunately where business interests and economic interests end up trumping character and public good. the Atlantic had a story called Minneapolis uprising and they went to some of the training sessions that are happening in Minneapolis where they're training people to follow ice and oppose ice and monitor ice and you know hand out whistles and there was some of that in the Chicago area but folks in Minneapolis have learned from Chicago and developed it further and now they're hoping to teach these ice resistance methods to the broader country as more of this happens. It's interesting because to me, it felt like, you know, reading about the training sessions during the civil rights movement where they were training nonviolent resistance, you know, and these are training sessions where they're passing out whistles. We're not passing out guns, we're passing out whistles. and that there's and then some of the leaders in this training are also clergy just the more liberal clergy which was also the case in the civil rights movement so i'm looking at the parallels then on the other hand fox news ran a story about how the organizers behind all of this are are really marxists and communists which was also leninists they said lenin oh they said They covered all their bases. That's amazing, which is also what we said about the civil rights organizers, that they were probably communists and Marxists and Leninists. They're anti-American. So why are we doing the same thing again with Christians on both sides taking the same positions that we took 60 years ago? Why is this happening? I know history doesn't repeat itself. It echoes, but this echo is so... It rhymes. It rhymes. That's a quote attributed to Mark Twain, but no one's been able to prove that he actually said it. It rhymes, and it echoes. Yeah. There are some interesting differences, though, with the civil rights era. Yeah. So, tell me more. Okay. The civil rights movement, obviously, was centered largely in the South, where segregation was dominant, Jim Crow and all that. Yeah. And in those narratives, it was the state governments that were aligned against black citizens and against the protesters. Right. And then against the federal government. Right. And the federal government was the power that would come in to try to protect the protesters against the state. Here, it's the opposite. Like in Minnesota earlier when it was here in Chicago and Illinois, it's the federal government that's coming in to deny rights to both residents and American citizens. And it the state in this case Minnesota that is trying to protect There was a story this morning of the Minnesota National Guard handing out coffee and donuts to protesters Yeah Because the states don want the federal government doing these unconstitutional things So the roles are reversed in a weird way. And I don't know what that means. And the hard part is, let's say things get to the point where the federal government decides, all right, we're leaving Minneapolis, we're leaving Minnesota. They're just going to go somewhere else and do this to another blue state or another blue city. The word is they're coming back to Chicago in force in March. So it's like this roving band of Trump-aligned antagonizers who are going after blue cities and states. And here's the other part that's very different, and this is the part that scares me more. I'm grateful that there are these people organizing these protests and giving them nonviolent tactics and whistles and all those good things. but based on what happened this weekend from what i've seen in the videos i've watched and i don't think there's any ambiguity about this alex preddy was a non-violent protester and he's dead so even if you're only armed with a whistle even if you're not doing anything violent even if you're not threatening ice your very presence there now could mean giving up your life and what's worse is there's no, the federal government has been lying about what happened. They're not investigating the thing thoroughly. They're not allowing state officials to investigate these things. So there's no accountability. And this is the same administration that pardoned all the violent protesters on January 6th. And so there's a license now, if you are an ICE agent, that if you do something which is flatly unconstitutional, illegal, or lethal against a U.S. citizen, you will probably get pardoned by this administration. You will be protected. So the citizens going out there and protesting, unlike during the civil rights movement, where there was at least the federal government that was on their side. They've got nobody because the state governments can't intercede above the federal government in this case. Right. So it's a very different power. But the movement of nonviolent training, sometimes led by clergy to stand up for the civil rights of others that you feel are being violated. Sometimes, you know, it means that they're breaking the law. Like you as the protester, you know, some of the sit-ins were breaking local ordinances. They were breaking state laws. Yeah, they were breaking state laws. Not federal laws, which is why they were banking on the federal government ultimately stepping in and doing it. They were trying to get enough national attention on these things to provoke the federal government to step in and do something. Yeah, they were banking on public opinion to rise to the level of motivating congressmen and presidents to do something about it, which obviously isn't the hope here. That's my point. That can't happen here. Caitlin. The other thing that's really hard, not that this is different than the civil rights movement, it's very similar. And we live weirdly in a very different media ecosystem. And yet the same problem exists, which is it so depends who is narrating the story of what happened. And it's really hard to overcome the fact that there is a significant segment of the population that gets their news about what's happening in such a way that it sounds to them, even though I would say, under what circumstances are these kinds of killings justified? But the way that it's presented to them is that the chaos and the unrest and all and the violence is the fault of protesters, not of ICE or other federal immigration enforcement agents. That is a is a storytelling problem that is really hard to overcome. But it does also go back to what you said earlier about Romans 13. Like, I'm totally with Sky that I don't think, I mean, this is just like not how humans function, that most Christians who are supportive of ice are just kind of mechanically going from Romans 13 to ice board ice. But many evangelical Christians do exist in a theological environment where there is an assumption that law and order is ultimately good. Like it is an ultimate good. God's design is order. And there might be plenty of those people who would say, I mean, it depends who's in power, who I think like the good guys and the bad guys are like plenty of those people would say you should resist enforcing COVID era restrictions on churches. Like it's not universal that it's just like, oh, I'm always supportive of obeying the government. But in an instance like this, what's more theologically significant is this sense of law and order and like public decorum and and obeying law enforcement. And the Bonnie Christian, the CT piece that you referenced, what was so striking to me about that was she is describing a context in which people have picked up that part of the theology, whether it's from Romans 13 or just the way that they were taught to believe about the world. They picked up that part without any of the theological context that makes sense for why Christians do value law and order in the best sense of like we value communities being ordered and there being consequences for mistreating people. But all of that theologically in Romans 13 and in all of Christian history has always come rooted in a larger theology where it is government's accountability to the sovereignty and justice of God that makes us care about how human communities function. It's about care for humans made in the image of God, which we forget. But it also we forget is you as a government are held accountable to a higher power that will judge you for misusing that power. Right. And that's missing in so many. I mean, the comments that I see online or even the people I know who might not be, they're definitely not supportive of any particular like civilian who is protesting being killed. But they are, I think, just more dispositionally in favor of ICE than I am. The way they articulate that tends to be the law needs to be obeyed and there need to be people that enforce obeying the law. And what I think a lot of Christian communities fail to do, and maybe it has something to do with the fact that there was not a sizable evangelical presence in some of these protests, was that we have not sufficiently communicated that that needs to be couched in this larger theology of accountability. to go. I mean, most of the civil rights movement, so much of that theologically was rooted in not just what's happening is unjust and we should protest it, but what's happening is an affront to God who made human beings in his image and requires that government be held accountable for mistreating them. All of that is not theology that most evangelical churches have been marinating in. That would not automatically equal action in a certain way, but I do think some of our failure to understand what's going on is we picked up a part of the theology that was true, which is that ordered communities are God's desire. We missed the accountability of governments to be accountable to God's greater sense of justice and sovereignty. I obviously agree with you 100%. And that's one of the unique contributions of Western post-Enlightenment democratic societies like ours. We have created a system in which no one, not even the federal government, is above the law. That whether you are a federal agent, an FBI agent, an ICE agent, even the president of the United States, you are held accountable to the law because of a Romans 13 kind of value system that this country was built on. But we now have a federal government for various reasons that is saying, yeah, we're able to do whatever we want because whether it's on the international stage, we can take Greenland, we can go into Venezuela, we can do whatever we want because we're the toughest people, international law be damned, and we can do whatever we want to protesters. How much of this is a public outcry about everything? You know, because obviously we don't like what ICE is doing in Minneapolis, but we also don't like we're blowing up drug boats without even checking to see if there are actual drugs on the boat and that we're threatening our allies and that we're going to. I don't think most Americans care. No? No, I really don't. And I don't think most Americans are upset at what Trump is doing, trying to remove undocumented citizens, especially the violent ones. I think this data shows majority of Americans support it. The problem is, and this is where the Trump administration and ICE are in trouble, is it's evident that they are using tactics which are unconstitutional and un-American. Do we care more that they're cruel or that they're unconstitutional? Well, they're usually the same thing. If we could find cruelty in the Constitution, then would we be okay with it? I don't know. I hope this isn't like a Boston Massacre kind of moment where the ruling power loses so much credibility because of its violence that we just fall down a rabbit hole of retribution. And I'm worried that's where we could be heading if something doesn't change. But I don't know what the answer is. And here's the other thing. Nobody wants to believe that they are on team evil. And there's a lot of people in this country, 170 some million of them, who voted for Donald Trump. And a lot of us who didn't vote for him after January 6th, after the first administration, after all of his rhetoric, we all thought this is a bad idea. And there's a bunch of people who voted for him for a variety of reasons, whether it's the economy or southern border, whatever it might be. And now they're watching what's unfolding. And none of them want to believe that they contributed to this. And so when the horror that comes out on video about what happened this weekend is shown to them, they have to come up with some narrative that excuses their endorsement of this man in this administration. So they are predisposed to pick the narrative that alleviates their guilty conscience because no one wants to be on team evil. And I don't want to condemn my fellow citizens who voted for Trump for various reasons, and some of which were legitimate. But this is when everything else breaks down. When Congress breaks down and their role in holding the president accountable is given up, they have no backbone. When the courts break down and they don't hold the president accountable, especially not quick enough. When the political parties break down and they allow somebody with a demonstrably terrible character and an inability to follow the Constitution to get the nomination again, all of our structures have broken down, and the last one is the people themselves. And unfortunately, the only way they can be informed is if we have people of integrity in the media presenting the narrative as it actually unfolded. And it's very evident from some of the sources you just cited, Phil, that that's not happening. So you can live in your narrative bubble that protects your conscience. Here's my problem. If you're a Christian and you primarily get your news from Fox and you're on their website right now, the top story is about a Minneapolis Antifa influencer who's making armed calls to action. That's the story. And then if you go to Christian Post because you want a Christian perspective, there's nothing about it at all. So I don't know how we fix it if we don't even know what each other is talking about. And the last time America was in this kind of media silo was the Civil War. What? This is what people don't understand. If you're as old as you and I are, Phil. Yeah, I remember the Civil War. No, we remember the 20th century before the Internet. And we remember when America was more or less unified through a shared media experience. There were a handful of television channels. Everyone got their news from the evening news on ABC, NBC, CBS. There were a handful of newspapers that we had our local papers, but nationwide. That was it. And we had a shared narrative about America. Back in the 19th century, that wasn't the case. There was no broadcast. There was no radio. There was no television. So most people got their narrative from their local media, their local newspaper. And if you lived in Charleston, South Carolina, it was very different than if you lived in Boston. And that's part of the breakdown that happened leading up to the Civil War. We are back in that system again where everyone, because of the algorithms and the Internet and the proliferation of media, they can live in their own ecosystem. But shouldn't the Internet bring us all together around the world? Caitlin, last thoughts? Well, I was thinking about your question, Phil, about like what do we even do if people are not seeing this? And I do think in just the last week or so, I've seen more of my friends on social media on I'm only on Instagram now who don't normally post anything about politics, who have posted things about the child that was that was detained and brought to Texas and used as kind of bait for his family about multiple of these killings by by eyes of protesters. And I I'm usually hesitant to say, like, go. I mean, I'm never going to say, like, go fight with your family members about politics. I'm usually pretty hesitant to say, like, it's your job to be like informing your family members or your neighbors who are more conservative or whatever about what's going on. But I do think there is an opportunity here for people, if they are able to, to communicate about what they are seeing through legitimate news sources, as long as they're doing it in a way that, to Sky's point, doesn't accuse the person they are sharing this with of like, you contributed to this, you did this. We all, without intending to, contribute to great evils in the world. It's like part of being a fallen finite creature in a broken creation. But you have an opportunity to instead of like in anger, which I would understand. I understand the people who are looking at their friends or family members who voted for Trump and going like you caused this to happen. It's horrible now and you won't even acknowledge it and you won't admit it. But if you have an opportunity to from a very different place in yourself, come to someone who who you recognize. I mean, most of us can tell the difference between our friends and family members who are so in a spiral of this stuff. They're so down a rabbit hole. You can't reach them. and very often they're like spouse or their friend or like someone else who is not as much down the rabbit hole who could maybe hear something about this who might not be getting it from the news sources that are that are available to them or that they most often listen to but might hear it from a friend if it's given in a spirit of like this is heartbreaking to me and i know it would be heartbreaking to you if you heard this i believe you're the kind of person that would hate this not a how dare you let this happen or you're a bad person because you don't It can't be adversarial? I would recommend against it. I think it's interesting that, as you share that, Kayla, I'm thinking of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was obviously a huge Trump supporter for a long time. And she got off the Trump train with the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Yeah. Right. That was the straw that, or I don't know what the right metaphor, but the thing that opened her eyes. Right, right. And I don't know what it will be for different people. Maybe it's these horrific shootings in Minneapolis. Maybe it's other stories of U.S. citizens or legal immigrants who are here, refugees who are being arrested, something that makes them realize, OK, I'm not on board with this. I may have voted for Trump for various reasons, economic or who knows what, but I'm not on board with this. We need more people feeling like they are welcomed to jump off the Trump train. Yes. And remain conservative, remain Republican, remain convinced of all these various things that you care deeply about. And you can also believe that I don't want my country doing these things. I want to I believe in the rule of law. I believe in human dignity. I believe there's a right way to secure the border and round up criminals. And there's a wrong way to do it. And if we can make a welcoming place for those people to just jump off the Trump train, then we can get our country back to some level of normalcy and have the good old fashioned right versus left debates about the best ways to fix America. We are not in that place today because too many people are remaining silent. Right, right. It does feel a bit like the summer of 2020 and George Floyd. And because, you know, my response at that point, based on some feedback we got, was to, hey, I'm just going to make a video and talk about how we got here and just lay out the facts. And then people will say, oh, hey, that was really helpful. And for about two weeks, that's what people said. They said, oh, that was really helpful. You made something I can even show to my conservative uncle. It's like, hey, it's VeggieTales guy. And so I had that initial thought, like, can I do that now? And I realized, no, I can't because I'm now – I've been labeled as, you know, I'm on the other side. And so I don't have the ability to speak to the people I had the ability to speak to four years ago. So I – I just – I don't know how often we have to say this. and I know this is true of you also, Phil, we are not on the other side. We are not on the other side. I am not in the tank for the Democratic Party. In fact, I think part of the reason we are seeing what's happening right now is because the Biden administration did such a horrible job on immigration. Right, exactly. And so I'm not advocating that we go back to that. I am advocating for human decency and for Christians to stand up for the things that Jesus values. And part of that, in least the American context is the rule of law and that no one is above it. Back to your Romans 13 idea that even those who represent our government are accountable to God and they're accountable to the people. So to have a president and an administration that says these laws do not apply to us is un-American and it's un-Christian for us to support that kind of brutality. And I would just say along the lines of what you were saying, Phil, it's not just you. I think there are a lot of voices that used to be considered moderate, generally trustworthy, that have been pigeonholed as, you know, the liberals. And I hate that that's true. And I hate that we have such a polarized political and media environment. There is also a lot of opportunity for people who, I mean, like for the church ladies, for like the people who live in neighborhoods with people that are, you know, that are in the same household that, that do not have the reputation. I mean, some of us do. Some people have become that person in their family, like they're the liberal, but a lot of people have not. I know a ton of people who have slowly changed their mind about some of this. They haven't gotten into it with their family, and I think that was wise of them. But there is a real opportunity here to, instead of doing what many of us want to do, which is, I'm going to send a link to Phil talking about this, or I'm going to send a link to an article from a news source that I already know that they won't really trust because it's not in their camp. There is an opportunity here for you to read the things you need to read, but to not feel like you have to be an expert or send the most polished, perfect argument, but just have a conversation with that person. If you are lucky enough right now to be in the position of going, I know I'm generally trusted. And I say church ladies, but I truly know so many women in particular who have been faithfully serving in their church and building relationships in their family. And I think they've been very wise with the influence they have. And this may be the opportunity. That's like between you and the Holy Spirit. But this may be the opportunity for you to use that hard one respect, not recklessly, not by just going, well, now I'm going to, you know, say whatever I want to you, but to use it wisely and say, you trust me. You know that even if I start to say something that you might want to impulsively disagree with really quickly, you trust me enough that maybe we can have a conversation about it. And I think there's a lot of room for people to receive that now when not only is our media so fragmented, but there's a lot of distrust in all kinds of institutions. Even of the voices that I typically listen to, there's a lot of distrust. So if you are someone who's built actual in-person trust with someone, it might not go well, but you might have some opportunity to do something that that otherwise they won't be able to hear. OK, cool. I'm so sorry we had to talk about this this week. Last week, we took a week off and just said we're going to talk about love. Wasn't that great? We talked about love last week. And I thought we're not going to have to go deep back into current events next week. Surely nothing. Here we are. And stuff keeps happening. It does feel like we're at a I just did an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And one of one of the questions because he wanted to know, I have no idea why he thought of me for this. I was like, are those vegetables? You want to talk to the vegetables guy about what's going on in Minneapolis? He wanted to talk about the evangelical perspective on what's going on in Minneapolis. Which I said, there is no single evangelical perspective. And why did I bring that up? Sky. darn it why did i bring that up i don't know oh man it was so good i had something that was so good to say we're not gonna oh because i remember because he he asked do you think we're at a pivot point for evangelicals and i said probably not um because we're all getting different news and we're all in our different silos and we've all chosen you know whether who we think is wearing the black hat and who we think is wearing the white hat. And it's very hard to change once you've made that commitment. And he was a little discouraged by that. But I said, but fear not, because there's always hope in Christianity. And so don't give up. Then I led him to Christ and I sent him a tract and everything was happy. And it'll be in the Star Tribune in the next day or two. Okay. My brother went to a they had Saturday night after the shooting. Candlelight vigils broke out all across Minneapolis. And so he just he took a picture of the one in his neighborhood, which had about 200 people at it just in his neighborhood. So people are coming together. Christians are coming together. It's just tough when making a statement about something endangers your social relationships. Because of where you go to church, who you go to church with, who you hang out with, and what you've said you value. And it's tough for all of us. But be brave. We can do it. Care about you guys. Next week, we're not going to talk about current events because nothing horrid is going to happen in the next seven days. So we're going to talk about love and puppies. Next week is going to be love and puppies again. And you're going to love it. Great. We'll see you next time. Bye. The Holy Post is sponsored by BetterHelp. This year, Lisa and I will celebrate 36 years of marriage. I'd love to say it's been blissfully easy all the way, but I'd be lying. Making relationships work over the long haul is hard. I've benefited hugely from time spent with a trained therapist talking things through. Finding a good therapist who shared our faith convictions has been a huge help. And that's what BetterHelp can do for you. BetterHelp is the world largest online therapy platform having served more than 5 million people around the world It easy to describe what you looking for and BetterHelp will match you with a therapist You can join a session with the click of a button to help fit therapy into your busy life And you can switch therapists at any time What are you waiting for Become a healthier you by visiting BetterHelp.com slash Holy Post to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Holy Post. And thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Holy Post is sponsored by Drip Drop. How are your New Year's resolutions going? Trying to get healthier? Start with a new habit for better hydration that's not just for athletes. 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Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has saved users more than $2.5 billion, including over $880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Save money by canceling your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash holypost today. That's rocketmoney.com slash holypost. rocketmoney.com slash holypost. If your faith has been primarily shaped by the white American church, then you may assume that churches can be put into one of two buckets. There are the more conservative, often evangelical churches that have more strict theology, but align with Republican politics and are more likely to be MAGA-friendly. And then there are the more progressive, often mainline churches that are more democratic and sometimes more loose in their theology. In these divided times, it can feel like we have to pick between these two buckets. One with more orthodox theology but toxic public witness, and the other with a more faithful public witness but less commitment to the authority of Scripture. But those aren't the only two options. In fact, there's an incredible tradition within American Christianity that has defied this binary choice for generations. While the white church has bifurcated its public witness and commitment to orthodoxy for the last century, the black church has rejected this false choice. And it's the black church's commitment to keep these two things together that was best revealed during the civil rights generation. That's what Justin Giboney's new book is about. It's called Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around, how the black church's public witness leads us out of the culture war. Giboney does two things brilliantly in this book. First, he explains how the culture war has warped the values and vision of too many Christians in America, and how it's made us think we're in a zero-sum, winner-take-all battle with our neighbors for survival, which leads us to abandon the way of Jesus in our public witness. But secondly, the book inspires us with the example of black Christians from the civil rights era who held strongly to the teachings and ethics of Jesus while also pursuing justice in the public square. And Giboney believes that these are the lessons that we need to apply to our situation today, regardless of what church tradition we're a part of. Justin Giboney is the co-founder and president of the AND Campaign. He's an ordained minister, an attorney, a political strategist, and a regular contributor to the Esau McCauley Show here on Holy Post Media. Here is my conversation with Justin Giboney. Justin Giboney, welcome back to The Holy Post. Hey, Scott. Glad to be here. You are kind of in tight orbit with us because you are regularly on Esau's show and grateful for all of your time and contribution to The Holy Post media community. So it's great to have you back on this show. I was just saying to you before we started recording, I'm grateful for your new book because I feel like this is a massive contribution to the Holy Post Media community, even though it's published with IVP. You've just beautifully articulated so much of what we're trying to do here at Holy Post Media with this book. Let's go to the background. You've written on some of these themes elsewhere in different places. What led you to want to put all this into a single volume? And you frame it around a couple of key figures. Why did you do it that way? Yeah, so one thing I think in this moment, we need to bring it all together. I think we're losing the legacy of the civil rights movement. I feel like it's one of those things that we should have captured and held on to. But as I see us interacting, when I say we, I'm talking about the church, not just America in general. I don't think we're using some of those basic principles that we got from the civil rights movement. And I wanted to put those out there, but also provide proof of concept, because it's one thing for me and you, Scott, to talk about this in theory and how great it would be to love your neighbors. And it's a sweet thing to do. It's another thing to say, no, these people did it. We're going through more than we're going through and did it and were effective with it. The reason that I made it personal is because it really is personal. I had the honor of being raised in part by the civil rights generation, my grandparents. So, as you know, the narrative around this is around my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, Willie Faye, and her favorite gospel artist, Mahalia Jackson. And so being around them, seeing their spirit and how they reacted to different things, that's something I want to hold on to. Also living in Atlanta, when I first got here, several of the civil rights generation, a lot of them, those leaders were still around and I got to interact with them, too. And I just don't want that to be lost or co-opted. And I think in a way, conservatives and progressives try to co-opt that that legacy. One of the things I've appreciated about the book, and it permeates the whole thing, is when I've heard these conversations in the past about the contribution of the civil rights generation and what they did and how they did it, it's usually applied to the black church. Like, we need to not lose this in the current moment of activism, the roots of activism in the gospel and in the church, all that. But you don't do that. You say, we need to learn from this generation and their faith and the way it was activated in the public square and apply it to the entire church. White, black, Latino, Asian, whatever. Like this is a lesson for all of God's people, especially in this moment. Are you finding that message is being received or are there still barriers? You're like, oh, no, no, like the black church is for the black church and it doesn't have a larger message for the broader people of God. Yeah, I think people are slowly catching on While this came out of a certain tradition This, I think, belongs to the church in general Because I think they themselves would have told you that their work is filthy rags without God Without, you know, the kingdom And so this is something that we all can learn from And I'll say this, it's a challenge even to the black church of today And other churches to say this I'm not just trying to exalt one tradition I'm trying to say we're losing this as a whole It belongs to us as Christians. And let's try to recapture that and re-envision what using those principles and applying them better could look like. You make a comment later in the book. I'm not going to get the quote exactly, but something along the lines of if you were just randomly to ask white Christians in an evangelical church to name a single black theologian, they probably wouldn't be able to do it because they've been so isolated in their exposure to different streams of the church. I'd encourage people if you're listening to this you're a white Christian and you're like I couldn't name a single black theologian or any significant contribution that the black church has made to American life beyond maybe the civil rights movement which is significant read this book this is a fantastic introduction to part of our heritage as the followers of Jesus in America that a lot of us just weren't educated in or exposed to so you've given a primer to a lot of people in that regard. I would just say, if I can real quick, I would just say, I mean, if you haven't heard a Gardner C. Taylor sermon or read a Gardner C. Taylor sermon, I think you're missing out. If you haven't read up on Nanny Helen Burroughs, I think you're missing out and you may be misled as to what their witness was about and what this movement was about. So, yeah. And to the exposure that a lot of evangelicals, white evangelicals have had to the black church tradition, it tends to be framed as, well, you know, it's progressive, it's democratic, it's liberal. And that's an inaccurate portrayal. It's not true. And you do a great job of unpacking why that's inaccurate. So I think too many people have just dismissed it as a source of inspiration, learning of spiritual guidance, frankly, because it's been coded to them in the wrong way. To that end, I want to use something very early in the book as a framework for our conversation here. So page 16, you talk about four primary characteristics that distinguish the black church's social action tradition from, you know, broader American culture, the political landscape, even the American evangelical white church. And these four characteristics, we'll take them one by one and just kind of talk about how you impact them in the book. The first one is the connection of the spiritual with the socio-political in advocacy. Explain what you mean by that, because, again, a lot of the white church tradition is politics or even social issues are seriously bifurcated from spirituality. How are those things united in the black church tradition? Yeah, I think the idea is you can't talk about peace and the Prince of Peace in church and then go out and not represent that in the public square. And the civil rights generation did a very good job of taking those principles and applying them to what they were doing, to their marches, to their protests. And you see it in the spirituals they sang. So when they were singing spirituals, keep your eye on the prize. I'm going to treat everybody right until I die. These were actually spiritual disciplines. They weren't just saying this to pass the time or to have something to do. They were reminding themselves of how they have to treat even the people who are mistreating them. They were reminding themselves of who and what they represent in very tense moments where without being deliberate about that, any of us could very well act out of character and do something that not only hurts the movement, but doesn't glorify God and how we act. So when you see them out there being able to take some of the things they took, it's not because they didn't care. It's because they had the disciplines and went through the spiritual. I mean, the spiritual purification prayers and things like that to be prepared to engage in that way. And so I don't I couldn't think of a better example of taking what you're learning about the gospel and applying it to very serious issues in the public square. um i've had conversations recently both with esau and with senator warnock your senator from from georgia and esau has talked about the concerns and i and dr charlie dates has talked about this other friend of ours here in chicago i've talked about the the tendency of of modern activists to separate their social activism from the church especially the tradition in the black church. I asked Senator Warnock about that, and he kind of was like, eh, he didn't agree with that entirely. He said that even in the civil rights era, there were plenty of activists who separated their activism from the church, and there were others who rooted it in the church. And he sees that it's ongoing today. But it seems like on the one side, you have a set of progressive activists who are increasingly vocal in the public square, but not rooted in any kind of faith tradition, or at least not vocally rooted in that faith tradition. But then you have a lot of the white church, which is arguing that, well, spirituality is for inside the church, and they're not attaching their faith in any way to their political activism either. So there's different problems on all sides here. How do you think – is there a way to rebuild this infrastructure of integrating these things, or do you think they're bifurcated for the foreseeable future? I have to believe that we can bring those things back together The first thing people have to see Because something that's going on now And I completely agree with you Yes, there's always been people who didn't apply it properly The most prominent movement at that time did Right, right So that's what's very different than now So I would disagree with them on that But one thing we have to show people There's this feeling today that part of being authentic Is kind of just venting and saying what you want to say And somehow that's like the authentic way to engage. But we have to show people it's actually not all that effective, especially when you're in a republic where you have to persuade people. The civil rights movement did the hard work that you have to do in democracy of trying to persuade and inspire people instead of just tell them off so you can vent and feel better. And that's actually more effective. And so people need to see that what you're doing that seems authentic or gets applause from your tribe is actually doing damage to your issue. You're doing a disservice to the people that you say that you're protecting because it becomes more about you and getting out what you want to say instead of strategically doing it in a thoughtful way and trying to persuade people who you might think would never agree with you. Yeah, that comes up in a later point. Let me go to number two, though, you list here. You said they upheld social justice and moral order, which means they didn't fit into the conservative versus progressive culture war binary. This is one of the major themes of the whole book. And you do a masterful job. There's a whole chapter in here where you discuss the shortcomings of the conservative end of the culture war spectrum. And then another chapter where the progressives fall short. explain why that generation of civil rights activists in the black church didn't fall into that binary so it's interesting because if you look at the history of it when the white church is splitting apart into the more conservative side and the mainline side the black church is actually watching and if you look at the publications from that time they're looking and they're making the deliberate decision. They don't just fall into this. As they see this split, they make the deliberate decision not to follow either of them. They look and they say, well, we can't go to the right because we'll lose our bodies because there was no justice. There was no protection there. And we can't go to the left because we'll lose our souls because they were walking away from the authority of scripture. They felt that to be unchristian, just as they felt the lack of emphasis on justice to be unchristian. And so they make that deliberate decision to go in a completely different direction. And that's what I think some people miss. And so when we try to make the civil rights movement a progressive movement, it's just intellectually dishonest, because these were people who believed in the authority of scripture. That's where their courage came from. That's where their belief that things could actually get better came from. the word of God. It's not something that they just use as symbolic or these are cute stories about Jesus. No, people like Fred Shuttlesworth were saying, I believe every jot and tittle of what the Bible says. And that's why I'm doing that. And that's what gives me hope. So it's really important. I think it also goes against the colorblind narrative that you hear from conservatives, too, to say, no, never were they teaching, hey, let's just pretend everything's okay and act like it's all good. Ignore the injustice. No, let's deal with it. And hopefully one day we can get to a place where it's not an issue, but it is today. And until it isn't, it needs to be dealt with. Do you think this heritage of not conforming to the white cultural or even white Christian binary partly explains what we're seeing in voting trends today? I mean, for a long time since the civil rights movement, African-Americans have largely voted for Democratic candidates, but we're seeing that erode more and more. Is it a case that the progressive left, the white progressive left has just gone so far that increasingly there are black voters saying to themselves, I just, I'm done. I can't, I can't stick with this. And you're seeing a fracturing of that voting block or is that an oversimplification? It may be a bit of an oversimplification. I mean, I get where that comes from. And historically, and even today, black Christians are far more socially conservative than the Democratic Party that they're in. However, because of where the Republican Party is at, most of the people, most of those churchgoers, I don't see them necessarily going in that direction as much. Although in black America, in general, you see some people move in that way. And it could have it could have a good deal to do with that. I'm not ready to say that that's the you know, that's the reason you saw some movement toward Trump. Most of the Orthodox Christians that I go to church with have huge issues with the administration. And I don't think those overcome some of the social issues necessarily that they have with with the Democratic Party, although I think it has presented in the past opportunities for Republicans to take advantage of it. They just haven't ever seemed to be able to push away the racism to do it. Okay, let's go to the third point. You said they acknowledge the potential for wickedness in themselves, not just in others. Again, a big theme in your book, the way that our culture war framing of politics right now and just everything makes whatever side we're on completely righteous and innocent. And anyone who's on the other side is entirely evil and to be contemned and dehumanized. How did the civil rights generation and the black church tradition avoid that kind of demonization, dehumanization that is so common today? Yeah, I think what they recognize, and you can see it in the songs, you can see it in the speeches, is that anytime you address wickedness, you run the risk of becoming evil to fight evil. I think they understood that a good cause in and of itself is never enough. Fighting against a bad administration or a bad movement is never enough or a bad system is never enough. The spirit of your cause is just as important as the objective of your cause. And that, I think, is a lesson that we just don't have right now. We feel like once I have identified that the administration is really, really bad, or once I have identified that these progressives in popular culture that are trying to, you know, sexualized children are really bad, then I'm good. As long as I'm fighting against that, it's never that simple. I mean, we can look from Stalin to a whole bunch of people who had a good cause initially, but went astray. We, you know, one of the things that you see the civil rights generation doing is they always go through, they had like a four-step process. And we actually talked about this a little bit when I was on Esau's podcast last time. They had this self-purification. So before you engage in social engagement, you had to go through this self-purification process to make sure you were in the right spirit and the right state of mind to engage in a constructive way. Because not only could you do it again, do a disservice to the movement, you could be unrighteous while fighting unrighteousness. We don't have a sense of that today in the culture war. They're so bad. They're bad. We're good. Don't question what we do. And so it causes us not to examine ourselves. It causes us not to be able to – we lose intellectual honesty because when the other side does get something right, we can never admit it in this zero-sum game. They didn't really allow for that. Yeah, that's exactly it, the zero-sum game. The way so many things are framed today is if I give my enemy anything, even their humanity, then I'm losing something. And you cite numerous folks throughout the book who argue against that. One of the ones that jumped out to me was just on page 106. You cite Senator Hiram Revels. He's also a black preacher. He was the country's first black senator from Mississippi, obviously, during Reconstruction and that brief moment of hope. But it's a longer quote, but he also said this. This is the doctrine that I everywhere uttered, that while I was in favor of building up the colored race, I was not in favor of tearing down the white race. Sir, the white race need not be harmed in order to build up the colored race. That is completely out of sync with what you see on all sides of our political arguing today where for my group or my cause to win I have to destroy the other side And you see MLK picking up this rhetoric of the double victory he talked about all the time in his stuff where it wasn just ending segregation it was freeing the perpetrators of segregation from the harm it was doing to their souls. Why do you think we've lost that in today's America, this sense that I'm not just fighting for my side, I'm actually also in a way advocating for and fighting for those who are opposed to me? because we don't see or don't want to see our opposition as redeemable. Once I've made somebody purely evil, they're irredeemable and everything they do is wrong. And so we don't we don't necessarily want to see them get better. And I think it's unfortunate. The other thing is we bought into the idea that somehow we're going to make them disappear or somehow everything is going to be good when the progressives run everything or when the conservatives run everything. And the truth of the matter is they're not going anywhere. They're going to be people you disagree with. And what King was kind of getting at is we our destinies are tied together. We have to we're going to get through this thing. It's going to have to be together. Nobody's disappearing. how do we coexist and thrive together even within our disagreements. That's a whole different perspective than we see today when, again, it is about eliminating or annihilating the other side. Okay. And that brings me to the fourth point. They were led by moral imagination and refused to treat their opponents with contempt, which allowed them to engage with grace and tenacity. Okay. Obviously, during the civil rights movement, there was no illusion that black leaders, they were not going to eliminate white America, right? They weren't going to – I mean, there was this delusion during and after the Civil War that some abolitionists or some advocates in the North were arguing, okay, well, let's abolish slavery, but then let's literally ship African Americans back to Africa, right? I mean, this was a very popular view because they didn't believe that a society, a harmonious society could coexist across racial diversity. No one in the civil rights era thought America is going to be taken over by black people and let's get rid of all the white people. And so there was this built in sense of we're bound together in our destiny. We have to figure this out. It's kind of scary to me that that I'm not sure people believe that anymore. It does increasingly sound like in our rhetoric and in our politics that we've bought into this delusion that somehow the other side is just going to disappear. And what you see happening right now with immigration and ICE, it's literally an attempt to make – I mean, in some – was it Stephen Miller said he wanted 100 million Americans gone, which is one-third of the country. you mentioned that we've bought into this because we don't want to view the other side as redeemable who do you point to or who are you seeing in our public discourse today right or left who's making a different case that's arguing for a we're bound together and we got to figure this out that is an echo from the civil rights era yeah i mean i see that in in ro-kanna a little bit I think even though he's far more progressive than I am, there's this understanding that he has his stances, but he's going to have to work with others. You see him teaming up with Thomas Massey. I think those are two people who are actually getting things done. Very different, come from very different places, very different ideologies and parties. But say, how do we hold people accountable to regain the public trust? And how do we get things done even within our disagreement? We should have enough. And here's a sad thing. A lot of the people who disliked how Trump talked about people and how he acted are now getting behind the people that do the same thing just on their side. If you look at it and I would say it's time for us to be sick of the public temper tantrums, who can make the best joke about somebody else and say, who's getting things done? who is taking this seriously. It's time for us to incentivize the statesmen and change the incentive structure because politicians in a way are just like children. When your children get a benefit from doing certain things or they get what they want when they get some things, they're going to keep doing it. And until we change the incentive structure and we discourage certain behavior, then we're going to be in trouble. But we have to decide, Do we want to be able to laugh at the other side and somebody to say, you know, what we want to hear in some malicious manner? Or do we actually want to build? It's interesting to me to see so many people that say these issues are so serious, but then follow people who are unserious, these conflict entrepreneurs that really aren't moving us forward constructively. You have a whole chapter in here about pluralism and diversity. And one of the key arguments you make in that is being a diverse society with so many different people with different convictions, beliefs, religious traditions, that we not only need to invite all those voices in and have a seat at the table, but then we need to build our public discourse on persuasion. And describe how you saw that modeled in the civil rights era. I mean, obviously, neither of us are old enough to have lived through that ourselves. But I look back and I can see and understand and empathize with the temptation of people to say, this is just right. I shouldn't have to persuade you that it's right. Like, obviously, this racial segregation, Jim Crow, all these crazy things that were happening are just manifestly wrong. Stop doing it. And if you're doing it, you should be prosecuted or whatever. Why should I take a posture of persuasion towards things that are manifestly evil? I want every bad idea and movement to have a very democratic and public death. Therefore, if the merits are on my side, I want to have the conversation. Dr. Martha King wasn't trying to dismiss people. He wanted to bring them into the conversation Because the merits of the case were on the side Same thing with Frederick Douglass I want your most Mean Slavery promoter Whoever it is To come into this space with me So I can deal with them real quick I want y'all in this space But when we get so self-righteous That we think we don't have to explain it We're only doing ourselves a disservice Let's have the conversation Let's want let's sit sit down and make sure that people hear what we're both trying to say and again i think it's a self-righteousness i think and sometimes we're right and but we're in a democracy we're in a place where the discourse you have to engage in it and it's the same thing that we see even in the bible in act 17 you see paul going into the agora this is the marketplace place of ideas. He wants to have the conversation. And when he's having the conversation, he's meeting people where they're at. He's talking to them in their language. He's using the Socratic method. And he is persuading some people because the merits of the cases are on his side. And he knows where the conversation is. And too often we it's just too much work. I shouldn't have to do this. How how could you not already agree with me? I don't really want to do that work. But that's just part of democracy. That's part of citizenship. And if you're that serious about your cause, you should welcome that when you get the opportunity. Okay. I want to go deeper here, both on the left and on the right. I've obviously done a ton of reading like you have about Christian nationalism. We see it all over the place. I've preached about it. We talked about it endlessly on Holy Post shows. We've done explainer videos about it. And I've been thinking more and more about what is the sort of besetting sin of Christian nationalism? And there's many to pick from. And increasingly, this is going to sound strange, but increasingly, I think the casual Christian nationalists, their primary failure is that they're lazy. And what I mean by that is they don't want to do the hard work of persuasion. And so they grasp at this idea that I don't I don't have to prove my ideas are good or right. they should just automatically have dominance in the public square because this country was supposed to be white and Christian. And therefore, anyone who doesn't agree with my point of view isn't a real American, doesn't have a legitimate voice here. And everyone should just accept my point of view. I don't want to do the hard work of persuasion. And that's appealing to people who don't have great confidence either in their ideas, in their ability to persuade, or in their desire to sit across the table from someone they disagree with and have to look them in the eyes of fellow human being of equal worth. Yeah. No, I think you hit it on the head. Let the government do our work because I shouldn't have to do this. You know, let's use the government who I actually talk about limited government, but I would actually like them to be, you know, my enforcer on this particular issue. Yeah, that's it And that's what people have to hear But it's really It's really What's the word that I'm looking for It's audacious in a way And also kind of Blind To history If I'm outside of that small group Of Christian nationalists What in the world would convince me That they're fit to tell everybody else What to do If I look at the history of America what honest person would say yes let me hand all of this over to them and let them decide because they've treated people so well and that part of the church did so good when it came to jim crow and they figure all this stuff out you have to persuade people that you you that you actually should be in that position and the truth of the matter is i don't think any of us are fit to steward that type of absolute power in the first place especially many of us don't have as bad of a history of it as some of some of these folks do. So so that's that's one of the biggest problems. It just doesn't reckon with the history and the chances that you did have when you had a lot of power and still do. And what happened to other people? The other part, big part that I have a problem with is it ignores the contributions that other people can make. Never. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where God's people had all the answers and people who weren't in, you know, either in the church or are part of the faith didn't have anything to say or any contribution to make. I just don't I don't see that there. I believe in common grace. I believe I have a lot to learn from other people. And let me tell you this. If I don't make my case the way I should, because I do want Christian values to have an influence without violating other people's rights. But if I don't make the best case, then my agnostic neighbor or my Muslim neighbor deserves to win the day. And that's the way that it is under the social contract that we agreed to. The problem with Christian nationalism is I think it lacks integrity because it's reneging on the democratic experiment. It's reneging on what we told people this was about when they came to this place or were brought to this place. If we really believe it, if you're really a patriot, then you have to hold true to what that social contract said. Okay. There's two things that come to mind here. One is Vice President Vance has said in numerous forums that he thinks people whose families have been here longer, he often demarcates the Civil War. If your family traces its roots back to the era of the Civil War or before, he said, you should have more of a say in what happens in America than if you're more recently an immigrant, which is ironic given that his wife is a second generation Indian American like I am, which I guess he's arguing his own children shouldn't have as much of a say as he does. It's kind of nutty. But the argument there, again, is I don't want to have to make an argument to persuade somebody. If my great-great-great-grandparents are buried in some battlefield somewhere, then my vote should get more weight than yours. That's antithetical to the American tradition and values, which was founded on all people being created equal. That's one thing. But the other side of this is it's not just a besetting problem on the conservative right or the MAGA right. We see this, and you talk about it eloquently in the book, in the cancel culture on the left, which is when someone espouses a belief or an idea that the left disagrees with, whether it's on a college campus or on social media, the cancel culture instinct to just berate them, humiliate them, silence them, is another way of saying our ideas shouldn't have to be persuasive. They should just use cultural force and domination to silence any critics. How do you see this going on on the left? And are we you think people on the left are getting tired of it? Are we coming out of it? We've reached peak cancel culture and recognize it's bankrupt. Or do you see it still persisting? The people seem to me to be tired of it. The people on the ground, the grassroots seem to be very tired of it. The leadership class, the custodians of the culture, I think, are still trying to because it's a tool of control. Right. It allows them to do what they want without examination. One thing that the campaign runs into is people always saying, well, Trump administration is so bad. How could you ever say anything about progressives? progressives. And if you mention progressives, something we did wrong in the same in the same statement as you mentioned Trump, then that's a false equivalent. Right. We get that all the time. I mean, that statement does so much work and it's doing a lot. And the truth of the matter is it's just false. I can mention two things and not saying that they're the same. I can critique two things and not say they're the same. The other thing I would mention is let's not forget Jesus comes into a Roman occupation, his people are under occupation. He doesn't just say, well, we're under Roman occupation. They're so bad. I'm not going to critique the Pharisees, right? I'm not going to critique the Sadducees because we're the victims right now. And certainly they're so bad that it would be false equivalents to say something about my own people. That's ridiculous. And neither did Frederick Douglass do that. When Frederick Douglass had an issue with other abolitionists, he made public statements because he had to get it right. Not just say his side was right. He had to get it right. And Christians have to be focused on getting it right, not just acting like their side is completely righteous. Part of really caring about a movement or even a country is being able to correct it. And if you think that the people that don't correct you love you, That's not necessarily true Right sometimes we need to be corrected In order to do things better And the people that don't correct us Are sometimes self-interested And they're doing it for their own reasons And they're pandering for their own reasons Jesus never did that And so I think if we correct in love That's what is more Christian Rather than giving one side a pass As if its mistakes Aren't going to be seen by anybody else And I think it also Sky And I'll end with this we lose credibility because people can see when we're being partial. So for the people who are persuadable, for the people who are being honest brokers, when something bad on our side happens and we either don't say anything about it or we justify it, you lose them. And a lot of Christians are losing persuadable people and losing the opportunity to persuade them to their side because they don't have any credibility because they let everything on their side pass. That's what I'm trying to prevent. And we have to do a better job of that if we want to make progress. You talk about the the idol of careerism at one point in the book and the instinct to remain silent about critiquing your own side. And how much of this and we've got to wrap up here, but how much of this comes down to just a lack of courage? I mean, Jesus, obviously courageous, but rooted in his identity as the beloved son of God was able to withstand the pressures all around him. But you see that even in the Old Testament prophets, you know, firing their bones like Jeremiah and others like they. they were able to critique their own people because they were courageous in their foundation as God's called voice. And I've railed on this a lot behind this microphone, but at least speaking of the white evangelical tradition, I feel like it's in this bankrupt place that it's in because its leaders lacked courage. Is that what this boils down to in your mind, whether it's on the right or the left? I think a lot of it is a lack of courage. And let's be honest, especially when it comes to the careerism, when I've worked very hard and I've, you know, sacrificed to try to get where I'm going, making a compromise here and there doesn't sound so bad, right? Like if I've been working really hard, somebody said, you can have this position in whatever you want. You just got to stop talking about abortion. You just got to stop talking about justice. You just got to stop talking about sexuality. You're like something in your head, I think sometimes says, well, I'll make that compromise now and I'll get back to it. And you really never do. This is the cost of discipleship. And you've got to believe that by doing the right thing, by saying what needs to be said, you're glorifying God and you might be in a better position possibly, or even if not, it's worth it because you did what you were called to do. And so many of us, I think in our generation were taught so much about just, you know, all about professional achievement and what you can. And that's why I think, and you know, I'm hard on the professional class, the Christian professional class in this book, because I think that achievement overtook faithfulness in what you were doing. And the truth of the matter is, if people would have stood up earlier and more often, you wouldn't even have to compromise yourself because there would have been protection for people coming after you. But that individualistic spirit had us all just trying to get what we can get in the moment. And that's never Christian. You never just take what you can get. You do the right thing and believe that it will end up being profitable in the end. Well, this is a beautiful book, like I said at the beginning. And you could see how that generation had inherited a spirituality and a commitment to justice from their predecessors that fueled them in the moment in the 1950s and 60s into the 70s. We have benefited from their self-sacrifice and their courage and their conviction to do the right thing. And I think about my kids who are young adults now and what they're going to be facing in the decades ahead. And I got to admit, in a lot of cases, I feel like we have not given them the heritage that they're going to need. And have we squandered the heritage that we inherited as a generation? Have we squandered that faithfulness, that moral compass, the fear of the Lord that caused so many of these civil rights leaders to do what's right but not return hate for hate? gosh this country despite all of its failures and shortcomings this country has had a long legacy of spiritual vitality that we has fueled incredible things in this country and are we squandering it in this moment and is that what we're watching I hope not but the choice is still before us Justin any final words before we have to wrap up I think we are in the process of squandering it, but all isn't lost. There's still time. There's still people who are speaking up. I think even the Holy Post, I appreciate what you guys are doing. I think there is a courage in how you guys address issues and being willing to say, you know, maybe I don't have a tribe that's going to pat me on the back for everything I say, but it has to be said. And the more that we do that, the more we embolden and encourage others to do it. Because I just think courage is is, it catches on. And so we have to, we just have to keep doing it and believing that God has this under control, do what you're asked to do and move forward from there. Good word. Courage is contagious. All right. The book, Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around, How the Black Church's Public Witness Leads Us Out of the Culture War. Justin, we're going to be doing more with your book, with the Holy Post community in the days and weeks ahead. So they're going to hear more from you. And if they want to hear more from you sooner than that, check out Justin when he's on Esau Macaulay's podcast. Get your own copy of Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around. And be sure to check out the AND campaign and the excellent work you're doing there and public advocacy and not succumbing to just the polarization of our political tribes. Justin, thank you so much. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it, man. The Holy Post Podcast is a production of Holy Post Media, produced by Mike Stralow, editing by Seth Gorvett. Help us create more thoughtful Christian media by subscribing to Holy Post Plus at holypost.com slash plus. Also, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts so more people can discover thoughtful Christian commentary plus ukulele and occasional butt news. Visit holypost.com for show notes, news stories, Holy Post merchandise, and much, much more.